After Alice (12 page)

 

CHAPTER 28

L
ydia remarked, “How curious of the child. Where has it gone?” She could hear her own voice taking a public, amused sound, as if Siam were a toddler scurrying under tabletops, and she were pretending ignorance of it, for his delight.

“Why would he come in here?” asked Mr. Winter.

“I sent him to replace something he had”—­Lydia hadn't clarified for herself just how far she was going to go with this—­“collected.” She glanced first at the chessboard. Her eyes hadn't adjusted to the gloom. She couldn't tell if all the pieces were there. “He is playing a game on us.”

“He's not the type to play games. Siam, come forward, if you're here.”

Nothing stirred in the room. Lydia was confused. After these months, this terrible space still seemed the laying-­out room, and would remain so until her father stirred the grief out of it. It wasn't her place to throw open the drapes. Yet she crossed to the windows and did just that, for the weasel child had got the better of her. “I can't believe he's slipped out a window. Look, they are latched, each one.” She turned. The two dozen chess pieces stood in their proper ranks. “Is he that stealthy that he might have slipped out behind my back? But it was scarcely turned.”

“You under-­guess his capacity for intrigues.” Mr. Winter took the room by eminent domain. He strode to check the shadowed side of the dish cupboard, where the brown and white pieces had wakened and were winking dustily in the surprise light. The Staffordshire leech jar, its perforated lid set aside, held a clump of dead flowers set there in memoriam months ago. Brown stalks and curled petals. So little color left that Lydia couldn't remember what sort of flowers they'd been. Rhoda must be frightened of this room, and avoided it since the occasion. What a failure of a maid she was. Lydia crossed the room. She twitched the violet drape into place around the over-­mantel looking-­glass. She smoothed the cloth.

“I asked him about his escapades,” she said. “My, how he husbands his story. If you're the one who has trained him to hold his tongue, you've done your job well.”

“As a guardian, I can only reinforce lessons that his life has allowed him,” said Mr. Winter. “The boy has a history he would sooner forget. I know some of it, and I would let go of it if I could. Some realities are too onerous to be borne by nations, let alone by children. But we are all chained in this.” He sounded cross yet his words rolled out smoothly, as if he'd prepared his statement for a sympathetic congregation. How fond of his own sonorities, for a young man.

“Lydia, Mr. Winter.” That was her father's voice beyond the door to the drawing room. “I insist. Mr. Darwin requires assistance at once.”

She was all daughter, that was all she was. “Yes, Father, of course.”

She swept the American abolitionist out of the room. “But this is not right at all,” said Mr. Winter in a backstairs voice to Lydia. “Siam is too petrified to go off on his own.”

“I shall find Siam playing with our Alice, no doubt. She's about somewhere. I shall make it my chief aim to locate them, right now. Oh, but isn't the day filled with missing children!” She spoke lightly and with a hushed voice. This focus, this emphasis required her to lean into Mr. Winter's shoulder. She overbalanced, though. She had to catch herself on her fingertips against his broadcloth, an accident of poise. Her blood leapt in her arteries to counterweigh the advance.

The great man was in the passage, his broad famous hands flat upon his waistcoat, thumbs touching, little fingers pointing to the floorboards. She allowed herself to sense the presence of illness, intellectual temerity, and theological scandal. He moved by in a froth of white whiskers. Fame and mystery, they are two sides of any earthbound prophet. There was a hint of sharp mustard in his wake. She pulled the door to the drawing room closed. She leaned against it, hands clasped behind her back. She watched Mr. Winter grasp Darwin's elbow and lead him toward the side door and the privy.

“Lydia.”

She turned to look at her father, who raised an eyebrow. It was not her foray into the unused parlor that he was commenting on, but that she had been there with Mr. Winter. Unchaperoned. “Remember who you are,” he told her, before turning his face away.

Ah, but that was easier said than done, she thought. In order to remember who you are, you have to have known it in the first place.

Her father stood in the passage by the parlor door. He was distracted by both his colloquy with Darwin and his concern for Lydia. What he said next—­she could hear it quite clearly—­may have served two lines of thought at once.

He said gently,

“Genus holds species,

Both are great or small.

One genus highest, one not high at all.

Each species has its differentia, too,

This is not that, and He was never You.”

