The Looking Glass House

by Vanessa Tait

  But Mr Dodgson was answering Alice.

  ‘Bends in rivers may have evolved,’ he said. ‘Young rivers go quite straight.’

  ‘Young rivers?’

  ‘Those high up in the mountains. They are in a dreadful hurry. But when rivers get old and far away from where they began, the land gets flatter and they meander and loop about, just as humans do.’

  ‘But why do they need to loop?’

  ‘They need to loop because every river needs to run into the sea and they are trying to find the best way there.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Do-Do-Dodgson! I’ll remember it always!’

  ‘My pleasure, Alice dearest.’ As Alice ran away from them he remarked: ‘I must confess, I am not fond of children who look like porcelain dolls, as so many people are. I have an idea of what makes a good photograph of a child: vitality. A look in the eye. And also good breeding. The children of the working class, who may be quite pleasing in other ways, so often have something that jars: a thick ankle, large hands. Something that belies their roots and ruins their beauty.’

  The working class did have uglier children, it was true, Mary thought. Just the other day she had been shouted at on the street by one, more monkey than child – great coarse lips, dark skin. Dirty, too. As it turned out, Mary had dropped her handkerchief and the girl was letting her know about it, but it had not sounded like that at all. The girl’s voice was harsh and accented and anything that came out of her mouth sounded like an insult. Although – Mary ran over the scene again quickly, as if she were stepping over hot rocks – when she stooped to collect the fallen handkerchief, she found herself unable to meet the girl’s eyes.

  ‘Perhaps you have seen a little periodical called The Train, Miss Prickett?’

  ‘Oh no, I have not. Is it widely published?’

  ‘Very narrowly published, I should say. I have something in the current copy that I would like to show you. Not under my own name of course, it is just a poem. May I?’

  Walking as he was by her side, Mary did not have to turn her head to know he was looking at her. His eyes were pale and cool and flecked with points of grey. Sea-washed stones.

  The grass fell into the path, swept into disarray by the breeze.

  ‘I would like to see it,’ she said, glancing back at him. His face was all politeness, just as it had been when he made his remark about the Queen. She could not tell if underneath he was mocking her, or if he was covering up his embarrassment with good manners.

  ‘I should like to show it to you. It is a happy coincidence that I ran into you all today.’

  ‘It was not a coincidence!’ said Ina. ‘You were following us!’

  Mr Dodgson blushed. ‘Well, I admit it. I thought it might be pleasant to take a walk with you.’ After a pause he added: ‘I think I may have overstayed my welcome at the Deanery. For the time being.’

  For the first time that afternoon Mary remembered Mr Dodgson’s humiliated smile, the handles of his wheelbarrow dropped in dismay. She had caught his eye, and what expression had she made? She had smiled, tried to impart that it was a misunderstanding.

  But if she brought it all up with him now, she would have to give a reason why Mrs Liddell cut him. Or lie and say he came on the wrong date. But it had not been a misunderstanding. Mrs Liddell wanted him kept away. Did that mean she should steer the children away now?

  She shook her head and smiled, trying to signal that he was being foolish, without contradicting him.

  ‘Well, I suppose I had better leave you here, for we are at the gate,’ said Mr Dodgson. ‘Before we part, I wondered . . . well, I wondered if you would like to come over to my rooms on Thursday? I could show you The Train; it’s only a little thing, as I say, but you may like to read it. I hope one day to write something of note, in the field of mathematics perhaps. I do write, as often as I can. It is good to have ambitions, I think. It may drive one on to do something one otherwise would not have achieved.’

  Ambition was a good thing in a man, as long as it was not for fame. Mary thought of Mr Wilton with his bear-like hands on the glass countertop, and his disparagement of ambition, though he did work in a haberdashery.

  Of course there was nothing wrong with a haberdashery.

  ‘Bring the children too,’ said Mr Dodgson. ‘They may find something to amuse them.’

  Mrs Liddell had said that she did not want Mr Dodgson at the Deanery. But she had not said that the children were not to see him at all.

  ‘Mr Dodgson’s rooms! Oh, let us go,’ said Alice. ‘There is so much in them, I should never be bored.’

