by Richard Peck
Or they tore at their throats when the air went yellow with gas. And then these young men fell too, and the tears streamed from their dead eyes. They died in the mud. And others died adrift in life rafts on this very sea, which burned in sheets of oil as great warships turned over in the water. And still the bombs rained down from the dragonfly aeroplanes.
I wept for them all. Mama once called my powers puny. And she was right, for I could only see. I could no more change the future than the past. I hadn’t even been able to save one small boy—Julian.
Alexander heard me out, never breaking in. We paced on quite a distance before he spoke again. “Soon?”
“Very soon,” I said. “And then again. And again. And on and on.”
“They’ll tear up the world,” he said. “These wars will. And what will they fight over?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Even the dead won’t know.”
There were few on the deck, for it was a bitter night. We passed only one couple, a tall lady and a small man. But they seemed lost in one another’s company and didn’t notice the cold or us.
“That was Miss Dabney and Mr. Birdsall,” Alexander murmured.
I’d taken the two figures for lovers, and so this surprise brought me back from the future somewhat.
“They have everything in common,” Alexander declared. “All Mr. Birdsall’s tastes are English too. He lives over there part-time in a country cottage and reads Shakespeare.”
“Then I expect he knows how he likes to take his tea,” I mentioned. Freshly returned from bombs and death, I was talking of a tea party. It seemed strange and wrong at first. But then I thought that in a savage world we have to cling to whatever small pleasures and niceties we can devise. Maybe Miss Dabney had learned that early in life.
Alexander took my hand as we strolled on, and I let him.
18
LONDON IS CALLED the finest city on earth. Maybe so, but it’s a backward place. Smoke from a million chimneys brings on early evenings and blackens the stonework. Much beer is drunk in murky saloons, and they eat fried potatoes off greasy newspapers in the streets. All manner of goods is sold door to door. And the vendors’ cries begin long before dawn. You wouldn’t credit it, but in this Center of Empire, sheep are driven through the parks to graze, like open country, though a railroad tunneling underground throbs beneath their hooves.
It’s a gray city wrapped in yellow fog. And the street lamps burn all day long. But it’s a big place, indifferent to a small troop of Americans washed up at its door.
We put up at Brown’s Hotel to await a Royal summons. We’d likely be waiting there yet if it wasn’t for an idea Alexander put me onto. In her Promised Land Miss Dabney seemed overcome by her old shyness. She couldn’t dash off a letter to announce us to Queen Mary. And she couldn’t call in the press, as Miss Spaulding might do. So she holed up in Brown’s Hotel, baffled.
Brown’s was no bigger than the Cornhusker Hotel back home, and less modern. I’d expected something more like the Astor Hotel than these poky, dim rooms. It looked like a boarding house done over. “Lord Byron’s valet founded this hotel,” Miss Dabney repeated. And “Mr. Theodore Roosevelt honeymooned here, though I do not recall with which wife.” And “It is the correct address for refined guests who abhor making a vulgar show.”
Maybe so. Though my travels had accustomed me to such things as bathtubs and hot water. Come to find out, the English do very little bathing.
They do a good deal of sitting though. The Brown’s Hotel parlors were ranked with a clientele who’d come long distances to remain stationary in chairs. Several sat asleep all day before the fire, hogging the heat.
Here Miss Dabney made herself at home. It wasn’t etiquette to speak to the other guests, who stared at the London Times or simply into space. In this silence she was safe from snubs. England is a nation of recluses, so Miss Dabney fit in, lapsing into her Bluff City ways.
Mr. Birdsall called on her twice daily. Mornings for coffee and afternoons for tea. In her Queen Mary hat she poured for him in a corner sofa, unwilling to stir far from it. But each evening when me and Alexander returned from our exploring, she quizzed us about all the London sights, stroking her cheek in wonder.
What she and Mr. Birdsall discussed all day in the parlor, I never heard. Only their tweeds were loud. But whenever he was nigh, Miss Dabney grew as skittish as a young girl. She took on the look of a startled flamingo—blushing pinkish. It had been a shipboard romance, but they seemed not to notice they were now on dry land.
