Unbirthday

by Liz Braswell

  “Splendid! I have just the thing!” Mathilda cried, eyes lighting up. She did not, however, say thank you, Alice noticed. Instead she pulled out one of her loathsome pamphlets. Alice’s heart sank. “Tonight is the fundraising lecture for the rally. Mr. Ramsbottom is giving a talk to his biggest supporters. There will be light refreshment. The four of us shall attend—and that way I also get you to actually come to one of my meetings.”

  “Great yes fantastic you win now get out,” Alice said, scooching like an inchworm back into her covers and putting all the pillows back over her head. She felt the bed shift and the pressure in the air change as her sister stood up and left the room.

  “Clubs,” Alice said for no good reason, and resumed trying to dream.

  But she never got close to leaving England or even falling asleep. And somehow, remarkably, as the day progressed, Wonderland slipped away so much that she forgot it entirely for minutes at a time. Bathing, getting dressed, attending to what little correspondence she had, and avoiding any more contact with her sister took up most of the afternoon. When she found out that Mathilda had invited Mr. Headstrewth (Corwin) over for a spot of tea before the lecture, Alice slunk out of the house entirely with the message that she was going to fortify herself for the evening as well—but at Mrs. Yao’s.

  (Also there were several specialty teas in her stock that were conducive to sleep: lavender, chamomile, valerian root, etc., which Alice thought she might avail herself of.)

  This day wasn’t half as glorious as the previous ones. It was misty and dark—practically begging for a good lie-in. A duvet day, as one of Alice’s closer girl friends called it. Certainly not one for attending hateful and boring lectures.

  “Then again, perhaps I shall be so sleepy and dull at the talk tonight that I will simply doze off…just as I did when my sister was reading to me so long ago—and thereby make my way back to Wonderland!”

  That thought put her into a much sunnier mood, at least until she turned the corner and saw the tea shop.

  Its dainty window was smashed to bits, its sign cracked in two.

  “Good heavens!” Alice cried, rushing through the door. The bells that jingled merrily upon her entrance had at least not been ruined.

  Mrs. Yao sat slumped at her counter with her lower lip sticking out sadly. But she broke into a smile as soon as she saw Alice and quickly busied herself measuring out the right quantity of Alice’s favorite tea and pouring hot water from a constantly bubbling kettle over it.

  “No, stop,” Alice pleaded. “Let me do something—you look a wreck.”

  “Being busy keeps me from being sad,” Mrs. Yao said with a wry grin. “Also, I have to pay for the damage somehow. Can I sell you on two biscuits this time?”

  “You may sell me a half dozen. What has happened? Was it a bird?”

  “Sure. If birds sank like stones from the air,” the proprietor said sourly. She lifted up the stone in question from where it had sat in an icy-looking puddle of cracked glass. It was smooth and fist-sized and unlike something you would pick up from the wayside or a cobbled road. It was a beach stone, its origins far from Kexford. A string was tied tightly around it, attached to which was a surprisingly neatly and prettily written note:

  go back to whence you came

  “Oh dear,” Alice said. “That’s terrible!”

  “I know who did it, too,” Mrs. Yao said, going back to working on the tea service. “That wretched little Danny Flannigan. But I don’t think it was his idea. He can’t write. Or read.”

  She presented Alice with a pretty tray holding two teacups and mismatched saucers, a couple of fancy nibbles, and an enameled pot whose steam smelled divine.

  “Has this sort of thing happened before?”

  “Oh, you can’t live here and look different from everyone else and not hear things like that from time to time. Breaking the window is new. But I have been told worse.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Alice murmured. “I had no idea.”

  “Why would you? But I appreciate your sympathy, I really do. It’s nice to think I have an ally—with good taste in tea.”

  Alice smiled and poured a cup for her friend and then for herself, breathing in the lovely-scented steam issuing from the pot.

  “You should talk to Danny’s parents. Even if the boy can’t pay for a new window, he could help fix it or run errands for you until you’re square.”

  “I am certain he was put up to it by someone else. He’s not this clever. He’s just a brat.” She smiled mischievously. “We had brats back in Nanjing, too—and they also only targeted Chinese shop owners.”

