After Alice (13 page)

 

CHAPTER 30

I
t is an ordinary day in Oxford, just one midsummer day in the early 1860s. The clock has struck one. Mrs. Brummidge has finished laying out the luncheon. She has let her employer know the table is set. She has dumped the water used for boiling the pudding into the stones of the soakaway, and she has sat down in the shade outside the kitchen doorway. She is sucking on a horehound drop.

This story is spattering along on unregistered reaches of the edges of the famous town. The town hardly acknowledges the likes of Mrs. Brummidge. For her part, Mrs. Brummidge knows nothing, and will never know anything, about Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte and Zuleika Dobson, Harriet Vane and Lyra Belacqua and Jay Gatsby, George Smiley and James Bond, or even Captain Jas. Hook. They are yet to be imagined. In any case, Mrs. Brummidge doesn't read fiction. She hasn't the patience for it.

It might be worth considering for a moment if the built landscape inspires in authors the invention of romantic individuals. Of course, architecture is impervious to rants, petitions, to shrieks of rape and the murder of martyrs and all the other human noise. But is one of the satisfactions of carved space—­that is, massive stone laid just so—­that it calls out for the creation of heightened characters to live up to it? Even if those outsize characters are ourselves, our own cleansed, resolved natures? The ancient Greeks may have thought so. (Drama was perhaps invented by the natural amphitheatre, and not the other way round.) The medieval masons of Chartres and Reims built windowed bluffs that laddered light into heaven; and peasants, in perceiving their own rights to salvation, began to imagine other rights, too. So Oxford, at its inception a huddle of theologicians and divines, grew into a city of dreams, and much good may come of that. Little surprise that Middle-­earth and Narnia were both discovered here.

Yet this story takes place outside of the most famous sites. No murder in the Sheldonian, no undergraduate lust in the reading room of the Radcliffe Camera, no academic intrigue in the Senior Common Room of Balliol, no capering over the leads of Christ Church, no spicy infidelities in the back passage at the Ashmolean, no spiritual remorse before William Holman Hunt's
The Light of the World
. Most of this story takes place on Oxford's margins, the area where the maps of famous buildings and renowned sites tend to pale and give out. The undifferentiated reaches marked
HC SVNT DRACONES
. Beyond the old town walls. You won't identify the exact mile of riverbank that ties together the lives of those in the Vicarage and the Croft. The river changes its course by grains of mud every day, imperceptibly. A rural district yields indifferently to development, plot by plot. And once the colleges open to women, fifteen, twenty-­five years hence, the late-­Victorian houses of Norham Gardens and the like, those anxiously fanciful, tall brick ships moored behind their garden gates up and down each lane, will obliterate this scrap of unsanctified north Oxford. It will remain only here, on these pages.

Perhaps we love our Oxford because it seems eternal, and we can return arm in arm; while our private childhoods are solitary, unique to each of us alone, and lost. We cannot point them out to one another. Only, sometimes, in the text of a book here and there, we tap the page with a finger and say, “This is what my lost days were like. Something like this.” But even as we turn to the fellow in the bed beside us to say, “Yes, this passage here,” whatever it is we recognized has already disguised itself, changed in that split instant. There is no hope that our companion can see what we, just for a moment, saw anew and hailed with a startled, glad heart. Literary pleasure, and a sense of recognition and identification, real though they are, burn off like alcohol in the flame of the next heated moment.

 

CHAPTER 31

S
o, yes, the luncheon is set, and the great man is brought to table. He is not sat at the foot, for that was Mrs. Clowd's place and will never be used again. He is placed at Mr. Clowd's right hand. Mr. Josiah Winter sits at Mr. Clowd's left. Rhoda brings forward the first course, a mock turtle soup. She retires to hover in the pantry. She listens to spoons clink upon porcelain. The men speak intermittently, affably, but without the race of competitive chatter Rhoda knows from meals at the boardinghouse in Jericho where on her off-­days she sometimes shares a meal with her sister, who is in ser­vice to an addlepated old cleric hunkered down among the other rubbishy types there.

Rhoda has nothing to do with the disappearance of Alice. She has paid little attention to the child. The little girl, a bit of a pill. Rhoda pulls up Alice's bedding every morning and wonders at the doll left on the chest. Alice never sleeps with a doll as other girls might. Was she always this rigid, Rhoda wonders, or am I only seeing her as she is today, these months after the passing of her mother?

Alice? Eager to put every foot right, to live every moment correctly, to balance or redress that slashing crime perpetrated by an unfeeling universe? Or to forestall it happening again? Strange little Alice, playing in the penumbra of her father's moral consternation. She can't help but absorb some of the stress of that man's grief. Put plainly: If we aren't made of eternal stuff by a Creator who bent low upon the earth to fashion us, how can we hope for an eternal soul that might return to Him? And how can we hope for the promised reunion of souls when this created universe has run its course?

