The Conviction of Cora Burns Read online

  Squatting down, Cora unhooked her bodice and pulled out the photographic likeness of a face that no longer seemed like hers. She placed the creased image on to the ashy fire. For a moment, it seemed as if the thickness of the card might smother the flame, but then the striped prison jacket began to darken and the edge of the print buckled. Cora poked at the ash to cover the whole surface of her convict’s scowl.

  She picked up the enamel bowl and heard a grinding on gravel. On the drive beyond the paddock Samuel was leading the pony back to the yard. Cora ducked below the hedge top, only straightening once she was shielded by the wall and was out of Samuel’s sight. If she was quick, she might make it to the back of the stable block without Samuel noticing she was there.

  Low bushes, stiff with thorns, straggled across the unused ground. Most of the berries had wizened to brown husks, but some still gleamed fat and black. Brambles and blackberries must be the same thing Cora decided even though people called them, for no good reason, by different names.

  The plumpest ones were hard to reach. Cora pulled up her skirts above the tugging of spikes in leaves as well as stems, and waded into the tangle. A sudden waft of smoke caught in her throat. Perhaps she’d breathed in her own likeness, consumed by the flames into vapour.

  In the stableyard, hooves scraped on stone and Samuel barked some command to the pony. Cora was not close enough to hear his words only the roughness in his voice. Why was she hiding from him? She’d done nothing to apologise for and she should tell him straight that if he was holding out any hopes where she was concerned he’d be disappointed. Perhaps it’d be best to give him that sixpence back before she got paid and think up some story to go with it.

  Dark juice stained Cora’s hands and she licked a tang of fruit and charred wood from her thumb. The base of the tin bowl was not yet covered by berries and some of them were shrunken and wound around with spider’s threads. Cora chose the fattest shiniest berry and put it in her mouth. Sweetness burst on to her tongue but as she bit down on the carcass, the flesh of the fruit slipped away and she was left only with hard seeds embedded in her teeth.

  ‘Bit sharp, aren’t they?’

  It was Samuel, standing just behind her, arms folded. He smiled but his eyes were icy. There was an edge in his voice that she hadn’t heard before and it kindled something inside her, although whether temper or passion she couldn’t tell. Her skirts dragged on the brambles as she went to him. It wouldn’t do to raise her voice, at least not yet.

  ‘Timothy said there was plenty here. But he was wrong.’

  ‘Maybe you’re not looking in the right place. You have to lift up the prickles to get a good one.’

  She pulled at her petticoat and heard a rip of cotton. ‘They hurt.’

  ‘Not if you’re careful.’

  He took a step towards her but didn’t put out his hand to help her on to the grass. Instead, he unbuttoned his work jacket. His shirt beneath was collarless; a brown handkerchief was knotted around his neck. Cora felt his size above her and a shade of menace in his strength.

  Samuel smiled, but not pleasantly. ‘Had a nice jaunt yesterday, did you, on the steam tram?’

  Cora tensed. ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Nothing. Except you used my money on it. And on your fancy man I suppose.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I know you owe me sixpence.’

  ‘All right, then. Have it back. Have it now.’

  Cora reached into the seam of the print dress and to her pocket. Her hand went to a coin that she knew to be a shilling but she pulled it out anyway and held it up, shining, to Samuel.

  ‘What’s this? My sixpence seems to have swelled up with excitement.’ His attempt at a chuckle turned into a snort.

  ‘It’s the smallest I’ve got. Have it anyway. Call it a payment for your loan and then we’re quits.’

  ‘My, flush today, aren’t we? Had a win on the horses?’

  Cora shrugged and looked at the ground. She did not want to look at him or speak because she could feel an itch of fury laced with passion worming through her insides.

  ‘Well? Do you want my money or not?’

  ‘Depends where you got it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Was it by fair means or something a bit more foul?’

  ‘What?’

  He reached down into his trouser pocket and then held out a scrap of paper pinched between his thumb and forefinger. The fragment was charred around the edges but there was no doubt what he was holding; Cora’s face, brown now from the fire but still recognisable beneath the starched prison bonnet.

