The Looking Glass House (5 page)

Dinnertime came. Mary faced her mother across the surface of the dining-room table, darkly shining and sparse. The head of the lamb was browned and collapsed in on itself from a day spent in the oven, but still recognizably reptilian. Its eyes were misshapen with fat, which must have bubbled up from the recesses of its skull. Her mother – for there were only two of them at the table – carved up the cheek. Red grease pooled around the base of the head. Mary’s throat rose up. She felt suddenly that she was going to cry.

‘Mary, plenty of fat for you,’ said her mother.

Half the head lay on her plate, a pile of potatoes steaming gently to the side.

She stared at her mother across the table, sawing hard at a cheek. She stared back down at her own plate, at the nubby cartilage between the jigsaw of the nose bone.

A curl of shame tugged at her stomach. She pushed her chair back. ‘I am not hungry.’

‘You are always hungry!’

‘I am not hungry,’ Mary said again.

‘Sit there till you have finished it. It’s been all day cooking and it’s not to waste.’

Mary grabbed the back of her chair and scraped the legs across the stone floor. Now her mother did look up and Mary was glad to see surprise on her face.

‘I will not eat it. There is no point, Mother, and stop trying!’

‘Trying what, Mary?’

But Mary could not say for what her mother was trying; she could not form the words out loud unless it was an admission of defeat.

A few months after that, Mary had got her job with the Liddells, and in between times she decided that God had made her thin to test her fortitude and strengthen her in the face of people’s judgement. She knew very well that she was considered unwomanly, untrustworthy, spiteful, by anyone who cared to vouch an opinion, and they could tell all this just by passing her in the street and without ever having talked to her. But she had as much soul as them – and full as much heart!

Chapter 5

Alice and Ina were wearing matching dresses of black and white checked organza, with two large black velvet bows at the neck and the chest; Mary had seen the same on much older girls.

‘What are we getting dressed up for?’ said Alice.

‘Your mother is having a small tea party,’ said Mary.

‘But she always has people to tea! Why are Ina and I to come?’

‘Don’t ask questions,’ said Mary again. She didn’t know the answer, or why she was to take such care preparing them. She bent over Alice’s face and scratched something off it with her fingernail.

‘Do not flinch. You were dirty. I don’t know how, when your face was just washed.’ Mary took hold of Alice’s chin in her hand and rubbed at her face with a licked thumb.

‘I don’t see how spit is cleaner than dirt,’ said Alice. ‘You said spit
was
dirt, I’m sure of it!’

‘Don’t ask questions,’ said Mary, giving Alice’s cheek three extra rubs with her thumb. Then she took the brush and swept it down over Alice’s hair. The image of Mr Wilton came into her mind. She wondered when he would come for his visit. He could drop in at any moment – she ought to tidy those books, and the beading had come loose from the overhang of the tablecloth. And her socks needed darning. And she should ask the house­maid to scrub the stain out of her sleeve.

The longer she stayed at the Deanery, the larger the suspicion grew that it was not her life that was important to the world generally, but the children’s. She was a shadowy presence behind their white glare. Their need for fresh air, their knowledge of Prussia, their laces being undone.

‘Miss Prickett, you are brushing my ears!’ Alice twisted her head away.

Mary looked down. The tips of the child’s ears were red but she kept on until she could see strands of hair flying up towards the brush and others clinging to Alice’s forehead.

She couldn’t bring Mr Wilton to mind, not the whole of him, only his shape with its solid middle, and his darkly furred hands. His eyes she could not see; his face was indistinct even though she thought about him, the idea of him, very often. She wondered when he would come.

Mary released Alice and turned to Ina, tweaked at her lace collar and smoothed down the wiry hair that sprang up from her parting. Ina puffed out her cheeks and stared hard at the floor but said nothing.

Mary led the children out from the schoolroom, down the narrow stairs and on to the landing. On down the Lexicon staircase (bought with the profits made from the Dean’s Greek Lexicon) with its large wooden panels and lions that stood sentinel on each corner. Through the drawing room, almost stumbling over the skin of a tiger, its head thrust upwards and its teeth bared, shot by one of the Dean’s ancestors. Past the table with the silver enamelled box from India picked up by Mrs Liddell at the Great Exhibition, past the embroidered scenes, done by Mrs Liddell during the long winter evenings, that hung on the wall, until finally they were out on the terrace.

Mrs Liddell sat talking with a young undergraduate in the spring sunshine, his thin legs stuck out in front of him, leaning back on his chair. The hat he had thrown down beside him had a gold tassel on it. An aristocrat, then.

‘My dear Francis, it will be a tragedy if the ball does not go ahead. A tragedy!’ Mrs Liddell leaned towards him.

‘It looks like it will not.’

‘The naysayers!’ said Mrs Liddell. ‘And led by Mr Dodgson! He who comes over most days to drink our tea. It was the same when we came here. The Dean got all sorts of complaints. He was thought a modernizer, dangerously progressive. And Mr Dodgson was at the forefront of that too, as far as I remember. It certainly didn’t stop him ingratiating himself.’

