The Looking Glass House

by Vanessa Tait

  ‘Well, you know how the man is, Lorina. It is a joke,’ said Mr Liddell. He stood angled towards the door as if he meant to step out of it at any second, his mouth miserable with embarrassment and awkwardness.

  Mrs Liddell held on to the last letter, the one about the plums, with both hands. She shook her head violently.

  Now Mary would see; she had been waiting for it.

  But instead Mrs Liddell grew very still. She folded the last letter up into squares.

  ‘Ina, could you get the rest please? I am taking them downstairs.’

  ‘Why, Mama, what is wrong?’ Alice’s eyes seemed to take up all of her face.

  ‘I should not like anyone to find these; they may fall into the wrong hands.’

  ‘Wrong hands?’

  ‘They are too affectionate.’

  ‘But why should they not be affectionate?’

  ‘You will understand, Alice, when you are a grown-up.’

  Mrs Liddell took up all the notes and letters, the product of seven years of friendship, and turned to the door. Then she turned back to her middle daughter. ‘Did Mr Dodgson say anything to you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Mrs Liddell stared at her. ‘I mean: do you have an arrangement?’

  ‘What kind of arrangement?’

  Mrs Liddell said nothing.

  ‘We are supposed to be meeting tomorrow, for riding,’ said Alice at last.

  ‘Does he take you on his knee?’ said Mrs Liddell.

  ‘Yes, you have seen him do it!’

  ‘Mr Dodgson’s manner is too affectionate. He has made this family the subject of gossip, not for the first time.’ She turned to Mary. ‘I thought he was supposed to be courting you!’

  Mary smiled painfully. ‘Me?’

  ‘Of course, I knew there was no truth in that rumour.’

  Mary felt the blush start at her breast and burn upwards past her neck, her cheeks, and into her hairline.

  ‘This rumour is much worse.’ Mrs Liddell shut her eyes, her mouth a thin line. When she spoke, she barely moved her lips. ‘Alice, was there any talk of marriage?’

  ‘Marriage? Yes. We always talk of marriage. He says he will be my prince.’

  Mrs Liddell opened her eyes wide again, turned and pushed past Mary through the door.

  Alice was confused. ‘The Prince and Princess’s marriage, Mama. The Illuminations! What did you mean?’

  Alice followed after her mother but could not get up to her; she was moving so fast and her dress took up all the width of the corridor. The Dean, Mary and Ina followed behind.

  ‘You are a child. You cannot be expected to know.’

  Mrs Liddell got downstairs and pushed through the doors into the servants’ quarters and the kitchen. Mrs Cook was preparing dinner, rasping away at a large cow’s tongue that arched over the sideboard. The windows were opaque with steam.

  ‘Mrs Liddell. Has there been a change to the menu?’

  ‘No change, Mrs Cook. I need a box of matches?’

  Mrs Cook stopped and took in the mother, the children, the governess, the bell jar of weight that surrounded them all. She did not ask what the matches were for, but fetched the greasy box and placed it in Mrs Liddell’s outstretched palm.

  In the drawing room, Mrs Liddell crouched down over the waste-paper basket, her bustled skirts pooling out behind her on the floor, and lit a match to the first of the letters. It flared up immediately, the flame burning her hand so that she was forced to drop it flaming into the basket.

  ‘You will set the whole house alight,’ said Mr Liddell.

  Tears fell from Alice’s eyes and pooled at the velvet round her collar.

  ‘They are my letters,’ she said.

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Why not? I don’t understand! Tell me why?’

  Mrs Liddell lit the next letter, and the next, until the basket, which was made of wicker, began to smoke. ‘At least the Long Vacation is soon,’ she said grimly. ‘We shall be away from here for three months.’

  The Dean hurried from the room and returned with a pail of water, which he slopped into the basket, a stain spreading unevenly beneath. He grabbed his wife’s wrist and pulled her away. Then Mrs Liddell contented herself with ripping every letter into tiny pieces, and throwing them into the fireplace, watched by the silent members of her family.

