Alice I Have Been: A Novel (26 page)

“No,” Alan said hastily, as Caryl opened his mouth to speak. “I’ve learned a few things in my career, and I do not believe it’s wise for brothers to be in the same regiment. It gets rather—complicated, if you will. A bit risky, too.”

“Naturally—that’s very wise of you. Well, then?” I faced Rex. I was so rigid my jaw ached, but I would not fall apart; I would not act as if I was asking for anything more important than if they wanted kippers for breakfast, or kidneys.

“I think I might give the Irish Guards a whirl,” he said casually, as if he was talking about a dance.

“Very good. Caryl?”

“I rather fancy the Scots Guards,” Caryl replied, in earnest imitation of his brother’s easier, breezier attitude.

“Yes, I think that’s a good choice.” I nodded approvingly; Caryl needed that more than his brothers did. “Quite a busy day, then, hasn’t it been? And tomorrow’s the flower show. If you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll retire, as there’s so very much to do. You’ll all be up early to help?”

“Of course, Mamma.” Alan smiled very indulgently, as if he knew how desperately I needed to get to my room just then—and he broke my heart. When did he become such a wise, understanding man? It was not right; he should not have to comfort me.

“Lovely. I’ll see you all in the morning, then.” I walked quickly past, afraid to touch any of my sons; afraid that if I did, I would not be able to let go. I managed to leave the library, walk down the hall, attain the stairs, speak to one of the Mary Anns about breakfast—I decided on kidneys—and climb the long, wide staircase without touching the banisters, even as with every step I climbed, my eyes filled with more tears. Finally I reached my bedroom—I heard Regi across the hall in his, with his door open, calling out my name, but I could not come to him just then—and closed my door, reaching my bed before the first tears fell; I sat silently, feeling the tears upon my cheeks but not really thinking, not seeing anything—

Until I looked down at my lap, surprised. For in my hand was the copy
of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland;
I had been holding it all this time.

“Oh!” I clutched it to my chest, holding it tight, as if I could keep it safe in this way—knowing that I could not do the same for my own sons. Why hadn’t I read it to him? I thought wildly, remembering that moment in the library so long ago. What had I been afraid of? What did I even know of fear, then?

Now war had come. The little boy was a soldier now. And it was too late for us both.

I opened the book and turned to the first chapter. Blinking, I studied the page through swimming eyes; I focused and focused until the words finally were clear enough for me to read them.

“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank,”
I read aloud. When my voice caught in my throat, I stopped, took a breath, blinked again, and continued.
“And of having nothing to do; once or twice she peeped into the book her sister was reading.…”

I shut the book again. I waited until my eyes were dry.

I’ll read it to them later, I told myself. When they come home. I’ll read it to them when they’re all home safe and gathered around the dinner table, teasing me, irritating their father. After dinner I’ll insist that they join me in the library and I’ll read it to them, and I won’t mind that it’s foolish, absurd, for a mother to read to her grown sons. They won’t mind, either; they’ll understand. Somehow, they’ll understand.

I nodded to myself, at the faded book in my hand with my own name on the cover, and I repeated the words, softly, almost like a prayer—

I’ll read it to them when they come home.

Chapter 15
•  •  •

I
T’S SUCH A COMFORT TO BE AWAY FROM LONDON JUST NOW
. They say there could be air raids at any time. Those vile zeppelins! I think they’re horrid.”

Ina wrinkled her pert nose, pursed her small, sour mouth as of old; but she was not a little girl any longer, and her simpering manners verged on the comical. For Ina was white-haired now: still plump, but a softer plump than before, and very few wrinkles, which is one of the benefits of the fuller body in advancing years. The dear girl was also a bit jowly, and her chin now looked to have melted into her neck.

I was stringier with age; while my figure remained slim, my hair was more dark than gray, my wrinkles were more evident, and my bones more prominent. My eyes were still as wide and watchful, still framed by the fringe of my hair, but I had need for spectacles now. Particularly when doing close work, such as knitting, as I was at the moment.

