The Alice Stories

by Davina Bell

  ‘Surely Lillian can’t cook yet, can she?’ Papa Sir asked as he put Mabel down and held his hands out to Little. She had been sitting on the lawn not moving, taking everything in with her big dark eyes. Now she slowly stood up and walked over to Papa Sir. She put her head against his legs and closed her eyes. And then Papa Sir’s eyes – which weren’t so frightening when Alice looked again – were misty with tears.

  Alice swallowed. ‘She can. Anything you like. She’s the cleverest pixie chef in the world.’

  ‘Good grief,’ said Papa Sir. ‘How much I’ve missed.’

  ‘Who’s Lillian?’ whispered Pudding. ‘Who’s that man?’

  Alice rocked Pudding from side to side in her arms and walked her slowly over to Papa Sir. Pudding hadn’t been born when Papa Sir left. No wonder she was frightened. ‘Lillian is Little’s real name, remember, Baby? Little is just a nickname, like yours is Pudding.’

  ‘Do I have a real name?’ asked Pudding, clinging tighter to Alice’s neck as she eyed off Papa Sir.

  He reached his hand out and stroked her downy white head. ‘If you are who I think you are, you’re named after me. My name is Martin.’ Papa Sir swallowed. ‘I’m your father. And your real name is Martine.’

  ‘Martine,’ said Pudding slowly. She turned to Alice. ‘My name is Martine.’

  It wasn’t so long ago that she couldn’t say anything, thought Alice with wonder. And now she’s so –

  ‘You are ugly,’ Pudding added, frowning at Papa Sir’s face.

  ‘And all the while I’ve been thinking I was the handsomest creature alive.’ Papa Sir winked. ‘Speaking of handsome creatures, where’s Pan? And has anyone seen my beautiful wife?’

  ‘Oh, Pan got poisoned and died,’ Mabel said sadly. ‘Ages ago. By that Douglas McNair – he was The Vandal, did you know? Good grief, you probably don’t even know that Mama almost died! Little too, actually. And Teddy was in the war. You really are behind. You’ll have to come with us on Uncle Bear’s boat – we’re leaving any minute.’

  ‘Actually, it was Papa Sir’s boat,’ Alice told her, pinching herself on the elbow to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. ‘Before the war.’

  Those three words hung in the air; they stood for so many things.

  ‘Would you like that, Papa Sir?’ asked Mabel after a long pause. ‘You don’t want to do anything boring like resting, do you?’

  ‘Nothing would make me happier,’ Papa Sir replied.

  ‘Not even another leg?’ asked Mabel.

  ‘Or the Complete Works of Shakespeare?’ said George.

  ‘A puppy?’ said Pudding.

  ‘Seeing Alice on pointe shoes?’ said Little.

  Papa Sir roared with laughter and pulled his pipe from his pocket. ‘Actually, all those things – every single one.’

  hat a bonny red, thought Alice, admiring the Minnie May as Papa Sir steered it across the broad, glorious blue of Freshwater Bay. It’s the same red as the remembrance poppies. The mast and the trim were white and blue, and the sails were cream and crisp, the colour of baked meringues.

  As Mama sat beside her husband at the tiller, she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  ‘I knew it!’ she had said triumphantly when they’d taken Papa Sir up to her room. ‘I ’ave always said that the sea is too big to know what ’as been lost in it. Oh, my love – your poor face. I shall kiss it better, if it takes me the rest of my life!’

  Now everyone was gathered around Papa Sir, talking over the top of each other, their questions bursting out like a shower of shooting stars.

  ‘Did your ship sink?’

  ‘Did sharks eat your face?’

  ‘Why didn’t you write to us sooner?’

  ‘Did you miss me?’

  Papa Sir laughed and held up his hand to shush them.

  ‘Let me start from the start.’ And so he told them the whole story: how his ship had been hit so forcefully that nobody else had survived; how he’d floated on a piece of its shell for so long, trying to keep his wounds clean with salt water while he almost went mad with pain. He explained how eventually he’d slipped into a giant sleep and was picked up by a Greek fishing boat and cared for by an old lady who made him poultices out of tiny fish mashed up with garlic. How he hadn’t known who he was – not the tiniest bit.

