After Alice (7 page)

 

CHAPTER 17

T
he boy followed Lydia down the steps to the kitchens. She had no interest in exposing him to the gawps of Rhoda or Mrs. Brummidge, but what else was she to do with him?

“More to drink, more cake,” Lydia announced as she came through, like a regular domestic. “I left the pitcher and the other glasses behind, but this little prince is ravenous.”

“Poor tyke,” said Mrs. Brummidge, bustling. Rhoda jumped with a start. She looked as if she'd been reading up on cholera in London and the filthy well at Broad Street, and she'd become a convert to Snow's theory of germ contagion. She inched away from the boy as if she might catch something wretched from him.

The kitchen door stood open to cucumber frames and a few ill-­trimmed old fruit trees whose heavy arthritic limbs were supported with crutches. The light that slanted in, the taint of meadowsweet upon the aqueous breeze, the sound of doves now at their elevenses, these all conferred upon Siam an air of normalcy. He looked like a boy who might need Dinah the cat, or her kittens, to play with. For a moment Lydia hated him for his ordinariness. There ought to be a credit of the exotic about him, but his eyes looked just like a boy's eyes, no different.

She was tired of playing Mother after just a few moments. She was after all hardly fifteen. Finding this novelty of humanity upon her threshold, what
would
Mama have done?

But questions of that sort could have no answer. The subjunctive mood was not Logic Lane. It was no detour, only a cul-­de-­sac. Answers to the question
what Mama would have done
: They did not exist, for one could never know. Had Mrs. Clowd not died at the end of Michaelmas term, her husband wouldn't have received a belated visit of condolence from the great Darwin. Some gibbering American named Winter wouldn't have come up from London to hold Darwin's elbow at every step. This ebony boy would be scratching the backs of his knees in some other room than this.

“I don't suppose you have a name,” said Mrs. Brummidge offhandedly to the boy.

“Do too.”

“So do I, it's Mrs. Brummidge.” As if she talked to specimen children every day of the week, as natural as that. She lumbered about, cutting an extra large slice of cake for him. “Now you tell me your moniker, and we'll be done with this little bit of business.”

“Siam,” he said. “Siam Winter. Winter,” he repeated.

Lydia couldn't bring herself to ask how he came by Mr. Winter's name. “Shall I get Dinah from upstairs? She's probably dozing on Alice's window-­bench, or on Nurse Groader's coverlet.”

“I'll go,” said Rhoda, and fled.

“Are you visiting in England or have you come to live?” asked Mrs. Brummidge.

Siam shrugged. His neck was bony but his chin lovely and stunted. When he glanced around, Lydia slid an extended peek. She hadn't imagined such ruddiness possible in a boy of his origins. He caught her looking. He pursed his lips, as if trying to keep his tongue from sticking itself out at her.

“Not Egyptian, I'd guess, nor Italian,” said Mrs. Brummidge. “Would you be from the sugar islands then?”

“Siam is in the Far East, Mrs. Brummidge,” said Lydia.

“No, I ain't,” said the boy.

“Where—­do—­you—­come—­from?” asked Lydia, as if addressing the deaf.

“The parlor,” he said, crooking a thumb over his shoulder.

Stifling a smile, Mrs. Brummidge commenced to dicing the rhubarb for her syllabub. “Either very quick or very slow, that one,” she commented, “but luncheon wants to be ready when they ring for it. Why don't you take the boy for a stroll, Lydia? Whilst you're about it, you
will keep an eye out for Alice
. Do you hear me? Her father will notice her absence sooner or later, and you'll answer to him if anything happens to her.” A clucking of tongues, a soft shaking of the head at the sorrows of incompetent parenting.

It wasn't that Lydia objected to being seen with a child of equatorial origins. It was that she wouldn't know what to say should anyone meet her in the lane down to the meadows. While Lydia didn't think she was insensitive to the plight of others—­the color of his skin, his curious rubicund health!—­she was careful of her own profile in the community. Anyone might note her discomfiture and take it to be for the wrong reason. “Alice would be some help right now,” complained Lydia. Alice wouldn't bother with Siam's race; she wouldn't notice it. Just as she had never commented on Ada's bracing armature.

Mrs. Brummidge
would
go on and on about a thing. “Miss Alice was in your charge. It's fine for her to be larking about all lonesome, but she's too young to be gone for too long.”

“I dozed and she dawdled off,” said Lydia. “She'll dawdle back, as usual. She doesn't go near the water, and everyone knows her, so there's no need to fret.”

“I worry for Miss Alice, I worry for her father. We're taking care of him now, mind.” But before Mrs. Brummidge could work up to a fine hectoring, Rhoda came back with Dinah's two kittens, the black and the white.

They brought Siam up from his somnolent caution, those kittens. They capered and tottered and mewed with great fantastic faces on their frail necks. He fell on his knees to adore them. They pounced upon his thighs and bounced away again, as if everything they touched were shot through with static, the sort promised by dry air and thready cotton blankets. “They's a pair of little demons,” he cried. Scrapping like Lucifer and Michael, the black and the white, over and over so fast they might almost have been two grey kittens.