  Samuel’s voice crackled with fake jollity. ‘Nice hat.’

  ‘You bastard…’

  Swimming through rage, she lunged at him with the full force of her body. Samuel, shocked and wrong-footed, reeled back then fell sideways into the brambles.

  Cora never knew quite what happened next or how she found the strength to inflict so much damage on a tall, muscular young man. All she could later bring clearly to mind was Samuel lying face down in the bushes and herself sitting astride him, riding his buttocks like a saddle as he bucked and writhed amongst the needle-sharp thorns. Both of her hands had grasped on to clumps of his hair and she’d had such a firm grip on his head that she was able to swipe his face from side to side through the bramble-barbs until he was bellowing like a cow in the slaughterhouse and his face was mashed into blood-drenched shreds.

  Fourteen

  1874

  china

  Cora didn’t feel the gash until a red blob popped out of her skin. She put the finger in her mouth and sucked hard, wondering why she wanted to cry. The cut hadn’t hurt; she’d hardly felt it. Maybe that was because the china was so sharp.

  She still couldn’t believe quite how neatly the dinner bowl had smashed against the wooden boards of the dining hall, nor how easily, right under the nose of the overseer, she had concealed the sharpest isosceles of it inside her skirt. And because of the blood on her hand, the breakage had looked so much like an accident that she’d got away with two quick slaps around the head. Those hadn’t hurt either.

  Cora managed to find a way to carry the shard around, wedged into a hole in her petticoat. It stayed there all morning, even though Mr Bowyer asked her twice to write on the blackboard with the whole class looking at her. In the recreation time she and Alice went together to the privies and shut themselves inside a stall.

  Their nostrils pounded with the sweet-sour smell of dung. Cora lifted her skirt and extracted the china knife from the petticoat. Alice put out her hand to feel the edge but Cora pulled it away.

  ‘Careful! It’ll cut you to ribbons.’

  ‘But I want you to cut me.’

  Cora shook her head. ‘There’d be too much mess.’

  ‘Please, Cora. Just a little one.’

  Again Cora shook her head, but as usual, she could not refuse her friend.

  ‘All right, then. Just so I can get a feel for how to hold it.’

  Alice lifted her skirt high enough for Cora to see all of her black stockings tied over her knees and the tops of her thin white legs. Alice’s breath was shallow and quick. She licked her lips.

  ‘Where shall you cut me?’

  Cora placed her fingertip, the one with the raw scar, to the inside of Alice’s thigh. Alice spread her legs wider and braced her back against the wooden partition. Then Cora kneeled on to yellowed sawdust and held the razored china between her fingers like a stick of chalk. The greasy hem of Alice’s skirts brushed the top of her head.

  Gently, she touched the china point to the softest part of the leg and drew a line about an inch long. Alice flinched. A trickle of blood, brilliant and quivering, spilled out of the cut and down the leg. The crimson lattice on Alice’s ghostly flesh transfixed Cora. She could no
t bring herself to wipe it away or to press the cut and stop the flow.

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  Alice’s eyes were half-closed. ‘A bit. But it was nice. Shall you do my other leg as well?’

  Cora shook her head and felt an unbearable urge to become Alice, or at least to be her reflection. If they looked the same, they’d be as brave and strong as each other. Together, nothing would be too daunting for them, even the dreadful task that they’d set themselves.

  ‘I’ll do one just the same on my leg. Hold my skirt.’

  Alice helped pull the skirt aside and Cora bent forward to find the same fleshy part of her own leg. Just then, the outside door opened and Alice, wide-eyed, put her finger to her lips. But the door banged shut again without anyone seeming to come in. Cora’s heart beat faster. It was harder to get a good grip of the china when it was slippery with blood and she could not quite see the inside of her own thigh as she cut. A blind wave of numbness washed through her. And then pulses of pain almost made her fall over. Blood cascaded down her leg.

  Still holding Cora’s skirt, Alice bent down and stared at the wound.

