Inheritance Feud

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Livia had already seen the Provost, in his great wig and chain. She had also seen the Governor, and he'd seen her, stripped part n***d over a bench in front of them all and beaten with rods till she bled. Smug, Priddy had stayed through all of that; the expression she'd caught on his face had been one of pure pleasure. It wasn't she who had a devil, Livia knew now; it was Priddy and his like. The knowledge of what he'd done to her came more fully as the weeks passed;

in the correction-house, the inmates could at least talk. They talked most in the dormitory, free of any Ada Park; the two old women had separate quarters. In this way and others, life was if anything more private than it had been in the orphanage proper. As Livia's child grew in her, so did her soul.

Some of the inmates she already knew. It was not a large town, and two at least of the girls had been formerly in the orphanage, having been returned from situations, one for petty theft and one for soliciting. The petty thief was Mary Reid, whom Livia remembered from Emmett's. She was the same sharp-faced, bitter-tongued little wench with one skeery

eye, and not grown an inch; it was hard to credit that she

had a young man outside, and that he was Tam Imrie. "I knew he hadn't done anything with you," she told Livia. "I knew who had." They had all known, evidently, what the governor was like; he'd got at three of the girls Mary knew of. "One day he'll get what's coming; but they wouldn't believe us. Did you take a black draught, dear?"

Livia said she hadn't, and Mary shook her head. "It's too late now; should've taken one, it'd have loosed it," she said. "Thing is, their ladyships won't take you once they've seen you looking like that; it might be their husbands next time," and she scanned Livia's

waistline. "Better stick to pinching, like me." She grinned, showing degenerate stumps of teeth. "It's the money," she explained, "what the hell do they expect you to do? Three pounds a year, and half to go back. Tam and me'd get married when he's free of his bond, that's this coming quarter, and he'll be a master baker." She closed her lips on what might have been more, and looked at Livia reflectively with her weird eye gleaming. "It's better here without that laundry," she added. The depraved and aban doned inhabitants of the yellow house were not permitted to go down to the river; their task instead was plain sewing, which occupied the daylight hours with propriety.

Besides this there were visits, made more frequently than to Emmett's proper, by those charitable ladies of the town who took an interest in such things and were, moreover, like every one else, on the lookout for domestics. It was unlikely that they themselves would accept the correction-house inmates into their own homes, though they prayed over them; but an acquaintance in the country might be glad of a maid, and might even advance the fare and other perquisites to the finder of such a treasure, even if it meant waiting for a while. Brief factual versions of the successful applicants' careers were sent before them, so that the prospective employer could take her own precautions, Mary had experience of this. She was, she confessed at last, in fear of the well-doing ladies and the way in which they might separate her from the prospect of bliss with Tam.

"Don't you say a word to anyone," she hissed one night from under her grey blanket. "Tam gets his articles next month, see? He's found a place, oh, miles and miles from here; somewhere east. It's got a brick oven, and a house for us to live in. It isn't much, but it'll do me. But s'pose in the meantime they tie me up with some old b***h who won't let me go, and Tam goes off with some other? A man can't wait for ever, but it'd kill me, I think." She'd feigned sick, she said, last time they came with a place for her; she'd scratched and rubbed her face with harsh lye and let them think it was the pox. "That sent her off fast enough, but the folk here got the apothecary to me next day, and he soon saw it wasn't. They warmed my back, I can tell you; but it was Lily got that job." Mary gave her eerie grin. "Only thing is, that tale won't do twice, if they come for me again; no way of catching the real thing in here, I'd say. I wondered if you'd help, knowing Tam?"

Livia had half listened, then and at other times; the tale by now was like something she'd heard long ago, but which would never happen. If any of them got out of here, it would only be to some drearier place; to some old woman who skinned the meat off the bones before serving, or beat one constantly; not but what they all did that. She stared at the high barred window, beyond which rain could be seen drop ping down between here and Emmett's. There was nothing else, only Emmett's and the rain. On Sundays they all assembled, and formed a procession for church, wet or dry; she remembered the young fellow she'd seen one such day, mounted at the gate on a bay horse. He'd had light eyes like a cat's; they'd stared at her, and she'd stared back. There were folk like that outside. She herself would do anything, anything, to get out of here; it didn't matter whether it was to Tam Imrie or another. If Governor Priddy himself came with an offer to set her up as his doxy, she wasn't sure, by now, that she'd refuse him.

She glanced down at her swollen body. It hadn't-they'd tried twice or thrice in the first weeks after she came, with out telling her why-proved possible to relieve her state with purges. It'd gone too far, Gammer Bell said, agreeing with

Mary unknowing; glaring meantime at Livia as though it were

her fault. They'd made her sick, however, and as though her

inside were all running out of her in a constant mess of black

draught; but that was all, and this remembrance Priddy had left her with grew bulkier as day followed day. It began to seem as if there never had been a time when she wasn't pregnant. They'd stopped purging her now. She would lie beneath her blanket night after night and half listen to Mary, and it was with no sensation of anything snapping open at last in her own mind that she said one time

dully, as if it couldn't matter much either way, "If Tam can fix it so's we both get away, let him; I'll do it if I can, if he can wait till after." Her belly by now raised the covers as she lay. Mary turned on her side, smiled, and said, consideringly,

"Thanks, love. When's it come?" Livia said she didn't know. "Lord, you innocent," said

Mary. "Looks as if it wouldn't be long to me; say any day now. I'll get word to Tam when he comes in with the loaves. Funny they never notice who's delivering daily; used to bake their own, then we'd be done. But the sacks of meal are big enough, in the dray."

Livia did not answer; she was already asleep. A silence had settled down on the yellow house, to be roused some hours later by the sound of Emmett's clapper. Livia's labour began that same day at six-thirty, where she'd gone after breakfast to wash up the bowls. It was, at the beginning, like washday and flooding again; she dropped everything and yelled for Gammer.

They said to her afterwards that it had been an easy birth. All Livia could remember was the pain; agonising, recurrent pain such as she'd never felt, nor hoped to feel again. In this state they removed her, somehow, to a narrow grey cell, and a truckle bed, and she lay there all day grunting and crying out dolefully; most of the time, Gammer Bell stayed with her. The odour of spirits came, because they were always to be found where Gammer might be; one time, someone put the flask to Livia's mouth, and it burned all the way down. Then pain again; then a lasting, screaming agony. After that some one put a hand over her mouth and said she must bide quiet, the session was visiting; and Livia opened her mouth and damned the session, and bit whoever it might be on the hand.

If it was Gammer, she didn't hold any grudge; later, when it was all over, she brought Livia a posset. Gammer Bell had a face like a great slab of ancient curd, immobile, expression less and mostly evil; she dived presently to the blanket below which Livia lay and, beside her, by now, a small scarlet creature which had cried at first, and which looked like Governor Priddy. Gammer then said, in her flat everyday tone, "Well, it was the good Lord's mercy, without a doubt," and lifted away what by this time was a dead skinned rabbit, like those seen hanging in the poulterer's shop. Livia, who had thought she could feel no more, felt her heart turn over. The baby was dead; they'd killed it. That suited everyone here well enough, no doubt, but it hadn't done any harm, the poor baby. Gammer had done something to it with the grey blan ket, after it had cried; it had been alive enough then. It had been awkward, no doubt, on a day when the session was visiting, for a baby to be born in here who had a face like Governor Priddy. She'd seen that much clearly for herself, as Gammer bore it away.