by Steven Sater
“I only wish you’d known your Dad before his illness did,” Alfred’s Dad, Mr. Hallam, once had said. “What a prince of a man he was. For him to be taken, with you still so young . . .”
A prince, yes. With her signature sigh, with a stubborn stretch of her unbruised hand under the burlap, Alice dredged out her nub of a pencil and yellowing school pad. And through the bars of mothy light, she reviewed those Wonderlandy rhymes she’d been writing (and rewriting) through all those nine, unending nights:
How sweet-sad-sadly does Miss Mamie
Glance up from her dress,
And mock my now-familiar pain
With her faux-posh “Ah yes.”
Ah yes. Tilting aslant on her elbow, Alice snuck another look. But she saw no Mamie there, at the quarantine bed. Only Alfred. Through the opened skirt of dusky curtain, Alice could see him, propping his weakened form on his pillow. And she rose, in response—couldn’t help it—rearing herself from her cot. That moment, everything stopped. (Or perhaps it was only that everything within her stopped.) How he looked at her! As only he would. With something of his old rascal smile. As if taunting her with some secret . . . ?
Abruptly, a brusque, gruff hand slung his curtain shut. Slap-bang—duty done. The Nurse! Alice shuddered, then nested her forehead in her hands, if only to secure that wink still within her—in the face of that Stalinist medical glare. Enough.
Forward she lunged. She would go, she’d demand a moment with him. One solitary moment only. Surely, no true Nurse—no volunteer for some Humanitarian Organization—would deny her that. Digging her blistered fist into the cot, she pushed herself up—but there, before her, there, Miss Mamie went. Casting her disapproving shadow on Alice’s bed as she (just so accidentally) sauntered past, with a once-dainty hand on her soot-sullied dress. A daub of what—jam?—on the bodice. As she nibbled on something crumpet-like—fig biscuits? Really?
“My Aunt Millicent says,” that oncegolden girl said, “the Savoy’s the shelter to be seen in, these days.”
What a pleasure, Alice thought, to be proven right in instinctively disliking that girl so much. It was as if, however tragic the circumstance, however much all the majesty of London—all the temples, domes, and theatres—might be crumbling around her, somehow some few gilded crumbs always clung to Miss Mamie’s maidenly lips. For, she (as she was so fond of reminding them), she was the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Such and Such; she, the doted-on niece of the seventh Earl of Sandwich of Such and Such; she, the granddaughter of the Baroness Beaverward of Such and Such.
“My Auntie Maude says she’s just dined at the Dorchester. What with the bore of the bombs, all the pommes frites went rattling right off the table. And every grasping waiter expected his fair shilling, just for picking them up again. Gave her such a fit of indigestion!”
Go! Alice knew she should go, must go. She looked again, one brisk look. But there, that Nurse remained—in stubborn vigil beside his closed curtain, surveying the ward with a crude and cruder leer. Squelching the hope of all who came near. The futility, really.
Back Alice turned—to that foundering gossamer girl—with some answering sense of sympathy. Whoever, whatever the girl was, Alice had to interrupt, had to reach out a hand. Had to ask: “Tell me, please. How is he?”
At the touch of Alice, Mamie drew back, as if not wanting it known what she felt like. “He? Who?”
“Alfred.”
“Oh, him. Silly me! Obviously.” With a spry turn to that navel-gazing Dodgy, and those select few Tubees whom she deemed worthy of speech, Mamie heaved forth a sigh so profound it seemed to shatter what little was left of her: “Good God! Her, and her consuming love for that consumptive boy.”
Then with a cold, wandering scorn, eyeing various curves and dark corners of Alice’s body: “What a relief it must be, never having to think about having a family.”
To Alice’s surprise, not a sneer came back from Dodgy, only a quick nasal twinge to indicate the lack of an impression Mamie’d just made on him.
Unsurprisingly, then, Miss Van Eysen’s tone lightened, and she cast her fishing line again: “But beyond all that, and all them, haven’t we had a marvelous war?”
