by Mary Swan
Listening to her mother, Alice thought how true it was. They sat two pews in front in church and she knew the back of their heads, Mr. Heath’s thick brown hair neatly cut, Naomi’s untrimmed black bonnet. Lilian’s thin shoulders and the strange little noises she sometimes made. She thought of the words she’d exchanged with each of them, of the words she’d heard them say to each other. If there had been some clue, some hint, she had missed it completely and so, it seemed, had everyone else.
• • •
Lazy Eye turned a page in his notebook, the pencil held tight in his fat fingers. Alice wondered what kind of story he would write, when so little seemed to be known. When her father died, the Herald said only that it had been sudden, and a terrible loss to the town. Christmas Day, and she remembered the cold air, snow squeaking beneath their feet as they walked from church, the dazzling reflection of the sun. The new curate had a problem with his speech, and her father mimicked him all the way home. I’m sho hungry, he said. I wonder wash for luncheon thish day. Stop, their mother said, her mouth twitching a smile. Stop, she said, taking her hand from her muff and slapping at his arm. Someone will hear you.
Shtop? he said. Did you shay you want me to shtop? Waving a hand as Mr. Marl drove by, the horses’ harnesses jingling. As they stamped off the snow outside their door her father said in a loud whisper, The wagesh of shin ish—and they were all giggling as they stepped inside, the smell of cloves all through the house. Nothing unusual in the rest of that day, meals prepared and small gifts opened, their mother lighting the lamps as the night drew in while Sarah played from the sheet music Gordon had given her, tied with white ribbon and a clumsy bow. Their father saying, when she was finished, that he thought he’d take a little stroll, that he thought he’d get some air. Bending to kiss their mother’s cheek, and the way she tilted her face to receive that kiss, and looked back down at her book. Alice would have said that she knew her father, would never have thought to question that. But as he bent to kiss her mother, as he wrapped the gray scarf around his neck and stepped out into the cold, clear night, his mind must have been on the perfumed rooms on Neeve Street, no sign of that on his familiar face.
Yellow Jacket crossed one sharp knee over the other and asked why they thought such a thing would happen, if they had any ideas at all. Drink, Sarah said, that will be at the bottom of it, and both reporters leaned forward in their chairs, but when she admitted that she’d never actually seen Mr. Heath take a drop, they sat back again. Then Lazy Eye stood, cutting off her lecture, and said that they had to be going. In the kitchen, Alice scraped their cold supper into the pail.
• • •
Sarah holds her coat closed at the neck; she’s been cold for years, it seems, wears extra layers on all but the hottest days of summer. She remembers that she once saw the murdered girl and the Robinson boy sitting on the grass at the river’s edge, wriggling their bare toes in the sun. For some reason it had made her think of the back room in the pharmacy, the smell of spices and earth and medicines, the way the light there seemed to make everything glow.
Mrs. Beck is the only one Sarah can depend on now. The one who has helped her find her way. Things she used to worry about, listening to Reverend Toller’s sermons—Mrs. Beck has shown her that those things are really her strengths, what make her such a valuable worker for the cause. Sometimes, before she falls asleep, she imagines herself saving Mrs. Beck from a fire, pushing her out of the way of a runaway horse and wagon. Often Sarah is badly hurt; sometimes she dies. She hears Mrs. Beck weeping, hears her say, as she has heard her say in life, She’s the daughter I never had.
It was Mrs. Beck who showed her that what happened with Gordon was a good thing, the broken engagement all for the best. There were a few tears, but Mrs. Beck dried Sarah’s eyes with her own handkerchief, explained how it was clear that Gordon didn’t really support their work, would maybe have forbidden it. It will take time, she said, but you will be so glad.
Mrs. Beck is always early at the store; she likes to be there herself to let little Donal in with his broom, to give him a bit of bread and jam for his breakfast. Through Donal she hopes to reach the entire family, and there are already signs that this is happening, tears in the mother’s eyes as she tried to sit up in her fusty bed. From the very beginning Mrs. Beck told Sarah that they must be vigilant, that opportunities are everywhere, not just in the meeting hall, and they must seize them.
