The Looking Glass House

by Vanessa Tait

  ‘I am sure Mr Dodgson does not want to be troubled telling you a story,’ Mary said quickly.

  ‘No, Alice. Maybe next time.’

  ‘But it is next time. Because you said that last time!’

  ‘When was last time?’

  ‘I don’t know! Last week. But do, please. Otherwise we shan’t come to your rooms again.’

  ‘Alice!’

  ‘And must I be susceptible to blackmail?’ Mr Dodgson sighed, though not crossly. ‘Very well. A short one. What shall it be about?’

  ‘Me,’ said Alice.

  ‘Sit down then, with your sisters.’

  ‘Where will you sit?’

  ‘I will sit here, next to Miss Prickett.’

  Mr Dodgson settled himself, crossed one thigh over the other. The space was not quite big enough for two: it was a love seat upholstered in pink velvet. Mary could feel the reverberations of his foot as it joggled; she could see his hipbone protruding beneath his twill trousers. He started on a story about an enormous puppy, the size of a house, which had appeared in Oxford.

  She looked over at the children. Alice and Ina had curled their legs under them and were leaning against each other on the sofa. Alice’s shoelace had come untied and hung down over the edge, her skirt ruffled up to her knees.

  ‘Did Mama and Papa not see anything?’ asked Alice.

  ‘They did not; they were so absorbed in their ham and eggs that they did not notice a thing.’

  Mr Dodgson talked on, about Alice escaping from a game with a stick, how she ran back indoors and into the nursery.

  As he told the story, Mary felt the quadrangle to be animated by the gigantic dog, its eyes level with hers as it peered into their room, its nose the size of a plate.

  ‘What happened to the puppy afterwards?’ asked Ina.

  ‘He blundered through the doors of Elliston and Cavell, where they did not know what to make of him at all, and all of the men gathered up brooms and pushed him out again.’

  Mary felt sure Alice would say that perhaps he would see Mr Wilton, and she started to speak just in case she did, to drown it out. She did not want to talk about Mr Wilton to Mr Dodgson; heat rose up her face at the thought of it, but Mr Dodgson spoke instead.

  ‘That is the expression I want to capture in a photograph. I have my camera set up just downstairs; what do you say we run down there and make a photograph?’

  Mary looked in surprise, but he – of course – meant the children.

  Mr Dodgson hurried the three girls outside and sat them on a sofa with a backdrop rigged behind it. He heaped them up together, Ina in the middle, Alice and Edith leaning in on either side. It was easy to see that the children’s heads were still filled with giant gambolling puppies, and they all sat still.

  Mary thought fleetingly of Mrs Liddell. If the photograph came out well, the detail of the sofa would be magnificent: pale silk with brown tendrils curling all over the front and back.

  Chapter 11

  Mr Dodgson had not made any attempt to show her a copy of The Train. The realization nagged at her. Possibly he had forgotten, even though that had been the reason given for the visit. Or he had realized that she would not make a good critic.

  Mary thought again about the Ammoniaphone: the silver gleaming tube, the bud-like protuberances at either end, the hard feel of it inserted into her mouth. And of Mr Dodgson’s face as he came towards her. Smiling, playful. And what else, behind the crystalline orbs of his eyes?

  She went to get a copy of The Train from town. There was no poem in it written by Mr Dodgson. Only after she had read through the whole thing did Mary remember that he had said something about a nom de plume. She looked again. A poem called ‘Solitude’ seemed the likeliest, written by a Mr Lewis Carroll; its several melancholic verses ended with:

  I’d give all wealth that years have piled,

  The slow result of Life’s decay,

  To be once more a little child

  For one bright summer-day.

  But Mr Dodgson was not old! His face was unlined. Although, she thought again, perhaps there was something elderly in the way he walked: the peculiar gait, the stiffness. Mary was glad he had not asked her for her opinion of the poem; she would not have known what to say.

  She would not want to return to her own childhood, not for anything.

  In the evening, as Mary was looking through The Train once again, there was a knock on her door. She started, and closed the periodical. She stood up and smoothed her dress. ‘Come in!’

