Alice I Have Been: A Novel

by Melanie Benjamin

  “What the devil are you doing?” I asked the insolent fellow, who was leaning against the stove, having just lit his cigarette from a burner.

  “Havin’ a smoke,” he said, looking at his cigarette with some surprise.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh. I mean, havin’ a smoke, madam.” He shrugged and continued to puff on the horrid thing; I summoned the housekeeper, intending to dismiss him, but she informed me—while the creature simply stood there, staring at us with unconcealed, ill-mannered amusement—that he was the best we could get.

  “All the good young lads are dead in France, and it’s just scoundrels like ’im left, especially for the wages being offered, not that I’m complainin’, madam, no, but you have to admit, times is tough.”

  “Indeed.” I left the kitchen without acknowledging her broad hint. Christmas was coming; she’d get her extra pound.

  Regi scarcely noticed my difficulties keeping the house running, although I tried desperately to involve him. As soon as the war ended, he grew old overnight, somehow older than I, although we were the same age. He was almost deaf, and prone to doddering about at his old cricket club in good weather, and simply doddering about the house in bad, following me around like a small child but never really interested in what I was doing. He harped on Caryl’s extravagances—of which I also disapproved—but other than that, he simply had no interest in the house. It was up to me to pay the bills, see about repairs; the land did not bring in much income any longer, and taxes were outrageous, so I urged him to sell several parcels.

  Bit by bit, Cuffnells was diminishing, and so, to my great distress, was my husband. I worried about him, scolded him into wearing warm clothes in winter, drinking cool drinks in summer, but I could not prevent his decline. It was as if he simply decided he was a clock not worth winding any longer.

  In February of 1926 he came down with a bad cold—he would insist on throwing off the muffler I tried to keep wrapped about him morning and night—and took to his bed; he was very ill but not so ill that he did not smile at the fuss I made over him.

  “What’s all this?” he croaked as I sat beside him, trying to coax him into sipping a spoonful of beef broth. “Mrs. Hargreaves feeding me with her own hands?”

  “Do be quiet, and eat.” I frowned down at him, trying to hide my concern; the doctor had just been, warning that Regi’s lungs were weak, and this was not merely a bad cold. Pneumonia, he thought.

  “Yes, madam,” he said meekly, trying to salute me, but he could not lift his hand. Still, he smiled, pleased at my presence; tears sprang to my eyes to see how happy it made him just to have my attention, my concern. Why had I not offered him more of that over the years?

  That was the moment I finally realized that Regi was the only person whom I had ever made completely happy; he was the only person who had not needed me to be someone else; someone more. Even Leo had needed me to be Alice in Wonderland, a fairy tale, a dream.

  But Reginald Gervis Hargreaves, Esq., needed only me—Alice. Alice Pleasance Hargreaves; twenty-four letters now, instead of twenty-one. Sitting beside his bed, stroking his arm, I wondered who I would be without him.

  I removed the soup bowl to a tray and placed my hand upon his forehead; it was clammy and cold, and his breathing was much labored. Struggling to hold him up—even though he was quite frail, he still was such a tall man; he had been so very sturdy and big-boned in his youth—I propped a few pillows behind his back so that he could breathe easier. Then I helped him back down, and in doing so, I planted a kiss upon his unshaven cheek.

  “What’s the occasion, Mrs. Hargreaves?” he whispered with another sweet, simple smile.

  “I do not require an occasion to kiss my husband,” I huffed—but my voice quavered, and he reached over and took my hand, and squeezed it.

  He died two hours later; I was still sitting next to him, still holding his hand, when he smiled at me, whispered that he would tell the boys I sent them my love—and then he was gone. I sat for a very long time that way, watching the snow pile up outside his window, wishing I had been a better wife to him; hoping that in the end, the love I had been able to give him was enough.

  His death notice included the mention that in 1880, he had married Alice in Wonderland. I like to think he would have been pleased at that, but the truth is he was the only one to whom this didn’t matter at all.

