Kissing Alice

by Jacqueline Yallop

  ‘Excuse me, madam, could you take a seat? The auction is starting.’

  It was not Mr Wilcox himself who spoke, because he had not yet noticed Alice and because he had been planning in his head, for many days, the exact phrasing and intonation of the first public words he would utter on this significant occasion. It was a younger man who appeared from the side. He sounded offended by her being there.

  ‘I need to talk to the auctioneer,’ said Alice firmly, without looking at him, rapping her fist instead on the edge of the podium.

  Alice was somehow unignorable, and Mr Wilcox looked straight at her now, from his height. He did not speak. He glanced instead at his colleague who this time took Alice by the arm.

  ‘Madam, please. This is not the time.’

  Alice shook him off.

  ‘I want to talk to you about the rest of the book,’ she said, not quietly, and it was heard all around her, in the first few rows of the saleroom, as far back as to where Eddie and Maggie were each calculating a changed future. ‘I need to know what has happened to the rest of the book.’

  Maggie was panicking. ‘Oh my God, Dad, she’s going to say it’s hers. She’s going to take it out of the sale. There’s going to be all sorts of… can you prove she gave it to you? Can you prove it, Dad?’

  Eddie put a hand on her arm. He was noticing how the back of Alice was so neat this time, her hair perfectly trimmed and flat, her jacket hanging full, her skirt uncreased.

  ‘I suppose there’s just the letter,’ he said. ‘If that’s proof.’

  Maggie covered her eyes with the heels of her hands, pressed hard, and groaned.

  Alice unzipped the top of her document case, just far enough to prise it open so that the edges of the pages inside could be seen. The auctioneer bent, despite his better judgement, peering over the top of his stand at her. He presumed the interruption would be brief and eccentric. But then he saw quite clearly the swirl of Blake’s colours, the truncated lines of text, the thick edges of old folios, and looking over Alice’s head he raised his hand again, this time to signal a delay. The man at Alice’s arm stepped back, and a deep hum burst into the hall as though someone had let a swarm of hornets through the window. Only Eddie and Maggie, it seemed, were quiet, trying to listen.

  ‘You are, I presume,’ said Alice, ‘missing some pages. And I have some of them – here. A few.’ She swung the document case in a wide arc. ‘But the rest?’

  If there was more, neither Eddie nor Maggie heard it. Because the saleroom crowd was swelling forward, noisy, and because there was an announcement about something from the dais, and because Eddie was pushing his way along the row of people seated alongside him, desperate to see Alice, having no idea of what he would say, and hearing nothing except the bellow of an ocean gale.

  Theodore Wilcox stepped down. He shook hands with Alice neatly, and then led her away beyond the cameras and microphones to a door behind, through which they disappeared. Music was piped then into the saleroom and a woman with fiercely blonde hair apologized to everyone for the unforeseen delay. More wine was served. No one seemed to mind. Eddie was awkward in the aisle. He looked back to Maggie, but she still had her face covered and her head bowed.

  The door behind the auctioneer’s dais led into a short corridor. There was a small, clean office through another door on the far right, and this is where Theodore Wilcox took Alice now. He offered her a seat and a drink, but she remained standing, asking just for a glass of water. This never arrived.

  Alice laid the document case carefully on the table.

  ‘I have three pages,’ she said. ‘All from Experience. But you know, when I last saw the book it was the whole thing: Innocence and Experience. Exactly as it should be.’ Alice was calm but her voice was heavy with accusation and lapsed anger. ‘I knew he’d taken it apart – that’s how I got these – but he told me he’d kept everything. Everything. But now, I need to know what’s happened. Who’s got the rest of my book?’

  Mr Wilcox was cautious. ‘Now, before we begin, madam, Mrs… ?’

  ‘Alice Craythorne.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Alice. From the letter? That Alice?’

  He seemed to peer at her. Alice glared. ‘Shall we talk about that later?’ she said. ‘Shall we sort this out first?’

  Mr Wilcox summoned the words he had read at the front of the book and couldn’t help them repeating in his head. He found it hard to concentrate.

