Pinkerton's Sister

by Peter Rushforth

  Even a whisper.

  Especially a whisper.

  For always.

  For always.

  The wind would take Annie. Annie would disappear, like Nurse had disappeared, without saying goodbye, without Alice knowing that the last time they had spoken together was the last time.

  Trumpets sounded, angels came out of the Celestial City to greet Papa and the Reverend Goodchild, and the choir sang even more loudly.

  Papa and the Reverend Goodchild were led through the Gate and into the Celestial City by angels, and everyone poured in after them. It was a squash inside, and Pilgrims were angling their heads or attempting to stand on tiptoe so that they could see properly. It was like being at the back of a crowd as a procession went past. Some Pilgrims, showing their teeth in smile-shaped snarls, because that made it all right, shoved their way firmly through to the front. It was a technique they had perfected at rummage sales.

  Faithful, like one of the Shining Ones, reappeared to welcome Christian and Hopeful. He wasn’t dead, after all. He walked on like one of those actors who expected applause at his every entrance (“It’s me again! It’s me! Me!”), and looked annoyed when it didn’t happen. In such a way, one felt, would Reynolds Templeton Seabright have entered, Mrs. Albert Comstock-Conquering-Herofashion, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-daddle-daddling, delaying his first line until the thunderous applause had somewhat subsided, so that his vowels might be heard to their best advantage.

  As Papa and the Reverend Goodchild kneeled in the central courtyard of the Celestial City they looked like communicants kneeling at the altar. Raiment was put upon them that shone like gold, and angels placed crowns upon their heads, and harps into their hands.

  The frog-faced angels suddenly produced hand-bells from behind their backs with abracadabra flourishes, and bells began to peal, echoing out across the lake. You could tell by their expressions of agonized concentration that this bit – like the smiles – hadn’t been rehearsed often enough. Many of them were fortunate not to have an eye out as the ringing became animated to the point of foolhardiness, the sharp silvery lips of the bells flashing up and down like murder weapons being used to beat out brains.

  Alice clung tightly to Mama’s waist, never wanting to let go, her whole body shaking. The thin summer coat smelled slightly of lavender, and a button pressed against the upper part of her cheekbone, as sharp as any Roman coin. She pressed harder, to feel the button dig in more.

  “There will I keep you for ever,” she thought. “Yes, for ever and a day.”

  17

  On the last time she was taken to the Celestial City, the time just after Annie had gone, she had not wanted to go, but Papa had made her go, to where his “friend” was waiting for them behind the wall, even though it was winter, even though it was so cold. They had left footprints in the freshly fallen snow, as they trailed out to The Old Pigpen. Papa had left them, and wandered down to the edge of the lake to wait there for an hour. The rowboats would be frozen together now in the shallows at the edge of the lake, locked in ice. People would be skating soon, whissshing, and spinning round. Papa would have his pocket-watch with him. Once or twice, his “friend” had started to complain that they had not been there for the full time, a man who had been hiring something for a set period, like a rowboat on the lake. A peevish, pettish note would come into the “friend”’s voice, that of an aggrieved customer whom a scheming merchant had unwarrantedly cheated of his rightful due. No one applauded when I came on again at the end! You could still hear the resentment in his voice, months later. He had been a very good Faithful. He had been excellent. Everyone had said so. That was the note you heard in his voice, that fretful whine that things were not as they should be.

  In the Celestial City his voice had become contented again. The correct goods had been supplied. She felt that he ought to be sucking his thumb, making little noises like her baby brother sleeping. She was the pacifier, the thumb, and he was the gurgling child, clad in his newly washed diaper, his silent rattle fallen upon the floor. A fire had been lighted in the room at the back, where the little kitchen once had been, and it had the look of a children’s secret den prepared for some feast, the flames crackling, and sending up sparks. You thought it would be driftwood, a fire lighted on whitened pebbles at the edge of the sea. There should be skates hanging from the wall, hot drinks, marshmallows to toast.

