chapter 6

The sky was overcast and grey and seemed to threaten a dreary English summer drizzle at any moment so Anna was surprised to see a woman dressed in a flowing white gown tending to the roses. As Anna got closer she realised that the woman was not pruning the bushes but cutting the white roses from their stems and allowing them to fall into a bucket with a nauseating thud like severed heads from the executioners block. When she turned to look at Anna her grey eyes shone with tears and her hands were bloody, her papery white skin torn by the thorns.

"What are you doing?" Anna gasped.

"They ought to have been red," the woman said simply. "But the gardeners planted the white ones by mistake and if she was to find out we would all be in trouble."

Anna realised that she could not tell if the woman was a teacher or a student or if she was very old or very young. her hair was luminously white and her skin so pale that it was almost translucent, the blue of her veins sickeningly visible. She seemed as frail as an old woman and as fragile as a child and it unsettled Anna.

"You're thinking about something, my dear. And that makes you forget to talk," the white woman said.

She realised that she had been staring silently at the white woman for quite some time. She looked down at the beautiful white roses in the woman's bucket but they were splattered with red blood and already their white petals were beginning to curl and brown.

"I don't understand. Who is she? Why would the roses make her angry?"

The white woman suddenly seized Anna's arm and brought her face very close to her. Her grip was surprisingly tight though her skeletal fingers felt brittle and insubstantial as egg shells. "Mrs Hart! You must be careful of her!"

Almost as suddenly the white woman released Anna from her grasp and her sorrowful expression rearranged itself into a ghastly smile. "Now, hurry along, dear. After all, you mustn't be late and the world only goes 'round by everyone minding their own business."

Anna took a few shaky steps back from the white woman and then broke into a run, barely daring to look back until she reached Mrs Hart's office.

With great trepidation she reached out and knocked on Mrs Hart's door. It was a heavy piece of cherrywood ornately carved with hearts and roses. At the centre was a large heart ensnared by rose thorns which bore Mrs Hart's title.

"Enter," a voice rumbled from within.

Anna could barely stop herself from gasping at the woman who awaited her. Mrs Hart was the biggest, fattest, heaviest mountain of flesh that she had ever seen. She saw in every excess pound, every roll of flab that shrouded this massive woman's body precisely what kept such a large army of chefs busy all day long.

The headmistress sat behind a desk on a chair big enough to seat three girls of Anna's size comfortably but her mammoth backside was so wide that it eclipsed the chair, causing her to overspill the arm rests and so round that it forced her higher and created the illusion that she was sitting on a plush, well cushioned throne.

She wore a red blazer with a black shirt underneath and for a moment Anna contemplated how many acres of fabric must be required to clothe such a vast frame. Around her neck hung a heart locket. Except that Mrs Hart didn't really have a neck, she had so many chins that her face seemed to meld into her shoulders. Indeed, she was so fat that her whole body seemed to have become one indistinguishable blob of shapeless blubber. Even her arms, forced out from her sides by her bulging rolls, had lost all definition with flab rolling over her elbows and her chunky wrists threatening to engulf her plump hands.

Her round, soft face and full cheeks gave her an almost cheerful aspect. However, recalling the white woman's warning with a shudder, Anna suspected that it would be folly to think that Mrs Hart was predisposed towards jolliness.

Somehow the headmistress carried her great bulk with dignity. Her sheer size seemed to grant her the assertive quality of a woman not to be trifled with. She created the sense that it was not that she was too big but that everything else was too small, as if the whole world was cowering and shrinking from her temper.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Mrs Hart demanded impatiently. "Sit, girl! Sit!"

Anna slid into the chair opposite the headmistress for a moment they sat in silence. She found herself squirming in discomfort as she sat in the behemoth of a woman's imposing shadow.

"You are before me today because you have broken one of the school's most fundamental rules by trespassing in the study of our founder, Miss Alice Liddel," Mrs Hart said. "I'm afraid that the severity of such an incident means that I have no option but to expel you."

"But I didn't know it was against the rules!"

"You don't know much, girl, and that's a fact," she said. "The expulsion will take effect immediately. Gather your belongings, a carriage will be waiting for you by midday."