When Mr. Birdsall returned to his club in the evenings, Miss Dabney began to look haggard and careworn. She’d soon admit defeat and confess she’d led us all halfway round the world on a fool’s errand. I saw this coming and wondered how to forestall it. As I’ve said, Alexander stumbled onto the solution, though of course he didn’t know what he was doing. Armed with a guidebook, me and him marched forth each morning to do the town.
It’s my way to go right to the heart of the matter. I inquired of the hotel porter where Queen Mary and King George put up when they’re in town and learned it is Buckingham Palace. This is an easy walk across the park from Brown’s. Alexander was willing to go as he wanted to see the Changing of the Guard. They change every morning at eleven-thirty.
The Palace stands in quite a good neighborhood behind an oversized statue of Queen Victoria. Alexander turns out to be the kind of traveler whose nose is never out of the guidebook. “‘Queen Victoria,’” he read aloud, “‘is carved from a solid block of marble. On the sides of her pedestal are groupings representing Justice, Truth, and Motherhood.’”
“Come on,” I said, “let’s get closer to the Palace.” We didn’t get much closer. Tall ironwork fenced off the front yard. The Palace rose behind it, grim and gray. Across the yard the Grenadier Guards in scarlet capbands pounded the paving in precision marching.
“‘If the Royal flag is flying, this signifies that the Family is in residence,’” Alexander read. It was snapping in the breeze, so this was one favorable sign.
A Guardsman in a tall fur hat with a tight chin strap stood outside the fence. His sentry box was the image of Old Man Leverette’s privy. I first took it for a public convenience, though it lacked a door. I approached him at once, but could not catch his eye.
Counting his tall hat, he rose up seven feet. The chin strap drew all his features together into furrows. “Say listen,” I said up to him. “How does a person go about dropping in on Queen Mary?”
This civil question merited no answer. Thinking he was deaf, I repeated myself louder. Still, nothing.
My third try brought a response, though it was rude. “ ’Op it, kid,” he growled, though his mouth seemed not to move. As he was armed, I gave up on him. For all I knew, a simple question might well be a capital offense in England.
So near and yet so far, I mourned, gazing up at the blank windows. If it wasn’t for Miss Dabney, I’d have written Royalty off. A person knows when she’s not wanted, particularly me.
“Come on,” Alexander said. “There’s plenty more to see.” And as regards London, he was right. Since I have no patience with a guidebook, I was at his mercy, and a boy’s taste in sightseeing wouldn’t suit everybody.
Alexander was inclined to museums, and there are several in London. They are places where things are kept that would otherwise be thrown out.
We went to the Victoria and Albert Museum by riding the Piccadilly Underground Line, a train in a smoky tunnel. We were in search of a thing called Tipu’s Tiger.
At last we found it, pointless though it was. It wasn’t a real tiger at all, but a kind of large mechanical toy an eccentric Englishman brought back from India in 1795. This large wooden beast is mauling the figure of a small, surprised wooden man in a top hat. If you push a button, the mauled man lets out a strange and tinny squeal. This gives an accurate idea of Alexander’s taste in points of interest.
Another time we rode on an omnibus to the British Museum. As I was
getting the hang of such places, I was for taking it room by room. There were many fine statues of the old Greeks. And a blue and white glass urn called the Portland Vase which a madman had shattered in 1845. This was entirely reassembled very artfully.
“We’ve come here for the mummies,” Alexander said, dragging me on. These dead bodies were kept in the Egyptian Rooms. On the way are large paintings from the original tombs. One shows a man being judged in the Hereafter. They are weighing his heart on a scale, balanced with a feather. Standing by is a hippopotamus, waiting to eat the man if he fails the test.
The mummies were nearby. When I was younger, I’d have taken to them with more zeal. Now this deathly place made me queasy. Coffins littered the floor. “One of these mummies is unwrapped to show his excellent state of preservation,” said Alexander, darting from corpse to corpse. “Here it is!”
