Pinkerton's Sister (32 page)

Have a care, Mrs. Albert Comstock! She’d certainly rattle her, her tinkles ever deepening toward the mighty death-knell tolling of reverberating ding-dongs. You might be taking on more than you expect. Who would true valor see/Let him come hither.
Valour.
A well-wielded bell could give tongue to death.

“Pun Warning!”

Tinkle! Tinkle!

“Unclean!”

Ding-dong! Ding-dong!

“Unclean!”

Splat!

The bats were swarming.

The next generation of batty spinsters was all lined up and ready to be unleashed, more bats than a night-shrouded cavern swarming with high-pitched shrieks, the insect-like rattle of membranous wings, the night sky loud and restless.

She bent to the telescope, fiddling with the eyepiece, as if to bring the memory into sharper focus, bring it closer, and explained what it was she was looking at.

“Which piece of Mozart, do you think?” she asked. “Which would you choose? Which opera? Which music?”

Charlotte gave the matter some thought, as Alice bent to the telescope, like Kate over her camera, or Henry Walden Gauntlett.

“I …”

Charlotte didn’t know very much Mozart. Beethoven would have been a better bet.

“I …”

She’d much rather that Gilbert & Sullivan had been proposed. The ampersand – Charlotte tended to write an ampersand between the two names – linked them like the proprietors of a long-established business, with signs above plate-glass windows in the main streets of most large cities. “
The Mikado
,” she’d have said confidently. “
The Pirates of Penzance
.”

“I …”

She then noticed Alice’s shoulders starting to shake, her fingers tightening on the sides of the telescope.

“None of them!” she said firmly.

“None of them,” Alice confirmed, laughing. She straightened up, and looked at Charlotte. “One of Mozart’s lesser-known pieces.”

“Not one of Mozart’s pieces at all.”

“Not one of Mozart’s pieces at all!”

Charlotte started to bend down toward the eyepiece, and Alice put her hand across it teasingly.

“I know what must have happened,” she said. “The sign painter decided to add some music, and grabbed hold of whatever was on his music rack to take with him to copy, the first thing he came across.” She smiled at Charlotte. “What piece of music would that be? What would be the most likely?
Don’t
say Gilbert and Sullivan! Think back a few years. Any home, any music rack, what do you think is most likely to …?”

It was not
Ker-plunk, ker-plunk, ker-plunkety plunky-plunk, ker-plunk, ker-plunk, ker-plunkety plunky-plunk
. It was …

“‘After the Ball’!” Charlotte was unhesitating.

“
Yes
!”

They began to waltz around the room, together, singing.

“How could Mozart ever manage to forget he wrote that?” Charlotte asked.

“It has definite thematic links with both
The Marriage of Figaro
and
Don Giovanni
, wouldn’t you say?”

“Miss Stein would be proud of you!”

“I hope Miss Iandoli doesn’t notice,” Alice said. “She’d probably set fire to the sign in protest at the demeaning of Mozart.”

“
Mysterious Conflagration in Longfellow Park.
”

“Back to Mrs. Albert Comstock.”

“Huge flames.”

“Thick smoke.”

“The thicker the better.”

“Then we wouldn’t be able to see her.”

She brushed her teeth with Dr. Graves’s Tooth Powder, wondering how long it would be before G. G. Schiffendecken began to stock an extensive range of tooth products bearing his name, and worthy of the false teeth he rammed into every available mouth. There would be bottles on an epic scale in order to cope with the needs of the gigantic landscape-encompassing grins. In his presence it was wise to keep your mouth shut. One thoughtless yawn in his vicinity, and an unfamiliar set of oversized teeth would challengingly occupy your gums, as if you had been seized with an unfamiliar mood of vivacity. As you goggled vacantly at the invasive grin-grin choppers, G. G. Schiffendecken would begin his patter, informing you – in a spirit of informative informality – that it was well worth paying extra for teeth of such high quality.

Smiles were far more sincere when you’d forked out a fortune.

She wandered back across to the window as she dabbed at her lips with the towel. She clutched the towel to her, feeling like a bather drawn to the edge of a frozen sea.

