“Annie of Tharaw, my true love of old,
She is my life, and my g-g-goods, and my g-g-gold …”
“My life, my goods, my gold,” Annie repeated.
“You said it wrong. You didn’t say g-g-g.”
“G-g-good.”
“I don’t know it all by heart,” Alice admitted. “I read it to you from a b-b-book.”
“Do you remember the part about the wind?” Annie asked. “The wind and the bad weather?”
The wind seemed to be penetrating down the interior corridor, blowing through and dipping the candle-flame downward.
“… Then come the wild weather, come wind or come snow …”
Alice started, uncertainly. This wasn’t right.
“… We will stand by each other, however it b-b-blow …”
“‘We will stand by each other.’ That’s the bit I remember.”
“There’s another b-b-bit, about hail b-b-beating down, and rains falling.”
“‘The more it beats, the more they fall, the stronger grows the love …’ Something like that.”
“Yes.”
“There’s something about forests and ice. I’ll follow you through forests. I’ll follow you through ice. Not that, but something like that.”
“In an ice p-p-place.”
The wind in the corridor outside Annie’s room shrieked again. It was like the end of “The Eve of St. Agnes,” as Madeline and Porphyro escaped from the mansion, gliding like phantoms. The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,/Flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar;/And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. Annie shivered. She was so close that Alice felt her shaking, and shivered alongside her.
She opened At the Back of the North Wind at Chapter IV, “North Wind,” the right place to read, words that might work better than the interpretation of the dream had done.
“… There was a great roaring, for the wind was dashing against London like a sea; b-b-but at North Wind’s b-b-back, Diamond, of course …”
– “‘… of course …’” Annie mouthed –
“… felt nothing at all. He was in p-p-perfect calm. He could hear the sound of it, that was all …”
The page had been marked with a neatly cut strip of pretty patterned paper, a place at which Annie had often opened the novel, to look at the picture of Diamond curled up on North Wind’s back. He was not hanging on, clutching at her shoulders to remain safe, but lay against her – small as a new-born baby – warm and half-asleep in bed, his eyes open but sleepily unfocused, his hands loosely cupped beneath his chin. She was young, she was beautiful, her left hand rested against the place where her heart was, and her eyes – also – seemed to be seeing something far away. North Wind’s long flowing hair swept around both of them like the swirling eddies of water in a fast-flowing stream, filling the greater proportion of the illustration. He was lying beneath a pool of deep, clear water, curled up very still amongst the smooth pebbles at the bottom, perfectly at peace, drowned in a bath of the tresses of Annie, like Tom in The Water Babies, sunk down into the cool, cool water, hearing the sound of church bells in his head. Annie would lie on her side in bed, looking at this scene, until it filled her eyes so completely that sight overwhelmed the other senses, and she did not hear the wind outside, did not feel the drafts that rippled the candle-flame. As she looked at this picture, she would touch the words that Alice had just read, and she would feel the words here on the page, and here in her heart. She would recognize the feel, the sight, of certain words.
… Diamond …
… of course …
… perfect calm …
Alice flicked further forward through the novel, to the end of Chapter IX, to a passage she did not read aloud. North Wind had taken Diamond to the north side of an iceberg, and placed him on a ledge of ice in a cave near the water. A page or so further on, and Diamond was walking on the shore of a land made of ice, begging North Wind to let him go into the country at her back. To do this, he had to walk on, treat her as an open door, and go right through her. He walked toward her instantly. When he reached her knees, he put out his hand to lay it on her, but nothing was there save an intense cold. He walked on. Then all grew white about him; and the cold stung him like fire. He walked on still, groping through the whiteness. It thickened about him. At last, it got into his heart, and he lost all sense. Whereas in common faints all grows black about you, he felt swallowed up in whiteness. It was like a death, a letting-go, like Tom slipping beneath the surface of the water because he must be clean, he must be clean, washing away his blackness. She felt swallowed up in whiteness herself, in the unprinted sections of pages at the beginnings and ends of chapters, on both sides of the illustrations, in the wide margins of the short-lined songs where there were no words, and – most of all – in the whiteness of the unwritten-on pages of her journals. She wondered if Annie felt the silence that she felt in these places.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
The feet crunched through the ice, like Papa’s feet crunching through the bones of the babies she imagined were buried secretly in their garden. Frankenstein’s creature, after he had leaned over Frankenstein’s lifeless body and asked him to pardon him, sprang from the cabin window out on to the ice raft, and the waves bore him away. The last sight of him, like the first sight of him, was of a solitary figure surrounded by ice, moving away into darkness and distance.
Alice wanted to look around for photographs in the little room, to peer into the blurry vagueness to see if there were any likenesses of Reuben, a mother and father, on the shelf beyond the letters. That was where photographs would be, so that someone who couldn’t read could see them, someone lying in bed listening to the wind. She hadn’t liked to ask Annie about a mother and father, in case it was something she did not want to talk about, and she had never mentioned them. Did she have a mother and father? The only letters that ever arrived for Annie were letters from Reuben. If you couldn’t read, if you couldn’t write, how could you let people far away know that you loved them?
