at once. After a time, like the villagers charging up the mountain in response to the shrieks of the boy who cried wolf, I would dismiss her summons, or just give her a cursory nod in passing.
I even spoke to you and arranged for Alice to have a dog. Of course at the time I said it would be a family pet and lovely for all of us. It was really for Alice though, to occupy Alice, to absorb her, and perhaps give the rest of us a little peace.We fetched the wretched creature from the Hong Kong SPCA.Alice chose him. If I’m honest I thought him a disagreeable mongrel, quite absurd in appearance—a motley assortment of colours, brown, black, white, grey and even a bit of yellow. He had a feathered tail far too long for the compact body, huge paws, a ragged ear, a long thin snout, and a black tongue which, when it hung out, very nearly trailed to the ground.
‘Really Alice! Why him?’ I asked her, running my eyes over the scrappy mutt. ‘There are others that are so much prettier.’
But true to form, never taking her eyes from the dog she had selected, Alice seemed not to hear me.
‘I shall call him Bear,’ she had announced, as I filled out the paperwork. I resisted the temptation to state the obvious. It was a dog not a bear! I thought it an absurd name. Why not call the thing Rover or Sparky or Rusty? But Alice was adamant. And to be fair, ‘Bear’ did fulfil his allotted task of providing a preoccupation for Alice. It was not unknown for the two of them to disappear for several hours at a time. Though Alice, when present, remained just as challenging.
Why, I asked myself countless times, couldn’t she just take things at face value? Why was she was forever digging under the skin, probing things best left alone.Yet despite this you seemed to relish her company, Ralph. And for her part, Alice would happily have followed her beloved father anywhere. As Alice began her final year at Big Peak School, my relief was palpable. Soon, very soon, she would join her sisters at the convent in England, and then it would just be you, Ralph, and me, and our son of course. I broached this subject one weekend after a particularly good meal, when I knew you were relaxed and mellow and would be most receptive.We were sitting at the dining-room table and enjoying a small cognac with our coffees.
‘It’s probably time for us to make arrangements for Alice to join her sisters,’ I ventured. I waited. There was no response. I took a mouthful of brandy for courage and soldiered on.‘I can hardly believe it, but Alice is in her last year at Big Peak School, and with the problem of finding suitable secondary education here I—’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’you said, uncharacteristically cutting me off mid-flow.
Had you indeed, I ruminated.You continued.
‘I’ve heard they’re opening up a new school on Bowen Road. They’re setting it up in the old British Army Hospital while they make a start building new premises on the terraced slopes above. In time they plan to demolish the hospital entirely, making way for further expansion. I want Alice to go there.’
I drew in a breath sharply.You gave me a quick glance.‘Is there a problem?’ you asked, a dangerous note sounding in your voice.
I felt stunned,as if I had been slugged over the head and temporarily my eyesight was blurred. I tried to hold onto the salient facts.You had been thinking, you had been thinking about Alice, thinking about keeping Alice here with us, despite the chaos she was causing, Ralph, you wanted to send her to a new school they were building, a school I had heard nothing about.
‘But darling,’I said,reaching for the cognac bottle,‘we don’t know anything about this school.’
‘I do,’ you fired back. ‘I’ve been to see the site. Nigel has been telling me all about it.They’re considering sending Christopher and Anita there. Actually, I’m surprised Beth hasn’t mentioned it to you.’
And so was I. Although this could not quite be classed as deception, my friend and neighbour Beth Fielding’s omission to acquaint me with this startling news came a pretty close second in my book. I tipped up the bottle and refilled my glass. ‘I see. Well. Well, well, well.’
‘Myrtle, be honest with yourself,’ you went on as I stiffened in my seat, ‘it would be a disaster sending Alice to boarding school.’ Under your breath you added, ‘I’m not at all sure it’s been a success for Jillian or Nicola either.’
I sipped my cognac, then cradled my glass, slowly swilling round the amber liquid.
‘I feel we should at least discuss it,’ was my face-saving remark.
‘We have,’ you said brusquely, rising from the table.
Tonight Alice is worse than ever. Sometimes you can almost believe she alters with the rising of the moon, a kind of moon-madness. She is like a lone wolf howling and prowling all through the night. Ralph is dealing with her. With Alice his patience is inexhaustible. Harry seeks refuge in my bed.We close our eyes and block our ears.Finally I drift off to sleep. I dream we are on our junk, White Jade, which we have moored in a pretty bay. We are floating on a cobalt-blue sea. I feel the gentle rise and fall of the boat like breath coming in and going out, the rhythmic lift and fall of the thing. The sun is shining. We are fanned by a light breeze. And we are fishing, Ralph and Alice and I. We have cast out nylon lines with hooks knotted at the end of them. We have speared wiggling maggots for bait. Time passes. Ralph catches nothing. I catch nothing.Then Alice reels in a fish. It is several inches long, and it flaps dripping over the wooden deck, the silver scales brilliant as coruscating diamonds kissed by the sun. We all point at the fish as it gulps in air, and slaps and slips about. Our faces are masks of delight. Then quite suddenly the fish starts to inflate, like a silver balloon spiked with prickles. It swells up obscenely until it no longer flaps over the deck. It is a motionless bubble. Its prickles become barbs, hooking into the soft flesh of the damp wood.
‘It is a puffer fish!’ cries Alice in dismay. ‘It’s poisonous!’ She is standing now over the gasping, hideous thing, hypnotised.Then she looks up at me. ‘If you eat my fish you will die, Mother,’ she says, and I wake.
My hands itch all day. When Alice returns from school we have a row. I do not like rowing. Some people can shrug off rows like a dog shaking water from its coat. I cannot. Brutal words stay with me…well…sometimes for a lifetime. I keep count of them. I notch them into the bark of my life, so deeply that they will never grow out. I tell Alice she cannot carry on with her deranged nights. My voice is quite calm, quite steady. I tell her they are taking a dreadful toll on her father. I tell her how hard he works, and that she is making him very ill.And when none of this seems to have any effect, I tell her that she is coming between us, that she is forcing us apart, her mother and her father. Alice’s voice rises up like a snake with its egoistic jingle-jangle, as if she really is the only person alive in the world, and not just through the long, dark nights but through the long bright days as well. My voice shifts key. I feel the ‘demon rasp’ tolling in me then, purifying, abrasive, because Alice smiles a foolish smile. The demon is full of wrath, and he spits words out at the smiling, loon-faced child.
We are in the bathroom, the same bathroom where Alice has summoned me so many times with her games. The window is open and the sky is red. I feel it bleed into me. I am dimly aware that my mouth is still working, and that my voice has grown deep and masculine, a war cry, and that my limbs are flaying. Alice is bold and stands her ground. And still she is smiling, smiling! I want to wipe that smile off her face. I draw back my hand and deal her such a blow across her grinning visage, that she is sent reeling backwards, covering the distance of several feet to the window, sliding down the wall, crumpling on the floor, while incongruously, above her head, Alice’s wondrous sunset is framed. I am transfixed by the white face looming through the long brown hair. The eye is already puffing up. The cheek is split with a deep gash. Her blood is such
