The Looking Glass House

by Vanessa Tait

She opened her case and quickly angled the photograph inside. She would take it to Wales; it would be a comfort to have it there, even though she was not over-fond of the Deanery. She could keep it in her room, but it would do well to let nobody else see, in case of awkward questions.

  Mary’s only holiday as a child had been spent in Dorset, where the land unfolded like a shaken-out rug. North Wales was a land of crags and pinnacles, and Penmorfa was a gothic pile with turrets and crenellations that merged with the countryside in a gloomy way.

  The house was damp and dark and the light was filtered by the lead windows that dominated the front side. Even with the fires going all day, Mary’s knuckles and wrists were chilly and the pad of her big toe was often numb.

  The children quarrelled more than in Oxford, perhaps because they had not got Mr Dodgson to amuse them. Ina said that Alice took everything of hers; Alice denied it. Ina could not even bear to see Alice with her old doll, which she had long outgrown, and snatched it away.

  One afternoon Ina was sitting reading a booklet she had acquired about etiquette, with the old doll on her lap.

  ‘You are too old for a doll. I don’t see why you are bothering to learn about how to be a lady when you still want the doll,’ Alice said. She took the doll and sat her on the table; Kitty’s pantaloons splayed out from her skirts like two chicken drumsticks.

  ‘Give me the doll!’

  Alice grabbed Kitty’s arms with each of her hands. ‘Miss Prickett,’ she said, pretending it was the doll who spoke, ‘why have you got a photograph of Mr Dodgson’s?’

  Mary stood still, her chest very cold. ‘Have you been in my room?’

  ‘Yes, you told me to get my mittens.’

  Mary had told her that, it was true. ‘How do you know it is Mr Dodgson’s?’

  ‘Because he is the only one who takes photographs of the Deanery.’

  ‘I am not speaking to a doll, Alice. Use your usual voice and give Kitty back to your sister.’

  Alice did not give the doll back. In the same grating voice she read, over Ina’s shoulder: ‘“A gentle, deferential manner will disarm even the most discerning. Steer a course” – I can’t see, and how will I ever learn if I can’t see – “between silence and the twittering of a canary, and remember that gentlemen do not want to be told what to think. ”’

  ‘Give it me!’ Ina got up and made a grab for Kitty.

  ‘I won’t! Not until Miss Prickett tells me why she has a photograph of Mr Dodgson’s in her room.’

  Mary found herself at Alice’s side. She grabbed the doll from her and threw it to the floor, its porcelain head hammering on to the floorboards, its blue eyes blinking. ‘It is none of your business, Alice. You ought not to ask so many questions! You would know that, if you read more of that booklet on etiquette.’

  In three strides she was at the drawer where the ruler was kept. She could already feel its smooth wooden sides, the snug way it fitted into her palm. She had not yet used it as a weapon – only for measuring – but now something pushed at her behind her collarbone: light and expanding rage.

  ‘Alice, hold out your hand. You can see what it is like to have a taste of your own medicine.’

  Alice would not hold out her hand.

  Mary went over and pulled her arm up by the sleeve. ‘Turn the palm to me!’

  ‘Why is it a taste of my own medicine? I have not hit anybody!’ Alice’s wrist bone wriggled in her grip; an animal trying to escape a trap.

  Mary held on harder and brought the ruler down on Alice’s palm.

  She had expected to feel relief as the crack rang out. But instead she felt abruptly as if she might cry.

  She turned her head to the window and squeezed her eyes shut. Three birds fell, as if they had been dropped behind the window pane. She must punish Alice; it was for her own good.

  She could hear her mother saying the same words to her as she brought the ruler down on Mary’s hand. The harder the better, as her mother said; the lesson would be learnt. And it had been for her own good. She had learnt her lesson. She had been quiet and taken her slaps as she was meant to, without making a fuss.

  Not like Alice, who was cradling her hurt hand with an exaggeration of rebuke, her eyes blinking just like the doll on the floor.

  Alice was not authentic. Her sadness showed on her face as desolation, her cheerlessness as devastation. Her aim was to suck sympathy towards herself and to discredit Mary.

  ‘Mr Dodgson says I may ask as many questions as I like. I wish he was here!’ cried Alice.