  Chapter 33

  The next day, Mary, Mrs Liddell and the children were walking across the quadrangle when they saw Mr Dodgson at the corner. He was standing, as if waiting for them. He half put his arm up in a salute but then his face changed and he began to hurry towards them.

  Mary instinctively stepped behind Mrs Liddell. He could not know that the rumours originated from her – she had gone over and over it – as long as Mrs Chitterworth had not mentioned her name. But it would be against her own interests to do so. And even if Mr Dodgson knew, Mrs Liddell so thoroughly believed the rumours now that it would make no difference. But still Mary felt she might give herself away somehow. She was no actress.

  Mrs Liddell saw Mr Dodgson at the same time as Mary did. She stopped. She seemed to be about to lead them all back indoors. But she changed her mind and carried on walking in the same direction, giving him no sign. She pulled Alice by the hand. Mary saw from the corner of her eye Mr Dodgson breaking into a limping canter.

  Mrs Liddell was walking quickly at a perpendicular angle to him. Alice craned round on her mother’s arm. Mr Dodgson drew nearer until it was impossible not to acknowledge him, although Mrs Liddell did not slow her pace.

  ‘I know you are busy preparing for the Long Vacation, too busy of course for tea, as your note said. But I thought perhaps, perhaps, I thought perhaps . . . It may be . . . I came to bid you goodbye before you and your family left.’

  ‘Mr Dodgson. Yes, well, goodbye.’

  Alice looked up at him but did not speak. Mrs Liddell started to move forward, leaving Mr Dodgson standing alone. Mary glanced back at him. He hadn’t noticed her. He was staring at Mrs Liddell’s face with a look of confusion and alarm.

  Mrs Liddell took a few more paces and then came to a halt again and turned back to him.

  ‘It will be best if you cease communication with this family, Mr Dodgson.’

  ‘Cease communication? Why?’

  ‘Why? Do you ask why? The whole of Oxford is talking about it and you ask why!’

  ‘You know Oxford is a dreadful place for gossip. But forgive me, surely you do worse to give in by stopping our meetings than to show Oxford they have no foundation.’

  ‘Give in? No foundation?’ said Mrs Liddell, speaking quietly but pushing her words out between her teeth so violently that each of them was a kind of stab. ‘No, there you are wrong. It is best that we don’t speak today, I think.’

  ‘Do you think? Perhaps next week then.’

  ‘Not next week. Not ever. You must know what I am talking about.’

  Mary felt as if she were looking down at them all from the roof of the quadrangle. The disc of Mrs Liddell’s skirts, the rest of them insects, ants, thin-limbed.

  ‘I have heard, huh-huh-huh, one thing. That my visits to the Deanery have been misconstrued as attentions to the governess. But Miss Prickett will be the first to assure you that I have no plans that way. None at all!’

  He looked at Mary, as if expecting her to say something. Mary stared back at him until he dropped his gaze.

  ‘Not the governess.’ Mrs Liddell paused. ‘I must ask you, Mr Dodgson, just out of curiosity. Did you really think I would allow it?’

  ‘Allow what? What, allow what?’

  ‘Marriage.’

  ‘To Miss Prickett?’

  ‘No, Mr Dodgson, not to Miss Prickett. For there are other rumours, more ugly.’

  Mr Dodgson looked from Mrs Liddell to Alice, who stood silently with her head hanging down. ‘Can you mean to Alice?’

  They were still standing in the middle of the quadrangle, windows looking in on them and doors like mout
hs.

  Imperceptibly Mrs Liddell nodded.

  A red stain burst out over his cheeks and his forehead, the colour of blood. ‘I deny it absolutely! Alice. You cannot say it?’

  Alice started to cry again. She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘After all my kindness to you. God knows there are others who would have been more congenial to have in the house, but I let you come, for the sake of the children. Alice . . .’ Mrs Liddell let the word trail off in a long hiss. She shut her eyes and continued in a quieter tone. ‘Did you really think I would ever allow marriage between the two of you? The idea is ludicrous. Ludicrous! To a mathematics tutor? To you, Mr Dodgson? You, who have taken advantage of my home and my hospitality. As I said, it would be better for all if your visits to my family cease.’

