Inheritance Feud

Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

She minded this less than might have been expected. Her own company was enough for her, and in ways always would be. It was, in fact, less dull than that of Alice, Milly, Ada and the rest; the defeated grey look that made them seem already like little old women had entered their souls, and talk was sparse and mostly f*******n. Livia thrived on silence. She knew also, though she had no mirror, that she wasn't like the rest, either in soul or body. Supple and strong as a young tree-sapling, she knew her body was; despite Governor Priddy's exhortations, she seldom troubled about her soul, and she had breasts already: they'd formed over a year ago. There were other matters one put up with, but which had never been explained; they were on matron's f*******n list. Some times when huddling down at night beneath the single, greyish blanket on her bed, Livia would be aware of her own smooth, sliding limbs; and in the river sometimes, if she got down first to wash the day's lot before the others came, she could see her own reflection in calm water. It was already as Mor ven would see it, and remember; a face broad and strong in the cheekbones, the mouth full and generous, the eyes shadowy in reflection beneath the tight laundry-cap.

Livia was treading the tub my herself as Alice had snuffles, the day the governor passed by, whether by accident or not she never knew, or wondered later. She had her skirts bundled high and was kicking and dancing in the wash, while her bare toes dripped beads of dissolved lye as they left the water; she knew no tunes except the paraphrases they chanted on Sun days in church, and in some manner she'd altered one of those, so that it fitted the dance-rhythm; jigging and dancing, as her ancestors had done from the Hungarian plains to the north shore of Scotland, over a century and a half ago now, despite the law and its rigours. The rigour overcame Livia as, seeing God's pale intent face at the door, she stopped fearfully, and bobbed a curtsy in the tub; it got her skirts wet. Lord knew what he must have seen, she thought, as she kicked her height moments ago. He didn't seem displeased. however; he closed the door and latched it. His lips, she noted, as he came towards her, seemed purplish today in his pale set face, like the plums in thin dough they had sometimes in summer. What did he want with her? Livia began to tremble; there was almost nothing one could think of doing which wasn't punished, somehow or other, soon or late. "Come here," he told her. He didn't trouble, that time, with her name.

Livia stepped out of the tub, and stood trembling on the stone floor, barefooted, the wet dripping from her legs and skirts. What would he do now? But it wasn't-queerly punishment. The governor, instead, was doing an unexpected thing. He had put forth a hand and was, almost reflectively, stroking her breasts under the grey bodice. Livia watched in fascination. She wasn't to know-how could she or anyone have known, such matters being almost like piercing the veil of the tabernacle-that Governor Priddy's wife, the Provost's sister, had denied him marital rights now for a matter of five years? The sneck on the laundry-door would hold.

Governor Priddy got at Livia four times more after that; after the first, she was no longer surprised, hardly even frightened. It gave her, in a way, a sense of power. One time was in the broom cupboard, another in the privy, and twice it happened when he was supposedly wrestling with her immortal soul, in his office. That last was a place where everyone, sooner or later, came on Fridays for punishment. Livia her self had been chalking the flagstones outside when he'd wrestled with Mary Reid, who had gone away now from Emmett's and was at work somewhere in the town. Mary had had a villainous squint and a stubborn Scots disposition: no doubt that was why Priddy's nasal whine had risen, on that occasion, particularly high over the Book of Isaiah. Or was it Ezekiel? The sounds Priddy was making now, with little groans coming out from between his teeth as though he were in pain, as he got at Livia wedged up hard against his desk, were like those he'd been making then. Livia closed her eyes and let him get on with it. If it was what he wanted, she'd be better off no doubt, as long as he was pleased with her. Already, twice now since it all started, matron had sent her down to town by herself on an errand to the baker's, a thing that had never happened before; and had given her a penny for herself to buy gingerbread.

Livia thought of the gingerbread; of its hot, spicy smell; of the friendly, spotty face of Tam Imrie, the baker's boy, across the counter as she bought it. The recollection occupied her until Priddy had finished and had taken his hands off. Then he said, as always,

"Are you a good girl, Livía? Do you say your prayers?"

"Yes, sir." "You say them each night, kneeling

shift?"

by your bed in your

"Oh, yes, sir." It paid to tell lies. It wasn't so bad now as it had been at first; after that first time, she hadn't been able to stop bleeding, and the wash wasn't finished, and she'd stilled the trembling of her limbs by the only way she knew, by getting back into the tub and finishing the job, so that the blood went away with the washing-water. She hadn't dared say anything to anybody. Who could she tell? Matron would say she was a wicked liar, and have her whipped. Ada Park would only tell matron. If it got back to the governor him self, he-well, he-what would happen then? There was no body who could tell Governor Priddy what he must do and what he mustn't. (In this Livia was wrong.) There was no body, nobody at all, now farmer Ransome was long dead, who'd take her side, or to whom she could run. No, she must just say nothing, and go on as usual. As long as it pleased old Priddy, that was all right...

