The Looking Glass House

by Vanessa Tait

  Mr Wilton – he had called for her, just for her. For her he had come to the house in his large overcoat, his cheeks reddened by wind and embarrassment, his black hair curling out beneath his hat. For her he had loitered awkwardly on the step while he was told that she had moved away.

  ‘Did you ask him in?’

  ‘He said he wouldn’t stay.’

  ‘Did you tell him I was living with the Liddells now?’

  ‘I did, Mary, what do you take me for?’

  He must have been impressed, thought Mary. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he would call for you there.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘He didn’t name a date.’

  He’ll send a note, thought Mary. She had last seen Mr Wilton sitting on her mother’s sofa in the living room, buttoned tightly into a suit. His father had worked with hers at Trinity College: Mr Wilton’s father was another of the college’s household servants and the two had struck up a friendship. Mr Wilton’s father had been a farmer; he owned some land at Binsley, just outside Oxford, where some of Mary’s family still lived. But his herd of milking cows had come down with consumption and he had been forced to take a job at the college. The etiquette demanded by the dining hall had bewildered the older Mr Wilton, and Mary’s father had taken pity on him, often staying after his own work was done to help the other man, to Mrs Prickett’s dissatisfaction.

  So Sidney Wilton had come to the house with his father to pay a visit. The last time Mary had seen him he had talked about Elliston & Cavell. It was the finest store in the town, he said; its front took up six windows on Magdalen Street. Only the best people visited, he said. He had a new delivery of buttons, he said, made from ivory and carved by hand in Ealing. And a fine roll of braid, which Mrs Sinclair had ordered for her husband’s uniform. He was particularly pleased with the colour of the blue ribbon that had arrived from Sheffield.

  He paused. Mary wondered what kind of blue it was.

  What kind? It was blue, dark blue, Mr Wilton replied. He could not think to describe it any other way; he was not good with words.

  But he sat with his knee pointing towards hers, which signified more than words perhaps. Mary thought she read some kind of intent in his kneecap. Twice, when he leaned forward to retrieve a biscuit from the table, he had angled it into her own knee, rather hard, and had not apologized nor moved away. The motion had been curiously at odds with the way he consumed his biscuit: fastidiously, raking his thick sideburns with his nails afterwards in a way that Mary could only assume was a grooming for crumbs.

  She had put the idea of him at the back of her head during the turmoil of moving and taking up her new position, but now that she had discovered that Mr Wilton had called for her at home, without his father, she found that the image of him quickly grew to fill up the whole of her mind.

  ‘I hear Agnes Briars has had another child,’ said her mother. ‘That makes four, and she is not yet twenty-five!’

  Mary had watched her school friends become engaged, married and producers of red-faced babies, one by one. They disappeared into their confinement and when they reappeared they had replicated.

  They were all holders of the same secret that she had not the key to. There was something about the making of babies, something that married women knew and would never tell. Surrender seemed to be required. She had learnt from a girl at school that babies went in and came out through the navel, which opened up like an enormous mouth. Women were supposed to want children more than anything else, Mary knew.

  Perhaps when she had her own she would feel the same way, though she could not imagine it. As far as she could see, children were like savages and it was her purpose to try to tame them until they could fit into the civilized world like everybody else.

  When she was married, she would have a house of her own. Bigger than her mother’s, with more than one servant.

  When she was married, she would leave this body behind and grow big enough to fill up a house in Park Town with its bulging red bricks and puffed-out cheeks and long-eyed windows.

  When she was married, she would have tradesmen coming to her door, her heavy black door, and the tradesmen would lay out silver trinkets from India on her dining table and she would bend low, so low that she could see her reflection in the polished surface and smell the incense that still clung to the interior of a little silver box from Rajasthan. She would pick each piece up and weigh it gently in her hand before choosing the very best to display in her hall to the guests who came for dinner, and her taste – impeccable, but with a hint of daring – would be admired by all.

