The Conviction of Cora Burns

by Carolyn Kirby

  ‘To find Alice Salt.’

  ‘I thought that must be a pseudonym you had adopted.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A false name. Because of the opprobrium attached to your own.’

  Cora frowned. A few people had stopped close by and were staring unabashed in her direction.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bowyer. I don’t follow what you mean. Shall we walk for a bit?’

  She nodded in the direction of the colonnaded facade of the Council House. Mr Bowyer folded the Gazette untidily and limped slightly as they walked. He coughed before he spoke.

  ‘I must tell you that I replied to the advertisement mainly because I felt it my duty to protect Miss Poole.’

  ‘Protect?

  ‘I feared for her, a child presumably, who would not be aware of your… history.’

  Ice seemed to tighten around Cora’s chest. She was not sure she could bear to hear more. ‘I should go…’

  ‘Let me finish please. My health is not good and I have been sorely afflicted since I saw the newspaper drawing. Memories came flooding back of the dreadful event which I had strived so hard to banish from my mind. I knew I must reply to the advertisement. It seemed like fate. But as soon as my letter slipped into the mouth of the posting box, I was full of anguish that I had done the wrong thing. I have slept very little since.’

  Cora felt a needle of anger. ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘I am sure that the only thing which might allay my disquiet is if you can tell me now, after all these years, why you did it.’

  Cora was quiet. A feverish stew of shame, disgust and rage began to swirl through her head. She would make him say it.

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘To that little boy…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why did you… do what you did to him?’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘Do you not remember?’

  ‘You tell me, Mr Bowyer. Tell me what I did.’

  ‘I found you with him by the privies. His mouth had been suffocated with your underthings and his legs cut with strange marks. Both of you were naked as the day you were born.’

  His hand went to his mouth and his shoulders heaved a little as he seemed to retch.

  Cora’s voice trembled. ‘How do you know it was me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It might not have been me that did it.’

  ‘Who else could it have been?’

  ‘Why, Alice Salt of course. You said her and me were both there, naked.’

  ‘No. I said you and the boy. Both of you were bare.’

  ‘And Alice too. She was there. That’s why I put her picture in the advertisement. That’s why I am seeking her, to find out what really happened.’

  ‘Until I saw your advertisement, I had never heard of anyone called Alice Salt.’

  ‘You must remember her. She came to the Union house that summer and we could not be parted. She looked just like me. I have no doubt now that she is my twin.’

  ‘I can assure you, Miss Burns, that whatever the diseased content of your head might be telling you, you never had any sister at the workhouse, nor indeed any friend that I can recall. And I can also tell you, without any shadow of a doubt, that when I found you and the body of that poor little boy in the privies, you were entirely alone.’

  A fist of air punched at Cora’s ribcage. She felt herself sway.

  ‘No. No. You are wrong. Alice was there with me. She was the one who did it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Burns, to shatter your convenient delusion. But there is no such person as Alice Salt and there never was.’

  He lifted up the newspaper and crackled it open to the advertisement page, tapping his finger against the small printed copy of Violet’s charcoal sketch.

  ‘No one can have any doubt about who is depicted here. Anyone standing hereabouts could tell you. It is you, Miss Burns. This Alice Salt is you.’

  Cora’s knees and ankles seemed to liquefy. She reached out for smooth stone but her hand did not quite make it to the pillar and she fell heavily on to the steps, grazing her palm and twisting her wrist. Mr Bowyer looked down, his face ashen. Then he threw the folded newspaper on to her with some force before turning away and breaking into a lopsided run as he crossed the road.

  With one hand still clutching the wrapped doll, Cora pulled the Gazette towards her and as she stared down at her own carefully depicted features amongst the tight columns of black type, she understood with the force of a body blow that Mr Bowyer was right.

  babby

  Cora blinkered out the clop and roll of traffic, the swish of passers-by. Hop-scotch paving wavered beneath her feet. In a shop window, she saw a Cora-shaped shadow drifting past but it was empty of any features. She was no longer cold or aching or thirsty. She was no longer anything.

