Pinkerton's Sister (49 page)

Alice had seen Oliver, when he was about seventeen – with lubricious looks and overemphatic secretiveness – carrying an obviously French, and disturbingly large, volume under the alarmed eyes of his mother.

(
French!

(You could see the revulsion in her eyes, the frantic search for her umbrella.

(
French!

(She'd rap its knuckles. She'd give it a good crack across its head.)

“That is a
cookery
book,” Alice had whispered fiercely to him when he walked past her, and he had been blithely unconcerned.

“That had occurred to me,” he said. “But Mama doesn't realize. In any case, there is a decidedly risqué recipe for
moules mariniÈres
on page forty-seven.” In a louder voice he had added, “Ah yes, the serious and even terrible responsibility writers incur when they send out to the world books full of pernicious and poisonous suggestion to contaminate the minds that have hitherto been clean and undiseased. I am a contaminated creature, trained to perfection in the lax morals and prurient literature of my day.”

He had sounded quite pleased, particularly when it made his Mama shudder so spectacularly, like a gigantic earthquake-imperiled blancmange. He was determined to be the Duc Jean des Esseintes of Longfellow Park, æstheticism incarnate, and was following the instructions in
Against Nature
to the letter, with such single-minded thoroughness that it was as if this volume – also – had been a sort of cookery book. If she could find herself in Christopher Marlowe – and in numerous other volumes – he could certainly find himself in Huysmans. The Misses Isserliss were fortunate not to have had their venerable and dignified old tortoise – Septimus – kidnapped, and its shell painted gold. Oliver would have attached it to a gold-linked leash, as finely wrought as the links of a watch-chain, and gone for slow, stately walks, promenading with a sunflower in one hand, and the end of the leash in the other, though – come to think of it – it was highly unlikely that the Duc Jean des Esseintes would ever have ventured out into the swoon-inducing inhospitable vastness of the open air. He was totally
against
Nature, and kept to his room, his bed – drapes firmly drawn – as determinedly as any delicate invalid, pale and enervated as the out-of-control æstheticism roared through his fragile system. This gilding was what des Esseintes had done with his tortoise, so it was clearly – if one purported to be a true æsthete – the right thing to do with any passing tortoise. If you were to be the Duc Jean des Esseintes – as eager to be corrupted by the character as Dorian Gray had been (this was what had awoken Oliver's enthusiasm) – you didn't draw the line at gilding the lily. Like King Midas you ran riot, not knowing when to stop. Oliver was all agog to be a Gilded Youth. Why should a tortoise grab all the glitter?

“Here comes the Gelded Youth.” This was another of Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster's sniggered asides to the Reverend Goodchild – he was quite keen on puns (puns, like clouds, like dreams, had hidden significance) – whenever Oliver came into sight, and off the beards would go again, rutting and rearing, cacophonously copulating.

The Gelded Youth!

Snigger, snigger!

Gelded Youth!

The irony of it, when he had a son with a voice like Max's, Master Max, the shrill-voiced warbler! Huysmans hadn't explained what you were expected to do with a Pekinese or a parrot to demonstrate your æsthetic credentials, and – at this time – a Chinky-Winky and a parrot (not even a peacock!) were the only pets owned by the Comstocks, and Oliver had been left at a loss. How keenly he must have felt the lack of the lost-long-ago peacocks from the vanished Shakespeare Castle. The parrot – Hilderbrandt – was a depressed-looking, molting, moth-eaten bird, drooping disconsolately on its stand, never uttering a sound (apart from incomprehensible, foul-tempered mutterings), and occasionally given to biting chunks out of passers-by. A little æstheticism would not have gone amiss with this bright blue brute.

