After Alice

by Gregory Maguire

  He ate the future and the past,

  And all the days as they galloped past.

  He ate the prophets, stars, and sky,

  And fell down dead and refused to die.”

  “I am beginning to feel I grew up in the wrong nursery, as these rhymes won’t behave,” she said aloud, to give herself courage. “I wonder if nursery rhymes do lasting damage?” Before she could answer her own question, the path dropped in a steep decline. She found herself rushing downslope into a clearing in the mist. Her new agility failed her. She tumbled.

  A group of travelers turned to her. “Oh, my, a guardian angel,” cried one. “How welcome, for we are quite lost. I fear we will arrive late for our performance.”

  Ada drew herself up short. The figure addressing her was flat and sharp, possibly cut out of a sheet of metal and painted in carnival colors. A Tin Ballerina, with one leg lifted and a beribboned tambourine pinched in her tin fingers. She was accompanied by a Tin Bear with a valise upon his upturned nose. Sauntering along behind was a large, sour-­looking, fully ovoid Egg, wearing a necktie and little else.

  “What a remarkable family you have,” said Ada to the Tin Ballerina.

  “We have no family, we simply have careers. We are in the theatre,” replied the Tin Ballerina, a little sadly.

  “I thought there seemed a bit of Punch and Judy to you. Where are you going?”

  “We are going to perform, of course, but we have lost our way in this purgatorial soup. You are good to show up and lead us forward, you heavenly creature.”

  “I am not that good,” said Ada. “And I am not a guardian angel.”

  “You came from above, didn’t you? That’s the origin of angels,” replied the Tin Ballerina.

  Ada didn’t know if the Tin Ballerina was referring to the slope or to the world of upper Oxford. “Well. I came from above. Yes. But only in a manner of speaking.”

  “She has no strings,” said the Tin Bear. “She’s a guardian angel, all right.”

  “No one asks me my opinion,” snapped the Egg, “but if they should, I might have something sharp to say!”

  “Dear Humpty Dumpty, what is your opinion?” asked the Tin Ballerina.

  “I have no idea,” he replied. “Perhaps she is a guardian ornament, intended to revolve in the wind like other tin weather-­vanes.” Oh, thought Ada, that’s what the Tin Bear and the Tin Ballerina most resemble: weather-­vanes. While the Egg resembled nothing so much as a refugee from a luncheon platter.

  “You’re players meant to entertain at the garden party of the Queen of Hearts!” guessed Ada.

  “If you say so,” said the Tin Bear. “I would have said we were cheap ornaments intended for the decoration of joyless holiday endeavor, destined for the rubbish bin, but you know best, dear guardian angel.”

  “Please don’t think me a guardian angel. For one thing—­”

  “You are hardly a guardian mongoose,” said Humpty Dumpty. “And a good thing, too, for mongooses eat raw eggs.”

  “Alas,” said the Tin Bear, “guardian angel or not, you cannot join our band. You have no strings. So you are not a marionette.”

  “You have no strings,” said Ada. “If I am not a guardian angel, neither are you marionettes. I think you’re weather-­vanes. I mean, except Mr. Egg.”

  “We are poor soothsayers, I’m afraid. We cannot tell whether the weather will hold for the party,” said the Tin Ballerina. “In any case, we do have strings. I don’t mean in any case, really, I mean in that case.” She revolved upon her toe so her extended leg pointed toward the valise balanced atop the Tin Bear. “We keep them coiled in the satchel until they are needed. Now, tell us whether or not you are going to guide us to the party.”

  Ada said, “If you are weather-vanes, you ought to be able to sort out your location from which way the fog is blowing in. No?”

  “I thought I told you. We’re whether-­vanes, with an h,” said the Tin Ballerina. “We don’t know whether we’re coming or going. It’s supposed to be charming, but it makes our professional appearances alarmingly impromptu.”

  Ada put a finger to her lips. “Aren’t you a guardian Egg?” she asked the one called Humpty Dumpty. “I had been told a Head Egg like you was serving as a lookout to protect birds’ nests from hungry serpents.”

  “I’ve been told you went out walking in the lane without a chaperone!” he retorted. “Mind your own business. I left the position of guardian Egg to take up a higher calling. Art is all. You will rarely have seen a performance in which an Egg has such an exalted role.”

