Alice’s Secret Garden. Rebecca Campbell
before Alice said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Andrew couldn’t think what she was apologising for, but it seemed a strange sort of greeting. The park was, as Alice had said, very pretty. There really were wallabies, or one at least, accompanied by what Alice said without looking was a capybara, a big brown thing like a guinea pig on steroids. There was a bandstand with a large sign warning people to stay away. Although it was a chilly April morning, the sun shone in its weak-willed way, and it ought to have been fun.
But for Alice.
Andrew became increasingly frantic in his attempts to break through her … her what exactly? Reserve? No, she’d never been reserved, and that wasn’t it now. Veneer? God no. A cloud. For some reason Andrew remembered the derivation of ‘glamour’ which was originally a Scots word for an enveloping, obscuring cloud or mist, conjured up by a spell. So that was it: here in her mad-auntie clothes, Alice had acquired a glamour. Having a word for it didn’t help. His capering produced one brief smile, one moment of flickering recognition in her eyes. They were walking slowly around the aviary when Andrew was confronted by a tastelessly plumed, gangly bird, about a yard high, with a frill of what looked like 1960s eye make-up around its head.
‘What’s that one called?’ he asked.
‘It’s a crane.’
‘A crane! Amazing. It doesn’t look strong enough.’
There was a pause before Alice registered what he’d said.
‘Strong enough?’
‘You know, to do all that lifting, for buildings and things.’
She crystallised for a second, before deliquescing back into some unreachable place, behind the cloud, behind the glamorous cloud.
The last thing Alice said to him as they parted was, ‘I’m sorry.’
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lay open to the sky. From up here she could see the whole of the great city stretching away from her on every side: glass pyramids, skyscrapers in gleaming, beaten bronze and bright chromium, towers of intricate wrought iron, ecstatic arcs of light, bridging gulfs and chasms. And lower down, miles below her, acre after acre of teeming tenements rich, like a coral reef, with life, blooming and billowing in the clear currents of air. Lower still, she could just make out the network of placid brown canals, with their longboats, and oared Venetian barges, crusted with gold and sugar icing, laden with aromatic cargoes of spice and opium. Blue airships, borne on plumes of white canvas, sailed serenely above and between the towers, and she could see the children waving from the small windows, giddy and hectic with the thrill of flight. From here there was no noise, none of the roar and throb of the city, just the sighing of the cirrus clouds and the blood murmuring in her ears.
But this was too high: she couldn’t see what she wanted to see. Up here she was blinded by all the beauty and the splendour. She closed her eyes and thought herself closer to the ground, closer to the heart of things. She felt for the place, gently, timidly, like a tongue feeling for a point of tenderness. She opened her eyes into a layer of cloud. But no, not cloud: thick, choking smog, dirty with flakes of ash and busy particles of soot. She thought herself lower. Noises reached her: a harlot’s curse, the screams of a newborn baby, a hammering of iron upon iron.
And further down she plunged, hoping to drown the cries of the wretched with the rush of wind in her face. She opened her eyes again. Here was the street she had walked down so many times. She saw the cafés spilling tables out onto pavements, desperate to make the most of the spring sunshine; she saw the mannequins in the windows of French Connection, Hobbs, Gap, all eager for summer, in light dresses and swimwear. Queues formed at the cashpoints, each one headed by a bewildered old lady, randomly pressing buttons.
She hovered just below the roofs, close enough to feel the noise of the traffic: the buses and taxis and cars; close enough to hear the clip of heels, the jingle of change; close enough to see the faces, blank or anxious, smiling, wincing, cursing, laughing, of people pushing their way to the cafés and shops, all desperate to do what must be done this lunchtime. From here she could see directly into the windows of the rooms above the shops, but they stared blankly back, refusing to give up their secrets.
She didn’t have to wait long before she saw him, moving like a dream of beauty through the world of things. Instantly, the street and the other people lost their vibrancy, became muted and grey. He was dressed in a long black coat, which swept behind him as if he were walking into a strong breeze. Beneath the coat she could see a white shirt, which flickered, becoming now soft swan’s down and now shimmering chain-mail. The breeze which blew back his coat also caught thick strands of his long hair. But Alice made the wind stop: the image was false, too clearly derived from advertising or shallow girlish fantasies.
The boy’s slow, long strides took him steadily towards the crossing. The people before him dissolved as he passed, or melted into the pavement: he was the only real, solid thing in this world. And look, there, on this side of the road, Alice coming. So innocent in her dreaming: nothing there to cloud her thoughts or crush her will. She’s thinking about some silliness of Andrew’s (was it the time he’d tampered with the auto-correct function on Clerihew’s word-processor, so that whenever he typed ‘Cedric Clerihew’ at the end of a memo or letter, what came out was ‘Cedric King of the Visigoths, Emperor of all the Byzantines, and Lord of the High Seas Clerihew’? – the watching Alice smiled even now). Or perhaps she’s planning a mollusc hunt on faraway Mauritius. How easy the world had been then, how infinite in wonder and hope and opportunity.
The innocent Alice paused at the crossing, and the watching Alice looked for her boy.
When she replayed the incident, as she so often did, she could never quite see clearly enough to understand what had happened, why the car hadn’t stopped, why he hadn’t seen it approach. But there he was now, pellucid in the shade. This time she would learn the truth. And before she, the waiting Alice, had seen him, he had looked at her, paused for a moment, and then stepped out into the road.
The car must have come from his right. Alice looked, and there she saw it. Metallic blue; something nondescript; a badge she did not recognise. There was a thick crusting of grime around the butterfly pattern of the wipers. And coming too fast. The boy again. He was still looking at her, confident on the crossing. But now he sensed that something was wrong. He was alone. Where were the others? Just as Alice, the waiting Alice, saw him for the first time, registered his presence, his beauty, he turned away from her to the car. The watching Alice peered down through the screen to the driver: a young woman, blonde, smart, untroubled, looking ahead. Looking but not seeing. But seeing now. Seeing him. Her body tensed and she stamped down on the brake. Tyres screeching. The boy absorbed the car, the truth of the car, and turned slowly – so slowly she realised there must be some distortion in her perception – back towards Alice. And he smiled.
What could that smile have meant? The waiting Alice wondered; the watching Alice wondered; and later the Alice who replayed the visions of the waiting Alice and the watching Alice wondered. Was it some reckless, adolescent bravado – a determination to show no fear in the eyes of the world? Was it a smile of sadness for the world that he was leaving? Was it a smile of love for Alice, a love engendered in that moment of desire and death? All seemed to carry something of the truth, but none to fully contain it. There was something else. Something darker. Something in the boy that said – but how could it be? – that said yes, yes.
Odette was worried. This was unusual, because Odette was not a worrier. Not that she was unnaturally cold or heartless (she was, in fact, a reliable source of solid, practical