Of course Rhoda doesn't put Alice's situation like this. She thinks, scatteredly, Peculiar mite, that Alice. Whatever haze of apprehension attends the thought of the missing child is quickly dissipated. In the moments before the soup bowls must be removed—­they dine à la Russe, in stages, unlike the hobbledehoyfreeforall ser­vice at the boardinghouses—­Rhoda goes to soak the tea towels in an enamel basin. She studies her own cuticles. She has moved on from any further reflection about Alice's character.

Mrs. Brummidge and Rhoda: These two ­people are here, too, in the story, along with the newborn Boy Boyce, that squalling infant, the presence of whom first sent his sister Ada hustling out of the Vicarage with a jar of marmalade. The dropsical Mrs. Boyce, the distractible Vicar; they inhabit their own Oxfords. They don't realize that they might remember this day for the rest of their lives. The fatal day rarely announces itself, but comes disguised as midsummer.

Our private lives are like a colony of worlds expanding, contracting, breathing universal air into separate knowledges. Or like several packs of cards shuffled together by an expert anonymous hand, and dealt out in a random, amused or even hostile way.

 

CHAPTER 32

L
ydia wasn't hungry. It was too hot, she thought. Still, Mrs. Brummidge would report to Mr. Clowd if Lydia neglected to eat anything. So she sat at the kitchen worktable with a hunk of bread and some cheese. She didn't care for soup, but Mrs. Brummidge delivered a portion to her regardless. Lydia was put out at not having been invited to dine with the gentlemen, but in truth, Mr. Darwin scared her a little. And Mr. Winter probably would have ignored her over the joint and the peas, or been condescending. So perhaps it was best she stayed in the kitchen. With the residual heat of the oven, however, she felt dizzy and not entirely herself.

“We can't get rid of you, it seems,” said Mrs. Brummidge in a here's-­trouble voice. Lydia looked up. She wasn't surprised to see Miss Armstrong once more. That woman seemed yoked to this household today by a gum-­rubber cord. She lowered her parasol and entered without invitation.

“I am on the edge of being alarmed.” In the absence of a gesture of welcome, she sat down.

“Only on the edge?” replied Lydia. “Is there any way I can help . . . ?”

But the woman was calmer than she'd been earlier. Perhaps Mr. Winter had soothed a few of her separate hysterias. She accepted a bowl of soup and dandled the spoon above it, preparing her strategic remarks before beginning her meal. It's the spoon of Damocles, thought Lydia.

“I went across the river. No luck. Then I returned to the Vicarage. Ada is still gone,” she said. “I didn't make a fuss as there was another medical moment going on. I'm surprised
you
aren't more distressed at your sister's continued absence.”

“You don't know Alice very well.”

Lydia was glad Mrs. Brummidge was collecting something from the larder, so missing this exchange; otherwise she'd have charged into this conversation. Lydia went on. “Alice lives in a queer no-­man's-­land, Miss Armstrong, as far as we can tell. She isn't capable of malice and she hasn't discovered deviousness. No doubt you're wise to become exercised over the disappearance of Ada. But for this household to do the same over Alice's adventures would be ill-­advised. Alice will return when she does. Likely, Ada will be with her. I think you are rather overwrought today.”

“It's hardly your place to say so,” snapped Miss Armstrong. Still, she was a guest here, and Lydia was as much as the Croft could boast in the way of a proper hostess, so Miss Armstrong scooped some soup as a gesture of closure. When she had swallowed the first mouthful she continued. “Mr. Winter waited with me while the boatman finished his lunch. Until Mr. Winter felt he must return to attend Mr. Darwin, I learned a great deal about the new work Darwin is considering.”

“I see,” said Lydia, who saw mostly that Miss Armstrong now seemed alert to the significance of Mr. Darwin. But Lydia took little interest in questions of natural history. Mrs. Brummidge, having returned to the kitchen, went about her business, ears cocked.

“At home in Kent, Mr. Darwin showed Mr. Winter a most peculiar orchid. It was sent the great naturalist from an island off the coast of Africa. I forget which coast and which island. Geography is a sore mystery to me. In any event, the nectary of this amazing plant, according to Mr. Winter, is an eleven-­inch tube. Surely no insect flies around, even in darkest Africa, with an eleven-­inch proboscis. Such would be ungainly. Yet Darwin imagines a moth possessed of a rolling proboscis, like an uncoiling snake, that could collect the nectar. Such a moth could retract his implement and propagate the species by visiting a sister plant. I don't think such a strategy is likely. But just imagine the mind that can imagine such a thing.”

