by David Smith
‘Well yes, Mr Baxter, I think I’ve still got time for you.’
‘Ah, that’s good. So then I have something that I meant to give you years ago, but the time never seemed quite right until now.’
He opened up a small box and passed it to her. The jewel on the gold band inside was not large, but it was big enough for the rest of their lifetimes.
‘Baxter, what’s that?’ she said, genuinely taken aback.
‘It’s a ring of course. So will you?’ he asked again nervously. She kissed him full on the lips
‘Of course I will, you silly old thing.’
And they said, ‘O good Iagoo,
Tell us now a tale of wonder,
Tell us of some strange adventure,
That the feast may be more joyous,
That the time may pass more gayly,
And our guests be more contented!’
And Iagoo answered straightway,
‘You shall hear a tale of wonder,
You shall hear the strange adventures
Of Osseo, the Magician,
From the Evening Star descending.’
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast
*
Toward the end of the evening when Lady Mary and the Reverend George Dore returned from their honeymoon, they were astonished to see the staid formality of the house transformed by such high jinks.
‘What an excess of silliness,’ said the reverend, smiling but quietly worrying about the expense of it all.
‘For heaven’s sake, George, it will be you in the doghouse if you don’t join in the fun,’ replied Lady Mary with a scowl. She gave Alice and then her two daughters a big hug and reserved a special kiss for Eddie. ‘This kiss is shaped like you, Peter,’ she said with a wink.
‘Ah, my sweet Lady Mary,’ he replied. ‘But if you’ll excuse us for a moment.’
Eddie took Alice’s hand and she followed him out on to the balcony, shutting the doors behind them.
*
‘So, I hope you liked your surprise?’
‘You’re a scoundrel, Eddie, if this is what you and Julia were up to all this time. And to think I thought you two were…’
‘Sshh,’ he said, ‘not another word, you really should believe in me more in the future.’
‘Don’t push your luck, darling, you’re still a rascal, if a totally loveable one,’ she spoke from her heart, not wishing to spoil the moment.
‘Yes,’ he said, taking her by the waist and kissing her in a way that felt like they were ten years younger again. ‘I’m saving the best till later tonight.’
*
Across the lawn in the little gazebo, slightly merrier now, the blue caterpillar sat thoughtfully by himself on the mushroom, continuing to suck at his hookah pipe. Hugh was watching Eddie and Alice smooching together on the balcony from afar. He felt warm inside to see how happy they were again. Through the steam from his hookah water bath, he spotted Julia coming up to the little garden house to join him. She too was dressed prettily, holding up her gown with her hands, wrapping it around her legs against the dew of the grass.
‘Who are you?’ he asked in a languid, sleepy voice.
‘I – I hardly know, sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said the Caterpillar, sternly. ‘Explain yourself!’
‘I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir, because I’m not myself, you see.’
‘I don’t see,’ said the Caterpillar.
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
‘I think I must be Wendy, the girl who never grew up,’ Julia replied.
‘Wendy? Not hardly Wendy at all, nor Alice nor Julia neither it seems?’
‘I really think I ought to know who I am,’ she said indignantly.
‘Well that’s as maybe but if that is really you, Wendy Darling, Alice seems to have gone and stolen your Peter again. It’s all very confusing.’
‘It looks very much so, but I agree and I suppose I am glad. Anyway, Mr Caterpillar, is there room for me beside you on your mushroom while I think this all through?’ she sobbed theatrically.
‘Room? It depends very much what size you want to be.’
He beckoned for her to join and she sat down beside him.
‘So are you content now with all your preparations?’
‘Very much so, although this mushroom could be a little larger.’
‘You’ll get used to it in time.’
‘So I think you ought to tell me who you are now, Mr Caterpillar?’
‘Why?’
‘Well it might be polite, but if you’re going to be difficult about it,’ Julia turned away, the incense-laden steam from the water bath beginning to get up her nose. She pretended to get up to leave.
‘Wait,’ Hugh called.
‘Come back!’ the caterpillar called after her. ‘I’ve something important to say!’
