The Envelope: Keep Me (2)
*~*~*~*
In the end, it had been what the Hatter had not said that had conveyed his response. First there had been the choked giggle, then the twitchy brows, and finally, Alice had found herself with an armful of rather vigorously happy hatter.
The kiss had been quite nice, too. Overwhelming. Alice had given up on participating rather quickly and concentrated on hanging onto his shoulders. Had there been curtains covering the front windows, she suspects there would have been more dust than passersby being disturbed by his ardor. Alas. The Hatter had ignored everything other than her. He had beamed his joy.
“Do you really think I can do this, Alice? I cannot even manage this mirror-speak everyone uses here and…”
Alice had pressed a single finger to his dark lips and whispered, “It just so happens, I’ve had a thought about that…”
A thought that she hopes will work because she hasn’t another. Alice sighs as she consults her satchel and vanity in order to collect the items they will need and then returns to the ground floor of her house-in-town. The Hatter sits at the writing desk in the study, watching her nervously as she enters the room.
“I’m afraid I cannot address the issue of your speech pattern, Hatter,” she apologizes. “Because you sound all right-to-left to me. But writing… perhaps I can assist you with that.”
The Hatter holds onto her chair as she takes her seat beside the writing desk. He tentatively ventures, “Why do you suppose that is? That you understand me quite clearly, but cannot read what I write?”
Alice sighs. “I’ve several thoughts on that, but I am not sure if they are all connected or merely circumstantial.” She reiterates the possible interpretation of the phrase “the Queen’s English” and then does her best to describe a hazy memory of receiving a history lesson from a very large, very sad turtle. “And something about how lessons lessen with each passing day…?”
“Did you take lessons in Underland?” the Hatter asks.
Alice shakes her head. “Perhaps that is why I cannot read your writing properly. So.” At this point, she lays a brown leather folio on the table in front of him. “Let’s address that first. At least for the sake of correspondence issues.”
With a nod to the case, she prompts him to open it, which he does but from left to right, rather than right to left. He studies the items inside: a fountain pen (secured in its leather holster) and a sheaf of parchment on the right and, on the left, a looking glass nearly the same size as the folio itself.
“Now, my skill with a needle and thread is very poor,” Alice warns him. It had taken her nearly ten minutes upstairs to manage securing the mirror to the inside of leather-encased cover. “So we shall have to devise a better way to secure the looking glass in place. These bits of thread won’t hold the corners for long.”
“Never mind, never mind,” the Hatter says absently. “I shall take care of that… I believe… yes, this is to help me write in the manner here, is it not?”
“Yes, it rather presupposes you use that hand, there,” she says, pointing to what she would call his right hand, but which the Hatter clearly believes is his left. “But we can reverse the arrangement in the folio if you prefer.”
After a bit of fiddling, the folio is adjusted. The Hatter holds the fountain pen in his left hand, the tip poised over the paper. “Now, write my name,” she suggests in response to his blank look of expectation.
He does so and it is perfectly reversed in the mirror on the inside cover of the folio. “Excellent. Now, Hatter, watch yourself write my name in the mirror.”
“And I should write it as I would read it?” he checks.
“Yes. With a bit of practice, the print on the page should be legible to me and other people here while it is legible to you in the looking glass.”
“Legibly ledger-ed,” he mutters with a small grin. Alice rubs his shoulder and helps him hold the folio steady as he tries, again and again, to write Alice’s name using the reflection in the mirror rather than the sight of his own hand on the paper to guide him. After nearly three-quarters of an hour, the Hatter manages to write not only Alice’s name, but his own, the address of the townhouse, and the address of the shop passably well.
“Wonderful, darling,” she praises him on a whisper which she delivers directly to his ear. He leans back in his chair with a sigh and Alice presses her cheek to his shoulder, considering the pages of scribbles scattered around them. “I realize it’s not a true solution, but perhaps it will help until we can find a way to…”
“Alice, ‘tis fine. Even if I cannae…” He wraps an arm around her shoulders. “Mayhap, if I cannae change, perhaps this London place will suit itself to me.”
With the Hatter’s boyish charm, she doesn’t doubt that he is fully capable of convincing even the stodgiest miser to do so. But it will take time. “Of course.” Still, she considers hiring a boy to run the shop. Someone who would be willing to learn the Hatter’s mirror-speech, someone who could translate the requests from the customers… or at least write them down so that the Hatter might read them in a looking glass…
Over dinner, Alice asks him how he feels about taking on an apprentice or hiring a young man to liaise with the custom.