  Mr Dodgson’s face was shocked and confused but Mrs Liddell was already starting to turn away, pulling them all after her.

  ‘Can you deny it?’ said Mrs Liddell, stopping again.

  ‘I do!’

  ‘But everybody says differently. And I have your letters. Alice kept them hidden in her doll’s house.’

  Mr Dodgson looked to be in physical pain. ‘They do not mention marriage!’

  ‘The friendship is over,’ said Mrs Liddell, adding, ‘Good day,’ out of habit before she could stop herself.

  ‘When will I see Mr Dodgson again?’ said Alice as they walked away. Her nose was red and her cheeks blotchy.

  ‘I have told you, Alice, his visits to you will cease. It is not appropriate, especially as you grow older. You must develop friends of your own age. The Acland children.’

  ‘But Mr Dodgson is my friend,’ said Alice, tears and mucus shining on her face. ‘My one true friend.’

  ‘Alice!’ Mrs Liddell stopped again and towered over her middle daughter. ‘Do not be so childish. I have said that you cannot see Mr Dodgson and I expect to be obeyed. Stop crying before somebody sees you.’

  Alice stopped crying. Her wrist hurt where her mother had been grasping it and she cradled it to her chest.

  ‘Alice, there is a great deal to get done, stop hanging back. We must get to the draper’s before they close, otherwise we shall have no curtains in Penmorfa.’

  But Alice would not speak and she would not hurry until her mother took up her arm again and forced her to walk more quickly.

  Chapter 34

  The Liddells always made the trip to wales by railway: Mary and the family took up one carriage, the servants and the luggage occupied another. There was no conversation in the Liddells’ carriage. The Dean worked his way through several books in Ancient Greek, piled up in front of him on the table. Mrs Liddell’s face was obscured by Wilkie Collins. Harry and Ina each had an instalment of Dickens. Alice had The History of Sandford and Merton open on her lap but was not reading it; it was boring she said, she already knew how it would end: the good happily and the bad unhappily. After a while she snapped it shut and turned to stare out of the window.

  Mary was already staring out of the opposite window. Her book, The Christian Observer and Advocate, was still open, but similarly unread. When she turned her eyes to a paragraph she found that her mind mechanically recited the words but would not take them in. They were just useless sounds that rattled around in her mind, much as the train rattled on along its track.

  Things passed outside the window. The various hedges that demarked the fields from the railway track blurred into a thick jagged line that seemed to lead somewhere. She could move through the landscape like this lightly and forever.

  Nobody knew that it had all been set into motion by her.

  She was not nothing. She was not something to be toyed with as if she had no consequence.

  Behind them in Oxford the gossip still raged – Mary imagined all the small rooms of the college chattering with it. Mr Dodgson would always now be the man who was in love with Alice, who wanted to marry Alice and was turned down.

  She saw again his face as she had last seen it in the quadrangle. But it had looked – how? Clouded this time. Like an animal’s, in pain.

  She pressed her forehead to the glass of the carriage. It was warm in the train; the smell of breakfast still lingered: kippers, milk.

  He had picked her up when it suited him and then let her fall. Wafted her away without even explaining what he had done. Such carelessness in a man who seemed so precise.

  Mr Wilton, with all his size and stubble, had turned out to be the better man after all.

  One day they would find that love was a chemical such as could be made in a laboratory and drained away just as quickly. It was simply a matter of waiting for Mr Dodgson to drain away. In the meantime, she had her pride.

  As the hours ground past, the rolling pastures roused up into steeper hills. Cows were replaced by sheep, hedges by stone walls. A bleaker place, but more honest. Bare crags rose now on top of the hills, as if Nature had failed with its usual cover.

  The roundness of Alice’s cheek was still turned away from her. Mary could see the length of her neck as it twisted, the tiny pulse that beat at the base of it. Every so often Alice rubbed at her nose with the palm of her hand.