  And now, for the first time in her life, Alice was truly alone. Wonderland was well and gone; I was left with a large house and larger bills—endless bills; I could not see an end to them, although I could see, alarmingly close, an end to my income. Taxes, death duties, the frightful expense of coal—at night I lay in bed, unable to sleep, doing sums in my head, never coming up with a comforting answer.

  I was also left with a very impractical son who did not appear to share my concerns. Even when Caryl did come home, I cannot say I was overjoyed to see him, nor he me; we were both uneasy sitting next to each other at the long, empty dinner table. I couldn’t pretend to approve of his wastrel lifestyle—how many times did I tell him his brothers surely would have managed to do something more with their lives, had they been allowed? Yet for some reason this only spurred him to greater heights of frivolity, such as the time he stormed out, drove recklessly back toward London, and got a flat on the road; instead of simply changing the tire, he paid a farmer to tow him to Epsom, where he traded in the old car for a new—more expensive—one, and continued on.

  Our arguments grew more heated with every visit, and I’m quite sure it was a topic of discussion among the servants. Knowing this made me even more angry; how dare they whisper about me! It was bad enough that I had to hide my jewelry these days instead of wearing it, for there was no trusting them. If it hadn’t been so difficult to find replacements, I would have sacked the whole lot.

  Yet dining with Caryl, however uncomfortably, was better than sitting there alone as I did every other night, dressed in a faded evening dress (without my jewels, which made me feel rather naked), staring at the paintings—Papa’s old oils of the English countryside, quite dirty now, for I could not afford to have them cleaned—on the wall.

  “It is very kind of you to allow me to remain here,” I told Caryl during one such occasion, after we had exhausted polite conversation before the soup course was done. “I realize that you’re the rightful heir to Cuffnells.”

  “No, Mamma, this is your home. I’m not sure I’d want the place, anyway.” He looked about the great empty room, and for the first time I saw it through his eyes—the wallpaper was out of date, the chandelier messily wired for electricity, the ceiling plaster cracked. “Have you ever thought of taking in boarders, or renting the place out? It would pay for repairs and perhaps even give us more income. It’s so frightfully expensive in London, you know.”

  “Boarders?” I stared at my son, who was carelessly sipping his soup. Strangers living here, where I raised my family? How could he suggest such a thing? “No, I shan’t be taking in boarders,” I said coldly, and pressed down upon the buzzer, summoning Mary Ann. “This soup is lukewarm; do take it away, and tell Cook I’ll speak to her later.”

  That evening, after Caryl had returned to London—he rarely stayed even one night these days, although he did manage to apologize to me before he left—I sat in the library going over accounts, too worried about the future to allow myself the luxury of remembering the past. Once I had thought I could escape sadness simply by moving on; I remembered how I could not wait to quit Oxford, after Leo left and Edith died.

  Now, although the grief was greater, I did not want to escape it; I felt as if I was hanging on to Cuffnells by my very fingernails, and there was no one—least of all Caryl; renting to boarders, indeed!—to catch me if I fell. I wished I owned something of value, something I might be able to sell, in order to keep Rex’s and Alan’s memories alive, for it was only here, at Cuffnells, that I felt I could remember what they looked like. It was only here that I could still see them, and Regi, too
—walking the grounds, now overgrown, that meant so much to them all; hearing the echoes of their laughter from the billiard room, how often they had wagered against one another even though they knew I did not approve!

  I simply could not bear to lose them all over again.

  I rose, massaged my stiff fingers, and roamed the room, searching the shelves for valuable first editions, even though I knew there were none; I looked anyway, hoping that perhaps Regi might have bought something that I hadn’t known about. Then I smiled, fondly; Regi had never bought a book in his life.

