(It would not be alive for much longer.)
Whirrr! Whirrr!
“Theebyl!”
47
Charles Kingsley – if no great encourager of girls – had his uses. She and Charlotte had found – in The Heroes – some extremely useful tips on how to deal with Mrs. Albert Comstock. They had been discussing how to dispose of her twenty-five years ago. This – rather like Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster’s treatment of her – was an inspiring example of tenacity of purpose, but did not speak very highly of the effectiveness of the methods used. When Athene gave her advice to Perseus on how he could overcome the power of the Medusa (who, like Mrs. Albert Comstock, had the strange power of being able to turn people to stone in her presence) they paid careful attention.
You shall take this polished shield, and when you come near her look not at her herself, but at her image in the brass; so you may strike her safely.
This had been Alice’s time to scribble, scribble, scribble.
And when you have struck off her head, wrap it with your face turned away, in the folds of the goat-skin on which the shield hangs.
This sounded hopeful, this sounded useful, this sounded positively enjoyable. It was one of the most serious things that could possibly happen to one in battle – that was how Tweedledee had expressed it – to get one’s head cut off. His words were a source of great comfort to her.
A book, a handkerchief, and an apple had not brought much tranquility the time she had gone into the apple orchard to read The Wide, Wide World; for a while she had higher hopes of a brass shield, a sword, and a goatskin, and had polished the coal scuttle to gleaming magnificence in the absence of a shield. This would give a good reflection. She could easily borrow one of Grandpapa’s Japanese swords: there would be no problem there.
The statue of Perseus in the Piazza della Signoria gave them an inspiring example of what might be achieved by a well-polished coal scuttle. He looked so proud as he stood there, holding the head aloft, the winner who’d just been awarded the prize for growing the biggest vegetable marrow in that year’s competition. The city of Florence had ever been in the forefront of civilized endeavor.
“The Gorgon! She will freeze you into stone,” she and Charlotte had chanted, like the maidens in the garden. Alice had remembered this, years later, when she had walked into the park through The Forum. It was as if all the statues had been casually conversing passers-by, frozen where they stood by a vindictive Comstockian glare.
When Alice read the story of Apollo and the Sibyl of Cumæ, she and Charlotte – somewhat shuffling their myth-pack – began to refer to Mrs. Albert Comstock as The Sibyl. It was an enjoyably naughty thing to say to each other, as much for the use of the “The” as for the use of “Sibyl.” Whenever Mrs. Albert Comstock boomed out some sonorous banality, Alice and Charlotte would whisper to each other, “Sibylline Oracles! Sibylline Oracles!” and the words possessed all the glamorously forbidden allure of “bosomptious” or – indeed – “gonorrhea.” You never again felt as clever or as totally knowledgeable as you did when you were a young child with a new piece of information.
“The Sibyl! She will freeze you into stone! The Sibyl! She will freeze you into stone!”
It had made an enchanting chant, and they had circled the pillars in the schoolroom menacingly in a counterclockwise direction for what seemed like hours at a time, as if they had Mrs. Albert Comstock (eyes bulging, sweating prodigiously) securely pinioned to one of them, and at their mercy, prolonging – with delicious anticipation – the moment of her demise.
(STAB ENORMOUS SIBYL!
(STAB ENORMOUS SIBYL!)
It would take a lot of rope to lash her down. They would be grappling with the sails of an Indiaman during a storm, belaying her, me hearties, or erecting a circus tent in a tornado. It would be like capturing some wild, ferocious beast for Phineas T. Barnum (hence the tent), but this monster would not be taken alive. Where would be the fun in that?
Decapitating Mrs. Albert Comstock, she wrote in her neatest handwriting as a heading in her journal – it was healthy for a girl to have an ambition (with or without Latin) – and made a neat list of the requirements beneath it. She felt all the pleasure of fulfillment as she ticked off the items on her list.
It was like collecting the ingredients together for a recipe.
