After Alice (17 page)

 

CHAPTER 41

T
hey heard an intrusion of thunder. They looked at the glass sky but the key above it lay there undisturbed. The indeterminate shapes above, those hints of a separate reality, scudded and shifted shapes, none of them nameable. Ada said, “I know that noise, it's been following me. They called it the Jabberwock I think.”

“I know that noise, too,” said Siam. His face was grey as paste. “We got to get us into that garden and hide us-­selves there.” He went up to the door and felt it. A metal plate, in very small letters, said

KEEP OUT.

“Not too friendly,” he said.

“All doors say that, when they're closed,” said Ada. “An advertisement to go away. But so what?”

“Use the key,” said the Cat, appearing at the top of the wall. It was flicking its tail dangerously, like a civet cat.

“We can't reach.” Ada pointed to the glass tabletop. “Can you get it for us?”

“Cats do favors for no one,” it replied. “Not to mention that it's the wrong key for right now.”

“Somehow that does not startle me,” asked Ada. “Little that has happened today has proven advantageous.”

“Try your pockets,” suggested the Cat, beginning to fade in the air, like wood-­smoke.

“I have nothing left. I've given away the marmalade already.”

“Maybe I gots something,” said Siam, and dove his scarred hands therein. He came up with that characterless figure on a pediment, nicely turned in ebony. “I took it,” said Siam, “but I gave it back.”

“Maybe it
wants
to be lost,” said Ada. “Is this a key in any way, do you think?” She turned to raise an eyebrow at the Cat, but it was gone.

Siam put it up to the keyhole, which seemed now to be little more than a bung hole. The head of the figure fit neatly in the aperture. They heard no click, turned no knob. Regardless, the door in the garden wall swung inward.

They walked through, hand in hand, and the air instantly seemed warmer, though still there was no sun to speak of, only a bland differentiation in color and shadow upon the flowering borders. “Well,” said someone, “I never thought to see you here. I didn't think you properly brought up. Walking about on your own, no chaperone, like an urchin.” It took Ada a moment to realize that the nearby rose-­tree was addressing her.

“Rosa Rugosa,” said Ada. “You survived being transplanted.”

“Few do,” said Rosa Rugosa, “but I always had a desire to grace the court. So here I am, doing my bit for beauty.”

“You look lovely.”

“They wanted to paint me white but I objected,” said Rosa Rugosa. She gave Siam a glance. “I make no further comment.”

“There's a great deal going on here,” said Ada. “Have you seen a girl called Alice?”

“I wouldn't say. I don't interview the madding throng. Though every type and token seems to be invited. The Queen of Hearts has a wide circle of admirers.”

“They look abject,” said Ada, scanning the bewildering assortment of guests.

“Well, the Queen is hot-­tempered, and is constantly sentencing them to death. It tends to cast a pall on the chitchat. There she is now.”

From around a stand of violet larkspur came a ferocious-­looking creature cut along the lines of a Queen printed upon a playing card. “It is time for the entertainment, and where has that troupe of barmpots got to? You!” she barked at Ada and Siam. “Are you the marionettes? Tie your strings on and get to work.”

“Begging your pardon, Your Highness, we are not,” said Ada. She didn't expect to be able to manage a curtsey but perhaps the seaweed inserted in the heel of her shoe gave her a rare balance. She dipped and swayed and returned without falling over, or even threatening to do so.

“Hmmmmpph. I don't recall your names on the guest list. I don't recall your names at all, come to think of it. Who are you? Where is the Master of the Household? Why am I shouting? Heed!” she bellowed.

“I'm Ada, and this is Siam,” said Ada.

The White Rabbit scurried forward and adjusted his spectacles. He carried a long trailing scroll of paper in which many holes had been cut. “Your Highness,” he said. “At your ser­vice.”

“Check the guest list, and tell me if Ada and Siam are upon it.”

The White Rabbit peered with grave intent. After a few moments he said, “Ah, yes. Here they are.”

“Well, take them off,” she said. At this the White Rabbit pulled a pair of sewing scissors from a pocket and made two little holes. The paper scraps went into another pocket, which was stuffed with earlier excisions.