  ‘Mr Dodgson does not mean you to ask impertinent questions. The other palm, please.’

  Again Mary had to force out Alice’s other hand herself. Again she brought the ruler down. But again she had to hold back the tears that threatened to spill out as if a tap had suddenly been unblocked.

  Her mother had sometimes given her three slaps – it was the second one on the same hand that punished the most, of course – if she had refused to finish her supper, say, or if she had been caught running down the corridor, something her mother could not abide. Or if she had spoken out of turn, as Alice had.

  But Mary had lost the taste for punishment. She hardly noticed that Alice’s eyes at last filled with tears and her bottom lip trembled. She turned away again towards the window, letting the ruler clatter down on the table.

  In the afternoon it rained, gently but persistently, pricking the sea with pin marks. Shrimping was cancelled and the children and Mary were kept indoors. Mary found herself aiming all her diversions at Alice. Would she like to play the piano? She would not. Would she like to practise her watercolour painting? Or perhaps a collage? She said nothing to this, but Alice usually enjoyed collage, so Mary started one up, of the Angel Gabriel. They had not even started on the wings when Alice said she needed to use the water closet.

  ‘I thought you just went?’

  ‘But it is so pretty. I want to see the picture of Pan on the bowl, and the water rushing through!’ Alice looked at her for the first time that afternoon, and smiled.

  The water closet was new, and it was exciting, Mary concurred. Of course she may!

  But fifteen minutes later Alice had not returned. Mary, unwilling to bellow into the echoing hall, set off after her.

  Alice was no longer in the water closet, which stood alone over its dominion of white tiles, if she ever had been. Nor was she behind the damask curtains in the hall, nor behind the new pine door into the morning room, which still smelt of the sun slanting through a green forest, nor behind the canary-yellow sofa.

  Alice was hiding from her, she must be!

  The scheming, conniving little girl had looked her in the face and smiled, and all the time she’d been planning to trick her. Humiliate her in front of her family, where Alice was the worm buried inside the apple and she, Mary, was a wasp crawling on the surface, trying to get in.

  Or perhaps – and this was worse – she was not being wicked, she was afraid. Afraid of Mary, and that was why she hid.

  Or perhaps Mary was imagining it all and Alice was back with her sisters now, carrying on with the collage.

  But as she was hurrying back through the hall she came upon Mrs Liddell sauntering the other way. ‘Miss Prickett! What a pity about the rain.’

  Mary nodded, caught on the edges of her feet.

  ‘Have you found some entertainment for the children?’

  ‘We are making collages. I should get back.’

  ‘How dear. I will come and see.’

  Mary swallowed. ‘Yes.’

  Mrs Liddell followed her through the hall; Mary could hear her skirts slipping over the uneven surface of the flagstones, could feel her perfumed breath on the back of her neck as they turned into the corridor towards the nursery.

  But when they arrived, there was Ina, jumping up to show her mama the angel’s gilded wings, and there was Edith, but no Alice.

  ‘She went . . . Alice felt the call of nature and became distracted, I believe,’ said Mary.
r />   ‘Oh, is she upstairs?’

  ‘I . . . She may be. I will find her for you.’

  Now Mrs Liddell would see that Mary could not keep control of her children. She would see that Mary could lose one of them, even in the house! She thought of Alice’s neat little nose and the swing of her hair; her hands, large for a ten-year-old, their knuckles like a full-grown woman’s.

  ‘I expect she is playing a game,’ said Mary.

  ‘I hope she hasn’t gone outside.’ Mrs Liddell frowned through the window at the rain. ‘I can’t think why she would have.’

  Perhaps Alice had gone out into the sea; perhaps she had come to some harm, her thin, pale body washed up on the beach. It would be Mary’s fault. ‘I will look for her.’

  ‘I will come with you. Some exercise will do me good.’

  They set off together into the house once more. But even though Mrs Liddell started out gay, calling out Alice’s name, to Mary the search soon took on the aspect of a nightmare. Crouching under tablecloths, opening up obscure cupboards, the idea of Alice growing and growing between them the longer she was lost.

