“She kicked down the Queen of Hearts’ horrid cards and shook the Red Queen so hard she nearly broke her neck—more’s the pity she didn’t finish the job. Everything was going to be all right, you know. With the Other One here to keep those scarlet women in line.”
The cat licked his paws. “I met her. She was rather thick, if you ask me. And she kept going on about herself, which I think is very rude, when you’re a guest.”
“But you knew it wouldn’t be all right,” said Olive, who had a little brother, and therefore was immune to distraction. “Because of how you live backwards.”
“Yes, yes! What a clever girl! I knew, but no one listens to me because I’m always screaming about one thing or another—but you would scream, too, if you remembered the whole future of the world until Judgment Day and past it! You’d scream and scream and never stop! I knew she’d vanish like a shawl in the wind and she did and just as soon as she did, the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts would decide Wonderland needed taking in hand. Needed one crown. We were all conscripted. My Lily died on the Croquet Grounds. I wish I had. I wish… I wish a lot of things. The Other One came back, of course, nothing only happens once in Wonderland. But as soon as she was gone again, those red ladies holed up in their castles and started building their armies once more. We are not at war now, my child, but we soon shall be. Now, we simply hold our breaths and wait.”
“Something like that happened in my world, too,” Olive said softly. “Is happening. Germany and Russia and America and… well, everyone, I suppose.”
“The Tumtum Club is the only place the Looking Glass Creatures are allowed to be mad anymore.” The White Queen sighed. “Outside, we have to report for duty at dawn. In here, the Hatter can pull his heart out of his hat.”
The gorgeous butterfly slipped out of the curtain again to master further ceremonies, twirling on her tiny black feet in a sudden cloud of stage smoke. She peered into the audience as though she were speaking to each of them in particular, as though what she said were more important than anything that had ever happened to them, and the whole of the universe waited upon their answering her.
Something knocked into their toadstool table and toppled Olive’s drink. She tried to keep mum for the sake of the Hatter and shout indignantly at the same time, which is impossible, but she tried anyway.
The marble raven capital blinked up at her.
“Come on, then,” he cawed. “This is our five-minute call. We’re on, Olive, old girl.”
THE TRIO OF musicians wind down. The lights are dim now. The restaurant nearly empty, nearly shut. Peter and Alice toy with the notion of eating their slices of plum-cake awash with double cream, but neither can fully commit to it. They speak of Wonderland, of cabbages and kings, of riddles and chess and what sort of tea could be got in the wilds. It is pleasant, there is a joy in it, but it is unreal. It is like listening to someone try to tell you the plot of a radio play you missed. Peter feels a chill. Perhaps another cold coming on.
“I want to believe you,” he says.
“Clap your hands and give it a go. Or decide I’m a barmy old woman and go on with your life. It won’t change what I know. Oh, Peter, how disappointing for us both. You thought we were the same. I thought we were. But Alice in Wonderland could never take me from myself, because it was myself, it always was. We’re both the victims of burglars, dastardly fellows who stove in our windows and bashed up our houses. But my robber only took the silver. Yours took the lot. Of course, Charles got it half wrong and put a great lot of maths in to amuse himself; and perhaps if I’d been the one to write it, I wouldn’t have to sell my first editions to keep the lights on in my house; but losing Wonderland didn’t ruin me. Losing…” and then she cannot continue. She grips her beer glass like it can save her, but it will not. It never has saved anyone. “…my boys… all my pretty boys…”
“My brothers, too,” Peter whispers. There is nothing more to say than that, than that they are people of a certain era, and people of a certain era know an emptiness in the world, a place where something precious was cut out and never replaced.
“Coffee?” asks the waiter.
“Tea,” they answer.
“What I don’t understand,” Peter ventures finally, “is what you’re doing here.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If it was all real, why don’t you go back? When the lights have gone out and… your boys have gone… why stay here, in this dreadful world?”
“I never went on purpose. It just happened. I saw a white rabbit one day. I touched a looking glass. I never decided to go. It decided to take me. It’s never decided since. Wonderland is like my son, my last son. It’s just so awfully awkward for him to see me the way I’ve ended up, it avoids me as much as it possibly can.”
“I suppose I should scour the countryside for bunnies and mirrors,” Peter laughs despite himself.
“I suppose I should,” Alice giggles, and for a moment she is that child on the cover of a million novels, the English Girl, rosy and devious and brilliant. The check appears as if by magic, and Peter pays it, as good as his word. Alice stands and the waiter brings their coats. “No, Peter, it’s best as it is. Whatever would I say to the White Queen now? Give me my bloody damned jam, you old cow? I gave up weeping for my lost kingdom years ago. I made my own, and if it crumbled, well, all kingdoms do. The world’s not so dreadful, my dear. It is dreadful, of course, but only most of the time. Sometimes it rather outdoes itself. Gives us a scene so improbable no one would dare to put it in a book, for who would believe in such a chance meeting between two such people, such a splendid supper, such an unlikely moment in the great pool of moments in which we all swim?” She kisses his cheek. She holds her lips against him for a long time. When she pulls away, there is a thimble in his hand. “Oh, goodness,” Alice says with a shine in her blue eyes. “What a lot of rubbish old ladies have in their bags!”
They walk arm in arm out into the New York street. People shove and holler by. The lights spangle and reflect in the hot concrete. The air smells like rotting vegetables and steel and fresh baking rolls and summer pollen. Alice stops him on the curb before he can cross the road.
“Peter, darling, listen to me. You must listen. You’ve got to answer the Caterpillar’s question—you’ve got to find an answer, or else you’ll never find your way. I never could, not until now, not until this very night, but you must. It’s the only question there is.”
“I can’t, Alice. I want to.”
Alice throws her arms round his neck. “I like you better, Peter. Ever so much better than him. Peter Pan was always such an awful shit, you know.”
They start across the long rope of the street, but being English and unaccustomed to traffic, they do not see the streetcar hurtling toward them, painted white for the new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. Peter hears the bell and leaps back, hauling Alice roughly along with him, barely missing being crushed against the headlamps. When he collects himself, he turns to ask if she’s all right, if he didn’t hurt her too much, if the shock has ruffled her so that they need another drink to steady them.