Pinkerton's Sister

by Peter Rushforth

  The skipper’s daughter, the salt tears in her eyes, was wrapped in her father’s seaman’s coat, and he had bound her to the mast with rope cut from a broken spar. He had lashed her tightly, though he had left her hands free.

  Her hair fell and rose in the wind, as if her body was still breathing.

  24

  She kneeled down to be in the warmth close to the fire, and began to brush her hair. She hadn’t undressed yet, but wished to begin the ritual of counting, to drive all other thoughts out of her head. She’d laid her nightgown on the chair beside her to warm. The wintry moon shining through the stained glass of the casement might have thrown a glory like a saint on Madeline’s hair as she kneeled in prayer on St. Agnes’ Eve – Porphyro growing faint at her purity, her freedom from mortal taint – but she certainly neglected its care, failing to brush it before she slept.

  Brush hair, brush,

  The men have gone to plow…

  – plough (should it be “plough”?) –

  …If you want to brush your hair,

  Brush your hair now …

  “One, two, three …”

  Time for the nighttime brushing of her hair to begin, the repeated one-to-a-hundred ritual that she completed automatically, without looking into a mirror. She found herself becoming anxious if she did not brush, tugging out the elf-locks, unable to sleep without removing them.

  Looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall.

  “… twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven …”

  It was soporific, counting up to a hundred, over and over, a certain soothing monotony, just right before bedtime, emptying her mind of everything but the repeated numbers, free even from the image of leaping flocks of sheep soaring over five-barred gates. Nothing but numbers. The poppied warmth of monotony oppress’d her soothed limbs.

  “… sixty-three …”

  – Crackle! (Her hair was bulking out like thunder-filled storm clouds.) –

  “… sixty-four…”

  – Crackle! –

  “… sixty-five …”

  – Crackle! –

  They had once had a cook who had timed whole recipes by singing set numbers of verses of hymns, favoring specific hymns for specific recipes, like an evangelical pot-rattler, a cordon bleu of the canticle. (Mrs. Goodchild was under the impression that Gordon Blue was the name of a famous chef. “It was as good as Gordon Blue,” she would say loftily, of any half-digestible meal she had wolfed down in an expensive restaurant, anxious to inform them how much it had cost.) Alice still found herself salivating – hard to explain this away to observant strangers – as the congregation of All Saints’ launched into “Let us with a gladsome mind,/Praise the Lord, for he is kind.” This had always meant that they would be having beef and potato hash for lunch, and this – Mrs. Freeborn’s advanced culinary skills had been the making of a sophisticated and discriminating palate – had been Alice’s favorite meal. She was always gladsome when she heard this hymn.

  “… The hornèd moon to shine by night,

  ‘Mid her spangled sisters bright!…”

  Mrs. Freeborn’s voice – hollow and echoing – sometimes boomed out from the schoolroom fireplace toward lunchtime, and Dribble! Dribble! went Alice. Beef and potato hash! Tomato ketchup would flow like a bloodbath.

  “… All things living he doth feed,

  His full hand supplies their need!…”

  sang the fireplace.

  This verse qualified for meaningful emphasis. They were lucky to have Mrs. Freeborn, and Mrs. Freeborn – “His full hand supplies their need!” – made certain that they were made aware of this.

  Dribble! Dribble!

  Annie had used the same technique, singing a section of a song that lasted exactly three and a half minutes as she cooked a soft-boiled egg. Alice heard Annie’s voice, the words of the song, as she spooned out the firm white, the runny yolk, from the egg in the eggcup decorated with painted squawking hens.

  “Her bright smile haunts me still,” she would sing to her distorted reflection on the back of the spoon – high-foreheaded, narrow-faced and narrow-nosed, not much of a bright smile, like a fun-free Flemish face in a religious painting – blurred on the curved yolk-smeared surface. It wasn’t only the hens that squawked. She held the spoon like a miniature hand mirror, a mermaid in her turn, singing sadly to her reflection as she sat uncomfortably on the damp, cold rocks.

