Pinkerton's Sister

by Peter Rushforth

  Alice had run all Enobarbus’ appropriate speeches together, and written them out in her neatest handwriting. Sobriety had cornered her, and demanded that she supply him with something suitable for him to perform for Mrs. Albert Comstock’s birthday or else. Unhesitatingly, she’d opted for or else. Act Two, Scene Two, she’d written learnedly as the heading, with II, ii in brackets to follow, giving – she felt – an improvingly biblical feel to her reference. Roman numerals were so much more appropriate in this context. With that underwear openly on display you needed as much improvement as you could get, prolonged exposure (a better word ought surely to have come to mind) to some of the more implacable, hectoring passages from the Old Testament. Sobriety’s mute gratitude – Grab. Grunt. Sneer. Attempt at slap – was reward enough for her. (“A Titanic …” Sobriety was thinking. “A Monumental …” There are some certainties in life to which we clutch. Sobriety Goodchild was perpetually hungry. “Possibly even a Gargantuan …” He stretched his hands out further, wobbling like Mary Benedict in an over-ambitious ballet position, all ready to grab the steaming steak pies that would be generously bestowed upon him by the gratified recipient of his fulsome address.) Alice could – when in good form – construct multiple revenges that would have had John Webster applauding admiringly and feeling inadequate.

  “Hail, Cleopatra!” he began, worshipful arms extended as if in a vain attempt to encompass Mrs. Albert Comstock’s vastness. Prolonged exposure to the worst excesses of Dudley Dibbo’s poetry had – as Alice fully expected – created in him the feeling that real poetry tended to have the word “Hail” in it somewhere. That’s why she added it, modestly doing her bit to improve upon Shakespeare. “Hail” had created a misplaced confidence in the rightness of what he was doing, and gave a cocky swagger to his reading. (“A Gargantuan!”) Otsego Lake Academy was not an establishment that approved much of poetry. It couldn’t see the point. Mrs. Albert Comstock, gratifyingly, immediately looked uneasy. She’d heard about Cleopatra, and she hadn’t liked what she’d heard.

  Sobriety Goodchild unleashed himself on Shakespeare, not understanding a word of what he was saying, apart from the occasional “the,” as out of his depth as Richard Hardie listening to the words of Dr. Wycherley. His arms twitched spasmodically and his voice went up and down to indicate that he was meant to be impassioned, and the camel-colored drawers slowly crept down his right leg, the one on which he was kneeling. They had been turned back on themselves, in proud demonstration of the Very Warm Extra Heavy Wool Fleece On Inside.

  It was riveting stuff.

  Fingers pointed silently.

  Mouths gaped.

  “The barge she sat in …”

  – he wonderingly informed them –

  “… like a burnished throne,

  Burned on the water …”

  She’d written detailed instructions all around the speeches in red ink, like a scholarly commentary on an obscure text. (It was a text that was not so much obscure as impenetrable to Sobriety.) Pause awhile … – she’d written at this point – … look astonished, stare at Mrs. Comstock. Sobriety looked astonished, as bidden, having been practicing for quite some time. Subtlety in performance was not his style. His jaw dropped, he reared back like someone attempting to save his eyebrows from the burning, his drawers dropped a further two inches, and he stared menacingly, not liking what it was he saw in front of him. His astonishment was nothing compared to Mrs. Albert Comstock’s. Aghastness flexed her features almost from the very beginning. Mrs. Albert Comstock didn’t like the sound of barge. Barges were for commercial traffic. Barges carried coal and ore and timber, things that were bulky and dirty and heavy, dumped in mountainous piles, not nicely arranged, and were employed in the more industrial areas of the nation. They were towed by horses, weren’t they? Big horses with matted manes, not like the dainty horses that pulled carriages or ran in races, not horses that were decked in ribbons and trip-trotted nicely in pairs. There was a distinct lack of niceness. A barge was cumbersome and ugly and – ahem – flat-bottomed. Barge sounded like “large.” She definitely took against “barge.” Her face began to clench like a huge fist preparing itself for retaliatory action after an attack. A Mrs. Albert Comstock sulky expression began to take shape in front of them, a storm cloud threatening heavy rain.