  ‘Right, Ms Craythorne, well, now – yes. But before we begin, I have to say, I’m not in a position to offer any kind of official authentication today. It’s very specialist, this kind of expertise. There are only a few people in the world… you have to understand.’

  ‘Never mind, never mind that.’ Alice was impatient. ‘These here, these are genuine pages. You can take my word for that.’ Mr Wilcox huffed quietly. ‘But that’s not important, not really. It’s the rest that’s important. What have you done with it? Did you know there was more? Is it a sales thing? Does it get you more money?’

  The questions stacked up between them. The auctioneer tried not to let his face give away his confusion.

  ‘I don’t quite understand,’ he said. ‘Obviously you know this book very well, Ms Craythorne, but…’

  ‘It was mine to start with,’ Alice said reasonably, and then, more quietly, ‘it came to me from my father.’

  Theodore Wilcox was conscious, all at once, of the heat in the room pressing in on him. He thought he could hear the drone of expectant voices in the hall. He wiped his face with his hand and came close to Alice.

  ‘Look, Ms Craythorne, this is, I know, a tricky, one might even say a sensitive situation. I appreciate that it must be upsetting, to find out, like this, that a favourite family item is being sold. But if you’re wanting to make a claim on it—’

  ‘To find out half of it’s being sold. To find out it’s been butchered,’ snapped Alice. ‘And through the papers – to find out everything through the papers.’

  ‘Yes, well, of course, a sale of this nature is a significant event. There’s a great deal of public interest, as you might imagine,’ went on Mr Wilcox.

  ‘I never imagined anything like this.’

  ‘No, of course, but a sale of this nature, as I say, and with the added personal interest of the book’s history, Ms Craythorne – it’s the kind of sale that captures the imagination.’

  He beamed. Alice was wishing the glass of water would come.

  ‘But it’s not right; none of it’s right,’ she said, not quite knowing where to begin. ‘It’s not just a book for sale. It shouldn’t be for sale at all, not like this. It’s not the right book at all.’

  Mr Wilcox pursed his lips. ‘Ah. I see. Ms Craythorne, it’s the new binding that alarms you, the reconstitution of the book, the metamorphosis.’ He smiled. ‘But you see it’s not a problem. It’s all correctly recorded. It’s in the catalogue. If you would like to come with me, back to the saleroom, I can show you exactly.’

  The auctioneer moved to the door, opening his arm to Alice as though to usher her through. Alice pulled a chair from the table and sat down. She sighed.

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said.

  When Eddie and Alice met again it was in the auctioneer’s office, with its barred-window view of bricked London yards and its stale scent. It was with Theodore Wilcox dry-mouthed and stiff, Maggie near to disappointed tears, and a bevy now of other staff pushing in through the door to see for themselves what had caused the interruption. Eddie was fretful, and Alice’s disappointment had drained her colour, making her seem grey. They said nothing to each other. Separated by the table and its display of pages and the people they did not know, they did not come close. But there was a longing they each acknowledged, written deep and old, uniting them.

  ‘I need to know what you’ve done to the book,’ said Alice.

  ‘We couldn’t find you,’ said Maggie, breathless.

  Alice did not smile at her niece. ‘And this letter malarkey, too; thi
s, what is it, a publicity stunt? Oh good Lord… I didn’t know you would do this.’

  Conscious of his responsibility, Theodore Wilcox felt obliged to step in and take charge. ‘So, Ms Craythorne, now that everyone is here we can straighten out everything, I’m sure. Bearing in mind that we are here today, all of us, to sell this beautiful copy of William Blake’s Songs of Experience.’ He looked around firmly, not letting them speak. ‘And I needn’t remind you that there’s a packed saleroom out there, waiting. People from all over the world, respectable buyers. Not to mention the press.’

  ‘We just need a minute,’ said Maggie. ‘Then it’ll be fine, I’m sure.’

  ‘Well, I can’t put this thing off for ever.’

  Alice put her hands on the table and looked ahead of her to where the staff were crammed into the narrow doorway. ‘I want answers to my questions,’ she said. ‘I need to know about the book.’

  Theodore Wilcox drew himself up to speak but Alice turned to Eddie.

  ‘This is what I need to know,’ she said, and she hauled a breath from deep within. ‘Simple things, Eddie.’

