Kissing Alice

by Jacqueline Yallop

  ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘I need to settle things.’

  The auctioneer puffed. ‘Really, Ms Craythorne. We need to be quick.’

  ‘Eddie, I need to settle things,’ said Alice, ignoring him.

  Eddie looked at her blankly, as though he did not recognize her, and it was Maggie who answered.

  ‘I’ll stay, Alice. I’ll go through it again with you.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake, Maggie, it’s nothing to do with you,’ said Alice, and when Maggie looked at her father, he nodded.

  ‘She’s right, Mags,’ said Eddie.

  The auctioneer closed the door to the hall behind him and it was quiet. There was just the hum of things. The click of Maggie’s heels on the tiled floor receded from them. Eddie got up and held out his hand to Alice, low down, unobtrusive.

  ‘We’ll find out about it, one way or another, one day,’ said Eddie. ‘We’ll find out properly, if you like. I can’t believe Florrie would do that.’

  Alice stepped away. ‘Ripped it apart, in the end – sold bits of it on – to pay for what? Stockings? Prayer cards? Perhaps she gave it to the priest, to save her soul.’ She was somewhere distant, almost laughing. ‘I didn’t think she had it in her,’ she marvelled.

  ‘Look, Alice—’

  The determination of Eddie brought her back. ‘Oh, but Eddie – for pity’s sake! The letter! The rest of it we could’ve… but the letter – that was the thing. Why did you do that?’

  ‘I wanted to keep it back,’ he said. ‘I wished I had, really I did. But you see, it was the librarian and everyone, saying it had to go in. Saying it was part of its history. I’m sorry.’

  There were long years between them that they would never navigate. But Alice tried. ‘And what did you do with what I’d written? To Florrie?’ she asked.

  Eddie thought she was confused. ‘No, you wrote to me, Alice. That’s what they’ve put in the book. The letter – the love letter – you wrote to me.’

  He held out his hand again. Alice looked at the white of it against the worn blue of the office.

  ‘I never wrote to you, Eddie,’ she said, frowning. ‘Why would I write to you? I told you that before. It’s not my letter.’

  Eddie was stubborn. ‘But I was sure…’

  ‘Why on earth would I give you a wedding present like that? Think about it.’

  Eddie was rubbing his face hard, his eyes tight shut, his skin creased. He thought of all the things he had heard about Alice, but they would not settle, he could not stack them into any kind of order; everything about her was confused.

  His words were smothered. ‘But if you never wrote it, Alice; if you never said those things…’

  Alice was scornful. ‘Eddie, I saw it in the newspaper. It was trash. I’d never write something like that.’

  ‘But Alice, that’s what started it all.’ His hands dropped away and his voice came clearer. ‘When I read that – when I thought…’

  ‘That? You read that – that rubbish – and you thought…’ Alice laughed through tight teeth. ‘Oh Eddie! It’s been a mess. For a long time.’

  Eddie was getting up to come towards her when he thought of something else. He sank back. ‘Do you want the book back then, Alice?’

  ‘You can’t sell it.’

  ‘But everyone’s waiting. It’s all arranged.’

  ‘Just take it home, Eddie. They can’t stop you.’

  Eddie shook his head. ‘Maggie’s banking on it,’ he said.

  Alice stepped towards him. ‘You can’t sell it, Eddie,’ she said firmly. ‘Not after everything.’

  Eddie ran his hand over the case on the table. ‘Look, we won’t sell your pages, Alice. They’re yours. If you want to keep them, they’re yours.’

  Alice had her hands too now on the case, to support herself, but still she did not touch Eddie. A heavy tear dropped on to the plastic cover and ran away towards the zip.

  ‘Oh Alice, look, don’t you see, it’s Maggie’s as much as mine. And she’s set her heart on it, on selling it.’

  Alice knew she only had the words for one appeal.

  ‘Eddie, listen to me. The book is mine. It’s always been mine. It was never Florrie’s or yours. It was certainly never Maggie’s. It’s mine. It’s all there is of me. You’ll betray me, Eddie, if you sell it.’

  He could never understand this. He was cross with her for spoiling things. ‘Don’t be stupid, Alice – it’s just a book. And if you didn’t write the letter, even – if you never even thought you might love me…’

  Alice shook away his dismay. ‘I only said I didn’t write the letter, Eddie. I only said that. The rest of it…’ She looked at him. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. It’s all so long ago, with Florrie being there and…’

  Eddie put a hand up and brushed the hair gently from Alice’s cheek, feeling the coolness of her tears. She did not move away.

  ‘I’m getting to be an old man, Alice. I don’t work any more. If Maggie had the money… if the sale went ahead…’

  Alice touched her hand on his. ‘I think there’d be too much lost,’ she said.

  ‘No, Alice, listen to me. There’d be nothing lost. You’d have the money – you can have some of the money, of course you can… and we can do something. It’d be a new start.’

  ‘I don’t think I could,’ said Alice, decided. ‘I think perhaps it’s too late for all that.’

