After Alice

by Gregory Maguire

  “I see,” said Lydia, who saw mostly that Miss Armstrong now seemed alert to the significance of Mr. Darwin. But Lydia took little interest in questions of natural history. Mrs. Brummidge, having returned to the kitchen, went about her business, ears cocked.

  “At home in Kent, Mr. Darwin showed Mr. Winter a most peculiar orchid. It was sent the great naturalist from an island off the coast of Africa. I forget which coast and which island. Geography is a sore mystery to me. In any event, the nectary of this amazing plant, according to Mr. Winter, is an eleven-­inch tube. Surely no insect flies around, even in darkest Africa, with an eleven-­inch proboscis. Such would be ungainly. Yet Darwin imagines a moth possessed of a rolling proboscis, like an uncoiling snake, that could collect the nectar. Such a moth could retract his implement and propagate the species by visiting a sister plant. I don’t think such a strategy is likely. But just imagine the mind that can imagine such a thing.”

  “You are flushed with the effort of imagining it,” observed Mrs. Brummidge.

  “It’s known as the Star of Bethlehem orchid,” said Miss Armstrong with complacency, as if biblical allusion must deter any unsavory associations.

  “And the insect would be a variety of the species magi, in that it comes bearing gifts,” said Lydia.

  “Malarkey and confustication,” said Mrs. Brummidge, trying not to laugh. “Rhoda, pay no mind to nonsense.”

  “I hate to pester you with questions,” said Lydia to Miss Armstrong, “but when you were returning here from the Vicarage, I don’t suppose you caught sight of Mr. Winter’s boy roaming about? He came back to the house with me but then scarpered off somewhere like a wagtail in the underbrush. Mr. Winter went in to dine without knowing where the boy has gone. And I understand the guests intend to take the mid-­afternoon train back to London so Mr. Darwin can return to Down by nightfall. This is an arduous trip for a man with his set of conditions. Mr. Winter won’t be able to postpone their departure just because his boy has gone larking about.”

  “I saw no sign of that child,” returned the governess, “but when luncheon is over perhaps Mr. Winter and I can make another perambulation together and look for both our charges.” She smiled at Lydia as if grateful the girl had scared Siam away. Oh no, you don’t, thought Lydia. You’re not making your jelly out of my jam.

  “You ­people lose children the way scholars lose gloves,” declared Mrs. Brummidge. “Lydia, I’ve had enough of keeping my place. After luncheon you’ll go locate our Alice, and no chatter about it. Yes I know your casual confidence, but if only for my nerves. I can’t take more of this, and I won’t. My heart, you know.”

  “They’ll all be found together, no doubt, playing a childhood game, Ada and Alice and Siam. The soup is quite strong, Mrs. Brummidge.” Miss Armstrong’s anxiety over Ada had quite settled itself, Lydia noted.

  “It’s my belief his interest in that boy is unseemly,” said Mrs. Brummidge. She wouldn’t elaborate upon the matter. Shortly thereafter Lydia spilled her bowl of soup toward Miss Armstrong’s lap. Her aim was poor. Hardly a dozen drops landed where they could do the most good.

  CHAPTER 33

  When Siam was able to believe that he had come unto another new world—­as different from England as England had been from Gwinnett County, Georgia—­he tried to take note of what this world was. A name would be helpful, like Little Egypt. Which was what the plantation had been called, the one from which he’d come out under pain and suffering, like the Israelites into the desert. Names of places mattered. Little Egypt. Bellerive. Down House, the home of that kind, distracted old man that Mr. Josiah was courting. But if Siam could reckon no name for this place yet, he’d at least sort out a portfolio of impressions regarding what it was like.

  He came to his senses, if these still were his senses, sprawled on his hands and knees in a patch of ferns. Falling through some sort of hearthside chute, he’d expected kitchens, a root-­cellar, an ash-­bin. Like any number of dank and spidery clinches in which he and Clem had been hidden. Or if he’d somehow been tipped outside the Croft, surely he’d be within sight of its narrow mullioned windows? But he found himself in a forest of some sort. Young trees with spindly trunks were established in sward smooth as felt, not thick with undergrowth like an American woods. As if woodland creatures cropped the grass here and kept it level.