  ‘I would like to,’ said Mary. There could be no harm in it.

  As they were turning to go, Mr Dodgson called out: ‘No need to trouble Mrs Liddell about it! I have troubled her enough. The vacation is only two weeks away. I am sure she is busy, and we ought to keep out of her way.’

  Chapter 10

  The note had been there, on a silver platter in the hall, when Mary and the children returned from their walk. It had suggested a walk around the meadows. Mary had written another note to suggest that perhaps, instead of taking a walk, they might visit Mr Wilton’s church again as she had ‘very much enjoyed it last time’. But perhaps she sounded too keen. She crossed out the word very, but it could still be read. She cross-hatched it, but now it looked as if an earwig had landed on the word. She started again, this time making no mention of enjoyment.

  Mr Wilton wrote back to say he would be happy to take her again, the following Sunday, if she liked.

  The light filtered quite brightly through the diagonal panes of the church and fell on the gleaming shoulders of the pastor, and on those of Mr Wilton, illuminating the specks of dust or skin that speckled below his collar.

  As Mary knelt to take Communion, she felt the firm palm of the pastor on her shoulder. He seemed to press all the air from her lungs and she felt, in her last whisper, the tendrils of the words I’m sorry wisp from her lips. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and as she breathed it she struggled to find out what for, though the words were a relief to say. They swept through her with a soft brush, cleaning out her mouth and the back of her throat.

  But afterwards she found herself unable to speak in tongues, though most around her did. The pastor seemed to glide over her, as if he knew.

  Outside in the spring glare, Mr Wilton assured her that the gift would come back. She had been lucky, he said again, bending over her close enough that she could see the two black hairs that sprang from the depths of his ears.

  Mary nodded. She desired it, she told him, very much.

  She must wait for the gift to fall, he said, but next time she must open her mouth to let it in.

  The sound of tongues was like an ancient language, unlearned, dredged up from the soul. Mary could hear it still as she and the children walked across the quadrangle towards Mr Dodgson’s rooms a few afternoons later.

  One of his nonsense poems came back to her:

  ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. Ta kennita kanardi.

  Both seemed to signify something deeper, to have some meaning, but she could not fathom what. She put her hands up and rubbed her ears. The fleshy buds of the lobes were a comfort; they assured her that she was there.

  After the service, she and Mr Wilton had seen Mrs Chitter worth. There seemed to be no place in Oxford that the woman did not go. She had looked at the couple and then at the church in a pointed fashion. Unasked, Mr Wilton had volunteered the information that they had just come out of a service there; had she been?

  Mrs Chitterworth had stepped back with what Mary later thought of as needless drama, her hand to her mouth. ‘Is it respectable?’ she had asked.

  Mr Wilton’s smile was easy. ‘Very,’ he’d assured her.

  She dropped her voice. ‘But I heard stories of the devil being heard in there.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind, Mrs Chitterworth. God’s voice may be heard, that is all: “For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue spe
aketh not unto men, but unto God, for no man understandeth him, however it may be that in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.” That is from Corinthians, Mrs Chitterworth, as I am sure you know.’

  Mrs Chitterworth had pulled herself up. ‘I do know the scriptures, thank you, Mr Wilton.’ And she had bade them good day with pursed lips.

  Mr Dodgson had seemed to want her advice, or her judgement. Mrs Liddell had not said that Mary should not see him, merely that he ought not to come to the house.

  The feeling of being a fugitive, hurrying towards Mr Dodgson, was not unpleasant.

  Although whenever she thought about Mr Dodgson and the swan, she experienced a curl of shame. She had read no book in which the hero wiped entrails from the toe of the heroine’s shoe.

  But of course, Mr Dodgson was not the hero of this book.

  The sticky pink intimacy, smeared across the leather; even when he expunged it, it left a darker slick that Mary could see now. But he had saved her, in a manner of speaking. He might not have ridden to her aid, but the white horse was a matter of semantics.

  They had reached Mr Dodgson’s corridor and were admitted inside. The walls were damp and the air smelt of the river. When he opened the door to his rooms, it was darker still, cluttered with piles of books and other objects Mary could not make out.