  Alice sighed. “I just wish there was something I could do. Oh!” Her face suddenly brightened with an idea. “Can I take a photograph of you? Next to the window? Holding the rock? I could submit it to the newspaper. ‘The scene of a hateful crime!’ It might not do much, but it would shed a light on this sort of thing, and might also act as an advertisement for your business.”

  “Oh, that’s an interesting idea! But I don’t want Danny’s name in the paper. I don’t think he’s the real villain—and anyway I’m fairly certain his father would beat him for it.”

  Alice spent the next hour setting up the shot. It was a tricky business because of the backlighting from the window itself, but she needed the shards outlined. Also, Mrs. Yao wanted to smile for the camera; Alice had to keep telling her to look stern or sad.

  But as she worked, she couldn’t help thinking:

  I wonder if she has a Wonderland double, and who it might be….

  After she left the tea shop, Alice spent what little afternoon there was left looking for hints of Wonderland everywhere and taking photographs of anything—or anyone—she thought might be a likely prospect for a double in the other world. Then she tried napping again, faintly hoping the world would end before she woke.

  Evening came despite her best attempts to avoid it. Soon enough Mathilda—hair specially combed, more of that powder on her face!—appeared at her bedroom door. She looked a little disappointed at Alice’s outfit, unchanged since the morning. It wasn’t a formal dinner they were attending (and Alice didn’t want to go, anyway) so her rather plain dress with red diamonds seemed just fine. She had shined her shoes a little to get the dust off and combed and restyled her hair, but that was all.

  “Ready?” Mathilda asked, visibly restraining herself from commenting on Alice’s clothing choice.

  “As I shall ever be.”

  “That’s not—you’re not bringing your camera, are you?”

  “Of course I am. Why, will your party members do something they don’t want me to take a picture of?”

  “No, no, of course not.”

  Mathilda shook her head swiftly, more like a dog than a person, unsubtly trying to reset the conversation. “Isn’t this fun? We’re going out—on the town—together!”

  “Très droll,” Alice responded, not quite rolling her eyes.

  Downstairs, Corwin Headstrewth was sharing a brandy with Alice’s father. Coney was meeting them at the lecture. That was something, at least.

  “How delightful!” Headstrewth bellowed, beaming. “I shall have a sister on each arm tonight.”

  “You may only have the permanent use of one,” Alice’s father said with far less humor than that sort of joking statement should have accompanied. “And that I grant most reluctantly.”

  “We should take a picture to remember this happy occasion,” Alice said, and only her father picked up on her tone. He hid his smile behind the snifter of brandy he held.

  Mathilda made a few negative sounds but Headstrewth was tickled pink with the idea. He brushed down his front, carefully moved a stray tress on Mathilda’s forehead (such an intimate touch!), and proudly held her in front of him.

  Definitely a pair of bandersnatches, Alice thought. She couldn’t wait to see what would develop.

  But on the walk over, even she had to admit that Headstrewth could sometimes be charming—if loud. He didn’t mentio
n the lecture or Ramsbottom or Coney at all, but kept up a fairly amusing dialogue about the shops and people they passed and even the street itself.

  Mathilda must have schooled him on what subjects to avoid, Alice thought with a faint snicker.

  Aloud she said, “Oh—did you know? Mrs. Yao’s tea shop had one of its windows smashed—by a small ruffian with a stone.”

  “That’s a pity,” Mathilda said sympathetically. “She’s a lovely woman.”

  “It was one of those little foreign thugs, I assume?” Headstrewth interrupted, more matter-of-factly than maliciously. “That gang from the Square?”

  “Not at all,” Alice said through gritted teeth. “It was one of the Flannigans, but egged on and abetted by someone who writes with a pretty hand. I took a photograph of Mrs. Yao and the note. Perhaps if it is printed in the newspaper someone will recognize the handwriting and we can get to the bottom of it all.”

  “Indeed!” Headstrewth said like this was the most brilliant, heady thing he had ever heard.