  He sat on his haunches. He rubbed the dirt and char from his face. With a little uncertainty, he stood up.

  The tree trunks were regular, like slender columns of iron. The canopy above was brown with shadow. He saw no sign of sky. This forest was, in fact, as dark as the room into which he had climbed to escape—­but he couldn’t think of that person’s name he was trying to avoid. The older girl with the blond—­the blond whiskery business on top. Perhaps he had hit his head and he was still in that space? He wished he could walk to one side and push aside the—­the hanging things that kept the light from coming in—­coming in the glass—­but he couldn’t think of the name of the set of glass panes that let light in.

  Must be shook up. That long fall. My words flown right out my head.

  He turned around. In all directions the woods seemed to go on with sameness. It was impossible to tell which way to go in order to find his way back to—­

  What was his name, that rescuer, who had brought him all the way across the sink? No, not the sink . . . across the water, the big water?

  A sound in the underbrush made Siam turn his head. A creature hurrying, pausing, sitting up, looking about, twitching its white whiskers, checking an item on a chain that came out of a pocket in its . . . cloth wrapping. The creature had funny ears covered with white fur, and a pouff of a tail. It said, “If only I could remember how to tell time, I’d know if I was late or not.”

  “I din’t know time was something you could tell,” said Siam.

  “One can tell time to hurry up, to slow down, or to stop making such a dreadful racket,” replied the thing, hopping a few feet closer and examining Siam with a placid expression. “One can tell time to be still. Two can tell it the same thing, only more forcibly, with the courage that comes from uniting voices in song. However, I seem to have forgotten how to tell it a thing, including to be sure to wipe its feet when it comes in from tramping about at all hours.”

  “Does time have feet?”

  “You’ve heard of time dragging. What do you suppose it is dragging, its nose? Of course it drags its feet.”

  “I din’t know it lugged itself about. I thought time flew.”

  “Ah, yes. The wings of time.” At this the creature swung the object about on its chain and then let it go. It soared upward but didn’t return. It had become lodged. “It’s stuck on that protrusion,” observed the creature. “I feel I should know what that is called, that lengthy thing with greenery clinging to its tips. Can you hear the tick-­talk, tick-­talk, that time is telling us?”

  Siam listened carefully. Yes, just barely, he could make out a regular pulse from the dial at the end of the chain. “So time does fly,” he said. “Does it fly back, too?”

  “Oh, yes. Remember the poem. ‘But at my back I always hear / Time’s wingèd hat-­rack hurrying near.’ It’s a bother to have a wingèd hat-­rack always poking one in the back, but there’s little else to be done if time is to return. Is that a hat-­rack it is stuck upon, do you suppose?”

  “This has a name,” said Siam. He shook the trunk to see if he could jostle the moments loose. “Still, I can’t remember if it a hat-­rack or not.” His labors were useful. The time-­machine fell off. The creature caught it in a furry paw, and slipped it into a convenient slit in the cloth that was bracketing its middle.

  “Shall we stroll together for a spell,” asked the creature, “now that we have the time?”

  Siam couldn’t think why not. He was twice the size of this woodland animal. He might easily outrun it if it called the authorities. “You headed anyw
heres special?” he asked.

  “Oh, very special indeed. Though I can’t recall what it is called. Perhaps you might suggest a few special sites? I will choose from among them which is the nearest.”

  “Perhaps you are headed to . . .” Siam scratched his head. “To a shoemaker?”

  The creature looked down at its unshod hindquarters. “Uncommonly rude of you to point out that sartorial impossibility for one of my appendages, not to mention the other one.”

  “Maybe you are headed to a headache factory?”

  “That sounds peculiarly right, and yet: no. Any other ideas?”

  Siam tried to think of wonderful destinations. He could envision a fireside at night, and massive warm presences that gave off gusts of affection and protection. He could find no words for that sensation, though. “You hunting for a velveteen ladle? A hill conquered by a rocking chair?”