  ‘Alice, I don’t know if I can… here… I don’t know what to say,’ said Eddie. He felt Maggie take his hand.

  But Alice went on evenly. ‘Let me see then, if I’ve got it right. So far. What I’ve read in the papers, what I’ve pieced together, what I know. First, that after Florrie died you went through her things and you found a book. Then, after a while, you found me. And then when you took the book apart – God only knows why you would take it apart, for pictures or trinkets or whatever, but anyway – when you took the book apart you gave me three pages. Here.’ She tapped the top of her document case. ‘Here, all three of them are here. Take them and see.’

  She thrust the case towards Theodore Wilcox. He unzipped it with clumsy hands and took out the sheets, laying them flat on the table. There was a push forward as everyone tried to get a view.

  ‘They appear authentic,’ he said, nodding. ‘They look like Blake. But of course, as I’ve said before, I can’t, myself—’

  Alice didn’t let him finish. ‘And really, that’s not too bad. Three pages, that’s all, and they came back to me. It’s all right, Eddie, that. I knew about all that. But then, some time later someone must have told you there was money in it, and you—’

  ‘It was on the television,’ interrupted Maggie.

  Alice glared at her. ‘You found out there was money in it,’ she continued. ‘And Eddie, what did you do then?’

  There were people between them, and Eddie could move no closer to Alice. The clutch of Maggie’s fingers was tight on his hand.

  ‘Is it a question of title?’ suggested Mr Wilcox. ‘Of ownership? Because—’

  ‘It’s a question of what you’ve done with half of my book and why you’ve cooked up this stupid sordid letter idea,’ spat Alice.

  There was a shuffle in the room, a slice of conversation from people passing in the corridor and then a wail. It was Eddie.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he moaned, and seeing that Alice looked away from him, he moaned again.

  Theodore Wilcox, also, did not understand, but he did not expose his confusion. Instead he asked measured questions, many of them, and it took a long time. Twice someone came through from the auction room to ask what to tell the gathered buyers, and twice the gathered buyers were asked to wait just a few more moments while the unforeseen difficulty was resolved. Mr Wilcox tried not to show his impatience. He tried to stay calm. But Maggie, in the end, was desperate.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘Dad. Just tell her. It’s our book. We can do what we like. We can sell it. She gave it to you.’

  Mr Wilcox had already ascertained the basic truth of this, and nodded. ‘I’m quite satisfied of that,’ he said. ‘The provenance is hereditary, clearly, as stated in the catalogue. You don’t contest that you gave the book away, Ms Craythorne, as a gift?’

  Alice shook her head. ‘But I gave them the whole book,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve just said that,’ hissed Maggie, through clenched teeth.

  ‘I gave nothing to you, missie, so don’t you start,’ Alice snapped. ‘It was Florrie’s – Florrie’s and Eddie’s – and it was the whole thing, every word. Innocence and Experience – not just this.’ She threw an open hand towards the saleroom.

  Again there was confusion. But the auctioneer was beginning to see, at least in part.

  ‘Ms Craythorne,’ he said, wiping his face with the yellow handkerchief from his breast pocket. ‘Do you mean… ?’

  The plot of things was coming to him. He wiped his face again. ‘Yes, yes – let me intervene. Let me imagine this. Just for a moment.’

  He raised an authoritative plump finger and the room was quiet. Eddie had his eyes fixed on Alice. The sun was shining through the barred window making the tips of her hair molten.

  ‘Let me suggest this,’ went on Theodore Wilcox, ‘as a possible scenario: that you gave to your sister and her husband, as a wedding present, a volume of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, complete. A long time ago, we should note. And for many years subsequently, we should also note, the volume remained in storage. As far as we know, neither your sister nor her husband read it, nor even opened it.’

  Eddie nodded at this. It was as though he had called out. Everyone turned to him.

  The auctioneer continued. ‘And then on the death of Florence, you, sir, you found the book with other of your wife’s effects, and with your daughter you proceeded to make pictures – and so on and so forth as we have established.’ His finger waggled broadly across the table, ushering away the inconsequence of this. ‘Until the book comes here, no longer both sets of Songs but just the latter half. Half the original book.’

