The Looking Glass House (11 page)

Still holding her finger he added: ‘I should like to make you a small gift, before you go.’

‘A gift?’ Mary said in confusion. ‘Why?’

‘I thought you might like it. I think it is too late to collect from my rooms now, but I will leave it for you at the Deanery tomorrow morning.’

He released her finger and Mary made a fist with her hand and hurried it back into her pocket.

‘What is it?’

‘Let it be a surprise, Miss Prickett. Gifts are better that way.’ She could see his smile gleaming through the darkness.

When they parted at the door of the Deanery, he bowed and thanked her. For what? Mary almost asked, but didn’t. She thought she knew – but if she asked him, it might signal that she thought that nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Chapter 14

What gifts did men give to women? What did an Oxford tutor give to a governess? A pen-wiper, a fan perhaps, or a pincushion? Mary had seen a pincushion in the shape of a strawberry last time she had been in town, and had wanted it. Or a needle case, embroidered perhaps, though Mr Dodgson would not himself have done the embroidery, but perhaps they had the cases in Elliston & Cavell. Perhaps he had gone to Mr Wilton for something! But they did not know each other, Mary was sure.

But Mr Dodgson
had
carried her in his mind. He had left his rooms, walked purposefully to the stationer’s, or the haber­dasher, or the bookshop, thinking of her. He had retrieved his wallet from his pocket and taken out his coins, still thinking of her, and carried the parcel wrapped in its brown paper home, his fingers pushed underneath its string.

Or perhaps he had gone to the jeweller’s. Mary had seen a pair of emerald earrings in the window, just small, nothing like Mrs Liddell’s, but she had experienced a sharp pang of covetousness for their blaze of colour, their promise of life.

She must not think of jewellery, though. But of the intimacy that a gift suggested, she could not help but think. Mr Dodgson had said the word
gift
with such tenderness, had he not, there in the darkness?

Mary’s school friends had provided intimacy of a general kind, but up till now she had only had real access to her own inner life. She had always assumed other people were generally as they told her they were. Even her own mother gave no indi­cation of having an inner life, unless feelings of irritation and impatience could be counted. But even the revelation that another human being struggled, as she did, experienced unhappiness, as she did, would not bring forth emeralds. But it was so unexpected, and one unexpected thing could easily lead to another .  .  .

She would get up. A little light was edging round the curtains, enough to go downstairs. The maids had been up for some time and would have been able to answer the door, if he had come.

She pulled on her dressing gown and trod carefully out of her room. The wooden stairs under her bare feet gave way to carpets below, and below that, the cold flagstones of the hall. Mary saw long before she got down that he had not brought jewellery, but she would not be disappointed. There was still a package, flat and regular-shaped, on the table by the door.

She snatched it up and shoved it under her arm, the sharp corners of it poking into her skin. She did not open it until she was back in the safety of her room, tearing off the three sheets of brown paper.

It was revealed to be a photograph of the Deanery, taken from the garden. The three miniature girls were seated in front of an open window. Mary had not remembered Mr Dodgson taking it; perhaps it had been done before she arrived.

She brought the photograph close to her face. It smelt of nothing. The girls each held croquet mallets. They had tiny balls at their feet. The Deanery was covered in ivy; it looked massive, its great windows bulging. She could read no expression on the girls’ faces. She would need to study the photograph further to try to extract a meaning from it.

She opened her case and quickly angled the photograph inside. She would take it to Wales; it would be a comfort to have it there, even though she was not over-fond of the Deanery. She could keep it in her room, but it would do well to let nobody else see, in case of awkward questions.

Mary’s only holiday as a child had been spent in Dorset, where the land unfolded like a shaken-out rug. North Wales was a land of crags and pinnacles, and Penmorfa was a gothic pile with turrets and crenellations that merged with the countryside in a gloomy way.

The house was damp and dark and the light was filtered by the lead windows that dominated the front side. Even with the fires going all day, Mary’s knuckles and wrists were chilly and the pad of her big toe was often numb.

The children quarrelled more than in Oxford, perhaps because they had not got Mr Dodgson to amuse them. Ina said that Alice took everything of hers; Alice denied it. Ina could not even bear to see Alice with her old doll, which she had long out­grown, and snatched it away.

One afternoon Ina was sitting reading a booklet she had acquired about etiquette, with the old doll on her lap.

