Pinkerton's Sister (77 page)

The lenses of their round wire-framed spectacles caught the light. Sometimes flames flickered there, sometimes the cool tones of the moon’s reflection.

Papa was nowhere near where she was, but she could smell his breath as if he was breathing into her mouth. It smelled overpoweringly of the sickly-sweet pink cachous he chewed in an unsuccessful attempt to mask the smell of his decaying teeth. Perhaps it was those very cachous that rotted his teeth in the first place. He shared them with his “friend.” Their jaws moved rhythmically as they chewed the small lozenges, making tiny crunching sounds, crushing the bones of small birds in their mouths. They passed the patterned tin between them, its jewel-bright colors like one of her Huntley & Palmer’s tins, moving it across from hand to hand without speaking, like the way they passed her.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Tinted bubbly foam glistened on their thick lips, and dribbled into their beards.

The flames of the torches made flapping noises, like sheets on a row of washing lines, as the breeze caught them, and the angels’ gowns fluttered.

The moon had sharpened, become clearer, fully emerged from the clouds like a large, cold eye staring down on her.

It was a full moon.

She and Annie would be brought back again tonight – she found herself thinking, though it had not happened for three weeks (they must have been busy rehearsing) – when the crowds had left, accompanied by Hopeful and Faithful (she had recognized Papa’s “friend”), walking through the churned-up earth and the discarded candy wrappings (“Pilgrims! Pilgrims!”) to the Celestial City. Christian and Faithful had been led up and down in chains at Vanity Fair, and placed in a cage. Faithful had been put to death. First they scourged him, then they buffeted him, then they lanced his flesh with knives; after that they stoned him with stones, then pricked him with their swords; and last of all they burned him to ashes at the stake. This was the part of the performance that she had enjoyed the most. This was the part where she had struggled against a strong inclination to shout “Bravo!” and applaud enthusiastically.

Charlotte’s shaking intensified. She was doubled over, still holding Alice’s hand with one of her hands, but cupping her other hand over her mouth to stifle the frantic whooping sounds she was making.

Alice looked at the moon, listened to the wind. There were things she ought to say in the Celestial City, things she ought to say wherever she was.

Every time I look at the full moon I shall think of you, Papa. For always.

She clutched Mama’s hand tighter.

If you tell anyone what has happened, the wind will get you. You cannot escape from the wind. You know that, don’t you? Wherever you try to go, whatever you try to do, the wind will always find you. Even a gentle wind, even a breeze, barely enough to ruffle the leaves on the trees.

Even a whisper.

Especially a whisper.

For always.

For always.

The wind would take Annie. Annie would disappear, like Nurse had disappeared, without saying goodbye, without Alice knowing that the last time they had spoken together was the last time.

Trumpets sounded, angels came out of the Celestial City to greet Papa and the Reverend Goodchild, and the choir sang even more loudly.

Papa and the Reverend Goodchild were led through the Gate and into the Celestial City by angels, and everyone poured in after them. It was a squash inside, and Pilgrims were angling their heads or attempting to stand on tiptoe so that they could see properly. It was like being at the back of a crowd as a procession went past. Some Pilgrims, showing their teeth in smile-shaped snarls, because that made it all right, shoved their way firmly through to the front. It was a technique they had perfected at rummage sales.

Faithful, like one of the Shining Ones, reappeared to welcome Christian and Hopeful. He wasn’t dead, after all. He walked on like one of those actors who expected applause at his every entrance (“It’s me again! It’s me!
Me!
”), and looked annoyed when it didn’t happen. In such a way, one felt, would Reynolds Templeton Seabright have entered, Mrs. Albert Comstock-Conquering-Herofashion, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-daddle-daddling, delaying his first line until the thunderous applause had somewhat subsided, so that his vowels might be heard to their best advantage.

As Papa and the Reverend Goodchild kneeled in the central courtyard of the Celestial City they looked like communicants kneeling at the altar. Raiment was put upon them that shone like gold, and angels placed crowns upon their heads, and harps into their hands.

