Alice by Heart

by Steven Sater

  “Yes. And they’ll be safer there. They’ll know their parents love them, and soon they will be home with them.”

  “Then, should we go there with them?” Alice had challenged. “We’ll be safer too.”

  “No no.”

  But she pressed on, the words like some warning voice escaping her. “Or should we singly stay on in a city grown so barbarous, it could cast out helpless children?”

  “Come, you’re talking round in circles now. It isn’t like that, Alice, and you know it. It’s their parents who decided.”

  “Yes but, Alfred, the injustice!”

  “Is it? Parents doing what they think is best—everything the government will let them? Maybe there’s a mercy in it too.”

  “Why can’t their parents go with them?”

  “Everyone leave, then?”

  “Everyone!”

  “Alice, someone has to remain—for London’s sake. Someone has to ‘aid and stir,’ as Churchill says, to stand up in resistance.”

  “But why does that have to be us? You’re still recovering, Alfred. You’re in no state to be standing up for London—not at the moment. First you must get well again. The countryside will do you good. The dust alone is so hard on you.”

  “It’s hard on everyone.”

  “That may be, but—”

  “Alice, please. My Mum and Dad, they want me home. As your Mum wants you.”

  “But it isn’t the same.”

  “It’s exactly the same. I’m no worse off than you.”

  But that wasn’t remotely true. Still, what what to say—in the face of the look he gave her? A look of regret, of indignation, but so powerful in its restraint she could not meet its gaze for long.

  “Alice, we can talk all day. Your lips are blue from cold. Come with me. Home.”

  With such words, with such a world of care, finally he’d steadied her, and led her past the heaps of splinters, weary brick, and black-ash rubble. There, behind some scooting rat, amid the debris, she spotted a bewildered school-edition of Euclid. The blasted pages of his Elements fluttering, flummoxed by the breeze—as if leafed through by some god, who murmured on: “A point is that which has no part . . . A line is a length which has no breadth . . .” Just beyond that demiurgic murmuring, some awkward-sad recording of Tommy Dorsey, sounding: “I’ll never smile again . . .”

  On they went. (As if walking through a time before there was any accounting for time.) On, past a crumpled, old old woman, in a Turkish robe and slippers, wailing from the ruins she would not go to a shelter. Why, she keened, why had life been spared her? Why not take that, too? She had lost her home, her everyone, her children, her grandchildren . . .

  Through all that, he’d walked her. Had seen her home, and stayed on—through that night and all the next day with her. He had held her hand in his, had read to her, as she lay shaking. Pale and shaking, just as he lay shaking now . . .

  . . . And had they gone—as she’d proposed? Had their parents actually set them on a train, like those children with their gas masks—all those months ago? Had she trusted her own inner voice, had she simply insisted—to her Mum and to his—that they both be sent from London, they would know no part of all this. They would be well out of it. In Derbyshire, perhaps. Or Somerset. And through the long temperate days there, he would know the sun again. There, he would find himself again, and he’d have rest. She’d read to him, and he would be well again.

  * * *

  • • •

  But what to do, beyond remembering? Beyond hosting her soul at a retrospective of all the bad choices she’d made and now could only second-guess? Meanwhile lying here, utterly restless, in this fetid Tube, consumed with care. What to do, but let be. To move past her belittling self. To buck up, and ignore the lumpy demands of this bed. To scrawl again within her old-friend notepad, with the dwindling nub of her dwindling pencil, a kind of acrostic. (Just a young girl’s jottings of her war impressions, and consequently meant for publication!):

  An auto stopped for me one night,

  Lit by a lone Red Cross,

  Its colors camouflage; and I thought:

  Can we please just not?

  Eternity is for the gods. I’m wounded, but I am not . . . lost.

  Or was she . . . not?

  “Hmmm,” someone hmmm’d. (Taking the word right out of Alice’s mouth.) But who? And was it meant in judgment on her acrostic?

  Leaning forward, pressing the offending poem to her knees, Alice sent her look scouting about. There: some shameless grin upon the stagnant night air, lingering. A sort of scar. And behind it? Cheshire Puss? Needless to say, that would be a bit strange. What would a Wonderland Creature be doing in the Underground, anyway?