  Mary thought about saying sorry to Mrs Liddell, but she could not bear to, so even though apologies rose continuously to her lips, she swallowed them down. She moved through the house self-consciously, much too big and at the same time as if she wasn’t there. Mrs Liddell often had that effect on her.

  After what seemed like hours, but may have only been minutes, they heard a sob coming from the boot room. Alice’s polished foot stuck out from underneath a mass of hanging coats. Mary had been there twice before and not discovered her.

  She felt a rush of relief that was immediately overcome by anger. ‘You are a very disobedient child! You shall be punished. We have been looking for you for hours.’

  Alice escaped Mary’s outstretched hands and ran to her mother. Tears and mucus slid down her face. She clasped her mother’s skirts and pressed her cheek against them. But her look, when it met Mary’s, she was sure, had triumph in it.

  ‘We have been searching for you for a long time. I am quite cross. We were worried.’ Mrs Liddell put a jewelled hand on her cheek.

  Alice kept crying.

  ‘Whatever made you hide like that, Alice?’

  ‘I will take her now,’ said Mary roughly. She would hit her again, once she was back in the nursery.

  ‘I was upset.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Miss Prickett hit me, with a ruler!’

  ‘I dare say you deserved it.’

  ‘I did not! I did nothing at all!’

  It was on Mary’s lips to say that Alice had been impertinent, and prying, although she could not explain to the child’s mother the true depth of her irritation because it was unfathomable, ran too low, somewhere beneath reason.

  ‘I only asked her about the photograph Mr Dodgson had given her.’

  Mary’s face, already flushed, burnt itself a deep crimson. She stared down at the galoshes the Dean had had made, as dark and glossy as tar.

  ‘Ah yes, the photograph. He does seem to be liberal with them.’ Mrs Liddell put her arm round Alice’s shoulders.

  Why would Alice tell her mother about her photograph?

  There could only be one reason: to embarrass Mary, to humiliate her. Well, she would not be humiliated. But she stayed staring down at the floor so that they would not see the colour of her cheeks. A woodlouse was trying to bury itself underneath Ina’s boot.

  Mrs Liddell was staring at Mary with one eyebrow raised.

  ‘It was a gift. Mr Dodgson is liberal with them, as you say. That was not the reason why I punished Alice, however. It was for taking something that belonged to her sister.’

  ‘But I wonder, if I may, why Mr Dodgson is giving a gift to my governess?’ Mrs Liddell’s voice was sharp with excessive politeness.

  Because he had followed her in the dark and they had sat on a bench together – she could not say that. Because she had heard him talk as she had never heard a man talk – she could not say that either.

  Because he was paying court to her – she certainly could not say that.

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs Liddell. He gives his photographs to everyone, as you say.’ Mary kept her tone even. She knew he did not give his photographs to everyone.

  ‘And you have brought yours up here, on a perilous journey to Wales.’

  Mary swallowed. The room was small and smelt of damp tweed and galoshes. It was crowded with oilskins and umbrellas, ranked in their stand like curious birds. ‘I had not the time to look at it before.’

  It only took a moment to look at a photograph, especially of the Deanery. Everyone knew that. ‘Alice, let us go!’ said Mary quickly. ‘We have troubled your mother enough.’ ‘No,’ said Mrs Liddell, tightening her hand round Alice’s shoulder. ‘I think I will keep her. She may like to see her father.’

  One other thing happened while Mary was in Penmorfa, that at the time she did not consider important. She happened to glance at a letter Mr Dodgson had written to Alice, which Alice had left carelessly open on the side table in the hall.

  My dear Alice,

  I liked your letter better than anything I have had for some time. I may as well just tell you a few of the things that I like, and then, whenever you want to give me a birthday present (my birthday comes once every seven years, on the fifth Tuesday in April), you will know what to give me. Well, I like, very much indeed, a little mustard with a bit of beef spread thinly under it, and I like brown sugar – only it should have some apple pudding mixed with it to keep it from being too sweet; but perhaps what I like best of all is salt, with some soup poured over it. The use of soup is to hinder the salt from being too dry, and it helps to melt it. And I like two or three handfuls of hair; only they should always have a little girl’s head beneath them to grow on, or else whenever you open the door they get blown all over the room, and then they get lost, you know.