"I am glad that you say your prayers, Livia. You may go now. And remember-" "Yes, sir?" His tongue passed, uncertainly, over the purple

lips. He looked ill, she thought. It must be bad for anyone to get as caught up in praying, and the like, and-and what he'd just done. One thing seemed much like the other, after all. Livia kept her face straight till she could get outside the door; but it was comical, she knew. Nobody here would ever let her say so, but it would make a cat laugh.

"Keep silence, Livia. You understand me?" "Oh, yes, sir."

She bobbed her curtsy, and went.

The first day she felt sick over the gruel at breakfast she didn't pay much attention; sometimes, with seeing it every day, that was what you felt like with gruel. But it happened almost every morning after that. Then, about a month after, she fainted in the laundry with the hot iron in her hand, and burnt herself, which didn't matter, and somebody's washed linen petticoat, which did. Matron was sent for.

The remembrance of matron afterwards added to the queer ness of the whole thing, from the beginning. Lately, matron had been almost a friend, with her gingerbread money; but now-well, she'd come and slapped Livia's face. That might have been to revive her, but then matron went on slapping, and Livia started screaming, and in the end they were both on the floor with matron kneeling, and Livia lying on her back, screaming with the pain of being constantly slapped, but it wasn't clear why matron was screaming in return. Presently she started to emit words. "Harlot! Brazen Jezebel! w***e! w***e!"

It was poor Tam Imrie they blamed for it. Tam and she, all the enquiries being over, were made to stand side by side, not looking at one another, on the repent ance-stools in church on Sunday morning. Livia was sorry for Tam, whose fault it hadn't been; she could only give half an ear to the hellfire preached over them both by the minister. Say what you liked, you couldn't go to hell for what you hadn't done. But everybody in the place thought he had, and as for Livia herself, there was nothing bad enough. The elders, among them Governor Priddy in his best blacks, sat there looking as if they and he had nothing to do with it; she could tell a different tale, of him with his breeches open. It didn't seem possible now. The elder, the prophet of God, the Pro vost's brother-in-law, the governor of Emmett's, all the rest of it: Priddy couldn't be interested, let alone responsible. She was glad she hadn't mentioned him; nobody would believe her.

Afterwards, the Emmett's authorities had Livia whipped; it was in any case the recognised punishment for a wanton. Governor Priddy sat with a gleam in his cold eyes, watching, in full view of her exposed flesh and what was happening to it. Afterwards she was to be sent to the correction-house for some months. It wasn't usual to go there straight from Emmett's, but in her case they hadn't had any choice; and in any event, they couldn't have kept her on at the orphanage once she was known to be pregnant. So Livia found out what was behind the yellow walls. If one waited long enough, there was an answer to all one's questions. She was taken in as an inmate of the adult house some days before her sixteenth birthday. At least old Ransome had left her the date of that, and her name. She was left in contemplation of those pos sessions, and of a flayed back and thickening belly, seated on the edge of just such a pallet bed as she had left behind in the orphanage, with a hodden blanket fashioned, no doubt, by the same weaver under the self-same contract.

There was not so much difference as might have been expected between the correction-house and orphanage. The difference was in Livia herself; not because of her pregnancy, not because of anything that had happened to her physically, but because she was filled with rage.

The emotion was so foreign that she did not at first recog nise it, or herself in harbouring it. For a poor, downtrodden, shamefully pregnant young woman, a mass of quivering and publicity chastised flesh, it was unexpected; Livia might have been assumed never to raise her head again or open her mouth. Her punishment had taken place in full view of the provost and session, the governor, matron and the two women officers who would be in charge of her, this coming year, behind the murky, yellow-grey walls of the correction-house. On first sight of the interior, however, Livia's rage increased; it might have come from her father's proud blood, never the devious gipsy half of her; such folk endure everything in silence. A smell of defeat pervaded the flagged passages; the familiar smell of old hodden, poverty, harsh soap and lye and repression and cruelty. The latter was by statute; all female inmates were to be flogged twice a month, to maintain them in an awareness of their fallen state, and to encourage repen tance. The proviso dated from the seventeenth century and was seldom now adhered to by the two women officers Livia had already seen, and who were known respectively as Gam mer Whitehead and Gammer Bell. They were in fact too idle for the exertion, and would lie like troopers instead, if the Provost were to ask a question regarding it, which he seldom did.