The Looking Glass House

by Vanessa Tait

  Mary took her damp handkerchief from her sleeve and inserted her nose into it. The nose felt as if it had been grafted on, with its own heartbeat, radiating out over the rest of her head.

  A misunderstanding, then. She was not to blame. She had told the Aclands’ governess as Mr Dodgson had asked, but Mrs Liddell had made other plans.

  Mary shut her eyes. She saw again the expression on Mr Dodgson’s face as he realized they were driving off and leaving him, his eyes following them in mute surprise, a smile of embarrassment.

  Mrs Liddell turned to her daughter. ‘Alice, dear, perhaps you are growing rather old for Mr Dodgson.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ Her frown left no trace; her skin was a material that could be puckered and lined as often as it liked but smoothed out afterwards to leave an impeccable surface.

  ‘I mean that he has been your friend for a long time, since you were, what, four years old. But now that you are nearly eleven, you may want to . . .’ Mrs Liddell squinted up at the leaves. ‘You may want to move on.’

  ‘Move on to what?’

  Mrs Liddell sighed. ‘I mean he is a good companion for children. But for young ladies he is not.’

  ‘He knows lots of young ladies! He always says that his child friends are quite often by now grown into young ladies. Besides, I am not a young lady.’

  ‘No, but you soon will be. He is fond of you, fond of you all, I know. But I don’t want him coming over to the Deanery. These last few months he has practically lived here.’

  ‘But I like him! I like him coming over,’ said Alice.

  ‘Just do as I say. I don’t want to see that strange face every morning when I wake up and every evening before I go to bed. It’s too tiring!’

  ‘I still want to see him,’ said Alice. ‘We are friends.’ She set her face out of the window; she looked just like her mother.

  Chapter 8

  It was Mary’s second visit to church that day, having been to hear the Dean preach at Christ Church with the children earlier. From the outside this church looked similar, if smaller. And the people inside looked much like any other congregation: women with ringlets, bonnets; men darkly dressed and sombre.

  The scripture was read by one of them, followed by a psalm read by another. And then the first difference: the man who took to the pulpit to preach the sermon was unlike any man Mary had seen in God’s service before.

  ‘Thank you, God, ye chose in your wisdom to work through us, unimportant members, low as we are, plain as we are, but who are sustained by love.’

  He ought not to have included himself alongside his congregation. The pastor was not plain. He was tall and dark, his face was startlingly symmetrical, his hair swept down past his ears.

  ‘You have put in our hearts a longing for the day when the whole world will come to an end.’

  Beside her Mr Wilton nodded and whispered: ‘The day of the Lord is near, even at our door.’

  Mr Wilton, a millenarian? Mary had not known it. She nodded back at him in confusion. That meant . . . would there be time . . . well, how soon was the world to end? She listened out for a date in the preacher’s sermon but she could not get one.

  No set date. That was a good thing: if he meant to ask her to marry him, there was still time before the apocalypse.

  ‘The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare,’ said the pastor.

  Around the church feathers shook, birds’ wings bobbed as women nodded their heads.

  A great wind was coming, he said – the trees in Christ Church meadow flattened like twigs, their roots torn up and dripping with soil. The roofs blown off all the colleges and a hand coming down and plucking out the inhabitants one by one, flinging them first to one side and then the other.

  Mary found herself smiling. The unbelievers in their finery lifted and twirled about, their topcoats flapping up helplessly, and cast into the fiery pit for all eternity. A great voice booming down from the heavens: Mary Prickett, come! And being lifted up, straight up, into a golden glow, warmth flooding her body.

  The pastor’s voice rose and rose until it itself was a hurricane that filled the church, and filled her. His vibrations got inside her ribcage and melted back out through her bodice.

  They must not stand idle, he thundered, waiting for the coming of Jesus! They must, in their greatest efforts, bring God to the world, just as the apostles had done at Pentecost, when they baptized three thousand souls and brought many more to the Lord!

