Pinkerton's Sister

by Peter Rushforth

  A gust of wind blew down the chimney, and sparks flew as in a blacksmith’s forge. Different patterns in the pieces of material in the quilt on her bed were clearly distinguishable. She could not see the colors, but she knew what they were. That patch with a narrow stripe was from a dress she had worn when she was ten years old. That polka-dot patch was from one of Annie’s old shirtwaists.

  The brief brightness died down, and the bed was lost in shadows.

  I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me …

  She saw him jump before her, when she jumped into her bed, as if leading the way, and then waiting there for her to join him. “Maggie Tries to Run Away from Her Shadow” was the title of Chapter XIII in Book First of The Mill on the Floss. She’d run away to join the gypsies because she was unhappy. She and her brother Tom had quarreled. She told the gypsies that she could tell them about anything there was in her books, because she’d read them many times, but one of them had taken her back to her father. She’d wanted him to do this.

  11

  She wrapped her kimono around her — it had been a present from Kate, after she had admired hers — and left the room. She felt as if she were a figure in one of Grandpapa’s Japanese photographs.

  “An oddly accidental oriental occidental,” she said to herself, as she fastened the sash. She liked the rhythm she had found in the words.

  She should offer this line to Harry Hollander for him to use in one of his songs. She walked down the steps onto the top landing. Later, the first cold faint light would be struggling through on that side of the house. The colored glass in the windows would have stained her first blue, and then green. Down on the next landing the wind sounded louder than ever. She would have been stained first green, and then red.

  When she walked here in daylight, it was like being at Mrs. Albert Comstock’s, in that Masque of the Red Death interior, where the redness of the decorated panes made the whole room scarlet at certain hours in the afternoon. Everyone walked around like a mass gathering of Lady Macbeths, with not just their hands but their whole bodies, faces and all — these Lady Macbeths had been messy with their daggers, gilding more than just the faces of the grooms — incarnadined. “Will these hands ne’er be clean?” they’d ask each other chattily, wading through blood, wringing their hands like fawning, blood-bolted Uriah Heeps, exchanging tips on stain removal in the intervals between gossip about neighbors. It was a spattered assemblage of Mrs. Dip, the Dyer’s Wives — polygynous Mr. Dip had clearly shifted to a Salt Lake City perspective when it came to matrimony, no wonder his hair was so wild, no wonder he soaked that suspiciously red-stained sheet so vigorously — and all the identical Mrs. Dips held up their stained hands scowlingly in front of their contorted Punch and Judy faces. These Family members did not look at all Happy. These hands would ne’er be clean. They’d tried everything. She should recommend Pinkerton’s Champion Stain Remover — as if loyally supporting a family enterprise — so enthusiastically endorsed by Washington Otis in “The Canterville Ghost,” the go-ahead American vigorously erasing the bloodstain of the wife murdered by the man whose ghost now haunted the English mansion in Oscar Wilde’s short story. “The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?” Knowing looks, lingeringly tapped noses.

  Mrs. Albert Comstock and Mrs. Goodchild actually performed these sorts of gestures, which Alice had thought existed only in novels. That — with half of their vocabulary — was probably where they found them. There was an illustration in Oliver Twist of that very nose-tapping gesture, Noah Claypole and Fagin both striking the sides of their noses with their right forefingers like incompetent nose-pickers — missed again! — and grinning knowingly. Mrs. Albert Comstock and Mrs. Goodchild performed them with overlarge movements, as if they were shouting in the language of the deaf. They probably twiddled their thumbs with the palms of their hands placed carefully on a flat surface, and the designated digits conscientiously extended, circling round and round as far as they could reach, bones cracking as they strove ambitiously for ever-more distant circumferences. Their screwed-up, shortsighted eyes were jammed against the hugely magnified black lettering of the first two rows of the sight-test at the optician’s, and the gibberish of these nonsensical words was all that they could speak, all that they knew.

  “A HKL!” Mrs. Albert Comstock squawked urgently to Mrs. Goodchild.