  ‘Oh my. How shall we stop it?’

  Cora stood rigid against the splintery door, too scared to touch the cut.

  ‘Don’t get it on our clothes. Find a rag.’

  They both looked at the wooden bench with the hole in it. Sometimes scraps of torn paper or rags were left there for the children to wipe themselves. But usually they just used their hands. Today the bench around the earth closet was bare. With the skirt still in one hand, Alice pressed her other against Cora’s thigh.

  ‘Don’t.’ Cora tried to push her away. ‘The blood’ll stain your sleeve.’

  ‘I don’t mind getting into trouble to keep you safe.’

  Cora looked into the coloured part of Alice’s left eye and began to count the tiny hazel flecks. She had no sense of how long they both stood there without blinking but the trickles into her stockings began to ease and Alice pulled away her hand, scarlet and dripping. She stretched it over the privy hole until the dripping stopped.

  Cora took a long breath. ‘If you wash yourself at the pump, they’ll see you.’

  ‘Don’t fret Cora. I’ll not give us away.’

  Alice turned to her with the sweetest of smiles and Cora watched, mesmerised, as Alice’s purple tongue licked back and forth across her red hand until it was white.

  Once she was back in the school room, Cora began to feel ill. Her head throbbed each time Mr Bowyer’s cane rapped against the lines of the prayer they were chanting.

  ‘Not only for the past I grieve,

  The future fills me with dismay,

  Unless Thou hasten to relieve,

  Thy suppliant is a castaway.’

  Each time Cora thought of the cut on her thigh, her stomach pitched. A black void grew inside her. She stood up and walked in a daze towards the door. Mr Bowyer turned, scowling, and left off his cane from the blackboard. Then his expression flushed into what might have been embarrassment, or even shame.

  ‘Cora Burns, what is amiss?’

  His eyes were no longer on Cora but on the trail of bloody footprints staining the floor behind her.

  Late that night, under the grey blanket, Alice inspected the cut on Cora’s thigh and pronounced the scab to be sound. The reassurance made Cora breath properly again.

  ‘I can’t believe Mr Bowyer let me leave class on my own.’

  Alice shrugged. ‘He thought you had a curse.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Curse. It’s what women get. Bleeding.’

  Even in the dark, Alice must have seen the horror on Cora’s face.

  ‘I’m a girl not a woman.’

  Alice gave a quiet chuckle. ‘He’s not to know when it starts, is he? And now he thinks it, he’ll let you go out on your own again.’

  ‘To the infirmary?’

  ‘He wouldn’t expect you to go there. Only to the privy.’

  Cora caught the shine in Alice’s eye and there was no need to say more. Tomorrow they would do it.

  As Alice had predicted, Cora only had to raise her hand next morning for Mr Bowyer to nod her towards the door. He didn’t even seem to notice when Alice ran after her saying she would go too and make sure that Cora was all right. As soon as the sharp sun hit their faces they began to giggle like lunatics, pressing their hands over each others’ mouths which only made their laughter more frantic.

  Once they’d got to the end of the yard their giggling was drowned by the wail and shriek of the infants. Percy seemed to be waiting for them by the gap in the railings. He was scratching his scabby head with one hand and holding his skirt where his tinkler must be with the other.

  Alice licked her thumb and held it towards the child. ‘Here, my pet lamb! Come suck on my sticky.’

  Frowning, Percy wobbled forward and latched his mouth on to the dripping thumb. Alice reeled him closer to the railings.

  Inside the fence, an old woman was slumbering on the bench. Cora put herself in front of Alice to screen her. It was a tight squeeze getting him through the gap but Percy was sucking so hard that he seemed to forget to cry. Alice scooped the little boy up and, with Cora still shielding them, they hurried to the side of the yard and to the privies. All the time, Alice cooed and clucked at the child. He smelled of milk and shit. Cora’s heart was beating so hard that she could scarce breathe.

  Once the privy block door shut behind them the air was suddenly still. Percy left off his sucking and looked first to Alice and then to Cora. Alice put her mouth to Cora’s ear, in case the boy might understand.