  “Dear, dear, everyone and everything falls apart so queerly around here,” that cryptic grin observed. Growing conspicuous now, agleam on that Cat’s unmissable mouth.

  Once again, Alice peered about—no one in medical uniform prowling about. So . . . why should she not let her thought out, to that fugitive feline? Besides, it wasn’t every day, some actual fictional character made its way down here. Shouldn’t she at least reply to it?

  Holding all that in mind, Alice summoned a sigh: “Yes, well, it all keeps disappearing. The pages turn so quickly.”

  Chesh nodded, her brindled tail like a freaked question mark, peering from behind the cracked-oval clock. “The moment you’re in the story,” she meowed, “you find you’re out of story. But perhaps that is the story. Always parting, always greeting.”

  Always parting, always greeting—the exact thing that that fantasticatical Cat was the emblem of. But parting from whom—to be greeted by . . . what?

  Maybe, Alice thought, part of what reassures us that the world still exists, even without us, was simply that the things within it stay there, that they don’t dissolve into our seeing them—that they remain there so long as our gaze does. But, the fact of that Cat seemed to refute exactly that. For, although Chesh had the look of something that liked being looked at, Alice could never quite hold on to the fact of seeing her. Could never quite catch up to herself in the act. It was, rather, as if the Chesh was always dissolving just beyond her perception of her. (As though there were nothing anywhere out there that Alice could hold on to. Nothing she could count on still being there—on staying there.)

  She was right there, Chesh was—wasn’t she?—and yet, still beyond there: that toothy, teasing grin, like so many sorry syllables, disbanding, discombobulating, “Always parrrrting, yes, and greeting. At least you can’t complain you need a change of scene.”

  Mentally I shake hands with you for that answer, despite its inaccuracy. “But . . .”

  Gone. No sign, no symbol of her. No trace of who-or-whatever, fictional or factual, had actually been there. (In any event, Alice asked, can there be anything, so quick to come and quick to go, as the frank affection of a cat?)

  And again, the siren—like some barbaric, yawping echo of that Cheshire meowww—wailing even as it waned. Yewawwawweeweewaa . . .

  Pertly, Miss Mamie turned to Dodgy: “Maybe Adolf missed your call—about my birthday?” Then: “On Thursday?”

  “Thursday?” Dodgy yawned. “We’ll all be gone before the night . . . Still, one day when they dig us up, we’ll be immortalized . . . Pray God, I haven’t aged too much.”

  Yeewawwaaaweewaooooaa . . .

  Suddenly, Pudding. Bolting upright. Shaken. His bad eye palpitating. As if he’d just heard reveille—or some Alarm for Troops to Turn Out under Arms.

  “Pudding, sir! Harold Pudding. Present and correct.”

  Waawaaw, the siren waaw’d. Not to be outdone, that hemispheric Nurse drew herself up, aghast. Pivoting on her sensible heels. The definition of shrill: “Mr. Puuuuuuddddiiinnng?”

  “Sir! Yes, sir! Before your Throne of Grace, sir!”

  Angus
, roused from his roost, satirically called out: “Right, right. And I, I, too, shall not cease from this mental fight, nor will my erect red Sword, my heated Meat Puppet, sleep . . .”

  “Hehehehahah,” Dodgy giggled (while Angus guffawed godawfully). “His red Trouser Snake, the boy means!”

  But Harold heard neither—heard no one—too alone he was, to take in any ventriloquism outside him. Standing at attention, in a shuddering vigil—like the last man standing in some mad dance of marionettes. Giving fair warning to his imaginary friend, his lost companion: “Put on your flak jacket and helmet, Freddie! Head down in your trench. Doooowwwn!”

  Startled and sad, from a sadness as large as her past, Alice watched every last silhouette stop. All except Harold’s, that was.

  With a nod of the head, Pudding made sure his imagined mate was there, still there—as he clasped his good Pudding hands in good-soldierly prayer. Brusquely he shouted again, “Dooooowwwwnnn!”

  A grim whistle blew. The Nurse, it was—summoning an Underground marshal.

  “Come, Freddie, that’s us!” Harold urged. “There’ve been whistles enough!”

  “Abso-bloody-lutely, mate,” chirped Angus. Abruptly out-Freddie-ing Freddie: “Out of this dust, let us rise and be touched!”