  It was the housemaid. ‘The Dean would like to see you before dinner,’ she said, her thin face betraying nothing.

  The Dean! The Dean had not asked to see Mary once, not since she had taken up residence. Perhaps he wanted to hear about the progress of the children’s education. Yesterday she had made Alice write out the line I will not question my governess so much, otherwise I will end up in no good fashion, thirty times. Had it been enough?

  She swallowed. ‘What time?’

  ‘Six o’ clock, he says.’

  Without looking Mary in the eye, the housemaid closed the door. It was as long a conversation as Mary had ever had with her.

  Mary was surprised at the untidiness of the Dean’s study: books and papers toppled over every surface, candles oozed wax all over the desk. The Dean sat behind the desk, Mrs Liddell stood.

  ‘It has come to our attention,’ said the Dean from behind a steeple of fingers, as soon as the door was shut, ‘that you have been visiting the church on Cheevney Lane.’

  ‘The church? Yes,’ said Mary distractedly. She wondered what the church had to do with anything.

  ‘Are they habitual, your visits there?’ he said.

  ‘I have been twice,’ said Mary. Perhaps he wanted her to take the children next time she went.

  But the Dean drew in his breath. ‘Miss Prickett, I’m afraid that church is not the kind of place we wish to have associated with one of our employees.’

  ‘Our employees?’ Mary said stupidly.

  ‘Surely you know what is said about the place, Miss Prickett!’ Mrs Liddell leaned forward on the desk. Her gold chain fell away from her neck and hung straight down, the locket at the bottom swinging from side to side.

  Mary took a quick breath in and pulled at her collar. It was too tight. She remembered Mrs Chitterworth, after the service. ‘But, I beg your pardon, Mrs Liddell, what is said is wrong!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if it is wrong or right. Oxford is full of rumours, as you know. If something is talked about as fact, it is fact. And we cannot have you going about to that place, especially when the Dean takes the services here in Christ Church.’

  Mr Liddell’s nose was very imposing from this closeness. He took out a handkerchief the size of a dinner plate and buried his nose in it. After a moment he said: ‘It reflects badly on us. I’m sure you understand.’

  Mary felt like a child brought before the headmaster. Which, of course, the Dean was, or had been when he was at West minster School for all those years. The boys had been terrified of him, Ina always said.

  She had not considered that her visits to Mr Wilton’s church would bring the family into disrepute, but now that the Dean had chastised her, she saw that he was right. ‘I’m . . . I’m sorry. I will only attend the cathedral services in future. I’m sorry to have caused a disturbance.’

  The Dean nodded. ‘You may like to take the children there on Sunday next. Mr Dodgson is preaching, I believe.’

  Mary nodded also and stared at the floor. The Dean signalled, by opening up the heavy book on his desk and starting to leaf through it, that the meeting was at an end.

  Chapter 12

  Mr Wilton had sent Mary a note asking if he might visit her at her mother’s. The note revealed nothing, except perhaps an unwillingness to see the children again. As their parents were friends it would be proper, and pleasant to see Mrs Prickett, as well as Miss Prickett, he wrote.

  Mary did not look forward to sitting in her
mother’s front room with Mr Wilton on her only free afternoon of the week, perched on one of those wooden-backed chairs with the creaky legs, balancing a cup and saucer on her knee, trying to find a moment to tell him without her mother overhearing that she could no longer accompany him to church. But she could not easily refuse.

  So she set off, on the appointed day, across town. Carriages clattered past, spraying up mud. Mary clutched her reticule to her breast, her knuckles sharp on her collarbones. She drew her coat tighter around her. She was cold, she had always been told, because she had not enough flesh on her. The tips of her middle toes were splayed with chilblains. Her knuckles were purple. Her legs, when she unrolled her stockings, were mottled, just like the inside of her arms. She alone had a map of the inner workings of her body, delineated in purple veins. The tip of her nose, her forerunner into the world, was chilly.