  It made sudden sense now, that time she’d spent in the workhouse infirmary when there was nothing wrong with her. What else might they do with a little murderess; too young to hang, too old to be ignored? The whole Board of Guardians would probably have been sacked if the scandal had got out. And so they covered it up with an excuse of infantile lunacy or some such that had kept her, forcibly on occasion, in bed. Eventually so much time passed that anyone who’d heard about the bad goings-on in the schoolyard privy no longer cared. It was then, perhaps a whole year later, that she was allowed to get up on to her muscle-wasted legs and totter back to the girls’ dormitory.

  Further up the street, shouting broke out over a clatter of hooves and wheels. Four brawny cobs were pulling an empty dray down the hill far too fast. The driver, cursing, grappled with the reins. The horses pranced and slavered at their bits. If Cora stepped into their path now, they could not miss her. One hoof amongst the sixteen that clipped and sparked on the cobbles would be enough to finish her off. It would hurt, but it couldn’t fail to be over quick. Iron shoes and bone-hard hooves would strike her skull then mash her to a pulpy mess beneath the horses’ steaming bellies.

  And no one would care. The carter would simply blame the mad-woman for flinging herself at his team. Cook would be hard-pressed in the scullery for a while but she’d soon find another tweeny. And Cora wouldn’t care either. She’d have already passed from this teeming street into nothingness.

  Although, at the very last minute, when it was too late to save herself, would she change her mind? Maybe she’d remember, just as the first iron horseshoe touched her hair, how good it had felt to wear a cashmere walking-dress, or to bite into a veal pudding or to have Jimmy’s sweating limbs wrapped around hers. With her last breath she might cry out: No! It’s too soon for everything to be gone!

  Had the little boy cried out? Perhaps she could remember if she really tried. Cora knew that he’d been too little to say much. Shoe, dickies, ta-ra, had been about it. His whole sense of what life was couldn’t have amounted to much more than the scratch of an itchy sock, a mouthful of semolina or a rag wiped roughly across a runny nose. But those small things had woven together into an existence that she, Cora Burns, had robbed from him.

  Cora stood frozen on the kerb as the straining horses pounded past her and away towards the High Street. Then, without realising how, she was crossing the wide roadway of the Bull Ring. The doll-bundle flapped against her skirts as she walked but her legs and every other part of her were numb. Should she stop or keep walking? Live or die? She hadn’t the strength to choose.

  At the sailor statue, an ancient woman hobbled past with a tray of gingerbread. A ragged girl sat by the water fountain with a few bunches of red-berried holly. Cora stood between them and unwrapped the paste-head doll. She did not want it. Perhaps no one would.

  The sun was beginning to sink behind the Market Hall. Cora stood motionless until she was gripped by a sudden fit of shivering. But she knew she could not move on until someone had taken the baby. A sm
all girl in a cape-shouldered coat let her eyes linger on the doll as she was pulled past. A boy at the tail end of a plainly dressed family group stuck out his tongue.

  Then a woman stopped. She was youngish but had a stern look. The high crown of her bonnet was piled with dark ribbons; a gauzy half-veil covered her eyes.

  ‘How much for the dolly?’

  ‘Ten shillings?’

  ‘Let me see.’

  Cora held it out. Her hand was shaking. The woman turned the doll over and lifted up the white muslin robe. Cora winced at the rough handiwork on the sacking body underneath. The woman passed it back.

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Five shillings?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can just have it if you like.’

  ‘Well, the costume is pleasant but the doll itself is quite hopeless. So, no.’

  The woman walked off with polished heels kicking up the hems of her complicated skirts.

  Cora rotated the doll around and around in her hands. The woman was right. It was ridiculous to think that a thing so horrible could be made nice. How could you turn bad into good? It couldn’t be done. Cora had been idiotic to try.