He may have been talking about the Savior. Or about Mr. Winter. Or possibly about dinosaur relics in the Oxford Museum and great apes in the Congo basin.

“Shall I tell Mrs. Brummidge to bring out the luncheon?”

He rubbed his face. This may have been a nod, or a grimace. He said, “Alice is keeping herself quiet today, anyway.” He passed back into his parlor. He closed the door upon Lydia's caution and her anger.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Brummidge said, “So you've misplaced the visiting heathen creature, too?” She heaved the joint out of the oven and onto the butcher's board. It was blackened on one side like a log removed from the hearth. Mrs. Brummidge chose some words unsuitable for Rhoda's ears and the maid went rash red. But Lydia refused to flinch at the assault, which barreled on. “For Lord's sakes! The young scamp must've scarpered up the front stairs whilst you was tossing your ribbons at his master. He's playing with Alice in some quiet way, and that's not right. Not in this house, with no Missus to remind you or Alice what's done or not to be done. Go up at once, and if they're around, bring them both down. I'll dish up some scraps and milk gravy when I've done sorting out the platters. Perhaps a dark boy will prefer the charred bits.”

Lydia flew up the stairs. The day seemed to be coming unstitched. It reminded her of her first and only trip to London in a railroad car. They'd crowded into a carriage with other passengers. Everyone, without considerations of privacy, talked their business across strangers. All their plans of what was doing in the City, and who was up from the country stopping in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and when someone would return, today or another, and alone or not. Lydia tried not to listen but her ears insisted. The railroad carriage rocked, at the stupendous speed of quite a few miles in an hour, and the railroad company didn't seem to care if someone dropped a ham on the floor, and which child had forgotten to use the loo, and whether Auntie Pretzel would remember to collect them in Paddington. On lolloped the carriage, as if time would work out all concerns eventually, with remorseless accuracy, no matter how the passengers barracked about their lives. Alice had sat and looked out the window at the rushing world, and she hadn't seemed to notice that she wasn't alone. Lydia noticed.

Lydia glanced in the nursery. She knew Alice wasn't there. Lydia could feel Alice in the house as one could feel a spirit or an intruder. But Lydia might be wrong about Siam. Who knew if he was readying to make off with something more valuable? That the Clowd family had little of value but what was broken among them didn't occur to Lydia. She sensed trickery and slippyness in Siam, as if he had evaporated in order to implicate her somehow. In something. She loathed him for it. She wanted to find him out at a greater crime, and cry foul.

Dinah the cat and her two kittens slept in a lazy, shedding heap upon a trunk in a sunny window. Lydia nearly pitched a shoe at them. It would have felt satisfactory to let a shoe go, but she didn't. She gritted her teeth and passed by, opening chamber doors and even wardrobes in case he was hiding therein.

He couldn't have climbed out upon the roof, surely? The window over the front portico was flung open, wide enough for a limber lad to scramble out, and woody vines around the lattice might have allowed him to climb down. But in the heat of June that window was always open.

She went up another half-­flight to the box room under the eaves. This dusty space featured only one window. Union cloth was tacked across it. She ripped it down. The view from atop the house gave out over the heads of trees to the river and meadows. She might see Siam on the run. She could hurry downstairs with news for Mr. Winter about his miscreant.

No boy to be seen; nor Alice; nor Ada; nor that pesky Miss Armstrong. They had all been swallowed up in their own escapades. Ought Lydia start to be anxious for Alice? It wasn't unusual for the child to wander off, but this day was beginning to feature a comedy of absences. What Puck might be bewitching the neighborhood with metamorphoses, parliaments, evaporations and misalliances?

She saw Mr. Winter waiting a few feet off from the privy house. He was studying the bees that hovered and swam over the snapdragons. She might have hallooed, did girls her age do that. She lifted her face in case he felt her gaze and saw her staring, so she might be caught looking statuesquely into the distance. The glassy summer noontime paused, trembled upon its long silent note of heat and anticipation. A few clouds over the Cotswolds cast upon that horizon a rich, regal grey, with a nap like Parisian velvet.

 

CHAPTER 29

T
he housemaid had pulled closed the drapes of the cloak of seaweed. The fronds interlaced and locked like iron mesh around Ada, the maid, and the performing troupe.

