After Alice

by Gregory Maguire

  She scurried forward and tried the knob again, in case it had changed its mind and wanted to open. It did not. But this time she thought to look through the keyhole.

  What began as undifferentiated sheen organized itself into patches of green and blue. A lawn of some sort, a sky. A wall of topiary hedge clipped into the shapes of domesticated hens, as far as Ada could tell. Along came the Ace of Spades with the basket containing Rosa Rugosa, who was trailing her roots through the grass in a most unladylike display. Ada cupped her hands around the keyhole and called, “Hallo, over here! Open the door!” But the Ace of Spades, if he even heard Ada, kept traipsing. His head was down, possibly to find a burying plot for Rosa.

  Until now, Ada had been drifting through this unusual day with disregard for what she’d left behind and for what might lie ahead. Had it occurred to her to ask the question—­what is this adventure like?—­she might have concluded that her visit seemed like a story or a dream. In any case, it didn’t correspond to life as she had known it so far.

  A story in a book has its own intentions, even if unknowable to the virgin reader, who just lollops along at her own pace regardless of the author’s strategies, and gets where she will. After all, a book can be set aside for weeks, or for good. (Burned in the grate.) Alternatively, a story can be adored for centuries. But it cannot be derailed. A plot, whether abandoned by a reader or pursued rapturously, remains itself, and gets where it is headed even if nobody is looking. It is progressive and inevitable as the seasons. Winter still comes after autumn though you may have died over the summer.

  As for dreams, they are powered by urgent desire, even if that desire is only to escape the quotidian. Ada, who lived with a sense of disappointment and failure, thanks to her misshapen form, suffered from a flat dream-­life, one that seemed poorly differentiated from her waking hours. As a stolid child, her dreams were of static things, almost still-­lifes: a lump of cheddar on a board, a goat roped to a tinker’s cart, a curving road.

  Now, however, Ada no longer felt like the passive observer of an unfolding fiction or of a dream daguerreotype. Something new rose in her, a thrill of ambition. She had to get into that garden. She would get into that garden. She didn’t know why she felt so strongly about it. Usually she didn’t much care for gardens. The garden at the Vicarage was a mess, what with the monkey-­puzzle tree needing pruning and the orange hawkbit colonizing the verge. But this garden looked entrancing, something like a college garden glimpsed through forbidding gates. Such Oxford gardens would remain off-­limits to the likes of Ada, both for her gender and for her crab-­gaited form. And probably for her latent sinfulness. All the more important that she gain access to this paradise in the keyhole.

  She peered again. Beyond the door, the lawn was shorn and rolled to Pythagorean precision. The clouds were perfect, neither too many nor histrionic. As she watched hungrily, the cumuli began sliding down the side of the world and changing places with the lawn. This proved disconcerting, like a picture in a book turned upside down. Why, there was the Ace of Spades digging a hole in the lawn-­sky, and stuffing Rosa Rugosa root-­first into the green-­fringed heaven hovering over a blue eternal sky-­sea. It was amusing to see the Ace of Spades sprinkle water upward. “This is a day I’m having,” said Ada to herself.

  “No, it’s not,” said a voice behind her. “It’s a day I’m having. You’re only decoration. A sort of mousy, apprentice Erinys detached from her clot of spectres, I imagine. Lose your way?”

  She turned and discovered a lopsided crescent moon hanging above and to one side of the glass tabletop. “Did you speak?” she asked it. “You, moon?”

  The moon distorted itself to answer. “You were expecting a Pantagruel come through for his cup of ocean? The instructions tell you: Don’t look up.”

  “I was always taught to look a person in the eye when addressing them. Though it’s difficult to do now. Your eyes are invisible.”

  The moon-­mouth said, “I’m feeling hungry, but harpy or mouse, you are extremely odd-­looking. I hope you don’t taste untoward.”

  “I am no mouse. I am a little girl.”

  “You are either a very little girl or an indecisive Fate or an argumentative and dissembling mouse.” The sliver-­moon began to seem more like a cat’s mouth. Ada was glad the rest of the cat wasn’t present, as a cat that size would scarcely leave room for her.