  “You speak reams of nonsense. I don’t understand a word you say.” While they had been talking, and scratching their heads out of consternation, the path had meandered through some thickets of red berries and prickery leaves. At the other side of this growth the forest suddenly tapered off. They came out into a spill of sensible light.

  “My goodness,” said Siam. “You a White Rabbit, and you can speak.”

  “And you’re a black child,” said the White Rabbit. “I don’t suppose we’re twins who have lost our way in the Wood of No Names?”

  “Is that where we were?”

  The White Rabbit turned about and pointed. “Yes. And we’ve lost time in there, I’ll warrant.”

  “No, we din’t,” said Siam, “it’s in the pocket of your waistcoat.” For suddenly he remembered pocket and waistcoat.

  “Oh, my,” said the White Rabbit, examining the watch and snapping its lid shut, “this will never do! I’m late for the garden party! She’ll have my head, see if she doesn’t!” At this, the White Rabbit tore off across the meadow, as if the hounds of a hunting party were on the scent and baying for blood. Siam remembered what that was like. In three shakes of its tail, the White Rabbit was out of sight.

  I won’t go backward, thought Siam, for I know little enough about where I am as it is. A forest that makes you forget the names of things is a dangerous place to hide. Odd that no one ever mentioned that animals could talk here. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Winter was so eager to speak with Mr. Darwin. Evolution a mighty power, could it yield up creatures capable of argument.

  Then again, thought Siam, what good did arguing ever do me?

  He tried not to be alarmed. After all, the past few years had brought him dozens of surprises, many of them unpleasant, and yet here he was. But where was he?

  Siam had a fine memory. He pictured the page of the book that a kindly New England matron had opened upon a table. She had picked up his hand and run it across the letters. She’d made him say the words that the letters were spelling. She had thought she was teaching him to read, but she was really only feeding his memory bucket, slowly and carefully. He moved his hand in the air before himself. He felt the words in their kinky, obstinate shapes. He said their sounds aloud:

  The Pilgrim’s Progress,

  from This World to That Which Is to Come;

  Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream.

  That he could carry such a memory still, even after he’d spent some time in the Wood of No Names, gave him a boost of courage not unlike a draft of ale. He straightened up his spine and went forward, whistling.

  CHAPTER 34

  Lydia decided to sabotage Miss Armstrong’s plan of waylaying Mr. Winter for another private walk. Lydia said, “Since Mrs. Brummidge insists I find Alice, I’ll go look, and return with Alice and Siam. Mr. Winter will be so pleased.”

  “I’ll have your head for a doorstop if you don’t bring Alice in,” swore Mrs. Brummidge. “I’d go hunt her myself did we not have Mr. Himself to dine.”

  “I’ll come with you, Lydia,” said Miss Armstrong promptly, as Lydia had gambled she would. Better Lydia should suffer the company of this sycophant than that the governess should prey upon Mr. Winter while Lydia was out-­of-­doors. Miss Armstrong continued. “Before the men finish their meal, let us put this hide-­and-­seek routine to an end. Those children are having us as fools, I fear. It is the age-­old gambit of the young against the adults. No doubt you played it in your time. I am certain I did.”

  Lydia couldn’t decide if she had ever engaged in such a campaign, and if so, whether or not she had finished. She was only aware of confusions, which might be the same thing. Resenting Mr. Winter his chivalry toward the governess, resenting Miss Armstrong’s menacing solicitude about him. Lydia was also aware of a throb of guilt about Siam’s hiding from her. Still, wherever Siam might be, it was his fault, not hers. She hadn’t pocketed a game-­piece. And from a room more mausoleum than anything else. Lydia found herself becoming indignant all over again.

  It’s not easy to be half of anything. Half-­adult/half-­child is a state with no reliable signposts.

  She left her soup half uneaten. She ignored the brown slices on the bread tray. She rose from the table. “If Siam isn’t found soon, do you suppose Mr. Winter will send Mr. Darwin home on his own? So the American can stay here to search for his lost boy?”

