Finding Alice

Long  has  paled  that  sunny  sky:

Echoes  fade  and  memories  die:

Autumn  frosts  have  slain  July.

 Still she haunts me, phantomwise, Alice moving under skies.

 - Lewis Caroll, Alice Through The Looking Glass

Evening is Missus Montgomery’s favourite time of day. It is by then, every day, that she has finished the day’s tiring chores, then that she puts on her most elegant dresses, so that when Philip comes home, he always has a doll to feast his eyes upon. They sip at their whisky and play bridge one such day, while little Gino perches majestically on the little throne daddy has bought him, colouring away into bits of paper. The three chairs surround  a round oak table where baked Scotch eggs steam from a porcelain dish, ready to be served.

“Do take your coat off, honey,” says the pretty housewife of this endearing family, watching with tired eyes as her husband leans back in his chair with folded arms, smiling affectionately at her.

“Here, alright now?” Philip Montgomery is as elegant a figure without his full dress as with it, and indeed his wife seems to appreciate it, for she says, “You look the same always, darling.”

“Which is a compliment, I dare say?”

 “As much one as that you are the dearest man to me in the world.”

 They share a tender look before she turns to look at their son, who sits watching them calmly with his dove’s eyes.

 “Here, take this lovely loaf that Kathryn has baked for you,” she tells him, “and play in your room –quietly, now- like a good boy.”

 She turns to Philip, who has drawn from the inner pocket of his coat a pack of cigarettes. He lights one.

 Little Gino is seven years old, as like his father in appearance as two people could be. “Why is a loaf called a loaf, Mama? Why isn’t it called scones, or tarts, or puddin’!” He twists the salt cellar before his face, closely examining it. “It’s like snow, Mama... I do like the snow. I like it when it’s snow and not ice, when it’s ice you can’t walk around in it. Daddy an’ me slipped comin’ over the sidewalk by Barney’s once. Do you remember, Daddy?”

The young parents are laughing. But the object of their amusement is certainly not their charming boy.

 “Funny woman she’s become, that one,” Philip laughs heartily, thrusting a children's colouring book into the boy's hands. “Nothing would get her to stay put, you know? Wants to do something all the time.”

 “One would think she had a whole zoo inside her clothes, for all the restlessness she suffers,” Mrs. Montgomery guffaws.

 Kathryn, the nurse, is summoned and little Gino is taken to his room where, though it is full of all sorts of toys, he never likes being, for the sole reason there is no life around him. The playthings don’t talk back to him, or appreciate when he colours a fish perfectly neatly. Sometimes, he thinks in his child’s heart, his parents are another two toys in the house.

***

 “Look in on Gino for me, will you, Kathryn? I hope he’s not ruining the walls with those awful crayons you got, honey,” the housewife turns to her husband.

“Oh, that’s alright,” he says carelessly, lighting another smoke. “If anything, it keeps him busy.”

 The nurse makes her way down the hall.

 

 “I’m glad I have you, Alice,” says the boy happily inside his room, smiling his lovely smile at a little girl who sits before him. She is looking eagerly at his many toys lying about.

“Are you really? Well guess what. I am too,” she says. “Glad you have me?”

 “Glad you have me.”

 Gino doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t dwell on her answer. He bounces on his couch. “Try this.”

 “Oh, this is lovely, lovely, lovely,” she yells in joy, bouncing on her own across the fascinated boy.

As the nurse opens the door to Master Montgomery’s room, her face is calm, peaceful, straight. When she looks away, a curious expression – is it fright?- seems to have shadowed the tranquillity in her eyes, and a few minutes later as she reappears in the parlour, her brows knit together and a worried line creases her forehead.

 “Whatever is wrong, Miss Smith? You look flustered. Is Gino alright?” The boy’s mother asks, surprised.

 “Oh yes, he is - he is in his room... talking.”

“Talking?” It was Philip. “With whom?”

“I don’t – I don’t know," she answered uncomfortably. "I see nobody.”

 

 “Mama says you’re not real. She doesn’t want us to be friends, I think.”

“Why is that?”

“Because she keeps saying to Father 'Philiiiiiip! Hear your boy, talking to his imaginary friend again!' She says that it’s abnormal to see someone who doesn’t exist.”

“But you and I would say I exist! In that case, it is abnormal that she can’t see someone who does exist.”

 “I don’t know, Alice. All I know is you’re my friend, and that I can’t do without you.”

 “Indeed you can’t.”

 “Mama says I made you up, just like other children do. She says once she takes me to the doctor I won’t be seeing more of you. Is that true?”

“Well, if the doctor can take your lonesomeness away, it’s true.”

“Do you mean you’re my friend because I’m lonely?”

 “Exactly so, Gino. Now you understand.”

“Do other people see you, too?”

 “Some. But only half of them acknowledge me.”

“Why?”

 “Because to acknowledge me would mean acknowledging they are lonely, Gino. And that’s a hard thing to do.”

“I wish Mama wouldn’t fret so. Why am I lonely, Alice?”

They exchange a troubled look before she responds. “That’s for you to answer,” she says gently. 

