Home > Author > Laura Purcell
1 " I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, miss. Charitable people like yourself saved my life. But I wish they’d thought a bit more about what I was to do with it, once it was safe. "
― Laura Purcell , The Corset
2 " Death, once conceived, was rapacious. It took all with it. "
― Laura Purcell , The Silent Companions
3 " Imprisonment was never the real punishment: it was the people you were stuck with. "
4 " That's why Ma took in piecework and flowering from Mrs Metyard: to keep us afloat. Pa always used that term, afloat. And it seemed to me Pa did float - he kept his head above the water and painted his pictures. Beneath was Ma, kicking through dirt and reeds. "
5 " She slumped down by the fireplace and sat with her legs stretched out, next to Jolyon. Or what passed for Jolyon: the cruel, blue-grey parody of him. She did not want to store this image of her boy: waxy and puffed; features imprinted with horror; vicious cuts to the dear skin. But she knew it would encroach, stealthily, and overwrite all the happier times. Death, once conceived, was rapacious. It took all with it. "
6 " Imprisonment was never the real punishment: it was the people you were stuck with. Lunatics were the worst; jabbering, yammering, moaning. "
7 " Anger has ever been a failing of mine. When it surges, it sings in my veins like a dram of gin. Any action seems possible, reasonable. It is only afterwards, when the fire fades, that I see the dark soot-stain of what I have done. "
― Laura Purcell , Bone China
8 " Perhaps the evil is seeking something.’ Sarah’s breath came hot against her skin. ‘Seeking . . . a more permanent host.’ A queasy silence fell as they considered the implications of that. Splinters. On Rupert, on the baby. Something trying to get in. "
9 " In the shade she looked like a lily; her pale skin and the gossamer veins beside her eyes. "
10 " But then I have noted that murderous thoughts seldom trouble the pretty and the fashionable. "
11 " She had an urge to confess everything: tell him about the splinters on Rupert’s neck; the nursery; the garret; the handprint; the eyes. But to speak of such things made them a farce. You could not explain fear; you could only feel it, roaring through the silence and striking your heart still. "
12 " In his eyes she saw the gleam of interest. This disturbed her more than the attendant’s scowl. "
13 " How steadily he watched her. He was close enough for her to smell him: carbolic soap, cloves. Memory flickered like a tinderbox. She refused to let the flint spark. "
14 " They didn’t get newspapers in the day room – at least, not when she had been allowed in there – but rumours had a way of seeping under doors and through cracks in the walls. Journalists’ lies made it into the asylum long before she did. Ever since she awoke in this place, she had been given a new name: murderess. Other patients, attendants, even the nurses when they thought no one could hear: they twisted their mouths and bared their teeth as they said it, ravenous. Murderess. As if they wanted to frighten her. Her. It wasn’t the injustice she loathed but the noise, its syllables hissing in her ears like – No. "
15 " She had the strangest feeling that it was not her stomach at all – not any more. It was only a shell. She was a shell, and another body, a foreign body, was growing inside. "
16 " Madness, as we call it, manifests itself in many ways. People do not always wail and shriek as you say your mother did. But it does seem to run in families, I have observed, particularly through the female line. Hysteria – womb to womb. Diseased blood will out. There is no hiding from it, I am afraid. "
17 " She drifted back to the gallery and looked down on the Great Hall. The grey and black flags danced before her eyes. Dear God, she couldn’t do it. They might as well ask her to go to Oxford and sit an exam. She could not be an ordinary mother to an ordinary baby. All those toys, the memorabilia of childhood. Perhaps it was different if you grew up happy, with memories of your father dandling you on his knee and your mother kissing your tears away. But for Elsie there was nothing but fear. Fear for the baby. Fear of the baby. Jolyon had turned out all right, she reminded herself. But it was easier with Jolyon being a boy. What if Rupert’s baby was born a girl? She could not love a daughter that looked like her. She could not bear to glance upon a mirror of her past without being sick. "
18 " Madness, as we call it, manifests itself in many ways. People do not always wail and shriek as you say your mother did. But it does seem to run in families, I have observed, particularly through the female line. Hysteria - womb to womb. Diseased blood will out. There is no hiding from it, I am afraid. "
19 " But instead I shared the fate of all girls who are poor of pocket: I was tied to my work, like a needle tethered by thread. "
20 " THE PENCIL WAS SHARP. Dr Shepherd had trimmed it with his penknife. She didn’t like the way it wrote now: scratching along the page; snagging; threatening to snap when she pressed too hard. She had to hold it delicately, as if it were made of glass. But it was not made of glass, it was made of wood. It smelt of wood, after the trim – she recognised the unsettling scent of trees cracked open. "