  Alice fumed and focused her attention on the gutter, where all her goodwill to the man beside her had just flowed.

  The venue for the lecture was a large and lovely house, much grander than Alice and Mathilda’s, with a special room off the library just for gatherings like this one. In it there was a stage with a lectern and space for at least fifty seats. Red, white, and blue bunting had been draped around the windows, but any potential festival air was squelched by the intense conversations of the attendees, who all had serious eyes and grim mouths. A gaunt young man with a close-shaved beard stood at a table offering buttons and ribbons that said RAMSBOTTOM FOR MAYOR. There was also a small pile of the sort of pamphlets that Mathilda was so fond of.

  Not even the least bit droll. Alice sighed.

  “Oh! I’m so glad you could make it!”

  Mr. Coney approached the trio delightedly, arms spread to encompass at least the idea of Mathilda and Alice and Headstrewth. Alice marked the look in his eye: it was delight, to be sure. But it wasn’t rapturous delight, the sort of emotion one might expect from a young man infatuated with a young woman—one who had seemed to allow him into her good graces once again.

  I wonder how much he actually likes me, Alice mused to herself, and how much it would merely be good for his career to be married to Mathilda’s sister. Mathilda and Corwin, Alice and Richard, going to lectures and promoting mayors and taking the Grand Tour and making their way to London gatherings of like-minded political folks….

  Mathilda and Headstrewth were exchanging a quick, very familiar look, like an old couple. Worry/hope/dismay/fear-of-embarrassment.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Headstrewth said aloud.

  “We absolutely endorse Ramsbottom, as you know,” Mathilda added.

  “I brought my notebook,” Alice said, pulling out her journal. “So I could take notes. And my camera for after.”

  “Splendid!” Coney said enthusiastically. “I have saved us four seats up front. Normally I would be up there, with the pins and buttons, you know. But I wanted to spend this time down in the trenches, as it were, with you.”

  Alice, unable to think of anything to say that wasn’t sarcastic, dry, or ironic, said nothing at all. Apparently satisfied with her silence, Coney led them to their seats and traded chuckles with Headstrewth.

  It turned out that Quagley Ramsbottom was the grim fellow subbing in for Coney at the table with the pins and pamphlets. Apparently the two brothers were twins. But aside from their political theories, they had little enough in common, at least physically: Gilbert, the politician, was broad, friendly-looking, prone to smiles.

  “Gentlemen Tweedles Dee and Dum, I’ve no doubt at all,” Alice murmured, taking out her camera quietly and setting up a shot.

  “Thank you all for coming out tonight,” Gilbert began. Alice noticed he had a RAMSBOTTOM FOR MAYOR pin on his lapel. Was that normal or egotistical?

  She heard him say very little else after that and was elbowed only once by Mathilda for too obviously sketching the Hatter in her notebook, which was the real reason she had brought it. Words and phrases would occasionally make their way into one of her ears and thence to her mind: “…everybody, of course, but focus on the real backbone of England: its own children…” “…darkening our doorsteps…” “…exotic philosophies, and religions, and even food, anathema to our traditions…”

  Alice looked up at Mathilda at the last one. “Food, too?” she whispered.

  Her older sister looked a little chagrined but shrugged, lips tightened.

  Mostly what Gilbert said sounded upbeat and positive—on the surface at least. He touched on how sad immigrants must be, so far from the shores of their real homes. Women and men alike in the audience murmured in sympathetic assent over this. He talked about the need to take care of them (though this sounded ominous rather than charitable) and how the planet had conveniently put giant bodies of water to separate the various races of men. The audience ate it all up.

  When it was over Alice did not applaud.

  “There’s a question-and-answer session,” Coney told her with a winning smile. “Won’t you stay for it?”

  “Oh,” Alice said, “I think I have all the answers I need, thank you. And what I need now is a cold drink.”

  “Absolutely! I’ll join you outside in a bit!”