  ‘I don’t remember much, but somehow they got me to England and put me in a convalescent home in the countryside. My memory was gone completely, and because I spoke like an Englishman, nobody ever thought that I might be from here. My face – well, it was in a bad way. They weren’t sure that it could heal – if I had it in me to fight. I wasn’t even sure myself.’

  ‘And then what happened?’ asked Mabel impatiently. ‘How did you remember who you were?’

  Papa Sir turned and smiled at Alice, and she had the same feeling she’d always had when he was with her: that there was nothing in the world that couldn’t be solved because she was safe and loved. ‘For a long time, my head was entirely wrapped in bandages, so I couldn’t see. They used to play us gramophone records to pass the time. And one day, they put on the most beautiful piece of music. I asked the nurses what it was. They told me it was the solo dance from a ballet. And when I heard the word “ballet”, something flickered in my mind – I knew it was important. I made them play it again and again, until one day I sat up and I remembered: I had a daughter. I had a daughter who danced so beautifully, it was like watching a fairy fly. And from there, everything came back – slowly at first, but then quicker and quicker. And here I am.’

  Alice blushed and looked down. ‘Do you remember what the piece of music was called – the one that made you remember?’

  ‘I do. I don’t think I’d ever heard it before. It was called, “The Dance of the Fairy Snow Queen”.’

  Everyone gasped. Papa Sir looked up in surprise.

  ‘That’s Alice’s dance,’ Little whispered. ‘The Fairy Snow Queen is Alice.’

  ‘I danced it at the peacetime concert,’ said Alice. ‘It’s my very favourite.’

  ‘And a couple of years ago, too,’ added Mabel.

  ‘Around the time we stopped getting your letters, actually,’ George noted.

  None of them said anything for a very long moment. In the silence, a thought came into Alice’s mind. ‘I’m sorry we stopped believing that you were alive. I’m sorry we didn’t try harder to find you.’

  ‘My dear child,’ he said tenderly. ‘When I left these shores you were so young and carefree. I fear the war has turned you into a worried old woman. What are we to do with you, my little babushka?’

  ‘Just love her,’ said Little.

  ‘It’s because of Alice we’re all still here and dandy,’ said Mabel loyally. ‘She took care of us every day while you were gone, Papa Sir, and she made sure we had clean clothes and that Little had things to cook with and Pudding had enough kisses, and she wrote lots of lists and –’

  ‘And she has been particularly supportive of my writing,’ said George. ‘In fact, I feel it’s appropriate at this moment for us to raise a toast to Alice.’

  ‘To Alice!’ they said. ‘Thank you, Alice!’ and raised their imaginary glasses.

  They were looking at her so fondly that suddenly Alice felt like she might cry. It was so perfect, and yet . . . Now that she had been given her father back from the dead, how could Alice ever bear to leave him? Around the world there were millions of children who had lost their papas and would never have them home. Didn’t she owe it to all those other children to stay close to Papa Sir for always?

  ‘I think it’s only fitting that I continue our celebrations by performing the opening monologue of my new play: The Valley of Death and the Mountain of Life,’ said George. ‘It’s rather long, so I’ll pause before I begin so you can all get into a comfortable position that won’t induce cramp.’

  After George had read his play and Mabel had sung and they’d eaten ham sandwiches, Mama went to sleep on the deck, worn out from the sea air. Teddy sat back agai
nst the wall of the cabin in the sunshine and closed his eyes, and Miss Lillibet leant against him.

  Alice went up top to find Papa Sir. He was there alone, looking out at the shimmering turquoise sea and smiling. She had dreamed of him so often and longed for him so deeply, but standing there next to him, she felt suddenly shy. It took her a while to think of something to say. ‘What will you do now you’re home? Will you be a doctor again? I mean, can you?’

  Papa Sir smoothed his fingertips down the ridges of his scarred cheek. ‘I don’t think it would be fair to expect people not to mind about all this when they’re suffering. So I thought I’d go back to painting landscapes. I wasn’t bad in my time – I sold quite a few pieces in Paris. I thought Teddy might come and paint with me. Do you think I should ask him?’

  ‘No,’ Alice said quietly. ‘I think the war took his painting away for good.’ Her eyes welled up. ‘The war took away so many good things,’ she said.