  “Do you know how to get into the garden?” she asked, to change the subject.

  “Through the door, of course. When it’s ajar.”

  A guttural hiss or a purr, Ada couldn’t decide which, rumbled from behind the smiling moon-­mouth. Then a tongue emerged from between pin-­teeth. It angled to lick some invisible part of the implied cat. When Ada realized that the cat was probably bathing its particulars, she was glad the body was absent. Gigantic feline organs of any variety weren’t included in the list of classic panoramas she might hope to glimpse before she died.

  She thought it would be polite to divert attention from the practice of hygiene. “The garden beyond that door is circling itself somehow.”

  “No it isn’t,” said the cat-­mouth. “It’s the keyhole that’s rotating.”

  Ada looked again. Sure enough, the keyhole was moving in a clockwise direction, one complete rotation to the minute. “I met a gardener who had a key. But he’s already inside. Is there another key?” she asked.

  “There may be, or may not be, but either way it means nothing to me. This is my day, after all, not yours. I have no interest in attending a garden party.”

  “I should think we share the day equally,” ventured Ada.

  “Impossible,” came the reply. “I’m much larger than you are. So we can’t share anything equally. Grow up a little and you’ll see what I mean.”

  “I would like to know what the tag on the teacup says. Since you are much more lofty than I, you could read it and tell me.”

  One orange cat-­eye appeared, and squinted at the tabletop. “It says: DRINK ME.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  A bit more of the cat appeared, nearly its whole face, including a pair of twitching ears. A mask floating against walnut wainscoting. “I could carry you in my mouth and deposit you on the tabletop if you like, and you could see for yourself if I’m lying.” The smile now looked like a leer.

  Ada was afraid if she walked into the cat’s mouth she might fall out the other side. What would Miss Armstrong say? “I’d better not,” she said. “I know a little bit about the damned crowding into Charon’s boat, but I don’t know much about ghosts, including ghost cats. There might be some contagion, and I don’t think I’m ready to be a ghost.”

  “No time like the present. Can’t I interest you in a little bite?” The mouth loomed. “I think you are wearing a tag that says EAT ME, but you have hidden it in your clothes. That’s why mice shouldn’t wear clothes.”

  Ada said, “I have only one life. I need to take care of it.”

  “Very well said. Off and away with the fairies, indeed. That was a smart move.” Ada couldn’t tell if the spectral cat was mocking her. It continued. “They buried me under the Iffley yew. A new grave was open and they packed me on top of a coffin before they filled in the hole. It’s true cats have nine lives, you know. But cats can’t count. So I don’t know where I am.”

  “I don’t know where I am either. But I know where I want to be. Won’t you please tell me where I can find another key?”

  The cat-­head didn’t reply, but set to licking the ocean out of the teacup. As it beaded up on the cat’s whiskers, it no longer looked like drops of salty sea, but like cream. “Since this is my day, by and large, I have no reason to satisfy the urges of the most peculiar mouse I have ever met. Still, I’m feeling fat and satisfied. Do climb into my mouth, my dear. More than one way to get into that garden, you know.”

  At great speed, the mouth dipped very cl
ose to her. The smile looked less hungry than kind, but Ada stepped back. “I am too timid,” she said, “and we’ve hardly been introduced. Another time, perhaps.”

  The haunted mouth began to fade. “Very well. I can wait. May I give you a bit of advice?”

  “Please do.”

  “Don’t take the advice of anyone you meet here. We’re all mad.”

  Ada thought about it. I’ve just met you, and your advice is not to trust you. If I don’t take your advice, then I should trust you. I guess I have to trust you and not trust you. Your advice wheels about like the keyhole. There’s no way in.

  Watching the cat-­head dissolve much as daylight does, by unnamable degrees, Ada’s eyes fell again on the words in the ceiling tracery. DON’T LOOK UP. Why trust that advice? Noticing that the plaster tracery had sent tendrils down the paneling, and that they were beginning to take root in the floor, she found a foothold and then a second. She began to climb toward the green heaven.

