Alias Grace (54 page)

“Please, Mrs. Quennell,” says Dr. DuPont. “It is no spirit. What we are witnessing here must be a natural phenomenon.” He’s sounding a little desperate.

“Not James,” says the voice, “you old fraud!”

“Nancy, then,” says Mrs. Quennell, who doesn’t seem at all affected by the insult. “They are often rude,” she says. “They call us names. Some are angry – those earthbound spirits who cannot tolerate being dead.”

“Not Nancy, you stupid fool! Nancy can’t say anything, she can’t say a word, not with her neck like that. Such a pretty neck, once! But Nancy isn’t angry any more, she doesn’t mind, Nancy is my friend. She understands now, she wants to share things. Come, Doctor,” says the voice, cajoling now. “You like riddles. You know the answer. I told you it was
my
kerchief, the one I left to Grace, when I, when I …” She begins to sing again: “ ‘Oh no, ’twas the truth in her eye ever dawning, That made me love Mary …’ ”

“Not Mary,” says Simon. “Not Mary Whitney.”

There is a sharp clap, which appears to come from the ceiling. “I told James to do it. I urged him to. I was there all along!”

“There?” says DuPont.

“Here! With Grace, where I am now. It was so cold, lying on the floor, and I was all alone; I needed to keep warm. But Grace doesn’t know, she’s never known!” The voice is no longer teasing. “They almost hanged her, but that would have been wrong. She knew nothing! I only borrowed her clothing for a time.”

“Her clothing?” says Simon.

“Her earthly shell. Her fleshly garment. She forgot to open the window, and so I couldn’t get out! But I wouldn’t want to hurt her. You mustn’t tell her!” The little voice is pleading now.

“Why not?” asks Simon.

“You know why, Dr. Jordan. Do you want to see her back in the Asylum? I liked it there at first, I could talk out loud there. I could laugh. I could tell what happened. But no one listened to me.” There is a small, thin sobbing. “I was not heard.”

“Grace,” says Simon. “Stop playing tricks!”

“I am not Grace,” says the voice, more tentatively.

“Is that really you?” Simon asks it. “Are you telling the truth? Don’t be afraid.”

“You see?” wails the voice. “You’re the same, you won’t listen to me, you don’t believe me, you want it your own way, you won’t hear.…” It trails off, and there is silence.

“She’s gone,” says Mrs. Quennell. “You can always tell when they go back to their own realm. You can feel it in the air; it’s the electricity.”

For a long moment nobody says anything. Then Dr. DuPont moves. “Grace,” he says, bending over her. “Grace Marks, can you hear me?” He lays his hand on her shoulder.

There’s another long pause, during which they can hear Grace breathing, unevenly now, as if in troubled sleep. “Yes,” she says at last. It’s her usual voice.

“I am going to bring you up now,” says DuPont. He lifts the veil gently from her head, lays it aside. Her face is stilled and smooth. “You are floating up, up. Up out of the depths. You will not recall what happened here. When I snap my fingers, you will awake.” He goes to the lamp, turns it up, then comes back and places his hand close to Grace’s head. His fingers snap.

Grace stirs, opens her eyes, looks around wonderingly, smiles at them. It’s a calm smile, no longer tense and fearful. The smile of a dutiful child. “I must have been asleep,” she says.

“Do you remember anything?” asks Dr. DuPont anxiously. “Anything of what has just passed?”

“No,” says Grace. “I was asleep. But I must have been dreaming. I dreamt about my mother. She was floating in the sea. She was at peace.”

Simon is relieved; DuPont too, from the look of him. He takes her hand, assists her from the chair. “You may feel a little dizzy,” he tells her gently. “It is frequently the case. Mrs. Quennell, would you see that she is placed in a bedchamber where she may lie down?”

Mrs. Quennell leaves the room with Grace, holding her by the arm as if she’s an invalid. But she walks lightly enough now, and seems almost happy.

T
he men remain in the library. Simon is glad he’s sitting down; he’d welcome nothing so much at the moment as a good stiff glass of brandy, to steady his nerves, but in present company there’s not much hope of that. He feels light-headed, and wonders if his earlier fever is returning.

“Gentlemen,” DuPont begins, “I am at a loss. I have never had an experience quite like this before. The results were most unexpected. As a rule, the subject remains under the control of the operator.” He sounds quite shaken.