  Mary’s cheeks were hot, burning. Beside her Mr Wilton got to his feet. In front of her the pastor elevated his hands, his long, pale fingers issuing out of a velvet coat. He was the admiral of a doomed but brave ship, his cape spread out fearlessly behind. The rest of the congregation stood too, as if drawn up by the raising of his arms, and Mary with them, as if her body belonged to him.

  He opened his arms and spread his hands. Mr Wilton did the same.

  ‘Let the Holy Spirit well up within. We calleth to you, O Jesus, send down your Holy Spirit as you did at Pentecost! Come down and fill us with your spirit!’

  Mary spread her arms out as the others were doing. Her heart was exposed; her breasts were exposed too, now that she had opened her arms, and pointing heavenwards.

  Somewhere ahead a member of the congregation started to make noises. Mary stiffened. But it was not a madman; they were not hurried from the church or hushed up. No . . . and even another person started to make the same sounds:

  ‘Haw haw haw kasheya. Rrabayya cattya rrrrrabya kotosho.’

  Mary looked to the pastor. In a tone of thrilling depth he exhorted the people:

  ‘Jesus, pour out your Holy Spirit! Open ye your mouths and let the Spirit pour forth! God will not speak unless you open your mouths!’

  Another deep voice to her left. Mr Wilton, with his eyes closed, his mouth open, started first to hum, then to chant: ‘Karreya shon shon magarr che che che che.’

  ‘Speak to Jesus. He who sits on the Throne!’

  The pastor had come forward from his pulpit, in his trousers of rippling black silk, his shoes with a velvet bow, and both his arms raised to the ceiling as if he were about to be taken up to heaven. His eyes were dark but piercingly bright.

  ‘Close your eyes!’ he said, closing his own.

  Mary closed her eyes. She let the sounds, spoken in an ancient language, whirl around her. In the black space in front of her eyes she saw, in a vision, Jesus, sitting on his throne. He too wore velvet robes; His hair too was dark and long; He too held out His arms to her.

  ‘Let your mouth open and speak. The Lord cannot speak through you if you do not open your mouth!’

  Mary opened her mouth. Jesus looked at her with love, such love in his eyes that she felt it rising up inside her, gushing like a fountain, emanating from the middle of her and flowing down her thighs and up through her heart and her chest and out through her fingers, which began to tingle with heat and cold, and her mouth. Hardly knowing what she was doing, not recognizing her own voice, she began to cry:

  ‘Korraamonshonddooor! Kayla la la la!’

  ‘The Spirit is here!’ said the pastor.

  Mary was talking to Jesus, discharging the longing of her heart in words that went directly to Him. No need to think, no need to mean anything, for this went beyond meaning to feeling.

  Mary felt poured all over by feeling. She felt so much, she longed for so much: she yearned for Him.

  The space in her chest, just below her throat, throbbed as if it were a cave that had just realized its own emptiness, at the very time it was being poured into and filled. Filled by Jesus. Plain Mary in here allowed – no, encouraged – to be needful. To have desires and long for release.

  Mary’s hips were pressed forward on to the pew in front. She closed her eyes and began to rock from side to side. The commotion whirled around her and penetrated her and the edges of her see
med to dissolve. ‘Mmm mmm mmmaaaah!’ With the buzzing of her lips and the buzzing of her body, she rocked back and forth until the whole church was a ship riding on a wave from side to side, God’s chosen people in the flood, and she felt a gush that started in the damp centre of her that was pressing hard on the pew and rippled outwards and upwards and left her flushed and breathless.

  Mary opened her eyes. Around her people still continued to sway and chant. A child in the aisle, bent over double and convulsing. And another child, her mother’s hand on her bent-over back, pulsing up and down.

  ‘The Spirit is strong in the children. Bring them unto me! Ma ma monna yay!’

  The pastor was touching the heads of the people, his face lit by ecstasy. He pressed with his palms the foreheads of the children. His hair had fallen forward, his cheek was flushed. Mary wondered how long she had been there, for she had lost track of time and the service showed no sign of ending.