She shouldn’t look. She stared down at the Griswold’s Girl.
THE PURE CURE.
Cures Loneliness!
Cures Sadness!
Cures Orphanhood!
The engraved face was all crinkled, like the cracked surface of an old oil painting. She sniffed the sheet of newspaper, and the strongest smell – stronger than the smell of cheap inky paper – was the smell of onions. If she sniffed for long enough, tears might come into her eyes. This reminded her that this was a page that Annie had saved, a page that she might have been waiting to have read to her. She had unwrapped the onions, and found the page waiting for her, a little unexpected extra on a dark morning. Alice turned it over to the personals on the other side, the crackling of the paper loud in the small room, to the world of Madame Etoile and her like.
“Shall I shed light on the tenebrous?” Alice asked.
This was another formula they went through.
“‘Tenebrous’?” Annie asked. This was the password, the word repeated with a question mark.
“Dark, shadowy, hidden by fog.”
“And ice.”
“And windblown snow. Shall I read them out?”
She was smoothing the paper, already as well smoothed as if Annie had ironed it after she had finished the sheets. Perhaps there would be a faint smell of onions on the pillow shams, bringing tears to the eyes, sad dreams to the sleeper.
“Yes,” Annie said. “Yes, please. That was one of the things I’ve been thinking about. I’ve been trying to work out what some of the words might say.”
“Madame Etoile is here again.”
Madame Etoile was always there, always telling all you wanted to know, always seeing the past, the present, and the future, always using the same words in her advertisements, and Alice did not read out what she had to say. They knew already. Her address was one of those that she had printed out for Annie. Alice imagined Ann
ie approaching Madame Etoile’s to discover what her future was going to be, and then forgetting the address. She would stop kind-faced passers-by, and point at the printed details she was unable to read for herself. There were beggars like that, people who never spoke, too proud to put their pleas into speech, silently indicating the words on the notices they held up before them. PLEase HElp the words would say, moving in and out of capital letters like the sign in George Cruikshank’s illustration for Oliver Twist. MY CHild is ILL and I AM HUNgry. They held the words before them, people Particularly Recommending Oldermann & Oldermann For Boys’ School Attire, their heads bowed. Alice sometimes gave them a few coins, if Mama said she could, and was embarrassed if they thanked her, and embarrassed when she felt annoyed if they did not.
She read out the personals for a long time, this time genuinely struggling to read some of the blurred words. Annie nodded, and occasionally asked questions, but did not ask Alice to write down any addresses. She was waiting for something. After a while, Alice strayed across several columns into a new area, one that she still thought was advertising fortune-tellers, seers of what the future would bring. These seemed to be even more rigidly exclusive of gentlemen than Madame Etoile, and Annie became awkwardly alert.
This was what she had been waiting for.
“A LADIES’ SPECIALIST,” Alice began, and had read the advertisement all the way through, without especially noticing what it was she was reading, when Annie asked her to read it again. “A LADIES’ SPECIALIST,” she repeated, “with many years’ (more than fifteen) success in this city, g-g-guarantees certain relief to ladies, with or without medicine, at one interview. Unfortunates please call. RELIEF IS CERTAIN. Delightful rooms available if required. Dr. Argersinger. Residence …”
For the first time, Annie asked her to write down the name and the address. On the back of one of Reuben’s envelopes, she printed the details with the heads of spent matches.
The wording of the advertisements tended to be similar, sharing a common restricted vocabulary, to ease communication with those they sought to find. They made great use of capital letters; they were pronouncements from the LORD. They presented themselves as important announcements, not something as vulgar as advertisements. Each time, Annie asked Alice to write down the name and the address.
“IMPORTANT TO FEMALES,” Alice read, “Dr. and Madame …” – the Mesdames were out in force where beauty, clairvoyance, and certain relief were involved – “… Unthank (TWENTY YEARS’ P-P-PRACTICE IN THIS CITY) g-g-guarantee certain relief to ladies, with or without medicine, at one interview. Ladies from a distance p-p-provided with p-p-pleasant rooms. ELECTRICITY scientifically applied …”
Electricity was always a guarantee of scientific respectability, a place at the farthest frontier of progress. You’d be warm, you’d be well lighted, you’d lie there – slumbering beatifically – as arcs of power pulsed and sparked around you. There’d be no need for spills or matches, no acrid skeins of smoke to make the tears well up.
Another one she read – they filled about a quarter of a column – was: SURE CURE FOR LADIES IN TROUBLE. Consultation and advice FREE. Certain to have THE DESIRED EFFECT within twenty-four hours, without any injurious medicines or instruments used. ELEGANT ROOMS. Madame Roskosch …
Madame Roskosch was scarcely a French name, yet Alice – as she used to do with the advertisements for Madame Etoile (perhaps it was the shared “Madame” – with an “e” on the end – that made her do it) read out this last with an exaggerated French accent, raising her voice for the capital letters. “LADIEES IN TROUBAIL” – she read – “’Ave ze dezaiyaired” – she’d giggled a little over her version of “desired”, though Annie had remained serious-faced – “effect” she read, “wizzout any enjuriars medeecines or enstruments used. ELEGAINT ROOMS …”
Dr. Argersinger.