  (A HKL were the first two rows of the chart at Alice’s optician’s, Mr. Brczin. He sometimes economically utilized his own name for a sight-test when the usual letters palled. He was on the second floor, above the chiropodist on Indian Woods Road.)

  “A HKL!” Mrs. Goodchild squawked back urgently to Mrs. Albert Comstock, eager to share the knowledge that they’d both spotted a hkl.

  (You could recognize Mr. Brczin’s by the heaving pile of patients, all wearing their new spectacles with bifocal — bi-focal? — lenses for the first time, who’d — Aaaaghhhh! — fallen all the way down the flight of steps leading to his consulting-room and spilled out through the door.

  (“A hkl!” they called faintly, everything around them blurred. “A hkl!”

  (It was the only thing they could think of to say, their only means of summoning assistance. The chiropodist chose to ignore them, whistling “The Streets of New York” to drown their cries as he grappled with a bunion. His first loyalty was to feet.)

  They watched Alice, half amused, half interested, when she conducted signed conversations with Rosobell, the Pinkertons’ deaf servant, as if to pick up new ideas. Half behind her back — it seemed to be a part of their pleasure that she should catch glimpses of what they were doing, and they took no care to be discreet — they exaggeratedly, with convulsed silent mirth, mimicked her actions, like little-known obscene gestures. They lolled their heads from side to side, and rolled their eyes, economically mocking a deaf woman and a madwoman simultaneously in one seamless series of actions. If Alice turned to look at them — she’d tried this — they stared back at her with challengingly bold, bright eyes, proud of their saucy naughtiness.

  “Are you interested in dactylology?” she’d asked Mrs. Goodchild once, all bright and beaming — she’d looked up the word for finger language especially — and the use of five syllables had briefly defeated Mrs. Albert Comstock’s tittering toady. She hadn’t wanted to admit that she didn’t know the word, and hadn’t wanted to give an answer until she knew what the word meant. After a pause — eyes glazing, fingers still tangled in complex knots — she employed the Mrs. Albert Comstock technique of completely ignoring the question and changing the subject. She also made use of vigorously soggy harrumphing. She certainly modeled her methods on those of her like-minded mentor.

  Mr. Pinkerton would never have hired a deaf servant. That was the gist of what they were saying. Things would have been very different if Mr. Pinkerton were still alive. Mrs. Pinkerton always seemed to choose servants for their novelty value. Mr. Pinkerton had been far more sensible. He, like them, had had certain standards.

  Though there had been that darkie girl.

  Snigger.

  “A hkl.”

  “A hkl.”

  Their voices had become quieter now, a barely audible bottom-line whisper, the tiniest of tiny lettering — just above Printed by Charles Gouvernear & Nephew, New York — unfamiliar words that Mr. Brczin hardly ever heard in his empire of the shortsighted. His eyes filled with nostalgic tears. They were speaking familiar words of greeting from his long-lost homeland — May your balalaika always be well polished! How brightly the tracks of the troika gleam in the light of the morning sun! — words that he had not heard spoken for half a century, hearing them only in memory.

  “Gracious!” Mrs. Albert Comstock effortlessly switched to English. Her voice rose, in the tone of someone fearlessly giving voice to universal truths that must not be denied utterance. You couldn’t stop her talking. You could never stop her talking. Mrs. Albert Comstock said what had to be said. “My word! If I might be permitted! Darkie!”

&
nbsp; “Whatdoyoumacallit?” Mrs. Goodchild agreed. “Thingamajig! Whatsit? Darkie!” (Mrs. Goodchild varied her exclamation points with the occasional question mark.)

  Sometimes they appeared to spend entire afternoons of conversation in employing no other words but these, bound by the rules of some strict order. You could rely on Mrs. Albert Comstock and Mrs. Goodchild for intellectual stimulation.

  There was no sound from Mama’s or Ben’s rooms.

  This afternoon, her brother would be leaving for Japan.