The not-yet-ancient Mariner’s ship came into her mind again. The mist. The wondrous cold. The ice, mast-high. The gale-driven snow on the night of Papa’s death, and the fallen telegraph poles lying across the street like the ice-covered masts of a storm-wrecked armada. The bowed heads. The muffled voices. Sins and iniquities.

Now the snow covered the whole of the area that was to become da Ponte, though the face of Mozart was clear. Snow was not falling, but the wind blew up gusts from the drifts that had accumulated earlier, and she looked down on the flurries beneath her, high up above the clouds.

G. G. Schiffendecken trudged into view on his morning walk with his dog, bowed over as he walked into the blizzard, the dentist drawn forth by the brushing of her teeth. He lay in wait, listening, all poised to pounce. For a moment it really felt like she had brought him into being by thinking of him, but this was a walk he undertook every morning. Coleridge had been inaccurate in his description. There
was
the shape of a man. There
was
the shape of a beast. He’d been right about
drifts
and
snowy
and
ice
. He’d certainly – when G. G. Schiffendecken was involved – been right about
dismal
. How could a man with so many teeth, so lavishly equipped for uncontrollable mirthfulness, look so dismal and
lowering
most of the time? It was a sinful waste of material. Perhaps for him – as a dentist – grinning qualified as work, another exhausting demonstration of what it was he manufactured. He stood nearby, as his dog – huge, of indeterminate breed, the sort of dog one felt ought to have a miniature wooden barrel around its neck – urinated copiously on Mozart’s feet. G. G. Schiffendecken gazed away into the middle distance in the opposite direction, back home, up toward Hudson Heights, strenuously adopting the attitude of someone unaware of what his dog was doing. Knowing his taste in music, Alice suspected Symbolism.

The dog bore the unexpected name of Olivia, unexpected – not least – because, Olivia, judging by the – ahem – urinating technique employed, was quite demonstrably not what Mrs. Alexander Diddecott would have described as a “girl dog.” It was probably some coded reference to the missing Mrs. Schiffendecken. G. G. Schiffendecken had discovered her
liaison
– somewhat
dangereuse
when dental equipment was freely available – with that very tall thin man who played the banjo even more loudly than Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster, and she had decamped to Brooklyn (famed home of Mary Kinkeldey, she of the unacceptable vowels) with her paramour. The Teeth – she, of course, had had a set of her husband’s false teeth installed – possessed strange, erotic powers.

“Olivia!”

G. G. Schiffendecken could be heard exclaiming the name each evening, as he took his second walk of the day with the dog, unwinding after a busy day with his arms down people’s throats.

“Olivia!”

His teeth – the mighty Schiffendecken teeth – could be seen gleaming in the darkness as he wandered past, calling Olivia’s name. It was strangely haunting. New posts, still pale and unweathered, bore the names of the streets that would be built there (names that would hold no meaning for G. G. Schiffendecken):
Almaviva
,
Figaro
,
Giovanni
(surely a rather controversial choice for the more strait-laced),
Dorabella
,
Susanna
…

Harry Hollander came into view, walking down the site for Susanna Street, heading straight for Mozart. G. G. Schiffendecken (who was probably singing “O, Susanna!” under his breath: that name he
did
recognize), noticing his approach, began to prepare himself for the ritual of greeting. Alice saw Harry Hollander walking past several times a day – even in weather such as today’s – as he worked on his latest song. He was gesticulating now as he strode along, as if conducting. He saw her at the window, and removed his hat, with a courtly bow. He was never too lost in his composing to cease to be a gentleman. She bowed back, and then waved with her hairbrush; though – by then – he had lowered his head again against the wind. He had never achieved a success as great as “O, Susanna!”, but he worked away every day, and lived in hope.

He was very modest and down-to-earth about what he did for a living, and they – she, Charlotte, Linnaeus, and Emmerson – had once had a very jolly evening with him years ago, in which he insisted that they should vote to decide which was the very worst song he had ever written. The winner – he had promoted it vigorously by singing it appallingly – had been “There’s a Gap in My Heart where Dorothy Dwelt (For Dorothy’s Not There Now).” “Sensible, sensible, Dorothy” had been his comment. He took his song-writing seriously: this particular song, clearly, had failed to achieve some personal standard. (“Dorothy paid for the doctor,” had been his enigmatic explanation.) There was a sign in his window at Mrs. Chambers’s, where he boarded on the far side of the park, which read:
Harry Hollander. Songs written.

