The Looking Glass House (8 page)

Chapter 10

The note had been there, on a silver platter in the hall, when Mary and the children returned from their walk. It had suggested a walk around the meadows. Mary had written another note to suggest that perhaps, instead of taking a walk, they might visit Mr Wilton’s church again as she had ‘
very
much enjoyed it last time’. But perhaps she sounded too keen. She crossed out the word
very
, but it could still be read. She cross-hatched it, but now it looked as if an earwig had landed on the word. She started again, this time making no mention of enjoyment.

Mr Wilton wrote back to say he would be happy to take her again, the following Sunday, if she liked.

The light filtered quite brightly through the diagonal panes of the church and fell on the gleaming shoulders of the pastor, and on those of Mr Wilton, illuminating the specks of dust or skin that speckled below his collar.

As Mary knelt to take Communion, she felt the firm palm of the pastor on her shoulder. He seemed to press all the air from her lungs and she felt, in her last whisper, the tendrils of the words
I’m sorry
wisp from her lips.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry
, and as she breathed it she struggled to find out what for, though the words were a relief to say. They swept through her with a soft brush, cleaning out her mouth and the back of her throat.

But afterwards she found herself unable to speak in tongues, though most around her did. The pastor seemed to glide over her, as if he knew.

Outside in the spring glare, Mr Wilton assured her that the gift would come back. She had been lucky, he said again, bending over her close enough that she could see the two black hairs that sprang from the depths of his ears.

Mary nodded. She desired it, she told him, very much.

She must wait for the gift to fall, he said, but next time she must open her mouth to let it in.

The sound of tongues was like an ancient language, unlearned, dredged up from the soul. Mary could hear it still as she and the children walked across the quadrangle towards Mr Dodgson’s rooms a few afternoons later.

One of his nonsense poems came back to her:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. Ta kennita kanardi.

Both seemed to signify something deeper, to have some meaning, but she could not fathom what. She put her hands up and rubbed her ears. The fleshy buds of the lobes were a comfort; they assured her that she was there.

After the service, she and Mr Wilton had seen Mrs Chitter worth. There seemed to be no place in Oxford that the woman did not go. She had looked at the couple and then at the church in a pointed fashion. Unasked, Mr Wilton had volun­teered the information that they had just come out of a service there; had she been?

Mrs Chitterworth had stepped back with what Mary later thought of as needless drama, her hand to her mouth. ‘Is it respectable?’ she had asked.

Mr Wilton’s smile was easy. ‘Very,’ he’d assured her.

She dropped her voice. ‘But I heard stories of
the devil
being heard in there.’

‘Nothing of the kind, Mrs Chitterworth. God’s voice may be heard, that is all: “For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God, for no man under­standeth him, however it may be that in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.” That is from Corinthians, Mrs Chitterworth, as I am sure you know.’

Mrs Chitterworth had pulled herself up. ‘I do know the scrip­tures, thank you, Mr Wilton.’ And she had bade them good day with pursed lips.

Mr Dodgson had seemed to want her advice, or her judgement. Mrs Liddell had not said that Mary should not see him, merely that he ought not to come to the house.

The feeling of being a fugitive, hurrying towards Mr Dodgson, was not unpleasant.

Although whenever she thought about Mr Dodgson and the swan, she experienced a curl of shame. She had read no book in which the hero wiped entrails from the toe of the heroine’s shoe.

But of course, Mr Dodgson was not the hero of this book.

The sticky pink intimacy, smeared across the leather; even when he expunged it, it left a darker slick that Mary could see now. But he had saved her, in a manner of speaking. He might not have ridden to her aid, but the white horse was a matter of semantics.

They had reached Mr Dodgson’s corridor and were admitted inside. The walls were damp and the air smelt of the river. When he opened the door to his rooms, it was darker still, cluttered with piles of books and other objects Mary could not make out.

‘Mr Dodgson! Will you forget me while we are gone?’ said Alice, pushing forward.

‘Yes, Alice, I am afraid I might, for you will grow so much over these next two months, and I have been taking lessons in forgetting, at half a crown a lesson.’

‘Rather expensive lessons,’ said Ina.