They paused, suddenly mature, studying. The black one deigned to lick its uneven fur. Siam took something out of his coat pocket to dangle and attract its twin. His back was turned to the room, and Lydia couldn't make out what he had—­a toy of some sort, a worsted ball perhaps, or a scrap of rasher filched from some breakfast platter? Then a knock on the door sounded. In came Mr. Winter, less tentatively this time.

“They've begun to talk on personal matters,” he said, “and it seemed proper for me to leave them in peace. I shall take a constitutional. Siam, come. It'll do you good to stretch your legs after your long morning.”

“I'll come, too,” said Lydia. Mrs. Brummidge shot her quite the look. “You
suggested
I take the boy out, and that I collect Alice,” she continued, “so I'll escort Mr. Winter around the path toward Parks Road and the great case of reptilian bones. Have you yet seen the University Museum, Mr. Winter?”

Mrs. Brummidge couldn't contain herself. “But Miss Lydia! Walking about with a gentleman you've just met? Not without your father's say, and I'll march in there and—­”

“Oh, he can't be disturbed. He is indisposed,” said Mr. Winter. He made a gesture, a finger at the lips, a
shhhh
. It was unseemly for being intimate.

“You'll need a chaperone then at the very least. Rhoda, off your posterior, and no jaw.”

“We have a chaperone,” said Lydia sweetly. “Little Siam, don't you know.”

She stood and pressed down the front of her skirt. It was too warm to require a shawl, though a bonnet would be proper. She would get one presently. For the moment, she stood bareheaded, willing a stiff sudden breeze to come in off the water and meadow and stir her hair just so. And you might have guessed her a minor goddess, for all that, because the breeze did as she imagined it might. Her hair blew fetchingly about her pale cheeks and severe expression.

 

CHAPTER 18

A
da had climbed down to where there were no more branches. She could see the green grass below. It looked generous and soft, like feather blankets. Previously, in the world above worlds (
DON'T
LOOK UP
), had she been able to scale a tree in the first place, she'd have been paralyzed on the descent. She'd have had to summon a gardener with a ladder to rescue her. Had she jumped, her legs would have been too rigid to provide coil and spring upon landing. They'd have absorbed the impact like ivory jackstraws, and shattered.

Ada was, however, not above-­world, and so she jumped down.

She landed without disaster. Indeed, it was almost fun. No, it
was
quite fun, pleasurable. She had half a mind to climb back up and do it again, but the other half of her mind was ready for a refreshment. The tea was laid out for a party of several dozen, as far as she could tell. She brushed herself off to make herself presentable. She pushed through ferny underbrush to approach the table set out
en plein air
.

More than one table pushed together, it seemed. At various places they jutted out, at one point making a T. Unmatching chairs were arrayed, some helter-­skelter, pushed back as if guests had fled in haste. Elsewhere, chairs were neatly aligned in sequence, awaiting company. At the far end, at a particularly dingy patch of tablecloth, a ­couple of characters were nattering away. They froze when they heard her approach.

“Don't look now,” said a small, intense man in a top hat, “but I believe we have a burglar.”

“When may I look?” replied his companion, who had promptly clasped paws over its eyes. It was a Hare of some variety, naked of ornament but for a key on a chain around its neck.

“I'm not a burglar,” said Ada.

“Clever alibi,” said the man, chomping on a bit of bread. “Many would believe you. I, for one, am not fooled.”

“Ooh,” said the Hare, peeking. “She
is
beautiful. She has stolen my heart.”

“I rest my case,” said the Hatter, for that's what he seemed to be, now that Ada could see a card reading
10 / 6
jauntily stuck in the silken hatband that announced the price as ten shillings sixpence. “Have some tea, but don't steal the spoons.”

“I would welcome some tea, but I would never steal a spoon,” said Ada.

“So you're a liar now, too. What's that you've got in your pocket?”

“How do you know I have anything in my pocket?” asked Ada.

“I can see the handle sticking out.”

Ada felt in her pinafore. She withdrew a spoon. “Oh, this. Yes, well they were dosing the baby with some corrective. I cadged a portion. I put this in my pocket to bring downstairs, but I forgot. I promise that it doesn't belong to you.”

“It doesn't
now
,” said the Hare. “I'd recognize that pattern anywhere, though.”

Ada laid it on the table next to the nearest spoon. “They're as near twins as spoons can be,” said the Hatter.

“They're nothing at all alike,” said Ada.

“Not all twins are identical,” said the Hatter. “I have a twin called Hatta, and
he
has a twin called Hatter. You can imagine the confusion when we all try to reserve a table at one of the finer establishments.” He looked about dolefully.

“
Are
there any establishments around here?” asked Ada.

“They wouldn't dare,” said the Hatter. “How do you find the tea?”

“It's quite—­well, it seems quite salty, I'm afraid.”

“It's an awful curse to be frightened of salt. You must jump at your own tears.”