We both stared down on a being dead now 5500 years. If this was an excellent state of preservation, may I never see decay. “‘The hot sands of Egypt have completed the preservative process,’” Alexander read in a hushed voice. The mummy’s nose bone was nearly naked of skin, and there were no eyeballs beneath the lids. His leather chest had the look of an old saddle. Breaking through the cracked hide were tufts of brittle hair. I turned away from this ancient.
But behind me were other mummies, wrapped like small packages in an eternal post office. There was a mummified cat, with chipped ears, and one of her kittens as small and as flat as my hand. Only a little scrap of life that had drawn breath for a few days and then lingered on in this state for fifty-five centuries. There was a dog’s mummy too, and a gazelle and a jackal. But I remembered the kitten most, though as a rule I’m not sentimental about house pets.
When Alexander had looked his fill, we left the British Museum. I was burdened by the litter of centuries, left around to be stared at by us modern strangers. I wondered what would be left to speak for our twentieth century after all its bombs and wars. “Isn’t there a thing to this town but museums?” I inquired of Alexander as we made off down Great Russell Street. “Look in that book and find something different.”
“One more museum,” Alexander said. “But it’s the best one, so I’m saving it for last.”
It was the best, though weirder than all the rest. And Alexander and me set aside an entire day for it. Madame Tussaud’s, it’s called, composed entirely of waxwork figures. All the famous and notorious persons of past and present are fashioned in wax as real as living flesh. And they’re in their own clothes or realistic costumes. Moreover, most are situated in settings called tableaux that tell of their lives.
Many of the earlier figures, all victims of the French Revolution, were carved and outfitted by Madame Tussaud herself, though she’s now dead. When we entered the museum lobby, it became weird at once. A small, withered lady in a long black gown of old-fashioned cut stood by the ticket-takers. She wore wire-framed spectacles and an out-of-date frilled cap much like Minerva’s. A small smile played around her old lips, and she clasped blue-veined hands before her modestly.
“Who’s the old party?” I asked Alexander.
“That’s Madame Tussaud,” he replied.
“I thought you said she was dead.”
“She is. That’s a waxwork of her.”
“Then why are we whispering in her presence?” I inquired, but Alexander only shrugged.
I was for starting with the historic tableaux, as they’d be something educational to tell Miss Spaulding. After all, we’d done none of our schoolwork and had no intention of doing any. But Alexander was hellbent for the Chamber of Horrors, which is down the cellar. Later we got to the tableaux, such as the beheading of the Queen of Scotland and the most famous one, called Sleeping Beauty. But I’ll mention the latter one now, as it is interesting.
When Madame Tussaud was locked up in a dungeon with French Royalty during the Revolution, she made a waxwork of Madame Du Barry while she slept. Madame Du Barry was shortly to meet a bad end, but her waxwork is enjoying a long life. She was a woman famed for her beauty, and her image lay on a rough prison bed behind a velvet rope. Her lovely hair streamed down the coarse pillow, and the promise of impending doom showed in her sleeping face.
But the best thing about her is this. A small motor is imbedded in her bosom, causing it to rise and fall, like breathing. This completed the realism. As mechanical devices go, it was far more clever than Tipu’s Tiger.
Following signs for the Chamber of Horrors, Alexander dragged me through the main-floor rooms, past Abraham Lincoln and any number of worthy people. At last we found the Chamber’s entrance down a long dark flight. As this is popular, the stairs were crowded with people tittering nervously at the sight of dungeon doors below. Above us through barred prison windows were the wax faces and clutching hands of crazed convicts. All this was exactly Alexander’s cup of tea.
The Chamber itself was a series of low-vaulted rooms lit by torches. The blood-stained bathtub of a mass murderer who’d killed many of his wives while they soaked was the centerpiece of one room. Several dozen methods of torture were shown, including an Iron Maiden which opened and closed on a body spiked through with red holes. Jack the Ripper was also there, lurking in a corner.