‘Yes, but well worth the price. After three lessons I forgot my own name, and I forgot to go to the next lesson. The Professor said I was getting on very well, but he hoped I wouldn’t forget to pay him. I said that depended on how good he was.’

‘How good was he?’ asked Alice.

‘The last lesson was so good that I forgot everything! I forgot who I was, I forgot to eat my dinner, and so far I’ve forgotten to pay the man.’

‘But you won’t forget me,’ said Alice. She shook her fringe out of her eyes. ‘Even though it is the vacation.’

‘I won’t forget any of you.’

Mary found she was clutching her bonnet to her chest. Mr Dodgson gently shook it from her fingers and put it on a pile of books, smiling his lopsided smile. The cheek that turned towards her was very smooth.

‘Are you looking at the mousetrap, Ina?’

‘Oh, is that what it is?’

‘It is a live trap, it is my own invention. You see, he enters here,’ said Mr Dodgson, pointing at a wooden flap, ‘and arrives at the bottom, where he has his final meal of cheese. I slide this wire compartment shut – of course there is no mouse in it at present – so that when I take it and plunge it into the water there is no chance of the mouse struggling on the surface and pro­longing its death. Animal cruelty, as I said,’ he turned to Mary, ‘is horrible to me.’

‘But Dinah might like to play with the mouse,’ said Alice.

‘He would not like to play with Dinah, I am sure. I quite believe that the time will come, in England at any rate, when the death of animals, when it must occur, will be quite painless.’

Mary thought of the sheep’s head. And of Mr Dodgson’s steering her away from the swan. ‘Do you think so?’

‘Not yet, I am afraid. There is something,’ he dropped his voice so that the children could not hear, ‘that I abhor.

Vivisection on live animals, in the name of scientific progress. It must stop. I am writing pamphlets to that effect.’

Mary had seen a baboon once that had been tied on to a pony’s back in the name of sport. Half human, half monster, but full of recognizable desperation. And the laughter of the men who stood around, taking bets.

Mr Dodgson’s face was clear and clean, unencumbered by hair. Vivisection must be stopped, Mary found herself thinking, for the first time. Rabbits cut open when they were alive, writhing and pinned.

‘Look at me!’ said Alice. She was staring at her reflection in the looking glass. Her head was squashed up like the round end of a hammer and her arms dangled down from somewhere above her ears. Her shins were so elongated that her knees were up where her hips ought to be.

‘How do you find yourself, Alice?’ said Mr Dodgson.

She moved her chin down and now her face was one hideous roar. ‘I can’t find myself!’

‘And isn’t that a most interesting place to be!’

Mary went to the sofa; she did not want to commit to sitting in the seat of it and chose the arm, but only one foot could comfortably reach the ground, while the other swung into the air like a child’s. So she sat down on the seat, which turned out to be even lower than she thought. She fell back and back, her haunches sunk into its recesses while her knees were brought up against her breasts.

And there was Mr Dodgson, with a slice of Victoria sponge cake, which he held out.

Mary struggled forward, on to the edge of the sofa, its forward rib against her thigh bone. ‘Cake?’

‘Yes, today’s. I had my scout bring it up.’

Mary took the plate and balanced it on the cushion next to her. The cake tipped on to its side, the leading edge hanging over the plate. He had not provided a fork and it was too big to pick up whole. She broke off a bottom section, the sticky yellow icing clinging to her fingers. The clods of it stuck in her throat. He was watching her eat. Mary smiled, unconvincingly. She hated to be watched while she was masticating. She had caught a glimpse once of herself at the dinner table. The bones in her jaw could be clearly seen as they hinged and slid. ‘Very nice, thank you,’ she said.

At last, he went. Ina was fondling a clockwork bear.

No choice but to lick her fingertips clean; she could not see a napkin. Though even after she had used her tongue, a residue of sugar remained. She stuck her hand flat under her dress. He would not notice a smear on his sofa, what with everything else in the room.

The shelf nearest her held a microscope housed in a mahogany travelling case marked cld glass with care, a telescope, a pair of field glasses, what looked like a human skull, a modified typewriter, a number of musical boxes and a collec­tion of watches. On the lowest shelf was something that looked like a silver pen, only it had no nib, and both ends were splayed.