  “… For her own person …”

  – Sobriety added, warming to his task, oblivious of the lack of enthusiasm from the object of his attentions, but delightedly aware (indrawn breaths, suppressed exclamations) that the guarantee of sensation was unquestionably being honored –

  “… It beggared all description…”

  Well, they could believe that.

  That was very well put.

  Splendid, Sobriety.

  You could feel a surge of enthusiasm on these words.

  Mrs. Goodchild had twisted herself right round so that she could see Mrs. Albert Comstock’s face better. If her elbow slipped she’d project herself right into the fireplace and blaze like an out-of-season, frantically kicking, Yule log. Pleasure upon pleasure. There’d been an appalled rearing back from Mrs. Albert Comstock on “beggared.” Become more and more excited had been Alice’s helpful gloss at this point, and – it was decidedly alarming – Sobriety became more and more excited, rocking upon the bony right knee, whimpering slightly. The possibility of drooling could not be ruled out. (“Hold him down!” someone ought to be calling out, panicking. “Send for a marksman! Quick!”) Sobriety was so dim that he would have followed any instructions she had written, fondly believing that each action brought a gently steaming gravy-soaked Gargantuan ever closer. Remove drawers. Place on head. Perform three back-somersaults, then leap on Mrs. Comstock. If only she’d had the courage to follow her instincts and gone for broke in her instructions. Pedantic, in a way that she believed that only she could be, he would have followed every instruction to the letter. On “pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids” he simpered and smirked in a way that frighteningly anticipated the worst excesses of his daughter a quarter of a century later. (Smile, she’d written, and look straight into Mrs. Comstock’s eyes.) Mrs. Albert Comstock flinched visibly at his Pandarus-like leerings.

  “… From the barge

  A strange invisible perfume hit the sense

  Of the adjacent wharfs …”

  They could believe that, also.

  It was, if anything, a little too vivid.

  On “I saw her once/Hop forty paces through the public street” Alice’s instructions – in capital letters – were STRESS “FORTY” REALLY LOUDLY, and, ever obedient, Sobriety bellowed the word at the top of his voice, leaning so far forward for added emphasis that his nose almost prodded Mrs. Albert Comstock’s aghast and upraised fan. In fact, he was so pleased with the volume he managed to achieve – it was a miracle that Mrs. Alexander Diddecott hadn’t fallen backward off the sofa – that he repeated the word. You couldn’t help feeling that Mrs. Goodchild had taken her son’s coaching in hand at this point, enthusiastically endorsing the annotated suggestions. (“Louder, Sobriety dear, much, much louder!”) She was watching the effects of her son’s performance like the proudest of all proud mothers at a school concert. Not much chance of a Comstock steak pie, but – to his bafflement – second helpings of everything when his mama got him back home. The fan whumpfed out like the first thrust in a duel, and became threateningly agitated. The expression on Mrs. Albert Comstock’s face was that of a nervous householder awoken from virtuous slumbers by suspicious noises from downstairs. Fingers tightened on fan. Knuckles whitened. There might be smites. Prods were a possibility. There could – with any luck – be uninhibitedly full-blooded bashings and ear-shattering screams. By the time Sobriety – drawing toward what he fully anticipated being a triumphant conclusion (“Humbly, madam, I thank you”) – had reached “Age cannot wither her” (STRESS “AGE”, STRESS “WITHER” REALLY LOUDLY), you could hardly see across the room for the steam coming out of Mrs. Albert Comstock’s ears (the only stea
m Sobriety saw that day), and blurred battalions of Stephenson’s Rocket s roared screaming across the nation’s railroads with boiler-busting velocity.