  Chapter 4

  The railway ensured that Oxford was connected to the vast web of communication that stretched the length of the country, and it brought, in its belching horseless carriages, the very latest of everything. Tradesmen vied with each other, with their displays which reached far into the street, and their advertising posters that hung brashly in their windows. Oranges and nuts very cheap, read the sheet tacked in the front of the confectioner. Try our celebrated 4d mixtures, the best ever offered at the price. Guaranteed absolutely pure!

  The Oxford Drug Company had gone further and advertised in bold type attached to the side of a dog cart, which trotted about town: Vaseline, glycerine jelly, pectoral balsam for coughs, linseed, and liquorice, most popular and efficacious.

  The Liddells’ carriage swung out to avoid it, causing Mary to lurch hard on to Ina’s shoulder. The girl’s face showed pain, but she said nothing. Mary herself was suffering from motion sickness, as she often did when she travelled backwards. Behind her head, separated only by the thin partition of the carriage wall, was the immense jodhpured rump of Bultitude in his yellow livery, one hand bunched round the reins, the other cracking the whip.

  Mary was hemmed in on the other side by Alice, whose full white dress and hoops she could feel pressing against her own black sleeves. Her elbows were pinned to her sides; her bones scraped against the children’s ribs with every jolt of the carriage. Her hipbones jarred. Her ribcage was filled up by the beating of her heart.

  On the opposite side Mrs Liddell had the whole bench to herself.

  They jangled into Magdalen Street, overtaking the crossing sweeper and slowing to swing out round the cheap bookseller, who had spilled all his wares on to the street. On the corner, Mary could see the reason why. She stood laughing in a way a woman would not usually do: her head thrown back, her neck an invitation, her bosom pushed forward and out by the stance of her chin.

  ‘What a strange dress,’ said Alice.

  The dress was made of satin, scalloped each in a different shade of red. Her jacket was made of orange velvet. The effect was somehow intestinal, as if what should be inside was out, and outside was in.

  Mrs Liddell followed their gaze. ‘Alice, look away!’ she said sharply.

  ‘Oh, why?’

  ‘Because I said so. Because we will be there in a minute and you ought to get your gloves on.’

  ‘But my gloves are on!’

  Behind her the woman had stopped laughing and was rearranging her hat in a frank manner (a combination of all the colours of her outfit, topped off by a peacock’s feather), wiping her mouth and settling her lips into what Mary could see was their habitual shape: a smirking invitation that could not erase the shadow of derision that lay behind.

  Mrs Liddell leaned over and grabbed Alice’s chin with her hand, forcing her to look out of the other window. Above them Bultitude shouted extravagantly at the horses to slow down and then brought them up sharply outside Elliston & Cavell.

  Mary did not want to see Mr Wilton at his place of work. They would be trapped animals, observed. She worried she would seem rude and artificial.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Liddell!’ The doorman swung open the door. Mary watched the rest of the attendants bow before Mrs Liddell, no doubt noticing the emeralds hanging from her ears, the rich silk balloons of her sleeves, the heavy rings on her fingers. Her thick brown hair was barely
contained by her bonnet, her gold chain heavy around her neck.

  The shop was suffused with a whispering industry: the rustle of silk on parquet, the attentive murmur of employee to customer, the susurration of paper enfolding a new purchase. Mary kept her eyes on the silks. They were too dazzling, she decided. ‘I have an acquaintance at the haberdashery department, I think.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Mrs Liddell, pausing to let her hands drift over the plush surface of a looped towel.

  ‘Yes, a friend of my parents. I mean, the son of a friend.’ She tried to keep her voice casual.

  ‘A friend of yours works here?’ said Alice. She grinned.

  ‘In haberdashery, I believe,’ said Mary. She gazed ahead at the uneven towers of damasks and chintzes.

  ‘He works here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here, in Elliston and Cavell?’

  ‘Alice, are you deaf?’ said Mrs Liddell.

  Mary straightened her back, made herself rigid – she had a sudden shameful sense that she was shrinking.

  Mrs Liddell swept on through the drawing room of a fashionable house, done up to show off the department store’s fabrics. A sofa, an embroidered footstool, and yellow curtains held back over two painted windows.

