Pinkerton's Sister (80 page)

She built the fire up again, wrapped her gown around her, and began to go downstairs, carrying a candle. On some days she felt that the stairs were like the stairs in the caves of Kôr in
She
, the stone stairs that had been worn down from seven and a half inches to three and a half inches, by the feet of the same woman walking up and down them, up and down them, like a prisoner in a cell, for century after century. If she was feeling like this in the week before her twentieth birthday, what on earth would she be feeling like in the week before her
thirtieth
birthday? (Now, thirty
was
old. It was only a short step from thirty to the two thousand and more years of
Ayesha, pronounced Assha.)

Snow had frozen into a solid sheet on the outer side of the windows, as at the back of the house, and she found herself walking down a staircased corridor lined with the blurred reflections of fake mirrors.

Looking-glass, looking-glass, made out of ice.

The whole of the mountain of Kôr was filled with the countless embalmed bodies of the dead, and nearly all of them were perfect.

Tell me, please tell me, that I look really nice.

Faithful besotted native girls did not survive long in the novels of H. Rider Haggard. Once they became enamored of the white intruders, they were doomed. Alice blamed the beards that the men brought with them. Beards and guns. These were the two essentials for possessing power over swaying, feverishly inferior natives. These were the symbols of supremacy. Depending on their geographical location, the cowed natives bowed or salaamed or kowtowed – a thoughtful element of choice was involved here – but they always fell down when the guns and the beards were whipped out to astonish them. (Native bearers held the beards high in the air, to preserve their dryness amidst the tropical foliage so that they could retain their power.) Ustane: doomed by the presence of the beard. Foulata: doomed by the presence of the beard. The beards were poisonous outgrowths flourishing beneath strong suns, and one touch brought death to the unwary.

In the kitchen the water was bubbling in the side boiler of the stove. The fire must have been roaring in the wind, though it was, by now, almost burned out, and the farther parts of the room were already starting to feel cold. Warmth lasted for such a little time.

She began to feed in small pieces of coal, squatting down, listening to the wind in the chimney, gradually adding larger and larger pieces. She had caught it in time, and with the fierce draft it soon began to glow again. Intermittently, the glass over the face of the kitchen clock caught the flickering of the flames, and she watched as the minute hand moved down the right-hand side, from
IIII
(why
IIII
, and not
IV
? she wondered, not for the first time) to
V
to
VI
(painted upside down), and then up the left-hand side, from
VII
to
VIII
to
IX
. The Roman numerals made her think of Shakespeare’s kings. Richard II. Richard III. Henry IV (not IIII), Parts One and Two. Henry V. Henry VI, Parts One, Two, and Three. There was no VII. Henry VIII. No IX. No X. No XI.
XII Night
? Possibly.

The ace-of-spades-shaped pointer on the end of the minute hand edged round and round, tick-tocking from minute to minute. She saw it as the ace of hearts, of clubs (she always thought of these as being blackberry-shaped), of diamonds, time moving past as a game of solitaire passed the lonely moments. “You’re nothing but a pack of cards,” she’d sometimes whispered (without the exclamation point) as a little girl, hoping that – by saying this – all that was happening around her would collapse into nothingness, shrivel away into nothing but a dream from which she would awaken. “You’re nothing but a pack of cards.” She whispered this to Sobriety Goodchild, to Mrs. Albert Comstock, to Dr. Vaniah Odom, waiting for the toppling to commence, the first vital card slipping silently sideways, the slow inevitability of the total collapse that followed. “You’re nothing but a pack of cards.” She whispered it to Allegra, to Edith, to Euterpe Dibbo, to Myrtle Comstock, to Mrs. Goodchild. There were not enough cards in the pack. She’d have to open further packs, fifty-twos after fifty-twos – like weeks, like years – too many spades, too many court cards staring at her, preparing to play multi-packed elaborate games with complicated rules, games with
French
and
foreign
names, games that did not inspire confidence in the nervous gambler –
rouge et noir
(there was Stendahl, recklessly tossing a huge wad of notes on
noir
),
bezique, baccarat –
games that no one could follow, the sort of games that inevitably led to violent quarrels.