While Donal sweeps, Mrs. Beck and Sarah check both floors of the store, making sure that everything is neatly piled, the correct things in the correct drawers. From the first, Mrs. Beck was pleased with Sarah’s sharp eye. Mr. Beck arrives later, in time to lead the morning prayers. His heart is not strong and he does less and less, but he likes to sit at his desk looking over things; he likes to get up and greet good customers by name, ask after their families. Sarah went to him when she saw Reverend Toller’s wife slip the buttons into her pocket, and two days later a pair of soft kid gloves, and he dealt with it discreetly, called on her husband, who thanked him for his consideration. When Mrs. Toller died last summer, Mrs. Beck was not the only one who whispered about blessings in disguise.
This morning, most of the other clerks are a little late stepping through the back door; they have stopped outside the jail and there is a hum beneath their voices when they say good morning to Mr. Beck, good morning to Mrs. Beck and Sarah. It is already a quarter to eight. Mr. Beck opens the prayer book and they all bow their heads as he begins to read: O Lord, we beseech thee, absolve thy people from their offenses; that through thy bountiful goodness we may all be delivered from the bands of those sins, which by our frailty we have committed. He has a surprisingly deep voice, a rolling voice that always reminds Sarah of the way her father used to read aloud in the evenings. Staring down at her clasped hands she is swept by a sudden wave of longing for the warm sound of her father’s voice, a pool of yellow light. She bites at her trembling lower lip, as hard as she can. Words she has heard, words she has read in the hard-backed kitchen chair, surge through her mind, and though she tries to concentrate on her clasped hands, on the gouge in the floorboards at her feet, the words keep coming. For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive. Look upon mine affliction and my pain.
There is a murmured Amen, and Mr. Beck closes his book; the little group separates as he makes his way to open the front door. Sarah walks toward her counter and maybe someone speaks to her, but her head is filled with words, just words, going around and around. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. She touches the soft plume on a trim brown hat, straightens the pamphlets in the rack once more. She is suddenly so tired, thinks of the long day ahead, the errands to do at noontime, the meeting this evening which is sure to run late. She would like to close her eyes, thinks that if she could rest, just a little bit, it would be enough. Our life is but a sleep and a forgetting, she thinks, more words pushing around in her mind, but she knows they’re not quite right. Alice would know; Alice can recite all kinds of verses, with a contented, dreamy look on her face. Though she knows that she won’t do it, Sarah thinks of telling Mrs. Beck that she is ill, thinks of going home again, of walking quickly home. And Alice will tell her the words and she will climb the stairs with an easy mind, lie down and sleep clean through the day.
• • •
By ten minutes to eight Alice is ready, hears a sigh and a shuffle from her mother’s room and knows that she is at least on her feet. She pours another few spoonsful from the bedside bottle; it is almost empty and she wonders if she will have time, when the children go for their lunch, to go to Howell’s for another. Mr. Marl’s is closer, but she doesn’t shop there. It sometimes lasts for days, this pain; it wears her down. Her mother tries to make her take to her bed, her cure for everything, but Alice remembers what her father used to say, that it’s always better to fight than to give in. All the stories he used to tell about coming to this country to make a new life, the hardships and the sat
isfactions. She thinks that if he were still alive they would be part of something larger, that without him they are all just fumbling through, even Sarah, who seems so sure.
She sits in the blue chair by her bedroom window and wonders what is happening now, imagines the clank of a metal door opening, the sound of heavy feet. Ye know neither the day nor hour, she thinks, and wonders again what it must be like if you do know. When Rachel first started coming to the school she asked about Alice’s father, and when Alice said he was dead she said, You must be so sad. I don’t know how I could bear it if something happened to my papa.
What a good thing she won’t know, Alice thinks, and then she remembers.