2 lbs. of good cooking apples.
(Tick.)
4 ozs. of brown sugar, or to taste.
(Tick.)
1 oz. of butter.
(Tick.)
The rind of 1 lemon.
(Tick.)
That was how the recipe for Apple Charlotte started. They had cooked it especially once, just because of its name.
If she wanted to make herself feel ill – an excuse to avoid an afternoon of Miss Swanstrom slowly murdering George Eliot or John Keats – she would go into the kitchen and read the recipe for Brain and Tongue Pudding. The very name of it could bring on nausea, and turn her convincingly pale. It sounded like something out of Titus Andronicus.
The list of ingredients began: 4 sheep’s tongues, 4 sheep’s brains – it actually, with the freedom of punctuation more common in sheet music, specified 4 sheeps’ brains – 1 hard-boiled egg, sliced … For some reason, it was the addition of the hard-boiled egg (sliced) that started to tip her over into genuine queasiness. Reading the instructions completed what the ingredients had started, and soon had her heaving. Slice the tongues, chop the brains coarsely, and place them in the basin in alternate layers … it began chattily, and she would be clutching the edge of the kitchen table, with everything swimming around her, a distant ringing in her ears. Perhaps there were families who feasted yum-yummily upon this for months.
“Why, there they are, both baked in this pie,
Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,
Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.
’Tis true. ’Tis true: witness my knife’s sharp point.”
Stab! Stab!
No Miss Swanstrom today.
(STAB EMPTY-HEADED SWANSTROM!)
’Tis true. ’Tis true.
Dispatched like Tamora.
It was one of the cruelties of chronology that Dracula had not been published twenty years earlier than it was. It would have given them so much pleasure, far more pleasure than “Is it horrid, are you sure it is horrid?” ever gave them. This wasn’t a matter of the horrid, this was entering the realms of the thoroughly entertaining. It would have given them an even more enjoyable list to tick, tick, tick, better by far than a brass shield, a sword, and a goatskin, as they planned the far more spectacular doom of Mrs. Albert Comstock, a decapitation (it would have been a real disappointment to have missed out the decapitation) with attractively gruesome added extras, copying the method by which Dracula had been destroyed. The novel gave detailed instructions, and it beat killing the Medusa. It would have been something much better than collecting the ingredients for a recipe, as recipes somehow failed to include instructions on killing the animals whose meat would be cooked.
It would have been – this had occurred to her, years later, when she had studied Ben’s carefully written accounts for Dr. Brown – more like describing an experiment in a Chemistry lesson at Otsego Lake Academy. “Experiment” was so much more satisfying a word than “recipe,” adding a spurious air of scientific respectability to what was a long-anticipated killing. It would be a challenge to maintain an air of intellectual coolness when so much deeply fulfilling pleasure was involved. Shrieks of delight were out of place in a laboratory. You had to have a serious expression on your face.
Title.
Object.
Equipment.
Materials.
Diagram.
Method.
Observations.
You had to have all these in your notebook, neatly underlined, in this order. Dr. Brown was quite adamant, and his handwriting positively shook with impassioned outrage if Ben deviated from his formula. He was a man whose life poss
essed little excitement; his obsessive head-down long-distance running about Longfellow Park – he circled and circled, as if seeking a prey he never found – signally failed to expel the demons within him. That handwriting could be really agitated, great loops and uprights shooting right off the top of the page.
She had her Title.
Decapitating Mrs. Albert Comstock.
She had her Object.
Decapitating Mrs. Albert Comstock.
It was an Object (all sublime) to which surely no one could possibly object. They’d be encouraging her with cheers, offering helpful suggestions and generous bribes. She’d written the same thing twice, but it was so enjoyable to write that she’d willingly have written it several times more. She’d have written it out a hundred times, as if set some copying task for unacceptable behavior, listening to the echoes as the same words bounced off all the walls around her, each echo as loud as the first cry. What she was about to do was certainly verging on the not-at-all-acceptable.