  Dr. Wycherley’s words to Richard Hardie would have featured prominently in Mrs. Albert Comstock’s – er – animated discussion with the Reverend Goodchild that must have followed Sobriety’s performance. “Dissection of your talented son.” Especially those words. Personally she’d have organized a more or less pulpy disorganization of one or other hemisphere of Sobriety’s brain. Or both hemispheres. If he had two. She liked to do a job properly. The elephant’s foot umbrella stand would have been ransacked for the most lethal of all the walking sticks. “Come closer, little boy, come closer,” she’d have cooed, and Sobriety would have hurried closer, beaming – to the victor, the spoils! – with his hands held out Oliver-like for a Gargantuan, as if surrendering, as the gargantuan knobbly knobkerrie appeared from behind Mrs. Albert Comstock’s back, and whumpfed down to brain him. That wouldn’t take forty whacks to achieve, but she’d give him forty, just for the hell of it. She hadn’t studied Her Albert’s butchering technique in vain, as he whacked away fit to bust his chopping block. Whack! Whack! (“Mad!” she’d have been thinking. “Mad!”) Sobriety’s brain, and his papa’s tongue. The pudding would have been a little too bland and chewy for some palates, and Chinky-Winky would have no trouble at all cadging leftovers.

  Sobriety had not performed in public again. It had never occurred to him that his fall from favor was in any way connected with the assistance he had bullied out of Alice Pinkerton. Although Alice had never received the praise that was her due for this achievement, she had felt a particularly intense satisfaction in having destroyed a brute beast with the words of Shakespeare, besting the barbarian with the best of Enobarbus. It was either Shakespeare or the all-too-generously displayed Boys’ Camel’s Hair Color Drawers With Very Warm Extra Heavy Wool Fleece On Inside that had done for him, one or the other, and Alice preferred to think that it was Shakespeare. It was better than muffled cursing and weeping. It was better than beating pillars with a wooden head (with a head of any description, for that matter). It was better than hammering nails into a doll’s head. It was better than just about anything you cared to enumerate.

  She’d hooked Sobriety Goodchild, and now she’d hooked Max Webster. You could see the hook tugging at the corner of his mouth, drawing him closer, despite himself.

  Any prior engagements for April the fifteenth – You have visionary qualities, are quick-witted and perceptive, and display bubbling good humor – that had been made by Max would be peremptorily cancelled.

  Bubble, bubble …

  The bubbles rose from the mouth of the hooked fish as it was hauled up to the surface. The visionary, the quick-witted, the perceptive, the bubblingly good-humored: this – unrecognizably – was the baffling description of Mrs. Albert Comstock on her horoscope bookmark, an unmistakable Aries in personality, it claimed, even if her looks owed more to Taurus. Well, she’d certainly ram something down Max’s throat, and put a permanent end to his days of singing and reciting. The lute would fall silent in the minstrel’s hall, only the tuning pegs protruding from where it had been shoved good and hard into his aghast and gagging mouth. She’d had enough of that kind of thing from Sobriety Goodchild all those years ago, and she’d soon put a stop to him.

  Max would practice and practice, until even the Reverend Goodchild wouldn’t be able to compete with him in weighing down every word with flirtatious fawning. Twinkling roguishly, eyebrows going up and down like a treeful of crows taking off into full flight, Max would give it his all – every word would ping its well-rounded vowels around the music room – and then (Alice knew he wouldn’t be able to resist doing this) he’d make a low chivalric bow to the subject of his verse, confidently expecting a gurgle of delighted pleasure. He’d probably wear a little velvet pageboy cloak so that he could cast it before her. It was the sort of touch he had perfected. It would be like a sonneteer singing the praises of Queen Elizabeth I at court. The sword would appear in the royal hand, and – as he knelt proudly at her feet – she’d tap his shoulder, and knight him.

  “Arise, Sir Max!”