‘You are too old for a doll. I don’t see why you are bother­ing to learn about how to be a lady when you still want the doll,’ Alice said. She took the doll and sat her on the table; Kitty’s pan­taloons splayed out from her skirts like two chicken drumsticks.

‘Give me the doll!’

Alice grabbed Kitty’s arms with each of her hands. ‘Miss Prickett,’ she said, pretending it was the doll who spoke, ‘why have you got a photograph of Mr Dodgson’s?’

Mary stood still, her chest very cold. ‘Have you been in my room?’

‘Yes, you told me to get my mittens.’

Mary had told her that, it was true. ‘How do you know it is Mr Dodgson’s?’

‘Because he is the only one who takes photographs of the Deanery.’

‘I am not speaking to a doll, Alice. Use your usual voice and give Kitty back to your sister.’

Alice did not give the doll back. In the same grating voice she read, over Ina’s shoulder: ‘“A gentle, deferential manner will disarm even the most discerning. Steer a course” – I can’t see, and how will I ever learn if I can’t see – “between silence and the twittering of a canary, and remember that gentlemen do not want to be told what to think. ”’

‘Give it me!’ Ina got up and made a grab for Kitty.

‘I won’t! Not until Miss Prickett tells me why she has a photograph of Mr Dodgson’s in her room.’

Mary found herself at Alice’s side. She grabbed the doll from her and threw it to the floor, its porcelain head hammering on to the floorboards, its blue eyes blinking. ‘It is none of your busi­ness, Alice. You ought not to ask so many questions! You would know that, if you read more of that booklet on etiquette.’

In three strides she was at the drawer where the ruler was kept. She could already feel its smooth wooden sides, the snug way it fitted into her palm. She had not yet used it as a weapon – only for measuring – but now something pushed at her behind her collarbone: light and expanding rage.

‘Alice, hold out your hand. You can see what it is like to have a taste of your own medicine.’

Alice would not hold out her hand.

Mary went over and pulled her arm up by the sleeve. ‘Turn the palm to me!’

‘Why is it a taste of my own medicine? I have not hit anybody!’ Alice’s wrist bone wriggled in her grip; an animal trying to escape a trap.

Mary held on harder and brought the ruler down on Alice’s palm.

She had expected to feel relief as the crack rang out. But instead she felt abruptly as if she might cry.

She turned her head to the window and squeezed her eyes shut. Three birds fell, as if they had been dropped behind the window pane. She must punish Alice; it was for her own good.

She could hear her mother saying the same words to her as she brought the ruler down on Mary’s hand. The harder the better, as her mother said; the lesson would be learnt. And it
had
been for her own good. She had learnt her lesson. She had been quiet and taken her slaps as she was meant to, without making a fuss.

Not like Alice, who was cradling her hurt hand with an exaggeration of rebuke, her eyes blinking just like the doll on the floor.

Alice was not authentic. Her sadness showed on her face as desolation, her cheerlessness as devastation. Her aim was to suck sympathy towards herself and to discredit Mary.

‘Mr Dodgson says I may ask as many questions as I like. I wish he was here!’ cried Alice.

‘Mr Dodgson does not mean you to ask
impertinent
ques­tions. The other palm, please.’

Again Mary had to force out Alice’s other hand herself. Again she brought the ruler down. But again she had to hold back the tears that threatened to spill out as if a tap had suddenly been unblocked.

Her mother had sometimes given her three slaps – it was the second one on the same hand that punished the most, of course – if she had refused to finish her supper, say, or if she had been caught running down the corridor, something her mother could not abide. Or if she had spoken out of turn, as Alice had.

But Mary had lost the taste for punishment. She hardly noticed that Alice’s eyes at last filled with tears and her bottom lip trembled. She turned away again towards the window, letting the ruler clatter down on the table.

In the afternoon it rained, gently but persistently, pricking the sea with pin marks. Shrimping was cancelled and the children and Mary were kept indoors. Mary found herself aiming all her diversions at Alice. Would she like to play the piano? She would not. Would she like to practise her watercolour painting? Or perhaps a collage? She said nothing to this, but Alice usually enjoyed collage, so Mary started one up, of the Angel Gabriel. They had not even started on the wings when Alice said she needed to use the water closet.

‘I thought you just went?’

‘But it is so pretty. I want to see the picture of Pan on the bowl, and the water rushing through!’ Alice looked at her for the first time that afternoon, and smiled.