  CHAPTER 15

  Mrs. Brummidge poured; Mrs. Brummidge squeezed the lemons; Mrs. Brummidge scooped the sugar; Mrs. Brummidge took a great wooden spoon and stirred the concoction. “Whilst you was out reading and losing track of Alice,” she said to Lydia, “that governess from the Vicarage came sniffing about for Ada Boyce, who’d been sent here with a jar of marmalade. But we never seen her, nor the marmalade, which will be welcome should it ever arrive.”

  “Young ladies these days,” said Lydia, deciding how to proceed. “One would think there were gypsies about, the way small girls disappear.”

  “Well, our Alice has her own compass, no doubt about that and don’t we know it well. But Ada Boyce is docile as a lambkin.”

  “A mammoth, compromised lambkin.”

  “Don’t be snarky. Ada’s lighting out on her lonesome vexes her governess no end. You’ve not seen the poor afflicted child, did you?”

  “Well, I did. And then I did not,” said Lydia. “I said as much to Miss Armstrong as she flurried by me after having accosted you for news. She’s a high-­spirited ostrich, not made for patience, I think.”

  “Well, that household,” said Mrs. Brummidge darkly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I once went by to borrow some malt vinegar? That time the grocer was gone away? Due to his old gaffer’s getting his head split open by a falling chamber pot? The kitchen door of the Vicarage was open to the sun and their cook didn’t hear my knock, so I stepped inside.” Mrs. Brummidge looked this way and that, as if there were agents who might hear her spilling testimony against the House of Boyce. “She was drinking tea from the spout. Oh, it’s an ill-­run house, from garret to cistern. I don’t wonder Miss Armstrong flusters so.” At this she caught herself. Too much had been said. She finished up with the lemon barley. She whisked a tray from the shelves beneath the window. “Rhoda, look smart. They’ll be waiting for this.”

  Lydia stood. “Rhoda, keep at your beans.” The kitchen maid was flummoxed, as if caught between a constable and a clergyman and unsure whom to obey. At Lydia’s insurrection Mrs. Brummidge took a sluice of air between her teeth and backward-­whistled it in. But she said no more about it. She placed the tray with the lemon barley and some drinking glasses and a plate of morning cake upon the pastry table. She retreated, as if the refreshments were about to detonate. She trained her eyes on the floor. Rhoda settled her rump back on her three-­legged stool.

  Lydia didn’t speak again, but picked up the tray. She led with her shoulder through the swinging door into the passage. When she was halfway along, she heard Mrs. Brummidge hiss at Rhoda, “Unseemly!” with the same tone of scandal she might have used had she been saying “Strumpet!” or “Baptist!” She does have her opinions, does our Mrs. Brummidge, thought Lydia. She was stymied for a moment at the parlor door, which was closed. How does one knock and open a door while carrying a tray? How did Rhoda ever manage? Balancing one edge of the tray against her bosom, Lydia freed her right hand to knock. Then she went through, into the male preserve of Pater, Mr. Darwin, and that handsome Mr. Winter.

  The light was bright. The breeze off the Cherwell delivered an odor of June mud, backwashed with essence of meadow-­grass and a whiff of cow. Mr. Winter was quiet and attentive, lifting on his toes before the open window. His hands were clasped in downward prayer. His eyes did not tilt toward the door. Nor did those of Pater or of Darwin. But Lydia could hardly blame them. They were expecting no one more exotic than Rhoda.

  She set the tray down on top of the closed harmonium. Her back turned to them, Lydia listened intently to the men. Darwin seemed to be reading from his own manuscript, line by line. Pater was commenting in words of solemn circumspection. It reminded Lydia of the way the local boys would beat the bounds of the parish every year, with peeled willow wands and high hilarity. Of hilarity there was none from Darwin, nor from dear father, but the intensity of thrashing seemed to her the same. Every yard of statement needed to be tested for soundness. What Mr. Winter was adding, other than devotion to the holy cause of thought, was unclear.

  Lydia rotated at the hip, waiting for a pause in the proceedings so she could offer to serve. Mr. Winter against the bright window was a silhouette. His hair was silvery blond and sleek. His form was neater even than it had seemed in the kitchen. How nice that he wasn’t lost in one of those sexless black gowns in which the scholars tramped about, hooting in sunshine and huddling in rain.

