POLITICS

Through the looking-glass, and what Alliance found there

NOEL MALCOLM

When Alliance had stepped through the looking-glass, she had not been walk- ing a minute before she found herself face to face with the Blue Queen. 'Where are you going?' said the Queen, rather fierce- ly. Alliance explained that she had lost her way, and was looking for a new way. `I don't know what you mean by your way,' said the Queen: 'all the ways about here belong to me. There is no other way.'

`But there are some dark valleys and deep cuts in your way,' said Alliance. `Nonsense,' said the Blue Queen. 'When you say "cuts", I could show you cuts, in comparison with which you'd call these ones steep rises.' No I shouldn't,' said Alliance. 'A cut can't be a rise, you know.'

`Oh yes it can,' said the Queen. 'Quick — I'll show you.' Suddenly, she took little Alliance by the hand and started to run. `Faster! Faster!' she cried, till their feet seemed to skim through the air. Then, just as suddenly, they stopped. Alliance looked round her in surprise. She could still see the same flower-beds, some full and some empty. 'But everything's just as it was!' she said. 'Look at all these empty beds!' Now you see,' said the Blue Queen, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast.'

Alliance was still puzzling about this when the Queen said: `By the way, would you like to see my cat? It's a Cheshire cat, and it's awfully clever. It knows all about Reeling and Writhing, and it's just in- vented something fearfully difficult called the National Purriculum. Look, there it is, in that tree.' Alliance looked up, but all she could see was a smirk. 'Well! I've often seen a cat without a smirk,' she thought, 'but a smirk without a cat!' Then she noticed that it had very long claws, and with a little shriek she rushed off into the wood.

She had not gone far before she heard a terrible crash. She looked round, and there was the Pink Knight, lying flat on the ground. 'I'm afraid you've not had much practice,' she said, as she helped him up. `What makes you say that?' he asked, sounding a little offended. 'I'm a proper knight, you know. I've even got a squire- at-arms; he's called the Mad Hatters. And I've had plenty of practice. Why, I only fall off every four years.' And as he sat down in the saddle again he grinned and gave a triumphant little punch in the air, as if he had just won a battle.

Poor Alliance could not think what to say. She felt sorry for the Pink Knight, who obviously thought he would keep hold of the reins, no matter how often he fell off. `Let me sing you a song,' he said. 'It's long, but it's very beautiful. The name of the song is called "Moving Ahead"."Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?' said Alliance, trying to sound interested. 'No,' said the Knight, 'that's what the name is called. The name really is "The 1991 Manifesto". But the song is called "Jabber- wedgie".' Then, with a faint smile lighting up his gentle foolish face, he began:

`Twas bryan, and the slithy shares Did gould and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borrowers And the mortgage rates outgrabe. Beware the Jabberwedge, my son!

The pipe that puffs, the cries that rant! Beware the Hefferwock, and shun The frumious Berniegrant!

And so it went on. `It seems a very pretty manifesto,' she said when he had finished it, 'but it's rather hard to understand. Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas — only I don't exactly know what they are.' (`Yes, people say that about all my songs,' he muttered.) 'However, some- body is going to kill somebody else, that's clear.'

While she was speaking, she noticed that the Pink Knight was tilting further and further over to the right. And then she heard a strange burbling noise approaching through the wood, and a whiffling sound, like a pipe being puffed very hard indeed. `Something terrible is going to happen to the Pink Knight,' she thought, as she ran away as fast as her legs could carry her. When she reached the edge of the wood, she found two boys standing under a tree with their eyes closed. They looked iden- tical, apart from one of them being right- handed and the other left-handed. But it was very hard to tell which was which. `Why!' she said, 'you must be Tweedlebob and Tweedledavid!' But they just stood there in silence, except that every now and then one of them would shout 'Nohow!' and the other would cry out 'Contrariwise!'

Then, still with his eyes closed, one of them asked: 'What do you think we're dreaming about?' Alliance said, 'Nobody can guess that.' Why,' he exclaimed, `about you! You know very well you're not real.' I am real!' said Alliance, and began to cry. 'I'm nearly seven years old, and I've been real all that time.'

`Don't cry,' said the boy. 'We're only pretending. Sometimes we pretend to dream the same dream, and sometimes we pretend to have a battle.' They both smiled, and Alliance couldn't help noticing that each had his teeth very firmly clenched together. 'Well, some of it is a pretend, anyway,' thought Alliance as she walked briskly away across the fields.

At last she came to a wall, and on top of it was Humpty David. 'Why do you sit up there all alone?' she asked. 'Why, because there's nobody with me!' cried Humpty David. 'It's very nice up here. And if ever I did fall off — which there's no chance of - but if I did fall, my King has promised me . . ."To send all his trolleys and all his money,' interrupted Alliance. 'Yes, all his trolleys and all his money,' Humpty David went on. 'They'd pick me up in a minute, they would. Anyway, what is your name?'

`My name is Alliance, but —"It's a stupid name enough!' he snapped. 'With a name like that, you could be any shape, almost.' (`And I almost am,' thought Alliance, thinking of how she had grown and shrunk, and turned into all sorts of shapes since she started her journey.) `Whereas my name means what I am,' he continued, my full name, that is: the Solitary David Party.'

`But a party is lots of people,' said Alliance. 'You can't be a party.' When / use a word,' Humpty David said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' The question is,' said Alliance, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.' The question is,' said Humpty David, 'which is to be master — that's all.' How right you are,' said Alliance, and pushed him off the wall.

`Well, that's that,' she said. 'Now I shall grow ever so tall again.' And, even as she said it, she started to grow smaller, and smaller, and smaller.