Pinkerton's Sister

by Peter Rushforth

  “Desired effect,” he announced, explaining what he was about to do. The mask muffled his voice, rendered him faceless. “Sure cure. Injurious instruments.” He placed the injurious instruments on the table, spaced out around the unconscious girl laid out in front of him. A pillow hid her face. He held them out one at a time between his thumb and middle finger – suspended just above the surface – and snapped them down with his forefinger.

  Spoon.

  Snap!

  Fork.

  Snap!

  Knife.

  Snap!

  He positioned the cutlery neatly and precisely all around Annie, the meal on which he was about to assuage his hunger.

  Spoon.

  Snap!

  Fork.

  Snap!

  Knife.

  Snap!

  He seemed especially keen on the knives. There was an especially loud Snap! as the knives descended.

  “Check the cutlery!”

  Papa had given his order more than once. He clearly visualized Annie walking away from them, bowed over, chinking slightly, her pockets bulky with furtively purloined knives, forks, and spoons, filched from denuded drawers, as if she were traveling to a place where she would feast perpetually.

  It was the knives Alice wanted most, the knives she would most – and most enthusiastically – have used.

  “C-C-Curse him! C-C-Curse him! C-C-Curse him!”

  She said it aloud because it had to be spoken to take effect; unspoken desires were as futile as unthought wishes, even if she did stutter when she said it.

  I never saw a brute I hated so;

  He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

  (Those last two lines – from Robert Browning – had often gone through her mind. They had the power of an incantation, a double-double-toil-and-trouble spell cast by a solitary Weird Sister in the flickering light of a fire.)

  “C-C-Curse him! C-C-Curse him! C-C-Curse him!”

  The more she said it, the more likely it was to come true.

  Almost without realizing she was doing it – as if unwrapping a candy – she had removed the rustling paper from around the package she was holding, and held the ring in the palm of her hand. She had recognized it immediately, and had almost hurried straight downstairs to show Mama. It had been too big to fit on any of Annie’s fingers, and she had worn it threaded onto the necklace.

  Alice had been wrong in imagining Annie approaching Madame Roskosch wearing all her “jules”: the ring had been left behind for her to find. Annie had placed it in Hard Cash on top of Alice’s bookmark (a reproduction of a Mrs. Alexander Diddecott painting), thinking that she would find it that same day, when she continued with her rereading.

  The necklace, the earrings, and the ring all had the same matching pattern: ovals of mirror glass set into gold-colored metal. Annie had put them on to show Alice when she had first received them. The miniature looking-glasses caught the light, dazzling in bright sun, and sent underwater rainbow patterns along the walls and ceiling, spinning elongated circles of brightness. Sometimes, during long mornings or afternoons in school, Alice had produced a lesser version of the same effect with the glass of her pocket-watch, or the lenses of her spectacles, watching the rippling radiance around the classroom.

  If she focused the beams correctly, she might be able to ignite Miss Swanstrom like a condemned witch, and put an end to the hours of agony with a brief but intense blaze, the kind that had consumed Krook in Bleak House, though – admittedly – not quite so spontaneous a combustion. This was another passage she found herself rereading, in the way that others returned – for a quietly enjoyable weep, handkerchiefs at the ready, just like Mama – to favorite death scenes in sentimental novels.

  The cinder of a small, charred log of wood sprinkled with white ashes: that was the (not at all sentimental) description of what was left of Krook after the flames had finished with him. It beat the death of Little Nell any time. If she couldn’t dispose of Miss Swanstrom as spectacularly as St. Cassian of Imola’s pupils had disposed of him in Elphinstone Dalhousie Barton’s depiction of his death (though she lived in hope), this would have to do for the time being. The whole class could sing celebratory songs around the bonfire as Millie – this was Miss Swanstrom’s Christian name – went up in flames, a ginger-headed Joan of Arc. (It was not advisable to make any reference to the color of her hair. Like the size of Mabel Peartree’s nose, certain things were safest not remarked upon. The slightest hint of a stunned involuntary “Crikey!” at the sight of Mabel Peartree would have her rolling up her sleeves and looking murderous.) Euterpe Dibbo was the one who had triumphantly discovered that Miss Swanstrom was in possession of a first name, and some of the more impressionable girls had become quite excited.