Oliver and the genteel ladies must have been sorely disappointed much of the time as, retired to some inner chamber – the maid dismissed for the afternoon, a chair back inserted under the doorknob to prevent ingress – they settled back, toes wriggling expectantly, a glass of reviving sherry within reach (the salacious contents might induce a momentary faintness), for a couple of hours of shocked and delighted tut-tutting. They were of the I-was-so-disgusted-that-I-had-to-read-it-four-times persuasion, but even they must have struggled to find something to shock them in the majority of the interdicted publications. In the right mood – they must possess rich inner lives unshared by the majority of the population – Mrs. Albert Comstock and the Goodchilds were probably capable of discovering covert obscenity in Mrs. Alexander Diddecott's cloyingly sentimental poems and paintings with their endless depictions of puppy dogs, fluffy kittens, and winsome waifs and urchins. (Alice would be as one with them on the waifs and urchins.) Mrs. Alexander Diddecott liked to think of her artistic endeavors as “heart-warming,” though Alice opted for the term “stomach-churning.” It captured the uniqueness of their vision better, she thought. If Mrs. Alexander Diddecott, and not her father, had designed the stained glass windows of All Saints', horrified martyrs would have found themselves being disemboweled by chubby, dimply-smiling cherubs, or chewed to death by cuddly, limpid-eyed lions.

Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster was clearly grooming Max to be the new Reynolds Templeton Seabright. Max was – he had always been – a particularly
theatrical
child, nurtured as such from infancy. The word “theatrical” irresistibly dipped into italics when used in connection with him. He spoke in everyday life with the same intensity of expression with which he performed his many – his very many – recitations and songs, stressing every syllable thrillingly. His inevitable extravagant hand movements made it impossible for him to request “a
large
can of beans” in Comstock's Comestibles without sweeping elaborately stacked displays from the counter onto the floor. Loud crashes accompanied him around all the local stores.

As soon as he was capable of speech he was wheeled out to perform “You'd scarce expect one of my age/To speak in public on the stage.”

This is what he would recite, laboriously ingenuous, wide-eyed and winsome, and everywhere in the room the buttocks of the more discerning members of the audience clenched audibly, with a sound like colliding cows. His pronunciation of “Demosthenes” and “Cicero” in the fourth line was much acclaimed. “Large streams from little fountains flow,” he'd pipe, and you could hear the threatening roar of thunderous tidal waves engulfing everything before them, and when he informed the enthralled listeners that “Tall oaks from little acorns grow,” you saw a land darkened and devastated by an impenetrably gloomy forest. Seldom had the lines “These thoughts inspire my youthful mind/To be the greatest of mankind” (received by a chorus of sentimental ahhhs) sounded more sinister and threatening, even if he did – rather grudgingly – concede that he'd be Great, not like Cæsar, stained with blood,/But only great as I am good.
Very
likely. His repertoire expanded rapidly, and no musical evening was complete without his lengthy contribution.

“What a treat!” Alice would mutter – this was the expected response – as the joyful news that Master Max was to be amongst them was revealed to the gathered throng of expectant æsthetes. One theory was that his father hypnotized him to preserve the radiant purity of his voice, though Alice embraced darker theories with enthusiasm.

Snip-snap! Snip-snap! Snip-snap!

After you with the scissors, Mrs. Albert Comstock! Make sure they're well sharpened, Mrs. Goodchild! (No, on second thoughts, file them down until their blades are as blunt as teething rings. That would be
far
more enjoyable.)

Worse was to come when Serenity Goodchild, several years younger, was launched as a feminine rival. At first, she had sought to harrow them with the most heart-rending of Mrs. Hemans's compositions. She'd tried “Alaric in Italy.”