  But as she turned into the High Street Mary saw Mr Wilton, and her heart surprised her by twisting in her ribcage. She had not expected to see him so soon.

  She began to walk parallel to him on the other side of the street, staring over, about to call to him. He was on his way to meet her, obviously. His face, absorbed, was quite different from the one he wore at the haberdashery and at church. Heavier, looser. The heft of him, the weight of his shoes struck her. His chin pushing out through the crowd.

  He stopped. Mary stopped. She thought something had caught his eye. But instead he pushed his index finger deep into his ear. He closed his eyes and agitated his finger, his elbow stuck out at right angles to his head, a look of contentment on his face. The vibration shook his whole arm. It was familiar, this action; Mary must have seen him do it before, but not noticed in the same way. It was obviously a habit.

  Mr Wilton pulled his fingertip from its waxy recess. He stopped walking to peer down at whatever was on the end of it. He looked back up, still standing still, rolling the tip of his finger against the tip of his thumb, a faraway look in his eyes. Then he flicked the residue on to the pavement.

  A couple with a poodle walked by, Mary expected them to see it and to step over it with disgust etched on their faces, but they did not. She turned away, intending to walk the other way for a moment so that she could lose Mr Wilton in the crowd; it would be better to arrive five minutes after him anyway. But he saw her.

  ‘Miss Prickett!’

  ‘Mr Wilton!’ As she spoke, she tried to push away his vibrating elbow, the bit of him that lay on the ground near his shoe. To leave the moment behind.

  Mr Wilton’s face had changed again: his full lips turned up towards his moustache, whose tips were waxed. ‘Well. We have met early.’

  ‘Are you going to my mother’s?’ Of course he was. It was just to fill the air that she said it.

  ‘Yes. Shall we go on together?’

  ‘I enjoyed myself at the Science Museum.’

  ‘And I.’

  ‘The bones were fascinating. The children do like dinosaurs.’

  ‘They certainly seem to. Are the children well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mr Wilton took this in with a nod. Mary thought she might bring up her visit to Mr Dodgson’s rooms but for some reason she decided against it.

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Yes. She came down with a cold last week, which was strange considering the season. But she is better now.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it. Spring colds are not pleasant.’

  ‘How is your mother?’ asked Mary.

  ‘Quite well, thank you.’

  Conversation would be even harder when they arrived at her parents’ house in Folly Bridge, stuck on chairs, inside four walls. She must try to find an opening to bring up the church before they arrived.

  ‘How is your father?’ she asked. Father to church – perhaps it could be one of those games of which Mr Dodgson was so fond: doublets. Changing head to tail by the replacement of one letter by another.

  ‘He is settling in, I think, thanks to yours. It is difficult to take up a new position so late in life.’

  Mary blushed and looked at Mr Wilton. But he had not meant anything; his face showed no embarrassment.

  How was it now? Head. Heal. Teal. He had shown her only the other day . . .

  ‘How is your father?’ asked Mr Wilton.

  They would soon have drunk dry all news from relatives and would be standing in a conversational desert. Into which Mary – but how? – could introduce a new trickle of conversation.

  Teal to tell. Tell to tall. It was remarkable how something could be transformed to its opposite just by incremental changes that by themselves seemed to signify nothing.

  ‘I have not seen my father recently, he works so hard.’

  ‘But it is the Easter Vacation soon.’

  ‘And I will be away with the Liddells.’

  ‘Ah yes.’

  ‘In Wales.’

  And then from tall it was easy: tail!

  ‘You are smiling, Miss Prickett, are you looking forward to going?’

  ‘Oh no! It’s just—’ Mary did not see the woman approaching her from the opposite direction until she felt a blow on the outer edge of her arm.

  ‘Watch it!’ The woman’s voice was too close to her ear. Mary could smell alcohol.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, drawing her reticule close to her chest. ‘Excuse me, please.’

  ‘You nearly took my arm off.’ The woman’s nose looked as if it had been grafted on from the insides of another animal: pullulating and red.