  All was gleaming, soft, a rich glow. How unlike Mary’s room at the Deanery. When she was mistress of her own house she would come here, order curtains, bed linen, napkins; the thousand different things that made up a home.

  ‘Why are there birds through that painted window?’ said Alice.

  ‘Because there are birds through real windows, I expect,’ said Mrs Liddell. ‘My dear Miss Prickett – are you well? You look terribly hot.’

  ‘No, I am well, thank you! Not hot at all.’

  ‘But why are there birds through real windows?’ said Edith.

  ‘Because God put them there,’ said Ina.

  Sweat crawled its way from Mary’s armpits towards her bodice. Let it not stain.

  ‘But why did God put them there?’ said Alice.

  ‘Darling, let us not descend from the problem of a painted window into the problem of existence in less than a minute,’ said Mrs Liddell. ‘I don’t think I can bear it.’

  Haberdashery was the busiest and brightest corner of the store. To the ceiling stretched a thousand open-fronted drawers of sewing silks, each thread bound over card and folded. On the counter were buttons, bed laces, bodkins, bobbins and carpet bindings, and below it larger compartments containing gloves, linens and handkerchiefs.

  Behind the counter stood Mr Wilton, his hands resting on top of the glass counter and his fingertips extending towards the perimeter of his universe. Mary saw him before he saw her: his gaze was unswerving and straight ahead.

  Mr Wilton, thought Mary, did look just how men were supposed to look, at least in books. His shoulders were broad, his brow was dark. His hair was thick, his eyebrows were uncontrollable, their tentacles reaching down towards his eyelids.

  But he was out of context. He jarred. He seemed not proud of his nature. His fingertips were crescented not by the mud of a Yorkshire moor but by short clean nails. And the hairs that poured out of his shirtsleeves wore a slick look of shame. He had trussed himself into a rigorous suit and held himself stiffly in it; his collar was punishingly high and Mary could see a red patch on the underside of his chin, even though it was darkened by stubble.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Mrs Liddell. ‘I am looking for lace trimmings, and some ribbon, and I dare say some buttons too, mother-of-pearl, and, let me see . . .’

  Mr Wilton hurried out from behind the counter. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Liddell. Miss Prickett.’

  Mary opened her eyes. ‘How do you know my name?’ said Mrs Liddell, looking at him for the first time. ‘Though I dare say everyone does!’

  ‘It is Mr Wilton and I who have met,’ said Mary. Her heart gave a small and surprising twist.

  ‘Ah yes, I remember now. Oxford is a small place, as I always say,’ said Mrs Liddell, pointing at the display behind the glass. ‘That ribbon there, the thick one, how much is that? And the red, that is very pretty, though perhaps blue might go better.’

  Mr Wilton stroked his sideburns. He told Mrs Liddell the price of the ribbons. He seemed mesmerized by her rings, which gleamed right under his nose; her hands, which fluttered with the excitement of purchase. She did have elegant hands, long and tapered and uncalloused.

  ‘I’ll take that one, the blue velvet, six lengths, and some of that cream ribbon too, the narrower of the two. And I need more handkerchiefs; I had better take a dozen, and a half-dozen pairs of gloves, for I am almost run out. And some lace; what would you recommend? It is to run round the hem of a skirt, and the cuffs, and some other ruffles too perhaps.’

  Mr Wilton smoothed his smooth hair and, with a similar motion, spread out all the things Mrs Liddell had asked for on the counter. She bent down to look, circled by shop assistants who had materialized from the rustlings of the shop floor, servile and admiring.

  Mary turned to Mr Wilton. ‘My mother told me you had paid me a call and I am sorry not to have returned it. As you can see . . .’ Mary gestured to the children, Edith staying close to her mother’s skirts, Ina running the tip of her finger over a length of white ribbon.

  Only Alice was staring back at them both, her head angled, smiling insolently. Mary thought about castigating her, but to do so would only draw attention to the awkwardness of the whole situation. Better to pretend the child was not staring so rudely – she was only a child, after all, she did not matter! Though in spite of herself Mary felt a flush spreading down her cheeks, towards her neck and her collarbones.