  ‘But it brought some back,’ Papa Sir reminded her, holding out his cuff for her to wipe her eyes on. It smelt clean and fresh, like Mama – like home.

  ‘But why did the war make everyone so horrid? Papa Sir, you weren’t here, you didn’t see, but it was awful.’

  ‘Oh, Tink, I can imagine. But you must understand that people get heated when ideas are involved. They’re not quite themselves when they believe they are right and others think differently.’

  ‘Isn’t that a silly thing to fight about, just ideas, when everyone’s are different anyway?’

  ‘Why, it’s just the opposite. There is nothing more important to fight about. When everything spins out of control, all we have to clutch on to is what we believe.’

  Alice turned it over in her mind. ‘Like a life ring, sort of.’

  ‘Exactly. If you were floating in the sea with only a life ring, what would you do if someone tried to snatch it?’

  ‘I’d fight him.’

  ‘And what would you do if he left you alone, but tried to grab Pudding’s life ring instead? Or Little’s?’

  Alice boiled to think of it, her fingernails biting into her palms. ‘I’d kill him.’

  It took a moment for her to take in what she was saying – that she, too, had war inside her; that perhaps everyone did who had someone to love and to fight for. ‘But I thought the war started because . . . because Franz Ferdinand got shot, and people were taking each other’s land,’ she puzzled. ‘Was that all a lie?’

  ‘Oh no – that was just it, just as you described. But curled inside all of that were ideas that people didn’t like – that I didn’t like. The idea that a man or a country with a strong and powerful army can take another’s land, and make him and his family live in a different way. That is what we were fighting against. That’s why I went away and left you . . . because that was an idea I had to cling on to, and I knew how I’d feel if someone marched in and wrestled you all away from me.’

  ‘So it was a war for love?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it was, in a way. And a war to bring fairness. To do the right thing and protect people’s lives.’

  As a pelican flew past in a low straight line, Alice’s throat hurt with all she felt for Papa Sir. She thought about fighting for an idea, for a life, for what was right. And as she pondered all these things, they felt huge and frightening. ‘Papa Sir, how can we be alive when there is so much sadness in the world?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Papa Sir, and put his big hand on her cheek, turning her face towards him. Papa Sir and I have the very same eyes, Alice realised as he looked at her. The same, too, as Teddy’s.

  ‘That’s a big question, dear Alice. But you have a wonderful choice, no matter what is going on around you,’ said Papa Sir, and he stroked her cheek with his warm, strong thumb. ‘You can choose to make your life beautiful – every bit. You can make beautiful art with everything that you do. Even the tiny things – how you live each day. That is all that we have, Alice – that, and each other.’

  ‘But which one’s more important: art or each other?’ Alice asked in despair, thinking of dancing and London. ‘And what if your art takes you away from the people you love? Should you leave them?’

  And then everything was spilling out of Alice – the story of her audition, and how she’d stopped dancing, the Vandal and Pan, and the Apple Blossom Fair, and her pointe shoes and how, on the walk down to the boatshed just before, Teddy and Miss Lillibet had offered to take her to London when they travelled to Europe on their honeymoon next year.

  Papa Sir listened and listened, and when she’d finished, he said, ‘Love can stretch across a sea, Alice. If anyone knows that, it’s me. So wherever you are and whatever you do, our love will follow you.’

  Alice looked out at the blue-green ocean and it wasn’t so hard to imagine love skimming across the white-capped peaks. ‘It won’t follow me,’ she said, making up her mind. ‘Because it’s inside me already. And it will still be there when I get to London. I’m going, Papa Sir. I’ve decided. When everyone wakes up, will you help me tell them? Do you think they’ll mind that I’m going to leave?’

  ‘My little fairy snow queen,’ said Papa Sir, ‘I think they’d mind if you didn’t.’

  Eventually Alice went back down to the deck in search of leftover fruitcake. Out on the boat’s prow, George and Mabel and Little and Pudding sat with their feet dangling off the edge, laughing as the boat sliced through the river’s bouncy waves and showered them with its spangled spray. They looked so happy there, all in a row with their hair flying out, that Alice stood and watched for ages. That’s just how I want to remember them always, she thought.