This sounded promising, certainly. She turned and came back again.
‘Keep your temper,’ said the caterpillar.
‘Is that all?’ she said, swallowing down her anger as well as she could.
‘No,’ said the caterpillar.
She thought she might as well wait, as she had nothing else to do, and perhaps after all it might tell her something worth hearing. For some minutes it puffed away without speaking; but at last it unfolded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, ‘So you think you’re changed, do you?’
‘I’m afraid I am, sir, I can’t remember things as I used—and I don’t keep the same size for ten minutes together!’
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
‘Can’t remember what things?’ said the caterpillar.
‘Who I am or who I came with. Anyway, enough of this, where’s Claudia, lover boy?’
‘She’s with her girlfriend. They came as the White King and the White Queen,’ said the caterpillar winking, pointing to Claudia and Jade rustling conspiratorially in the bushes. ‘Put one and one together.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise, I thought you were…’
He felt her arms passing round his waist for support as they fell slowly backwards on to the cushions behind. In an instant they were transported back to earlier days and he in turn quite forgot himself and began to kiss her full on the lips, which, to his relief, she responded to eagerly and with total abandon. He felt her hands rushing too onto his body, sending shivers of pleasure up his spine. Her scent attacked his senses, already dulled by the incense from the water bath.
‘God, but you’re beautiful, aren’t you?’
‘So are you. This feels right doesn’t it?’
‘Why on earth didn’t I ever do that before?’ She kissed him again, so that he could hardly breathe.
‘See what you’re doing to me?’
How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail.
And pour the waters of the Nile, on every golden scale.
How cheerfully he seems to grin, how neatly spreads his claws.
And welcomes little fishes in, with gently smiling jaws.
Lewis Carol, Through the Looking-Glass
*
‘I think our friends are having a pretty good time now,’ said Alice, pointing at the shadows of Hugh and Julia entwined in the gazebo. ‘I don’t think they’ll be in for a while, so we’d better not lock them out.’ The French doors opened and they were joined by Pearl and Hunter on the balcony.
*
‘So Augustus, how are we going to work this out?’ asked Pearl as she took a seat next to the slightly intoxicated pirate captain now sitting on the bench on the balcony. She filled his glass with Armagnac from the half-empty decanter in front of them. He looked at the glass, shaking the ice round in a circle and then looked back at Pearl with puppy-dog eyes. She looks truly sensational, he thought. Did he dare to take this further?
‘Mis
s Taylor, it’s delightful that you were able to join us this evening, your singing was quite enchanting, as ever,’ he said, his speech still formal if somewhat slurred.
‘I think we should cut the small talk,’ said Pearl. ‘We need to talk seriously, don’t we?’
‘Yes I suppose so, Miss Taylor. I’m afraid I think we do. You really were quite naughty the last time you visited us, you know. You realise I should charge you with a whole series of misdemeanours – kidnap, entrapment and blackmail amongst others I could name.’
‘Yes, but you won’t and we both know why not, don’t we, Gus?’
‘I guess it’s still the same old story.’
‘All’s fair in love and war.’
‘I really don’t think that excuses your behaviour though, however delightful an escort you are.’
‘Ah, if it’s to be your old world courtesy versus my new world justice, an unequal match, I think. It’s time to drop the courtly love bit and go with the flow I think, Captain.’
‘Revenge is never an attractive virtue in a woman, Miss Taylor. Would Troyte still be alive if you hadn’t been playing your little party games with him?’
‘Really not my gig, Inspector, I was done at the gallery. I hurt his pride but nothing else.’
‘But you let Rohit know he was coming didn’t you? You knew he would take matters into his own hands.’
‘Sshh, sometimes, you are a little too smart, Gus, really I am not that manipulative. Rohit approached me, not the other way around. How do you think I knew that Troyte would be here that weekend? He’s a clever young man, that writer, and you really ought to think about using him for more than the odd translation.’
‘So, you’re asking me to break a whole set of police regulations and countless laws and let you off?’
