The Alice Stories

by Davina Bell

Alice looked down at the wedding-dress tunic shimmering in the afternoon sun.

  ‘But we shouldnae expect any different, given who your mother is – her off pretendin’ to be a man, fiddlin’ with numbers and actin’ clever while her children run round like spoilt mongrel dogs.’

  Alice took a step back.

  ‘And cowardly mongrel dogs at that! Aye – that brother o’ yours, hidin’ away with his paints because he’s too afraid to fight. He makes me sick.’

  ‘But Teddy’s too young to go fighting!’

  ‘Pfffft – tosh. My Hamish was off at fourteen. And Douglas signed up the first chance he could when it all began, and he weren’t a day older than your precious Teddy is now. So don’t you dare be sayin’ he’s too young when the truth is that he’s nigh seventeen and plain disgustin’. What a fam’ly – cannae even talk, the half o’ you.’ She leaned in closer and smiled in a way that was not friendly, little bubbles glistening on the edge of her lips.

  ‘And now see what you’ve done,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ve killed that little ’un – the only decent one o’ the lot. Drowned, and because of you and all this foolishness. Aye, that’s right – left all alone, and see what happened? Blue she was, by the time they pulled her out o’ the river. I saw her m’self, carried across the lawn like a broken doll.’

  Alice gasped. ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’

  ‘You heard what I said,’ sneered Mrs McNair. ‘And I doubt you’ll ever sleep a solid night again – nor should you. Now, some of us have work to do. Good day,’ she said, and slammed the door.

  As Alice ran back through the kitchen gardens, her eyes were blurry. She didn’t see the clump of lettuces that snared her ankle, tossing her into the mud. She picked herself up and wriggled awkwardly through the hole in the fence. Her tights snagged on a splinter and tore. By the time she got to the kitchen door, she didn’t have the breath to call out. She stumbled in and leaned heavily on the kitchen table to catch it.

  It couldn’t be true – Pudding couldn’t be dead. Mrs McNair was just being horrid. Wasn’t she?

  And yet . . . ​hadn’t the littlies been left alone? And hadn’t they been looking forward so much to the ride in the iron canoe? Hadn’t the wind been strong – strong enough to tip over a boat? And hadn’t Uncle Bear left them because of Alice – because she had begged him – because she had been dancing? Alice put her head on her arms and closed her eyes.

  Mrs McNair was right. It was all her fault; she knew it in her heart. Oh, Pudding . . . ​round, sweet, sunny Pudding. Alice felt a cold stillness in her chest, as if it had been cased in stone. She never even got the chance to learn to speak, thought Alice sadly. Because of me, she’ll never know what she was good at. And all because I wanted to dance.

  ‘Tink?’ came a little voice right next to Alice’s ear. ‘Tink?’

  Alice’s snapped her head up and there was Pudding, grasping Alice’s leg with her pudgy hands.

  ‘Pudding! Pudding – you’re alive. Come here, you scamp – oh, I knew it couldn’t be true.’ Alice knelt and pulled Pudding’s downy head under her chin and squeezed her solid little body until Pudding wriggled and squeaked. ‘Sorry, Baby, sorry, but I thought you were gone.’ Pudding offered Alice the bottom of her dress and Alice took it, wiping at her wet, hot cheeks.

  ‘Alice?’ whispered Mabel from the doorway. ‘Alice, did you hear? Something has happened. You need to come upstairs. Little might be dying.’

  nd I know we shouldn’t have done it, Alice, but we did and everyone was having a lovely time. Then a big gust came and Little was tying my pinny to the front of the canoe like a sail and the wind took it and she reached out to catch it and then she went over the edge. And she was so tiny she didn’t even make a splash, so we couldn’t see where she’d gone, and I dangled my oar for her to catch, but then it dropped. And when they found her, she’d got lost under the boat and sunk to the bottom before she could breathe again.’

  Mabel was still whispering, but she needn’t have bothered, Alice thought, because Little couldn’t hear them. They had pulled chairs up close to her bed, where she lay, grey and crumpled, her lips as dark as if she’d been stealing mulberries. Her arms had been folded across her chest and in the dim evening light they glowed like crossbones. Alice watched for the rise and fall of her chest so closely that her eyes burned. Dr Peters had said it was all they could do – watch over her and wait.