  Maggie turned the bend in the corridor back towards the saleroom. She could see Alice and her father still in the office, close, their faces almost touching, their eyes on the table, not seeing. Their voices were low, but she could hear the rumble of passion in them. When she passed the open door, they did not see her; did not even raise their heads. She walked more quickly. For a moment, at the end of the corridor, she paused, but then she pushed open the door to the saleroom and Mr Wilcox, relieved, beckoned to her from the dais. She felt the buzz of noise around her.

  Alice and Eddie were slow together, tangled. It was some time before they made their way out of the office, the document case swinging metrically between them. They pushed open the door to the saleroom and Eddie stood back for Alice to pass, but they both stopped abruptly in the silence beyond, in the catch of breath before Theodore Wilcox, in full voice and imperious, called another figure.

  ‘Eighty-eight thousand, five hundred, on my right.’

  There was nothing around Alice suddenly but the dark, and apart from it all, the book, a beautiful thing, resting on a midnight velvet, lit from above, glistening almost, drawing her. Alice knew the place at which it was open for display. It was the song of ‘A Little Girl Lost’, with a tree sucking at the text of the poem, golds and weeping crimsons like bruises at the bottom of the page. She could hear the words of it in her head, Arthur’s voice knotted within them, and she felt herself trembling. There was too much now, shrieking at her from the poem, obliterating everything. She reached for the book, quivering, seeing everything now as it had once been, the blossoming love of it and the weariness. Around her was nothing but dim curtains. She was completely alone.

  A hand rested gently on her arm. Alice started. There was the dazzle of the display lights and an eddying mist of colour beyond that would not resolve itself. And then Eddie.

  ‘Eddie, stop him. He can’t do that. He can’t sell the book.’

  But Eddie had seen Maggie already, seated to one side, her eyes fixed on the auctioneer, leaning into the weight of the numbers he was calling.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alice,’ he said. And he took her tightly in his arms, drawing her back again to the edge of the saleroom, holding her firm across the shoulders, the unyielding plastic of the document case stiff and pungent between them.

  The bidding was measured but brisk, the auctioneer’s timbre steady. The price continued to mount magnificently. At three hundred thousand pounds Theodore Wilcox paused to take a sip of water from the glass at his side and to glance discreetly at the clock. At four hundred thousand pounds there was a fleeting
lull while the bidders considered their limits. Eddie could not look at Alice. He unwrapped his arms from her, taking her instead by the hand. She twisted her little finger between two of his and they held on tight, unsteady. The light in the hall became metallic and brittle as the sun faded outside, and somewhere a siren sounded. Still the sale continued. Then there was a silence, a glimpsed moment when anything was possible, before the auctioneer dropped his gavel ceremonially at slightly more than half a million pounds, and the book was summoned across the Atlantic to be locked in a private library cabinet. There was a shuffle in the hall as people began to stand.

  Maggie was defiant. ‘He had our instructions,’ she said, fidgeting from foot to foot in front of them. ‘We’d signed everything. I suppose he got tired of waiting. I suppose there was a schedule.’

  Eddie nodded and for a moment put out a hand on Maggie’s fluttering arm. Then he looked at Alice. Her face was flushed pink with the shock of it, her lips parted in surprise.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Alice,’ he said. ‘Does it?’

  He saw the lines deep in the corners of her eyes, the shadows of tears there still, the whisper of Florrie in the turn of her mouth. He waited for her to say something. Maggie peeled away, buoyant in the crowd, and Eddie saw her with the auctioneer, embracing him. Then there was just the two of them, quiet.

  ‘Alice, it doesn’t matter?’ Eddie asked again. But he was afraid. Her mournful stillness was beyond him.

  Alice did not know what to say. The words she was used to were in the book and now they had been taken away, the lines of verse spluttering like broken prophesies at the limits of her vision. She would have to begin again with a whole new language, and she did not know yet if she could. But she took Eddie’s hand, and led him through the clustered crowd and out on to the street where a sudden summer shower had split the sky with rust and marbled the pavements with rainbow damp. The noise of the traffic swelled like a January sea. They stood outside, along from the saleroom door, waiting. In the blank glass of the office window behind them, Alice knew she should be able to see herself, but the dust and the rain and the city grease obscured the reflection, the sharp light of the late sun breaking through the gap in the buildings opposite and making everything flat. Alice brushed her hair from her face.

  Ahead of them, caught in the slow traffic, a bus pulled to a halt, the conductor leaning out to look up the street and its open doorway beckoning. It pulled forward a few paces and stopped again, puthering dark fumes from its exhaust. The conductor disappeared inside. And all of a sudden there was something irresistible about the way the narrow metal stairway wound up into the dark of the top deck. Alice began to run, her document case flapping as she called to Eddie, her arms splayed, her shoes splashing up the rain on to her skirt, her eyes fixed on the red of the bus staining the line of traffic, and just as it moved again, faster now, purposeful, Eddie caught up with her and they skipped together on to the low platform where they hung for a moment side by side. And as they clung to the metal pole, surprised at themselves, the bus turned a corner into unfamiliar streets, gathering speed now as it moved away, and Alice looked steadily across at Eddie then, ready to answer him.