Dr. and Madame Unthank.
Madame Roskosch.
These were the three that Annie settled on. She listened as Alice reread the advertisements she had picked out, and narrowed them down to these. Alice underlined and starred them on the back of the envelope, and then rewrote them neatly on the back of another envelope. Just like Album, Dragon, House, Morgue, Pulpit, and Stone Mason, some of the words and phrases – certain relief, unfortunates, interview, scientifically, sure, desired effect – had hidden meanings. This much she could sense. She did not like the three names she had marked. Argersinger, Unthank, & Roskosch. They had the sound of one of those shadowy, corrupt businesses in a Charles Dickens novel – Bleak House or Our Mutual Friend – lurking on an upper floor at the head of a darkened staircase in one of the decaying and squalid courts or alleys of the city: Whitechapel or St. Giles, places where the mud was deepest, the fog densest, and the poverty the most desperate. It would be something to do with the legal profession, with corruption, with years of litigation, and squandered inheritances.
She put two stars beside Madame Roskosch, because Annie asked her to. “‘Sure,’” Annie had repeated in her usual voice, not attempting to copy Alice’s French accent. “‘Free,’ ‘certain,’ ‘desired,’ ‘elegant.’” The word “ladies” was clearly a worry to her, but whether this was because of her age or because of her class, Alice was unable to decide. TROUBLE was the word that registered most with Alice (the capital letters were like a shouted warning), and injurious and instruments were also vaguely alarming. Fortune-telling seemed attended by hazards that she had never noticed before. No instruments were used, so she knew that there would be no music, and everything would happen in silence. This idea of silence worried Alice more than anything else. If there were instruments, they would lie, dull and dusty with disuse, propped at angles against cane chairs, and not shiny and sparkling with vigorous polishing, reflecting the features of a proud and careful owner bent over them and making beautiful music.
Annie closed her eyes, clenched her hands in the way she did when she was willing the meaning of a dream to come true, and chose Madame Roskosch. It was like a nonreligious version of Mrs. Alexander Diddecott’s random consultations of the Bible, drawn to the right words by a power greater than she was.
On another envelope Alice wrote out Madame Roskosch’s name and address all by themselves, this time with three stars in front of them, under the heading THE DESIRED EFFECT. She repeated them several times until Annie knew them by heart, just as she knew “For Annie.”
“Madame Roskosch,” she said. “Madame Roskosch,” nodding, learning a new word, dark, shadowy, hidden by fog. “Read me the address again. What was the number?”
Alice read her the address again. The number was thirty-seven.
Alice handed her the envelope, and Annie folded it carefully and placed it within the bosom of her nightgown, like a girl in a novel secreting a forbidden smuggled-in love letter, one that she would take out, unfold, and reread – over and over – whenever she felt sad or lonely.
In this way, without knowing it, using a funny French accent, she helped Annie to die.
22
“P-P-Papa …”
The snow would mount up the stairs, like the cool blue-green light of the afternoons, and fill the house, until everything was ice. It hissed through the keyhole and beneath the door of the study, like the exhalation of frozen breath from a giant sleeper. It did not occur to her that it was odd to have snow inside the house. It was there, that was all. In the flickering glow of her night light, she was standing in the snow outside a stranger’s house, about to begin the words of a carol.
“We three kings of Orient are …”
“Orient” would not go down well in Longfellow Park. “Orient” was seething with the troops of Midian, all of them well armed with sharp-edged primitive weapons. “Orient” was where the faces were inscrutable, but what they held in their hands was all too readily scrutable. “Orient” was where they bowed down to wood and stone, gods that were in the plural, and without capital letters, and too brightly decorated. Idols. Graven images. That was what they worshipe
d, and the words sounded ominously Old Testament, something violently objected to by the LORD. There’d be flames and smiting, and the earth would gape beneath the ungodly. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me … (The LORD had a propensity for punishing children for the sins of the fathers.) “Orient” was where you couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep because of the constant hammering of nails – such people had no consideration – for the nonstop night and day crucifixions. “Orient” was where they didn’t even possess a proper alphabet or proper music, a place of opium-induced nightmares, a place fastidiously avoided by God. “Orient” was where it was far too hot, in preparation for the flames of hell that awaited the pagan hordes that dwelt there. They wouldn’t bring gold; they wouldn’t bring frankincense and myrrh. They’d bring the means of death with them, cunningly disguised as gifts, learning from the wanton excesses of the underclad knee-flaunting Greeks.
… Bearing gifts we traverse afar
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star …
“P-P-Papa …”
Again, there was the high singing sound in her ears, the sensation of being distant from all that was around her, in a dream, observing things happening to herself with a cool, dispassionate interest. After a night with little sleep, the dreams were arriving with the morning, and she was sleepwalking whilst wide awake. She felt disassociated from everything around her, remote in time as much as remote in place. There was no star to follow. All the stars had fallen, and she was lost and wandering in starless darkness. There were no futures to foretell in the heavens. Gemini had faded from the sky. There was no Aries, no Pisces in the floor of heaven.
… O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright …
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