  I will be long gone by then, Alice promised herself but did not say aloud. She made for the exit as quickly and discreetly as she could, without waiting for her sister. Outside the lecture room there were refreshments and people milling about, speaking more animatedly than before, their spirits awoken by the hateful, upbeat nonsense of the would-be mayor. Alice wished she had brought a fan. It was hot and she wanted to leave at once—but it would be rude without her sister. She found the punch bowl and dipped herself a mug, then stood in the corner to drink it as guiltily as a child sulking with a cup of milk who wishes to remain unseen.

  But then she saw something that nearly made her choke on her first sip: Aunt Vivian.

  She, too, was by herself and sipping punch! But she did it somehow without looking lonely; she held herself like she was the queen of the room, vaguely bored, waiting for some dullard to approach her. Her dress consisted of layers of emerald velvet and silk and tassels, topped by a small but exquisite polygonal hat.

  “Aunt Vivian!” Alice cried, approaching her with more gratitude than she could contain.

  Her aunt’s world-weary eyes widened.

  “Alice, dear, whatever are you doing here?”

  “I’m with my sister and Mr. Headstrewth. And Coney,” she added after a moment.

  “Oh, that’s right, your sister buys into this nonsense. I keep forgetting that; she is so levelheaded in every other aspect of her life.”

  “But what are you doing here? Do you support Ramsbottom?”

  “Heavens forfend! I’m here as a favor to Willard,” she said with a spin of her wrist and a roll of her eyes. “They won’t let him into their little gatherings anymore—not after the last one. Gave Gilbert quite the what-for, and all his nasty little cronies. I am to report back on the latest developments! But sadly I do not have much to tell aside from the usual hate-mongering drivel this crowd eats up.”

  “Perhaps if Willard is so inclined against Ramsbottom, he should run for mayor,” Alice said a little archly, thinking of the Hatter and his constant search for other people to lead the way. Mary Ann, herself…

  “What an idea!” Vivian said, shocked. “I absolutely love it. Ooh, hush, hush, dear, They are approaching.”

  She nodded over Alice’s shoulder. Gilbert himself came up to them, flanked by Coney and Quagley. The would-be mayor was nodding and grinning and his little helpers were clearing the way, Coney practically hopping up and down with excitement. Mathilda and Corwin followed.

  “You’re looking lovely as ever, Miss…” Ramsbottom said, nodding at Vivian. “It is still Miss, is it not? There’s no Mister in the picture?”


  She could have said “I’m afraid not,” or “Not yet, sadly” but instead she looked him in the eye and said simply, “No.”

  “Oh, but you come from such a good, strong family line, English to the core,” Gilbert said with a smile, this one with his fleshy lips closed over his teeth, just the corners of his mouth turned up. “We need good women like you to make sure there are future generations of such.”

  “But there is another generation,” Vivian said calmly, putting her hand on Alice’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t trade my nieces for the world.”

  “I have a law in mind for situations such as this, should I ever be so lucky as to make it into a higher office than mayor,” Ramsbottom went on with pleasant menace. “A law about…unwed women. Preventing the sort of dissolute lifestyle that not having a stabilizing marriage to a man generally encourages.”

  Alice didn’t react; she was too busy watching Mathilda and Headstrewth, both of whose eyes widened in shock.

  “Oh, well, it’s a free country, Gilbert,” Headstrewth managed. “Vivian’s no burden to the system. She supports herself.”

  Apparently even they have a limit, Alice thought.

  Coney said nothing but grinned like both his master and his friend had said the cleverest things in the world, and he was anxious for a fight betwixt them.

  “Well, hopefully women will get the vote before your law is discussed seriously,” Vivian said, tossing the rest of her drink back. “All of us women get the vote, I mean, including the ones you fear are invading our country. Alice, do come home with me—it’s early yet and past time you started earning your keep in my darkroom. I have a friend who wants a portrait of her own pretty little English niece. But she could be Welsh, or even French, so don’t quote me on that.”

  And with that Aunt Vivian turned with the grace of a goddess and sauntered out of the room, Alice practically giggling as she followed.

  She took giant gulps of the cool night air and enjoyed the feeling of her flush departing. The close smells of the party were replaced with moisture and horses and evening greenery. It was quiet on the street. Alice felt herself unfurling like the fern.