Work Text:
The girl in front of him looks like a real lady. Or so Hamish thinks for exactly one second, while she is standing.
There is neither elegance nor grace in Alice’s movements. She pokes her nose everywhere, and shamelessly interrupts the adults (Mother would have Hamish whipped for even thinking about doing anything like that). And she stomps loudly, running around Ascots’ estate wooden floors. Her own mother tries to put her in place, but the girl only giggles. Maybe it is because of her father, who laughs and smiles as well looking at all of her mischief, not a single frown from him. Hamish can’t help thinking about his own father, whose face would turn dark if his son makes so much as a wrong step.
Hamish watches her all day. Watches, because it is impossible to talk to her, but the mothers ordered them to spend time together, while they discuss something important and grown-up. Hamish should probably be offended – he is a big boy, and the math teacher always praises him, so hearing that he is just a child, a small child, whose only job is to keep the guest’s daughter company, is not pleasant at least. Besides, she does not even pay any attention to Hamish. He follows Alice like a shadow, while she is exploring the house and peeks into every corner. «Someone should», he tells himself, «keep an eye on this ever-absent girl, so that she does not wander where she must not»
But she grows tired of the house. Mother has everything perfect. God forbid, one thing moves just an inch, and Alice gets bored when confined to simply watching something.
Hamish does not like the garden. There are insects, and the leaves fall on his head, getting tangled in his hair. Yet Alice does not care about listening to him, when he says that they should not go there – he is lying, but what else can he do? She grins, as if teasing, testing him, this nine-year-old stubborn girl, and then she takes off. Not gracefully, as one would expect a lady, but deftly, like the cook’s son with scratched knees, and runs ahead. Fast, so fast, and Hamish, who hates running – who in the world would love that? – has to follow her.
Her fair hair and white dress flicker behind mother's rose bush. All the red ones died again, and mother was so angry, she even fired the gardener.
Hamish runs and runs, angry at this stupid girl – why was he even tasked with her in the first place? He could be preparing for the French lesson right now.
Alice passes the orderly bushes and stops by the forest entrance. There is impatience on her delicate, almost doll-like face. She’s happy to run on without this slow boy, but what would he do then? And he tried so hard, chasing her from the house.
«Wait!», he demands. She was standing anyway, and so she just looks at him pitifully, examining this strange company imposed on her by the grown-ups. «Why do you need to go to the forest?»
«There is a tree», seeing that Hamish understands nothing from this explanation, Alice continues: «An old one, with a rabbit hole. I noticed it a long time ago. You can climb it, or just sit by. It’s great either way», to be fair, there is only a piece of a once mighty and beautiful tree, yet there is something special about it. Magical. She fell asleep between its roots one day and had the dream about the smiling cat and the funny man with many hats, and the caterpillar that blows smoke from its mouth, and the red-and-white roses for the first time, The first and the last time it was not a nightmare.
«Girls should not climb trees», is the only thing that Hamish says. What is going on in this Alice’s head? Why would her parents let her do all these things?
«No one will see»
«I will»
Alice grins and takes off again, diving into emerald lush green, like a wild white rabbit. Hamish chases after her, and a single thought is occupying his head right now. «I am going to be late, I am going to be late for the afternoon tea, and mother will kill me». Sometimes he really thinks that she can chop off his head if he messes up too much. And father’s head as well.
At some point, it seems like the strange miss Kingsleigh managed to escape him after all, but then he sees a flicker of the white dress and continues to chase her.
Finally, they reach the tree. It is old indeed, and is quite far from home – mother would never allow Hamish to go there all by himself. Alice, as if having forgotten about her companion, looks into a rabbit hole, and Hamish flinches from the thought that an animal may jump out of it. He then would have to urgently look for a stick to scare the animal off the lady – to be honest, he is scared of animals, even small ones, but if there is a rabbit, he would have to fight it.
«Get down from there», he mutters nervously, when Alice begins to climb the old trunk, getting dirt on her pretty white dress. She can fall. And get hurt. And Hamish has no idea what to do if a lady falls from a tree and scratches her knee.
The very thought of it is absurd.