  It was dark by the time they disgorged on to the street. After the intensity of the church, Oxford was quiet, muted. There were no gas lamps in this part of town and only the clatter of distant carriage wheels to break the darkness. In the sky Mary could see clouds of different shades moving, one over another, as if being painted in by a heavenly Creator.

  She shivered and wrapped her arms round herself.

  ‘You enjoyed it, Mary. It is rare to speak in tongues your first time. I know it took me many months.’

  Mary did not know what to say. She wished she were back at the Deanery, in her bed, small as it was. She found she could not make sense of what had just happened; it was still too close to see all of it. She needed to construct a narrative around it and make it fit.

  ‘I hope this will not be your only visit.’ Mr Wilton’s inflection rose up at the end, making the sentence into a question.

  ‘No, no,’ said Mary. ‘I should like to visit again.’

  Mr Wilton’s hand on her arm was warm and immutable. She felt its presence as they walked all the way down the High Street until they reached the gates of Christ Church. She still felt it as she undressed in her room at the Deanery and fell into a long, deep sleep.

  Chapter 9

  A tangled mass of roots hung over the bank of the River Cherwell and dipped fat fingers into the water, stirring the river into a swirling brown broth. The weeds twisted and turned on their moorings of rock, the water slipped and slapped, gushed and splashed. The children ran ahead of her in the bright summer gloom, but Mary thought only of Jesus on his glowing throne. She could not help but see Him looking very like the pastor, with his dark hair curling on to his collar, his air of melancholy beauty. Then she thought of Mr Wilton’s lips. The words that tumbled out of them had lent his face a different, a foreign, shape. It was hard to align the Mr Wilton who had visited her parents with the Mr Wilton who had sat next to her in church. The new image had different contours to the old, would not fit, no matter how she tried to place one over the other.

  There might be a note by now, waiting for her on the tray back at the Deanery. A note folded in two, on paper as thin as skin, asking to take her to church again. Mary imagined Mr Wilton’s skin between her finger and thumb. It would not spring back into place; it would slowly collapse into repose, like the skin on a rice pudding, though he was not very old, he could not be more than thirty-five.

  The gift of the Holy Spirit had opened up an emptiness inside her, just below her collarbone, that needed to be replenished. She would ask Mr Wilton to take her to his church again, if he did not suggest it. Even though, when she thought of what had happened there, who she had turned into, she was a foreigner to herself. She tried to mouth out the words she had spoken; she could remember the sound of them, sharp and ancient, but she could not bring up their form.

  ‘Are you speaking to me, Miss Prickett?’

  Alice interposed herself between Mary and her thoughts, in her yellow hat and coat.

  ‘No, I am not. I was not speaking. What do you want?’

  ‘Why do rivers bend?’ Alice asked, her voice high against the water’s gush.

  ‘It is to do with geography,’ said Mary.

  ‘But why is it to do with geography?’

  Mary stared straight ahead. The meadows were quiet at this time, a little after lunch, except for a man striding away from them at right angles, his boots muddy, his head turning first one way, and then another, as if he were looking for somebody.

  ‘Because geography is the study of the land,’ she said.

  ‘Is it the land that makes the river bend so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why?’ said Alice again, breathing up at her.

  ‘Because Y’s got a tail!’ said Mary, in a rush of fury. ‘Now go away!’

  It was beginning to rain. Mary stared up at the grey mass of the sky. When she looked down again she saw that the striding man had changed direction and was now coming towards them, rather fast. She recognized the way his hat was angled on to his head, tipped very slightly back.

  Ahead of her the children were crowded round something on the ground, white and awkward. Its neck was twisted and much too long, its beak pointed impossibly back towards its neck.

  ‘Come away, come away at once!’ said Mary.

  ‘It stinks,’ said Ina.

  ‘Then come away.’

  Somebody had kicked the swan over. The whole of the underside writhed with fat white maggots, bringing the bird horribly back to life. Mary fumbled in her reticule for a handkerchief; the smell clung to the inside of her nostrils and filled up her mouth.

  She stepped back and tried to pull Ina with her.

