Wonderland

by Marie O'Regan

  No.

  I discovered him reciting poetry to the roses. Tennyson’s “Maud”. Do you know it? Come into the garden, Maud, for the black bat, night, has flown. Does that sound like the Charles who published several benchmark papers on disorganised schizophrenia and antipsychotic treatments?

  No.

  I wish for a kinder word, David, but no kinder word will do. He deteriorated. And please don’t assume that I’m laying this entirely at Mr Rabbit’s feet. I believe the thousands of patients before him had tiptoed Charles up the cliff. I believe Alice’s illness had led him to the edge, and it was Mr Rabbit who pushed him over. Excuse the violent metaphor, but it was a rather violent descent.

  Oh, it’s a queer thing, to talk so candidly about this with you, to infer that a psychiatrist might be influenced by his patient. I’d maintain reserve if I didn’t know you personally. And yes, Alice’s illness was a crucial factor. I would never suggest otherwise.

  Did I like her? But of course. She was the sweetest soul.

  Jealous?

  I’ll remind you, David, that this is a conversation, not an appointment. But I’ll answer your question: no, I was not jealous. Charles was closer to her by far, but they shared a womb, for heaven’s sake. Theirs was a togetherness of absolute purity. I was delighted for Charles to have Alice in his life, and heartsore for him to have lost her.

  “I’ll need to grow again,” he’d said to me. This was soon after the cancer had spread to Alice’s liver, and not long before Mr Rabbit arrived on the scene. “I’ll have new hands, new feet, a new soul. The world will be a new place.”

  How very cruel that at our most vulnerable, we need to display the greatest strength.

  BEFORE

  The rabbit hopped across the office and up onto the couch. He twitched his nose, ran his paws across his whiskers, and blinked his startling pink eyes. Charles looked at him for perhaps a little too long, then cleared his throat and took his seat.

  “I should have asked your name when you called,” he said calmly. “That was remiss of me.”

  “Not at all,” the rabbit said. “I could just as easily have told you, so allow me to do so now: Mr W. Rabbit. Or Mr Rabbit, for short.” He twitched his nose again, disagreeably this time. “W is such a cumbersome letter, don’t you think? Often longer than the word it begins. And no letter should be longer than the word it begins.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Charles remarked. “And where do you live, Mr Rabbit?”

  “A most wonderful place. A most broken place.”

  Charles crossed his right leg over his left. His expression was noncommittal. He would not make a great deal out of this. To do so would be to admit that the rabbit was real, and to admit that it was real would be to admit to a neurosis. This was no more than a nonpsychotic hallucination, triggered by anxiety. Quite understandable, all things considered.

  “I would normally ask several key questions during the initial appointment,” Charles said, speaking with a controlled tone. “To form a road map of sorts, from which to explore and revisit as required. On this occasion, however, I choose only to listen, certain that anything you have to say will be more interesting than any question I might ask.”

  “As you please,” the rabbit said, and struck a thoughtful pose, his little brow wrinkled, one ear pensively cocked. “I can talk for longer than we both have, about our uncertain world, the fragile nature of everything. A flower will wilt. A baby will cry. An iceberg will crumble, Dr Lewis—crumble, formed tens of thousands of years ago, miles wide and even more miles deep, yet as susceptible to decay as everything else.”

  Charles nodded, trying to lose himself in the rabbit’s head, and not think about the terrible, ugly, volatile thing charging through his twin sister’s body.

  “I can talk about time.” Mr Rabbit took the watch from his waistcoat pocket again, and regarded its slow, jewelled face curiously. “So fragile, and yet the only unstoppable thing in this or any universe. Time.” He tapped the gently curved glass with his paw. “One second is such a tiny measure in the grand scheme of things. Yet one second can change so much. It is the difference between late and not late, between yesterday and today, and between here and gone.”

  Charles fought the urge to reach over and touch the rabbit. Would he feel his soft white fur, the thin bones beneath? Or would his hand grasp at nothing but air? Certainly, the sound of the rabbit’s paw striking the watch glass had seemed real.