People said all kinds of things after the arrest, and later when the trial stirred it all up again. People who didn’t know him at all claimed to have heard Mr. Heath muttering to himself, looking at them with murderous eyes. The newspapers reported every detail, told how his lawyer tried to argue that he was insane. It was obvious, the lawyer said, that a man would have to be insane to do what he did. Alice understood the argument, of course she did, and yet … He stood on her front step that blue autumn day, his plan already half carried out, nothing in his voice, nothing in his expression, and Alice knows it was not so simple. Knows that he had reasons, some kind of reasons, that it was the only way he saw. Knows that if he had spoken at all, these past long months, he would have said it was done out of love.
According to the newspaper the execution apparatus is of a new design, and will perform its function quickly and painlessly. There are many who say that is not how it should be. A diagram had been drawn beside the article, smudgy lines that could have been a picture of anything. Alice has never been behind the high walls of the jail, although Sarah goes regularly to pass out her literature. She could have asked Sarah what it was like, and then she would have been able to picture it, but she rarely talks to Sarah, except about the details of the household. She only knew about Gordon because his sister told her after church one day that he had broken off the engagement. He says she’s changed, Beth whispered, bending her head close so no one could overhear. All this preaching and standing outside taverns, handing things out on the street. He says he just couldn’t go on with it.
At home Alice said that she’d heard, said she was sorry, and Sarah batted a hand in the air. Who would take the three of us on? she said, turning away, as if that were the reason. I don’t care at all, Sarah said, and Alice chose to believe her. She thinks now of the red lines where Sarah’s spectacles sit, of the way she rubs at her eyes when she takes them off. She thinks of her sister’s narrow shoulders in her old black coat, and the way the satchel bumps at her leg, the way she seems coiled tight, like a watch that is wound and wound.
Rachel’s chair stands, wedged in the corner, the little pile of books and papers. Downstairs the clock chimes for eight o’clock, and on the second note the church bell begins to toll, and she knows that it is done. She thinks that perhaps she will take the children back to the wood, where things are now green and growing. She has time to decide, and she has the whole day to think of what she will say, when Sarah opens the door.
House
THE HOUSE IS still empty but already people walk by it without stopping, without a shudder in the mind. Sometimes they arrive at their destination and realize that. It’s a small white house with a long front porch, one window up, two down, on either side of the door that has always been firmly shut. The floor plan was reproduced in the newspaper, neat crosses where the bodies were found, so although few people were ever inside, anyone can imagine. Perhaps in another year or so someone else will move in, someone too stolid or too poor to mind; the rent will stay low for years to come.
Mr. Marl owns the white house; he pays a man to keep the yard tidy, to rake up the twigs and dead grass, burn the fallen leaves. Boards have been nailed over the shattered windows, but other than that it looks like any other house, no sign at all. There was some bad feeling against him, talk that his son-in-law passed on, claiming concern. The glint in Lett’s eyes reminding Marl of things that would have to be dealt with, when this other business was done. There was muttering on street corners and even a suggestion in the newspaper, when the fact of the embezzlement charge became known, the arrest. As if he was somehow to blame, as if he had caused it all. Marl had a moment of doubt, eyes wide open in his soft bed, but only a moment; he knew that it was nonsense, nothing to do with him. He was, in fact, another victim, his trust betrayed, but no one seemed to care about that. When Heath had first presented himself, Marl already knew that his circumstances were desperate. He saw the brushed lapels, the battered boots that were newly cleaned and polished. Noted the way Heath carried himself, the way he spoke, carefully, but without even a hint of pleading. He recognized him as a proud man who wanted something better, a man who only needed a chance, and would be grateful for it. He saw something of his own younger self; maybe that was his mistake.
Although it belonged to him, Mr. Marl had the furniture sold along with the family’s few possessions, and added the amount to the fund he used for expenses. The funerals, the small, flat stones, the inquiry agents in England. The lawyer from the city, who had to be paid by someone. The sale raised more than he had expected but a significant amount still had to come from his own pocket, and there was also the upkeep of the house, and the stolen amount, never traced, never recovered. Lying in his soft bed he thought how unfair it was, the things people whispered; it was never about the money.
