Pinkerton's Sister (24 page)

The Alice Collection had been started by Charlotte, who – from the time when she and Alice had been small girls – had sought out novels and poems that contained the name Alice. (This was The Alice Collection, and there was any number of them to find). She would present the books triumphantly to Alice, with her name neatly underlined in the text. Later, she sought out books for Ben that contained the name Pinkerton. (This was The Pinkerton Collection: a somewhat more select number of volumes.)

This “Alice in it” was Alice Grey, the second Alice Grey they’d come across. (The other one was Agnes’s mother in
Agnes Grey
. She later found a
third
Alice Grey when Alice Vavasor – she’d hoped she would – married John Grey in
Can You Forgive Her?
) Unencouragingly, Sir Walter Scott’s Alice Grey was blind, an obvious riposte on Charlotte’s part to Alice for having given her
Poor Miss Finch
, in which the heroine with Charlotte’s surname had also been blind.

“At least,” Alice had said, with crushing dignity, as Charlotte handed the novel over, “I have never had corsets named after me.”

She had been thinking of the Carlotta model, recently unveiled in the Lindstrom & Larsson catalogue. Corsets – in their baffling complexity – did rather prey on the mind. She’d boggled at the hooks and buttons, the straps and clasps, the steel and bone, like a nervous young squire clutching a shield and apprehensively approaching his first suit of armor. The dawning of womanhood would bring with it some truly awesome responsibilities, a whole new world of serious-faced commitment, a sensation of going into battle with advanced and potentially dangerous weaponry.

It might save time if they didn’t bother to read the books, just resorting to hitting each other over the head with them instead (a good incentive to find thick novels), but Alice enjoyed reading too much to do this, and Charlotte really was her truest friend. If she had to be rude to someone, Charlotte would be the safest, but least satisfactory, choice, looking sad, but not retaliating. Slim volumes of verse would be all she could bear to use on Charlotte, gently patting her over the head with a petal-scattering of weightless poetry, the lightest of light verse.
The Brothers Karamazov
,
Crime and Punishment
(how very apt!),
War and Peace
,
Anna Karenina
, the thickly bearded, thickly volumed Russians: these would be her chosen weapons with which to brain those she really hated, done to death by Dostoyevski, terminated by Tolstoi or Tourgenieff.

All happy families resemble one another
…

Thwunk!

Well, she’d be happy.

“Tolstoi is by far my favorite novelist,” she could declare ringingly after she’d laid waste to one of Mrs. Albert Comstock’s literary afternoons (Madame de Stäel offered no competition whatsoever to these glamorous occasions), tripping lightly over the battered bodies, as horrified survivors – there would be few – stared aghast.

Instead of turning to the place she had reached in
Hard Cash
, she sought for the section with which she frightened herself, the scene in which Alfred Hardie first realizes that he has been tricked into a lunatic asylum. She was so caught up in her search for words that she was barely aware of the ring, wrapped in tissue paper so that it would not damage the pages, propping the book open as if to indicate a favorite passage. She held the little package loosely in her left hand as she read.

Alfred Hardie was trapped – trapped for life, it seemed – inside a private madhouse on his wedding morning, and elsewhere his unknowing bride was waiting for him.

He lay mute as death in his gloomy cell, a tomb within a living tomb
…

She read the words yet again.

(She may have read the entire novel three-and-a-half times, but she had read certain passages many more times than this. The description of Alfred’s entombment was the scene she had read the most. This was the page at which the book fell open, with no need of a bookmark. She’d often mused over
a tomb within a living tomb
as she lay on her back, unable to sleep, her arms down by her side. Then the words of Roderick Usher would insinuate their way into her mind. “
We have put her living in the tomb!
”)

…
And, as he lay, deeper horror grew and grew in his dilating eyes: gusts of rage swept over him, shook him, and passed: then gusts of despairing tenderness; all came and went, but his bonds. What would his Julia think? If he could only let her know! At this thought he called, he shouted, he begged for a messenger; there was no reply. The cry of a dangerous lunatic from the strong-room was less heeded here, than a bark from any dog-kennel in Christendom.

“This is my father’s doing,” he said. “Curse him! Curse him! Curse him!”