CHAPTER VI:
—
PIG AND PEPPER
MIDSUMMER, had it been? Just some few months ago, when their world was still one stream of afternoons? (Before the Luftwaffe—with its howling worms of the night—had come to feed on all their loving, secret life.) How contentedly Alice had been seated, couched in that plum-cushioned seat, by Alfred’s canopied bed . . .
“Chapter Six,” announced Alice, reading aloud from her vermilion, gilt-edged storybook, that gorgeous rare edition Alfred had given her. With a voice like a clarion bell, she proclaimed its title.
“ ‘Pig and Pepper’!” Alfred cried in delight, despite the stringent warnings that Alice and he had received: that he must remain calm as they played (if they were to be allowed to play); that he must relax on his bed—no major laughs, no tumultuous crying out—he must stay put and breathe.
But all that warning, Alice hardly remembered—so absorbed she was. So otherwhere she was. For the light that fell from his eyes, and the glow on his cheeks from his reddening mind, seemed somehow more rose-tinged, more permanent and human a sunset than that soon-expiring early June light. That near-forbidden light, which streamed through the mostly closed blinds, like some unwanted messenger from the world outside. The world where Alfred’s stouter, robuster, and years-younger brother was playing badminton—whacking the shuttlecock da da dum da de dee.
But never mind. Clapping his hands, Alfred made a brilliant grab, gripping his pillow—like Wonderland’s Duchess, near-suffocating her infant. Even as she so violently tossed her snout-nosed baby about, he began tossing his pillow, riffing on verses beloved from the book:
“Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes.
Then he, plump pig, can well enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!”
“Wow! Wow! Wow—” Alice began to howl.
But even before her last wow, Alfred was seized by one of his coughing fits. Nothing serious, she knew, or told herself she knew. Still, it was a thwarting reminder that she must exert a calming influence—or else be sent home again.
“Come, silly,” she cajoled. “At the beginning, we begin.”
“The Fish-Footman!” heralded Alfred.
“Of course! But first, let’s rest a bit while I read on.”
So saying, Alice resumed reading, to the relief of that rather neglected-feeling book: “For a minute or two, she stood looking at the house, and wondering what to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came running . . .”
But Alice broke off, seeing Alfred already upright, his bare feet astride his bedding as he struck the most supercilious Fish-Footman pose. Producing, from under his arm, his aforementioned pillow (in place of a royal letter “nearly as large as himself”), he carped: “For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet!” And Alice was too charmed to dream of trying to tame him.
For now he seemed to claim the entire world stage— leapfrogging to the opposite end of the bed, then unbending, valiantly upright again. Scooping out his chest, tapping his shoulders as if to straighten those bizarre epaulettes. The very picture of a proper Frog-Footman. Making a kind of bulge out of his eyes, and a snout out of his mouth, he drew forth an equally large pretend letter, bowed low, croaked lower, and presented it: in the near-exact fashion it had been presented to him: “From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.” And then, with a mad dexterity, alternately wiggling, then wriggling his head, then snatching, then catching the hair on that head—in order to mime how the powdered-wig curls of the Frog entangled so ringlingly with those of the Fish.
Alice laughed so much at this, and as she l
aughed, she wondered: Had she ever been so charmed? Had she ever felt so fond of anyone, anywhere?
Caught on the thought, she’d forgotten to talk. Prompting Frog-Alfred to leap ahead, to plop down seated on the bed. To prompt her, with an insistent psssst: “When she next peeped out, the Fish-Footman was gone . . .”
Alice listened, merely. Marveling.
On he psssst’d: “And the other was sitting on the ground near the door, staring stupidly up into the sky . . .”
“Oh, right,” she remembered, but let him continue.
And so he did: “Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked.”
Rapt in the marvel of His Frog-Footmanness, still Alice said nothing. Until, with a nudging nod toward the door, he rapped at the air with a white-knuckling fist.
“Alfred!” she crowed. “You know it by heart.”
“Shhhh. Do knock.”
With a penitent nod, Alice leaned toward the rosewood tea table and knocked.
“Sorry—no use in knocking,” the Frog-throat croaked. “And that, for two reasons.”