  Looking-glass, looking-glass, in the spoon,

  Tell me who’s fairest, and make it soon.

  More worrying than the elongated Low Country face, the reflection of a sulkily big-lipped Easter Island statue occasionally stared back at her, a Mrs. Albert Comstock gloomily impending over the breakfast table, stifling her appetite, and casting a cloud over the rest of the morning. Sometimes Alice had tried to balance her egg in a toothpick holder, as they were made in more interesting shapes than the eggcups, and was always surprised if it fell off and rolled across the table, leaving a yolky trail across the cloth. She was particularly drawn to one in the shape of a witches’ cauldron – it was described as being a gypsy kettle – and absentmindedly cast spells, as she and the two other Weird Sisters dipped thin slices of buttered bread into their egg yolks. The grilled kidneys made quite respectable poison’d entrails, and the broiled herrings definitely tasted of swelt’red venom. The finger of birth-strangled babe was more of a problem, especially when ditch-deliver’d by a drab, but she had hopes of the tiny new beef sausages from Comstock’s Comestibles. They looked perfect for the part.

  “Double, double toil and trouble …”

  She muttered the words,; what she said was secret. She saw Albert Comstock, quite distinctly, standing over the cauldron, his face illuminated by a lurid glow from the flickering flames, as he mixed the ingredients for the latest monstrous pie he had concocted. In went the fillet of a fenny snake, the eye of newt, and toe of frog.

  “Plop!” went the wool of bat and tongue of dog.

  “Plop! Plop!” from the sow’s blood that hath eaten her nine farrow, and the grease that’s sweaten from the murderer’s gibbet.

  Albert Comstock rubbed the fingers of his right hand daintily against his thumb, adding some rare and precious spice, saffron ground like gold dust.

  “Make the gruel thick and slab!” he chanted.

  Knives and forks could stand up unaided in Comstock’s Celebrated Gravy – It’s Thick! It’s Comstock! Now, there was a sentiment with which she could enthusiastically concur! – like miniature rows of Excaliburs waiting for modest-faced long-haired Arthurs to draw them squelchily forth.

  (“Please, sir,” Oliver hastily interjected, as the ladle drew closer to his basin, “I’d rather not have any more.” Horror was depicted on every countenance.)

  Alice had tasted of the Comstock Bargain Counter. She knew of what she spake. She could still taste the Tartar’s lips from that last cutlet, revolted by the flavor. She very much doubted that Porphyro would have produced some Comstock’s pies out of the closet to add to his pile of goodies lined up for his Eve of St. Agnes midnight munchings with Madeline, thudding them down with soggy plops next to the spiced dainties, the delicates, on the golden dishes and the baskets bright of wreathed silver, filling the chilly room with perfume light. “Delicates” was not the word that sprang to mind to describe Comstock’s pies, robust fare designed for the ambitious, salivating, trencherman who hadn’t eaten for a month or two, and enjoyed the sensation of teeth crunching on bones, marrow spraying out for several feet in all directions.

  That juice was wormwood to her tongue, she loathed the feast.

  “… Fire burn, and cauldron bubble …”

  (Hiss! from the dripping saliva, trying to attract her attention.)

  “What was that?” Allegra asked suspiciously.

  “… Cool it with a baboon’s blood …”

  (Hiss! Hiss!)

  “Eh?” from Edith.

  “… Then the charm is firm and good …”

  (Hiss! Hiss! His
s!)

  “How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!”

  “What was that?”

  “Eh?”

  The Two Weird Sisters stared at her across the breakfast table, the ends of their spoons protruding from their mouths, not really interested, but affecting a response just to be irritating. They had shoved the egg-yolk-darkened silver apostle spoons – baptismal presents – so far into their mouths that only the bearded heads on the handles were visible, upside down: St. James and St. John, the sons of Zebedee.

  Laughing Allegra, and Edith with golden hair.

  Laughing! Golden!

  The pigeons swarmed around The Children’s Hour, and the heads of Allegra and Edith vanished, whirring with fluttering wings.

  Plop! Plop! Plop!