  12

  She looked down the long final flight of stairs into the hall, and saw Annie, the little servant girl she had last seen twenty-five years ago.

  These things happened without any warning.

  Mrs. Alexander Diddecott talked with the dead every Tuesday at a house in Harlem, from seven to eight-thirty, her dead restricted to a certain place, and to certain hours, as if they lived in a museum. Alice seemed to see them at all times, and in all places. The memories were vivid, happening in front of her for the first time. Contrariwise, when real things happened they sometimes felt like something being remembered, a memory of something once read a long time ago, not as if they were happening for the first time then. As she drew nearer, she recognized the moment she was remembering. She had been ten years old. It was nothing special, and yet she had remembered it, as she remembered — with Emily Dickinson — a certain slant of light, or a tree against the sky, looking down at her feet on a beach, a red parasol.

  She was not aware of Annie at first.

  It was a summer morning, very early, and the hall was suffused by a red glow. In the evening it was green, blue, an underwater color. The hall was tiled, and sounds were sharper there — the heels of boots and the tips of umbrellas and walking sticks click-clicked, dresses swished and hissed, beaded braiding rattled like dogs’ claws — echoes close, enclosed. There were patterns on the tiles. No one ever appeared to notice them, but she walked with her head down, and was aware of them all the time she was there, as familiar to her as the Dutch tiles around the fireplace in her room. The tiles in the hall did not represent human figures. They had a look of the Low Countries, with their differently colored tulip-shaped designs, though — despite the blue-figured schoolroom tiles — she would always think of Dutch tiles as being black and white, like those in the cool, tranced interiors of Vermeer and de Hooch. The kitchen floor was like this.

  From the eighth step up she could see the newspaper lying on the tiles, neatly folded at an angle across them, placed there carefully, and when she lifted her eyes she saw Annie. Her white apron absorbed the redness of the light. She was standing in front of the mirror in the hall, with the front door and the inner door wide open, to give her more light.

  (There should be snow blowing into the house, there should be the heightened sound of the wind as it entered, an intense coldness — Alice was vaguely aware of thinking this — but there was no snow, and no wind, just mild early-morning sunshine.)

  Annie was peering intently into the glass — holding her breath, her mouth wide open, very still — and was grasping one of the kitchen carving knives with its bright blade some considerable way into her mouth; down into her throat, it seemed to Alice.

  Annie was fourteen, tiny, and the handle of the knife was huge. It looked as though she were about to pin herself to the floor, from the inside. Alice froze, not wanting to make a sudden noise, and stood irresolutely, wondering whether to attempt a silent retreat, or whether — by some discreet and silent sign — to let Annie know that she was there. Colors slanted across the tiled floor from the stained glass of the inner door, green, gules — was this the right word from “The Eve of St. Agnes”, the casement high and triple-arch’d? — and blue. Annie shifted the angle of the knife, and the sunlight caught the blade. Alice held her hand up to shade her eyes, dazzled, as if she were gazing out across a sunlit sea, and Annie saw the movement, saw the light in Alice’s spectacles. Her eyes, reflected in the mirror, looked up toward Alice, though she could not see Alice’s eyes, just two circles of light. With a sigh she pulled the blade out of her mouth. Several inches emerged.

  “I did check that I didn’t feel like sneezing before I started,” Annie said, as if that explained everything. She walked across to close the outer door, and then the inner door. The colors became more intense.

  “Are you training to be a sword-swallower?” Alice asked hopefully. This could add interest to her hitherto humdrum life.

  Annie shook her head.

  “No. This isn’t long enough.”

  There was a disappointingly prosaic answer for the sight that Alice had seen. Annie explained that, not possessing a small enough mirror, she was using the polished blade of the knife to inspect the back of one of her front teeth, where she thought a hole the size of the Grand Canyon (that was the expression she used) was developing. This seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Alice would have preferred the sword-swallowing.

  “I kept breathing, and losing the reflection.”

