Thank you everyone for the amazing reviews! Sorry for the delay -- life decided to rear its tyrannical head for a moment, but I beat it down with a toaster so I should be good for at least a few days! Ah, this story just gives me the pricklies to write it. I'm always so stoked to write the next chapter!
Hmmm, I wonder what it would really be like to live at the Marionette's School for Proper Young Ladies? Well, Alice is about to find out, I reckon!
Enjoy!
Chapter 2
A Bert in the Attic
It was sometime later, after she had been introduced to the old crone whose name was Madame Gazelle, and who was the Headmistress of the Marionette School for Proper Young Ladies, before she was allowed into her room. It was a small room with peeling and faded flowery wallpaper and two single rusty golden-framed beds. There was a dressing table that leaned exhaustedly against the wall, cluttered with makeup and powder and the waxy butts of expired candles. A layer of fine dust sheltered the mirror until Alice could only find her blurred golden-haired blob in it. The mirror glowed in the rainy London morning moreso than she would have ever expected, and for a moment she was curious.
But curiosity killed the cat.
She dragged her suitcase to the vacant bed, and heard the door close behind her. Her roommate was still fast asleep in the early morning hours of Monday, big and round and swollen in such a small bed. Tuffs of red hair poked out like woven dreads. Rosy lipstick smeared her pillow. She snored too.
Alice sighed, and delicately tiptoed over to the large window between the beds, and looked out onto the vacant street, still snuggled tightly into misty arms.
Don't be frightened, Alice.
"I'm not frightened," she told herself sternly. "This will just be another adventure. A new adventure."
She placed her fingertips on the cold and foggy window, and wrote out a name. Two names. Three. So she wouldn't feel so lonely.
"I'm not scared of being alone anymore," she whispered to the window. To the names. Her breath blurred the letters, and slowly they began to fade. "But I should be, shouldn't I?"
"Who the hell are you talking to?"
Alice gasped and spun to her roommate, who still snored loudly on her side, fast asleep. She darted her eyes to the door, still closed. To the window. To the street below. Nothing. No one. "Hello?" she offered softly.
"Jeez, George was right! These girls are loony and blind!"
Then Alice looked up. She gasped. Because there, in her ceiling, was a copper-headed boy poking his head out of a hole that led to the attic. She could've sworn it was covered up seconds before! "How did you get up there?" she hissed and darted her eyes to her plump roommate. "You'll get in trouble!"
"Oh pish posh!" scoffed the young man. "I do this all the time. Name's Bert, by the way. Bert Chagney." He squeezed his arm through the hole too and offered it down to her. It was covered in grime and soot. Alice winced. "What? Is a grimy chimney sweep not good enough for you?"
"Oh no, it's just…" and she held up her perfectly clean hands. "I'll need a good explanation as to why my hands are all sooty at dinner."
"You look like the type of lass to think up a good lie."
"The best!" she chirped, then quickly slapped her hands over her mouth, afraid she had been too loud. They both glanced at the slumbering whale of a roommate, who gave another loud snore. After a moment, Alice laughed.
So did Bert.
Not even a freight train would wake the slumbering giant.
"You never told me your name, pretty lass."
"Alice," she replied and reached up her hand. "Alice Pleasance."
They shook.
"New here?"
"How'd you guess?" she asked in sarcastic astonishment, giving a wide-eyed blink.
He smirked smugly. "Just a chum's intuition, Miss Alice."
Again, he made Alice laugh.
Twice in one day! He's getting good at this, my friend!
Oh Gobblygook! He's just lucky!
Finally, Bert tipped his black tam and said with a smudge-cheeked smile, "Well, cheerio. I have to finish these buggers before Madam Gazzy calls the coppers. Corrupting the youth and everything. You know how that goes, right Miss Alice?"
"Oh yes," Alice replied seriously. "It's quite difficult to find honorable gentlemen these days."
"Quite, Miss Alice. There's never enough time anymore."
