The Looking Glass House (14 page)

Chapter 20

A few evenings later there was a knock at the schoolroom door. The children’s nanny bent her head round.

‘I have lost Edith’s cardigan; I thought it might be in here.’

‘I have not seen it,’ said Mary.

The woman walked about, the heels of her boots ticking sharply on the wooden floor. ‘Have you seen Mr Dodgson today?’ said the nanny, after a while.

‘No, not today. Still too hot, I think,’ said Mary, glancing at her.

‘I suppose you must have grown used to him by now.’

Mary looked at Nanny Fletcher’s face. She often disagreed with the woman, even though she was the one who was most nearly her equal. Yesterday the nanny had launched into a long story about a girl who had been foolishly allowed by her parents to wander around the library to read as much as she liked, and whose brain grew so large she fell down dead.

Most things she said seemed to be directed obliquely but crit­ically at Mary’s sphere; in general Nanny Fletcher did not stay to make conversation. But this evening she circled the room, picking up cushions and replacing them in a way that did not suggest particular urgency as to the whereabouts of the cardigan.

‘I think the cardigan is not here,’ said Mary. ‘It may be in Edith’s room; perhaps you will find it tomorrow. I had best turn in.’

Nanny Fletcher hesitated. ‘It may not be my place .  .  .’

Mary noticed peripherally how small her feet seemed, how agile, underneath the bulk of her body.

The woman had heard something.

‘It may not be my place,’ Nanny Fletcher said again. ‘There is gossip, around Oxford .  .  . I thought perhaps you ought to know.’

Mary had made a fool of herself and now she would be shamed. Discovered. In the centre of her a thing that should never see the light squirmed upwards.

Nanny Fletcher paused, and then came out with the rest of the words in a rush. ‘Some say that Mr Dodgson is paying court to you; that is why you see him so much.’

Mary kept her face very still and turned away from the other woman.

‘Of course they are wrong. Aren’t they? But I thought you ought to know.’

She wanted to smile, was desperate to smile; she would have no choice but to let the corners of her lips turn skywards if the nanny did not leave.

She had been right.

She pressed her hand over her mouth and shook her head; she hoped it would look like disbelief.

‘Thank you, Mrs Fletcher. It was good of you to bring it to my attention.’

Still with her hand over her mouth, she pushed past and rushed to her room.

Mary threw the stack of books that were on her pillow on to the floor and sat down. She pressed her knuckles into her eyelids. Mr Dodgson rushed into the space behind them, the acid-sweet smell of him, his long pale fingers.

His wild look when he proposed on stage. His smile as he handed her the Ammoniaphone. His strange confession in the dark.

She got up from her bed again and paced up and down the room. She was fierce with joy, terrible with it.

She could leave this place and set up her own home. But where would they live? She sat down again, the springs squeaking.

Tutors could not marry. She had heard Mr Dodgson say that that was why he would never marry, as his father had; he would never give up his career to be the rector of an obscure parish somewhere, as he put it.

But men said plenty of things they did not mean!

The talk in Oxford irresistibly chimed with the conversation Mary had been having with herself. Every book she had ever read told her that gossip like this was never brought up just to disappear without a trace.

She would have to wait and see what Mr Dodgson wanted to do, where he wanted to live. He had not even proposed yet! Oh, where would it be, how would he do it? In the schoolroom, or down by the river, his knee pressed into the mud? Perhaps he would invite her to a garden, with roses in it, and sit her on a bench and take her hand and press it to his lips and look into her eyes with his own fevered orbs and .  .  .

Her orbs were fevered too. She must rest. But rest was impos­sible! She must, though, if she were to see Mr Dodgson tomorrow. She might see him – she might see him tomorrow! But how could she sleep, with her heart pounding in her ears?

She took up her book again and tried to read, but could not. Sleep would come later, or not at all. It made no difference now.

The only wedding Mary had previously attended was that of her classmate, Amelia. Amelia smelled of Parma violets; her skin was smooth, pale and plump. On a sunny day the sun shone straight through Amelia’s pale hair on to the white scalp beneath. Her flesh was soft; it swayed beneath her upper arms and sat in self-satisfied rolls underneath her chin. If it were pressed too hard it would retain the divot, like a pillow.