  ‘I don’t think that is quite right.’ Mary did not know what else to say. She hoped the woman would accept her apology and let her pass, but she stood there balefully.

  Mr Wilton stepped in front of her. ‘Move on,’ he said.

  The woman took him in.

  ‘Move on, or you’ll be sorry,’ he said, making his voice lower, more like a growl.

  The woman snorted. ‘If you say so.’ Even though her words were still provocative, Mary saw that her shoulders had dropped and her chin receded back towards her neck.

  Mr Wilton, on the other hand, had made himself bigger. His shirtfront was pushed out, with muscle and hair. Hair that must also matt between his thighs.

  Mary caught a tang of sharpness, the smell of sebum, sweat.

  The woman turned away, muttering. Mr Wilton pivoted round to follow her.

  When she had gone, Mary was surprised to see that she was trembling.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Mr Wilton was still puffed up, his face full of blood.

  ‘Oh yes, thank you, you’re very kind.’

  He had his hand on her shoulder; she could see, even from her vantage point, that between his second and third knuckle more hair sprouted.

  She looked away, into the window of a pharmacy. Brandreth’s pills are a tonic purgative for ragged feelings.

  ‘The streets are full of vice and depredation,’ Mr Wilton said. ‘It is a good thing that the End of Days is approaching and we will be cleared of all this.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary. She turned to face him. ‘Mr Wilton – I must tell you. I am afraid I can no longer accompany you to church.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because . . .’ She had not rehearsed this. Because she had been told not to was the answer. But to say it would make her sound pitiful.

  ‘Is it Mrs Chitterworth?’

  ‘Mrs Chitterworth? No!’ Although, of course, that must be how the Dean found out. Her next words came out sullenly. ‘My visits there reflect badly on the Liddells, I am told.’

  ‘Badly how?’

  ‘The rumours, the devil . . .’

  Around them people passed by on all sides. A man in a top hat apologized as he brushed Mr Wilton’s arm with his own. Mr Wilton still had his hand on her shoulder and he now pushed her back towards the side street that ran off behind them, where fewer people walked.

  ‘The devil has nothing to do with it!’

  ‘I know! I told them as much. But I have been forbidden.’

 
The news seemed to affect Mr Wilton greatly. His cheeks were flushed a deeper purple. He gripped her shoulder to the bone and pushed her against the railings. ‘But you enjoyed it, Mary. I have not seen you like that, like you were in there.’

  Mary flushed. ‘I did enjoy it, Mr Wilton, but there is nothing I can do.’

  ‘This means I will see less of you.’ His voice had dropped again.

  ‘No!’

  ‘I will see less of you at the church.’

  ‘But I can see you at other times.’

  Mr Wilton was standing close to her without looking at her face. He brought his free hand to one of her breasts and ran his palm over it in a circular motion. Mary gasped. He spread his fingers and engulfed it easily, first one scrap of flesh, then the other. She felt a heat rise from them to her cheeks and up into her scalp. She tried to pull away but he was strong and held her easily against the railings.

  She stared over his shoulder at the window opposite. It was opaque and held many panes. She counted them. Nine panes.

  ‘You may write me a note,’ she said.

  In her peripheral vision she could see his knuckles rising and falling, his fingertips dragging upwards and together.

  ‘And I will see you.’ Her breath was coming from very high up in her throat; her panting brought her bosom in closer contact with his hand.

  And now she heard the sound of boots striking on pavement. Down the street someone was approaching. ‘Mr Wilton. Somebody is coming. Let us go on to the bigger street.’

  He turned his head, his hand continuing its kneading motion as he ascertained her claim.

  The footsteps drew nearer; there seemed to be nothing in the world except the strike of feet on the pavement and the motion of his hand on her breast.

  Then with a grunt he stepped back. The railings ground against her backbone and the breath was forced out of her.

  He turned away, his hands in his coat pockets pressing something down at the front of him. His breath was heavy.

  The woman walking was upon them now and she went quickly by, staring at the ground, her reticule gripped hard in her hand.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Mr Wilton asked, after a moment. ‘Your mother will be expecting us.’