One exhibit was covered by leather curtains. A sign before it read:
NORTH AFRICAN RITUAL EXECUTION VIEWING RESERVED STRICTLY FOR PATRONS OVER THE AGE OF 18 YEARS
We waited patiently till the coast was clear. Then Alexander drew back the curtain. At close range a life-sized dead man was hanging from a big meathook. The hook entered his stomach and emerged just below his ribs. His arms and legs dangled well above the floor. Realistic horseflies encrusted his contorted face. Alexander dropped the curtain, and we returned in haste to the upper rooms.
On our way to the tableaux I stopped short and reined up Alexander. There in a far room beneath a massive chandelier stood Queen Mary. I knew her well from the portrait in Miss Dabney’s parlor.
We entered what Madame Tussaud calls The Throne Room, and were struck blind by the crystal and gilt. There stood all the images of the Royal Family in a room copied from Buckingham Palace. Queen Mary was proud as a partridge with her roped pearls and royal crown. Her glass eyes looked out over the heads of human observers. She had a certain strong beauty, though she didn’t measure up to Madame Du Barry, and as the Queen is now living, the wax workers may have flattered her some.
Beside her stood King George. He was a handsome man, though not tall. Around them stood their children. Featured among them was the young Prince of Wales, barely twenty years old and already a heartthrob to the young women of all countries.
The Family stood among much gold furniture. “Well, this is as close as we’ll get to the real thing,” I mentioned to Alexander. Even these big dolls awed me, good American though I am.
“Maybe we could bring Miss Dabney here,” Alexander offered. “And just let her think she’s being received at Court. After all, the guests at Brown’s Hotel don’t do any more moving around than this bunch.”
“She’d never fall for that, you chump,” I replied. Still, Alexander’s impractical notion set me thinking.
After we’d done the Queen of Scotland being beheaded and the Battle of Trafalgar, we just about had our fill of wax figures. I nearly missed a special announcement lettered on a sign. But it stopped me dead.
LATEST TABLEAU
RECENTLY UNVEILED
Madame Tussaud’s announces with pride its most current and striking tableau. A re-creation of a tragic moment during the sinking of the White Star Liner
TITANIC
Look upon the last moments of young Julian Poindexter, scandalously abandoned to his fate in eerie loneliness.
This tableau precedes the London opening of the American cinematograph on the subject. The forthcoming moving picture is based on the account of an obscure American girl who claims to have shared young Poindexter’s death agonies through Spiritual Translation. One flight up.
I clutc
hed Alexander’s arm. Then we shot away, one flight up. The tableau was in a room faintly lit in watery green. Shadows danced to suggest the roll of a ship dead in the water. We worked our way through the crowd gazing on. Suddenly I was standing almost where I’d stood before. Beyond a rope the tableau’s floor was pitched at the angle of the Titanic just before it took its dive.
It was Julian’s very cabin, down to details. The clock had just struck midnight. Beyond the portholes stretched an oil painting of the night sea. And in the far corner, dimly lit, a waxen figure of Julian in a nightshirt seemed to struggle up from the bedclothes. They’d captured his tow head and sleepy eyes to perfection. And just his look of frozen, gathering fear. I could nearly hear him call for his mama, and I went numb again from the iceberg night.
Alexander commenced poking me. “But you’re not in it, Blossom! He’s all by himself.”
This was true. Though the longer you looked, the better you saw a shadow cast on the floor and up over Julian’s blanket. It seemed to outline the presence of a young girl, though not of my shape and nothing distinct. Madame Tussaud’s was playing it safe.
The whole thing was too much like one of my trances. I remember very little till we were out in the street again, lost in thought. “It doesn’t seem right to me,” Alexander said. “Them leaving you out entirely when if it wasn’t for you, they wouldn’t have enough facts to flesh out a tableau.”
I basked a little, as it’s unusual for Alexander to take my side in anything. He had more to say. “And then when that moving-picture show comes out, they’ll have some lady playing you who’s completely grown up and filled out.” He glanced once at my somewhat straight shape and shook his head. “It’s not right,” he claimed.
