Peter and Alice Read Free Page B

can only remember two times. This was the first…
    Gentle and magical illuminations light the stage .
    CARROLL and ALICE stroll. It is 1862 .
    ALICE : But why mustn’t I grow up? It seems the most marvelous thing in the world to be old and wear gowns and gloves and hats with feathers.
    CARROLL : Oh, hats with feathers are admirable things, but along with them goes something altogether unlike gowns and gloves. First the squint in the eye and then the hard set of the mouth, followed in quick order by the wagging tongue and the shaking finger. One day you turn around and you’ve become Mrs. Grundy: soberly disapproving of everything that used to give you pleasure.
    ALICE : I can’t imagine that! Shan’t I always be able to laugh at things?
    CARROLL : Does your mother laugh much?
    ALICE thinks about this .
    ALICE : No… Not so much as she used to perhaps.
    CARROLL : And it seems to me even our Lorina is not so amused as she used to be.
    ALICE : She got her first corset, you know.
    CARROLL : Alice, you shouldn’t talk about such things to a gentleman.
    ALICE : It’s made out of whale bone!
    CARROLL : That’s why the leviathans are so terribly fat. They’ve given all their corsets to little girls in Oxford.
    ALICE speaks to PETER :
    ALICE : I watched my sister putting on her corset for the first time. I shall never forget it… My mother sat us down, all three girls, and produced it from a gorgeous purple box,made of Venetian paper I think. I was intoxicated by the box. And then the bone of the corset was iridescent . Here was growing up and becoming a woman: and it was beautiful … My mother helped Lorina put it on and tighten the laces. Well then I could see it hurt. Lorina cried… And my mother, the look on her face. She was not a woman given to displaying vulnerability. She was our soldier. But on her face… What was it? Not quite sadness. Acceptance. Resignation to something vast, and helpless to change it. Powerlessness… Here was growing up too.
    CARROLL : We’ll have to watch Lorina carefully, like a fever-sufferer, and at the first sign of the censorious eye, we’ll strike.
    ALICE : What’ll we do?
    CARROLL : Make her stand on her head.
    ALICE is amused .
    They walk for a moment .
    CARROLL is thinking about something .
    CARROLL : It’s only a matter of the clock now. She’ll be up and married and raising a litter of her own soon.
    ALICE : Lorina?! She’s still a baby.
    CARROLL : She’s 13. That’s a whole year past the age of consent.
    They walk for a beat .
    CARROLL : Why, in two years you could get married.
    There is weight to this .
    ALICE : What was he trying to say?
    PETER : You know exactly.
    ALICE : I was ten years old .
    PETER : You had fascinated him. Beaten out your sisters, like you said; your rivals. You sparkled for him. You got your wish.
    ALICE : Stop it.
    PETER : Don’t you like love stories?
    CARROLL : Alice, will you not look at me?
    PETER : I thought all little girls enjoyed love stories.
    ALICE : You’re a terrible man.
    PETER : And what kind of child were you?
    ALICE : A child is what I was!
    PETER : Not after that night. Might as well start chewing off your leg.
    ALICE : You don’t know anything about it! You didn’t walk with him. You didn’t feel his suffering . Like a vibration next to me, like a tuning fork, his need was overwhelming.
    CARROLL : Alice? Please look at me.
    ALICE pretends to peer ahead for her sisters .
    ALICE : Where have they gone? Can you see my sisters? I should catch up with them.
    CARROLL : Of course.
    ALICE : All right. See you later, sir.
    CARROLL : Alice – I’ve almost finished your story.
    ALICE : You’re writing it down, I’d forgotten. That’s marvelous.
    She moves off quickly .
    CARROLL immediately stops walking. He stands alone .
    ALICE recovers herself .
    ALICE : What would I have done if I looked back and saw him standing there? Would my