“Two hundred years ago, they would not have been at a loss,” says Reverend Verringer. “It would have been a clear case of possession. Mary Whitney would have been found to have been inhabiting the body of Grace Marks, and thus to be responsible for inciting the crime, and for helping to strangle Nancy Montgomery. An exorcism would have been in order.”

“But this is the nineteenth century,” says Simon. “It may be a neurological condition.” He would like to say
must be
, but he doesn’t
wish to contradict Verringer too bluntly. Also he is still quite unsettled, and unsure of his intellectual ground.

“There have been cases of this kind,” DuPont says. “As early as 1816, there was Mary Reynolds, of New York, whose bizarre alternations were described by Dr. S. L. Mitchill of New York; are you familiar with the case, Dr. Jordan? No? Since then, Wakley of
The Lancet
has written extensively on the phenomenon; he calls it
double consciousness
, although he emphatically rejects the possibility of reaching the so-called secondary personality through Neuro-hypnotism, as there is too much chance of the subject’s being influenced by the practitioner. He has always been a great foe of Mesmerism and related means, being a conservative in that respect.”

“Puysegeur describes something of the sort, as I recall,” says Simon. “It may be a case of what is known as
dédoublement –
the subject, when in a somnambulistic trance, displayed a completely different personality than when awake, the two halves having no knowledge of each other.”

“Gentlemen, it’s most difficult to credit,” says Verringer. “But stranger things have happened.”

“Nature sometimes produces two heads on one body,” says DuPont. “Then why not two persons, as it were, in one brain? There may exist examples, not only of alternating
states
of consciousness, as claimed by Puysegeur, but of two distinct personalities, which may coexist in the same body and yet have different sets of memories altogether, and be, for all practical purposes, two separate individuals. If, that is, you’ll accept – a debatable point – that we are what we remember.”

“Perhaps,” says Simon, “we are also – preponderantly – what we forget.”

“If you are right,” says Reverend Verringer, “what becomes of the soul? We cannot be mere patchworks! It is a horrifying thought, and one that, if true, would make a mockery of all notions of moral
responsibility, and indeed of morality itself, as we currently define it.”

“The other voice, whatever it was,” says Simon, “was remarkable for its violence.”

“But not without a certain logic,” says Verringer dryly, “and an ability to see in the dark.”

Simon remembers Lydia’s warm hand, and finds himself flushing. At the moment he wishes Verringer at the bottom of the sea.

“If two persons, why not two souls?” DuPont continues. “That is, if the soul must be brought into it at all. Or three souls and persons, for that matter. Consider the Trinity.”

“Dr. Jordan,” says Reverend Verringer, ignoring this theological challenge, “what will you say about this, in your report? Surely the evening’s proceedings are scarcely orthodox, from a medical point of view.”

“I shall have to consider my position,” says Simon, “very carefully. Although you do see that if Dr. DuPont’s premise is accepted, Grace Marks is exonerated.”

“To admit such a possibility would require a leap of faith,” says Reverend Verringer. “One that I myself will pray for the strength to make, as I have always believed Grace to be innocent; or hoped, rather, although I must admit I have been somewhat shaken. But if what we have witnessed is a natural phenomenon, who are we to question it? The ground of all phenomena is God, and he must have his reasons, obscure though they may appear to mortal eyes.”

Simon walks back to the house alone. The night is clear and warm, with a moon, almost full, enclosed in a nimbus of mist; the air smells of mown grass and horse manure, with an undertone of dog.

Throughout the evening he’s maintained a plausible self-control, but now his brain feels like a roasting chestnut, or an animal on fire. Silent howls resound inside him; there’s a confused and frenzied motion, a scrambling, a dashing to and fro. What happened in the
library? Was Grace really in a trance, or was she play-acting, and laughing up her sleeve? He knows what he saw and heard, but he may have been shown an illusion, which he cannot prove to have been one.

If he describes what he witnessed in his report, and if his report finds its way into any petition submitted on Grace Marks’ behalf, he knows it would immediately scotch all possible chances of success. It’s Ministers of Justice and their kind who read such petitions; they are hard-headed, practical men, who require solid evidence. If the report were to become public, and a matter of record, and widely circulated, he would become an instant laughing-stock, especially among the established members of the medical profession. That would be the end of his plans for an Asylum, for who would subscribe to such an institution, knowing it to be run by some crackbrained believer in mystical voices?