  ‘Where’s Mama, Alice?’ asked Mabel.

  Alice wished she knew. They had been waiting for her all afternoon and into the hazy dusk. Teddy had even used the telephone to call the bank when he’d got back from wherever it was that he went these days, but it turned out that Mama had left long ago.

  Eventually Teddy, tired with pacing, had ridden off into the night to find her, and Uncle Bear had taken Rough-and-Tumble down to the station in case she had caught the train. Now night had fallen and she still wasn’t home and she might be too late, because Little’s breaths were becoming slower.

  Didn’t Mama care that they were all alone? Alice wondered angrily.

  George came in, clutching one of Papa Sir’s weighty medical encyclopaedias. ‘Been doing some research, and it’s not looking good, I’m afraid. According to this, being starved of oxygen could have affected her brain by now, or damaged it. Possible outcomes include death, severe –’

  ‘Shut up, George. You heard Dr Peters – he said she might be fine,’ said Alice.

  ‘Or that she might never wake up,’ said George matter-of-factly. ‘I’m just telling you the science. Shame Papa Sir isn’t here, that’s all I can say.’ George closed the fat book and leant over Little, kissing her forehead tenderly. ‘Goodnight Little.’

  Alice had been thinking about Papa Sir all afternoon, wishing that he were here. Perhaps, just perhaps, he could have fixed Little. Perhaps he could have made everything all right again.

  When Teddy returned, Pudding was asleep on Alice’s lap and Mabel at her feet.

  ‘Did you find her?’ Alice whispered.

  Teddy shook his head, looking tired and sad. He didn’t say anything, just gathered Pudding and Mabel into his arms and carried them off to bed. Alice put her cheek next to Little’s and closed her eyes. Her head ached and her stomach churned.

  ‘Go and get some sleep, Tink,’ Teddy said when he came back in. ‘I’ll come and find you if anything happens. I promise.’

  If it had been anyone else, Alice wouldn’t have believed them; she would have stayed watching, just in case. But Teddy always kept his promises. She held out her arms and he lifted Alice up as easily as if she were made of cotton, and carried her to her room. Teddy tucked her gently into bed, but as he tiptoed away, Alice noticed something strange. Was it real, or was she already dreaming?

  ‘Teddy?’ Alice whispered into the darkness. ‘Why are you wearing those soldier boots?’

  But the door clicked shut, and Alice fell back on her pillow, feeling her eyes slide shut.

  Alice awoke at that peculiar time between first light and sunrise when the sky is all milky. The mud was gone from her palms, but she was still wearing her dance clothes and the sick feeling was still with her. From beside her bed, she heard somebody yawn. She looked down to see Mama, curled up under an eiderdown on the floor, watching her. Alice felt a rush of love and surprise, but it quickly turned to anger.

  ‘Mama, where were you?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t you come home? We needed you.’

  ‘Bonjour, ma petite,’ Mama whispered, sitting up. ‘Ça va?’ She reached out and stroked Alice’s hair.

  ‘Ça va,’ Alice whispered back crossly. But that wasn’t how she felt at all, and the gentle touch of Mama’s hand made her eyes fill with tears.

  ‘I was ’eld up. There have been . . . ​some troubles.’

  Alice sniffed and closed her eyes, scrunching them shut against the question she had to ask. ‘Little . . . ​is she . . .?’

  ‘She is still sleeping but ’er breathing is stronger. Dr P
eters came by again in the night. He says we must wait. Teddy is there.’

  ‘Maman . . .’ Where should she start? ‘Maman, it’s all my fault, because Miss Lillibet didn’t come, and then I made Uncle Bear take me to dance.’

  Mama bit her lip and looked away, not saying anything.

  ‘Mama?’ Alice tried to sit up. ‘It was my fault, wasn’t it? That’s what you think, too!’

  ‘Non non non, ma cherie. Not at all. It’s just that . . . ​I ’eard some news yesterday . . .’

  Suddenly Alice remembered what Mama had said about there being troubles.

  ‘ . . .while I was at the bank . . . ?all day people were talking, and I am thinking at first c’est pas vrai – it isn’t true. So after work, I went to ’er cottage, and then to see Ginger . . .’ She swallowed, tracing Alice’s ear with her finger. Ginger was what everyone called Constable Jenkins, their policeman. Why on earth had Mama been to see him?

