"Look here, Hatta, I think this is a picture of you." Separating one small, yellowed sheet of paper from the stack, Helen passes the drawing over the old green trunk to where the Hatter can reach it. Glancing at it as it passes hands, Hamish sees that it is very simple, done in what had probably been her father's quill ink and bare fingers. The smudged black square on top of a circle is indeed a child's depiction of a top hat on a head as far as Hamish can tell, and the old paper is passed into the Hatter's hands, who holds it with delicacy and stares at it in awe.
Among the stack are other simple childhood pictures, none much better than this one (for Alice, despite being amazing at almost anything she puts her mind to, has never really put her mind to being an artist), each showing little caricatures that Helen, Margaret, and Tarrant smile at fondly. Among which, Hamish is rather disturbed to find, is a purple cat with a big smile and a crude gray mouse.
Lowell is currently staring oddly at a picture of a woman with white hair in a white dress with a crown, while Margaret is laughing about a rabbit in a waistcoat with a pocket watch. Helen is watching Hatta's face, however, as he gently turns Alice's depiction of him around in his hands, as if to admire every angle. He appears as though his very breath has been taken away by the stick figure in the top hat.
In a different box, there had been pictures that aren't of Alice's "Wonderland"—Hamish holds in his own hand a squiggly drawing of two stick figures, one tall and holding the smaller one's hand, who is wearing a blue dress and has a wild mane of yellow hair, and then a bit to the side of them is a rounder figure with a tuft of ginger on its head.
The sisters are smiling in the picture. His younger, rounded self is not. Had he ever? Around little Alice? Probably more often than he did now, but not enough to have Alice immortalize him on paper with one in place. No, Hamish has always, and probably would ever, be the frowning stick in the mud to Alice.
He lets the paper fall back into the box he'd picked it from, and steps back a bit from the group gathered (rather unceremoniously) on the attic floor. It is dusty, and Hamish feels a sneeze coming on.
Lowell is also standing, though in his usual, closely protective stance at Margaret's side, as she sits with her mother and the Hatter, pouring over old boxes of this and that and, most importantly, the two girls' old drawings.
They've been at this for about an hour, for it had taken a bit to find the right boxes in the musty storage room. Hamish and Lowell had both been insistent about going through the boxes themselves and having the others stand back, talking of cobwebs and spiders, but really, the two men had been worried about finding pictures of Charles and how it might upset the Kingsleigh women, bringing about old stories and fresh tears, neither of which can either man handle. Now that the correct boxes have been found, Hamish is keeping his distance, aware that, while he is a family friend, this is not his past, his memories, or, truly, his family. Even Lowell, now empty-handed, is moving closer to Hamish and away from the happy group in the floor, feeling like intruders into something personal and distant from the present where they are. Contrarily, Hatta is the center of the reminiscence, with Helen and Margaret sharing each picture and each tale with him as they burst forth from the boxes and their memories, as though they had suddenly found a lost piece of their past that fit right in where husbands and childhood friends just don't.
Watching them makes Hamish feel sad, an emotion he tries to stifle by raising his chin in defiance and forcing himself to keep his eyes on the happy event that he is not a part of. He, Hamish Ascot, has brought these people together, has given them this joy. He should be feeling an undeserved sense of pride and accomplishment, just like he always does when circumstance deals him a beneficial hand.
His fingers tighten behind his back as his eyes flit to the hatter. He gives up the fight.
As cordially as he can, Hamish sounds his retreat. "I'm going downstairs, maybe pop my head out for some fresh air for a moment. Bit stuffy in here, hope you don't mind."
Helen looks up and gives him a sweet smile, one that shows just how appreciative she is of Hamish's hand in what is happening before her. It only makes him feel worse. "Of course, Hamish. Make yourself at home."
Leaving Lowell to stand guard with only a flicker of his lingering concern over Hatta's fits, Hamish makes his way down stairs with his head still held high and his spirits sinking more than ever. He is tempted to have a spot of brandy to lift them up again, but thinks better of it (for Hamish knows himself well enough to know that one glass won't help much, and any more than that will probably knock him off his feet, for Hamish cannot hold his drink).