  She took a few steps to the edge of the stone pavement above a deep rut of wet mud and rotting paper. Then she dropped the doll into it. Brown slime spattered the white christening robe. The sparkle of a tin foil bracelet sank into the slurry. Cora lifted her foot and let the sole of her boot hover above the red face. And then she stamped down on it hard. There was a cracking and crumpling of brittle paste and then a satisfying expulsion of air as the head flattened against dirt-soaked asphalt. Cora placed her other boot on the muslin dress and wiped both soles on the doll as if it was a coir mat at a doorway. Then she stepped back to see what she had done.

  The doll lay splintered and mashed into the sludge. Filth smeared the white dress and the head, part of it still inside the embroidered bonnet, was shattered into many pieces. All of the time that she had spent thinking up patterns and sewing the tiny garments had come only to this. A sharp pain shot through Cora’s gut.

  She bounded on to the roadway and kneeled down beside the broken toy. Maybe it was not too late to salvage the clothes. She could launder them after all, and then make her own ragdoll to wear them. But when she lifted it up, the christening robe seemed to fall apart in her hands. Fragments of hard paste and of dirty muslin fell through her fingers into the dirt. It was too late. Damage this bad could never be undone.

  A strange braying filled her ears. Then her stomach heaved, once and then twice, as if she was about to vomit. But all that she retched up was a throat-burning wail. She buried her face into the raggy mess of muslin and filth that had been her baby. A faint scent of orange peel in the cloth brought up another howl from the depths of her insides. Tears were flowing now and her face was slimy with mud and snot. She, Cora, had done this. No one else could be blamed. No matter how hard she tried, she’d never change. And no child, not even a paste-head doll, would ever be safe with her.

  She bent over, crouching on the road and shuddering with ugly hacking sobs that would not stop. Her shawl flapped at her shoulders as she wept. The flapping became firmer and after a while Cora sensed, through the racking of her body, the pat of a tiny wizened hand.

  ‘There, lass, there.’

  Cora looked up, her chin dripping. Through the throbbing blur, was a woman’s face, brown and wrinkled as a walnut, as old as the century.

  ‘That’s it lass. Weep. Weep yourself dry.’ The gingerbread-seller did not cease her patting, rhythmic as a heartbeat, on Cora’s heaving shoulder. ‘But you’ll get by, lass. You’ll get by.’

  Twenty-Six

  1883

  plum

  She told them she had dropsy. Not bad, but enough to make her shuffle and put on weight. Jane Chilvers looked sideways at Cora as she was pulling on her nightdress over where her stays should be. Jane knew what was up all right but her lifeless eyes didn’t care one way or another.

  Towards the end of her time at the Union house, Cora had once asked a woman in the laundry about babies. The washerwoman was loud and friendly, not afraid to get a slap for loose talk. Cora had seen enough pauper women in the family way, hobbling about with one hand at their back, the other stroking a huge belly, to know something of their state. One morning when she and the woman were alone at the soaping-tub, Cora took a deep breath.

  ‘I know babbies grow inside your belly, but how do they get out?’

  The washerwoman laughed her rudest, throatiest laugh. ‘Same way they got in pet, same way they got in!’

  So, as Cora went about her work at the asylum in an ever-tighter Melton jacket, she had an inkling of what lay in store. But she could not imagine how it might happen. Not for a second. As winter strangled the cold-water taps and stiffened the drying courts with February winds, Cora had to leave her jacket open and wrap her shawl around like a bodice. No, she insisted, she wasn’t cold; the dropsy must be keeping her warm. She almost believed it herself.

  The baby was there, of course, making himself felt. Sometimes his somersaults were so acrobatic that Cora felt sure they must be visible through her shawl. She knew it would be a boy. That seemed as obvious as her own name. But still, she could not really believe that there was another person inside her. Nor could she imagine what she would do with him when he came out.

  The choice, if you could call it that, was not hard. Even if she begged a baby-farmer to take the child, any wage she could get would never be enough to pay for his keep. And the asylum would sack her on the spot and without a character. The workhouse would be all that was left; her choice was simply whether to seek admission for both of them or to send the child, if he lived, on his own. She would avoid that decision as long as she could.

