Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

What I remember is a small rocky harbour by the sea, the land green and grey in colour, with not much in the way of trees; and for that reason I was quite frightened when I first saw large trees of the kind they have here, as I did not see how any tree could be that tall. I don’t recall the place very well, as I was a child when I left it; only in scraps, like a plate that’s been broken. There are always some pieces that would seem to belong to another plate altogether; and then there are the empty spaces, where you cannot fit anything in.

We lived in a cottage with a leaky roof and two small rooms, on the edge of a village near a town that I did not name for the newspapers, as my Aunt Pauline might still be living and I would not wish to bring disgrace upon her. She always thought well of me, although I heard her telling my mother what could be expected of me really, with so few prospects and with a father like that. She thought my mother had married beneath her; she said it was the way in our family, and she supposed I would end up the same; but to me she said that I should strive against it, and set a high price on myself, and not take up with the first Hail-fellow-well-met that should happen along, the way my mother had, without looking into his family or background, and that I should be wary of strangers. At the age of eight I did not have much idea of what she was talking about, although it was good advice all the same. My mother said Aunt Pauline meant kindly but had standards, which were all very well for those that could afford them. Aunt Pauline and her husband, who was my Uncle Roy, a slope-shouldered and outspoken man, kept a shop in the nearby town; along with general goods they sold dress materials and pieces of lace, and some linens from Belfast, and they did well enough. My mother was Aunt Pauline’s younger sister, and prettier than Aunt Pauline, who had a complexion like sandpaper and was all bone, with knuckles on her as big as chickens’ knees; but my mother had long auburn hair, it was her I got it from, and round blue eyes like a doll, and before her marriage she had lived with Aunt Pauline and Uncle Roy and helped them with the shop.

My mother and Aunt Pauline were a dead clergyman’s daughters — a Methodist, he was — and it was said their father had done something unexpected with the church money, and after that could not get a position; and when he died they were penniless, and were turned out to fend for themselves. But both had an education, and could embroider and play the piano; so that Aunt Pauline felt she too had married beneath her, as keeping a shop was not how a lady should live; but Uncle Roy was a well-meaning man although unpolished, and respected her, and that counted for something; and every time she looked into her linen closet, or counted over her two sets of dishes, one for everyday and one real china for best, she blessed her lucky stars and was thankful, because a woman could do worse; and what she meant was that my mother had.

I don’t think she said such things to hurt my mother’s feelings, although it had that effect, and she would cry afterwards. She’d begun life under Aunt Pauline’s thumb and continued the same way, only my father’s thumb was added to it. Aunt Pauline was always telling her to stand up to my father, and my father would tell her to stand up to Aunt Pauline, and between the two of them they squashed her flat. She was a timid creature, hesitating and weak and delicate, which used to anger me. I wanted her to be stronger, so I would not have to be so strong myself.

As for my father, he was not even Irish. He was an Englishman from the north of it, and why he had come to Ireland was never clear, as most who were inclined to travel went in the other direction. Aunt Pauline said he must have been in some trouble in England, and had come across to get himself out of the way in a hurry. Marks may not even have been his real name, she said; it should have been Mark, for the Mark of Cain, as he had a murderous look about him. But she only said that later, when things had gone so wrong.

At first, said my mother, he seemed a well-enough young man, and steady, and even Aunt Pauline had to admit that he was handsome, being tall and yellow-haired and having kept most of his teeth; and at the time they married, he had money in his pocket, as well as good prospects, for he was indeed a stone-mason, as the newspapers wrote down. Even so, Aunt Pauline said my mother would not have married him unless she’d had to, and it was covered up, although there was talk of my eldest sister Martha being very large for a seventh-month child; and that came from my mother’s being too obliging, and too many young women were caught in that fashion; and she was only telling me this so I would not do the same. She said my mother was very fortunate in that my father did agree to marry her, she would give him that, as most would have been on the next boat out of Belfast when they heard the news, leaving her high and dry on the shore, and what could Aunt Pauline have done for her then, as she had her own reputation and the shop to consider.

So my mother and my father each felt trapped by the other.

I do not believe my father was a bad man to begin with; but he was easily led astray, and circumstances were against him. Being an Englishman, he was none too welcome even among the Protestants, as they were not fond of outsiders. Also he claimed my uncle said he’d tricked my mother into marriage so he could have a fine time, living at ease and dipping into their money from the shop; which was true in part, as they could not refuse him because of my mother and the children.

I learnt all this at an early age. The doors in our house were none too thick, and I was a little pitcher with big ears, and my father’s voice was loud when drunk; and once he would get going, he did not notice who might be standing just around the corner or outside the window, as quiet as a mouse. One thing he said was that his children were too many in number, and would have been even for a richer man. As they wrote in the papers, there ended by being nine of us, nine living that is. They did not put in the dead ones, which were three, not counting the baby that was lost before being born, and never had a name. My mother and Aunt Pauline called it the lost baby, and when I was little I wondered where it had been lost, because I thought it was lost the way you would lose a penny; and if it had been lost, then perhaps it might someday be found.

The other three dead ones were buried in the churchyard. Although my mother prayed more and more, we went to church less and less, because she said she was not going to have her poor tattery children paraded in front of everyone like scarecrows, with no shoes. It was only a parish church but despite her feeble nature she had her pride, and being a clergyman’s daughter she knew what was decent in a church. She did so long to be decent again, and for us to be decent as well. But it is very hard, Sir, to be decent, without proper clothes.

I used to go to the churchyard though. The church was only the size of a cowshed, and the churchyard mostly overgrown. Our village was once larger, but many had moved away, to Belfast to the mills, or across the ocean; and often there was no one left from a family to tend the graves. The graveyard was one of the places I would take the younger children when my mother said I was to get them out of the house; so we would go and look at the three dead ones, and the other graves as well. Some were very old, and had gravestones with the heads of angels on them, though they looked more like flat cakes with two staring eyes, and a wing coming out on either side where the ears should have been. I did not see how a head could fly around without a body attached; and also I did not see how a person could be in Heaven, and in the churchyard too; but all agreed that it was so.