‘I’m afraid I am indeed. But I think it’ll be worth your while, my Toposcope hound, isn’t there a public interest test on prosecutions?’ she said, stroking his wig like a dog and blowing him a kiss.
‘That’s a good point, but not my call. Anyway, what about all that Rule Britannia business?’ he said. ‘You led us a merry dance there.’
‘But you and Penny solved the mystery, didn’t you?’
‘Yes but possibly not the enigma,’ he answered and then paused. The sound of a new song began to rise from the drawing room. That character had still not appeared on the stage.
‘Ah, Auld Lang Syne,’ she said as they heard their friends celebrating in the drawing room. ‘Maybe that’s the theme, friendship, the signal for us to return indoors.’
*
On the balcony of the house next door, Rohit and Nadia stared down at the frivolity below. They had been cuddling while listening quietly to the music and laughter. That evening she had cooked for him for the first time in the kitchenette next to her room. He’d relished the flavours, the spices, his body crushed by the cinnamon and nutmeg, licked by the sensuous aroma of rose petals and saffron. She had roasted the spices in a very hot pan until they released their oils and aroma, ground and worked them into a lavish paste, scoring and marinating the lamb so that they perfumed the meat. This was the last of the 1001 nights she would be apart from him, now he had been formally released. It was the end of her stories; now he would become slave to her love again.
He stood behind her while she nestled in his arms, snuggling her head in the crook of his neck, feeling ever safer as his strong hands wrapped tightly around the fabric of her sari, rubbing her elevated velvet slippers around his shins. She touched the back of his hand, pressing it closer against her abdomen, breathing in deeply and closing her eyes. She pulled the Mysore silk scarf closer around her shoulders.
‘Can you feel it kicking?’ she said, telling him now for the first time of her secret growing within her womb.
Her senses were full of the smell of the jasmine flowers she sprinkled in the little copper bowls in her bathroom; the bowls in which she washed her hair before brushing it through with olive oil. She had burnished her skin with yoghurt and turmeric to brighten its glow. He smelled of cologne, manly and western and slightly out of place in her imagined tropical landscape. She turned her face toward him and kissed him on the smoothness of his chin. From the bedroom behind them leaked the bewitching sounds of a qawwalli, art beyond caste, the lyrical sound of the rain and the wind captured in Ali Khan’s gentle voice. Rohit stroked her dark shiny hair, which radiated in the light from the moon.
‘So, my little prince, let me tell you the last part of the story before the sun comes up.’
*
As Eddie and Alice thanked their hosts for the last time and waved goodbye to Pearl in her taxi back to London, they descended the front stairs with a rather worse for wear pirate. Alice turned to the tall gentleman to kiss him goodnight, too.
‘Thank you for everything you did for me this evening, it was such a brilliant surprise.’
‘It was my pleasure, Alice. You are truly our romantic and delicate inspiration.’
‘Thank you. So what will become of Sir William?’ she asked, changing the subject. ‘I hear you are investigating him on tax fraud as well as the corruption case now.’
‘Yes there are quite a few things he is helping us with now. Fraud, using political influence to procure investment for the university, corruption and accessory to murder; in fact we’re building up quite a case against him. I think by the time we’ve finished with Sir William he’ll be helping out Her Majesty for some years to come and maybe not in quite the fashion he had come to expect. Yes, I think his dark sayings will be silent for a while longer.’
‘And what about you, Inspector Hunter? I was watching you earlier with Pearl. Now that you have truly returned from the grave, do you still have your dinner invitation for your evening with Ms Taylor at the Elgar Room?’ asked Eddie.
‘Yes, despite being the theme of many enigmas, death is overrated and they say revenge is a dish best eaten cold. I do still have my invitation to dinner and to dine again with her will surely be an awfully big adventure.’
Hunter closed his eyes and spoke softly:
And euermore vpon the Goddesse face
Mine eye was fixt, for feare of her offence,
Whom when I saw with amiable grace
To laugh at me, and fauour my pretence,
I was emboldned with more confidence,
Spenser, The Faerie Queene