  But Harold did not hear that faux-Freddie cry, nor that heckling grunt. Prone on his belly, he’d ducked under Mamie’s cot and lay there now, utterly still, shoulders hunched. While Mamie herself ducked under her blanket, still holding, still minding, her precious gilt cup.

  “See, blokes like me,” argued Angus, “failed volunteer blokes like me, we don’t fly. No, we climb a great ladder.” With a near-canine chortle, he ruffled Mamie, with a rough hand, through her blanket: “Muck-ups like me, it’s easy-peasy—see, we put out the li’l girls’ fires. But soon soon our ladders will be cryin’ for water! Haaaaaaah!”

  Shrilly that Nurse-whistle sounded. She herself drawing nearer, crying after, “Fire Guard! Marshal!”

  But on Angus had gone. Pocketing his pipe, he clamped that same presuming hand on Alice’s back. Swaggering suggestively: “Let that Queen call her dogs and her Marshals. The real enemy’s in our pants, isn’t he, darlin’?”

  “Alice,” a voice rasped. Alfred?

  It was. Yanking his curtain full open, the boy peered out palely, wildly.

  “Alfred Hallam,” the Nurse cried, her own eyes wide in alarm. “Close that, this instant!”

  “No matter what—if we lie down, or don’t—it will come!” Angus cawed.

  “No! You! Don’t!” cried Alfred, rearing himself forward from his precarious perch.

  “Ah yes, we can keep to our sad separate cots, still all those Kraut-bombs will fall. Fall like some pestilence,” Angus prophesied. “Explode here, above. Just a matter of time, till they’re all close enough. Till that water main bursts, and all your fine tunnel is smothered in sewage and gas.”

  “It will not!” Alice retorted. “Mr. Churchill would never have let us come down here. He knew it was sound. And it is. All of us, we’ll be safe down here—”

  “From the Drip? Do you think—”

  “Let her be!” Alfred shouted, heaving himself farther forward, his feet near-skidding from under him as he hoisted his frail form toward the floor.

  Keenly whistling, bounding suddenly toward him, the Nurse called out, “Hallam!”

  Alice saw: “Alfred?!”

  But Angus snorted, holding her hostage, staying his burled arm on hers. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”

  “That’s enough out of you!” hollered Alfred. Running, trying to run, his knees foundering. Hurtling himself headlong toward Angus. “Fear-mongering thing,” he cried. “Half-priest, half-pilot, are you? Setting yourself so above—looking down from your fear? Men like you, you’re the reason we’re down here.”

  “Oh, do you think?” Angus challenged.

  “Let her go!” demanded Alfred. And he lunged, all at once, grabbing Angus, breaking Alice free with the force of his fall.

  Yes. No. That moment, falling—once again—Alfred! But the stalwart Angus held on, with rough arms breaking that fall. Holding him, catching, resisting, as Alfred kicked, struck, and balked, wheezing and panting and heaving for breath.

  “Give me him,” commanded the Nurse, pressing her own stalwart flesh into the mix. Grappling Alfred, still convulsing, into her arms, she glowered at Angus: “It’s you, brought this on. You Hothead Fool!”

  “Opioid-induced Hyperalgesia,” the Good Doctor interjected, fixing his (indifferent) congregation with a mad pulpit eye, “this was ever, seemingly, a paradoxical phenomenon, ha; but—”

  “Dr. Butridge!”

  “Whaaaat?”

  Rebuffed, half-repentant, like a shamed reprobate, still Angus held on. Striding beside the Nurse, helping her lug the still-protesting Alfred back to his tent. There, with a firm, callous hand on his chest, she wrestled the boy’s wasted limbs onto the bed.

  Across the grizzled room of the Tube, Angus looked bluely back. In self-abasement. A look of pure apology, a sort of open ovendoor to a soul in regret. But Alice was taking no guests. Straining, stepping toward Alfred, shaken by the sight of him—as if some deathly chill had caught hold of him—still she could not catch a breath.

  And . . . that moment, Harold Pudding leapt like a cricket caught in the kitchen. With a sudden shudder of his shoulders, swatting his neck with his scarred open palms. In a frenzy. Alarmed to conniptions by Angus’s outburst. Chilled, sweating, yellower than yellowing grass, the dazed soldier vaulted about, to the consternation of every cot, sparking an “Ouch!” and an “Ow!” and—from the just near-again Angus, a “Hey, mate, look out!”