  A patch of shadow in a darker corner of the room shifted from beside the aureole afforded Mr. Winter. Lydia started, making a small, contained movement. Was Alice hiding in here all along? Impossible. But the shape was childlike. “Mercy upon us,” she said with displeasure. Darwin paid no mind. Pater looked up. She could not turn toward Mr. Winter.

  “Lydia, whatever are you doing?” said her father.

  “I am here to deliver a beverage, Pater, as requested by your other guest. I had been told there was a child. I see I had not been told everything.”

  The creature came forward. His countenance was of a very un-­English hue. He was of Africa, or from some plantation in Hispaniola or Barbados or the like. His skin was shiny as oiled mahogany. Hair cropped as if for nits. With undisguised thirst, he cast his glance upon the drink. “Yes, this is meant for you,” she said. His hands came out to clasp the glass before she had filled it. For an instant she saw his hands were gammon-­pink upon the palms. This surprised her, as the boy was otherwise as coal-­dusty as a sweep at the end of his fourth flue of the day.

  Darwin went back to his text, her father to his exegetic murmuring. Mr. Winter moved across the carpet so he could speak in a lowered tone. “Miss Lydia, you honor us,” he said.

  “No one mentioned the child was a boy,” she replied, in tones even lower, “and an aboriginal at that.”

  “May I present him to you? Miss Lydia, this is Siam.” The boy didn’t meet her eyes. He downed the lemon drink like a Berber lately crawled from hot Sahara sands.

  “What is he doing here? With—­with them? With you?” She realized it might sound uncouth, her inquiry, but she could be considered the mistress of the house, by some accountings anyway. She threw back her shoulders to suggest authority.

  “Well, miss, the lad’s traveling with me, you see. I’d arrived at Down House to meet the great man. I’d a letter of introduction. To my surprise, despite his recent aversion to travel, Darwin announced he’d made a previous appointment to visit your father”—­at this Mr. Winter’s voice became a whisper—­“in his bereavement. My unexpected arrival was timely. I was invited to come along and assist, as Darwin is too frail to travel alone.”

  “Yes,” said Lydia, also in private tones, “but—­but. This boy. He seems young to be your servant.”

  “No, no; not a servant, you’re right about that,” said Mr. Winter hastily, as if that explained everything.

  “Mother has been dead for several months. Why has Darwin come now? A
nd why have you bothered to come with him?” Lydia felt she was asking questions too grand for the custom of the parlor; she might well continue with And why did Mother die, and where did she go? But she stood looking at Mr. Winter with a ferocity that, though she had no idea of it, was nearly glamorous.

  “I understand that your father was kind to Huxley when he was here defending Darwin’s theories against the charges of heresy. Darwin has his head in natural science, but everyone has lost someone,” explained the guest, hushedly. “Darwin his daughter Annie, this house its beloved matriarch. The heart is a construct of any waking creature, and Darwin has a heart, too.”

  “A heart and a mind. I suppose Pater wants to discuss the immortal soul with Mr. Darwin.” She sighed, as if it was a recurrent argument about interior plumbing.

  “The great man is not well,” said Mr. Winter. “He lives in his sickroom. Had I not shown up opportunely upon his doorsill, he’d never have managed this trip. I can see it is taking a toll. I should go back to his side.”

  The little boy had finished a second glass. “There will be none for the others,” said Lydia rudely. “Though I suppose I can negotiate a fresh supply. How does this scamp come to be with you?”

  “He can speak for himself. He speaks English quite well. Perhaps you would like to show him around, now he is comfortable here? He’s slightly bored.”

  The world of men, always reconvening, asserting itself. The pull of her father’s susurrus, Darwin’s cautious replies. Mr. Winter preferred that over conversation with her. “Very well,” she said. “Master Siam, is it? You may accompany me. You may tell me something about yourself.”

  The lad followed her willingly enough, only pausing at the door to glance bright eyes at his guardian. Mr. Winter had returned to the window. He’d struck up again the posture of acolyte. An Athenian harkening to Socrates. “Come along lest you get lost, too,” said Lydia to the child.