  Ridiculous, Charles thought. This is a manifestation of grief… of pain. I’ve been bottling up my emotions for too long. And I need sleep.

  “It’s different when we’re younger,” the rabbit continued. He cast a fond eye toward the window, where the afternoon sun had started its descent toward the horizon. “Everything is open and unspoiled and possible. I remember being a young rabbit—a kitten.” Here he interjected himself, his narrow chest inflating with pride. “Do you know that a young rabbit is called a kitten, Dr Lewis?”

  “I do.”

  “Yes, of course you do. And a young hare is called a leveret. Unfortunate for the hare, but they do lack that kittenish allure. Don’t you agree?”

  “I haven’t given it much thought,” Charles said.

  “Well, they do. And they’re raving mad, to boot. But anyway, yes, as a kitten…” He took a deep breath that whistled through his front teeth. “Oh, I would run, and hop, and the grass had been so tall, the days so long. Time was not a factor in anything, because there was an abundance of it, and nothing to be late for.” His pink eyes glazed with nostalgia. His whiskers twitched happily. “I had such a time, Dr Lewis, playing with Bill and Pat, waking the Dormouse with my antics, sometimes listening to the wise old Caterpillar. Even the Duchess was cheerier in those days. Goodness, I think everybody was.”

  Charles couldn’t help but think of Alice, and the long, wonderful days they’d shared in Daresbury Wood. It wasn’t simply the adventures they’d invented, or the fact that they came to know every tree and wild flower. It was the time as a whole—a period of several years that, when compared to other years, shone with a true, relentless magic. And yes, everything had been open and unspoiled, and the grass had been so tall.

  “Then it all changes,” Mr Rabbit said dourly. The glimmer left his eyes. His whiskers drooped. “I can talk about that, too, and how, when faced with change, it can feel like falling down an exceptionally deep hole.”

  “Yes,” Charles said. “Quite.”

  That’s exactly how it had felt, looking into Alice’s eyes as she told him that she was dying. They had been sitting on her sofa, their hands joined, and Charles remembered how unnaturally silent it was. No traffic noises or planes. No creaks in the radiators. No neighbourhood dogs yapping. It was a moment of eerie stillness. The world had paused for them, awaiting their return—a respite that upset its alignment. It would grind more than spin from that point on.

  Charles had nodded at the news, then cried. He had made that inane comment about the tumtum leaves, and then he had fallen and fallen.

  “A change,” he said to the rabbit, “is often an opportunity.”

  “Only if we change with it,” Mr Rabbit said. His left ear cocked in that pensive fashion again, and a grain of the sparkle returned to his eye. “We are told that life is fleeting, that we exist for but a blink. This is true, of course, but it’s all relative. Our lives are all we know, and all we will ever know. The things we love, believe and trust are also fleeting, which brings us back to fragility and time. It’s all so unpredictable.”

  “Everything changes,” Charles said. “It develops, and regresses.”

  “Indeed,” the rabbit said. “Our greatest strength isn’t in keeping things the same, but in being able to grow and shrink accordingly.”

  ROSEMARIE

  I recognise that expression, David. Neutral. Is that the word? Or impassive? Inscrutable? I suppose it won’t do to show emotion. Did they teach you that during your residency, or is it something you’re born with?


  A little of both, I suspect. Charles was a master of the neutral expression, even when talking to me. I could never tell if he had a hidden agenda. He was such a clever man.

  Is a clever man.

  Is.

  He talked about Mr Rabbit often, without ever really saying anything. “Mr Rabbit is a warm breeze,” he’d say. “A light in the gloom,” he’d say. He once referred to him as a “boon companion”, which struck me as a rather odd endearment for a patient. You’d think Mr Rabbit, being so special, might have helped Charles in some way, but his deterioration only quickened.

  No, I never saw him. I kept to the front of the house whenever Charles was working. I’d occasionally see a patient leaving as I returned from town, or if they came through the front, rather than the back gate. But no, I never crossed paths with Mr Rabbit, which is a touch peculiar, I suppose, given the frequency of his appointments.