“It's all a matter of taste, I expect,” replied Ada. “How do
you
find it?”

“Why, I look down in my cup, and there it is. If it were a bear it would bite me.”

At this the lid of a teapot fell off. A Dormouse poked its nose up. Its whiskers twitched. It said drowsily, “Is she gone?”

“She's right here,” said the Hare, waving a spoon of its own toward Ada.

The Dormouse craned its thick furry neck. “That's not Alice. That's a different one.”

“Must be her twin,” said the Hare. “Don't touch the brioches, darling, we're saving them for the Duchess, if she ever arrives.”

“You've seen Alice,” said Ada. “She's been here!”

“She marched through a little while ago,” said the Hare. “How long ago was that, Hatter?”

“Not as long as all that,” said the little man, munching on toast.

“Were you already in the middle of your tea?” asked Ada.

“We don't know, do we,” said the Hatter. “Until we're done, we don't know when the middle might be. We may be just beginning. Eternity is grueling—­not that we're serving gruel, mind. But this tea party may go on for hundreds of years. Right now, I couldn't possibly say.”

“I could,” said the Dormouse. “But I won't.” It clamped the lid on top of its head like a little beanie and sunk into the teapot. However its friends cajoled, it would not come out again. It whistled a popular melody through the tea-­spout, though, which unsettled Ada. It sounded ghostly.

“I had forgotten that I was looking for Alice,” she said. “Which way did she go, do you know?”

“She went forward,” said the Hare decisively, “for no one has yet found a way to go back.” He began to sing to the tune of the Dormouse.

“Though many would reclaim their youth,

They soon must learn the dreaded truth

That even should they homeward stray

They'd find their youth had been stolen away.”

“If their youth had been stolen and they found it, they'd have it again,” said Ada.

“Cleverness becomes a thief. I suspect she's up to mischief.” The Hatter pointed his spoon at Ada and turned to the Hare. “I'd keep my thumb upon the
Kuchen, mein
Hare. Remember what happened to the tarts. A messy business, that. We haven't seen the end of it yet. Child, why are you looking for Alice?”

“Because she is lost,” said Ada.

“She did not look lost to me,” said the Hare. “All the while she was here, she was as solid a little janissary as you'd care to see. Every time I looked over at her, there she was. With that alarming forehead. You could hardly miss her. It was like having Gibraltar to tea.”

“Did she say where she was going?” asked Ada. “She has a tendency to wander about, you see. Someone will be worrying about her.”

“No doubt,” said the Hare. “I can't say I noticed where she went, Hatter, did you? We were deep in conversation when she left.”

“We were talking about where she might go if she ever got up from the chair,” said the Hatter. “Then, we looked up, she was gone. So we never found out.”

Ada felt a twinge of impatience. “This is important. If I could just steal a moment of your time and ask you, please, to try to remember—­”

“Stealing again. And time is all we have, really,” said the Hare sadly.

“Time for tea,” declared the Hatter. “The madeira cake beckons. Shall we?”

They moved a few places to the right, where new cups were set cleanly upon unmatching saucers. Farther along the table, the ornamental cake stand got up. It humped itself a few places away and squatted again.

“All this talk about stealing,” said Ada. “Have
you
stolen her?”

“I stole a glance at her,” admitted the Hare. “So shoot me.”

“She was an honest soul,” said the Hatter, “if a bit dim.”

“That's not a very nice thing to say.”

“No, it isn't,” he agreed. “Nor is it very tufted, or chartreuse, or miasmic, or palindromic. It's actually quite a dim thing to say, but that's what she was. Dim.”

“You are making me quite cross,” said Ada. “I'm leaving.”

“She's trying to steal away,” whistled the Dormouse through the spout.

“She'd take anything that isn't nailed down. The damson
gâteau
is at grave risk of abduction. After her,” said the Hatter, pouring a new cup of tea.

“After
you,
” said the Hare politely.

“After all is said and done,” said the Dormouse, “there is nothing to be done. Or said.” It fell silent, a little wistfully.

The Hatter lifted his cup and examined the dregs intently. The Hare took advantage of its companion's abstraction to spring from its chair. In a few bounds it had caught up with Ada. It pulled the chain from around its neck and put it around Ada's. “Here,” said the Hare. “I shall give you this in exchange for the spoon you left behind. I wouldn't like anyone to think I had stolen it. The Queen maintains the stiffest penalty for stealing. The death sentence. You will find this key uncommonly poor for measuring out treacle, but perhaps you can learn to do without treacle. Many do.”

Before Ada could thank the Hare, she heard a loud crashing in the woods behind her, as if a piece of the Hythe Bridge had fallen out of the trees. An iron sound, dangerous. She didn't ask the Hare where Alice might have been heading, but ran in the opposite direction of the crash. When she looked back, the Hare had returned to the table and was tying the edge of the tablecloth around its neck like a sort of bib. The Hatter was weeping bitterly. Ada thought she heard him say, “She has stolen the
Stollen
.” She didn't pause to object, but pressed on through the forest, which was growing darker.