  “I’ve never seen any performance in which an Egg was featured at all,” admitted Ada.

  “Exactly,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I rest my case.”

  “I wish I could rest my case,” said the Tin Bear. His valise was soldered to his nose.

  “Prepare to be astounded,” continued Humpty Dumpty to Ada. “If we ever get there, I mean.”

  “Perhaps I could join your troupe. I should like to go to the garden party, too,” said Ada. “I am hunting for a friend, you see. I’m afraid that she may be lost.”

  “She’s no more lost than Paradise,” said the Tin Bear. Everyone looked at him. “Do you think even Paradise Lost could find itself in this fog? Really.”

  “Well, we can’t get any more lost than we are,” decided Ada. “So I’ll come along with you. We’ll see where we get.”

  “That will never do,” said the Tin Ballerina. “We’ll come along with you, and we’ll see where we get.”

  The Egg muttered something bitter that Ada couldn’t quite catch. Then that noise, like the ongoing collapse of an industrial artifact, sounded again, and too near for comfort. Without choosing a path, they all ran in single file: Ada first, the Tin Ballerina hopping en pointe, the Tin Bear stumping behind. Humpty Dumpty was last, glancing over the great flanks of his even jowls (he had no shoulders to speak of). The forest grew indistinct with fog. The leafy branches of trees seemed like great mittened claws eager to scrape at the party. It couldn’t be denied that the clangorous monster was following them. “The Jabberwock!” hissed the Tin Bear. “A Guardian Demon!” They all closed their eyes as they ran. The fog was so close they couldn’t see more than a foot ahead of themselves anyway.

  CHAPTER 23

  The governess again! A riverbank nixie gone mad for interruption into human affairs. Puck’s countervalence. Lydia could spit. But the manifestation of Miss Armstrong snapped Lydia to attention. So far, Mr. Josiah Winter had proven little more than an unexpected aspect of Lydia’s morning. If, in time to come, this June day would be picked out in her memory for special notice, it would be because she had strolled upon the riverbank with a young American gentleman. True, their duet of comments and potent pauses had been only an experiment at grown-­up conversation. But they were together as a pair, strolling. A first, for Lydia.

  With Miss Armstrong hieing into view, however, the dalliance of this walk, the private silly adventure of it, was now beaten into something public and coarse. This encounter on the Cherwell bank would lie between Lydia and Miss Armstrong, unmentioned, every time their paths crossed for the rest of their lives.

  She glared at Miss Armstrong swooping across the meadow, cutting the diagonal the more quickly to meet them. Miss Armstrong was watching where she placed her feet. She didn’t notice Lydia’s ferocity. And Lydia thought: The court and the rabble of Athens move so quickly into the woods, stung and shifted by magic, abused by Puck. Shakespeare was showing how any social event is composed of separate simultaneous experiences, whose meanings differ, and must be negotiated into commonality if history is to occur.

  She had no intention of negotiating with Miss Armstrong, but Lydia was stuck like a wasp in honey. The stroll was no longer hers alone. Hers, and Mr. Winter’s.

  “I was hoping to waylay you, Miss Lydia,” huffed Miss Armstrong. She put ou
t her hand to grasp Lydia by the wrist, in friendship or worry. Lydia offered no wrist. After a moment Mr. Winter held out his hand. Miss Armstrong recoiled with flare, as if she hadn’t noticed the gentleman till his hand appeared. “Begging your pardon, sir; I am interrupting your meander. I am—­”

  “Mr. Winter, may I present Miss Armstrong,” said Lydia. It was not a question. “A governess from the Vicarage along the way.” The tone in which she said governess had a likeness to iron.

  “How do you do.” Mr. Winter bowed from the waist.

  Rallying, Miss Armstrong became downright Bohemian. “Miss Lydia, the Vicarage has gone turnips to toast! Ada has not returned, but that’s the least of it. The infant is squalling as if being pricked with invisible needles. The doctor has been sent for. Mrs. Boyce has taken the boy to her bosom. She has turned the Vicar out of the sewing room. He is beside himself, and you know what he is like!”