  Once a week, to begin with. Then twice. And then… well, I remember, towards the end, leafing through Charles’s appointment book, and seeing Mr Rabbit’s name numerous times in the course of one week. Charles had crossed out his other patients’ names and written Mr Rabbit’s in their place. I was tempted to call those patients to enquire if they had cancelled, or if Charles had, but I thoroughly lacked the nerve.

  BEFORE

  They were there for each other, as they always had been, and each drew courage from the other, a harmony in keeping with the colour of their eyes. Charles had always considered himself staunch, but he was nonetheless impressed by the steadiness of his hand when he gave Alice water, and his tone when he read her favourite poems, and how he could kiss the top of her balding head without qualm.

  They laughed together. Charles remembered that. They hugged, joked and listened. They held hands, reminisced and encouraged. It was, in many ways, the most wonderful time—a paradox of everything being perfect, and nothing being perfect.

  But Charles also remembered the radiation treatments and compression fractures to Alice’s spine and ribs, how she would walk stooped and sometimes scream because the pain was so advanced. He remembered countless medications—the painkillers and anti-oestrogens, and her chemotherapy drugs arranged like soldiers in formation.

  He remembered sweeping clumps of hair from her pillow, and how she used hydrogen peroxide to eliminate the odour of her decaying fingernails.

  He remembered how the bones in her face collapsed, and how her skin turned papery and old.

  He remembered getting stacks of audiobooks from the library because it hurt her wrists to hold a paperback for more than fifteen minutes.

  And, of course, he remembered the end…

  “One last time,” Alice had said to him. “Take me there.”

  Charles didn’t need to ask where, and would never deny this final request. He lifted Alice from her bed and carried her through the bright morning to his car, where he sat her in the front seat and draped a warm blanket over her. He drove through the town centre, past bustling stores and restaurants, through Hatter’s Square, then along the B257 towards Daresbury Wood.

  “The daffodils are out,” she said. “The foxgloves, too.”

  “Yes,” Charles said, even though it was October and the ground was golden with fallen leaves. The branches drooped, naked of everything but a recent rain. He parked the car in a lay-by, then lifted Alice from the passenger seat and carried her into the woods proper.

  “There,” she said, pointing, “it’s Antoine the Alder. He sheltered us from the Jabberwock. Do you remember?”

  Her narrow legs were folded over his arm, her hands looped around his shoulders. She weighed no more than a fawn.

  “I remember,” Charles said.

  They walked deeper, through rusty bracken and beneath skeletal branches, around the greyish hulks of fallen trees—none of which Alice saw. Her eyes flooded with belief and elation. She enthusiastically pointed out the clearing where they’d enjoyed numerous tea parties, the lairs of the Boojum and the Bandersnatch, and the innumerable creatures and colours that weren’t there.

  Except they were.

  “Put me down,” Alice said.

  Charles did… gently, although Alice all but hopped out of his arms. She stood straight and strong, and with every step the woods came to life around her. The leaves fluttered upward, turning green on their passage, the roses and tiger lilies bloomed furiously, the animals peeped from the understory and chattered, the birds filled the sky with song.

  It’s different when we’re younger, Mr Rabbit had said, this memory recurring so vividly that he might have been perched on Charles’s shoulder. Everything is open and unspoiled and possible.

  Alice spread her arms and twirled, and in that moment the fractured, dying woman disappeared, and Charles saw her as a young girl, with her blonde hair whispering, her endless face turned up to the trees.

  “Alice,” he said. There were tears in his eyes.

  In that moment he saw everything.

  ROSEMARIE

  Thank you for coming to the funeral, David. That was kind of you, and I know Charles was grateful. He was grieving terribly, but you wouldn’t know it. He was at his stalwart best. Good old Charles. I think that was the last time he was anything like himself.

  And, for all the memories I have, it’s how I’m choosing to remember him: dressed so handsomely, with not a hair out of place, not a mark upon his brow.

  The eulogy? Yes, he delivered it so flawlessly. A poem—I’d not heard it before, but it felt familiar, somehow, and it stayed with me. Particularly the last stanza.