“You are flushed with the effort of imagining it,” observed Mrs. Brummidge.

“It's known as the Star of Bethlehem orchid,” said Miss Armstrong with complacency, as if biblical allusion must deter any unsavory associations.

“And the insect would be a variety of the species
magi,
in that it comes bearing gifts,” said Lydia.

“Malarkey and confustication,” said Mrs. Brummidge, trying not to laugh. “Rhoda, pay no mind to nonsense.”

“I hate to pester you with questions,” said Lydia to Miss Armstrong, “but when you were returning here from the Vicarage, I don't suppose you caught sight of Mr. Winter's boy roaming about? He came back to the house with me but then scarpered off somewhere like a wagtail in the underbrush. Mr. Winter went in to dine without knowing where the boy has gone. And I understand the guests intend to take the mid-­afternoon train back to London so Mr. Darwin can return to Down by nightfall. This is an arduous trip for a man with his set of conditions. Mr. Winter won't be able to postpone their departure just because his boy has gone larking about.”

“I saw no sign of that child,” returned the governess, “but when luncheon is over perhaps Mr. Winter and I can make another perambulation together and look for
both
our charges.” She smiled at Lydia as if grateful the girl had scared Siam away. Oh no, you don't, thought Lydia. You're not making your jelly out of my jam.

“You ­people lose children the way scholars lose gloves,” declared Mrs. Brummidge. “Lydia, I've had enough of keeping my place. After luncheon you'll go locate our Alice, and no chatter about it. Yes I know your casual confidence, but if only for my nerves. I can't take more of this, and I won't. My heart, you know.”

“They'll all be found together, no doubt, playing a childhood game, Ada and Alice and Siam. The soup is quite strong, Mrs. Brummidge.” Miss Armstrong's anxiety over Ada had quite settled itself, Lydia noted.

“It's my belief his interest in that boy is unseemly,” said Mrs. Brummidge. She wouldn't elaborate upon the matter. Shortly thereafter Lydia spilled her bowl of soup toward Miss Armstrong's lap. Her aim was poor. Hardly a dozen drops landed where they could do the most good.

 

CHAPTER 33

W
hen Siam was able to believe that he had come unto another new world—­as different from England as England had been from Gwinnett County, Georgia—­he tried to take note of what this world was. A name would be helpful, like Little Egypt. Which was what the plantation had been called, the one from which he'd come out under pain and suffering, like the Israelites into the desert. Names of places mattered. Little Egypt. Bellerive. Down House, the home of that kind, distracted old man that Mr. Josiah was courting. But if Siam could reckon no name for this place yet, he'd at least sort out a portfolio of impressions regarding what it was
like
.

He came to his senses, if these still were
his
senses, sprawled on his hands and knees in a patch of ferns. Falling through some sort of hearthside chute, he'd expected kitchens, a root-­cellar, an ash-­bin. Like any number of dank and spidery clinches in which he and Clem had been hidden. Or if he'd somehow been tipped outside the Croft, surely he'd be within sight of its narrow mullioned windows? But he found himself in a forest of some sort. Young trees with spindly trunks were established in sward smooth as felt, not thick with undergrowth like an American woods. As if woodland creatures cropped the grass here and kept it level.

He sat on his haunches. He rubbed the dirt and char from his face. With a little uncertainty, he stood up.

The tree trunks were regular, like slender columns of iron. The canopy above was brown with shadow. He saw no sign of sky. This forest was, in fact, as dark as the room into which he had climbed to escape—­but he couldn't think of that person's name he was trying to avoid. The older girl with the blond—­the blond whiskery business on top. Perhaps he had hit his head and he was still in that space? He wished he could walk to one side and push aside the—­the hanging things that kept the light from coming in—­coming in the glass—­but he couldn't think of the name of the set of glass panes that let light in.

Must be shook up. That long fall. My words flown right out my head.

He turned around. In all directions the woods seemed to go on with sameness. It was impossible to tell which way to go in order to find his way back to—­

What
was
his name, that rescuer, who had brought him all the way across the sink? No, not the sink . . . across the water, the big water?

A sound in the underbrush made Siam turn his head. A creature hurrying, pausing, sitting up, looking about, twitching its white whiskers, checking an item on a chain that came out of a pocket in its . . . cloth wrapping. The creature had funny ears covered with white fur, and a pouff of a tail. It said, “If only I could remember how to tell time, I'd know if I was late or not.”

“I din't know time was something you could tell,” said Siam.