  But when he came, choice seemed to disappear. It started on a day as raw as winter even though the birds and the daffodils had begun to think it was spring. As she heaved herself out of bed that morning, the skin of her belly felt as stretched as an overripe plum. One prick of a knife seemed like all that would be needed to split it open and push out the stone.

  In the afternoon, she was set to oversee the mangle room, but the whirr of the centrifugal wringer burrowed into her head. As soon as the shift was over she went to the bedroom. There was no point taking tea. The thought of eating anything made her stomach turn. As she lay all evening on the bed, feeling pulses of pain tighten her middle, she told herself it was gripe or something she ate. And as she managed, again and again, to waddle to the water closet, her stomach did indeed seem to be in a foul state. But after the last bout on the lavatory she knew that she could not go back to her bed. She was feeling so poorly that she would not be able to keep a smooth face once Jane came up for the night. And that could not be long. The door next to the lavatory was the linen store. She made sure that no one saw her slip inside.

  The waves of pain kept coming, throbbing through her belly. Her shawl fell to the floor. Her shimmy, already soaked with sweat, clung to her bosom. The painted shelves were set at a convenient height for her to cling on to and bury her face in the piles of clean sheets and towels to stifle her groans. She knew then what was going to happen and the dark, soap-scented cupboard seemed about the best place she could have chosen.

  In the end, her body folded over on itself and she sank down on to the floor to push him out. She reached up and grabbed a flannel, stuffing it into her mouth, as much to protect her teeth from the grinding as to soak up the noise. Her palms slipped on the watery mess that now covered the linoleum. She was glad it was too dark to see the colour of the liquid. A bloody, earthy odour filled the airless cupboard. Then a burning tightness flared between her legs. Muscles ripped. Skin tore open. And, with a pop, something inside her gave. A heavy object flopped on to the floor.

  Groaning softly, she spat the flannel from her mouth and gathered up her petticoats. A wide s
haft of light from the crack under the door illuminated the slick of fluids that had come from her body. Inside the puddle lay a ghostly-white child. Cora leaned over on all fours and put her face beside his. He had the sweetest cleanest smell. His arm seemed to move, but not his chest. Cora reached up for a bedsheet and laid it around him, mopping up the wetness. She used a clean corner to wipe away the lardy muck filling his nostrils and mouth. And then, still on her knees, she leaned down and kissed his cheek.

  His little ribs began, magically, to rise and fall. In the glow from beneath the door, his greased, silvery limbs seemed to have their own brightness. He was the strangest but most beautiful creature that Cora could imagine. And he was hers alone. As she watched, his eyes tugged open and showed, for the very first time, white pinpricks of life. He cried a thin shuddering mewl. Then it got louder.

  They must not be found; at least, not yet.

  ‘Hush, baby, hush.’

  She put one hand beneath his slippery head, the other under his thin bottom. As she lifted him, she felt that she was still connected to him in some way, but could think only of stopping his noise. Her shimmy would not quite open far enough. She bit hold of the top of it and clamped her teeth, pulling down on the neckline with three fingers until the cotton ripped enough to let one bosom through. His mouth was already open in a wide shivery wail. But as his lips felt her flesh they closed around the nipple and began to suck.

  He was strong. His mouth pulled at her; he wanted as much as she could give. If only time could stop now, and forever. Cora leaned back against the shelf, to ease the discomfort underneath her. She looked down at the little head on her breast and saw a dark shape across it. The half-medal, still around her neck on its twine had drifted on to his cheek.

  Then, something inside her began to slip. She felt a pang, hot as flame, shoot through her insides. Her stomach hardened. Lord, it was happening again. Was there another child still inside her? A twin? Would her boy have another just like him, as she had had Alice? She laid him down on the floor as she strained again, bearing down to push out what was there. This time, the pain was so sharp she could not help but cry out. But what was left inside slithered out quickly. Would it be another boy? At least then they might grow up together in the same workhouse dormitory and never be alone.