She wasn’t sure what she ought to define as Equipment and what as Materials, her scientific certainties wobbling slightly at the edges.
Under Equipment, she could have made her list.
1. A soldering iron.
Tick.
2. Some plumbing solder. (Or was this Materials? She did like to do things properly.)
Tick. (She hovered on the verge of recollecting some memory of Ben or Linnaeus as she remembered the smell of this.)
3. A small oil lamp. (Definitely Equipment.)
Tick. (This was such an easy list of things to find.)
4. Operating knives. (No doubt about these, either.)
Tick. (They’d be sure to find various knives in the kitchen that would meet their needs.)
5. Garlic. (Materials?)
Tick. (The kitchen was going to be a gold mine. The fact that Mrs. Albert Comstock viewed garlic with utter revulsion – garlic was far too French for her – added considerably to the pleasure of what they were planning.)
6. A round wooden stake, some two and a half or three inches thick and about three feet long.
Tick. (She had found the very stake in the garden, supporting a bough on one of the more dramatically drooping apple trees. This was meant to be. She’d feel quite in control and masculine, quite Maggie learning Latin, as she hardened one end by charring it in the fire, and sharpened it to a fine point. She’d hum a tune under her breath as she sharpened away, thinking of the joys ahead, like someone preparing a giant pencil for an inspired piece of writing, ideas swarming upon her from all directions.)
7. A saw.
Tick.
8. A heavy hammer, such as in households is used in the coal cellar for breaking the lumps.
Tick. (They had the very same hammer, used for the very same purpose. This was surely meant to be. It was manifestly their destiny to hammer a stake into Mrs. Albert Comstock’s heart, cut off her head, cram her mouth full of garlic, and solder her up in her coffin. The fact that they’d enjoy it so much was surely a secondary consideration.)
Even more pleasurable than the preparations – the anticipation would have been wonderful – would have been the actual end of the vampire of Hampshire Square.
Method.
(She’d save Diagram as a treat until the very end. She’d sharpen all her red pencils especially, and Science would merge seamlessly into Art. Blood spurting high into air, she’d label neatly, drawing the arrows nice and straight with her ruler. Mouth wide open for scream of agony.)
1. Lift the lid of Mrs. Albert Comstock’s coffin.
Tick.
2. Place the point of the stake over Mrs. Albert Comstock’s heart.
Tick. Charlotte takes the stake in her left hand, and places the point over the heart, holding it ready in position for Alice.
3. Hammer the stake into Mrs. Albert Comstock’s heart.
Tick. Alice takes the hammer in her right hand – no, no, forget the text, both hands – and strikes with all her might. One Tick would not be enough.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
There would be enough ticks for a shop full of clocks.
Alice would insist on being the one to wield the hammer. It was, after all, from her house. She would bring the hammer down as if destroying a Test Your Strength machine, the bell exploding and whistling across the fairground to cut a swathe through the freak show. (It would spell the end of the Goodchilds and the Griswolds, the depopulation of vast areas of Longfellow Park.) Her capital-lettered Strength would pass the Test with all flags flying.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
She would bring the hammer down as if she were driving home the last bolt into a tie securing a coast-to-coast railroad track. Her arms would rise and fall, driving the stake deeper and deeper, while the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. She would wear an apron – her long, cream, floor-length apron – to protect her dress. She would wear her winter gloves to prevent blisters on her hands. She’d be thwunking so hard that there’d be a definite danger of blisters. There would be no hint of a Teuch! There would be no Faugh! and no Fah! There would not even be a Phew! The only sound, over and over – apart from the loud cheers – would be a satisfyingly resonant Thwunk! as the blood from the pierced heart – she liked to think of it yet again – welled and spurted up around it. That’s what it said in the book, and instructions needed to be followed precisely to be certain of success. (Just as Equipment had merged into Materials, so Method had blended with Observations. She clearly lacked the necessary scientific detachment to become a Madame Curie of Murder.)