«Get down», he repeats, on the verge of tears. «Please»
She laughs. Feeling merciful, she gets to the ground in a few seconds. Her dress is all dirty, yet she does not seem to care at all.
«Mother will scold you»
«Whose?»
«Yours, of course», snorts Hamish.
«Dad won’t, and she always agrees with him», Alice tosses her head bravely. “When we get home, he will climb anywhere with me,” Hamish does not understand what is happening in their family. His own father sits in his study all day, they only see each other at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the future Lord Ascot can hardly imagine him climbing somewhere.
Everything around them is absurd.
He does not understand a thing.
«Look!», Alice suddenly points at the sky. Clouds are floating. White. It won’t rain, thankfully. Hamish turns to the girl, puzzled, and she, smiling condescendingly (he is pretty sure, this is the word), explains: «That cloud looks like Jabberwocky»
«What?», the word is so strange that Hamish forgets to say how pointless and stupid it is to watch clouds, looking for something that does not exist.
«It is a huge dragon», Alice suddenly grows serious, frowning, as if trying to remember something. «I think, someone showed me a picture», and then adds, a guilty tone ringing in her voice: «I don’t remember who it was»
«Your father?», suggests Hamish. Mister Kingsleigh could come up with something like this, why not?
«No, no, not him!», Alice states firmly. «Forget it», not caring about the dress again, she sits on the old, moss-covered stump not far away from the tree, then tilts her head back to see the sky and all its clouds. «And that one looks like a queen with a giant head», her tiny finger pokes into the blue, but Hamish, no matter how hard he tries, can’t picture any kind of monarch up there.
He makes himself appear smart though.
Mother always tells him to do just that.
«Have you never watched the clouds?», Alice sees right through his little trick, and Hamish turns away, his face betraying him and turning redder than mother’s favorite roses. So what if he has not? This is useless anyway, why would he waste any time on it?
Miss Kingsleigh looks at him with such sincere sympathy and pity, that his face begins to burn.
«No», he finally grumbles.
«It’s very easy!», she states with the kind of voice his literature teacher has sometimes when he is in a good mood. «Dad and me, we always play like this!», Alice gets up and stands right next to Hamish. «Just choose any cloud and think what it looks like»
Hamish thinks it dumbs, yet he obeys and looks at a tiny cloud that floats slowly though the sky.
«It looks like a cloud?»
«And what else?», Alice asks. There is a surprising amount of force in her voice, not the one you would expect a little girl to have.
Hamish thinks, looking at the white curves.
«Like mother’s terrier», – he dislikes the dog. She is loud, loves no one, except her owner, and believes herself to be the mistress of the house. She bit Hamish last week. There was blood. Honestly, he does not understand why mother even keeps her.
The wind blows and the cloud disappears. Hamish imagines that the same thing happened to a nasty animal, from whose small but sharp teeth there are still marks on his arm, and somehow a smile creeps on his face.
(He does not wish anything bad for the dog. She can just live in another family with another little boy to terrorize)
«See, nothing hard», nods Alice. «My turn now!», she says enthusiastically. There is happiness in her voice now as if the fact that she finally managed to shake him a bit is like a Christmas present to her. «That one…», her fingers are very pretty, despite being covered in scratches «Mhm… Like a hat!»
For whatever reason, after three clouds Hamish begins to find this game to be very amusing. It’s better than translating a huge text from French and thinking about the tenses. He and Alice are sitting on the ground, poking their fingers at the sky, and somehow they completely forget the flow of time. It is by some miracle that they remember, that there are people waiting for them when the sun starts to go down.
There is an expression of pure terror on his face, and a cute, just a bit guilty smile on hers.
Lady Ascot is angry. The Lord is frowning. Mrs. Kingsleigh opens her mouth like a fish out of water. And only mister Kingsleigh smiles, picks his daughter up, whispers something to her, and they both laugh.
Alice leaves, and mother scolds him. Fine, the girl got distracted, but how did he let himself be drawn into this?
She punishes him out of some weird fear that her son would dream too much and would forget all that she has been dutifully putting into his head all these years.
Yet the clouds stop being the clouds from time to time, no matter how many times he tells himself that watching them during a busy day is a stupid and pointless activity.