  Lydia had no idea what the Vicar was like. She was not interested in learning. She couldn’t decipher this story, with its needles and bosoms and squallings. Oh, so the infant had the hiccups. To judge by the look on Miss Armstrong’s face, the Pennines would now collapse and the Hebrides float away toward Norway. But all this drama couldn’t deter Lydia from her obligations, much as she tried to resist them. “Miss Armstrong, this is Mr. Winter, lately of London though originating in those pestered States across the ocean.”

  “I understand,” said Miss Armstrong in a tone of regret. She put a hand to her bonnet brim as if to brush away a horsefly. “Miss Lydia, I am beside myself.”

  “So I see,” said Lydia. “I have no words of advice for you, though. We are engaged in our own campaigns. We’re out looking for Alice, as she hasn’t returned either. No one has reached a state of alarm, mind you. Alice never goes far. She merely goes . . .” She thought. “Deep.”

  Miss Armstrong murmured, “Where is the boy who looks after the sheep, but under the haystack, fast asleep.” They began to walk together, a hateful trio.

  “I know that nursery ditty,” said Mr. Winter. “It is sung at the cots of Concord babes. Interesting how the word fast suggests, in that instance, a way of holding. From the word fastened, I suppose. Locked in sleep, kept.”

  “Is it possible that Ada is locked in sleep somewhere with her head on Alice’s shoulder?” said Miss Armstrong. “Has anyone seen Ada today?”

  “One might imagine she’d been pushed into the river and drowned, to simplify her life and everyone else’s,” said Lydia.

  “No one could imagine such a thing,” protested Miss Armstrong.

  “You did,” said Lydia. “You told me earlier. You pictured Ada fetched up against the milldam, as I re—­”

  “The marmalade—­”

  “Ada and her marmalade!” Lydia made an airy, dismissive sound like a French laundress. How Miss Armstrong could jabber as she walked! “Miss Lydia, Ada can’t have gone far. But some forbidden destination would have appealed to her more strongly than the company of Alice.” In an aside to Mr. Winter, Lydia said, “My sister isn’t always attentive. Oh, she’s never unkind, but she’s easily distractible. If she and Ada were playing a game of hide-­and-­search, and Ada had closed herself in a wardrobe, Alice might decide to go dig worms in the garden and drop them in the well. Ada could spend the day waiting to be found.”

  “Don’t say that!” Miss Armstrong took a fright. “Mr. Winter, Ada Boyce has never gone out alone before today. It’s always been my pleasure to walk with her endlessly, endlessly, hither and yon, endlessly, but what with turmoil at home, Ada escaped me. The Vicar—­oh, possessed of such piety!” She shook her head; her shoulders wobbled, too. “And Mrs. Boyce, distracted by the nuisance of a newborn, and all her natural feeling for her husband channeled elsewhere. It is a harlequinade, a harlequinade enacted in a torched and smoking rectory, by ­people devastated with terror and madeira.” She had said too much, of course, she had flung herself into the river and drowned. She blinked two or three times like a Guernsey surprised to have just delivered an aria. She lowered her parasol, closed it. She stabbed the ground with it as if to kill the very earth upon which she walked. She lifted both hands in a gesture of defeat that didn’t fool Lydia for a moment. “I am not myself today,” said Miss Armstrong by way of apology, in a softer tone.

  “Few are,” said Mr. Winter. Lydia couldn’t tell if he was being amusing or rude. “Of course, we’ll look for your Ada while we keep an eye out for Miss Lydia’s sister. Would you care to walk along with us?”

  Lydia couldn’t bear it. “I suspect, Miss Armstrong, that having escaped you, Ada took the chance to engage a boatman to take her across the river. I seem to think she said something of the sort. To explore the other side, she said. And look, there’s a boatman lolling down on that spit. Just there. Perhaps you should hire him yourself, and go have a look around that side of the river. We’ll check out this side. One never knows.” The tone was ominous. “Of course if we find Ada we’ll send her home at once. I have already told you that, Miss Armstrong.”

  But now Miss Armstrong was weeping. Lydia could have given her a good hard kick. “I can’t begin to tell you what it would mean—­to us—­if I were sent away!” she sobbed. Mr. Winter stopped, pale. Had he never encountered a volatile woman before? He put out his hand and settled it upon Miss Armstrong’s shoulder. She couldn’t look up, but she raised one hand and rested it upon his as if they had known one another for twenty years. The bells began to sound the quarter hour. The sun blinked behind a cloud. For a moment the colors took on a hasty intensity. The first cloud after a session of blinding sunlight is a shade of the underworld, a hint of the grave and even how it might smell. Lydia felt a shiver of dread, but overcame it.

