Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

At that a chill ran over my whole body, and I did not ask her to explain herself. I didn’t want her saying anything bad about Dr. Jordan, as on the whole he has been very kind to me, and is also a considerable diversion in my life of monotony and toil.

When Dr. Jordan comes back, I am to be hypnotized. It has all been decided; Jeremiah, or I should think of him as Dr. DuPont because that is what I must now remember to call him, is to do the hypnotizing, and the others will watch and listen. The Governor’s wife has explained it all, and said I need not be afraid, as I will be among friends who mean well, and all I will have to do is sit in a chair and go to sleep when Dr. DuPont tells me to. When I am asleep they will ask me questions. In this way they hope to bring back my memory.

I told her I was not at all sure I wanted to have it back, although of course I would do as they wished. And she said she was glad to find me in a co-operative state of mind, and she had the greatest faith in me and was sure I would be found innocent.

After the evening meal Matron gave us some knitting, to take into our cells and finish after hours, as they are behind on the stockings. In the summer it is light until quite late, and no candle grease need be wasted on us.

So now I am knitting. I am a quick knitter, I can do it without looking as long as it is only stockings and nothing fancy. And as I knit, I think: What would I put into my Keepsake Album, if I had one? A bit of fringe, from my mother’s shawl. A ravelling of red wool, from the flowered mittens that Mary Whitney made for me. A scrap of silk, from Nancy‘s good shawl. A bone button, from Jeremiah. A daisy, from the daisy chain made for me by Jamie Walsh.

Nothing from McDermott, as I don’t wish to remember him.

But what should a Keepsake Album be? Should it be only the good things in your life, or should it be all of the things? Many put in pictures of scenes and events they have never witnessed, such as Dukes and Niagara Falls, which to my mind is a sort of cheating. Would I do that? Or would I be truthful to my own life.

A piece of coarse cotton, from my Penitentiary nightdress. A square of bloodstained petticoat. A strip of kerchief, white with blue flowers. Love-in-a-mist.

Chapter 47

The next morning, just after sunrise, Simon sets our for Richmond Hill, on a horse which he’s hired at the livery stable behind his hotel. Like all horses accustomed to a succession of strange riders the beast is obstinate, with a hard mouth, and tries twice to scrape him against fences. After that it settles down, and plods along at a dogged canter, varied by a brisk, jolting walk. Although dusty and rutted in places the road is better than Simon has expected, and with several stops at wayside inns for rest and water he reaches Richmond Hill shortly after noon.

It’s still not much of a town. There’s a general store, a blacksmith’s, a straggle of houses. The inn must be the same one Grace remembers. He goes into it, orders roast beef and beer, and enquires about the location of Mr. Kinnear’s former house. The landlord isn’t surprised: Simon is by no means the first to ask such a question. In fact, they were fairly swarmed back then, he says, at the time of the murders, and ever since there’s been a steady trickle of sightseers. The town is tired of being known only for that one thing: let the dead bury the dead, to his mind. But then, people want to gawk at tragedy; it’s indecent. You’d think they’d leave trouble alone — but no, they want to partake of it. Some go so far as to carry things away with them — pebbles from the driveway, flowers from the flower beds. The gentleman who owns the house now is not so bothered, as fewer people have been coming. Still, he doesn’t want idle curiosity.

Simon assures him that his own curiosity is far from idle: he’s a doctor, and is making a study of Grace. It’s a waste of time, says the landlord, because Grace was guilty. “She was good-looking woman,” he adds, with a kind of pride at having known her. “Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. You’d never have guessed what she was plotting, under that smooth face.”

“Only fifteen at the time, I believe,” says Simon.

“But could have passed for eighteen. A shame, to have got so wicked, at her young age.” He says Mr. Kinnear was a fine gentleman though loose, and most people had liked Nancy Montgomery, even though she’d been living in sin. He’d known McDermott too; a prime athlete, and would have done well in the end, except for Grace. “It was her led him on, and it was her put a noose around his neck for him too.”

He says the women always get off easy.

Simon asks about Jamie Walsh, but Jamie Walsh is gone. To the city, say some; to the States, say others. After Kinnear’s place was sold off the Walshes had to shift. In fact there aren’t many left in the neighbourhood who were here back then, as there’s been a great deal of buying and selling and coming and going since; the grass being always greener on the other side of the fence. Simon rides north, and has little difficulty in identifying the Kinnear property. He hasn’t meant to go right up to the house — he’s only been intending to look at it from a distance — but the orchard which was young in Grace’s time has now grown up, partially obscuring the view. He finds himself halfway up the drive, and before he knows it he’s hitched his horse to the fence beside the two kitchens, and is standing at the front door.

The house is smaller, and somehow dingier, than he has imagined it. The porch with its pillars is in need of a coat of paint, and the rose bushes have run wild, and show only a few infested blooms. What can be gained from looking, Simon asks himself; apart, that is, from a vulgar frisson, and the indulgence of morbid interest? It’s like visiting the site of a battle: there is nothing to be seen except in the mind’s eye. Such confrontations with the actual are always a disappointment.

Nevertheless he knocks at the front door, then knocks again. No one answers. He’s turning to go away when the door is opened. A woman stands there, thin, sad-faced, not old but aging, soberly dressed in a dark print dress and apron. Simon has the sensation that this is what Nancy Montgomery would have turned into if she’d lived.

“You’re here to see the house,” she says. It isn’t a question. “The master’s not at home, but I have instructions to show you around.”

Simon is taken aback: how did they know he was coming? Perhaps they have a lot of visitors, still, despite what the innkeeper told him? Has the place become a grisly museum?

The housekeeper — for that’s what she must be — stands aside to allow Simon to pass into the front hall. “You’ll want to know about the well, I suppose,” she says. “They always do.”

“The well?” asks Simon. He’s heard nothing about a well. Perhaps his visit will be repaid, after all, with some fresh detail about the case, never before mentioned. “What about the well?”

The woman gives him an odd glance. “It’s a covered well, Sir, with a new pump. Surely you would want to know about the well, when looking to buy a place.”

“But I’m not looking to buy it,” says Simon, flustered. “Is it for sale?”

“Why else would I be showing it to you? Of course it’s for sale, and not for the first time neither. Those that live here never feel entirely comfortable. Not that there’s anything, no ghosts or such, though you’d think there might be, and I never like to go down to the cellar. But it draws the idle gawkers.”

She stares hard at him: if he’s not a buyer, what is he doing here? Simon doesn’t wish to be thought just another idle gawker. “I am a doctor,” he says.