"But you haven't even given me a chance to explain myself!" Anna cried.

"Sentence first - verdict afterwards," Mrs Hart said as if it was the most logical thing in the world. "Better still to administer the punishment before the crime has even been committed."

Anna could not help but balk at the unfairness of such ludicrously topsy-turvy thinking.

"Stuff and nonsense!" she said loudly. "The idea of having a sentence first!"

"Hold your tongue! Do you dare speak to me so, girl?" Mrs Hart demanded hotly. "You are expelled. I demand that you collect your belongings and leave the school this instant."

"No," Anna whispered as she sank back quite defeated in her chair. "There must be some other way."

"There is no Other Way. The only way is My Way."

"No. Please," she begged. "You know who my mother is and you must understand why I am here. I know so little about her, I can't leave until I know what happened to her or at least know who she was."

"Ah yes, your mother," Mrs Hart said. "I trust the name of Alice Liddel has never conferred any privileges upon you or afforded you any special treatment in the past. Quite the opposite, I can only imagine. Do not expect things to be any different here. Our interest in Miss Liddel is purely academic. Regrettably few prominent intellectuals or artists have personal lives that are wholly unproblematic but the more unsavoury aspects of your mother's history are for the fish wives and washer women to discuss, not for us to concern ourselves with."

"I suggest that you follow a similar suit and do not think of Alice Liddel's unfortunate history," the headmistress continued. "Your mother is your disgrace and you were hers. She conceived you in sinfulness before leaving you orphaned and degraded. So I urge you not to look to the past for there is only pain for you there. Look instead to the future while you still have beauty, youth and hope. You have fortune, I trust, your mother has granted you that much if not a respectable name."

She had known her whole life how people whispered about her in judgement or pity but no one in her acquaintance, whether out of kindness or politeness, would ever have said such hard words to her directly.

As she stared at Mrs Hart in shock, the grey clouds shifted in the sky and the sun's light flooded the dark office. Anna noticed something embedded in the headmistress' heart locket glittering in the sunlight: a shard of glass. It should mean something to her, she knew it should. But what?

Mrs Hart grasped the locket in her plump hand and shifted her bulk back in her seat that creaked loudly in protest. She gave Anna a broad and unpleasant smile like a cat smugly savouring the moment before it bites the head off a mouse.

"Perhaps I'm being unreasonable. I do rather let my temper get the better of me sometimes," Mrs Hart chuckled. "After all, it was your first offence and you didn't even know it was against the rules."

She nodded but she was still thinking about the shard, the memory just out of reach of her conscious mind.

"Yes, I think it's only fair to give you another chance," the headmistress said and reached for a small gold box. "Won't you have biscuit just to show there's no hard feelings?"

Anna was enchanted by the delicate little biscuits, each one beautifully decorated with brightly coloured icing and messages piped upon them saying "EAT ME!", "TAKE ME!" and "TRY ME!" so that they all seemed to clamour for her attention, each one more tempting and delicious looking than the last.

As soon as Anna took a bite of one of the biscuits she felt herself slipping down the rabbit hole into a deep sensual lethargy. In her dreamy state all her thoughts felt fuzzy and indistinct and her limbs were leaden.

"Now, why don't you run along to your next class," she heard Mrs Hart's voice, muffled and distant. "I'm sure Professor Hattington will be waiting for you."

She felt like she was floating as she left Mrs Hart's office, her head bobbing along a sea of clouds. She saw a man, almost as small and thin as the headmistress was big and fat walking towards her carrying a large platter of jam tarts above his head.

"The Queen of Hearts
She made some tarts
All on a summer's day..."

She said to no one in particular as the man passed her and entered the Mrs Hart's office but she couldn't remember any more of the rhyme.

Time seemed to elongate in strange ways or vanish altogether as if kept by a broken pocket watch perpetually ticking but only ever moving forward in fits and starts. Sometimes she felt like she had been walking down the same hall for hours while other times she found herself in a completely different part of the school without any recollection of how she got there. She did not recall Professor Hattington's classroom being difficult to find but now the whole school seemed vast and labyrinthine.