The frog-faced angels suddenly produced hand-bells from behind their backs with abracadabra flourishes, and bells began to peal, echoing out across the lake. You could tell by their expressions of agonized concentration that this bit – like the smiles – hadn’t been rehearsed often enough. Many of them were fortunate not to have an eye out as the ringing became animated to the point of foolhardiness, the sharp silvery lips of the bells flashing up and down like murder weapons being used to beat out brains.

Alice clung tightly to Mama’s waist, never wanting to let go, her whole body shaking. The thin summer coat smelled slightly of lavender, and a button pressed against the upper part of her cheekbone, as sharp as any Roman coin. She pressed harder, to feel the button dig in more.

“
There will I keep you for ever
,” she thought. “
Yes, for ever and a day
.”

On the last time she was taken to the Celestial City, the time just after Annie had gone, she had not wanted to go, but Papa had made her go, to where his “friend” was waiting for them behind the wall, even though it was winter, even though it was so cold. They had left footprints in the freshly fallen snow, as they trailed out to
The Old Pigpen. Papa had left them, and wandered down to the edge of the lake to wait there for an hour. The rowboats would be frozen together now in the shallows at the edge of the lake, locked in ice. People would be skating soon, whissshing, and spinning round. Papa would have his pocket-watch with him. Once or twice, his “friend” had started to complain that they had not been there for the full time, a man who had been hiring something for a set period, like a rowboat on the lake. A peevish, pettish note would come into the “friend”’s voice, that of an aggrieved customer whom a scheming merchant had unwarrantedly cheated of his rightful due.
No one applauded when I came on again at the end!
You could still hear the resentment in his voice, months later. He had been a
very
good Faithful. He had been
excellent
. Everyone had said so. That was the note you heard in his voice, that fretful whine that things were not as they should be.

In the Celestial City his voice had become contented again. The correct goods had been supplied. She felt that he ought to be sucking his thumb, making little noises like her baby brother sleeping. She was the pacifier, the thumb, and he was the gurgling child, clad in his newly washed diaper, his silent rattle fallen upon the floor. A fire had been lighted in the room at the back, where the little kitchen once had been, and it had the look of a children’s secret den prepared for some feast, the flames crackling, and sending up sparks. You thought it would be driftwood, a fire lighted on whitened pebbles at the edge of the sea. There should be skates hanging from the wall, hot drinks, marshmallows to toast.

“You’re one of the girls from the statue.”

It was a clouded night, and no moon was visible.

He began, as he always began, with her head. Each time the beginning was the same words, in the same order, and she would brace herself for the moment when things began to change, as they always did. He was very methodical in what he did. Even though the moon was not visible, he would begin by naming the features of the moon, as he had done the first time they had passed
through the Gate. They had not knocked, but it had been Opened Unto them. This had been going on for over a year now. The hour would pass. After a while, she would not feel his fingers. She would peep out through the eyeholes of the statue she had become. She was – she felt sometimes – more afraid of what didn’t happen than what did, the sense of considered possibilities.

“Plato,” he said, “Copernicus …”

First they scourged him
…

Down at the lake’s edge she imagined Papa, becoming bored, tentatively beginning to place first one foot, then the other, upon the thin covering of ice that ran a few yards into the lake from the bank. There’d be a creaking, the straining sound of something on the point of snapping, echoing all around the silence of the lake. The surface of the lake would vibrate, held on a resonant note. Emboldened, Papa would take another step out upon the dangerous crust of ice, lured into Jesus-like walks upon the water after his performance as Hopeful. He had fed the five thousand, and sent the multitude away. He had gone up into the mountain apart to pray, and when the evening was come, he was there alone, lost in Gethsemane musings. He walked on the sea, out to the disciples on the ship, ignoring the waves and the wind. “Be of good cheer,” he said, “it is I; be not afraid.” The wind ceased. Papa took another step further out onto the lake. Hope gave you strength. With Hope you could do anything.