Consequences
What will not a fearful man conceive in the dark?
—The Anatomy of Melancholy
FOR A LITTLE while that night, maybe even for a long while, he was gloriously drunk. The whiskey sipped before the meal, the wine, the brandy glass that was filled again and again at the round table in Blyth’s private dining room. The men sitting with him all fine fellows, the stories they told making him laugh until tears ran down his cheeks. It seemed a lifetime ago that the sheriff had poured a slug of rum, the neck of the bottle rattling against the thick rim of the glass. Rattling and rattling. I’ve seen some things, the sheriff had said. No need to finish the sentence. A second slug after the formality of the inquest, something that had to be done, though they all knew very well how he had died.
Heath’s face showed nothing of his last long minutes, looking—not peaceful, but empty. Blank as a photograph, an arrangement of eyes, nose, mouth. The full graying beard that could have belonged to anyone, except for the terrible marks of the rope that were visible beneath it. There was a piece of paper wrapped around the middle finger of the left hand, held tightly by an India rubber band. Robinson took it off, unrolled it, and saw that it was a note written in a child’s careful hand, a red heart in each corner. He showed it to the others and then wrapped it back around the limp finger, trying to match the creases the rubber band had made.
The sheriff let them out through a small door in the farthest corner of the yard. He needed the money, he said, meaning the red-haired hangman who had bolted at the first sign that things had gone wrong. There would be trouble over that, Robinson not the only one who recognized him as a cousin of the sheriff’s wife, recently arrived from Glasgow. Certain not to have been paid the whole amount the sheriff had been given to travel to the city and hire an experienced man. Maybe this time it would be trouble the sheriff couldn’t wriggle out of, although from the look of the cousin’s flying heels he wouldn’t stop running until he was miles from any questions.
As he made his way home, avoiding the crowd still gathered in front of the jail, Robinson remembered looking up as the procession made its way to the dangling rope, and again as they filed back across the yard, their witnessing over. Above the high wall he saw men on the rooftops of buildings across the way, and even faces peering down through the branches of trees. He walked quickly now, keeping his head down, noticing each small sensation. The sweat beginning to gather beneath his collar, the tickle in his nose that meant he was about to sneeze, th
e small stone lodged inside his left shoe. Things it seemed he still had a right to feel, and Heath did not.
• • •
There was a bottle in the bottom drawer of his desk, and he noticed that his hand was quite steady as he poured. Leaning back in his chair, feeling the warmth in his throat, in his gut, he thought of them all, but mostly of Lilian. Her bony shoulders, wrists, her voice like the whisper of a turning page. If they’d had more time he knew he could have cured her, and he thought about what that would have meant, for both of them. Even without the note he would have sent to the Medical Record, maybe the Lancet. Had there been something he should have seen, when Heath came to settle the bill? But that was days before, the awful thought surely not yet a flicker. He knew that even the token he charged could be a hardship, said there was no hurry, none at all, but Heath insisted, removing the coins from a little pouch in his pocket. Try as he might, Robinson couldn’t remember anything else they might have said to each other.
He had never warmed to Heath, and sipping slowly now, he wondered about that. They hadn’t spoken before the day that Lilian collapsed in a peal of church bells, but he had seen him about in the town, seen the family out walking, knew that the younger girl was at the Barnes’ school with his son. People said that Heath had always put on airs, but Robinson didn’t think it was exactly that, and he could think of many others who didn’t have a penny to pinch, yet carried themselves with dignity and weren’t judged for it. There was something in his manner though, something in the way he spoke when he refused the treatment Robinson suggested, denied that Lilian had any need of it. His wife put a hand on his arm, turned her beautiful pale face toward him, and Robinson had seen enough married couples not to be surprised when she returned alone the next day and said that her husband had changed his mind.