“Promise?”
I opened my mouth to say that, absolutely, I promised, no problem, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie—which is very unlike me. Words have power in the demi-monde and breaking a promise is supposed to have consequences. Not that I’ve seen any verifiable proof of this, you understand, but better safe than sorry.
“Once he gets to know you,” I said, “I’m sure he’ll let you pet him.”
Which seemed to satisfy Alice, who nodded.
“What was the story about?” I asked.
“About a princess, of course,” she said. “All the good stories are about princesses.”
I asked her to tell me story, and she flopped down to sit cross-legged and then made it clear she wasn’t going to start until I did the same. So down I went and I couldn’t help notice that my knees started complaining almost immediately. Toby made himself comfortable in my lap, yawned and pretended to go to sleep.
“This princess,” I said. “Does she have a name?”
Alice shook her head.
“Do you know where she lives?”
“In a castle.”
“Do you know the name of the castle?”
“Do you,” asked Alice, “want to hear this story or not?”
“Pray continue,” I said. My knees were now really beginning to ache—I don’t think I’d sat cross-legged for so long since I was in primary school.
“Once upon a time…” said Alice.
There was a Princess who lived in an unfortunately unidentified Kingdom who was beautiful and, well, basically beautiful, and there was this wicked man who didn’t like her. Alice didn’t know why he didn’t like the Princess or even why he was wicked, although he undoubtedly was.
Now the Princess liked to visit the people of her kingdom, particularly the sick and unhappy, leaving early in the morning and returning to her castle in the evening very tired from all the help she had been giving. She did not know that the Wicked Man, again nothing in the way of useful identification, had been watching her.
“He watched her go out in the morning and come home every evening,” said Alice. “And each time he saw her, he hated her more.”
His hatred grew so fierce that he could no longer bear to see her walk free in the sunlight and so he laid his plans against her. One morning he put a magic potion in her tea and she fell into a swoon. While she slept he turned himself into dog and carried her away to his evil lair and threw her into his deepest darkest dungeon.
But what the Wicked Man didn’t know was that right next to his dungeon lived the Master and all his friends in a splendid fairy palace made all of glass. The Master showed the Princess how to open the secret door to the palace and while the Wicked Man wasn’t looking she slipped inside.
“Does the Master have a name?” I asked.
Alice shook her head emphatically and as she did I saw a crack appear in her neck and run down under her collar. It was a very fine break and Alice didn’t seem to notice, but I remembered the Postboy and I figured I didn’t have much time left. I asked whether the Princess was stuck in the fairy palace and Alice said she wasn’t stuck exactly, but the only way out was through the dungeon and that was locked from the outside.
“The Master says that someone must be dispatched to save the Princess without delay,” said Alice. “Sir William said he wasn’t afraid to go but no help came so Tommy and Frenchie said they would, and then Clifford and Elizabeth, and then it was my turn.” There was a spray of fine cracks at the corners of her eyes and mouth. “There, that is my story and now I claim my reward.” She gave me a hopeful smile.
I was wondering how to persuade Toby to submit to ghostly petting when a look of dismay passed across Alice’s face.
“Oh,” she said and stood up. “I think my time is over.”
“No,” I said and, standing, brandished a squirming Toby at her. “Don’t go.”
“Nanny says I should be brave and that Mummy and Daddy are waiting for me in heaven,” she said and then leant forward to confide a secret. “But do you know what’s curious? I think Nanny’s talking rubbish. I don’t think anybody knows what happens after you die. There, I said it. Die, die, die, death, death, death.” She giggled and hiccupped and looked serious again. “Perhaps it’s just another world, maybe, perhaps you go somewhere that’s like this world only better. What do you think?”
I know what my mum believes and I know what I believe, but in a situation like this it isn’t about your personal convictions. It’s about what the person standing on the edge needs.
“My father believes that everything is music,” I said. “And when you pass on you become part of the tune.” One improvisation amongst the millions and millions of melodies that create the symphony of everything. My dad basically believes that your life is your one chance at a solo—so it better be a good one. Mind you, he also thinks that Miles Davis was the Second Coming and most of the world’s woes are due to humanity’s failure to recognise him as such.
“I only know one song off by heart,” said Alice. “Would you like to hear it?”
There were fine lines of darkness spreading across her face and across the crisp white front of her pinafore. It looked like the cracked pattern of parched mud. I considered trying a werelight but I doubted that would help.
“Yes, please,” I said, and Alice began to sing.
A quarter tone flat as it happens, but beautiful all the same.
I didn’t recognise the song at first. The tune and the structure of the couplets seemed familiar but it was only when she sang the fourth couplet—
Oranges and Lemons
Ring the bells at St Clements
—that I recognised it as the nursery rhyme. An older version, I discovered later, after a bit of Googling.
As she sang her happy little song of legally enforced debt and credit avoidance she turned to dust, dissolving in front of me and drifting away on a non-existent breeze across the rows of Topsy and Tim books and the serried ranks of coloured pens.
I personally would have liked to believe that a friendly skeleton on a white horse was waiting to carry her off. Preferably to somewhere a good voice coach could teach her to sing on key. But I’ve always believed that my dad is right about one thing—your life is your solo and whatever song you choose to sing you only get to do it once.
Although if you’re lucky you get to change the tune a couple of times.
Nightingale was waiting for me outside the shop. He frowned when he saw me.
“Is something wrong, Peter?”
“I think someone’s been kidnapped,” I said.
2Note for Reynolds: Diego Maradona was a short-arse Argentinian soccer player who, despite not being averse to a bit of handball, was awe-inspiring in his ability to race up the length of the pitch, bypassing opposing players as if they weren't there, and then slamming the ball into the back of the net.[back]
3Note for Reynolds: what you'd call a Social Security Number[back]
Chapter 5:
THE WATER BABY