  “I understand what you feel,” said Mr. Winter. “Should anything happen to my lad, I would be beside myself.”

  “Your lad,” chimed Miss Armstrong questioningly.

  “Siam.” Lydia spoke with a ferocious oratorical clarity. “Ahead of us on the path. Halloo, Siam!” she called to the boy, who turned and waved.

  Miss Armstrong lost some ground. It was too much. “You may be right,” she said to someone, to herself. Who knew what she meant? She pivoted away from the riverbank path and began beating down the shallow slope to the water’s edge. Lydia turned her shoulder; the subject was closed. As the moment passed, the dome of the Radcliffe Camera in the distance came out of shadow into the sun. The stodgy beauties of the colleges, and all these comic barbarians at their finialed gates.

  “What a passionate creature,” said Mr. Winter.

  “She’s an utter lunatic.”

  “But look, she’s left behind her parasol. She’ll need it, with the sun on the water. Miss Armstrong,” he called, with what Lydia thought was perhaps not a full-­throated effort. Distance, and the noise of the governess’s rushing skirts, must have kept her from hearing. “I shall go after her and deliver it,” he decided. “I shall ambush her by the launch, hand her the thing, and return, like so. Keep on along the riverbank.” He indicated with a nod of his head a path ahead by which he’d come back to Lydia. “I shall rejoin you along the way, having made a triangle of it. With your permission.”

  Lydia didn’t give permission, but he was off on his own, gamboling like an idiotic April lamb. She didn’t want to witness the reunion from this distance, any distance. She suspected he would loiter. She hated him, she hated them both. She turned her face into the wind. She looked for black Siam, a sentimental silhouette against the diamond-­dashed glitter and glare of a backwash of the Cherwell. She cupped her hands at her mouth. “I say,” she called to him, at a volume she knew the adults couldn’t hear. “We’re told to head back. Come with me.”

  CHAPTER 24

  We must now, if only for a moment, consider Siam on the riverbank, and what he sees. He examines life as intently as anyone else in this history. That the puzzlingly kind Mr. Josiah is loping along the ba
nk, away from him—­this causes in Siam a mix of relief and anxiety at the same instant. And what of Miss Lydia, the half-­adult missie, with her flaxen hair pulled forward in a way that fails to disguise the vastness of her forehead? She puts Siam in mind of the white cliffs of Albion, as Mr. Josiah had named them, on the vessel that brought them from Oostende.

  Persons like Miss Lydia are an unknown element in Siam’s life. His experience with white females of that age has been so chaperoned as to kill conversation. He doesn’t think in terms of vixen, virago, or virgin. He thinks she is attractive, though perhaps an aberration, like one of those new barnacles or orchids about which Mr. Josiah has yammered with Mr. Darwin. They broke the mold before they cast her, he thinks. That is perhaps not quite right. Still, it seems fitting.

  Of Miss Armstrong he has no opinion. She is a wild improbability whom he can see but has not met. He watched Mr. Josiah loping down a sloping bank toward her. Miss Lydia is hollering something to Siam. He ventures a few feet nearer to see if he can understand her words beneath her accent.

  CHAPTER 25

  The woods began to thin. The sound of hastening footsteps in the fog took on sloshy echo. They were running through marsh grass now, wetlands. Their feet were soaked. Perhaps we are at the side of the ocean, thought Ada. “The salt air will do you no good,” she panted to the Tin Ballerina and the Tin Bear. “You will come down with a pox.”

  “I adore salt,” huffed Humpty Dumpty. “Salt completes me.”

  “We mustn’t plunge into the sea or we would have to consider drowning,” said the Tin Bear. “And I’m not sure I’m capable of that. I’d be an utter failure.”

  The noise of their pursuer only intensified. They heard a hunger in that racket, or some other ambition. The Jabberwock, if such it was, must be lost in the fog, too. They cringed at the creak and clang of its limbs, which seemed in the thickening air to be all around them.

  “We are but poor players a-­wandering in the muck and the mire,” said the Tin Ballerina. “It’s time we relied upon a higher power. We must put ourselves in the hands of loftier management.”