Ina and I were in the drawing room of Cuffnells; it was an early May morning, so the hearth was cold. Outside the French windows—open to the soft, fragrant spring air—the flowering trees were in full bloom; great pinkish white petals on the tulip trees, the brilliant pink blossoms on the cherry trees, the softer white clusters of the crab apples. Even on an overcast day such as today, the blooms brightened the landscape, standing in vivid relief against the more sedate green of the oaks and maples and pines.

Inside the drawing room, even without a fire, the décor was cheerful; I had had enough of the oppressive Victorian upholstery and wallpaper and carpets of my youth. In this room—which was more mine than Regi’s—I had chosen lighter carpets of buff pink, chintz in bright blue and pink and white for the furniture, and had had the paneling whitewashed. Vases of apple blossoms dotted the many small tables, filled with photographs and small paintings, mostly watercolors.

“We are happy to have you, of course,” I told Ina, not quite truthfully; Regi had made quite a fuss when she wrote asking to come.

“I cannot stand that woman,” he stated flatly. Ina was the only person I knew who could incite such a warmth of feeling in him. “Let her go to Scotland and stay with her coward of a son.”

“Moncrieff is doing war work, Regi, even if he’s not at the front,” I reminded him weakly; it was difficult to be sympathetic to those working here at home, when all of our sons were still in the midst of the fighting.

Alan had already been wounded, only a month or so after war was declared, in October. He had been invalided home, and while I was so thankful to have him that I slept those first few nights in a chair outside his room in case he needed me, after the first couple of weeks it became evident that he was not happy to be here. He had already changed; he was thinner, with a haunted look in his eyes as if he saw ghosts at every turn. He was also impatient, almost fretful; he spoke constantly of his men, worried about them, and desired to know more than he was capable of knowing from the vague dispatches in the newspapers. I will not say it was a relief to see him go back; on the contrary, I felt a piece of my heart tear itself apart and go with him. I actually had to place my hand upon my chest, as if to keep the rest of it intact.

As much as I yearned to keep him safe and sound under our roof, however, I knew I could not. I realized he would not be happy, would not be sound, as long as he was away from the front. He actually looked more like himself—or rather, like the earnest little boy he once had been—for the first time right before he left.

As we stood on the front drive, the car warming up while the driver loaded his kit into the trunk—he would be driven to Lynd-hurst station, then journey on to the front—Alan hung his head bashfully. “Mamma, I do apologize for my frightful behavior. I know it hasn’t been easy on either of you, all of this, but you see, I have to be back with my men. They’re such fine fellows, and it is rather difficult out there.” He said it so nonchalantly—“rather difficult.” As if it was merely a lopsided game of cricket.

But I knew it was not; I knew because of his nightmares, of which none of us spoke. He’d had them only once or twice, but they were terrible; loud, anguished cries—I would run to his room, closely followed by Regi, pale and wild-haired in his nightshirt; even as we hurried to our son I reflected that when he was a child, I had never run to him in this way. Nightmares, then, were the province of Nanny.

But as a man, an anguished, battle-scarred man, he was finally ours to care for. Alan’s eyes would be wide open, but he could not see us; he could see only the horror of war as he cried out names we did not know; names that later I looked up. Only to find them listed in the rolls of the dead.

“There is no need to apologize,” I told him. “There is never any need. You’re our boy, you know. Our fine boy, and nothing you do or say can ever change that.”

“Mamma.” He bent down so that I could hold him; I put my arms around his shoulders, but I couldn’t feel them. All I could feel was the rough wool of his uniform, thick and protective but not protective enough. I raised my head to kiss his cheek, fresh-shaven, smelling of wintergreen; the cheek of a man, not a boy.

“Alan, I was wondering—do you remember keeping an owl when you were small?” I couldn’t help it; the mystery of the owl had been nagging at me ever since he’d come home.

