The Looking Glass House by Vanessa Tait Read Free Book Online Page A

perhaps: they were too long. But forcing them behind him pushed forward his chest and strained the buttons of his jacket.
    ‘And the fashion in hats changes so quickly, do you find?’ she finished, her hand flying up to her own black bonnet, at least three years out of date.
    ‘What lace have you here?’ said Mrs Liddell.
    Mr Wilton turned. ‘We have the Honiton lace; we are pleased to have it. It is made by hand in an area of thirty miles along the Devonshire coast. The handwork is very fine, as you can see.’
    ‘Anything better?’ said Mrs Liddell.
    ‘You are thinking of Belgian lace,’ said Mr Wilton.
    ‘Yes, I will have – let’s see, four lengths of that. Put it on my account.’ Mrs Liddell motioned to Mary to pick up the smaller packages. Larger ones were being wrapped.
    Mr Wilton turned to Mary quickly. ‘Could I pay you a visit one day, perhaps, at the Deanery? We have more to talk about, I’m sure.’
    Mary noticed the sides of his nose, greasy, open-pored. ‘A visit?’
    ‘Yes, if .  .  .’
    The inside of Mary’s head felt stretched and light. ‘Yes, of course you may visit, if .  .  . if Mrs Liddell has no objection, that is.’
    She turned to Mrs Liddell, solid and richly coloured in the gloom of the department store.
    ‘Visit? From – this man?’ Clearly Mrs Liddell had forgotten Mr Wilton’s name. ‘Do you wish it, Mary?’ Amusement smirked at her lips.
    Mary was glad of the packages rustling against her chest. She cradled them and smiled too, to signify that this exchange was unimportant. ‘We are friends – I knew him before.’
    Mr Wilton was smiling also, an endlessly pleasant smile that took in the buttons and braids and Mary and Alice and Mrs Liddell and thought nothing of it.
    ‘Of course he may. You know where the tradesmen’s entrance is to the Deanery? At the back of the house. Good day to you then.’
    In the carriage on the way home Mary tried to think about Mr Wilton and his impending visit. But her mind would only arrange itself blankly when it turned towards him, perhaps because of the high drum of the horses’ hooves and the lean and swing of the carriage as it rattled towards Christ Church.
    ‘How do you know Mr Wilton?’ Mrs Liddell asked. It was hard to see her face under her bonnet, crammed with a romantic swoon of flowers on the brim.
    ‘My father works with his,’ said Mary.
    ‘Oh, he works at Trinity?’
    Mary nodded.
    Mary had grown up with her father’s constant presence during vacations and abrupt and endless absences during term-time. When he disappeared to work she believed she had had something to do with it, that he had gone away from her in disappointment.
    She tried to gain an inch of space by shifting her hips up from the seat, but when she attempted to settle again Alice complained. ‘I can feel your bones digging into mine!’
    Mrs Liddell gazed outside at a woman and her baby, both dirty.
    Mary flushed and tried to ease away from Alice towards Ina. The woman wore a vacant expression on her face, as if every­thing that passed her was a mirage.
    Thinness such as Mary’s, her mother said, made for bad blood. Thinness was unengaging. (Mary wondered how to engage. She imagined a seed pushing hooks out of its surface, catching hold of things.) Thinness such as Mary’s denoted a shrewish character that no husband would want.
    Mary must eat more. Her mother put her on a course of suet puddings, plum duff, rice milk. And for dinner: tripe and onions, Spanish stew, stewed steak. She put each plate down on the table with a clattering challenge that Mary failed to meet – her arms did not ripen, her hips did not swell, her bosom did not luxuriate.
    Fried sweetbreads and swede mashed with dripping. Pork loin served with ropes of fat. Lamb’s head. Mary had seen it one morning lying on the side in the kitchen, skinned and looking more like a reptile than a sheep. She had backed out of the room but its lidless eye, its long row of