  After many hours the family climbed into a horse-drawn carriage that jolted and heaved over the road that led to the coast. Round the first sharp bend Alice’s knee was shoved into Mary’s, and Mary’s into Mrs Liddell’s. Alice looked for a second at Mary and their eyes met.

  Alice had lost a friend. But she would make another. In another year she would have needed an escort to go out with Mr Dodgson anyway, and the friendship would have faded off. Mary had done no more than push things forward.

  Mary tried to smile, but Alice looked quickly ahead, towards the horses.

  In any case it was a lesson to the child. Alice had too much as it was; she must learn that some things would be taken away.

  Mary’s life would be more comfortable now. Small distractions, small comforts. A normal life, with normal things to look forward to. Mrs Liddell would have more children. Might even be with child already – Mary had heard retching the other morning coming from her bathroom, and all day she looked pale and ill. The Dean was taking more care with her too, settling her into the carriage with a fussiness that was not usual to him.

  As Penmorfa came into view round the final bend, Mary saw a bird, bigger than a sparrow, smaller than a hawk. Swooping and diving, plunging down and managing to rise again without any seeming effort, on wings that curved perfectly into the mountainside. Alice saw it too, and for a moment she and Mary were united, in the dance of it.

  Then the bird caught something, or lost interest, it was hard to see which, and flew higher and higher till it was obscured by the sides of the carriage.

  Epilogue

  Charles dodgson sat at his desk in his father’s house in Yorkshire, the light fading around him. The summer was already over and soon the Long Vacation would be over too. He was always surprised, and a little gratified, at how quickly summer faded after August was gone. The sheets of paper that spread out over his desk were filled with handwriting he had tried so hard to make neat: Alice’s story, finished but for one last drawing. He would give it to her for a Christmas gift; she would have to forgive him the two and a half years that had passed since the telling of it.

  Alice would be quite changed by now.

  Charles saw her of course, at Christ Church, in glimpses. The cherry red of her hat heading across Tom Quadrangle. Her awkward smile as she and her governess passed by him under Tom Tower. Last summer – mirabile dictu! – he had been asked to the Deanery for the day (by the Dean no doubt) to enjoy croquet and all the other pleasures he had once been so used to. The children had been friendly, and for a few moments of blissful amnesia – if he was showing them a magic trick, or telling them a story perhaps – he had even forgotten that everything had changed between them.

  Mrs Liddell had kept her distance all afternoon. The governess, when his eyes had mistakenly met hers, had looked at him with contempt pos
sibly. But governesses were full of contempt, not least for their charges. He had liked her once, it seemed a long time ago. But she was limited in intellect, pedantic to the tenth degree.

  This last spring he had hoped for a resurgence in his relationship with the Liddells. The new growth on the trees had given him hope that such a thing could be achieved. In May he had applied for leave to take the children on the river (except Ina, of course, who was now too old to go without a chaperone), but Mrs Liddell wrote that she would not let any of them come in future.

  A boat beneath a sunny sky,

  Lingering onward dreamily

  In an evening of July.

  Charles turned back to Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. The difficulty of making his handwriting neat enough for a child to read had turned out to be nothing compared to the difficulty of illustrating the thing. Over many laborious months he had scratched out his pen-and-ink drawings in the spaces he had left in the manuscript. The process had made him painfully aware that he was not a draughtsman. The animals were easier; he was not too displeased with them – their faces could be quite without expression. Even Father William and his son, absurd as they were, were pleasing enough. In deference to Mrs Liddell, who, he was sure, would not like to see her child represented in a book, he had not attempted to draw Alice as she actually was, instead giving her long pale hair. But even this unreal Alice had come out flat. He had managed to capture no essence of little girls as they were, at all.

  He had left a space at the end of Alice’s Adventures in which he intended to put a drawing of his Alice, and it was this he wanted to do now. Surely Mrs Liddell could not object to that.

  He took up his pen and worked in silence, looking for reference at the photograph of Alice he had taken several years ago.

  But inspecting the photograph so closely gave him pain. Her features were so even, her gaze so clear, but beneath it he could still sense her, the riotous, inquisitive child, his dream child.