Here she said the words aloud –
Curse him! Curse him! Curse him! –
keeping her voice low, not wishing them to echo down the chimney, but speaking with intense feeling. She couldn’t help stuttering when she said this.

“C-C-Curse him! C-C-Curse him! C-C-Curse him!”

She could hear the “C-C-C” mocking voices as she did this, the “Coochi-coochi-coo” baby-talk of satirical impersonations. She tried to think of the “C-C-C” sounds as the rhythmic sounds of the nails being hammered home into the head, the dagger stabbing repeatedly into the heart.

…
and his brain seemed on fire, his temples throbbed: he vowed to God to be revenged on his father
…

This was the part she liked best. It was her source of comfort, her one embraceable doll.

Curse him! Curse him! Curse him!

She didn’t stutter when she said the words in her mind.

She didn’t stutter when she wrote them down.

“Check the cutlery!” Papa had said. “Have you checked your dressing-table drawers?”

“Yes, Lincoln.”

All over Longfellow Park the Happy Families – all resembling one another – checked the cutlery and the dressing-table drawers. The whole area echoed to the rattling knives, forks, and spoons being counted, dropped, spilled across the floor, the slamming of drawers and doors, voices shouting, feet running from room to room. You could hear it in the street, the tumult from inside. They were the Happy Families of a menagerie traveling from town to town, the animals of different breeds living together in the same cage. You paid to look at them living happily together, trying to ignore the smell of the soiled straw, the rank, ungroomed coats, trying to breathe through your mouth. They didn’t look much like a Peaceable Kingdom. They didn’t look happy. They didn’t look
together
. Some were restless, some inert, and all seemed nervously conscious of each other. They failed to cozy up together with affectionate cuddlesomeness, lacking all lavishness with licks and purrings. They were the Happy Families, the card game that Miss Ericsson had given her for Christmas, together with – it had been with the best of intentions – three Elsie Dinsmore novels. She could not abide Elsie Dinsmore, who was up there with Ellen Montgomery and Little Eva in the list of heroines of fiction ripe for assassination (and me-me-
me
,
I
want to wield the weapon).

Miss Ericsson, who had no family of her own, showed them how to play Happy Families, and she sat around the table in the schoolroom with Alice, Allegra, and Edith. Charlotte often played with them.

(A sense of irony had been instilled into Alice early, as she glowered at her two sisters, watching eagle-eyed for attempts at cheating. Allegra always tried to cheat.
Happy Families!

(With
Allegra
!

(With
Edith
!

(With …

(With …

(With
Papa
!)

It was very much the same game as Fish, or – a particular recommendation in Alice’s eyes – Authors, as you moved around the table, requesting the cards to complete the members of a Happy Family. You had to say “Please” when you asked, and “Thank you” if you were given a card. The English were very polite card players. If you failed to say “Please” or “Thank you” you lost a turn. No mercy if you were
sans merci
. If you were asked for a card – “Could I have Miss Bun, please?” – and you didn’t have it, you’d say, “Miss Bun is not at home,” as if shutting the door on an unwelcome visitor, and then it would be your turn to ask.

Thirteen Happy Families.

Thirteen …

There was Mr. Spade, the Gardener’s family: Mr. Spade, the Gardener; Mrs. Spade, the Gardener’s Wife; Master Spade, the Gardener’s Son; and Miss Spade, the Gardener’s Daughter. There was Mr. Chip, the Carpenter’s family: Mr. Chip, the Carpenter …

Mr. Dip, the Dyer’s family.

Mr. Soot, the Sweep’s family.

Mr. Bun, the Baker’s family.

Mr. Tape, the Tailor’s family.

Mr. …

Mr. …

She could remember
six
Happy Families.

“Could I have Master Tape, please?” she’d ask Allegra.

“Master Tape is not at home,” Allegra would lie, the pert false-faced housemaid guarding the front door and denying entrance, thoroughly enjoying her power.

Slam!

“Could I have Mrs. Bun, please?”

“Mrs. Bun is not at home.”

Slam!

The door would crash shut, and the sound would echo around the hollow spaces of the curiously deserted house from which all families had fled. Inside doors were left open, as if to demonstrate the emptiness of the rooms within, the drapes were drawn back from all the windows, but – if you listened carefully – you could hear the hide-and-seek sniggers of the hidden hosts.