Her way of clasping her hands together in front of her bosom was plump and self-contained. Her voice was high and tonally designed to soothe men’s ears.

When she was eighteen, the suitors came. She encouraged them all and read their letters out loud to Mary, smiling, showing her small, sharp teeth. Sometimes she tore up a letter in front of her and let the pieces drop in the waste-paper basket.

She told Mary how one man might meet another in the hall as they came and went – when she spoke of this, her usually pale face grew flushed, but there was no sign of embarrassment in her features.

After eight months Amelia became engaged to a wealthy gentleman farmer who lived just outside Oxford. During this time Mary saw them drive by in his fine carriage, with a chap­erone, close but not yet touching. Once she saw them stepping into a large house together in Summertown.

She watched the couple come back down the aisle: the beau­tiful bride, the handsome groom, walking on a snowfield of petals. Mary’s mother, who had accompanied her, pressed a handkerchief to her eyes ostentatiously. Mary herself had smiled until her mouth was a crack that held up her face. As her old friend went by she looked in at her face, suddenly revealed by her thrown-back veil. But Amelia only glanced sideways at her husband through half-shut eyes; she had passed through to somewhere, it seemed, that could not be reached by unmarried people.

At the wedding breakfast Mary had wandered into the hallway of the house, where three cakes were lined up on a table, under a bough of heavy jasmine. The smaller two cakes repre­sented the bride and groom, the dark one for the groom, the pale one for the bride. But the largest was decorated with elaborate orange scrolls and Amelia and her mother were busy dividing it into pieces so that while the front of it still presented a glittering facade, the back was a crumbling slope of dark devastation. The slices had been boxed up and tied with yellow ribbon, ready to give to the guests on their departure; each box contained a trinket.

The ring for marriage within a year;

The penny for wealth, my dear;

The thimble for an old maid or bachelor born;

The button for sweethearts all forlorn.

Amelia had handed Mary a box with a smile that prohibited intimacy. When Mary got home and unwrapped her box, she found a thimble.

It was hard to see how Amelia could have engineered it.

Soon Mary must write to her old friend with her news – although not now: Mr Dodgson had not proposed yet, but as soon as he did, she would write. Not boastfully, though she would mention that Mr Dodgson was a tutor at Christ Church, and that would sound much better than a farmer, no matter how rich. But it would not be the first thing she said, or the second even. The first thing would be to invite Amelia to her wedding, a simple yet elegant affair, attended by everyone impor­tant in Oxford.

A long veil attached to a coronet of orange blossoms, a long train; she had always thought that would be the thing. Short white kid gloves, silk stockings embroidered up the front. White – or cream? Silk slippers with a red bow at the instep.

But she would need to get new handkerchiefs with new initials! MD. A good name.
Mary Dodgson
spoke of the wife of a rector in a leafy parish, in Gloucestershire perhaps. A teapot on the table, a beech tree outside with leaves rustling, flagstones in the hall worn away at the edges .  .  .

But the housemaid was calling out her name, her old name.

‘Miss Prickett!’

Mary squeezed her eyes shut. Rosa could not want her for anything urgent.

Miss Prickett!

Her name inserted itself in front of the image of the rectory, and the flagstones dissipated through the edges of her mind.

‘What is it?’

‘There’s someone here for you,’ shouted the maid, not both­ering to come up.

A visitor: could it be – so quickly? She was not ready. She rushed to the looking glass. ‘Who is it?’ she said. Her voice was shrill.

‘Mr Wilton.’

Mr Wilton!

His presence now, here, was as unwelcome as a sea lion’s .  .  . Mary saw him lumbering up the stairs, freshly slicked. If she could put him off – but he must have heard the housemaid calling to her. He would be inside by now, and taking off his gloves.

She pushed a piece of hair behind her ear and looked in the mirror. She was surprised to see that she looked the same as she always had, with a faint air of worry or disapproval clinging to her lips.

Behind her the door opened.

‘Miss Prickett?’ Mr Wilton said her name as if he could not be sure she was there, even though she was right in front of him. She turned. He seemed to hold his weight on just one foot, as if her look had frozen him. He held his smartest hat below his navel; the fingers of both hands drummed on the brim as if he were playing a difficult piece on two silent flutes.