“An owl?”

“Yes, an owl—you asked me if you could—”

“You’ll miss your train if you don’t leave,” Regi called from the car. “Best get a move on.”

“Oh! Of course, we can’t have that,” I said hastily, brushing an invisible piece of lint from his shoulder.

“What about the owl, Mamma?”

“Nothing—it’s nonsense. You can’t miss your train.”

“Good-bye, Mamma.”

“Good-bye, my boy.” Alan swooped down and kissed me; I clung to him once more, felt his warmth, his weight against my chest, and hurried into the house before this sensation could leave me. Right at the door, I turned for one more look. Alan was standing next to Regi—who was chewing the insides of his cheeks, trying so very hard to be the gruff English gentleman—and he looked so tall and pale. But he raised his arm and smiled—the earnest, sweet smile of my brave little boy. I smiled back, then shut the door behind me, before I had to watch him drive away.

That had been in March, when the trees were still bare, the sky still gray; it was now early May. The world was in bloom again, even, one had to believe, in France.

“Is it time for the post?” Ina asked, putting aside her knitting with an impatient sigh and reaching for her rings, which she had removed and placed on the table next to her. We were knitting balaclava helmets for the Red Cross; Ina complained that her rings snagged on the gray wool yarn.

“Soon, I would imagine.” I looked up at the clock over the mantel. “It’s nearly two o’clock. What time did you say that reporter was arriving?”

“Two.”

“The trains haven’t been very reliable, of course, so she may be delayed. Really, I don’t know why I allowed you to talk me into this, Ina.”

“Her mother is a friend of mine, and I happened to mention our association with Lewis Carroll, which of course intrigued the dear girl.”

“Happened
to mention?” I studied my sister, sitting so placidly, examining and admiring her many rings.

“Yes, it simply came up, and why not? Now that Mamma’s gone, I think it’s high time we—I mean, of course, you—came forward and let people know that Alice is quite alive. What harm can it do now?”

“What harm? Oh, Ina.” I could never understand my sister; of all the people in the world, she should know why I had never wanted to speak publicly
of Alice
, of Mr. Dodgson—of all “that business,” as Mr. Ruskin once so prosaically put it. “In the past, my—association—with Mr. Dodgson has not served me well, or do you no longer recall?”

“You were very young, my dear. You seem to have things quite mixed up in your head—do you not remember the lovely times we had? The larks, the frolics, the adventures?”

“If I am quite mixed up, it’s all because of you!” I shook my head and wondered at my sister, at the way she used words, mixed them up into potions that could cause your head to spin. What she said was true; what she said was always, strictly, true. Yet never was it entirely honest.

“What you do not understand, my dear Alice, is that people are not interested in Mr. Dodgson and Alice Liddell—they’re interested in Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland,” she continued, putting her rings on her plump fingers, one by one.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because of the times we live in, dear. Everyone longs for the simplicity of childhood, don’t they?”

“I suppose so.”

“So, any association with
Alice in Wonderland
, now, will only be a happy one, don’t you see?”

“No, I’m not at all sure I see.” That the book was cherished and beloved by millions, I knew. Of course I knew—I was not ignorant of its success, and perhaps I even felt a glow of pride at my part in it, finally. Particularly now that Mr. Dodgson was dead—as were Pricks, Mr. Ruskin, my mother; so many demons buried, while I, and the book, remained. Maybe Ina was correct. Maybe it would be only a happy association from now on.

Still, there were questions unanswered, questions that nagged at me more and more lately with all the time on my hands, and Ina was the only one left to ask. Yet I did not trust her memories any more than I trusted my own.

“Do you remember that day on the train?” My index finger was red and tender from the tip of my needle; I wrapped the yarn around my work—I had gotten only as far as the wide pattern on the neck—and placed it in my knitting basket.