(“Has she gone yet?” they’d ask, voices from inside closets, voices from beneath pieces of furniture.

(“Has she gone yet?” they’d whisper, voices from the servants’ quarters, voices from behind screens and portières.

(The maid, standing on the other side of the front door would shake her head, her fingers to her lips.

(“Shhh!” she’d hiss. “Shhh!”

(Alice would rap at the door.

(“
Ignore her!
” the voices would order.

(Alice would tug the bellpull.

(“
Ignore her!
”

(The maid would smile. This was the favorite part of her job, though she’d enjoy a really hard slam even more.)

“Could I have Mr. Spade, please?”

“Mr. Spade is not at home.”

Slam!

Allegra held her cards close to her face to hide her smile, peering over the top of them like a flirt with a fan, defying Alice to accuse her of cheating, so that she could unleash the “Mama! Mama!” sobs of the unjustly accused, the wailing “Why me? Why me?” lamentations. Alice was the guest denied access to all homes, a woman beyond the pale of decent society, and everyone shrank from her defiling presence. A reasonable enough preparation for adult life, Alice supposed. She ought to be grateful to Allegra for the practise. The cards swayed back and forth tauntingly in front of Allegra’s face, as if they were the visiting cards from all the other, welcome, visitors, the merry throngs of those who were – unlike herself – found acceptable and crammed inside.

(The Buns were not at home.

(The Tapes were not at home.

(The Spades were not at home.

(The Chips, the Dips, the Soots were not at home, their dust-sheeted furniture – you needed dust sheets when the Soots came to call – shrouded in the empty rooms, dim with drawn drapes, the chandeliers swathed as if with Southern mosquito nets, some insect-haunted bedroom in Louisiana or Mississippi. Dust filtered through sunbeams.

(It was a high summer city, the streets were deserted, and everyone had left for the seacoast or the country.

(Alice rap-rap-rapped at the door.

(Alice tug-tug-tugged the bellpulls.

(The doors slammed in her face.

(They ignored her.)

Papa came to watch them playing. He had the air of someone at a loose end, restless, unable to settle to reading or solitaire, seeking for something to do to occupy the time that hung heavy upon him. He sometimes hovered around for a while, smelling of cigar smoke and
drink
, looking at them as though wondering who they were.

You could tell that Miss Ericsson was frightened of Papa. She clutched her cards tightly, and looked at them very closely, as if there was nothing else to look at in the room, like a reader deprived of a book lingeringly studying the labels on the tins and jars in the kitchen.

Alice asked and said “please.”

Allegra said that Miss Tape was not at home.

Alice asked and said “please.”

Allegra said that Miss Spade was not at home.

“What game is that?” Papa asked eventually, sounding like someone who thought that there might be money in it.

“Happy Families, Papa,” Allegra answered, employing her wide-eyed good-little-girl look, though Papa had been asking Miss Ericsson.

“Happy Families!” Papa had snorted, a man who’d just heard the funniest thing for ages. “Happy Families!”

Miss Ericsson bowed her face closer to her cards. Mr. Dip, the Dyer’s family was fanned out in front of her, a winning hand.

“Your turn, Edith,” she prompted.

Edith turned to face Allegra.

“Could I have …?”

“Don’t forget to say ‘please.’”

Miss Ericsson sounded like a governess being inspected by her employer, anxious to create a good impression of the way in which she ran the schoolroom, the impeccable manners she instilled into her pupils. She hadn’t looked at Papa once. This Jane Eyre knew all about Mrs. Rochester.

“Could I have Miss Spade, please?”

She’d asked and said “please.”

“Miss Spade is not at home.”

Edith looked suspicious and rebellious. (Edith was definitely showing signs of improvement.)

Allegra appeared to be holding a hand of blank cards, a full complement of absences. Her doors were locked and bolted, and probably barricaded. Members of the Happy Family would be waiting behind the barricades and clutching their weapons, like members of the Paris Commune preparing to resist attack.

“Happy Families!” Papa snorted again. He made it sound like something ridiculous, something impossible.