  She turned away and went to peer over the side. Out of habit, she gripped the boat’s glossy rail as if it were a barre. She swung her legs with pointed toes, higher and higher. She held herself up as tight as she could, squeezing all her strange feelings about life’s happy-sadness into her muscles. Then she went through the positions, first to fifth, over and over, until her mind felt as peaceful as the gentle waves below.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ pleaded Teddy when Alice had finished. ‘Please?’

  Alice spun around in surprise. Miss Lillibet was still asleep against his shoulder, so she couldn’t see the remarkable thing that was happening right in front of her.

  There, on his lap, sat the most glorious thing that Alice had ever seen.

  It was Teddy’s special tin of oil paints, shining like a box of magic. In his fingers was a paintbrush, more thrilling to Alice than if it had been a real wand.

  And on the paper in front of him, in a thousand perfect tiny dots, was Alice, looking up to heaven, dancing against the wide, bright sky.

  he merry sounds of a game of charades floated up from downstairs. Alice could smell bread browning on the end of toasting sticks in the parlour of Mrs Twyford-Moore’s boarding house. In her tiny attic, all alone, she sat at the end of her bed and pulled her quilt around her.

  The quilt was the one bright thing in the dank-smelling room. Mama had made it from little diamonds of fabric that the family had carefully chosen: Mabel’s loud and bright, George’s a sombre beige, Little’s pretty and Pudding’s pink. When it was done, she had folded it up in crisp, white paper and tucked it in Alice’s trunk. ‘The London winter is cold, non?’ she had said. ‘Your nose will disappear from your face!’

  After eighteen months in London, Alice knew what Mama meant about your nose disappearing, numb with cold. She knew about nights that started at 4 p.m., and taking coats and hats and gloves on and off, on and off. At the start, it had been thrilling – every bit. The bustle of people everywhere had made Alice feel part of something big and important; their different accents swirled around her like birdcalls. Catching the open-top double-decker bus to her dance school had felt like a dream. When Teddy and Miss Lillibet had taken her to Edouard Espinosa’s new academy that first day, the world had shone like crystals in sunshine. Big Ben had boomed out a rousing welcome. Like an angel’s trumpet! Alice had thought. Marking the start of my new life.<
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  ‘You won’t be lonely, will you, Tink?’ Teddy had asked when he and Miss Lillibet came to say goodbye a week later. Teddy was going to paint landscapes in Europe for six whole months and Miss Lillibet planned to find out if her relations were still in Germany. ‘Are you sure you don’t want us to pop back on our way home to Perth to check that you’re happy?’

  Alice had laughed. ‘How could I be anything but happy? It’s all I’ve ever wanted.’

  But that was before . . . well, before everything. Alice rubbed the back of her foot, and smoothed out Papa Sir’s letter for the hundredth time.

  Dearest Tink,

  Chaos here as always – Tatty fighting with Bear’s new puppy and Mabel practising opera (her latest thing) – so a quick note to thank you for your letter. By now your dreaded audition for The Nutcracker will be over. Your letter said that you don’t hold out much hope for a part, and while I doubt that very much, you’ll do splendidly even in the chorus line. Remember, my little Fairy Snow Queen, that beautiful art can be made at the back of the stage, and your time will come.

  Lovely to hear you’re well and happy and bunking in with the others there at Mrs TM’s. Little’s been baking the mother of all fruitcakes to send for Christmas, so if it doesn’t sink the ship, it will hopefully be with you for the festive season. Share it with friends.

  Sold a landscape of the Swan last week for a pretty penny to a chap visiting from El Salvador. Now there’s somewhere I’d like to go!

  Angus is the bonniest baby you ever did see, hair white as snow, and Teddy is a much better papa than I ever was. Dear Lillibet is almost back to full health. I know she thinks of you often and enjoys hearing the news, as does

  Your ever-loving father,

  The Papa-est of all Sirs.

  Alice’s heart broke and bloomed a little, as it always did when the warmth and love of home poked into her London life. And then she felt the prickle of guilt for wishing yet again that she was back with them in sunny old Peppermint Grove instead of banished to the attic. It wasn’t that she was banished, exactly – more that the other girls deeply despised her, and Mrs Twyford-Moore was a bossy, cantankerous cow. More a bull than a cow, Alice reflected. Or perhaps a bad-tempered yak. Something with real shoulders.