 

He looks around his room. Toys and games lie scattered, and he remembers every time his parents bought him these things, saying, “Now you be a good boy and play quietly inside your room.” For an intelligent boy like Gino, communication is vital to his personal development, and the injustice of inadequate attention from his parents, reflected by the fact they hardly talk with him or let him talk, was natural to take a toll on his emotions, which it has indeed, because Gino has now a friend who talks to him and listens to him: his friend no one else can see.

At the tender age of seven, Gino, when he thinks of his parents, thinks resentfully.

 

Heavy eyes watch through the door she holds ajar, the young boy sleep. His mother is sure there are imbalances in his brain, that there is something wrong with him, because he is demented, distorted : something is not right. When she withdraws her head and turns to go, the sight of Philip stops her, and she is transfixed, for in his eyes is mirrored the same expression that glooms hers, like a dark cloud, casting its menacing shadow over their otherwise joyful twinkle, ever alive.

“Who is Alice, Philip?” she whispers, overwhelmed, unable to hold the crushing truth that her boy is insane. “He talks all day with her, whoever she is. We can’t be haunted, because Father blessed the house, and Gino still plays with her. And the doctor- that damned pillock- he only says it’ll pass... who is Alice, Philip?” And she breaks out into tears.

 

The boy is ten years old when he sees no more of Alice, but before she left, Gino found friendship with Miles Davis, the young man who comes home to teach him geography, Latin and horseriding. This young fellow stammers, is shy around adults and wags his head absently in a most amusing way, but Gino is deeply fond of him, and Heaven knows the boys have a capital time together.

Gino does not wonder that Alice left about the time Miles came, he knows that is exactly why she is gone in the first place.

 

Giovanna Montgomery is delighted Gino now talks to somebody she can see, but her own life is an upheaval at this point in time, because Philip does not love her anymore, and is drawn to their new neighbour from Southwest England – or so she thinks.

Today when he comes home, she will confront him and get the truth from him, she decides.

 

 “Speak not another word, I’ll whip you!”

The boy and Miles watch his parents through the glass window of their chamber.

Mrs. Montgomery tears at her hair. “I saw you smiling like a fool at her! The rotten, wicked witch! Did you truly imagine I was blind to your cunning tricks, Philip? Know full well I am not, I see everything with blinding sight.”

They have had this conversation at a rate of about fifty times before, but today it is more than mildly upsetting altogether.

Gino watches as his father paces the room, crushing his cigar in his hands.

“You are paranoid,” he says as he stops suddenly before her, seizing her dainty shoulders and pulling her to him. “You are absurd, Giovanna. Look at you. What’s become of you?”

Evidently stung, she pushes him fiercely, her cheeks colouring a vivid scarlet. “I don’t want to see your face for as long as I live.”

She doesn’t.

 

Four months, and he hasn’t returned. She stands by the window looking outside, expecting him back from work at eventide – he doesn’t come. She is the wreck after the seastorm, the forest after the fire, and anything and everything that just exists, but can’t live on.

Her acquaintances wouldn’t interact with her because she has stopped waving  when she sees them, Kathryn the nurse avoids speaking to her whatsoever, because “Trust Madam to go up in smoke for nothing!”, as she tells the governesses in the neighbourhood- even the cat comes around no more because no dish of milk awaits her like once upon a time.

It is at this time in her life when Giovanna Montgomery meets the person she most needed to meet.

 ***

 They are the only two women at the baker’s.

She takes her muffin, the other woman her brown parcel, and they walk along the empty street, because Oliver has shut down the shop, and the other woman has suggested they walk to keep themselves warm, an offer Mrs. Montgomery sees no reason to decline.

“I haven’t spoken to anybody in a long, long time,” she says softly, but she is surprised she feels only half the hurt as she says this, and wonders if this has anything to do with how kind the woman has been to her, merely by walking alongside her. “I’m a lonely woman,” she adds, smiling tearfully.

“Loneliness is short-lived, if you find the right people around or the right things to do. You can think me a friend, you needn’t be lonesome, Miss,” the other woman smiles brightly.

“That’s kind of you to say.” Mrs. Montgomery smiles, too. “I’m Giovanna. Nice to meet you.”

They shake hands.

“Nice to meet you, Giovanna. I am Alice.”

The baker, as he locks up his shop, is staring at the beautiful Mrs. Montgomery talking to herself, and his curious expression is fright.

 

 “Who is Alice, Philip?”

She haunts you like an exquisite dream, that you know is within you, that dream worth searching all through your head to find.  When we are threatened by the ghost of being forsaken, she assumes the form of that beautiful ghost, whatever we want it to be, that will rid us of its rival phantom that is known to rob millions’ lives, of life.

We all have our Alice. She is that book that takes you to traverse kingdoms of fantasy, that whiskey that makes you feel so much better about the world and about yourself- sometimes, she is a person you can talk to and want to hear talk, and most often, other people can’t even see them.

Alice has profound meaning. Like the little boy and his beautiful mother, we know that when she is found, we have lost something, and when she is lost, we have found something. The thing to do is simply to acknowledge we are (whenever it is that we are) abandoned, and look to derive comfort in her companionship till the ghost of her, also, is taken away by that one person, or those people, or that thing, or those things, that have it in them to fill the vaccum in our lives, however momentarily.