“You're not to be found on the guest list,” said the Queen of Hearts darkly. “I have half a mind to take off your heads, now I've eliminated your names, but I need to work up to it.”

“If you please, Your Loudness, we're looking for a little girl named Alice,” said Ada.

“The place is crawling with objectionable creatures,” came the reply. “I'm sure you'll find something nasty to take home as a door prize.” She reached out and plucked Rosa Rugosa with her bare hands. Ada caught sight of the rose's startled horror. Whatever had suffused her with character faded. She was no more than a limp crown of petals upon a torn stem. “Here, this can be Alice. Now you can go.”

Before Ada could speak again, in another part of the garden a tawdry and hysterical brass fanfare sounded. It seemed to be summoning guests to the theatricale, as the Queen of Hearts was rushed away on the arm of the White Rabbit.

“My,” said Ada, laying the dead rose upon the peaty moss. “Life is a very cheap thing here.”

“Cheap and dear all at once,” said the Rose from her grave. “That's the thing. You'll figure it out sooner or later.”

 

CHAPTER 42

M
r. Clowd looked at his older daughter and then at the cowering Miss Armstrong. “Whatever can you mean?”

“The children have run off, all of them,” said Miss Armstrong. “Our Ada, and your Alice, and Mr. Winter's Siam. They are having a pretend adventure and have forgotten the time, perhaps. Or they are in some sort of distress. We've been searching for them.”

“Lydia, how can this be? I thought you were looking after Alice?”

“Papa, you know our Alice.” Lydia made a dismissive wave of her hand, pretending an insouciance she didn't feel. “All hours are the same to her. No doubt she's bullied the other children into going along on one of her games. I only worry about Siam, for Mr. Winter seems about to depart.”

“We can't alarm Mr. Darwin. He's been upset enough by the incursion of that uninvited Hindoo lady.”

“Oh, for shame.” Miss Armstrong was sympathy itself. “I'll tell Mr. Winter what is happening. Leave it to me, Mr. Clowd.”

“But you were to be watching Alice,” said Mr. Clowd to Lydia, weakly.

“She slips in and out of sight,” replied Lydia, in her own defense. A poor choice of words, perhaps. Mr. Clowd turned pale. But even moments of dread are interrupted by creaking dailiness. A noise in the road, and Alfred was drawing up the carriage. Mr. Darwin was emerging from the Croft and plopping a wide-­awake upon his head. Mr. Winter held his elbow as the intrepid naturalist steadied himself in the portico. Mrs. Brummidge and Rhoda hung back in the shadows, an honor guard of domestic sentinels observing the passage of the great man.

“We'll get to the station ahead of the rain, I'll warrant,” said Alfred, tipping his hat.

“It wouldn't rain today,” said Mr. Darwin without glancing upward. “It wouldn't have the nerve. Mr. Clowd: I regret not having seen your other daughter, but the young have escapades of their own. My own little Annie, before she died at the age of ten, was always in a state of ambition and espionage. The comings and goings! Hold on to her, Mr. Clowd.” He bowed to include Lydia. “Hold on to them both. In time you'll find children the greatest comfort you can imagine. Indeed, they prove to be the only possible distraction from the unanswerable question of
why
.”

“You have been too good,” said Mr. Clowd, miserably.

“Not good enough to answer your question of
why
. Each must await his cataphany in his own turn and time. In any case, no one can be too good; and I have merely returned sympathy to a sympathetic soul. Good day, my dear Mr. Clowd.”

“We are shy of Siam. Call him forward,” said Mr. Winter.

“I haven't found him,” said Lydia. “It's as simple as that. He wasn't upstairs nor down, nor about the water-­meadows. We went as far as Carfax and the Broad.”

Mr. Winter's brow contorted; he blinked in disbelief. But Mr. Darwin was hobbling with evident distress. He was minding his feet upon the paving stones and wheezing a pulmonary étude in a minor key. He needed his young friend's assistance. He seemed not to notice the consternation stirred up on the walk behind him, though Mr. Winter kept turning his head at Lydia.