He is almost to the sitting room when he begins to hear whispered voices. Tempted to chock it up to his continual bouts of delirium for the day, he nevertheless slows down and makes himself walk quieter, approaching the room with alert ears. Soon enough, a conversation can be made out.
A male voice, smooth and silky, is talking. "I have no idea what you are getting so ruffled about, Mally, everything seems to be going fine considering it's Tarrant we're talking about. I think he's fitting in splendidly."
A female voice replies, sounding more put off than the man had—and squeakier. "Fittin' in? With these slurvish-"
The next few words are quite unintelligible to Hamish, but he gets the idea they aren't compliments.
"Why, Mally!" The man replies, sounding scandalized, and absolutely thrilled about it. "Language, my dear lady. I was only saying that you are quite overreacting. There is no need to bring Tarrant home yet, he's doing just fine—and he hasn't even found Alice yet. I doubt you can drag him back before he's seen her again."
"I know that! I jus' don' see why he's so set on this! She made 'er choice, she did, and she choose this place, not us and not 'Atta. Wha' does 'e think 'e can say ta make 'er change 'er mind? 'E's in danger up 'ere, and fer wha'? A woman 'ho turned 'er back on 'im!"
Now Hamish is sure he doesn't know the whole story, but he is certain Alice would never turn her back on anyone, and the way this woman is talking about her is beginning to prickle his nerves. Daring a step closer, he peers around the door frame to get a good look at this insulting old—
It is the mouse again. The white one in the pink dress.
Oh, Hamish wishes he hadn't looked at all now, because certainly that mouse is not standing on the end table, waving around a sewing needle and chatting with that smoky cat that he is also imagining, perched on the back of the couch like any normal pussy that doesn't smile a mile wide and reply with a sultry gentleman's voice.
"Now Mally, you're being too harsh. Alice was there for us all when we needed her, came through even when everything made so very little sense by her definition of the word. You're partial towards Tarrant, and you don't know Alice like we do."
"Jus' because you all knew 'er when she is jus' a lass, you think you'll know 'er foreva." But the mouse is merely grumbling now, knowing she'd lost her argument. "Can't 'elp i' if I slept through most o' 'er visit."
"On the contrary, many of us can't even tell if she is even the right Alice, if you'll recall. But she proved herself, Mallymkun." There is a pause where the cat seems to await a reply, and when he gets none, smiles a bit bigger. "You're still mad she took your Bandersnatch eye."
"Am not!" The mouse snaps back. "I'm mad she got the 'atter arrested in the first place! She wasn' actin' very much Alice back then!"
"Which is exactly my point, Mally dear. She wasn't very much Alice then, but she's all Alice now—"
"An' she left us! Shot the 'Atta right down when 'e asked 'er to stay! 'E shouldn't be 'ere, where 'e don' belong, beggin' 'er back, she should be back in Underland, beggin' 'im!" The mouse, becoming more animated as her anger grows, swishes her needle about and gives it a hard throw—planting it pointedly in the wood of the door frame beside Hamish's head.
All three sets of eyes stare at the needle for a moment before two of those sets turn to Hamish, who meets their surprised looks with a rather stiff one of his own.
The mouse's expression goes from shocked to baleful in an instant. "Wha' are you lookin' at?"
"Oh, dear." The cat seems more exasperated than anything.
Having never had vermin cop an attitude with him, Hamish continues to stare (slightly bug-eyed, he admits) at the mouse in the pink dress who had seconds before coming inches from impaling his eyeball with a sewing needle.
There is a knock at the door, but it isn't until the third knock that Hamish finally pries himself away from what are obviously his delusions and forces himself the rest of the way down the hall to answer. It is a cabby, holding two rather large blue suitcases. Behind him, pulled onto this side of the street, is his cab, and, stepping out of it, is Alice.
Soaking wet, stumbling slightly, and being helped along in the arms of an abnormally large man with an eyepatch.