  Finally I found myself at the window, gazing out; it was dark, and I could see nothing but my own reflection, my hair—thoroughly gray now, but still with the same fringe; my serious, watchful eyes, that decided chin, now rather crinkled with age—and I thought, “Through the looking glass, indeed.” For there really was no logic to my life; I had traveled and searched and questioned and loved and tried, so very hard, yet still I ended up in this place with no answers, no solutions. There was no Wonderland; there had never been a Wonderland. There was only me, looking at myself in a mottled glass, unable to recognize the child I had been, the woman I had become, alone now with nothing to my name but a crumbling old house—

  Then I looked down, at the glass-encased bookshelf. Pulling up a stool—for I could no longer sink to my knees without risking never getting up again—I opened the door. Staring at all the volumes of books, some in strange languages, but all with my name very prominently featured, I realized that I did possess something of value, after all. If only I had the courage to confront it.

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It was there, all the valuable first editions, even the handwritten original, all along. Family heirlooms, I had thought them. But now I had no family—except for where I could remember them, here at Cuffnells.

  All these years, I had been afraid to read the book; afraid to see myself within the pages. But what had I known of fear, then? I had lost my sons to war, my husband to grief, and now I was about to lose my home. This was fear; this horrid, sinking feeling of not knowing where the ground was, or if my feet would ever reach it again. Of not knowing how I would hold on to the memories of those I loved, even if that love had come too late. But having found it, I could not bear to relinquish it.

  Now, at this moment, I could open the pages of this book and read them, and imagine my son upon my lap once more, for it was here, in this room, where it had once been possible. Realizing that, I was no longer afraid of what I might find within the yellowed pages; I was only afraid that I had waited too long.

  Taking a deep breath, I pulled out the book that Rex had asked me to read to him. I opened the cover, turned to the front page. “Down the Rabbit Hole … Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank.…” My voice quiet but steady, this time I continued reading aloud, even though I knew there was no one to hear. Still, I couldn’t shake the notion that perhaps Rex might be listening, after all.

  When I got to the part where the White Rabbit was looking at his pocket watch—just like Papa used to; I had quite forgotten!—I began to chuckle, softly at first. As I read on, however, my laughter grew until one of the Mary Anns popped her head in the door, and I waved her away, still reading out loud, not caring what she told the others, only wanting to continue, as I was eager to see what happened next.

  For finally, after all the years, the twisted paths that had brought me back, again and again, to a dark and dangerous place of memory, I could see Alice as others must have, and as I first experienced it that long-ago afternoon in a rowboat with my sisters: as a lovely, charming story about a very unflappable little girl caught in a maze of nonsensical, talkative creatures but not in any hurry to escape them.

  I was not that little girl; I knew that now. Even when I begged Mr. Dodgson to write it down so that I could remain a child forever, he understood that was not going to happen. Already, he was missing me. It was obvious in the melancholy at the end of the story, when Alice’s sister thinks of her all grown-up, forgetting her dream.

  Had he known that he would be the reason why I had to grow up so soon? I think that even I suspected that he would be the catalyst. Even so, the end of my childhood came about not because of what Mr. Dodgson had written; it was our private story, the one with an ending still unknown, that had done that. Not the story he had given to the world.

  And now I would do the same. I would give it back, for I need not fear it any longer. And it would save me. He would save me. Mr. Dodgson, who disliked little boys; who had never been able to reconcile himself to the fact that I was grown up and married, a mother, had given me the means to save my sons’ home and preserve their childhood.

  All it would cost was the last tangible evidence of my own.

  Chapter 17

  • • •

  Lot 319—THE AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF

  “ALICE’S ADVENTURES UNDER GROUND,”

  BY C. L. DODGSON,

  The Property of “Alice” (Mrs. A. P. Hargreaves)

  ADJUSTING MY SPECTACLES, I PERUSED THE CATALOG IN my hand; it was nicely done, sturdily bound, a nice, clean font. Sotheby’s reputation was certainly deserved, and I felt I had chosen well. There had been other interested auction houses, of course, but none of the stature of Sotheby’s.