The seaweed, though dead and dry, was still growing. It seethed and twitched densely. Soon it had filled in all the spaces among the strands. With no horizon to settle her eyes upon, without little sense of up-­and-­down or here-­and-­there, Ada was unmoored. Blood pounded in her eyelids but devoid of the orangey pulse that happens when one closes one's eyes at the bright seaside. She seemed motionless, in an attitude like a figure in a tableau vivant intended to reprove.
The Virtues of Modesty, Restraint, and Perspicacity at Play in Elysium
.
Though struck with paralysis in the dark, she had the uncomfortable sense of velocity. As if she and her companions were moving at a remarkable speed, and unaware of it. As if they were ignorant, decorous creatures painted around the rim of a dinner plate that had been sent hurtling through the air toward someone's head.

Ada was not accustomed to thinking in such terms. Such aggressive equations.

But crash they did not, or not so they noticed. The housemaid opened a button to let in some air. Though some peculiar sounds caught Ada's attention, none of them seemed to be Jabberwockian, as she had come to think of it.

“I always find a change of clothes so brightens the mood, don't YOU?” asked the housemaid as she released Ada into the daylight. The child fell out of confinement onto her knees, which hurt like the dickens. It took her a moment to straighten up and turn around. In her new agility she still favored one leg.

She found herself on a gravel walk. But for the housemaid, Ada was alone. “Where is this?”

“The path you find yourself upon,” answered the housemaid.

“What happened to the marionettes and to Humpty Dumpty?”

“Oh, they were wanted at the garden party. They were afraid of being late. Humpty Dumpty didn't want to be turned into a devil egg, which in the annals of kitchen science is the same thing as an angel egg. The Queen of Hearts has a robust temper, you see. And anger gives one an appetite. So her edible guests do try to keep her from losing her temper.”

“But I wanted to go there, too,” said Ada. “I'm sure that's where my friend Alice will be. She is ever one for a party, especially if there are charades, or games and prizes.”

The housemaid had finished removing her seaweed robe. She was folding it into a small square, about the size of a pincushion. She popped it into her mouth. “How unfortunate if it starts to rain at the party, as I've just eaten my weather apparel,” she said. “Then again, seaweed gets so very wet in the rain.”

Her voice was different than it had been. Ada realized that her young fresh face was now lined. She had turned pale. Her eyes blinked, rheumy and kind. She had shrunk, and her shoulders were hunched. She looked like the sort of aged matron who might be in charge of collecting tickets at a parish luncheon. “You're not yourself,” said Ada.

“Travel tires one, don't you agree?” replied the old woman. “So I've changed my clothes. It seems to go on forever, life. Still, when I get home, no doubt I'll feel sprightly again. Take my arm, dear, as I have trouble navigating over this treacherous gravel.”

“Where are we?” asked Ada, looking about.

“I have no idea. It seems perhaps to be a Zoological Plantation of some sort. I think we are the exhibit. Do you see the bars behind which we are caged?”

The old woman indicated a set of low hoops, like croquet wickets, set in the ground along the edges of the path. They formed an airy, imbricated fringe between well-­kept lawns on either side.

Ada said, “Those aren't the bars of a cage. They are fences meant to keep us from walking upon the grass.”

The old woman demurred. “They are for our own protection. Otherwise, visitors who come to stare at our peculiarities would pluck us to shreds and turn us into decorative items for their homes. What type of specimen are you?”

“Begging your pardon, but I am no specimen.”

“Oh, you most certainly are. I believe you may be a fine example of a Rogue Child. No one seems to be hunting after
you
to fetch you from this durance vile,” said the old woman. “As for me, I am a White Queen. Very rare in these parts. I frighten the natives. Quite often I frighten myself, but that is only for practice so I can do my job in the public
mêlée
.”

Ada knew she ought to be polite to a member of the royalty. “I believe travel has made you confused. This is simply a garden path. We could step over that low ridge of iron hoops and trespass upon the grass whenever we wanted.”

“Such ignorance in the young. If you think you are so free, try straying from your path. You should know the truth about captivity. Go ahead, my dear. Try.”