At the moment he seemed to be working his way through most girls’ names (toward the end of the previous year he had dealt with the majority of the city’s landmarks), and Charlotte told her of the latest publications as they appeared in the window at Columbarian & Horowitz. After Lillian, Gertie, Gladys, “You’re Bet, You’re Betty, You’re Lillibet (But You’ll Always Be Lizzie to Me),” “Linger Longer, Lydia (Stay Awhile with Me),” there had been Florence, Mabel (Mabel Peartree had studied it avidly, on the alert for anything dubiously nasal in its references), Bessie, Dora, Mildred, Grace, whole crowds of others. A publisher on West 28th Street, not far from Broadway, paid him ten dollars a song.

She had been slightly anxious in case he got around to using the name Charlotte, and when he did – Charlotte had arrived flushed with pleasure, and played it instantly on the piano – he had not only written a lovely melody, but (obliterating memories of Sobriety Goodchild) had included, amongst his more-or-less rhymes for Charlotte, “Louisa May Alcott,” “Lancelot,” and “Camelot” in a song about a girl who had loved books as a child. She didn’t envy him if this time he’d reached Agatha. (“Stagger the”? “Swagger the”? or – introducing an element of drama – “Dagger the”?) Aggie
might
have been easier, but there were worrying hazards – “saggy,” “baggy,” “scraggy” – if he was attempting a love song. It was only a matter of time before he got around to Alice. Perhaps she could collaborate with him, unleash her creative side.

She was undoubtedly strange.

Mrs. Albert Comstock – with her detailed information about Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster and the clinic – frequently told her she was strange (in the tone of voice of someone doing her a tactful favor, as if discreetly informing her that she had bad breath or an unfaithful husband), so it must be true. Mrs. Albert Comstock – who was a mistress of the well placed “er” – invariably referred to it as “Dr. Webster’s – er – clinic.” (She was clearly longing to say “er – lunatic asylum,” so keen that she’d probably dispense with the “er” before much longer.) Alice always felt that the next sentence would be to remark that it was rather – er – eccentric, surely, to rely upon the Webster Nervine Asylum – such an inconvenient distance away – when the North River Lunatic Asylum – she’d manage to slip the phrase in, somehow – was so – er – convenient. She couldn’t get it into her head (surprising, when you considered its vast empty spaciousness) that Alice was seeing Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster in his consulting room on Park Place, and was not making the journey to stay up in Poughkeepsie.

(Yet.)

Though she would …

She would …

She would be making that journey soon.

On Wednesday.

Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster had insisted.

Today, Ben would begin his journey to Japan, and – three days later – she would be making her shorter journey upriver. “Upriver.” The thought frightened her. There was a hint of slavery about the word, a suggestion of being sold into bondage. She was probably thinking of some narratives from before the Civil War, accounts of slaves being taken
down
river to the busier slave markets. There was some such reference, she thought, in
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(or was it
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
?), where the word “downriver” was a word to be spoken with fear. Curiously enough, Mrs. Albert Comstock’s intelligence sources – a moment’s pause here, to consider the incongruity of the word “intelligence” being discovered cheek by jowl (the jowls were pendulous and saliva-glistening, wobbling like those of a dribbly bulldog’s) with Mrs. Albert Comstock – had failed to discover the imminence of this departure. It was news she’d be thrilled to discover, and she’d waste no time in informing all her acquaintances. Sides would be sore from vigorous elbow-prodding, spectacles misted and dripping from sibilant whisperings.

She’d feel safer if Alice was some considerable distance away, preferably locked up, even more preferably chained to the wall and wearing a straitjacket in a barred and well-guarded cell. “How
is
Alice?” she used to ask Alice’s mother, in her usual tone of mild distaste, like a fastidious doctor driven to make unenthusiastic inquiries about a bowel movement. (Lady Macbeth – with every reason to be a little wary of doctors – would have had no patience with such dainty Twemlowian twemulousness. “When all’s done,” she would have hissed witheringly, in her most contemptuously are-you-a-
man
? tone of voice, “You look but on a stool,” wiggling the chamber pot vigorously right under his averted nose as if agitating a frying pan in mid-omelet.)