So Alice's newfound friend disappeared into his rabbit hole. He covered the hole up with a piece of wood painted the color of the ceiling, and was gone. She tried to crane her ears to listen for him, to hear him thumping away, but all was silent except for the window-rattling snores of her roommate. "Mr. Bert Chagney," she whispered his name on her soft rose lips, and finally managed to smile in the gloom that was the Marionette School for Proper Young Ladies.
In that moment, if she would have just turned around, she would have spied a dear old friend, his fingers tracing his name she had written on the glass, before he checked his watch and faded oh so dismally into the mist and drizzle of 437 Victry Street.
It was in those next few months that the world spun so fast it almost flew off it's axis. Months of endless whispers and gossip and sleepless snoring nights. Of hollowed teachers and opulent hidings. Of study halls and dreary library visits. Proper etiquette and recital halls.
The other girls of Marionette's didn't approve of Alice right away. She was strange, and poor, and friendless, and she would much rather spend her days out in the wilted garden sitting on a cold stone bench, book in hand, than inside gossiping near the warm and cozy fire. Her only friend was secretive, and only surprised her at night, or in the garden.
She wrote to her mother like she was supposed to, most of it soulless drabble. But every once in a while her mother would happen upon a letter filled with smudgy mistakes and glorified adjectives, and sheer pleasantries.
There was one in particular her mother would have enjoyed.
Other than that, Alice led a life of a normal teenaged young woman, growing beautiful and proper, like a marionette on strings. Like an actor in a play. She played her part, and acted the way they told her to, and said what she must.
But there were sparse times, in the dead of night, when she would sit up and bed and close her eyes, and remember those afternoons.
Those glorious golden afternoons, once upon a time.
- - -
Dear Mother,
I find the Marionette School a bit more tolerable now that I have a friend. We talk a lot, mostly out in the garden -- oh Mother, the garden is wonderful! In the summer, I suspect it will be blooming with lilies and wildflowers and rose bushes and even bluebells! My friend says that we'll begin planting some soon. Maybe we can brighten the garden a little. When you come to visit this June, maybe it will be done! I hope so. He tells me to be patient, but I hate the gloom. There is so much dark here... I don't understand how many of the other girls tolerate it. It's depressing -- as is their library!
I've never seen such a depleted and obsolete selection of books ever! Although my friend brings me these wonderful stories. I do not know where he gets them, but they satisfy me. One in particular is about a cunning Walrus and a family of little clams. Another about a talking griffin. And one about a magical looking glass. Oh, Mother, you'd love them!
There are pots of roses on the rooftop next door. I don't know what color they are yet, but my roommate says they are white, and that the mistress of the house wanted red. Such peculiar people!
My classes are going well. I really do not like Mathematics all that much. It is a boring subject, and the teacher is very drab. I miss Nana teaching me sometimes, but I suppose I have a better education here. You should see how Mademoiselle Resenbulb waddles! Like a walrus! You would laugh, I promise. We do.
There is Latin, and French, and Etiquette. I failed most of Etiquette when I first began. Forks are forks to me, Mother. Why does everyone stress about the forks? Oh Mother, I don't understand...
English is my favorite. We are studying King Arthur from Sir Alfred Lloyd Tennyson. It's all right, but I do not believe Lancelot was as handsome as Sir Tennyson says. I prefer Bediviere, actually.
I miss you, Mother. Please write back soon. I haven't been receiving letters from you as of late, so I expect Madam Gazelle is hording them in her office, or they have gotten lost in the mail. I hope not. Please, I implore you to write back soon! Enclosed is another address my friend said might serve better. Please try mailing them next to this address.
Please be safe, and tell Father I said hello. Diana too. I'm sure she misses me an awful lot.
Your Daughter,
Alice
P.S. Oh, and there is a field trip to London soon. Many of the girls are meeting up with their parents for an evening. Do you think you and Father could make it? Thank you!
Continue or No?