  Yes, of course, but I won’t recite it nearly as well as Charles.

  And, though the shadow of a sigh

  May tremble through the story,

  For “happy summer days” gone by,

  And vanish’d summer glory—

  It shall not touch, with breath of bale,

  The pleasure of our fairy-tale

  Charles disappeared five months later. A Wednesday afternoon, and a beautiful spring day. All the flowers were showing. He told me he was going to meet Mr Rabbit, and that was it.

  I haven’t seen him since.

  No, nobody knows. Not the police. Not his family in Oxford or Croft-on-Tees. It’s quite the mystery, and all the more upsetting for it. I wonder every day if he’ll return—if he’ll walk through the door and sit in his favourite armchair, newspaper in hand, as if nothing has happened.

  His slippers are beside the hearth, just in case.

  And Mr Rabbit? The police wanted to question him, of course, but Charles kept no contact information on file. I couldn’t even give them a description. He is an unsolved piece of the puzzle. An integral piece, I’m quite sure.

  How long has it been? Two years and four months. Sometimes it seems like it has passed in the wink of an eye. And sometimes it seems I could count every interminable hour, every second.

  Time is such a clouded thing.

  One final note, David, before I leave, and I’ve never told anybody this before. Oh, a little embarrassed I suppose, but… I looked for him. And I know it’s not embarrassing that I should look, only that I was so certain I would find him.

  Last August. The Sunday of the bank holiday weekend. I was watering the roses in the back garden, when suddenly I dropped everything and ran. Yes, I ran, David, like a child. I’ve never felt so light—so free. I ran through Hatter’s Square, out of town, and all the way to Daresbury Wood. It was like Charles was calling to me. I even called back to him: “I’m coming, Charles. I’m coming, my love.”

  How very foolish.

  The woods were empty. I searched for at least an hour, calling his name, my cries becoming more and more hopeless. And all at once the tears came. I fell to my knees and let everything out.

  No sign of Charles.

  Except…

  Indulge me a moment, David.

  I felt him. In the trees. No, not in them, like a squirrel, but within them, in their age and their shape, the way their branches reached and
soared. So stalwart. And as I wiped my eyes and got to my feet, I thought I saw, for one second, a young girl with long blonde hair standing beneath those branches, perfectly at peace and forever young.

  I walked home with the sun at my back, and it warmed me.

  Black Kitty

  CATRIONA WARD

  I was convinced it was a man, which is embarrassing.

  First, I noticed that Snowdrop had started braiding her hair and eating the special dates, the kind that sweeten your breath. She got new slippers of yellow silk as light as air. She looked wonderful—and the shine in her came from inside, not the slippers or the braids. I pretended not to notice anything different. I was buying time until I could figure out what was going on.

  Snowdrop and I were born a minute apart. It’s too close. We see too much, understand too much about one another. It’s like watching your failings and fears acted out over and over by someone who looks just like you, except much more attractive. In theory she and I are identical, and true, we have the same nose, the same cheekbones, and our hair is rich red and brown like the forest floor in autumn. I couldn’t put my finger on any difference between us. And yet Snowdrop is beautiful, whereas I seem to just miss being so. I overshoot beauty by a whisker. In the past I tried to make up for this by playing the piano excellently and being interesting in Portuguese and so on. But I found the only thing that brought me level with Snowdrop’s loveliness was my talent for villainy. So I decided to focus on that. (Most of the time, villainy is merely making difficult choices.)

  Now I watched her from my window, which gave onto the west terrace. Snowdrop looked out over the gardens, presenting a delicate profile. She sat very straight on the balustrade, in that way no one ever sits, unless it is to be watched. But by whom? The terrace was deserted except for the flamingos, which hooted and plucked peevishly at one another, so that the lawns were littered with orange and blue feathers. Now, in general, Snowdrop was not steady of purpose. She was odd-tempered and apt to wander off mid-conversation if distracted. Distracting items included, but were not limited to: bumblebees, clouds, chairs, candy, me, teacups, ribbons and air. But now, hour after hour, she sat patient and still.