“It will save Time,” the Hatter concludes after a few spoonfuls of soup. “And I suppose I really ought to start making amends with the fellow.”
Taking on a translator is only one option, Alice knows, and it may not be feasible in the long run. But, if that is the case, she and the Hatter will adapt. There are many solutions to the problem facing them. That is the most important thing to keep in mind: they have options, plural.
Thus far, the Hatter has not seemed overly frustrated or perturbed by his inability to make himself understood or to understand the Uplanders to whom Alice has introduced him. In fact, on at least one occasion, he had turned that obstacle to his advantage! For bravery and strength of character of that magnitude, the man ought to be properly rewarded.
At the conclusion of dinner, Alice thanks Marta and shows the Hatter upstairs. “This is the guest bedroom,” she tells him. “And although you are not my guest, you are welcome to use it.”
“And if the use I find for it is contrary to its intended function?” he murmurs with a twinge of uncertainty.
“Then I’d rather you not lose sleep over it alone.” And then she shows him to her room, where he stays for the rest of the night… and every night thereafter.
Alice’s return to work is exceptionally busy. Once, she would have thrown herself into her duties to the company, but now she has a reason to hold back, to manage her time, to leave the office shortly after closing time and stop by at the slowly evolving shop down the street. The Hatter had hired two young men himself, without Alice’s intervention or assistance, proving that he is more than capable of functioning despite the language barrier that clings to him like fearsome feathers to a Jubjub.
The boys pick up the gist of the Hatter’s speech pattern quickly and Alice tests their penmanship. She also visits their parents to assure them that their sons are legitimately employed. Additional (and domestically produced) fabrics and notions are ordered (Alice finds herself assisting the boys - Robert and Edgar - with this when they cannot understand the Hatter’s lecture-some explanation of each material and the Hatter himself is rather too busy to write a reverse-worded essay for them) and the shop is cleaned and polished and furnished.
It is on that day, almost a week since Alice had brought the Hatter to London, that she finds an occasion to give him something which she had commissioned on his behalf shortly upon their arrival.
“What’s this?” he asks when she places the wooden box on his lap. They have just gotten ready for bed (and Marta has no doubt resigned herself to knowing that her employer will be living in sin for yet another night). The Hatter is sitting under the covers and had been occupying himself with scribbling in his looking-glass-lined ledger until the presentation of the gift had interrupted him.
Alice grins. “It’s a box.”
“Cheeky, lad,” he reprimands her.
She simply grins wider and seats herself on the bed, facing him.
After a moment of silence and twitchy fingers, he dares, “This is for me, then?”
“Yes, one or two trifles I hope you will find useful.”
He sits up and puts the leather folio on the bureau beside the bed. And then, looking as if he expects the box to burn him upon contact, he flicks open the latch and lifts the lid. Inside, set into individually molded, velvet-lined beds, ten silver thimbles of varied sizes gleam.
For a long moment, he does not speak, merely stares.
“You needn’t use them all,” Alice ventures softly into the silence, “but I thought they might come in handy… I’ve rather missed seeing them on your fingers, honestly, and… Well, the shop is ready for wares, which you’ll begin making soon. Tomorrow, perhaps, and as I can’t give you a hand, I-”
“Alice?”
“Yes?”
The Hatter looks up, smiling. “Help me put them on.”
Sliding thimbles onto the tips of a man’s fingers should not be such a breath-shortening and blood-quickening experience, but Alice finds that it rather is. When every finger has been capped, he leans forward, frames her face in his hands and kisses her slowly, warmly.
Pulling back, he requests, “Nauw take ‘em off mae, lad.” She does, but she leaves three right where they are: the one on his right middle finger, his left thumb, and his left ring finger.
The Hatter brushes his cheek against hers, pressing forward until he can whisper in her ear. “An’ nauw ye.”
Alice frowns briefly, draws in a breath with which to point out that she is not wearing any thimbles… And then her breath catches in tandem with her comprehension of his meaning. Leaning back and looking into his eyes, she lifts her hands to her dressing gown and begins to disrobe. When her clothing is a pile on the floor, she assists the Hatter with his.
He shrugs out of his nightshirt, one white shoulder at a time, and lifts his hips to permit her to remove his nightwear completely, and then he opens his arms and invites her closer. He does not thank her for saving Underland from the Red Queen’s tyranny. He does not thank her for saving his fingertips from the needle. Her hands smooth over the scars on his chest.
“Look after me, now,” she whispers as their skin comes together.
“Aye, ‘twill be yer pleasure, laddie…”
And it is.