  They could roast potatoes in the glowing remains, and have a feast. There would be recitations and songs, an atmosphere of celebratory jollity.

  “‘Tender-Heartedness’ by Harry Graham,” Alice would announce as the title of her chosen poem, alerting the class – by a subtle shift in her tone of voice – that pocket-handkerchiefs might very well be required by all listeners.

  Third position.

  Simper.

  This was going to be sad, really sad. The last few lumps of roast potato were discreetly swallowed. The more enthusiastic amongst her audience began sniffing prematurely, affected by the atmosphere, dabbing genteelly at their eyes. The pocket-handkerchiefs were big and white, and ironed into neat straight-edged quarters.

  “Millie, in one of her nice new sashes,

  Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes;

  Now, although the room grows chilly,

  I haven’t the heart to poke poor Millie.”

  She wished that Harry Graham really had published his poetry when she had been a girl. Heartless Homes cried out for Ruthless Rhymes.

  Annie had beamed proudly as she displayed her jewelry, and moved the top half of her body from side to side, so that she sparkled with spectrums, the lower part of her face dancing with spangles of light, Ophelia or the Lady of Shalott floating down a sun-speckled stream, and Alice could see little bits of herself reflected in the tiny mirrors.

  There was her smiling mouth, one of her upraised hands, her hair …

  Parts of her were everywhere, but she was nowhere complete.

  She put the ring onto the ring finger of her left hand – the wedding finger – and extended her hand out in front of her, as if to check her fingernails. She had to fold her thumb across the inside of her palm to hold the ring securely in place. There was a certain sensation of naughtiness in wearing a ring on this finger, a feeling that it wasn’t really allowed until she was older. Her own face gazed back at her in miniature, like a portrait in a locket painted small, or a head cut out from a larger photograph to fit.

  It ought to have been like Aladdin’s ring, a ring to produce the slave of the ring when it was polished, an enormous jinnee that would say to her, “I am yours to command, mistress! Whatever you ask me for, I shall bring to you.” She wouldn’t ask it to carry her out of the darkness of the cave, and up to the surface of the earth. She wouldn’t ask it to carry her to the part of Africa where the magic pavilion had been transported. She would ask for Annie. She rubbed the ring, as if accidentally, not really aware of what it was she was doing.

  It hadn’t worked.

  Of course it hadn’t worked.

  She’d known it wouldn’t work, and yet she’d tried it.

  She lay on her side and lifted up the pillow, looking at her reflection in the mirror of the ring that she’d positioned to face her.

  She looked at herself, made small in the distance, reflected in the little oval mirror, a mirror for the tiniest of mermaids.

  “Looking-glass, looking-glass on the hand

  Who is the fairest in all the land?”

  Not her, that was for sure.

  The ring – too big for Annie’s fingers – was also too big for any of her fingers, and – like Annie – she
had worn it around her neck, threaded onto a small gold chain. The chain – given to her by Grandmama – had once held a small cross, and she had held her breath for a while when she had first replaced it with the ring. Nothing had happened, and she had let her breath out in a great gasp, and then held it again in case she had been premature.

  It was Charlotte who had pointed out the lettering engraved round the inside surface, too tiny for Alice to have noticed it.

  I Belong To Annie.

  Charlotte had read it out loud to her, seemingly without any effort – she hadn’t even screwed up her eyes – and Alice still could not read it, even when she knew what it said. She had taken Papa’s magnifying glass and read the lettering for herself. She knew that Charlotte would have read it out properly, but she had to see it written down, not just read out to her by another person, the way she had read things out to Annie. She tried to believe that she was looking after it for Annie, keeping it safe until she returned, as she would.

  After a while, the ring would fit onto her little finger, and she stopped wearing it on a chain around her neck, but Annie did not return. She’d lost the little cross, and was unable to replace it on the chain, even though she’d looked everywhere for it. She was a total failure as a Pinkerton, an unworthy bearer of a proud name.