  “Breathing can be a problem. Would you like me to put my head inside your mouth, rummage about a bit, and check your teeth for you.”

  “I’m training to be a sword-swallower, aren’t I? Not a lion in a lion-tamer’s act. Anyhow, you don’t want to see my tonsils, not close up, and that big dangly thing.”

  “I promise I won’t attempt to swing upon the big dangly thing.”

  (A brief, rather pleasing, picture of a possessed Quasimodo — the most grotesque of all the gargoyles of Notre Dame — flinging himself upon the bells, swinging high above a dark abyss on big Marie, his favorite of them all. Even more pleasing was the picture of Quasimodo flinging himself upon even bigger Sibyl. The appalled squawk. The grimly disapproving “Gracious!” The reticule and fan brought into action as defensive weapons.)

  Annie flourished the knife.

  “I’ll wash it before Cook uses it to cut the meat. I almost always wash the sausage scissors after I’ve cut my toenails with them, though I may have forgotten last night.”

  “The sausages were particularly delicious yestere’en,” Alice retorted loftily.

  “E’en so. Verily, the sausages were suspect. They were — I am afeared to report it — from Comstock’s Bargain Counter.”

  “Oh, horror, horror!”

  Annie began to sing.

  “Oh where, Oh where ish mine little dog gone;

  Oh where, Oh where can he be?”

  Alice ignored this, adding, “You should refer to me as ‘your ladyship,’ menial one. I am the young mistress of the house and thou a mere varlet.”

  This was a game they often played when there was no one else around to hear them. Alice wasn’t too sure about “varlet.” She had an obscure feeling that it was used only in reference to males. She liked to get things right.

  Annie performed one of her spectacularly servile curtsies, arms reaching far out on either side of her, head bowed.

  “Forgive this humble underling, your ladyship,” she begged.

  “I am minded to be merciful on this occasion.”

  “Your ladyship is all too gracious to one as insignificant as my groveling self.”

  “And there are few as insignificant as thou art.”

  “As thou hast often commented.”

  Annie wobbled from side to side. She was almost doing the splits. Alice had seen a woman acrobat like this, high up on a tightrope, her parasol quivering in her right hand as she tried to keep her balance.

  “Your groveling is to be particularly recommended this morn.”

  “Your ladyship — as ever — is all too kind.”

  Annie disappeared, clutching the knife, into the dining room, hurrying like someone remembering something urgent. She was in the middle of blackleading the grate. The shutters had all been opened, the doors unlocked, and the dining room would have been swept, and the grate emptied. Annie kept to a meticulous routine. A moment later, the door opened again, and Annie’s head reappeared, leaning out at an ang
le, time only for a few hurried words.

  “I didn’t waste any time looking at my tooth when I should have been working,” she said. “I woke up early this morning, and started work straightaway.”

  Her usual time to begin work in the summer was six o’clock. The door closed again. It was as if she needed to explain herself. Papa must have said something again. Her hands and the lower parts of her arms had been dusted pale with ashes. Alice imagined her right hand inside her mouth holding the knife, cinders dropping down into her throat, a victim of Vesuvius, lying still in some inner room in Pompeii, curled up amidst her buried possessions, choked with ashes. She would be kneeling down on the cloth she had laid over the carpet, her housemaid’s box on one side of her, and the cinder pail on the other side, leaning over into the grate to brush on the blacklead. Sometimes, after she had done this, her hair and forehead were marked with soot. Alice thought of her as Cinderella, and herself and Allegra and Edith as the Ugly Sisters, one more than usual for added ugliness. When did Cinderella’s stepsisters become ugly? In her version of the story they were described as “fair in face, but foul at heart,” like something out of Macbeth, which was rather more interesting, and — she had thought, with considerable venom (Allegra had been annoying her again) — rather more accurate where Allegra was concerned. Allegra (no hesitation whatsoever in her case) and Edith could both be described as pretty. Alice — how appropriate an expression could be — was undoubtedly the cuckoo in this particular nest.