  Mary could not help but compare the letter, whose images poked her in the eye like awkward elbows, with the one Mr Wilton had written to her. Mr Wilton’s letter told her about the visits he’d paid (Mrs Storing, old Mr Flumy, Mrs Mull), the weather (better in Oxford than in Wales) and news of a horse that had gone lame.

  But he was not good with words, as he often said. That did not mean anything. The tone, however, suggested domesticity. And domesticity suggested marriage.

  Mary tried to imagine kissing the red lips that were pointed to so sumptuously by his sideburns, in front of the altar, in her wedding dress. But she got snagged on the texture of him; his lips would be moist, flaky. His sideburns like stroking a glossy bear.

  His hands, blossoming with dark hair. The railings at her back.

  Did the gift of a photograph suggest marriage too?

  A sharp rush through Mary’s chest made her fold up Mr Wilton’s letter and put it away.

  Chapter 15

  Mary had not been back in Oxford long when Mr Wilton came to visit. He had put on extra pomade for her; his hair smelt strongly of soap and candles, and was greased back from his temples in a way that probably suited his work at the haberdashery.

  They had the schoolroom to themselves. The children were next door, arguing; their voices could be clearly heard. ‘What is the point of a book without any pictures?’ said Alice.

  ‘You are a baby,’ said Ina.

  ‘I am not! Yours are dull.’

  ‘Why is whatever I like dull?’ said Ina.

  ‘Tea, Mr Wilton?’ said Mary, pushing a cup towards him.

  ‘Children,’ said Mr Wilton. ‘I suppose to be childish is in their nature.’

  ‘I am going to read my book,’ said Alice.

  ‘But I thought we were going to read together!’

  Mary got up and went next door. ‘Alice. Read together as you promised, then you may read on your own.’

  ‘But it’s boring!’

  ‘Do as I ask.’

  ‘But I can do what I want, you said so!’

 
; ‘I certainly never said so! You do what I want, that is the end of it.’

  Mr Wilton was sitting with a hand cupped over each knee. In each fingernail there was a crescent, as polished and white as a new moon.

  Mary shut the door. She smiled. ‘Well.’

  Mr Wilton shifted on to one haunch and brought out something from his pocket: a square of folded tissue paper. He held it out to her. It was light, insubstantial.

  She unwrapped it in silence, the leaves of tissue papers shuffling away from her fingers; she tore a hole in them getting to what was inside.

  A length of Belgian lace, so delicate she could not at first make it out against the tissue. It was beautiful. Flowers so fine their stamen could be clearly seen, berries with bulging seeds, leaves made to show even their veins – the world remade in black and white. It reminded her of one of Mr Dodgson’s glass negatives.

  She held it up draped between her fingertips, a spider’s web. She was aware of Mr Wilton watching her.

  ‘It is beautiful. Thank you.’

  ‘When Mrs Liddell bought some, I thought you ought to have some too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary, staring down at it.

  ‘One day you may have a dress to put it on,’ he said.

  Was he criticizing her clothes? ‘I already have a dress, only . . .’ Mary was about to add that the lace was far too beautiful to attach to it when his meaning caught at her.

  He was smiling at her, or had been, and now was absorbed at scratching dirt from his trouser leg, waves of embarrassment rolling from him.

  Belgian lace was used for weddings.

  Or perhaps it had many uses that only Mr Wilton knew about. ‘It came to the store only yesterday,’ he said at last. ‘From Belgium. I thought of you.’

  ‘You are very kind. It won’t fit my usual dresses. Much too fine!’ She stared down at the floorboards.

  Now she had brought up the subject of the dress. But there didn’t seem to be any other conversational alleys. She sounded as if she were waiting for a proposal, or at the least as if she were too poor to own a nice dress.

  ‘It would do very well on a handkerchief,’ she said.

  It was only later, when Mary was wrapping the lace back up and putting it in the drawer next to her bed, that she remembered the full story of Belgian lace. It was made by old ladies in Flanders in rooms made deliberately dark, to preserve the quality of the lace. But the quality of the old ladies’ eyes was not taken into account. As they laboured in their dark rooms, beautiful gossamer webs blossoming on their laps, their eyes grew ever weaker and more clouded, until in the end they were rendered totally blind.