  “You’re one of the girls from the statue.”

  It was a clouded night, and no moon was visible.

  He began, as he always began, with her head. Each time the beginning was the same words, in the same order, and she would brace herself for the moment when things began to change, as they always did. He was very methodical in what he did. Even though the moon was not visible, he would begin by naming the features of the moon, as he had done the first time they had passed through the Gate. They had not knocked, but it had been Opened Unto them. This had been going on for over a year now. The hour would pass. After a while, she would not feel his fingers. She would peep out through the eyeholes of the statue she had become. She was – she felt sometimes – more afraid of what didn’t happen than what did, the sense of considered possibilities.

  “Plato,” he said, “Copernicus …”

  First they scourged him …

  Down at the lake’s edge she imagined Papa, becoming bored, tentatively beginning to place first one foot, then the other, upon the thin covering of ice that ran a few yards into the lake from the bank. There’d be a creaking, the straining sound of something on the point of snapping, echoing all around the silence of the lake. The surface of the lake would vibrate, held on a resonant note. Emboldened, Papa would take another step out upon the dangerous crust of ice, lured into Jesus-like walks upon the water after his performance as Hopeful. He had fed the five thousand, and sent the multitude away. He had gone up into the mountain apart to pray, and when the evening was come, he was there alone, lost in Gethsemane musings. He walked on the sea, out to the disciples on the ship, ignoring the waves and the wind. “Be of good cheer,” he said, “it is I; be not afraid.” The wind ceased. Papa took another step further out onto the lake. Hope gave you strength. With Hope you could do anything.

  She had hated Bruno’s ’ittle-dirly-dirl-like mispronunciations in Sylvie and Bruno. “Hurted mine self welly much!” he sobbed, cutely curly-headed, posing awhile as Mrs. Alexander Diddecott leaped upon her watercolors with ecstatic cries; “Not as much as I’d like to hurt you,” Alice had muttered mutinously. (Welly welly much indeed! That’s how much she’d have liked to have hurted him.) How could Lewis Carroll have ventured so far out into the treacly, feet-squelching depths of Mrs. Molesworth territory? One of the mispronunciations had, however, lingered in her mind as a potentially useful expression. “River-edge.” That was Bruno’s version of “revenge.” “Revenge is a wicked, cruel, dangerous thing!” the narrator had cried. (Moral Lessons Effortlessly Inserted for the Instruction and Betterment of the Young Person. In The Water Babies, Charles Kingsley, following this golden rule to ensure the Betterment of the Young Person, named the worst ills of all in Pandora’s box as Naughty Boys and Girls. “I must be clean,” Tom said. “I must be clean,” and he pulled off his clothes, and went to the river-edge to throw himself beneath the clear, cool water.)“River-edge?” said Bruno. “What a funny word! I suppose you call it c’ooel and dangerous because if you went too far and tumbled in, you’d get d’owned.” River-edge. Papa moved closer toward where the ice became darker, the soft, dangerous edge. If he went too far and tumbled in, he’d get drowned. Or he’d freeze to death, clutching at the soft sorbet ice-edge as it turned to slush and spurted between his grasping, feeling-deadened fingers. The c’ooeler the better. That was her position on the matter.

  “… Aristotle, Archimedes …”

  …then they buffeted him …

  She tried to think of Annie.

  All week she had been searching for Annie in the snow.

  She could see the last two verse
s of the statue’s stone base, the lettering that was like that on a newly cut gravestone, as clearly as if they were painted on one of the stacked signs in the House of the Interpreter. She couldn’t stop herself reading them, the verses that could not be true, the verses that must not be true, her mouth pressing against the metal, frozen, unable to speak, unable to move away, but breathing, seeing. The man playing the music took all the children away, and into the mountain.

  The next-to-last verse.

  “… I have you fast in my fortress,

  And will not let you depart,

  But put you down into the dungeon

  In the round-tower of my heart …”

  The …

  The last …

  The last verse.

