Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 26 (13 page)

1) Ina First

For it’s very easy to forget Elsie, eldest of the treacle sisters, as she sits at the bottom of the well and waits to come up, but it was she who met Uncle D. first, after all, and she who first took tea with him back when her sisters were all too young—babies, really—for such a treat, and it should be easy to see how she should have been first in his love, and through him first in all our hearts.

But look at the photographs and think, who could be captivated by such a one as her? A face only a mother could love, and that’s the truth. With her oversized brow and her sulky expression, it is not a lory she reminds one of so much as an egg. No, she could never be the heroine of the tale, but perhaps she could have been Humpty-Dumpty, teetering on the edge of a precipice and hurling glory and scorn down on her sister in contemptuous tones, glory and veiled threats of murder.

For alas for poor Ina! Even if Uncle D. had been taken with Ina first, first Ina with her high brow and set sausage curls, the curls that hung down bedraggled and unloved around her surly face, his heart was soon lost forever and always, to her younger sister, whose name he set among the stars. Alas, alas, for the little lass, alias Miss Alice, had a dark and disturbing gaze, bewitchingly delicate eyebrows, and a darling little pointed chin. The dark glow in her eyes set her apart, the glow of the abyss.

And yet, what was so special about Miss Alice? Nothing, thinks Ina, but what Uncle D. made of her, for isn’t the muse the invention of the artist, the beloved the creation of the lover? Wasn’t Alice a stolid, clever, regular little girl, nothing so remarkable after all? For didn’t she grow into an icy, unpleasant, unremarkable woman? Or perhaps she had been an ebullient, otherworldly delight of a girl and that spirit had been beaten out of her by the rigid switch of the nineteenth century. But who could accuse the Golden Age of flower fairies and children’s fantasy of destroying such a sprite as Uncle D. had imagined existed in his favorite? No, no. After all, aged Ina thinks, Alice must have always been the straight and narrow, the iron child, the respectable dullness that she later became, all the rest must have come from the heart of the lover, the eye of the beholder.

But could it truly only ever have been Uncle D.’s vision and not the creature he beheld, wonders Ina. For if it was thus, why should he not have fastened on me (a knotty problem)? Was it always, is it always, will it always be a matter of prettiness? That little Miss Alice was a dainty elfin creature next to which Ina looked large, pale, slow-moving, and ill-tempered? Could Uncle D.’s vision not pass through that exterior to light upon the spirit beneath?

Or perhaps, and here was a frightening thought, perhaps she had no spirit after all. Perhaps she was as dull and respectable and tame as her sister. Or perhaps she did have a spirit and it was a nasty, vicious thing, not at all congenial to flights of fancy or journeys of adventure. Perhaps the exterior did reflect the interior, in which case Alice must have been a sparkling, ethereal, unsettling spirit after all, because not even Ina could deny that her sister was beautiful, so beautiful as to merit a white stone.

At least, she had been when she was a child. An exceptional child, then, but a stunningly unremarkable adult. Something had been lost in the transition from girl to woman, but then, something always is.

And now, see what has happened! Even I, with the best of intentions, have wandered from Ina to Alice, and instead of elaborating on the plight of the elder sister, I find myself speculating on the spirit of the younger. How easy it is to pass over sulky Ina for ethereal Alice. Is it any wonder that Uncle D. did the same?

So perhaps the prudent thing is to refrain from further discussion and to return to the chapter title. Ina was first, first into the world, first into Uncle D.’s arms, and first to be photographed. She cannot be blamed for being the girl she was and not her sister. So for just a moment, consider Ina first, Ina first, Ina first.

2) Alice Has Mirror-Sign Delusion

Alice has a secret, but not the one you think.

All her life, Alice has looked in the mirror and seen somebody else instead of herself. She is the only one to be so replaced—the images of her sisters, her mother, her father, all appear in the looking-glass where they ought to be, as clear as day. Alice recognizes them, knows them as she would know her own face, if ever it appeared in the glass, which it does not.

Instead of seeing her own brown bob, unsettling eyes, and pointed chin when she gazes into the pier-glass, Alice is confronted with another little girl, quite different from herself. The other little girl she sees has long, stringy blonde hair and no bangs at all. Her hair, all one length, straggles down her back like straw. Her face is round and dull, without any of the questioning gaze that Alice is told can be found in her own eyes. The other little girl never smiles. No matter what delight Alice takes in Uncle D.’s riddles and stories or how often she wins at croquet, Alice’s other-girl-reflection never seems at all pleased or excited, let alone transported with joy. The other-girl-reflection adopts expressions ranging from mildly irritated to viciously angry, no matter how Alice herself is feeling.

And Alice is feeling afraid. She is starting to suspect that this other little girl is plotting to take over her life. After all, the other-girl-reflection follows her around, absorbing every aspect of her existence, and nobody else seems to be able to tell the difference between them. Her mother and governess and nurse fix her hair and dress her in her finest clothing and then tell her to admire herself in the looking-glass. When she looks into the mirror, only she can see the other girl, plotting away and thinking nasty thoughts. All others around her insist that it really is her in the glass and eventually Alice stops arguing. But she is worried that one day the other little girl will step out of the mirror and, quick and brutal as a nightmare, push her through to the other side of the glass where she will be trapped, helpless to intervene as the other little girl plays with her sisters, kisses her mother, and goes to tea with Uncle D. Every morning when she wakes up, Alice opens a book to make sure that she hasn’t been taken to looking-glass land while she slept.