“Off with her head!” the Queen of Hearts would scream, quick to spot an opportunity for pleasure.

“Nonsense!” Alice would reply, very loudly and decidedly, and
the Queen would fall silent.

“Off with her head!” the Queen would shout, and Alice would grow to her full height again.

“Who cares for
you
?” she’d ask the Queen, invincible as Lizzie Galliant, looking down from her eminence. “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”

She’d borrowed packs of cards from Papa’s study without his knowing, and shot the cards high into the air like an incompetent overambitious shuffler. She’d used more than one pack to ensure a storm of cards upon her, raining down with light, glancing touches upon her head and shoulders, a bride assailed by aggressive confetti.

“Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said.

“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”

“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, and she’d turned purple, the appropriately imperial shade of someone choking.

“I won’t!” said Alice.

(“Stuff and nonsense!”

(“I won’t!”

(“Who cares for
you
?”

(Alice had said these words over and over, as if learning the language of defiance, the incantation against evil. Were parents really unaware of how dangerously subversive the
Alice
books were? It wasn’t just logic that was under attack.)

“You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”

As the cards fluttered down, she struck at them with her fists, with spurts of genuine revulsion, feeling that she was under attack from crowding, choking, fluttering giant moths or bats, shouting out the defiant words, cuffing them away from her. Sometimes she’d catch at a card as it fell, a member of the audience invited to choose a card – any card – by a magician, or one of the superstitious picking out a card in which her fortune lay. Mrs. Alexander
Diddecott told her that the worst cards in the pack were spades, cards of unhappiness and loss. The sharp edges of the spades, the slight gleam glimpsed in the dark crumbly earth, cut down deep, scraping against the soft wood of the rotting coffin. The ace of spades – the card that showed the passing of time on the kitchen clock – was the death card, but the very worst card of all was the nine of spades. “Spades! A grave!” That was what Carmen had said, and every card she drew was spades. (“Hearts! A grave!” Tess Durbeyfield whispered, seeing her fate in the stain upon the ceiling, and in every card she drew, where every card was hearts. The Queen of Hearts passed her sentence. It was death. It was off with her head, and Tess did not know the words of defiance.) In one of Tchaikowsky’s operas a character stabbed himself to death after the card he turned up was revealed as the Queen of Spades, spades digging another grave. The metal cut like a well-honed knife into the damp wood, through into the small dark space beneath, bringing to light that which had long been buried. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s earth-filled fingernails thrust through to reach for the manuscripts he had buried with his wife’s body years earlier, urgently holding the stained pages close to the lantern, straining to see if the scrawled words were still legible, to glimpse words and phrases.

…
a toad within a stone
he read.

…
Time crumbles on
…

…
its cold circle charmed
…

…
vanish as smoke
…

The manuscript had survived.

The poems could still be read.

The cards rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her, and she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off. They were Happy Families cards, smothering her, pressing down upon her with all the weight of the slab of gray granite laid upon sweet Alice. Did they remember sweet Alice, buried in the old churchyard, in a corner obscure and alone?
The Spade family, the worst of all the suits, was upon her, eager to be digging: Mr. Spade, the Gardener, Mrs. Spade, the Gardener’s Wife, Master Spade, the Gardener’s Son, Miss Spade, the Gardener’s Daughter. Their eyes were intent, their purpose firm. The task before them would give them no particular pleasure but it was a task they were there to do. Spades. A grave. The blood-soaked Bones – the Sweeney Todds of the card world, eager to grab the headlines with every new excess of butchery (
BONES BUTCHERY! BONES BLOOD BONANZA! IT’S DEM BONES, DEM BONES!
) and conveniently based in Fleet Street, happy, happy, happy – were not far behind them, and moving closer. It gave a disturbing new meaning to the expression
Family Butcher’s
, particularly if you weren’t too fussed about the apostrophe. Dem Bones had their bright sharpened instruments – unlike Madame Roskosch, they
did
use injurious instruments – eagerly positioned to start their snip-snap disconnecting. Bones. A death. The Tape family edged competitively upon them, the Happy Families fighting for precedence like scavengers around a corpse. Mr. Tape, the Tailor, and Master Tape, the Tailor’s Son, moved forward, swarming upon her as if to peck out her eyes, fluttering like wings against her face.