  A little while later – when she knew that Annie would never be returning – it fitted any finger on her hand, and she began to wear it all the time, on her middle finger.

  When she first wore it to Mrs. Albert Comstock’s, she had noticed – no doubt she was meant to notice – the nudge-nudges at the cheapness of the ring she wore, and Mrs. Albert Comstock and Mrs. Goodchild had made twinkly, carefully kind-faced (or as near as they could manage) inquiries. The sensation of strain had been exhausting just to witness, quite nauseating. She had remained enigmatic. It was the best way to annoy them, and she wasn’t going to tell the bejeweled warthogs that it had been given to her by “that darkie girl,” the grinning crocodile. (They would not have recognized “Annie,” not known the name.)

  Gracious!

  Ha-ha-ha-ha.

  (Alice heard the sound precisely, the hippopotamus honkings.)

  What a lot of teeth!

  Sometimes, when she didn’t feel up to bright repartee, she turned the ring the wrong way around, so that only a simple gold-colored band showed, and she felt the little mirror and the gouging claws that held it when she clenched her hand. She clenched harder and harder as the afternoon became increasingly unendurable, forcing the little mirror into her mount of Saturn, cutting into her line of heart.

  Sometimes, when Alice returned home, she found that there was blood on her palm – she had gripped her hands so tightly – and marks that looked as if some small fierce creature had made them, scratching to escape from a place in which it had been trapped. Blood smeared her need for solitude, and seeped along the feelings of her heart. She had a double heart line, and this meant that she had an unusually developed capacity for love.

  Mrs. Alexander Diddecott had talked of such things one afternoon, peering dubiously at the lines and markings of her hands, a woman attempting to decipher an unfamiliar – and not very well written – foreign alphabet. She had held the outer edge of Alice’s hand lightly, possibly reluctant to grasp something suspected of grubbiness. She probably had a crystal ball at home, well polished on a nicely brushed red velvet cushion, looking rather like the glass dome that Mrs. Alexander Diddecott had, the one containing the plaster cast of her baby boy’s arm.

  The left hand was the hand to read first. This was the hand that revealed what was inherent, that which was within you.

  The lines on the mount of Saturn made a distinct square. This meant that she was in danger from fire. Perhaps she really was Bertha Rochester after all.

  One day she would clench her hand so tightly that the tiny mirror would shatter.

  “Gracious!” Mrs. Albert Comstock would exclaim, as the shimmering blood-edged fragments tinkled downward.

  “Gracious!” Mrs. Goodchild would exclaim, slightly louder, not to be outdone.

  I Belong To Annie.

  29

  The ring was the first message.

  The picture was the second message.

  She hadn’t seen the picture at first. She’d placed the ring on her finger immediately, to feel some closeness to Annie, and looked at her reflection in the tiny oval looking-glass, thinking she might look different in that particular mirror. She looked the same as she always did, she eventually decided, only a little smaller, a little further away. Some improvement there, then, she thought. She sometimes felt that, of all the looking-glasses in the house, she looked best in the oval mirror – another, larger, oval – at the back of her wash-hand-stand, because – glancing into it as she washed her face – she was not wearing her spectacles when she looked. This was not because her spectacles gave her appearance an ugliness it otherwise would not have possessed; it was because she could not see herself at all without her spectacles.

  The picture was in color, a small reproduction of a painting she later knew to be by Vermeer, the girl in blue reading a letter at a window, and was tucked beneath her bookmark for her to find. It was a picture she knew well, and had always been drawn to, though she had never known its title, or the name of the artist. Not knowing anything about it, knowing only the image that was in front of her (something she had always seemed to know, like a memory), somehow made it speak to her in a way that was more personal, a way that was beyond the reach of words. She felt something of what Linnaeus must have felt – years later – thinking that that Danish artist painted only for him. He and Ben were babies when Annie disappeared. They would have no memories of her.