Here, Alfred looked up. As if allowing his adoring throngs a glimpse of the lad behind the Frog-mask: “Guess.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Two reasons. Guess.”
Knowing well that Alice knew (equally) well the answer to that, and indeed the entire script, he pressed on again, his would-be-frog-like eyes rolling back in his head. “Two reasons, yes. ‘First, because I’m on the same side of the door as you are: secondly, because they’re making such a noise inside, no one could possibly hear you!’ ”
“Please, then,” said Alice, adept with her line, “how am I to get in?”
Scarcely had Alice let out that question, when—
An actual knock on an actual door came sounding, announcing itself.
Alfred’s blank mahogany door looked blankly back.
A second, more obstreperous knock followed.
With a wild zeal, Alfred dropped onto his covers—striking a pose as motionless as some marble-sculpted Roman Cherub Reclining.
A sudden, vociferous “Answer me” knock—
“Yes?” he addressed the door, ingenuous.
Mrs. Austerlitz’s ageless voice replied, as her ageless, peek-a-boo eyes peeked in: “Would Mr. Alfred care for some liquid refreshment?”
“Some orangeade,” he replied, “would be just enormous.”
“And Miss Alice?”
“Please.” Alice smiled. “Smashing. Thank you.”
“You will allow Alfred some rest as you read to him?”
Look the woman straight in the eye, Alice reminded herself. Trust me. I will.
“Of course she will, Mrs. Austerlitz,” Alfred replied. “She always does.”
“Then why is it, sir, I am always sent to look in?”
Before there was even time to reply, the ever-efficient Mrs. Austerlitz had caught his eye, had smiled her ever-morose, mournful smile, and with a dire air stepped out again.
“Always so Out of Sorts, that Mrs. Outofsortz,” Alice quipped, recalling their dry, familiar line.
But this time Alfred did not smile. No, he seemed only to inherit that woman’s mournful gloom. And sighed, as if he too had gone out. Or some light in him had.
“Come, Alfred,” Alice tried, and waited, but knew, knew well, he would not look up again—not for some time yet. Sighing her own sigh, she looked through the windows’ eyes, onto those ochre clumps of crocuses, where once they’d run, and now only that uninterrupted badminton.
CHAPTER VII:
—
SOME SPRUNG MONKEY
STILL there. Those same, unheeding eyes. Mamie eyes—brimful with assurance she’d had the last word. She had Come (those eyes declared), she had Seen, she had Conquered poor Alfred! And now, with a satisfied toss of her weddingbell curls, that Mademoiselle drifted back to her bed. Like some amber-plumed bird, in her lone-remaining dress—that pale-canary party frock. She, whose every outfit must once have expressed its own rainbow-slant of her soul, now molting a bit as she collectedly fluttered back to her Underground cage. Her main mating call done for the day.
Ah well, Alice mused, carefully observing the palefreckled girl. Knowing that, one day, when this war ended, and Alfred came home again, some laggard afternoon she’d be playing Miss Mamie as part of their afternoon game. And Alfred, he would do such a dead-on impression of that dastardly Dodgy. Would huff and puff himself up, just as that proud boy was, just now. Seated high on his would-be throne (which was to say, high on his folded coat on his own bunklike bed), one cot past where Miss Mamie sat. “Poor Alice-Thing!” the scamp yawned, too bored to say more—until he did: “Playing Miss Forlorn—with those scabby knees. Meanwhile, bursting at her blouse’s seams!”
“Excuse me?”
“Didn’t I tell you: button up the blousy?” came the raucous Red Cross cry, echoing out of the undercover nowhere.
Like a guilty thing surprised, like a ruddy cactus pear, Alice prickled: “But, it is. All buttoned. It’s just grown smaller, really.”
From behind those bandaged eyes, Tabatha weighed in: “Funny how that happens, when the boys start growing bigger.”
Ouch. “What do you mean?” inquired Alice.
Tabatha sighed, with the graveled voice of a street grown impatient with some dreamy-headed flaneur: “Blouses—they’re like flowers, aren’t they, love? They only really blossom when the young men stop to look at them.”
“Sorry?!”
But no word, no purr, was forthcoming.
“Tabatha?”