“Could I have Mr. Tape, please?”

Mr. Tape was at home.

Mr. Tape lunged at her eyes with his needle, absently attempting to put them out, or stitch her lids together, a long thread curving out in the air behind him. He was cross-legged in the air, seated upon an invisible magic carpet, stitching away at a garment, every outward thrust casually aimed at her face, a duelist with a tiny but deadly weapon, Lemuel Gulliver’s Brobdingnagian wasp-stings.

Stitch-stitch-stitch.

“Could I have Master Tape, please?”

Master Tape was at home.

Master Tape –
Struwwelpeter
hair, dead eyes, a simian, scowling
face – opened and shut a pair of scissors that were as tall as he was. He’d snatched the scissors from the scissor-man, lopped off his long legs, and snip-snapped him into silence. He snipped, he snapped, his expression unchanging, he himself the scissors, the implements become the whole of himself, the stiff bright blades moving up and down, up and down, goosey, goosey gander goose-stepping like an invading army intent on death, upstairs and downstairs and in my lady’s chamber. If he met an old man who wouldn’t say his prayers, he’d take him by the left leg and throw him down the stairs. Then he’d enter my lady’s chamber, slamming the door shut behind him. That was whither he wandered.

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

Just behind him, Mrs. Tape, the Tailor’s Wife, and Miss Tape, the Tailor’s Daughter, were donning large white aprons with the slightly weary air of those with yet another messy and wearisome – but necessary – night’s work ahead of them. A woman’s work was never done.
Stitch-stitch-stitch.

“Could I have Mrs. Tape, please?”

“Could I have Miss Tape, please?”

Mrs. Tape and Miss Tape were at home.

Mrs. Tape, the Tailor’s Wife, and Miss Tape, the Tailor’s Daughter – Mrs. Goodchild and Serenity to the life – unleashed a tape measure like a lasso, and wrapped it around her throat, pulling at opposite ends, tug-of-war fashion.

“Neck measurement is thirteen inches,” Mrs. Tape announced to an unseen assistant busily taking down the details. The measurements of the body needed to be taken, so that the shroud could be
made the correct size for the burial.

Tug, tug.

“Neck measurement is twelve and a half inches,” Miss Tape corrected.

Tug, tug.

“Twelve inches.”

“Eleven.”

Alice was now the one turning purple.

They whirred around her with kite-tail snappishness, and the stitch-stitch needle and the snip-snap scissors drew closer.

Tapes.

A shroud.

The Happy Families were upon her in full force.

All happy families resemble one other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

If she didn’t play Happy Families, she could always play Old Maid. Even in children’s card games, spades was the suit to avoid. If you were the player left with the Queen of Spades in Old Maid you wouldn’t meet a Tchaikowskian death, but – an even worse fate, some thought – you were the one who would end up by being the old maid. Allegra and Edith had shrieked with horror if any game threatened to leave either of them with the dreaded card, and they’d conspired to edge it toward Alice. “Old maid! Old maid! Alice is going to be an old maid!” They chanted it in a way that made death sound merciful. There were truth and hidden meanings even in schoolroom playing cards. Mrs. Alexander Diddecott would be sure to announce this with a meaningful nod.

“Stuff and nonsense!”

“I won’t!”

“Who cares for
you
?”

Those were the powerful words. Those were the words to drive away her assailants.

They were nothing but a pack of cards – hearts, clubs, diamonds, Happy Families – all the spades beaten down to litter the
floor around her.

“Take that! Take
that
!”

She’d find herself lying on a bank with her sister, a bank on which no wild thyme blew, dead leaves fluttering down upon her face, the fall suddenly chilling a summer’s day as time leaped abruptly onward. The Fall. She felt the capital letter, a different shape in her mouth. The icy winds blew away the fragile veil of modesty, and Eve cowered in her discovered nakedness.