  “Mamma, this crowd is simply astonishing!” Caryl was almost beside himself with excitement, entirely too ridiculous for a man of his age. He was nearly forty, after all, and his hair, as well as his mustache, was turning steel gray. It was difficult to realize that this distinguished-looking middle-aged gentleman with the slight pouch around the middle was my youngest son.

  But then I supposed it was difficult to realize that this elderly woman sitting next to him on the dais, clad in a smart black suit, the very thing, the salesgirl told me, for 1928—although I could not quite give up my corset, as one felt so very loose without it—was “Alice.” There had been quite a bit of interest in me once the auction was advertised, particularly in my reasons for giving up the manuscript. The crowded room—apparently, there were people who viewed these auctions as a spectator sport; didn’t they have better things to do with their time?—reflected that interest; the young lady in charge had said, rather breathlessly, “We’ve never had such a lot simply for a book!” upon greeting me at the door.

  “Well, it’s not simply any book, is it?” I inquired. “It’s my book.” Then I allowed her to lead me through the throng—and as I did, I had a very curious sensation. “Curiouser and curiouser,” I murmured to myself, but Caryl heard, and chuckled.

  For I felt as if I were finally stepping through the looking glass, into a world where everything was backward, yet now it made sense. After so many years spent being Miss Liddell, then Mrs. Reginald Hargreaves, mother of three sons, dowager of Cuffnells, I was suddenly, once again and possibly forever—simply Alice.

  That was what they called me—complete strangers; as if they actually knew me! “There she is, that’s Alice,” I heard someone whisper, and it caught on, like flame to a paper, and spread about, more and more murmurs. “That’s Alice in Wonderland! The real Alice—can you believe it?” While my initial reaction was to comment upon their rudeness, for there were very few people living whom I would allow to call me by my Christian name, it then stole upon me that they were all so very happy to see me. (Although, yes, this was when I first observed the shock that I was not a little girl with yellow hair.)

  For the first time, my public association with my namesake was not a complicated one. These strangers were delighted merely to meet me, to shake my hand, to ask innocent questions about my childhood and Mr. Carroll. No one spoke of him as Mr. Dodgson, and I suppose that made it easier for me to talk of him and tell them what I knew they wanted to hear: that he was a kindly man, a cherished friend, who provided me with many happy memories.

  Yet that was the truth, I realized. Part of the truth, at any rate.

  There were, to be sure, uncomfortable questions abo
ut why I was selling the manuscript, and I was happy to allow Caryl to speak for me on this subject, at least. (He was more than eager to speak for me on every subject, but I was no shrinking violet, to his obvious disappointment.) “My mother, upon my father’s death, finds herself in the unique position of being able to plan for her future while also sharing the joy of her childhood memories with the world at large.”

  I had to bite my tongue the first time I heard this, but I also had to admit Caryl had a bit of his aunt’s blood in him; he was so very good at rearranging the truth. Well, we all were, at that; perhaps that was the most lasting lesson I had learned from Mr. Dodgson.

  “How much do you think it will fetch?” I heard Caryl ask the auctioneer as he approached the podium, and I stifled the urge to yank him by the ear and banish him from the room.

  “Caryl, do be quiet,” I hissed. I sat straight, dignified—my back not touching my chair; my back had not touched a chair since I was twelve—and observed the crowd. We were in a large gallery, the walls hung with various pictures. Directly in front of the dais was an odd, U-shaped table at which sat the bidders; behind them were rows of chairs, upon which a crowd of nearly three hundred—or so the breathless girl had told me—were perched, eagerly watching. I was not sure what they were watching, exactly; it did not appear to me that auctions were very interesting, unless it was your own possession being auctioned off. Yet the crowd seemed breathless with anticipation—and I realized, finally, that they were anticipating me. My reaction, I supposed; I wondered why it mattered to them?

  “Number three nineteen,” the auctioneer—a slim man in a nicely tailored suit—said, rather softly, I felt. I had assumed auctions were much louder.