  Something about the girl in the picture made her think that it was a portrait of the artist who had painted it, the thought that all paintings were self-portraits, serious-faced artists studying their own reflections in the way that Hamlet studied Yorick’s skull, or Aristotle contemplated the bust of Homer. There was something about the smock that made her seem like an artist, something about the firm, clenched hands, the way in which the light caught the knuckles. She’d looked for telltale smudges of paint on these hands, stains on the front of the smock, and then it had occurred to her that everything she was looking at was composed entirely of paint: the reflective face with its lowered eyes, the whole figure, the room in which she stood. Women artists to Alice, as a child, were women who stood in silence all day at their easels in front of paintings by men in art galleries, copying them. The copyists – the public galleries were crowded with them – all seemed to be women, a sex with nothing original to say in paint, one that could only mimic what men had already said. Copying Day was a clarion call – this mediæval instrument linked them neatly with their stitch-stitch-stitching forebears – for all amateur women artists to root out their brushes and watercolors and assume attitudes of artistic endeavor. Those unwilling to thus expose themselves to public scrutiny had to be content with needles and silks, the unceasing stitch-stitch-stitch of the past. Her ideas for her novel The Life Class must have been forming far earlier than she had realized.

  Vermeer was another artist much loved by Linnaeus. It was he who had given her the name of the artist, he who had identified the painting when she had shown it to him. He didn’t grasp at crowded value-for-money canvases, packed with gesticulating figures, and filling the whole of a large wall (they’d have golden frames, elaborately carved); all he desired was the small-scale depiction of the solitary figure of a silent girl in a room. It would have a simple black frame, “Dutch frames” Linnaeus called them. To Linnaeus, Dickinson Prud’homme was a purveyor of pulchritude, not an artist, a man who dealt in bosoms and buttocks, a rival to Comstock’s Comestibles as a purveyor of fresh meat.

  Because she could not read, Annie had a particular fondness for pictures of people reading, and sought them out. Alice imagined the walls of her room as being lined with such pictures, inward-looking faces angled downward, or turne
d a little to one side, and the room filled with an intense, concentrated silence like a Quaker Meeting in the moment just before someone felt the need to speak. She had imagined wrongly. On the one occasion on which she had been into Annie’s room – a night of snow and storm – the white walls had been bare.

  Alice had studied The Woman in Blue, trying to understand what it was that Annie had been trying to say, to discover the encoded meaning. Because she could not write, Annie had left the picture to speak for her. The young woman in the blue smock was facing to the left, standing at a window, though the window was not depicted. It was something that you knew was there, but could not see. The whole picture had a sense of things that were not there, things just out of reach, things that yet were central to its meaning. The light flooded her face, and the front of her body, as she stood – utterly absorbed – her head bent slightly forward as she read the letter that she held with both hands, her arms resting against her. She was gripping it tightly, her knuckles clenched. Her mouth was slightly open. It was a depiction of the moment at which a reader or viewer melted into the text, into the play or opera, into the painting, the moment at which breathing halted, time ceased to exist, and Alice found her own mouth drooping open, her breathing slowing, as if it were she who was reading the words in the letter, she who was the woman in blue. The young woman’s head and shoulders were in profile against a large map that hung on the white wall like a tapestry behind her, the lines and markings of a place that had been exhaustively explored, its frontiers delineated, all details named, a place that had lost its mystery. The young woman herself was mystery entire; nothing was known about her, and it was what the viewer was that made him (or her, or her) see what was seen in that captured moment.

  It was in a book that she had first found the picture, and it was in books that she kept it, keeping her place in each book that she read. She always penciled comments in books as she read them, marking passages that particularly struck her, and always read a book with a blank piece of paper folded inside it, jotting down thoughts that opened out from a text. The Vermeer picture she kept next to this, all unfolded musings drawn out by studying it, a silent form that teased her out of thought. When she came across these words in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” she knew exactly what Keats had meant, but she had never known what Annie had meant by the message in the ring, the message in the picture, if messages were what they were. She studied her face in the miniature mirror, looked at the girl reading the letter, and the words of what she was reading became a part of what she saw.