One afternoon, while she and her sisters are on an afternoon boating expedition with Uncle D. and his friend the Duck, she sneaks a peek over the edge of the boat to check her reflection in the water. Sure enough, the ill-tempered stolid blonde girl is looking back at her, daring her to disrupt the summer idyll by making a fuss about something that only she can see. In anger, Alice is about to bring her fist down on the reflection’s face when she glances up and catches Uncle D.’s eye. He looks away quickly, down at the reflection, and then his eyes flick back up to her face, startled. She realizes that he can see the other girl too. He knows. Alice sighs with the relief of the perfectly understood, the perfect harmony, and lets her hand fall gently into the water.

For this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people, thought Uncle D., as he was telling a story to Alice and her sisters. He considered the two girls sharing the name of Alice, the quick-witted, pretty-faced child with a dark bob and profound eyes on the one hand, and her reflection, the sulky plump blonde girl with long hair, reaching through to grab the first girl’s soul, on the other. He has read fairy tales of wicked magicians who stole shadows and mirror-reflections as a way of stealing souls, but never in all these tales has he read of a foreign reflection being sent to take the place of a stolen one.

He shades his eyes against the afternoon sun and watches the three girls making daisy chains.

Or should he say, the four girls?

The rest of the afternoon passes in a dream for Alice. Uncle D. saw the other girl. She knows that he will not betray her, for they have secrets together, she and he, mainly that she is going to marry him when she grows up. Together, she is sure, they can thwart the wicked plans of the looking-glass girl.

Later that week, Uncle D. invites Alice for a photography session. This is not at all uncommon and it is one of the reasons Alice loves him so; Uncle D.’s photographs are the only way she has of knowing what she actually looks like. She poses as a beggar girl, in her best dress, and in Chinese costume. And then it happens. Something wonderful.

“Alice,” says Uncle D. “Would you like to help me in the darkroom? I shall show you guild secrets.”

Would she? To assist in the dark alchemy of mixtures that sometimes stain Uncle D.’s hands quite black! To be allowed into the sanctum sanctorum, the room of no light, there to assist in the mysteries of artistic creation! To move from mere muse to able assistant!

Of course she would.

So, carrying the photographic glass plates in both hands, Alice is ushered into the darkest of rooms. She brings over bottles of foul-smelling chemicals at Uncle D.’s direction and watches as he bathes the glass plates in shallow tubs. After she watches him treat two plates, he sets up another tub of mysterious substances and asks Alice to take charge of the third by herself.

Thrilled and solemn, Alice carefully, gently rocks the glass plate back and forth, back and forth. And for the first time, she sees, oh wonder of wonders, she watches as first a trace and finally a speaking likeness of her own face appears on the glass.

For her part, the looking-glass girl lurks in the mirror, in the water, and waits. Her time will come, she knows. She needs only to bide her time. Long after dark-haired Alice and her sisters have faded into old age, long after Uncle D. is dead and buried, she will still be reigning in triumph and majesty. She can afford to wait.

3) Alice at the Clang Association

The Red Queen, the dread clean lead mien calls the Clang Association to order, to water, oh my daughter. Oh daughter Alice, alas, a lass, the dafter daughter with laughter ought to jump down, drown in her wonderland, under hand, the sundered band, a hundred grand wild creatures, mild teachers, oh child’s features, peering staring quizzically physically from a glass plate, a raucous fate stilled in pages, filled in stages as malice goes underground with wonder found.

O Malice! O Mouse! Let me douse the fire of your pyre, the mire of your gyre, you ferocious liar! And the moral, oh adorable malice, is to take care of sense and the sounds will take care of themselves, but what selves! What delves into the dense sense of tragic magic and emerges in surges of blue? Only a few of the merry cherry toothsome dairy, running true and fast at last, in all kinds of mauled minds with lightning tightening like ice, callous Alice, cruel and caustic, a ghoul, a girl, a true dew pearl afloat in milk and honey.

Thundering hands, wondering lands, wandering sands, brushed with silk and money, hushed and lush with giant mushrooms and sticky sickly treacly blood red falls and squalls. The tea party departing in a ruffled huff paused with its claws dragging and snagging, dripping and clipping, clapping and snapping, catching and snatching at the hair that needs cutting, ruddy in the fading light, the light kite that shudders through the heir.

Oh, airy fairy free! To be own invention, the known convention of flight, lily-white child, wild in her eyes, shifting size and losing temper. For the egg and the sheep and crystalline sleep join hands at the feast. O beast of burden at the final curtain, weep for the shining sea.

Down that hole in the all she calls for the gold, but who holds the pen? The tears on the beach, calling to each duck, dodo, eaglet and wren? The race and the bill taking in their fill, oh fill with the day’s kill the eager mouth—see how it stands to bite the hands hid amid the lilies’ press gangs. Lilies and rushes in armfuls and bunches melt into air at the touch—for the glory, the crush, the uncertain hush, the story’s own lurking rush.