“What can you have done with him?” hissed Mr. Winter,
sotto voce
. “He's been glued to me since we left Rowes Wharf in Boston Harbor.”

“Here we are then, sir,” said Alfred, taking over and assisting Mr. Darwin.

As Mr. Clowd presided upon the step of the Croft and the staff peeped from the shadows, Mr. Winter turned back to Lydia. He wore the look of a hawk at hunt. He frightened her. But now Miss Armstrong, of all unlikely barristers, came to Lydia's defense. “Your Siam has come unstuck,” she said coolly. “Perhaps in the presence of real children, he's remembered how to play.”

Lydia was emboldened to add, “I wonder if the cost of your saving him from menace was the denying of his other liberties.” A tone of accusation rose in the way she slapped her words in place. She found her regard for Mr. Winter turning to something like suspicion—­though notice how often we lower suspicion upon others to avoid putting ourselves under scrutiny.

Now Miss Armstrong grabbed at Lydia's arm and linked it with her own. “There is no need to fret, Mr. Winter. See to Mr. Darwin as far as he needs, all the way to Down House however long it takes. Return to Oxford tomorrow or the next day. The boy is larking about with the girls, no doubt. He can wait at the Vicarage with the Boyces till you return.”

“Nonsense, not with the new infant wreaking havoc in that family,” said Mr. Clowd affably. “Siam can stop here. Mr. Winter, I agree with Miss Armstrong. She talks good sense. From what you've said, the child hasn't had a childlike day in most of his life. Let him roam and see what freedom means in England. No one will accost him. He'll turn up with our Alice and with Ada Boyce. We'll tell him he's to wait with us until you return for him. He can trust us.”

Mr. Winter managed only, “Siam is not adept at trust.”

“We'll woo him with our confidence. Or we will force him.” Miss Armstrong gave a brittle smile. She squeezed Lydia's arm cheerily. The girl hadn't asked Miss Armstrong to step forward, but she wasn't unhappy for the unforeseen alliance. She stared beyond the trembling Mr. Winter at Mr. Darwin, now settled in the carriage and leaning forward to see what the delay was. The white beard captivated her. He was like an image of the Ancient of Days.

“We're off then,” said Alfred from up top. Mr. Winter had no choice but to depart.

Miss Armstrong dropped Lydia's arm the moment the carriage had cleared the property wall. “And now it is time to call upon the constable,” she said. “Mr. Clowd, will we go together?”

“Midsummer evenings are long. I'm certain the children have merely lost track of time,” replied Lydia's father. “Surely we have another hour before we need to become concerned. Alice will come home when the shadows lengthen at last. Would you care to take refuge from the sun, Miss Armstrong? The good Mrs. Brummidge could fix us a pot of tea.”

Lydia followed them. Her grip on the moment was uncertain. She was demoted to a mute member of this noxious tableau. She was a sallow adolescent girl, no more than that. Her thoughts were seized within her, words carved immemorially upon an upright grey tablet.
Miss Armstrong has already given up on Ada. Miss Armstrong apprehends that her tenure at the Boyce household is done. Miss Armstrong is tendering a kindly attention to my father.

 

CHAPTER 43

A
da thought, It's as if a botanical display and an athletic contest and a gypsy circus have all set themselves up in a hippodrome of some sort. Creatures and things bobbed and weaved this way and that, like cottage farmers and housewives on market day. If there were a central commotion amidst the sideshow specimens, it came from beyond a tall stand of ornamental rushes. The entertainment, perhaps, accompanied by hasty ragged music and cheers. “I think since we don't see Alice on the lawns, she's joined the throng to watch the marionettes,” said Ada. “Let us make our way there.”

“That Queenie told us we wasn't invited,” replied Siam, though he didn't seem perturbed by that.

“It's too varied a crowd for us to be noticed. We'll skulk,” said Ada. “I've never skulked before, as it requires a talent for slinking and sloping. But I'm up to trying it now.”

“I can learn you skulking. Let's go.”

A hooded figure meandered by. He was made out of papier-­mâché, colored all over with dark paint, with a prominent jawline and protuberant eyes. He was studying a pamphlet. “Pardon me, has the spectacle begun, then?” asked Ada.