(STAB ENORMOUS SIBYL!)
She would sing the “Anvil Chorus” from Il trovatore as she thwunked away. She’d learned the words especially.
4. Sing the “Anvil Chorus.”
“Chi …”
Thwunk!
“… del gitano …”
Thwunk!
“… i giorni abbella?…”
Thwunk!
“… Chi del gitano i giorni abbella?…”
Thwunk! Thwunk! Thwunk!
“… La zingarella! …”
Thwunk!
“… La zingarella!”
Thwunk!
Charlotte would be permitted to join in.
5(a). Listen awhile to hideous blood-curdling screech from the opened red lips.
Tick.
(b). Listen a little while longer, as it was so much fun the first time.
Tick.
6. Saw the top off the stake, leaving the point of it in the body.
Tick.
7. Cut off Mrs. Albert Comstock’s head.
Tick. Alice would insist on being the one to cut off the head. The knives were, after all, from her house.
8. Fill the mouth with garlic.
Tick. Charlotte would be permitted to do this, if she asked nicely. They’d need an enormous amount of garlic to fill that cavernous aperture. Charlotte would be shoveling it in with both hands.
9. Light the oil lamp.
Tick.
10. Melt some plumbing solder.
Tick.
11. Solder up the lead coffin.
Tick.
12. Screw on the coffin lid.
Tick.
13. Gather up belongings.
Tick.
14. Come away.
Tick.
They’d sing an extra chorus from Il trovatore as they came away, as a form of celebration.
“La zingarella!” they’d bawl triumphantly as they emerged, blinking, into daylight from the cellars of 5 Hampshire Square.
“La zingarella!”
You could keep Apple Charlotte. You could keep Brain and Tongue Pudding. This was the recipe to make everyone roar for more. This was the recipe for second and third helpings. This was the recipe to get the spoons banging on the dining-room table in an insistent, irresistible rhythm, bouncing from wall to wall like deafening multi-layered echoes of the heart-piercing thwunks.
“Please, sir, I want some more.”
“And you shall have some more, Oliver. As much as you want! All of you!”
In the George Cruikshank illustration, Oliver’s spoon was huge, as large as his bowl. It was too large to insert into his mouth. He would have to sip his gruel from the side. Here was an artist who read the text carefully.
“As much as you want! All of you!”
With a ringing cheer, the workhouse boys began to bang on their bowls with their enormous spoons, singing the “Anvil Chorus” as they jostled into a line behind Oliver Twist.
“Chi …”
Clink!
“… del gitano …”
Clink!
“… i giorni abbella?…”
Clink!
The spoons, like the bowls, were very bright and shiny, where the workhouse boys had licked them in their hunger. They held the spoons before their faces, as if they were hand mirrors – they were the right size and shape for this – in which they were studying their faces, like mermaids, like girls combing their hair late at night, noticing the results of slow starvation, the withholding of love, being unwanted: the sunken eyes, the pale, drawn cheeks, the emaciated bodies. They were – shrunken and bowed down – like a procession of young Dorian Grays or ragged Mr. Hydes lining up for nourishment.
“… La zingarella!…”
Clink!
“… La zingarella!”
Clink!
She stared at herself in the coal scuttle’s curving surface, her face lugubrious and elongated, like a face on the back of a spoon, as she pondered the problem of a goatskin. The goatskin was proving elusive. Charlotte’s reflection appeared beside hers, equally drawn-out and doleful.
“Do you think Mr. Gauntlett would let us borrow his leopardskin?” Charlotte mused. They had remembered seeing one in the photographer’s studio, draped informally over the shoulders of the Vestal virgin, massive in marble, with the breasts – “Boo!” – thrusting officiously through. Henry Walden Gauntlett was about the only man in Longfellow Park who employed a naked woman as a rack for clothes, if – that is – you ignored the scurrilous rumors about Dr. Vaniah Odom. “If we explain what it’s for?”
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