In front of her, Alice stood very still. Mary could tell she wanted to speak but held herself back. Her mother had not yet seen them.

‘It is not as if curfew will be broken
every
night.’

‘I quite agree, my dear Francis. Quite. To listen to them, you would think we were proposing a night in hell rather than a ball.’

Mary’s shoes pinched where she had rushed to lace them. She wondered where she ought to stand. But just then Mrs Liddell saw them and beckoned them over. Her fingers were clustered with rings; she looked like an enormous shellfish festooned with diamond limpets.

‘I am pleased to introduce my eldest girls, Ina and Alice. Girls, this is Lord Newry. Why don’t you come and sit down?’

They went, Ina puce.

‘Not over there, Ina, here.’ She motioned to a seat near Lord Newry. ‘Where we can all see you.’

Mary could feel Ina’s embarrassment in the handling of her cup as she brought it to her mouth, in the sweep of her eyelashes as she fixed her gaze on the linen tablecloth, and the clumsy angle her body made with the table. Nobody else seemed to notice. Lord Newry flicked away a fly from the side of his plate. ‘I suppose Nature, in her sphere, must include flies, but I do not know why.’

‘For birds, dear Francis, that is why,’ said Mrs Liddell.

‘But Mama, birds could survive on worms. They are nicer,’ said Ina.

‘Nicer? Worms are nicer?’ Lord Newry put an amused finger up to the corner of his mouth, where he had correctly divined there was a stray crumb. ‘Than flies, you mean. Though perhaps that point is up for debate.’

Ina pinked again and folded her arms around her waist. Mary, looking down at her, noticed they had a new plumpness. From her bird’s-eye view she saw that Ina’s nose had started to pimple and she had a conical red spot to the side of her forehead near her hairline. And when Ina had been putting on her dress,

Mary had noticed the buds of her breasts for the first time.

‘Worms live below ground, that is why they are nicer,’ said Alice.

‘Well, I live above it,’ said Mrs Liddell. ‘I don’t know anyone who lives below.’

‘That reminds me, have you ridden on the new Metropolitan railway line in London?’ said Lord Newry. ‘There is a frightful crush in the mornings, and again in the evenings. I have experi­enced it, just for fun, and I must say one is pressed up against people quite as if there was no society left.’

Mary had seen young men like him around Oxford many times, but this was the first time she had been up close. It was just as she had expected. The sneering shape of Lord Newry’s mouth as seen from a distance did indeed bring forth words intended to put others down when you could hear them. They dropped out of his constricted throat in a thin, high stream; perhaps the tightening of the throat developed when the aristoc­racy tightened their grip on the land and separated themselves from the rest of society.

‘Oh, you are brave, my dear Francis!’ Mrs Liddell put the palm of her hand on his knee. ‘I shouldn’t like to try it one bit. Travelling underground seems most unnatural.’

‘I suppose you have read Spencer?’

‘I have heard of him, yes.’

‘Travelling on the Met puts me in mind of him. He has coined a term for Mr Darwin’s theories: “survival of the fittest”. And I must say, jammed into one of those carriages I am inclined to agree.’

Mary thought of the woman in the shades of red, with the peacock feather in her hat. She had had a vitality that the aristocrat lacked.

‘Whatever do you mean, Francis?’

‘The lower forms of society ought not to procreate, for the good of the higher. There are some ghastly people around.’

Mary’s face burned. Even though she had not been in service long, she knew already to divide the world into two categories: those who noticed her and those who didn’t. Lord Newry fell into the second category.

She wondered what he would have done. Sterilization perhaps. Would his plan extend to governesses? Surely not. Just the lady in orange and her sisters. But not to the men who visited them – that would take out half of Christ Church’s undergraduates.

The talk travelled on. Alice was young enough to think her opinions counted for something, and Lord Newry was encour­aging her by asking questions and letting off laughter that rattled like a woodpecker on a tree.

‘I don’t like tea very much, I’m afraid,’ Alice said.

‘Oh?’

‘It tastes like leather shoes.’

The avian laughter. ‘I daresay it does if you are – what age are you?’

‘Ten years old, Lord Newry.’

‘Precisely. But perhaps you will one day,’ said Lord Newry. ‘I should hope so at least, otherwise you will find it difficult to pay house visits.’

‘Ina is growing up so fast, she will soon be making house visits of her own,’ said Mrs Liddell.

Ina stared down at her teacup.

‘How old are you now, Ina?’ asked the aristocrat.

‘Thirteen, Lord Newry.’

‘Ah, thirteen, yes. I knew a girl of fourteen engaged to be married, so I dare say house visits are nothing to that.’

Mary noticed Ina’s ears burned bright red. And they
were
talking about her, and thus the origin of the phrase.

‘Fourteen is
rather
young, but I shan’t say anything against eighteen, Lord Newry, or seventeen at a push!’

