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The egg-man turned to Olive. “And you, Miss…”
“Olive.”
“Ah, with a name like that you’ll want a martini. With a name like that you’ll be small and hard and bitter and salty. With a name like that you’ll be fished out when no one’s looking and discreetly tossed in the bin!”
The notion of being served a martini, no questions asked, rather thrilled Olive. Darling Mother was very strict with everyone’s indulgences but her own. “I can’t pay, I’m afraid. I haven’t got half a crown to my name.”
“No crowns allowed at the Tumtum Club, my dear,” the white knight whispered, “Not even one.” And before he was done with his whispering, a cocktail glass slid down the bar into Olive’s hand. Whatever was inside was nothing at all like a martini, being completely opaque and indigo, but it did have an olive in it. Frosted letters danced across the base of the glass: DRINK ME. So she did.
A voice like a crystal church bell wrapped in silk rang out over the club.
“Will you all come to my party?” cried the Monarch to the Throng
“Though the night is close around us and its reign is harsh and long?”
A long, slim, orange and black leg slid out from behind the curtain. A rude and unruly applause burst through the room, catcalls, foot and hoof-stomping, snapping of fingers and claws, a great pot of hollering and whistling stirred too fast. A long, slim, orange arm emerged from the blue velvet, its elegant fingers curling and dancing with each new word.
“Gather eagerly, my darlings, tie your troubles in a bow
For the Tumtum Club is open—are you in the know?
Are you, aren’t you, are you, aren’t you, are you in the know?
Are you, aren’t you, are you, aren’t you, aren’t you ready for the show?”
Olive stared. This was, perhaps, a naughtier show than she really ought to be seeing. But then, if the mad are naughty, who can scold them? She scrambled for an empty seat among the toadstool tables. Only one remained, far in the back row, wedged between a large striped cat and a thin, nervous-looking chess piece, a white queen, knitting a long silvery shawl in her lap.
A huge saffron-coloured wing spooled out over that coy leg like a curtain all its own. It was speckled with white and rimmed with jet black and veined with ultramarine. Finally, a head emerged: hair like a beetle’s back, skin the colour of flame, eyes as green as swamp gas and cut-glass. The girl swept and twirled her massive butterfly wings like the fans of a harem-dance and sang for the roar of the crowd:
You can really have no notion how delightful is our art
In here there is no Red Queen and there is no Queen of Hearts
Only me and thee and he and she all in a pretty row
Alive as oysters, every one—now, shall we start the show?
Shall we, shan’t we, shall we, shan’t we, shall we start the show?
Shall we, shan’t we, shall we, shan’t we, shan’t we set the night aglow?
“The Queen of Hearts?” Olive whispered. “I read a book with a Queen of Hearts in it once.”
“You must be very proud,” yawned the cat.
It Must Sometimes come to Jam to-day
The candlelight lights up her cheekbones ghoulishly. She has the look of a fox on the scent of something small and scurrying and delicious.
“I shan’t stop,” she needles him. “If you know any bloody thing at all about Alice, you know that she doesn’t stop. She keeps going, all the way to the eighth square and back home again. She’s the perfect English Girl, greeting the most vicious of things with an ‘Oh My Gracious!’ and a ‘Well, I Never!’ You haven’t the first idea what sort of stony constitution it takes to go through life as the English Girl. At least your Other One got to be wild and free and rule-less. A man can aspire to that. My Other One cannot rise above charmingly confused, because no English Girl may be allowed to greet nonsense with a sword or else all Creation would fall to pieces. But you wanted to meet me. You wanted to compare notes. You wanted a sympathy of minds, so no Oh My Graciouses for you, Peter. Only Alice, and Alice will have her tea and her crown if it’s the death of her. Alice is curious, don’t you remember? It is her chief characteristic. Curiouser and curiouser, as the meal goes on. Tell me everything. Leave off this poor mad little me act. What was Neverland really like?”
Peter coughs brutally. His vision swims with liquor and humiliation and the violin and the cello and the love he had prepared so carefully for this person, only to find it spoiled in the icebox. With the perfect timing of his class, the waiter appears with steaming plates of beef bourguignon and quails in a cream-mustard sauce, ringed in summer vegetables glistening with butter.
“You’re mocking me, Mrs. Hargreaves. I never imagined you could be so vicious. I might as well ask you what Wonderland was like.”
“You might at that. It smelled much better than New York, I’ll tell you that much. But no more. I am operating a fair business here, young man. Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
“You can’t be serious. Are you quite drunk? Does it amuse you to pretend to a silly clod that Wonderland was a real place?”