  He spoke slowly, his voice ringing even in the little office. He knew he had it now. He opened his arms expansively, taking in the room.

  ‘Yes, and let me imagine this also. That in the intervening period, in that time when neither of you had the book, someone else divided it. Someone else took it away, had it rebound in two parts, and returned one part, the Songs of Experience to you, sir. Leaving you, Ms Craythorne, none the wiser, and you, sir, with what still amounts to a very valuable object. In my sale.’

  He was proud of the pause that followed.

  ‘That can’t be right,’ said Alice at last, but quietly. ‘Who would do such a thing? Why would anyone divide the book?’

  She looked at Eddie, the sunlight slipping on to her face as she turned her head.

  ‘It wasn’t me, Alice. Really. I’ve kept everything that ever came to me, every page. It wasn’t me.’

  Maggie was relieved. ‘It must have been Mum. If it’s like you say, Mr Wilcox, it must have been her. She must have found out it was worth something and sold it, half of it. That must be it.’

  The auctioneer brought his hands down so firmly on the table that Alice’s document case jumped. ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  ‘It fits all the facts,’ said Maggie.

  But Eddie shook his head. ‘I don’t think she’d do that. I don’t think Florrie would do that, Mags. And I would have known.’

  ‘Not if it was before, Dad, when you were away. Not then. She might have done it without you knowing. She might have needed money for things.’

  Theodore Wilcox was putting Alice’s pages back into her case. He looked up at Eddie. ‘It happens all the time, sir, all the time. We hear of it a lot. Sales are frequently made – how shall we say – discreetly.’

  Eddie could not let this be true. He shook his head again. ‘It’s not right. I know she wouldn’t… Alice you don’t think Florrie sold it, do you, half of it?’

  Alice’s voice was dull. ‘No,’ she said, and then, ‘I don’t know.’ She sat back in the chair. Some of the staff had drifted away from the table now that the mystery was solved, and in the corridor a young man was flipping a coin.

  ‘But if I could return your attention to the sale,’ insisted the auctioneer. ‘Per
haps we could continue. There seems to me no reason not to continue. Now that the confusion has been… allayed.’ He rested his hand on Alice’s document case. ‘And these other pages, Ms Craythorne. Obviously we can’t sell them today. That would be most unwise. They are subject, of course, to authentication. But if we could perhaps display them with the rest of the book; make it known that they are available; that they could be sewn back into the volume by the buyer, then it would, I’m sure, only be to everyone’s advantage. A prospective buyer would be reassured, I am certain, at the prospect of acquiring, sooner or later, the complete volume.’

  He picked up the case. The noise from the saleroom rumbled towards them as the door through was propped open to allow everyone to pass quickly. Maggie now let go of her father’s hand.

  ‘It’s not the complete volume,’ said Alice firmly, standing up.

  The auctioneer made himself very large. ‘Madam, the book out there in the auction has been authenticated. As far as anyone is aware – anyone outside this room – there was never more to it. There is conjecture that at one time it might have been differently bound, perhaps with a now lost copy of Songs of Innocence, but this is conjecture, academic conjecture. We do not need to concern ourselves with it today. All we need to know is that the book out there, in the auction, is now richer by three very beautiful pages.’

  It felt as if everything was resolved.

  Maggie moved towards her aunt and sighed. ‘We thought,’ she said, ‘that perhaps you wanted the book back, the whole thing. That you were going to say it was yours. And stop the sale. It’s a relief.’

  Alice pursed her lips, biting slightly on the lower one. Theodore Wilcox offered her his arm magisterially.

  ‘It was all just rather unexpected,’ he said, the noise of the saleroom luring him. ‘Rather exceptional. But we are unambiguous now, we are agreed, and that is the main thing.’

  In a moment the mechanics of the auction were moving inexorably along again. The office was cleared, the auctioneer was refolding his pocket handkerchief in preparation for the show, and Maggie’s cheeks were flushing red with the excitement of promised wealth. There was a scraping of distant chairs, a slight draught of cool air and the light in the room suddenly sharp and slightly green. But then Alice looked across at Eddie, still sitting in the corner, smoothing the creases in his trousers meticulously with troubled hands.