  ‘Whose cottage?’ asked Alice. ‘And why did you go to the police?’

  ‘Miss Lillibet’s. She ’as been taken away. I went to try and find where she is being kept.’

  Alice couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘What do you mean, taken away?’

  ‘To a camp . . . ​an internment camp. Because Germany is our enemy in the war, lots of German people ’ere are being locked away in camps like prisons.’

  ‘But Miss Lillibet isn’t German! She’s English.’ Alice lay back, relieved. ‘It must all be a mistake.’

  ‘Non, but ’er grandfather was German, and these days, the world is so ’orrible that this is enough to be put in gaol.’ Mama sighed. ‘You know how suspicious people are now.’

  That’s what Mrs McNair had meant when she said ‘that German lass’, Alice realised.

  ‘When people feel powerless,’ Mama continued, ‘they look for enemies all around them, non? She is lucky, I suppose, that she was not taken sooner. I am sorry, ma petite.’

  Alice tried to imagine Miss Lillibet in a dirty prison camp in her long, white cloud skirt. She knew about the camps for German people – there had been one on Rottnest Island for a while. And the kind old Schultz brothers who lived at St Just, the house up the road, had been sent to one in New South Wales. People had thought they might be spies, signalling to German ships from their balcony.

  Alice sighed and looked up at the pattern on her ceiling. If I hadn’t been dancing, Little would be awake now, stirring the porridge, she thought. If I had been helping do things for the war instead of all that practice, none of this would have happened.

  Miss Lillibet had told Alice never to stop dancing – that the world needed beautiful things. But suddenly Alice didn’t find her dancing beautiful. She found it selfish and ugly. Mrs McNair was right: Alice had no business prancing around when so many people were suffering.

  Alice looked down at her lovely dance clothes, and sat up with a start, suddenly remembering. ‘Mama, my new tunic – it’s your wedding dress,’ she said. ‘Oh, Mama. You shouldn’t have cut it up – it’s too beautiful for me. You should have kept it to remind you of Papa Sir.’

  Mama frowned and stood up quickly. ‘I must go and check on Little. Sleep some more, if you can.’

  As she closed the door behind her, Alice began to cry, silently at first but then louder. How were they to remember all the nice things about Papa Sir when Mama would hardly even let them say his name? And what was the point of loving people if you were only going to lose them?

  Alice felt a big hate well up in her heart. She hated Mama, she hated the war, she hated that Papa Sir was gone.

  But most of all, she hated herself and the dancing that lived inside her.

  hat morning, Mama didn’t go off to the bank and Alice wondered if she might have decided to stay home forever to take care of them. In the days that followed, though, she went back to work and didn’t come home each night until after they were all in bed. As far as Alice could tell, she barely looked in on Little. It was as if she wanted to pretend that nothing was happening. It made Alice burn with anger.

  They didn’t go to school that week, and nobody answered the knocks of the people who called by – nobody wanted to look into their kind, sorry faces. Jilly left a pot of soup on the back porch with a lovely note, but when Alice thought of going over to thank her, it felt too hard; she felt too tired. For three days and three nights, they did nothing but take turns waiting by Little’s bedside.

  George read to Little from the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

  ‘Break, break, break

  On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

  And I would that my tongue could utter –’

  ‘Good grief, George – you’ll kill her with boredom,’ said Mabel.

  ‘Mabel! That’s a terrible thing to say,’ said Alice.

  ‘Well, it’s true – I’ve been singing her show tunes, and she much prefers it, I can tell.’

  Pudding wound up Little’s music box over and over until the key bent and it wouldn’t work anymore. Alice lay next to Little, smoothing her hair and hoping that somehow the warmth and life in her own body would skim the bed sheets and enter Little’s. Teddy just sat with Little’s hand in his, as if he were cupping flakes of gold.

  Sometimes she stirred and once her eyelids flickered, but Little did not wake up.

  With all that had happened, nobody had thought to ask about Alice’s audition, and she was glad of it. But on the fourth day, Alice remembered what Edouard Espinosa had given her. Leaving George with Little and Eighteenth Century British Verse, she wandered round the house, eventually finding Papa Sir’s raincoat mashed in a ball by the kitchen dresser.

