Roots of Evil(53)

Whatever else I may do in the future, vowed Alice during those days in Vienna, outside of illness or old age I will never again wait on another human, and I will never expect another human being to wait on me!

In the small room she had rented in the Old Quarter, just off a cobbled alley, rather sinisterly named the Blutgasse – Blood Alley – she considered how difficult it would be to throw off the quiet lady’s maid and replace her with a completely new person. It was exciting and terrifying, but if she did it, it might mean she would no longer have to submit to the prodding hands and insistent bodies of all those nameless men in anonymous hotel rooms.

I could be anything and anyone I wanted, thought Alice with a little thrill of excitement.



What she had not been prepared for was how much fun it was to plan a whole new identity. All it needed was a little money, and a little resolve. Not much more.

Alice Wilson, that nice, well-behaved girl, had always looked exactly what she was. An English girl of the servant class, respectable, quietly dressed, her complexion as God had made it, save for a light dusting of rice powder on her nose when it was her day off, because only females of a certain type – which meant tarts and actresses – painted their faces. Well, all right, and bright young things who danced to jazz, and painted their mouths and showed their ankles.

Alice considered her appearance. She had unremarkable eyes, somewhere between grey and green, and slightly fluffy mid-brown hair. Pretty hair, people had sometimes said, indulgently. A pretty girl. Yes, but I don’t want to be pretty any longer. Prettiness is for good girls. For nicely brought-up girls who would not dream of going to men’s rooms, and doing with them the thing that should not be done until after marriage…(No man will ever respect you if you don’t remain pure, Alice’s mother had said. No man will ever want to marry you.)

There were other things that nicely brought-up girls did not do, as well. They would not, for instance, dream of dyeing their hair. But Alice dyed hers that day, buying the preparation from a tiny shop, trying not to feel guilty. The process of darkening her hair to a shiny raven-black was complex and messy, but after it was done and her hair had dried in the warm afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows of the little room, she brushed it smooth so that it fell in glossy wings on each side of her cheeks. And then she stared at herself in the small oblong of mirror which hung over the weatherbeaten dressing-table.

The transformation was startling. It was beyond her wildest hopes. She was almost a different person. But was ‘almost’ enough? She must be unrecognizable to everyone who had ever known her. All right, what else could she do? How about cosmetics? Greatly daring, she tried the effects of outlining her eyes with kohl and of darkening her lashes with mascara. At once the nothing-coloured eyes became mysterious and slanting. Good. Now for the lips. She applied a dark, mulberry-hued lipstick, getting it crooked the first couple of times, and having to wipe it off and start again. It felt dreadfully sinful but it also felt exciting, and at the third or fourth attempt she got it right. This time, when she considered her reflection in the mirror, she was aware of a little thrill of delight, tinged with fear. Is that really me? And dare I go into the streets looking like this? Yes, said the rebellious little voice in her mind, yes, you dare, and yes you will.

So now, what about clothes? As Miss Nina’s maid she had worn a neat black frock with a crisp apron – plain for daytime, frilled muslin for evening. On her day off she had worn her good navy serge in winter, with a cloche hat, and for summer there was a brown linen costume, with a straw boater. When she had tied an orange ribbon around the boater’s brim the master’s butler had said, My word, Alice, that looks very dashing, but the housekeeper who oversaw the female servants had tutted and thought it a bit fast, and said Alice was not to wear it to church this Sunday.

But the person Alice intended to become would not wear brown linen (even with the orange ribbon on her bonnet), and she certainly would not wear navy serge either. She counted her money out again, nodded to herself, and bundling her hair under the navy hat so that no one would see the halfway stage of her transformation, went out to one of the little backstreet clothes shops.

She knew about these shops that existed in any city and that bought and sold the cast-offs given to maids by the rich, bored ladies they served. She had, in fact, entered one or two of them herself after Miss Nina had rather pettishly given her gowns. ‘I’m bored with this thing, Alice, and the colour is ugly. You might as well have it.’ Never once wondering where a maid would have the opportunity to wear a silk dance frock or a velvet tea-gown. In England Alice had done what most maids did; she had accepted the cast-offs politely, and then sold them. Now she would enter the second-hand shops in Vienna, but this time she would be buying, not selling.

She spent her dwindling store of money carefully, but she was fortunate in her purchases. A damson silk gown that clung to her thighs when she walked and swished across the ground with careless elegance, and an evening frock in jade green that made you think of unprincipled temptresses reclining on satin-sheeted beds. The labels – Schiaparelli and Madeleine Viennet – were pristine. ‘Neither garment has been worn more than twice,’ insisted the proprietress of the little shop, and then, having surveyed Alice’s appearance with a professionally critical eye for a moment, she darted into the back of the shop once more and brought out a black velvet cloak, ruched and lined with sable. The fr?ulein should buy this as well, she said. So great a pity not to have it; it might have been made to go with both gowns. A very modest price was all she asked – almost she would be making a loss. But it would add the finishing touch. Cunningly she draped it around Alice’s shoulders and led Alice to the mirror again.