Mr Dodgson had returned. ‘I see you are looking at my Ammoniaphone, Miss Prickett. The air inside it is supposed to resemble the soft, balmy atmosphere of the Italian peninsula. I believe its inventor analysed the air there and found a quantity of ammonia and peroxide of hydrogen unique to the area. It is supposed to produce a melodious and rich voice, much like the Italian voice, I suppose. Would you like to try it?’

‘Oh no, I have never been to Italy!’

‘You will not need to, if the claims for this are to be believed.’ He came towards her. ‘Press the end valves and place your lips tightly over the entrance.’

He could not be coming to put it between her lips. Mary smiled to try to signify that it was normal, this coming towards her, this insertion of an Ammoniaphone in her mouth, but at the last moment Mr Dodgson allowed her to reach for the thing herself and guide it between her teeth, only the sides of their smallest fingers brushing each other.

Mary felt, but did not admit to herself until later, a small shrink of disappointment.

‘Breathe in, slowly but deeply.’

Mary breathed in as she was told, fastening her eyes on the ruched black buttons that punctuated his sofa. Mr Wilton would like the material: practical, without being cheap. The Ammoniaphone tasted of peppermint and something else sharper – ammonia, she supposed. As she inhaled, a popular song drifted into her mind:

I’ve found a friend, oh, such a friend!

He loved me ere I knew Him;

He drew me with the cords of love,

And thus He bound me to Him.

‘There now – speak to me, let me hear if you are improved.’

‘What shall I say?’ asked Mary.

‘Ah, you see, it has done not a whit of good; you sound just the same as you did before. I knew it! I shall send it back to its maker at once.’

She must think of something clever to say. But nothing came. ‘What should I sound like?’

‘You should sound just exactly as you do, Miss Prickett.’

Mary blushed. She still felt his eyes on her. She turned her head away.

‘I had hoped it would help me in the speaking of my sermon next Sunday, but now I do not hold out much hope.’

She turned to look at him again. His face was so smooth, so different from Mr Wilton’s. So untroubled by hair.

‘I should hate to have an attack,’ he said.

‘An attack?’

‘Of my affliction. My hesitation.’ He sat down beside her, quite close. He was still smiling, but now it seemed to Mary that she saw behind to the sadness that lay there.

She said impulsively: ‘Perhaps the Holy Spirit could help you.’

‘I pray to the Holy Spirit every night. Alas, my hesitation is still with me.’

‘I mean tongues. The gift of tongues.’

Mr Dodgson, who had been resting his hands on his knees, sat back. ‘You mean glossolalia?’

‘Yes! It is marvellous. Jesus and the apostles at Pentecost, of course .  .  .’ But something in Mr Dodgson’s face stopped her from explaining more. Her hand went to her lip and started worrying at it.

‘To have Jesus in one’s life is a blessed thing, Miss Prickett,’ he said, with his head on one side. His smile looked as if it had slid down correspondingly.

‘I am bored. Tell me a story. Please!’ said Alice.

They looked up. Alice was standing at Mr Dodgson’s letter-writing table. ‘Who is Effie?’

‘One of my child friends. Why are you reading my letters? That is very interfering of you. You didn’t think you were my only friend, did you?’

‘No!’ said Alice. But she pouted.

‘Although Effie is not strictly a
child
any more, being eighteen. But we are still friends, I think.’

‘That’s what I told Mama!’

‘Told her what?’

‘I am sure Mr Dodgson does not want to be troubled telling you a story,’ Mary said quickly.

‘No, Alice. Maybe next time.’

‘But it
is
next time. Because you said that last time!’

‘When was last time?’

‘I don’t know! Last week. But
do
, please. Otherwise we shan’t come to your rooms again.’

‘Alice!’

‘And must I be susceptible to blackmail?’ Mr Dodgson sighed, though not crossly. ‘Very well. A short one. What shall it be about?’

‘Me,’ said Alice.

‘Sit down then, with your sisters.’

‘Where will you sit?’

‘I will sit here, next to Miss Prickett.’

Mr Dodgson settled himself, crossed one thigh over the other. The space was not quite big enough for two: it was a love seat upholstered in pink velvet. Mary could feel the reverberations of his foot as it joggled; she could see his hipbone protruding beneath his twill trousers. He started on a story about an enor­mous puppy, the size of a house, which had appeared in Oxford.