  Alice reached into the deep pocket and pulled out the envelope that was addressed to Miss Lillibet. She held it in her hands, unsure of what to do next. It wasn’t right to open someone else’s letters. But who knew when Miss Lillibet would return to read it herself? Does it even matter what’s inside? Alice asked herself. Do I even care anymore?

  But she did. Of course she did. Alice slipped the letter down the front of her pinafore and called to Pan, who came bounding happily from in front of the parlour fire. She ran to the greenhouse and threw herself onto the wooden floor, her heart clunking.

  ‘Should I really open it, Pan? Even though it’s addressed to Miss Lillibet?’ Pan wagged his tail and so Alice pulled open the envelope with her finger and unfolded the letter. She cleared her throat. ‘I’ll read it to you. It says . . . ​

  ‘My dearest Lily,

  ‘You told me that Alice was talented. But this couldn’t have prepared me for what I saw this morning. Without question, Alice is the most gifted dancer I have seen. In fact, I suspect that she may go on to be the most famous, most glorious dancer of our times. Under your tutelage, she has developed exquisite technique. But we both know that a true ballerina like Alice is more than that.’

  Alice stopped, feeling herself blush. Even though Pan was just a dog, she felt strange saying all these things aloud.

  ‘When the war ends, God willing, I am determined to start an academy in London. It would be my honour to be entrusted with the care of Alice. The chance to see theatre, opera and the arts; to travel to the Continent and work with the best choreographers – this would be just the beginning. I am quite overcome with excitement, and wish that I could go myself and rip the guns from the hands of every soldier if it would hurry along this tiresome conflict.

  ‘If you wish to accompany her, Lily, you know you are always welcome in the home of your good friend,

  ‘Edouard.’

  ‘Woof,’ said Pan, grinning.

  Alice eyed him warningly. ‘Pan, it doesn’t mean anything, so don’t go acting all happy.’

  But even though she’d tried to squash down her hunger for ballet, Edouard Espinosa’s letter had made it roar inside her once more. Before she knew what she was doing, she was over by the gramophone. It’s a pity I don’t have my shoes, she thought. Perhaps I could sneak up to the house without anyone seeing and . . . �
�

  She stopped.

  Wherever Miss Lillibet was now, she certainly wasn’t dancing. And up in the house, because of her dreams, Little lay slowly dying. Though Alice’s love of dance felt as wide as the sky, her love for Little was as big as a galaxy. She realised that there was nothing – nothing – that she wouldn’t do to have Little back.

  ‘If Little wakes up,’ she said, ‘I’ll never be selfish again. I’ll knit a thousand socks – a million. And I’ll help Jilly roll bandages and I’ll . . . ​I’ll give up ballet forever. If she comes back to us, I’ll never dance again. I promise.’ She wasn’t just talking to Pan – she was talking to something bigger: to the world, or perhaps even to God, though she didn’t know him well enough to be sure.

  She folded up Edouard Espinosa’s letter to throw on the fire later. She pulled the leather cover over the gramophone and pushed the clothes-horse barre into a corner.

  ‘Woof,’ said Pan suddenly, his ears pricked. ‘Woof,’ he said, and wagged his tail madly.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re so pleased about.’ Alice sighed. ‘It’s not like there’s anything nice left in the world.’

  ‘ALICE,’ cried Mabel, throwing open the door and making Alice jump. ‘You have to come now – it’s happened!’ And then she turned and fled.

  What did she mean – what had happened? Alice wondered as she chased Mabel up to the house. She’d been in and out so quickly that Alice hadn’t seen her face. And her voice, loud and desperate, could have been happy or sad.

  Either way, Alice knew that it was Little’s bedroom where the thing had happened. As she raced there and stood outside the door, she felt she could have outrun a tiger.

  Squashed into Little’s pretty yellow room were George and Mabel, Pudding and Mama, Teddy and Uncle Bear. Everyone was silent. Their eyes were fixed on Dr Peters, who was bending over the bed so Alice couldn’t see past him. What was he looking at?

  Finally he moved aside, and Alice gasped.

  ‘Hello, Alice,’ said a little voice. ‘I was wondering where you were.’