  ‘Mr Dodgson! Will you forget me while we are gone?’ said Alice, pushing forward.

  ‘Yes, Alice, I am afraid I might, for you will grow so much over these next two months, and I have been taking lessons in forgetting, at half a crown a lesson.’

  ‘Rather expensive lessons,’ said Ina.

  ‘Yes, but well worth the price. After three lessons I forgot my own name, and I forgot to go to the next lesson. The Professor said I was getting on very well, but he hoped I wouldn’t forget to pay him. I said that depended on how good he was.’

  ‘How good was he?’ asked Alice.

  ‘The last lesson was so good that I forgot everything! I forgot who I was, I forgot to eat my dinner, and so far I’ve forgotten to pay the man.’

  ‘But you won’t forget me,’ said Alice. She shook her fringe out of her eyes. ‘Even though it is the vacation.’

  ‘I won’t forget any of you.’

  Mary found she was clutching her bonnet to her chest. Mr Dodgson gently shook it from her fingers and put it on a pile of books, smiling his lopsided smile. The cheek that turned towards her was very smooth.

  ‘Are you looking at the mousetrap, Ina?’

  ‘Oh, is that what it is?’

  ‘It is a live trap, it is my own invention. You see, he enters here,’ said Mr Dodgson, pointing at a wooden flap, ‘and arrives at the bottom, where he has his final meal of cheese. I slide this wire compartment shut – of course there is no mouse in it at present – so that when I take it and plunge it into the water there is no chance of the mouse struggling on the surface and prolonging its death. Animal cruelty, as I said,’ he turned to Mary, ‘is horrible to me.’

  ‘But Dinah might like to play with the mouse,’ said Alice.

  ‘He would not like to play with Dinah, I am sure. I quite believe that the time will come, in England at any rate, when the death of animals, when it must occur, will be quite painless.’

  Mary thought of the sheep’s head. And of Mr Dodgson’s steering her away from the swan. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Not yet, I am afraid. There is something,’ he dropped his voice so that the children could not hear, ‘that I abhor.

  Vivisection on live animals, in the name of scientific progress. It must stop. I am writing pamphlets to that effect.’

  Mary had seen a baboon once that had been tied on to a pony’s back in the name of sport. Half human, half monster, but full of recognizable desperation. And the laughter of the men who stood around, taking bets.

  Mr Dodgson’s face was clear and clean, unencumbered by hair. Vivisection must be stopped, Mary found herself thinking, for the first time. Rabbits cut open when they were alive, writhing and pinned.

  ‘Look at me!’ said Alice. She was staring at her reflection in the looking glass. Her head was squashed up like the round end of a hammer and her arms dangled down from somewhere above her ears. Her shins were so elongated that her knees were up where her hips ought to be.

  ‘How do you find yourself, Alice?’ said Mr Dodgson.

  She moved her chin down and now her face was one hideous roar. ‘I can’t find myself!’

  ‘And isn’t that a most interesting place to be!’

  Mary went to the sofa; she did not want to commit to sitting in the seat of it and chose the arm, but only one foot could comfortably reach the ground, while the other swung into the air like a child’s. So she sat down on the seat, which turned out to be even lower than she thought. She fell back and back, her haunches sunk into its recesses while her knees were brought up against her breasts.

  And there was Mr Dodgson, with a slice of Victoria sponge cake, which he held out.

  Mary struggled forward, on to the edge of the sofa, its forward rib against her thigh bone. ‘Cake?’

  ‘Yes, today’s. I had my scout bring it up.’

  Mary took the plate and balanced it on the cushion next to her. The cake tipped on to its side, the leading edge hanging over the plate. He had not provided a fork and it was too big to pick up whole. She broke off a bottom section, the sticky yellow icing clinging to her fingers. The clods of it stuck in her throat. He was watching her eat. Mary smiled, unconvincingly. She hated to be watched while she was masticating. She had caught a glimpse once of herself at the dinner table. The bones in her jaw could be clearly seen as they hinged and slid. ‘Very nice, thank you,’ she said.