“One can tell time to hurry up, to slow down, or to stop making such a dreadful racket,” replied the thing, hopping a few feet closer and examining Siam with a placid expression. “One can tell time to be still. Two can tell it the same thing, only more forcibly, with the courage that comes from uniting voices in song. However, I seem to have forgotten how to tell it a thing, including to be sure to wipe its feet when it comes in from tramping about at all hours.”

“Does time have feet?”

“You've heard of time dragging. What do you suppose it is dragging, its nose? Of course it drags its feet.”

“I din't know it lugged itself about. I thought time flew.”

“Ah, yes. The wings of time.” At this the creature swung the object about on its chain and then let it go. It soared upward but didn't return. It had become lodged. “It's stuck on that protrusion,” observed the creature. “I feel I should know what that is called, that lengthy thing with greenery clinging to its tips. Can you hear the tick-­talk, tick-­talk, that time is telling us?”

Siam listened carefully. Yes, just barely, he could make out a regular pulse from the dial at the end of the chain. “So time does fly,” he said. “Does it fly back, too?”

“Oh, yes. Remember the poem. ‘But at my back I always hear / Time's wingèd hat-­rack hurrying near.' It's a bother to have a wingèd hat-­rack always poking one in the back, but there's little else to be done if time is to return. Is that a hat-­rack it is stuck upon, do you suppose?”

“This has a name,” said Siam. He shook the trunk to see if he could jostle the moments loose. “Still, I can't remember if it a hat-­rack or not.” His labors were useful. The time-­machine fell off. The creature caught it in a furry paw, and slipped it into a convenient slit in the cloth that was bracketing its middle.

“Shall we stroll together for a spell,” asked the creature, “now that we have the time?”

Siam couldn't think why not. He was twice the size of this woodland animal. He might easily outrun it if it called the authorities. “You headed anywheres special?” he asked.

“Oh, very special indeed. Though I can't recall what it is called. Perhaps you might suggest a few special sites? I will choose from among them which is the nearest.”

“Perhaps you are headed to . . .” Siam scratched his head. “To a shoemaker?”

The creature looked down at its unshod hindquarters. “Uncommonly rude of you to point out that sartorial impossibility for one of my appendages, not to mention the other one.”

“Maybe you are headed to a headache factory?”

“That sounds peculiarly right, and yet:
no
. Any other ideas?”

Siam tried to think of wonderful destinations. He could envision a fireside at night, and massive warm presences that gave off gusts of affection and protection. He could find no words for that sensation, though. “You hunting for a velveteen ladle? A hill conquered by a rocking chair?”

“You speak reams of nonsense. I don't understand a word you say.” While they had been talking, and scratching their heads out of consternation, the path had meandered through some thickets of red berries and prickery leaves. At the other side of this growth the forest suddenly tapered off. They came out into a spill of sensible light.

“My goodness,” said Siam. “You a White Rabbit, and you can speak.”

“And you're a black child,” said the White Rabbit. “I don't suppose we're twins who have lost our way in the Wood of No Names?”

“Is that where we were?”

The White Rabbit turned about and pointed. “Yes. And we've lost time in there, I'll warrant.”

“No, we din't,” said Siam, “it's in the pocket of your waistcoat.” For suddenly he remembered
pocket
and
waistcoat
.

“Oh, my,” said the White Rabbit, examining the watch and snapping its lid shut, “this will never do! I'm late for the
garden party
! She'll have my head, see if she doesn't!” At this, the White Rabbit tore off across the meadow, as if the hounds of a hunting party were on the scent and baying for blood. Siam remembered what that was like. In three shakes of its tail, the White Rabbit was out of sight.

I won't go backward, thought Siam, for I know little enough about where I am as it is. A forest that makes you forget the names of things is a dangerous place to hide. Odd that no one ever mentioned that animals could talk here. Perhaps that's why Mr. Winter was so eager to speak with Mr. Darwin. Evolution a mighty power, could it yield up creatures capable of argument.

Then again, thought Siam, what good did arguing ever do me?

He tried not to be alarmed. After all, the past few years had brought him dozens of surprises, many of them unpleasant, and yet here he was. But where
was
he?

Siam had a fine memory. He pictured the page of the book that a kindly New England matron had opened upon a table. She had picked up his hand and run it across the letters. She'd made him say the words that the letters were spelling. She had thought she was teaching him to read, but she was really only feeding his memory bucket, slowly and carefully. He moved his hand in the air before himself. He felt the words in their kinky, obstinate shapes. He said their sounds aloud:

The Pilgrim's Progress,

from This World to That Which Is to Come;

Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream.

That he could carry such a memory still, even after he'd spent some time in the Wood of No Names, gave him a boost of courage not unlike a draft of ale. He straightened up his spine and went forward, whistling.