– she squeakily intoned, drawing to a close –

After what was clearly designed to be a moving pause – you could see her lips going as she counted up to ten – she bowed her head, with her hands folded in front of her eyes. Then she'd tried “The Wife of Asdrubal,” killing her children and perishing in the flames of the temple. (Alice had enjoyed this. The concept appealed enormously.) A count to ten. Head bowed. Eyes covered. Then she'd tried “He Never Smiled Again,” spoiling the intended effect by dissolving into giggles in mid-recitation. No. Not dissolving. The flesh involved was too too solid for dissolving, even in the most thunderous of downpours. On the occasion of the giggles, there was no count to ten, no bowed head, no covered eyes from Serenity. It was the audience who'd counted, bowed, covered,
writhed
. Whatever she'd tried, the results were always the same: audiences cramming yards of handkerchief into their mouths, falling off their seats, and struggling in vain to control their hilarity. It was as if Childe Roland – Myrtle Comstock's
fiancé
– had convulsed Flanagan's bar yet again by treating all its patrons to one of his celebrated impersonations of her Mama's doggie's farts, an unprecedentedly spectacular Chinky-Winky Krakatoa, one of those vein-bulging efforts that misted all the mirrors and rattled the light fittings. Myrtle sometimes described him as her “affianced” because she thought it sounded impressive, or, if in flirtatious mood (this, terrifying to witness, had been known to happen), as her
amoroso
(an understandably morose-looking
amoroso
). She did not know about Childe Roland's contributions to the gaiety of Flanagan's, a particularly rowdy bar, blinding with electric lights and acres of beveled glass, all of it imperiled when he let fly. This heady scent of danger set Childe Roland's pulse racing.

Sobriety Goodchild and – er – Mrs. Sobriety Goodchild (Alice was not sure whether or not she had ever been allocated a Christian name), Serenity's ambitious parents, and the Reverend and Mrs. Goodchild (who pinned on their Schiffendecken's Grins like badges), the even more ambitious grandparents, had to rethink their strategy. They were prominent amongst the humorless of Longfellow Park, but decided to abandon attempts at serious declamation (Longfellow Park was clearly not in a mood to be harrowed), and demonstrate their well-hidden depths of chucklesomeness. The four of them trained Serenity to perform a whole series of nightmarish
comic
recitations, and sat there beaming with isn't-she-just-adorable? expressions on their faces as she was launched into action.

“Isn't-she-just-adorable?” was a question soon answered.

Serenity's version of “Only a 'Ittle Dirly Dirl” would have had Herod leaping into enthusiastic action, elbowing his soldiers aside so that he'd be the first in line for lopping. Dressed in a many-layered pink dress, a frog in frills (once seen, never forgotten, and – my God! – how you tried to forget), and with much roguish rolling of eyes, simpering winsomely (every gesture was painfully and pedantically rehearsed), Serenity assured her audience:

It was the most stomach-churning rendition of baby talk since Lewis Carroll had unleashed Bruno upon the world. (What on earth could the author of the
Alice
books have been thinking of when he wrote
Sylvie and Bruno
?) Even Mrs. Molesworth's creepy cuties – lithping fearthomely – sounded like representations of courageously stark realism when you compared them with Serenity Goodchild once those eyelids of hers started batting.

Reactions were instantaneous.

(“Ahhhhhh!” from the Goodchilds and Griswolds who had been hauled in to cram the rooftops.

(“Ahhhhhh!” from the Goodchilds and Griswolds in the woods.

(“Ahhhhhh!” from the Goodchilds and Griswolds in the music room.

(“Heeeeeeave!” from everybody else within hearing. They didn't heave-ho, they just heaved, and up the nausea rose.)

Mama, Papa, Grandmama, and Grandpapa, cultivating expressions of dewy-eyed fondness, gazed upon the ogling offspring. They appeared to be convinced that the rest of the audience were as enraptured as they purported to be, clamoring crowds eager for her every coy syllable. They ignored the desperate fighting to escape, the frantic attempts at hiding under sofas or in the grandfather clock, those diving behind chairs or hurling themselves out of the windows, those pretending to faint in order to be carried from the room, the suicide attempts. These were people understandably overcome by emotion at the thought of what they were about to hear. The comic recitations signally failed to convulse the audience as much as the serious ones had done. You winsome. You lose some. No thrills from those frills. “He Never Smiled Again” had never been received in such stricken, heartbroken silence, by such still and shattered listeners. Alice survived these occasions by gazing at Serenity with an expression of rapt attention, imagining that she was fat and forty-nine, and still performing that same song, still utilizing those meticulously practiced gestures. This helped to stave off the worst effects of nausea.