  “I believe Mr. Darwin’s needs take precedence.” Miss Armstrong’s air of propriety about Mr. Winter’s obligations, thought Lydia, was nothing short of insolent. “Mr. Winter told me that the old scholar hasn’t left his home in months. ­People come to him. Whenever he does venture up to London, he lets no one know, or he’d be bedeviled with invitations. Your father must be a very honored friend of Mr. Darwin’s for the man to travel so. He is feeling the stress of this trip. Nothing would induce Mr. Winter to abandon him. Mr. Winter has his own petition to make of Mr. Darwin, you see.”

  “The gentleman went around the world on the Beagle, and it took five bloody years,” intoned Mrs. Brummidge. “If he can’t get from Oxford to London on his own, he needs to grow a new pair of flippers.” She made vaguely arfing noises under her breath for the next several minutes.

  Lydia and Miss Armstrong went to the garden. Love-­in-­a-­mist, sweet sultan, bachelor’s buttons. Hardy annuals. “The children are not in the house,” said Lydia. “I am sure of this. It’s true, Alice can be silent as a corpse when she is in one of her dream games. I found her once lying under the bed staring up at the mattress ticking. I sensed her presence, there’s no other word for it. She’d been there all day.”

  “Which room?” asked Miss Armstrong.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  In fact, the bed in question had been the bed that Mama had died in. Lydia had yanked Alice out by her elbow and by the hem of her skirt. Lydia had had to slap Alice, twice, to make her blink her eyes and notice where she was.

  But though one child, an Alice-­like child, could pretend to marble, three together would give themselves away in whispers and giggles. The children must be underfoot, hiding somewhere obvious. It was a matter of thinking where to look. Of becoming like unto a child again. Of yielding to that paradox: that the least powerful among us are privileged with the greatest exposure to feeling. The greatest susceptibility to impression.

  “When Ada has come to visit before, the children have played in the garden,” said Miss Armstrong, looking about. “Shall we leave no stone unturned?”

  “They won’t be under a stone,” said Lydia.

  The property of the Croft consisted of a small orchard (four trees), a kitchen garden with a hen run, and a misshapen apron of grass across which Dinah sometimes stalked with stiff swiveling legs, and her kittens pounced, black and white against the green. The garden had been Mrs. Clowd’s domain. Much flourished now that ought not to do: stands of weed, frotheries of vine that had not been cut back in the appropriate season. No shortage of blinds for hide-­and-­seek. In
ten minutes Lydia and Miss Armstrong had made a thorough circuit, even peering into the chicken house. No stowaways could be found.

  “We’ve been back and forth across the river path and the nearer meadows,” complained Miss Armstrong. “Does Alice often go far afield on her own?” She spoke with a minimum of disapproval, for which Lydia was grateful.

  “Not very far. She’s too young.”

  “We all grow up.” This, a bulletin from the front, courtesy of the five or six years Miss Armstrong could claim against Lydia. Lydia despised her all over again. “On my way here after checking at the Vicarage, I called out to the Trillings’ gardener, who was passing by in a rowboat. He hadn’t seen the girls. I didn’t ask him about Siam, but I suspect he’d have mentioned if he’d seen a displaced child of that variety. Are you quite certain the children aren’t hiding in the Croft? You’ve examined all its crannies and particulars? You’ve been to the attics? Have you remembered the basements?”

  “I’ve been all about, but not to the crawl space,” said Lydia. “It is too wet to keep anything there but spiders. In any case Pater minds the keys. No, Alice is not at home, Miss Armstrong; I’ve said that already. And I insist she wouldn’t venture into town. She’s given to silence and solitary play. She doesn’t seek out company. She avoids it generally. And in among the colleges and the market there is nothing but company. Even in the long vac, when the streets are quieter than in term, there’d be too much fuss made over her.”

  “I can’t see that Alice deserves much fuss.”

  “She’s become a motherless child, Miss Armstrong. That type of creature calls forth a response from all, whether Alice requires it or not. Though she abhors the stickiness of sentiment. She’s too brave for that.”