The water closet was new, and it was exciting, Mary con­curred. Of course she may!

But fifteen minutes later Alice had not returned. Mary, unwilling to bellow into the echoing hall, set off after her.

Alice was no longer in the water closet, which stood alone over its dominion of white tiles, if she ever had been. Nor was she behind the damask curtains in the hall, nor behind the new pine door into the morning room, which still smelt of the sun slant­ing through a green forest, nor behind the canary-yellow sofa.

Alice was hiding from her, she must be!

The scheming, conniving little girl had looked her in the face and smiled, and all the time she’d been planning to trick her. Humiliate her in front of her family, where Alice was the worm buried inside the apple and she, Mary, was a wasp crawling on the surface, trying to get in.

Or perhaps – and this was worse – she was not being wicked, she was afraid. Afraid of Mary, and that was why she hid.

Or perhaps Mary was imagining it all and Alice was back with her sisters now, carrying on with the collage.

But as she was hurrying back through the hall she came upon Mrs Liddell sauntering the other way. ‘Miss Prickett! What a pity about the rain.’

Mary nodded, caught on the edges of her feet.

‘Have you found some entertainment for the children?’

‘We are making collages. I should get back.’

‘How dear. I will come and see.’

Mary swallowed. ‘Yes.’

Mrs Liddell followed her through the hall; Mary could hear her skirts slipping over the uneven surface of the flagstones, could feel her perfumed breath on the back of her neck as they turned into the corridor towards the nursery.

But when they arrived, there was Ina, jumping up to show her mama the angel’s gilded wings, and there was Edith, but no Alice.

‘She went .  .  . Alice felt the call of nature and became distracted, I believe,’ said Mary.

‘Oh, is she upstairs?’

‘I .  .  . She may be. I will find her for you.’

Now Mrs Liddell would see that Mary could not keep control of her children. She would see that Mary could lose one of them, even in the house! She thought of Alice’s neat little nose and the swing of her hair; her hands, large for a ten-year-old, their knuckles like a full-grown woman’s.

‘I expect she is playing a game,’ said Mary.

‘I hope she hasn’t gone outside.’ Mrs Liddell frowned through the window at the rain. ‘I can’t think why she would have.’

Perhaps Alice had gone out into the sea; perhaps she had come to some harm, her thin, pale body washed up on the beach. It would be Mary’s fault. ‘I will look for her.’

‘I will come with you. Some exercise will do me good.’

They set off together into the house once more. But even though Mrs Liddell started out gay, calling out Alice’s name, to Mary the search soon took on the aspect of a nightmare. Crouching under tablecloths, opening up obscure cupboards, the idea of Alice growing and growing between them the longer she was lost.

Mary thought about saying sorry to Mrs Liddell, but she could not bear to, so even though apologies rose continuously to her lips, she swallowed them down. She moved through the house self-consciously, much too big and at the same time as if she wasn’t there. Mrs Liddell often had that effect on her.

After what seemed like hours, but may have only been minutes, they heard a sob coming from the boot room. Alice’s polished foot stuck out from underneath a mass of hanging coats. Mary had been there twice before and not discovered her.

She felt a rush of relief that was immediately overcome by anger. ‘You are a very disobedient child! You shall be punished. We have been looking for you for hours.’

Alice escaped Mary’s outstretched hands and ran to her mother. Tears and mucus slid down her face. She clasped her mother’s skirts and pressed her cheek against them. But her look, when it met Mary’s, she was sure, had triumph in it.

‘We have been searching for you for a long time. I am quite cross. We were worried.’ Mrs Liddell put a jewelled hand on her cheek.

Alice kept crying.

‘Whatever made you hide like that, Alice?’

‘I will take her now,’ said Mary roughly. She would hit her again, once she was back in the nursery.

‘I was upset.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘Miss Prickett hit me, with a ruler!’

‘I dare say you deserved it.’

‘I did not! I did nothing at all!’

It was on Mary’s lips to say that Alice had been impertinent, and prying, although she could not explain to the child’s mother the true depth of her irritation because it was unfathomable, ran too low, somewhere beneath reason.

‘I only asked her about the photograph Mr Dodgson had given her.’

Mary’s face, already flushed, burnt itself a deep crimson. She stared down at the galoshes the Dean had had made, as dark and glossy as tar.

‘Ah yes, the photograph. He does seem to be liberal with them.’ Mrs Liddell put her arm round Alice’s shoulders.