Now that he was here, even though he had sent no warning, Mary must offer him tea, if for no other reason than to give him a teacup to stop his invisible orchestra.

But when the tea was brought, Mr Wilton would not touch it, would not sit down. He would not talk on his favourite sub­jects: the new Indian silks, the tweed mills of Argyll, or anything else he usually liked to discourse on at such length. He only answered Mary’s enquiries in the briefest way, until at last she fell silent.

He walked to the other end of the room and chewed on his lip.

‘Is there something wrong, Mr Wilton?’

‘No – I mean yes. Well.’ He stopped chewing and sucked in breath through his teeth.

‘Is it your parents? Your health?’

‘No! Nothing like that.’

He went over to the window and put his back to her. Mary stared at the silk of his jacket, the dark grey gleam, the hori­zontal rifts in it between his shoulders.

Why was he acting so strangely? And why would he inflict his mood on her, now, when she was such an unwilling participant?

‘I see that I have started now, so I must continue.’

Behind the shadow of his beard his skin was inflamed.

Mary, looking at him, had a premonition, a shock high in her breast, and rushed to open the windows. ‘It is warm in here. These windows always stick but I usually can open them. Today they are particularly difficult.’ The words rushed out of her in an attempt to keep him from talking. But he was beside her now, fumbling with the fastener, reaching his arm across hers, press­ing down on it. Mary could see where the edge of his collar had rubbed at his neck, a red, raw line.

He caught hold of her arm. She must have looked frightened, because he dropped it again, although he did not step back.

‘You must know what I have come here for.’

‘I don’t!’ She clung on to the last hope that she might be wrong.

Mr Wilton looked at her, waiting for some sign. When he found none, he continued.

‘I have come here for some months now and have grown very fond of you – fonder than I was before.’ He swallowed. ‘Oh, Mary! I am not good with words. You know that. I cannot speak around the thing. I must say it plainly. I was hoping .  .  . that is to say, I
am
hoping, that you would do me the honour of agree­ing to be my wife.’

A chaffinch hopped up the trunk of a tree, pecking at the bark as it went. It must have babies to feed.

A month ago, nothing. Now two proposals at once.

Mary felt laughter rising up, as inexorably as oxygen finding its way to the surface. It would be disastrous to greet Mr Wilton’s proposal with an attack of laughter. Somehow that made the thing more funny. And when the laughter came burst­ing out of her mouth, Mr Wilton looked astonished, as if his chest had been struck a violent blow.

She covered her mouth with her hand, tried to push the laughter back down into her stomach. She must stop! But her mouth operated on its own: gaping, noisy. Out of the corner of one eye squeezed a tear, as hard earned as sweat.

Mr Wilton took hold of her arm and started to shake it. ‘Mary! Stop laughing!’

But she could not.

‘Stop it!’ He put his palm on her breastbone, his thumb and forefinger making a U around the base of her neck. Still bubbles tightened in Mary’s chest and rose remorselessly to the surface. Her laugh was high and constricted and sounded unlike any­thing she had ever uttered.

‘Stop it, I said!’ His hand had the effect on her neck of a stopper being pushed into a bottle.

Now a feeling of something else, more angular. Fear.

She gripped his wrist tightly with both of her own hands and took a step back.

‘Mr Wilton! Please – I am sorry. I don’t know – please forgive me. I didn’t mean to laugh. I don’t know what happened.’

Mr Wilton let his grip slacken.

‘I thank you for your proposal. I am flattered, really. But I cannot marry you.’ She forced his hand away and it fell down by his side.

‘Cannot? Cannot?’

‘I cannot marry you.’

Mr Wilton had been so clearly expecting another answer that his face still showed some trace of gladness. ‘But you .  .  . You took my gifts. You welcomed my visits. I thought you welcomed me.’

‘I did welcome you. Your visits. But I cannot marry you.’ Mary pushed herself away from the window and walked into the centre of the room. ‘I will admit it – I thought perhaps I could once. But not now. I do not possess the feelings towards you that a wife ought to possess for a husband – and that is all.’