  The birds defecated copiously, grunting with effort.

  Plop! Plop! Plop!

  Heave! Heave!

  Symbolism was such a comfort.

  “Eh?”

  “Eh?”

  The heads of St. James and St. John – in vigorous agreement with each other – bobbed up and down in time with her sisters’ grunts.

  Being cultured was ever a burden, and communication with the rude majority difficult.

  “… ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine …”

  She stood up, still brushing, beginning a new section.

  “One, two …”

  Another of Curdie’s songs from The Princess and the Goblin came to her, like a memory of something she’d done a long time ago. Hard to imagine that she’d ever chanted to herself as a child, watching her face in the mirror as she brushed her hair, that Shetland pony’s of a mane! She’d liked the comparison of Maggie Tulliver to a Shetland pony, and seen it as quite a compliment, perhaps influenced by Charlotte’s breathy sighings over horses. A copy of Black Beauty and a good supply of chocolate, and Charlotte was in heaven. It was the illustrations of the horses that she’d liked best in At the Back of the North Wind.

  “One, two –

  Hit and hew!

  Three, four –

  Blast and bore!…”

  – It wasn’t quite Christina Rossetti –

  “… Five, six –

  There’s a fix!

  Seven, eight,

  Hold it straight!…”

  – But it was verse to drive away goblins –

  “… Nine, ten –

  Hit again!

  Hurry! Scurry!

  Bother! Smother!

  There’s a toad

  In the road!

  Smash it!

  Squash it!…”

  The Goodchilds – mouths open, hands held up in horror – toppled slowly beneath the road-roller that effortlessly flattened them with neither pause nor wobble. (She could savor it more if it happened slowly, and lingered over the expressions of outraged disapproval.)

  Smash them!

  Squash them!

  Serenity – you had to admire the girl – gave a good shove to her mama and papa, in an attempt to jam its works and save herself. When it had engulfed them – she paused for a moment to enjoy the view of their twitching legs frantically bicycling in the air (she couldn’t prevent a little giggle) – she shoulder-charged Grandmama and Grandpapa, and the Reverend H. P. – Hideously Pressed – Goodchild and Mrs. Goodchild were flattened like (here was a really satisfying simile) dried cow-dung. Then it was Serenity’s turn. Like a Juggernaut, the road-roller continued on its way with an epic religious-procession dignity about it, the fringes jiggling on its howdah. In its wake it left a set of five life-sized Happy Family cards flapping in the breeze. Here was an interesting variation of a traditional game. Reverend Goodchild, the Preacher; Mrs. Goodchild, the Preacher’s Wife; Mr. Goodchild, the Preacher’s Son; Mrs. Goodchild, the Preacher’s Daughter-in-Law, and Miss Goodchild, the Preacher’s Granddaughter, nothing but a pack of cards.

  They’d been smashed.

  They’d been squashed.

  They were toads in the road, incommoded, exploded.

  Their aggrieved expressions attained a height of hitherto unachieved frogginess; their flattened faces were – captured forever – the froggiest of all possible frogs, the toadiest of all possible toadies. This was not a very happy-looking Happy Family. Tolstoi had got it all wrong. You expected better from a novelist of his caliber. All happy families resemble one another … It took all that time to read Anna Karenina, and he couldn’t even get the first sentence right! At least War and Peace had a few battles to look forward to during the boring bits. And he had a title! Huh! He was clearly a count on whom you could not count. In the flat, papery right hands of the compressed cards, other, smaller cards were still grasped. They were invitation cards. Mrs. Albert Comstock was holding an “At Home” at that very moment. It was toward her house that the Goodchilds had been hastening. It was toward her house that the road-roller was heading now, increasing its speed slightly in its eagerness to demolish Hampshire Square and everyone within it. Max Webster was promised for today’s entertainment, together with Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster. The red velvet portières’ rings shot right across the pole as the next act was announced for another afternoon’s feasting on culture, teeth splintering on the bones, hands glistening with grease.

  Rattle, rattle, rattle.