Not a wag of that cat-cophonous tongue? Nothing? Alice pursed her lips: “It’s just my body—growing. Not much I can do about it, is there?”
Still no answer to that. Only the drip drip drip of her own soul’s November. Echoing the loutish, soulless drip of that water main overhead.
Had she gone then? That itinerant Tabatha? Or had she merely receded, like a phantom, into her personal shadow canyon again? Where an occasional glint from the cracked clock face, mysterious as twilight, sometimes would find her; as if in the velvet gleam of a windowsill on a Rembrandt night . . .
Hard to tell. For, still, on certain nights, she slipped out and away. (Attracted to the danger, was she? Or homesick, maybe?) Alone again, she’d shelter in doorways from the shrapnel falling, “just like you’d take cover from a summer downpour.” And indeed the shrapnel wounds remained visible, up her cheeks and down her forehead. The burns as well. Until, these past few days, the bandages had so consumed her face, there was nothing much left, in the high shadows of that scaffold; only the faint, ghost-bright glint of a grin. (Like some slim light shining in darkness, which the darkness could not comprehend.)
What was left of her, then, Alice asked, though not aloud.
No, merely she looked: down at her self in that ill-fitting blouse. Was she—was this new she—these arms? These anemically pale, and yes, perhaps longer, but still-so-spindly things. These hands growing out of them, dangling like strangers beside her; these ever-present hands, of which she always seemed so unlikely a part. (Their bone structure, apparently, the same as a bat’s. Thank you, Charles Darwin, for that!) To say nothing of these newly peering-out hips. And these . . . aliens. These breasts. Still forming, yes. But already leaving her so far behind, it was all she could do to keep up with them. She, who (beyond the vagaries of ill-behaved hair) was living within some strange sensation of having exactly the wrong head. This odd box of the nothing that she looked through—onto the nothing much there.
Some solitary whine, some chill unsettling breeze—like rude, cold fingers turning a page—brought her back to this place. And sent her eyes searching about, over the strewn bodies, over the maimed soldiers, and tile walls and iron railings, over the castaway bags and shoes that lay like scattered chunks of masonry . . .
Tha
t moment, she knew, knew with the whole of her, something was off, something new afflicting Alfred! She had to be with him. That moment.
She turned, but there, before her, the Ogre. Stooping, high-shouldered, he lurched. He loomed. Good Old Dr. Butridge. Blocking the narrow, cluttered way. A man remarkable in nothing so much as his utter unremarkableness. This bureaucratic medical stooge. Doing his duty to the Sick and Wounded, without really taking in any of them. Transforming all their particular woes into one soulless rote. Did he even know it was Dodgy he tended, depressing that sad, sassy tongue? And then, with a quick indifferent swab, with a muttered tsssk, the man was done. Yes! Blessedly done. Once more, he went clittering clattering, like tin over the asphalt, rattling on to the next bacterial suspect. Leaving Alice free to head toward Alfred. Which she immediately did. One stealthy step, on . . .
Only to meet a leg. Directly in her path. But, whose leg? Oh, of course—Angus’s! With his face gone in a puff of smoke, beckoning her toward his blue-cloud delirium. With a wave of his siren pipe: “One puff—and all this fades away. You’re in some other dream.”
And with that, Leg 2 swung round and clamped her, just above the knees. All those smoky Os departing from his lips like burp-rings from an openmouthed fish. “O O O, see the pottery frog? On my pipe, that is. O, and I have got such relics to show you: fine crystal stones, and such shrapnel bits—”
“I, please,” Alice attempted to plead, when . . . suddenly . . .
Like an answer to her unuttered prayer, Harold Pudding jumped onto Angus’s dustblooming cot, and with that plunge, broke Alice free. “Shall we have some tea? Yes? Shall we?”
Mamie, so dislodged and unsettled herself, secured her secret pearls down down her blouse, and nodded most engagingly: “Oh yes, absolutely.”
With a flick of her gilded hand and a dash of mordant wit, that tattered Miss dispatched her vanished domestic staff: “With just a spit of jam, James—and perhaps a spot of Spam.”
