Pinkerton's Sister by Peter Rushforth Page A

ever appeared to notice them, but she walked with her head down, and was aware of them all the time she was there, as familiar to her as the Dutch tiles around the fireplace in her room. The tiles in the hall did not represent human figures. They had a look of the Low Countries, with their differently colored tulip-shaped designs, though — despite the blue-figured schoolroom tiles — she would always think of Dutch tiles as being black and white, like those in the cool, tranced interiors of Vermeer and de Hooch. The kitchen floor was like this.
    From the eighth step up she could see the newspaper lying on the tiles, neatly folded at an angle across them, placed there carefully, and when she lifted her eyes she saw Annie. Her white apron absorbed the redness of the light. She was standing in front of the mirror in the hall, with the front door and the inner door wide open, to give her more light.
    (There should be snow blowing into the house, there should be the heightened sound of the wind as it entered, an intense coldness — Alice was vaguely aware of thinking this — but there was no snow, and no wind, just mild early-morning sunshine.)
    Annie was peering intently into the glass — holding her breath, her mouth wide open, very still — and was grasping one of the kitchen carving knives with its bright blade some considerable way into her mouth; down into her throat, it seemed to Alice.
    Annie was fourteen, tiny, and the handle of the knife was huge. It looked as though she were about to pin herself to the floor, from the inside. Alice froze, not wanting to make a sudden noise, and stood irresolutely, wondering whether to attempt a silent retreat, or whether — by some discreet and silent sign — to let Annie know that she was there. Colors slanted across the tiled floor from the stained glass of the inner door, green, gules — was this the right word from “The Eve of St. Agnes”, the casement high and triple-arch’d? — and blue. Annie shifted the angle of the knife, and the sunlight caught the blade. Alice held her hand up to shade her eyes, dazzled, as if she were gazing out across a sunlit sea, and Annie saw the movement, saw the light in Alice’s spectacles. Her eyes, reflected in the mirror, looked up toward Alice, though she could not see Alice’s eyes, just two circles of light. With a sigh she pulled the blade out of her mouth. Several inches emerged.
    “I did check that I didn’t feel like sneezing before I started,” Annie said, as if that explained everything. She walked across to close the outer door, and then the inner door. The colors became more intense.
    “Are you training to be a sword-swallower?” Alice asked hopefully. This could add interest to her hitherto humdrum life.
    Annie shook her head.
    “No. This isn’t long enough.”
    There was a disappointingly prosaic answer for the sight that Alice had seen. Annie explained that, not possessing a small enough mirror, she was using the polished blade of the knife to inspect the back of one of her front teeth, where she thought a hole the size of the Grand Canyon (that was the expression she used) was developing. This seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Alice would have preferred the sword-swallowing.
    “I kept breathing, and losing the reflection.”
    “Breathing can be a problem. Would you like me to put my head inside your mouth, rummage about a bit, and check your teeth for you.”
    “I’m training to be a sword-swallower, aren’t I? Not a lion in a lion-tamer’s act. Anyhow, you don’t want to see my tonsils, not close up, and that big dangly thing.”
    “I promise I won’t attempt to swing upon the big dangly thing.”
    (A brief, rather pleasing, picture of a possessed Quasimodo — the most grotesque of all the gargoyles of Notre Dame — flinging himself upon the bells, swinging high above a dark abyss on big Marie, his favorite of them all. Even more pleasing was the picture of Quasimodo flinging himself upon