  “Careful,” called Alice.

  But he did not turn. With a brisk disheveled bound, down down the platform went Pudding, caprioling.

  “Pudding? Harold Pudding?” Old Doc Butridge queried, as if he were just, fortuitously, awakening.

  Still so distracted, that Private related: “‘For God’s sake, Pudding,’ they told me—with the blood still spurting down Freddie’s face. ‘For God’s sake, Pudding, take hold of yourself.’”

  “My thought exactly,” the Nurse commanded. “Just where do you think you’re going?”

  “No weapons, sir!” that good soldier returned. A broken syntactical plea: “My presence will be with you. Even when you are without me. And no weapon turned against us, never will it prosper.”

  Like a panicked colt, so confused it kept running back into the barn on fire, Harold cantered—pouncing on each stair, coursing past every bugaboo’d sleeper, near-whinnying as up up he leapt, he went. The fraying pages of his sketchpad fluttering onto the platform.

  “Your book, Harold!” Alice called.

  With that word he stopped, with that word he looked—some faint blossom of a look put forth to Alice. Like a thing set free in a sharp wind. Like some green life within the scorched tree which still housed him. Quick, quick, said the look, as it also said goodbye.

  And . . . Just as quick (too quick for any fresh word from her to interrupt) he turned, he went. Like some candlelight, by which he’d read and sketched within that book, flaring that much higher. Before going out forever?

  “Hey, cool the borrowed brass, mate—there’s a raid on!” cried Angus, with an abrupt burst of dust, toiling after.

  But nothing surfaced further from the soldier, as on and on he bounded: “To the breach! To the breach!”

  “Pudding, dear boy,” Dodgy deigned to call after, “do come to your senses!”

  But on on, regardless, the untented soldier went. Still shivering. “‘Thank Gawwwd, our Harold, our youngest, is well out of it . . .’”

  “Come back here!” the Nurse yowled. Her cramped crabbed feet chasing after.

  “Stop! Stop him!” cried Nigel.

  But on, toward the loudpoun
ding night, Pudding went. Evading the Nurse and the winded Angus’s grasp. Stair after stair. “‘Chip! Chip! Chip!’”

  “Pudding, this minute!” the Red Cross Nurse demanded.

  But on, as if into his lost comrade’s arms, Harold ran. On and out of the Underground.

  “Pudding—nooooo!” Dodgy bellowed after, discarding his usual guise of disinterest.

  But . . . gone. His shadow gone. Not a footfall left.

  The entire world, it seemed, staring itself into shivers after him. A world dispossessed. Till finally, the Tube station drew in a breath, as if ready to participate in the sensation of living once again.

  “Oh my God, my pearls!” Mamie shrieked suddenly. Ripping her blanket from her, near-toppling her teacup. “Where are my pearls?!”

  “Your neck, darling?” posed Dodgy.

  Mamie checked. Still there. Sigh. “Well. All right, then.”

  And the world was itself again.

  And she? Not herself, not just yet. Searchingly Alice looked up the platform to Alfred. There he lay, flushed, chest heaving still, but with such relief in his gaze he seemed almost content. And yet, and yet. She feared what all that exertion had cost him. Was it only her delirium—or was his chest still trembling? As if his body was now too weak to keep secret how sick he actually was . . .

  . . . An oral quiz it was. History class. In the stale air of their staler schoolroom. That barrel chest of Alfred’s, ballooned toward her—so full of life. So full of him. As he insistently pointed and pounded his thumbs toward his breast. His gaze so ardent, beneath those lank copper bangs.

  “Alice Spencer?”

  That snub-nosed stickler, Miss O’Shaughnessey. “Yes, ma’am?”

  Alice, alone. Standing, knock-kneed, in front of the class. And falling, free-falling—all of Newton’s stupid Laws coming back to haunt her (all that force, mass, and whatever the rest of it). As she tried tried tried to sort how, when, and why those Angles, Saxons, and wretched Jutes had first invaded Britain—in AD 880.

  Miss O’Shaughnessey, nose-wings aquiver: “Shall I repeat the question for you, Alice?”