Lord Newry reddened now, though he hid it by yawning with his hand over his face.

The girls were young, but perhaps never too young to be acquainted with the right sort of possibility, thought Mary.

Standing behind the party as she was, Mary was the first to see Mr Dodgson come round the corner of the house, with his hands held out in front like an illustration of a sleepwalker. They were stained, or dirty, Mary saw straight away. Had he been digging with them? They were not uniformly black, but darker on the palms. Splotched. Like Alice’s copybook.

How had she not noticed before? But – perhaps he always wore gloves. Yes, perhaps he did, though she hadn’t thought it strange at the time.

Mary saw Mr Dodgson take in the nobleman, the teacups half empty, Alice and Ina in their best dresses pressed in on him on either side.

The colour in his cheeks spread up to his forehead and down towards his neck. He passed a hand over his face. He looked back at Mrs Liddell, his mouth a disbelieving smile.

Lord Newry took a final bite of fruit cake. Not for him the possibility of crumbs, of too much or too little saliva, or gum-sticking mulch. Just one small bite, masticated neatly beneath a quivering moustache.

‘Oh look, it is Mr Dodgson. Hullo, Mr Dodgson!’ said Alice.

Mr Dodgson’s face changed again. He bowed and then turned his palms up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I am afa-afa-afraid .  .  . I didn’t think to meet anyone today. I left off my gloves.’

‘Oh, Mr Dodgson! Are you in the broom cupboard again?’ said Mrs Liddell, drawing out the word
broom
into two rising syllables. ‘You must be more in the Deanery than in your own rooms.’

‘I have been atta-atta-attempting a view out of the garden,’ he said, dropping his hands back down to his sides and pressing his palms on to the outside of his legs.

‘That’s why they call it the dark art,’ said Lord Newry. ‘I never put it together before now.’

‘Why do they call it what?’ said Alice.

‘Photography. Because of the chemicals. They stain.’

An undergraduate shouted somewhere in the quadrangle, his voice neutralized through the sandstone walls.

‘You know Lord Newry,’ said Mrs Liddell.

‘Yes, Lord Newry. Good afternoon.’ Mr Dodgson stood unevenly, one shoulder higher than the other. ‘I think you were up for a lecture of mine once.’

‘Possibly.’ Lord Newry hadn’t moved; his hands were still behind his head, though Mary saw his lips twitch. ‘Did I go?’

‘No.’

Mrs Liddell smiled.

Mr Dodgson pressed his lips together; he looked fussy. Mary wondered if he meant to or if it was something he could not help. She had noticed this primness about him before. He was fastidious in matters of dress – his own and even the children’s. It was not unknown for him to kneel down by Alice and rub off a piece of dirt on her collar with his thumb.

‘Before I go .  .  . I did mean to ask. This may not be the best time, only I did promise.’

‘Promise what?’ Mrs Liddell rattled her teacup into its saucer.

‘I met the Acland children on the way here. I wondered, if you were agreeable, if I may take their photograph along with your own children at the Deanery. Would you allow it?’

Mrs Liddell’s smile reminded Mary of the head of the tiger-skin rug in the drawing room, its teeth bared. ‘Oh, Mr Dodgson, I am flattered that you wish to spend so much of your time in photographing my children when you are so busy, not to mention the considerable expense of meeting the cost of chemi­cals and so on.’

Mr Dodgson bowed and turned to go. He had taken her answer as a yes, Mary saw. But Mrs Liddell glanced at Lord Newry and added: ‘I think I saw you out of doors last night. It must have been around nine o’clock.’

Mr Dodgson turned round again. ‘I like to walk; the evening air refreshes me.’

‘Yes, the evening air refreshes me too. I always think the occasional late night does wonders for one’s health. Do you agree, Lord Newry?’

Lord Newry smirked. ‘Quite, Mrs Liddell.’

‘What do you think, Mr Dodgson?’

Mr Dodgson’s eyes were fixed on the flagstones. ‘It might depend on what it, on what it en-en-en-en, on what it en-tailed.’ He brought out the word with a stamp of his tongue on the T.

‘Precisely. It would depend on what it entailed. A night of drinking and carousing would
not
be good, but I expect a night of general enjoyment, such as Lord Newry’s ball, might lift one’s spirits significantly. I know you enjoy many such nights, and in the Deanery too.’

‘But your ball, as you know, would entail breaking college rules.’

‘I don’t see what you have against young people enjoying themselves. I dare say even you must have been young once!’ said Lord Newry.

Mr Dodgson looked as if someone had stuck a broom handle up the back of his jacket to keep him still. Discomfort radiated from him.

Mary felt a surprising stab of pity.

‘I have nothing against enjoyment, as you know, Mrs Liddell. But the rules of college curfew have been in place for hundreds of years, and if you, if you, if you were to break them once .  .  . then, then, then they could be broken again. And again, and they would become meaningless.’