  She saw it like something written on a blackboard, a task to be learned by heart.

  “… And there will I keep you for ever,

  Yes, for ever and a day,

  Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,

  And molder in dust away!”

  There will I keep you forever.

  This was what the father had said to his three daughters.

  I will not let you depart.

  They were put down in the dungeon of his heart.

  Goneril strained blindly upward, to whisper into her father’s ear.

  “Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter,

  Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty;

  Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare …”

  Regan’s whispered words overlapped with those of her sister’s.

  “… I am alone felicitate

  In your dear Highness’ love.”

  “N-N-Nothing, my lord,” Cordelia said. “N-N-Nothing.”

  N-N-Nothing would come of n-n-nothing.

  The bodies of the three sisters lay – in homage – in front of the body of their father at the end of the play.

  … We that are young

  Shall never see so much nor live so long.

  “… Kepler, Hercules …”

  … then they lanced his flesh with knives …

  She thought of Annie again. She had walked round and round The House of the Magdalenes, Pettifar’s Orphanage, and the North River Lunatic Asylum, coming across her own footsteps like those of some polar explorer as she circled round in the untrodden snow. Then, as if concentrating on something bright with which to hypnotize herself, she thought of the brightness of the left side of her breast in the sculpture. Moving very slowly, so that Papa’s “friend” would not know that she was moving – she had to keep still, he became annoyed if she moved – she placed her right hand upon the same place on her own body, to ease an ache by its warmth, to feel an alteration in the rhythm of her heart.

  On the fragile carapace of ice, Papa took a step further out across the lake, swaying slightly like a man on a flimsy wind-blown bridge. He stood with his arms extended out on either side of him, balancing. One step too many, and he would fall through into the dark icy water beyond the edge. He paused for a moment, feeling the shifting surface beneath his feet. One more step, and the ice would still support him. One further step. He stood there a long time, like someone unable to continue, someone unable to turn back. It was intensely cold. He would feel the ice thickening beneath him, the surface of the water becoming misty and opaque like a breathed-on mirror. One step closer to the edge. River-edge.

  … “O father! I see a gleaming light,

  O say, what may it be?”

  But the father answered never a word,

  A frozen corpse was he.

  Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,

  With his face turned to the skies,

  The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow

  On his fixed and glassy eyes.

  Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed

  That savèd she might be;

  And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave

  On the Lake of Galilee …

  “… Oceanus Procellarum, Palus Epidemiarum, Lacus Somniorum …”

  Storm. Disease. Sleep.

  The thing that she had feared would happen, had happened. The molten bronze had been poured around her body, a little part of her at a time, a thin layer of metal, decorative armor plating slowly encasing her whole body, gradually becoming thicker, gradually becoming rigid, until the living girl within was covered, overwhelmed and stifled by the work of art that contained her.

  “… Mare Frigoris, Mare Crisium, Mare Imbrium, Mare Nubium …”

  She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t breathe.

  Coldness. Crises. Showers. Clouds.

  … after that they stoned him with stones …

  She had turned into her own bronze figure in The Children’s Hour, like a ventriloquist’s dummy poised forever upon the knee of the man who manipulated her, made her move in the ways he wanted, put his words into her mouth.

  18

  The Children’s Hour statue was sited near the children’s play area in the park, and the bedraggled survivors of the exotic birds from the aviary. In a winter storm – it was the second winter of the Celestial City, just before Annie had gone – a branch from an overhanging tree had crashed through the aviary’s glass roof, and most of the fragile birds had been blown out – or had willingly flown out – from the rarefied warmth of their ornate little pavilion into a nighttime blizzard. Small brightly colored frozen corpses had littered the neighborhood for days.