  But Alice and Edith still stared in at the entrails, which curled out with a horrible intimacy. Above, it was still recognizably swan-like: clean white feathers, wings held as if they were still floating on water. It made the spillage below worse, a ghastly secret. It reminded Mary of a medical book she had once seen. This skin that held in so much sausage meat. That glistened so terribly; that was both you and not you.

  ‘Come away, I said!’ But Mary’s voice was muffled by the handkerchief she held over her mouth. What if they got dirty – got a disease? Disease was surely floating about in the air round where the swan lay, and they would inhale it and get sick. She must wrench them all away. She must go in and push them back from in front, using one arm for two children.

  She heaved in a breath and shouldered her way in, pushing them backwards with her elbows, full of rage. Her shoe came down on something soft and marshy; she heard the high, slick sound of it. She cried out.

  Mary felt a steadying hand on her elbow – Mr Dodgson’s.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.

  Mary nodded; she could not speak.

  ‘Sit here, on this log.’

  On a log? Women did not sit on logs. But he pressed her down, his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I saw you in the distance. I hoe-hope you don’t mind.’ His smile held traces of embarrassment. ‘I thought I might join you, for a walk.’

  Mr Dodgson had seen her ineptness; he had seen her lose control. Abruptly Mary wanted to cry. She nodded up at him vigorously.

  ‘Your boot,’ he said. He crouched down in front of her. Her boot had a residue of something pink and white around the rim and on the top of the toe.

  ‘Let me,’ said Mr Dodgson.

  ‘No, please!’ Mary tried to twist her foot to wipe off the matter, round and over.

  But he had got up to fetch some dock leaves and was back in front of her, rubbing at her boot. Mary wanted to pull her foot away, but he had hold of her heel, and short of wrenching it out of his hand she could do nothing.

  The children’s faces made a semicircle behind his back. Alice was smirking. Mary looked back down at Mr Dodgson’s top hat as he worked; its circle of smoothly brushed black was a solid thing to hold on to. But when he got up, she could not look at the face that revealed itself underneath, smiling solicitously.

  ‘Shall I walk you back towards Christ Church?
’

  ‘We were going down here.’ Mary indicated the direction with her chin.

  ‘Oh – well, do you mind if I follow on for a moment?’

  ‘Yes please, Mr Dodgson,’ said Alice.

  Only now did Mr Dodgson turn to the children. ‘Your governess was right. Dead animals carry disease. You ought to have come away.’

  ‘But I have only seen a swan’s outsides before, never its insides,’ said Alice.

  ‘And you never need see it again, I think. It is ghoulish,’ said Mr Dodgson. ‘I cannot abhor cruelty to animals. I only hope it wasn’t wretched town boys who killed that one. I have seen them torment a cat before now; they seemed to be completely without human feeling. I chased them half the way down the Broadwalk.’

  Mary walked next to him with her eyes down. He was beside her on the small path that ran by the river, his elbow bumping into hers. She could feel his breath alongside her cheek, smelling distantly of fennel and the wine he must have drunk at lunch.

  ‘Can I ask you something please, Mr Dodgson?’ said Alice.

  ‘Alice, you are too full of questions!’

  ‘I assure you . . .’ said Mr Dodgson.

  ‘Why do rivers bend?’

  ‘Alice! I told you—’

  ‘No, Miss Prickett, it is quite all right. Without questions and answers there would be nothing at all! And I am very happy to help you out. The education of young minds is an arduous business.’ He smiled at her. ‘I know that myself, though the minds I have to deal with . . .’ He trailed off. ‘Well, they are not so young, and even more arduous. But in education we are in the same boat, both struggling to enlighten. Are we not, Miss Prickett?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary uncertainly. Though she would not have put it like that. The children’s questions, the number and velocity of them, overpowered her, dragged her under. And their needs, for attention, for affection, for physical things – paper, ink, dolls, dolls’ clothes, tin soldiers – were endless. They seemed to demand that she open herself up and pour out her own blood – she couldn’t do it. Not always. Not even often.