  “Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster and Master Max! High-pitched Shrieks and a Banjo!”

  Applause!

  Dr. Vaniah Odom had promised to demonstrate his hootchy-kootchy dancing with Myrtle Comstock. His head would be about level with her waist.

  Rattle, rattle, rattle.

  “Dr. Vaniah Odom and Myrtle Comstock! The Thrill of the Forbidden! Erotic Entanglements! See Hell and Live to Tell the Tale!”

  Applause!

  Mabel Peartree would be there. Mabel Peartree was always there.

  Rattle, rattle, rattle.

  “Mabel …”

  Outside, through the red-stained windows there was a curious grinding, crushing sound …

  Outside, beyond the heavy curtains, something was lurching inexorably toward them …

  Outside …

  Those rattle, rattle, rattlings were – Gracious! – about to become death rattles.

  Thunderous applause!

  Encore!

  Bravo!

  Brace yourselves!

  Howdy, Howdah!

  “… Fry it!

  Dry it!

  You’re another!

  Up and off!…”

  Her reflection gazed back at her, next to the face of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. He had the same face as Edgar Allan Poe, as Roderick Usher. It was like looking at puzzle pictures, designed to fill the empty hours, in which two apparently identical pictures were printed side by side. Armed with a soft-leaded pencil, the viewer studied the illustrations in order to find the ways in which they differed, circling the changes in the altered version. She imagined Dorian Gray – the mirror and the picture the same size side by side – reaching out with a thick BBB pencil to circle all the changes in the picture, like a tailor marking out his material to start crunching through with his heavy-bladed shears. He grasped the pencil with his whole hand, a knife with which he was about to stab, the technique he’d employed so successfully when he’d murdered Basil Hallward. He drew circle after circle, moving his hand in upon himself over and over. There were so many changes that the blackness grew, like the shadows of a growing darkness that obliterated all features, all colors, until nothing remained of the painted face.

  “B” is for Badness …

  “B” is for Brutalization …

  “B” is for Blackness …

  He’d look into the picture, as into a mirror, and see only darkness. He’d look into the mirror, and see the same thing, poised between two counterbalanced darknesses, darkness on his left side, darkness on his right side, a Doctor Faustus with no Good Angel to whisper the words of repentance and redemption. He would have ceased to exist, swallowed up as Dr. Jekyll was swallowed by Mr. Hyde, scribbled out by the BBB of the s
oft lead, become cancelled writings, obliterated variations.

  She’d done this with the Sir John Tenniel illustrations for Through the Looking-Glass, the two from the very beginning of the novel. One depicted the back of Alice as she disappeared through the looking-glass, her right arm held up as if to steady herself against the surface of the glass – the glass that was melting away like a bright silvery mist (“Tell me what you can see in that mist”) – and the other the same moment from inside the Looking-glass room, as the front of Alice emerged into it, her left arm – as if for balance – held in front of her. In the Looking-glass room, the altered picture, the reversed world within the reflection, the clock and the vase on the chimney-piece – both beneath glass domes – had curious, wide-mouthed, smiling faces, and Tenniel’s initials – in the bottom right-hand corner of the first picture – were in the bottom left-hand corner, in reversed Leonardo da Vinci mirror writing. It was not a particularly entertaining exercise, as there were not all that many differences, the world through the looking-glass were only a minor variation of the world it reflected.

  The Alice in the novel was not the same Alice as in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Here, also, there were alterations. In the later novel, the Alice band appeared for the first time, and the stripes on Alice’s stockings. She looked like someone who had been tightly tied around her legs and bound to a chair, and these were the marks that remained. The broad dark band across her head was like a bandage. As the injurious instruments cut into her brain, she struggled to free herself from the knotted cords that bound her, and they cut in deeper.

  Tighter!

  Tighter!

  Grace Poole gave Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster a cord, and he pinioned the arms of the madwoman behind her, and bound her to a chair with more rope. Panting, sweating, he bound her legs. Grace Poole held another cord ready, silently, without waiting to be asked. She knew what was expected of her.