  ‘First, we’ll take off our clothes.’

  ‘All of them?’

  Alice nodded. ‘Otherwise they’ll get messed up. And the babby won’t think it so strange when we take his off.’

  Alice was right, of course. Cora should have thought of that too. Percy did not smile as Alice stripped off his pinafore and his stiff dress but neither did he complain.

  ‘That’s it, darlin’. Hot today, isn’t it? This’ll make you feel more comfy.’

  Alice lifted off her own dress, and then her stockings and even her shift, and she signalled for Cora to do the same. Cora had never seen anyone completely naked, even herself, and now all three of them were bare as they’d been born. Cora felt the soft reeking air bathe her skin and thought she never wanted to wear anything ever again. Intoxicated, and sure at last of her strength, she picked up the china knife.

  What happened next was never clear in Cora’s mind. If a memory ever wormed through, or if the scene came back to her in a dream, the sequence would vary each time. The events inside the privy block were ever afterwards cloaked in haziness.

  The first thing that she remembered bursting through that haze was the bang of the outside door and Lottie Bolger’s finger pointing. Mr Bowyer was there too, eyes darting, his face as grey as the wall.

  ‘What in God’s name…?’

  Only then did Cora blink and follow his horrified stare to the small body on the floor. Percy’s head was turned sideways, his eyes half-closed. Cora’s petticoat bloomed from his mouth like a chapel flower. There was hardly any blood on the floor, but carved on the inside of his thigh, just below his shrivelled private parts, was an unmistakable red A.

  Cora’s insides seemed suddenly to move into the wrong place.

  ‘It wasn’t me, sir. I didn’t do it. I swear. It was her. It was Alice.’

  But her voice was drowned out by the clanging of the chapel bell, and Mr Bowyer was already inside the stall heaving up the contents of his stomach.

  Cora ran then, to search in every corner of the privy block and, naked as she was, out into the yard. Yet Alice was nowhere. She had evaporated it seemed, as completely as a scrap of schoolyard mist on a hot summer morning.

  Fifteen

 
November 1885

  outhouse

  The wash-house pump shrieked like a crow in a trap and Cora’s hand quivered under the lash of icy water. The tremor worked into her shoulder, her stomach, her teeth. Bramble juice mixed with blood, some of it her own, in red streams across her knuckles. What in the name of heaven had she done?

  Before she ran, she’d seen Samuel’s face so dripping and raw that if he came looking for her now she’d not fight back but take his punches gladly. She deserved them, and more. He’d not go to the police, though, she knew that. Attacked by a woman? No man would take that shame.

  There were bloodstains on her sleeves. Too much to pass off as some accident with game birds in the meat larder. Her fingers groped at the buttons of the print dress. She peeled it off and let the tang of chill air ripple through her shift. The pump screeched as a freezing drench ran through the thin cotton bodice. But cold water was the best thing for blood. And the red was still vivid, the spots not yet dry. With luck, the taint would come out and not leave a mark.

  Her fingers grew numb as she bundled the bodice to the back of the room and slumped it over the indoor line. It wouldn’t dry of course, but she’d rather stay undressed than have its wet folds cling to her skin. If Samuel came in now and got an eyeful of her underwear it was only what he was due.

  He’d get his revenge somehow, she had no doubt. Lord, if it had been the other way round, Cora would have relished thinking up the ways; a poisonous word in Ellen’s ear, a gob of spit in his greens, a cigarette jumping back to life in the hay shed. That other way round was the normal order of things; a girl leads a lad on, rejects his advances, gets thumped and then exacts her sly revenge. No one could argue with that. But for Cora to set about a strapping under-gardener and get the better of him was unnatural.

  The water petered to a drip. Cora leaned on the sink edge and shivered through her sweat. A mannish odour seeped over her stays. This nastiness wasn’t all her doing, though. Samuel shouldn’t have provoked; once he’d seen the prison bonnet he should have known better than to rile her. Even a milk and white-bread lad like him should have realised then that Cora was not one to be messed with.