She had hated Bruno’s ’ittle-dirly-dirl-like mispronunciations in
Sylvie and Bruno
. “Hurted mine self
welly
much!” he sobbed, cutely curly-headed, posing awhile as Mrs. Alexander Diddecott leaped upon her watercolors with ecstatic cries; “Not as much as
I’d
like to hurt you,” Alice had muttered mutinously. (
Welly welly
much
indeed
! That’s how much she’d have liked to have hurted him.) How
could
Lewis Carroll have ventured so far out into the treacly, feet-squelching depths of Mrs. Molesworth territory? One of the mispronunciations had, however, lingered in her mind as a potentially useful expression. “River-edge.” That was Bruno’s version
of “revenge.” “Revenge is a wicked, cruel, dangerous thing!” the narrator had cried. (
Moral Lessons Effortlessly Inserted for the Instruction and Betterment of the Young Person.
In
The Water Babies
, Charles Kingsley, following this golden rule to ensure the Betterment of the Young Person, named the worst ills of all in Pandora’s box as
Naughty Boys and Girls
. “I must be clean,” Tom said. “I must be clean,” and he pulled off his clothes, and went to the river-edge to throw himself beneath the clear, cool water.)
“River-edge?” said Bruno. “What a funny word! I suppose you call it c’ooel and dangerous because if you went too far and tumbled in, you’d get d’owned.”
River-edge. Papa moved closer toward where the ice became darker, the soft, dangerous edge. If he went too far and tumbled in, he’d get drowned. Or he’d freeze to death, clutching at the soft sorbet ice-edge as it turned to slush and spurted between his grasping, feeling-deadened fingers. The c’ooeler the better. That was her position on the matter.

“… Aristotle, Archimedes …”

…
then they buffeted him
…

She tried to think of Annie.

All week she had been searching for Annie in the snow.

She could see the last two verses of the statue’s stone base, the lettering that was like that on a newly cut gravestone, as clearly as if they were painted on one of the stacked signs in the House of the Interpreter. She couldn’t stop herself reading them, the verses that could not be true, the verses that must not be true, her mouth pressing against the metal, frozen, unable to speak, unable to move away, but breathing, seeing. The man playing the music took all the children away, and into the mountain.

The next-to-last verse.

The …

The last …

The last verse.

She saw it like something written on a blackboard, a task to be learned by heart.

There will I keep you forever.

This was what the father had said to his three daughters.

I will not let you depart.

They were put down in the dungeon of his heart.

Goneril strained blindly upward, to whisper into her father’s ear.

Regan’s whispered words overlapped with those of her sister’s.

“N-N-Nothing, my lord,” Cordelia said. “N-N-Nothing.”

N-N-Nothing would come of n-n-nothing.

The bodies of the three sisters lay – in homage – in front of the body of their father at the end of the play.

“… Kepler, Hercules …”

…
then they lanced his flesh with knives
…

She thought of Annie again. She had walked round and round The House of the Magdalenes, Pettifar’s Orphanage, and the North River Lunatic Asylum, coming across her own footsteps like those of some polar explorer as she circled round in the untrodden snow. Then, as if concentrating on something bright with which to hypnotize herself, she thought of the brightness of the left side of her breast in the sculpture. Moving very slowly, so that Papa’s “friend” would not know that she was moving – she had to keep still, he became annoyed if she moved – she placed her right hand upon the same place on her own body, to ease an ache by its warmth, to feel an alteration in the rhythm of her heart.

On the fragile carapace of ice, Papa took a step further out across the lake, swaying slightly like a man on a flimsy wind-blown bridge. He stood with his arms extended out on either side of him, balancing. One step too many, and he would fall through into the dark icy water beyond the edge. He paused for a moment, feeling the shifting surface beneath his feet. One more step, and the ice would still support him. One further step. He stood there a long time, like someone unable to continue, someone unable to turn back. It was intensely cold. He would feel the ice thickening beneath him, the surface of the water becoming misty and opaque like a breathed-on mirror. One step closer to the edge. River-edge.