  Alice wouldn’t bank on the bubbling good humor, if she were he. If a sword appeared, it would lop his head off.

  Whumpf!

  Thud!

  Boing!

  Boing!

  Boing!

  “There’ll also be some specially written songs. I’m thinking of asking Harry Hollander …”

  “My fee is a little more if I have to learn new material.”

  He got that in quickly.

  He avoided using her name the whole time he spoke to her, though “fee” had definitely had an enthusiastic emphasis. He sounded like someone saying the name of his beloved.

  “That is entirely proper, Max.”

  Alice had started to write one song already.

  She thought it would do rather well.

  It should be the first song sung, straight after “To a Lady on Her Art of Growing Old Gracefully.” She’d even thought of a tune that would bring out the full beauty of the words.

  “Sixty-five,

  And still alive!

  Hail,

  Sibyl Comstock!”

  That was as far as she’d got. It was a promising start, haunting in its simple eloquence. Mrs. Albert Comstock had been hailed as a Conquering Hero often enough, timing her entrances so as to appear in the music room to the Handelian chimes of the clock (Dah dah dah dah dah! Daddle-daddle dah dah dah!), so it was probably about time that she was hailed in her own right. A second verse was starting to form, somewhere at the back of Alice’s mind.

  “I’m not surprised you dribble, Sibyl …”

  Would she be held legally responsible if Max Webster were slaughtered in mid-warble? It would be worth it. She’d have to ensure that Kate would be there with her camera.

  It would be cruel.

  Good.

  It would be very cruel.

  Excellent.

  “Ichabod, Ichabod,” she muttered, as if casting a curse on one of the Ichabod Cranes of Longfellow Park. “The glory is departed.” The Three Weird Sisters had nothing new to teach her when it came to toil and trouble. The fire burned, the cauldron bubbled.

  Alice had spent much time in searching through medical textbooks in an attempt to find something that might explain what was wrong with her. Something, surely, was wrong with her. In the absence of any clear guidance from Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster, who – displaying an unexpected gift for creativity – was making things up as he went along, she tried to find out for herself. Mrs. Albert Comstock – the quotation marks had been mockingly audible – described Alice as suffering from “the vapors.” You could see the pale shapes forming in the air, the insubstantial smoke trails, the will-o’-the-wisps foggily floating above the marshy depths, leading unwary travelers astray. Alice had not bothered to seek out Vapors. Apathy she’d looked for, and not found. Exhaustion. Weariness. No success. Exhaustion and weariness did not exist, as far as the medical profession was concerned, beards perkily positioned.

  Perhaps what she sought would be contained within a more spiritual volume, one less concerned with the merely physical. After this insight, she’d tried to find Accidie, as it described her condition so perfectly, with the added bonus of sounding appropriately confessional and mediæval, like one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

  No success.

  It was tick, tick, tick (and tick, tick, tick, tick again) with the Seven Deadly Sins as far as she was concerned, in intention, if not in fact, and as for the Ten Commandments …

  She’d better not even think about the Ten Commandments. When she was in certain moods as a child, they’d looked temptingly like an irresistible dare, the offered possibility of a ten out of ten target. Miss Caulfeild’s spelling bees had obviously had a detrimental lasting effect upon her, developing her spirit of competition (Alice Pinkerton: The Spirit of Competition: get that chisel sh
arpened, Carlo Fiorelli!) into dark and dangerous areas far beyond her control, beyond the reach of desiccated, embarrassment, onomatopoeia, and graywacke, luring her beyond even the corrupting allure of diarrhea. It had developed into a ravenous parasite, eating her up until nothing else of her remained, like ambition with Macbeth, or jealousy with Othello. She’d read them, Sunday after Sunday, displayed on the wall in All Saints’ like a taunting challenge at a fairground shooting gallery designed to fire up the gaping peasantry, and have them digging into their pockets for their cash. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. How Many Can You Break? Go On! Have a Go! Splendid Prizes!