There’s no way he can write the report Verringer desires without perjuring himself. The safest thing would be to write nothing at all, but Verringer will hardly let him off the hook so easily. However, the fact is that he can’t state anything with certainty and still tell the truth, because the truth eludes him. Or rather it’s Grace herself who eludes him. She glides ahead of him, just out of his grasp, turning her head to see if he’s still following.

Brusquely he dismisses her, and turns to thoughts of Rachel. She at least is something he can grapple with, take hold of. She will not slip through his fingers.

The house is in darkness; Rachel must be asleep. He doesn’t wish to see her, he feels no desire for her this evening – quite the opposite; the thought of her, of her tense and bone-coloured body, her scent of camphor and withered violets, fills him with a faint disgust; but he knows all that will change as soon as he steps over the threshold. He’ll begin to tiptoe up the stairs, intending to avoid her. Then he’ll
turn around, make his way to her room, shake her roughly awake. Tonight he’ll hit her, as she’s begged him to; he’s never done that before, it’s something new. He wants to punish her for his own addiction to her. He wants to make her cry; though not too loudly, or Dora will hear them, and trumpet scandal. It’s a wonder she hasn’t heard them before; they’ve become increasingly careless.

He knows he’s reaching the end of the repertoire; the end of what Rachel can offer; the end of her. But what will come before the end? And the end itself – what shape will it take? There must be some conclusion, some finale. He can’t think. Perhaps, tonight, he should abstain.

He unlocks the door with his key, opens it as quietly as he can. She’s there, just inside; waiting for him in the hall, in the dark, in her ruffled peignoir, which gleams wanly in the moonlight. She winds her arms around him and draws him inward, pressing against him. Her body shakes. He has an urge to beat her away, as if she’s a spiderweb across his face, or a skein of entangling jelly. Instead he kisses her. Her face is wet; she’s been crying. She’s crying now.

“Hush,” he murmurs, stroking her hair. “Hush, Rachel.” This is what he’s wanted Grace to do – this trembling and clinging; he’s pictured it often enough, though, he now sees, in a suspiciously theatrical way. Those scenes were always skilfully lit, the gestures – his included – languid and graceful, with a kind of luxurious quivering, as in the death scenes at the ballet. Melting anguish is a good deal less attractive now that he actually has to contend with it up close and in the flesh. Wiping the doe-like eyes is one thing, wiping the doe-like nose quite another. He rummages for his pocket-handkerchief.

“He’s coming back,” Rachel says in a piercing whisper. “I’ve had a letter from him.” For an instant Simon has no idea who she means. But of course it’s the Major. Simon has consigned him, in imagination, to some bottomless debauch or other, and then forgotten him.

“Oh, what will become of us?” she sighs. The melodrama of the expression does not diminish the emotion, at least not for her.

“When?” Simon whispers.

“He wrote me a letter,” she sobs. “He says I must forgive him. He says he’s reformed – he wishes to start a new life – it’s what he always says. Now I must lose you – it’s unbearable!” Her shoulders are shaking, her arms around him tighten convulsively.

“When is he coming?” Simon asks again. The scene he used to envisage, with a pleasurable prickling of fear – himself embedded in Rachel, the Major appearing in the doorway, all outrage and drawn sword – returns with new vividness.

“In two days,” says Rachel in a choking voice. “The day after tomorrow, in the evening. On the train.”

“Come,” says Simon. He leads her along the hall to her bedroom. Now that he knows his own escape from her is not only possible but necessary, he feels an intense desire for her. She’s lit a candle; she knows his tastes. The hours remaining to them are few; discovery looms; panic and fear are said to quicken the heartbeat and heighten desire. He makes a mental note to himself –
it’s true –
as for perhaps the last time he pushes her backwards onto the bed and falls heavily on top of her, rummaging through the layers of cloth.

“Don’t leave me,” she moans. “Don’t leave me alone with him! You don’t know what he’ll do to me!” This time her agonized writhing is real. “I hate him! If only he were dead!”

“Hush,” whispers Simon. “Dora may hear.” He almost hopes she does; he feels, at this moment, in great need of an audience. Around the bed he ranges a shadowy assemblage of watchers: not only the Major, but the Reverend Verringer, and Jerome DuPont, and Lydia. Above all, Grace Marks. He wants her to be jealous.