  At last, he went. Ina was fondling a clockwork bear.

  No choice but to lick her fingertips clean; she could not see a napkin. Though even after she had used her tongue, a residue of sugar remained. She stuck her hand flat under her dress. He would not notice a smear on his sofa, what with everything else in the room.

  The shelf nearest her held a microscope housed in a mahogany travelling case marked cld glass with care, a telescope, a pair of field glasses, what looked like a human skull, a modified typewriter, a number of musical boxes and a collection of watches. On the lowest shelf was something that looked like a silver pen, only it had no nib, and both ends were splayed.

  Mr Dodgson had returned. ‘I see you are looking at my Ammoniaphone, Miss Prickett. The air inside it is supposed to resemble the soft, balmy atmosphere of the Italian peninsula. I believe its inventor analysed the air there and found a quantity of ammonia and peroxide of hydrogen unique to the area. It is supposed to produce a melodious and rich voice, much like the Italian voice, I suppose. Would you like to try it?’

  ‘Oh no, I have never been to Italy!’

  ‘You will not need to, if the claims for this are to be believed.’ He came towards her. ‘Press the end valves and place your lips tightly over the entrance.’

  He could not be coming to put it between her lips. Mary smiled to try to signify that it was normal, this coming towards her, this insertion of an Ammoniaphone in her mouth, but at the last moment Mr Dodgson allowed her to reach for the thing herself and guide it between her teeth, only the sides of their smallest fingers brushing each other.

  Mary felt, but did not admit to herself until later, a small shrink of disappointment.

  ‘Breathe in, slowly but deeply.’

  Mary breathed in as she was told, fastening her eyes on the ruched black buttons that punctuated his sofa. Mr Wilton would like the material: practical, without being cheap. The Ammoniaphone tasted of peppermint and something else sharper – ammonia, she supposed. As she inhaled, a popular song drifted into her mind:

  I’ve found a friend, oh, such a friend!

  He loved me ere I knew Him;

  He drew me with the cords of love,

  And thus He bound me to Him.

  ‘There now – speak to me, let me hear if you are improved.’

 
; ‘What shall I say?’ asked Mary.

  ‘Ah, you see, it has done not a whit of good; you sound just the same as you did before. I knew it! I shall send it back to its maker at once.’

  She must think of something clever to say. But nothing came. ‘What should I sound like?’

  ‘You should sound just exactly as you do, Miss Prickett.’

  Mary blushed. She still felt his eyes on her. She turned her head away.

  ‘I had hoped it would help me in the speaking of my sermon next Sunday, but now I do not hold out much hope.’

  She turned to look at him again. His face was so smooth, so different from Mr Wilton’s. So untroubled by hair.

  ‘I should hate to have an attack,’ he said.

  ‘An attack?’

  ‘Of my affliction. My hesitation.’ He sat down beside her, quite close. He was still smiling, but now it seemed to Mary that she saw behind to the sadness that lay there.

  She said impulsively: ‘Perhaps the Holy Spirit could help you.’

  ‘I pray to the Holy Spirit every night. Alas, my hesitation is still with me.’

  ‘I mean tongues. The gift of tongues.’

  Mr Dodgson, who had been resting his hands on his knees, sat back. ‘You mean glossolalia?’

  ‘Yes! It is marvellous. Jesus and the apostles at Pentecost, of course . . .’ But something in Mr Dodgson’s face stopped her from explaining more. Her hand went to her lip and started worrying at it.

  ‘To have Jesus in one’s life is a blessed thing, Miss Prickett,’ he said, with his head on one side. His smile looked as if it had slid down correspondingly.

  ‘I am bored. Tell me a story. Please!’ said Alice.

  They looked up. Alice was standing at Mr Dodgson’s letter-writing table. ‘Who is Effie?’

  ‘One of my child friends. Why are you reading my letters? That is very interfering of you. You didn’t think you were my only friend, did you?’

  ‘No!’ said Alice. But she pouted.

  ‘Although Effie is not strictly a child any more, being eighteen. But we are still friends, I think.’

  ‘That’s what I told Mama!’

  ‘Told her what?’