Ada went to the edge of the walk and began to step over. The lifelong stiffness that had been absent since her fall through the shaft now seemed to afflict her in the hip, however, and she couldn't raise her ankle more than a few inches. She turned to explain about her ailment to the White Queen, who smiled wincingly. Then the old woman directed her alabaster scepter toward her own feet. Ada saw that the Queen's shoes were affixed to a dial of some sort, like a plaster stand.

“Why, you're a chess piece, more or less,” said Ada in amazement. “No wonder you are having a hard time walking.”

“I glide but I do not jump. Shhhh, I believe we have company.” The White Queen cocked her head and rolled her eyes to one side meaningfully.

Along the grass on the other side of the hooped edging strolled a Lion, a Unicorn, and an elderly Sheep. The Sheep was trailing some undone knitting out of a carpetbag.

“Don't look now,” said the Unicorn, “but the most revolting creatures are on display over there. Don't look. Don't.”

All three of them turned and rushed to the edge of the path and leaned over, making faces at Ada and the Queen.

“Just ambling along as if it owned the road. I call that sass!” said the Lion.

The Sheep adjusted a pince-­nez. “I recognize a Queen when I see one in captivity. Would that all Queens met the same fate!” Her companions laughed halfheartedly but sent glances over their shoulders to make sure such sedition had not been overheard. “But what in nature or out of it could that other revolting thing be?”

“It's a mere trifle, no less,” said the Lion. “Either that or a plum pudding.”

“I never saw a plum pudding with such a foul expression on its face. I do believe it's not a comestible at all,” said the Unicorn. “It's a mythical creature, I suspect. It doesn't exist. It's a child.”

“We saw a child just a little while ago,” the Lion reminded him. “
She
existed.”

“Ah, but where is she now?” The Unicorn shrugged. “Imaginary, I tell you. A matter of legend and superstition with no basis in fact. So is this one. Swords and swordfish, but it's an ugly brute.”

“I am not,” said Ada.

“It thinks it's talking!” said the Sheep. “Isn't that droll, isn't it queer! Hello, whiddle whillikums, how is your hawwible life today? Blah blah, it replies, as if it can understand us!”

“Was the mythical creature you saw called Alice?” asked Ada.

“It thinks it knows all about our lives. Did its owners give it a pamphlet to study before prodding it out of its Creature House to parade its ugliness before the paying public?” asked the Unicorn.

“I think it's rather dear,” said the Sheep. “I should like to take it home and hang its head on the wall above my occasional table.”

“What is your occasional table when it occasionally is something else?” asked the White Queen politely, as if trying to change the subject from Ada to something less offensive.

“I choose not to recognize it when we pass in the street,” replied the Sheep. “Sometimes it is an ornamental iron fawn in a dubious coiffure, sometimes a wheelbarrow putting on airs. I cut it severely.”

“I
like
that one,” said the Lion, pointing. “Here, Queeny Queeny, if I point a stick at you will you snap at it with your little royal dentures?” He could see no stick at hand so he grabbed the Unicorn around the neck. With swiping motions he thrust the horn of his friend over the side of the path at Ada and the White Queen.

“I'll make a pudding of
you,
” said the White Queen. “When I hang my crown up, I spend my leisure time as a housemaid, so I have learned many tricks of the kitchen, believe me! I'll thank you to mind your manners.”

“It's so real, yet so banal,” said the Sheep.

“Let go of my horn,” said the Unicorn. “It's ticklish.”

“Did you fail to board the Ark? And did you drown?” Ada asked of the Unicorn. “Did Noah even
try
to save you?”

“Rescue is a myth. Don't believe a word of it,” said the Unicorn.

“We mustn't linger,” said the Lion, releasing the Unicorn. “Zoos are a form of happy diversion, but the light is lengthening. We ought to push on. I hope you still have the invitation to the party?” he asked the Sheep.

“Oh, dear, yes,” she said. “I understand there is to be an execution.”

“What is to be executed?” asked the Lion.

“Manners and fine taste, among other things. Let's hurry along.”

“Tell Alice!” cried Ada. “Tell Alice I am coming for her!”

“Aren't children so like real life?” said the Lion as they all opened up parasols and began to ascend in the breeze. “And yet so
not,
too.”

“I still think it's a trifle,” said the Unicorn.