“I’m not sure. Which day? As you know, we took the train often.” Ina’s gray eyes narrowed.

“The day we took the train home with Mr. Dodgson, instead of boating back with Mamma and Papa and those dreadful students.”

“No, not really. Although I do recall that sometimes Mr. Dodgson was very bold in his actions, if that’s what you’re remembering. Very bold.”

“No.” I shook my head. “No, that is not the man I remember—not a man of action, not at all. He spoke—he lived—in dreams.”

“Alice, you were young. You did not understand—” She was interrupted by the entrance of one of the Mary Anns, bringing in the post on a silver tray. Abruptly, any questions concerning the past were completely obliterated by the hope of word from one of the boys. I had to restrain myself from running over and snatching the tray from the slow girl.

With a tight smile, my hands clenched in my lap, I waited until she placed it upon the table next to me and bobbed—again, no proper curtsy!—before I grabbed the small pile of envelopes, searching for a tattered and dirty postcard, even a preprinted one, postmarked from France.

“Nothing today.” I sagged in my chair. “No, nothing today,” I repeated, looking up, knowing that Regi was standing in the doorway, hope in his eyes.

“Didn’t think there would be,” he said gruffly, as he said every day after the hope drained away. “Was wondering if that bill for my club came through, that’s all.”

“I’m sure there’ll be something tomorrow,” I tried to assure him—as I did every day. He nodded, I smiled at him, and he shuffled off toward the library in his baggy tweed suit, rumpled and tobacco-stained; he had such little regard for clothing lately. He used to be so very dashing, but now he would have worn the same suit every day, had I not protested.

He spent every afternoon in the library these days, brooding over maps of the front cut out from the newspapers when he wasn’t going over accounts, or cleaning his guns, or polishing his cricket trophies. He rarely ventured out of the house, not even to haunt his old cricket club as he used to.

“He’s so sad,” Ina said softly.

I stiffened; I did not appreciate the tone of her voice, for there was pity in it. “He’s simply concerned, as am I.”

“I think men take these things much harder than women. Remember Papa, how much he cried when those little babies died?”

“Yes. Mamma didn’t, though. Not a tear.”

“No, well—Papa cried for the boys. Mamma cried for Edith.”

I glanced at my sister, surprised; she hadn’t forgotten quite as much as she said she had. “Papa didn’t cry very much for Edith, that’s true. Not at all like he did for the baby boys. How odd.”

“How typical. Boys always are valued more. Lucky you—you should have married royalty, since all you’ve done is have sons—oh, I mean, rather—I’m sorry, Alice.” For once, I believed my sister; she bit her lip, frowned, and could not look at me.

I didn’t reply. How often had I thought the same thing! How often had I looked at the boys and wished—oh, God help me, I did wish it!—that they were Leo’s boys, not Regi’s? For all my activity, my determination to keep my life full and busy, I had not been able to prevent those thoughts from occurring, particularly when the boys were younger. It was wicked, wicked of me. I told myself, so many times, that one could not predict the outcome; had I married Leo, my life would have been so very different. My boys were the product of Regi and me, and I loved them, despite all my doubts when I first married Regi and started in on producing a family. I did, truly, love them all.

Still, sometimes I had wondered about the children Leo and I would have had. I had wondered if they would have been like him or like me. I had wondered if they would be slight, with soft blond hair, those gentle blue eyes.

I could not have loved my sons more, that I knew. What I would never know is if my capacity to love might have been greater had I married my true heart’s desire.

“Oh dear, I do wish that reporter would hurry up!” I rose and paced in front of the fireplace; I needed to do something, stretch my muscles, tax my heart in some way. Idleness was my enemy these days; I required physical activity to chase these wicked, unproductive thoughts from my mind. Abruptly, I turned around and headed out through the open French windows. “I’m going outdoors. Do come with me.”

“What?” Ina sputtered, pushing herself off the sofa. “What are you doing, Alice?”