  Alice had been awake, sobbing, alone in the schoolroom at the top of the house, terrified of the wind, and of Papa and his “friend.” She – suffering from a cough – had been left behind when Papa had taken Allegra and Edith to Charlotte’s birthday party. Papa had taken them because Mama was away from home, taking Ben to be seen by his grandparents. Mama would never have left Alice alone in the house when she was ill, even if Annie was there, but Papa did not see children when he looked at her and Annie. A Little Woman was not a child. Charlotte had promised to come and see her the following day, and Allegra had taken her birthday present to the party for her, to give to Charlotte.

  Her sobbing was interrupted by bouts of coughing, and when she tried to shut out the sound of the wind by hiding her head beneath her pillows, she felt that she was suffocating, and that was how she felt those times perched upon the knee of Papa’s “friend.” She thought that she heard a more distinct, closer sound than that of the wind, a sharp tapping, like fingernails against glass, and the glass vibrated slightly in the wind. She thought of a sudden crash, and the cold air bursting in.

  If you tell anyone what has happened, the wind will get you.

  They had not said a word to anyone, anyone, and the wind was howling outside her window.

  If she screamed, she felt that Papa, even though he was up on Hudson Heights, would somehow come back into the room. She thought that he had hidden himself somewhere in the house with his “friend,” their jaws rotating clockwise in unison as they crunched the cachous, as the pinkness dribbled down into their beards. Tick, tock went the crunching clockwork, tick, tock.

  Annie would be in her room near the kitchen. In novels, servants had rooms in the attics of houses, but Annie’s room was downstairs. It was Alice and her sisters who had the rooms at the top of the house. She wondered if Annie would be sleeping. The wind would not be so strong where she was. Perhaps she had managed to fall asleep. Perhaps she would have a dream to interpret in the morning, though she seemed to have had no dreams for a long time now.

  Timidly, she tried to summon Lizzie Galliant, Lizzie Galliant who lived inside her, and who was afraid of nothing. She would know what to do. She had never let her down, until Papa and his “friend” had started to take her to the Celestial City. Papa was stronger than even Lizzie was. She was half afraid to call Lizzie’s name in case, this time, she ignored the summons, and whom would she have then to help her? Alice knew that she herself possessed special powers, and that she was capable of summoning Lizzie to her assista
nce. She also knew that she must not use these powers until the right time came, otherwise she would lose them. Unlike Aladdin with the ring and with the lamp, she could not summon a jinnee again and again to do her bidding when she was in danger, or when she needed help. It had to be the right time to use her powers, and she would know when that time had come. She would have only one chance.

  “Lizzie!” she called quietly, and even the mention of her name in that room seemed to be louder than the noise of the storm: even her name was strong, the name that Alice had given to her. She said it again, and again, more like an incantation than a summons – “Lizzie! Lizzie! Lizzie!” – and felt herself become stronger.

  Lizzie would come, Lizzie was coming, and her mien would be at its most imperious.

  The wind was inside the room itself: the night light flickered, almost guttered, and threw tall swaying shadows across the walls, like the gas-lamp outside the front parlor window casting moving patterns on the wallpaper, shifting, glowing, never at rest.

  She heard Lizzie’s voice, calm, soothing. “What ails you, child?”

  Lizzie was tall, Lizzie was older and wiser than she was, and sometimes she said “you,” and sometimes she said “thee.”

  “I am afeard that something is amiss. Be of good cheer. I am here beside you, and we shall face this stern summoner together. Let us arise and show we fear not this dark and tortuous imbroglio. Be not afeard. We shall drive this varlet back whence he came, a broken and pitiful remnant of his former self. I am Lizzie Galliant. Strong men fall powerless before me! I have the power that alone belongs to women! Men’s beards will burst into flame at my approach and flare wondrously!”

  Alice had a particular fondness for this last sentence. She would have given a great deal to possess this power, and had practiced for ages, exercising to build up muscles. No glimmer yet within any of her chosen targets. She had focused her powers like a burning glass upon Dr. Vaniah Odom’s beard on Sundays, but there had not been even the faintest of faint flickering red glows from within its tenebrous depths.