  She turned her body away, as she might have from a too-hot fire, and angled her head to try to deflect Alice’s gaze. Alice’s curiosity impinged upon her as a solid thing, making her unnatural.

  ‘I am glad to see you here looking so well.’

  From the corner of her eye she could see that Alice was smirking. Mary turned away more, forcing Mr Wilton to step to the side to follow her. She started off on a description of her visit to her mother’s house, just to fill up the air between them, with no real purpose. But Mr Wilton didn’t seem to mind. He put his hands behind his back, a gesture that he must have picked up from addressing customers, to solve the problem of his arms perhaps: they were too long. But forcing them behind him pushed forward his chest and strained the buttons of his jacket.

  ‘And the fashion in hats changes so quickly, do you find?’ she finished, her hand flying up to her own black bonnet, at least three years out of date.

  ‘What lace have you here?’ said Mrs Liddell.

  Mr Wilton turned. ‘We have the Honiton lace; we are pleased to have it. It is made by hand in an area of thirty miles along the Devonshire coast. The handwork is very fine, as you can see.’

  ‘Anything better?’ said Mrs Liddell.

  ‘You are thinking of Belgian lace,’ said Mr Wilton.

  ‘Yes, I will have – let’s see, four lengths of that. Put it on my account.’ Mrs Liddell motioned to Mary to pick up the smaller packages. Larger ones were being wrapped.

  Mr Wilton turned to Mary quickly. ‘Could I pay you a visit one day, perhaps, at the Deanery? We have more to talk about, I’m sure.’

  Mary noticed the sides of his nose, greasy, open-pored. ‘A visit?’

  ‘Yes, if . . .’

  The inside of Mary’s head felt stretched and light. ‘Yes, of course you may visit, if . . . if Mrs Liddell has no objection, that is.’

  She turned to Mrs Liddell, solid and richly coloured in the gloom of the department store.

  ‘Visit? From – this man?’ Clearly Mrs Liddell had forgotten Mr Wilton’s name. ‘Do you wish it, Mary?’ Amusement smirked at her lips.

  Mary was glad of the packages rustling against her chest. She cradled them and smiled too, to signify that this exchange was unimportant. ‘We are friends – I knew him before.’

  Mr Wilton was smiling also, an endlessly pleasant smi
le that took in the buttons and braids and Mary and Alice and Mrs Liddell and thought nothing of it.

  ‘Of course he may. You know where the tradesmen’s entrance is to the Deanery? At the back of the house. Good day to you then.’

  In the carriage on the way home Mary tried to think about Mr Wilton and his impending visit. But her mind would only arrange itself blankly when it turned towards him, perhaps because of the high drum of the horses’ hooves and the lean and swing of the carriage as it rattled towards Christ Church.

  ‘How do you know Mr Wilton?’ Mrs Liddell asked. It was hard to see her face under her bonnet, crammed with a romantic swoon of flowers on the brim.

  ‘My father works with his,’ said Mary.

  ‘Oh, he works at Trinity?’

  Mary nodded.

  Mary had grown up with her father’s constant presence during vacations and abrupt and endless absences during term-time. When he disappeared to work she believed she had had something to do with it, that he had gone away from her in disappointment.

  She tried to gain an inch of space by shifting her hips up from the seat, but when she attempted to settle again Alice complained. ‘I can feel your bones digging into mine!’

  Mrs Liddell gazed outside at a woman and her baby, both dirty.

  Mary flushed and tried to ease away from Alice towards Ina. The woman wore a vacant expression on her face, as if everything that passed her was a mirage.

  Thinness such as Mary’s, her mother said, made for bad blood. Thinness was unengaging. (Mary wondered how to engage. She imagined a seed pushing hooks out of its surface, catching hold of things.) Thinness such as Mary’s denoted a shrewish character that no husband would want.

  Mary must eat more. Her mother put her on a course of suet puddings, plum duff, rice milk. And for dinner: tripe and onions, Spanish stew, stewed steak. She put each plate down on the table with a clattering challenge that Mary failed to meet – her arms did not ripen, her hips did not swell, her bosom did not luxuriate.