“It's begun, and then some,” replied the character. “The program seems to be a very good one today.” He took a bite of it and chewed carefully. “I do approve. A nicely varied offering, with body, heft, character, and nuance. I believe they are almost up to the trial. I don't have any lines, but I'm trying to digest the proceedings before I'm called to do my work.”

“What work is that?”

“Why, I'm the executioner, of course.”

“And what do you execute?” asked Ada politely. But he had begun to run a bone-­like finger along the margins. He was no longer listening. He veered away from them. He got his papier-­mâché axe caught in the low branches of a hornbeam tree.

“I suppose I'm late,” said another voice behind them. “The baby was such a pig today.”

Ada turned to see a fiercely ugly old woman tottering along in a headdress of stupendous proportions. It split in two as if it meant to disguise disfiguring horns growing out of her head. “You don't know where they're all gathering, do you?” she growled at them.

“If you're looking for the marionettes,” said Ada, “I suspect they're over there behind the sedge-­grass.”

“I'm looking for the trial. I believe I'm wanted as a witness.”

“Who is on trial?” asked Ada.

“The marionettes will be if they don't perform up to snuff. Though I couldn't be bothered about who is the defendant. I'm trying to stay out of court. Aren't you dreadfully nosy for a little girl. Then again, it seems a day for it. It'll end in tears, see if it doesn't.”

“I thought you said you were wanted as a witness?”

“What made you think that?”

“You just said so.”

The wizened old creature frowned. “Yes, they wanted me, but I didn't want
them
. A Duchess has better things to do than make a spectacle of herself.”

“Off with her head!” bellowed the voice of the Queen of Hearts.

“Oh, my, I hope they're not talking about Alice,” said Ada. “We must hurry.”

“Do you know Alice?” said the Duchess. “She was by my house earlier today. A right proper pill she is, too.”

“She's not,” said Ada.

“She is so. She taught the baby to scream.”

“A baby knows how to scream all by itself.”

“That's impossible. I was a baby once, and
I
never screamed. I was precocious. Though I was a mere abbreviation of what I would become, I was already brittle, loathsome, and fatuous.”

“A brittle baby?”

“That's a contraction for
brilliant
and
little,
of course.”

“But surely you couldn't have been a loathsome child,” said Ada, glancing up and down at the loathsome adult.

“Of course I was.
Loathsome
is a contraction for
loquacious
and
thoroughly
toothsome
.”

“And
fatuous
is a contraction, then?”

“
Fat
and
fabulous
. I was simply adorable.”

“What does
adorable
mean?”

“Dull.” The Duchess fanned herself with a program folded into pleats, not unlike the one the executioner had been devouring. “You haven't seen my Cheshire Cat or my kitchen maid, have you? They're conspiring against me, no doubt. Sidling up to the prosecution and whispering all sorts of innuendo.”

“Off with her head!” roared the Queen of Hearts.

“My, the trial is proceeding at quite the clip today, or perhaps they've moved on to pudding,” said the Duchess. “I daren't loiter or I'll be called as a witness, and the only thing to which I can reliably attest is that, as a witness, I am nothing if not unreliable.”

“Should I trust anything you say?”

“Not all babies are brittle, loathsome, and fatuous. The ones who are deserve extra kisses. Remind me to kiss my own baby the next time he lifts his snout from the trough.” With this she gripped her skirts with hammy, washerwoman fingers. She lit out across the lawns as if wolves were after her.

“I don't care to go before no judge,” said Siam. “Mercy in short supply here and everywhere.”

“We must find Alice,” said Ada, “or I must. Do you want to wait here for me?”

“There ain't no waiting,” he said sadly. “You leave, you don't come back.”

He looked as if he knew what he meant better than Ada knew. She didn't want to pause. She didn't want to be unkind. But it seemed that in his life Siam had seen a sort of sadness that Alice had not. Alice was younger. Untried. Alice, Ada decided, needed her more. “You can trust me,” she said to him, and reached out to his hand. But he pulled back as if she might burn him.

All of life hinges on what one does next, until finally one makes the wrong choice. But was this that moment? “Alice, I'm coming.”