The Doll Factory

by Elizabeth Macneal

  He runs into the street, his palm over his mouth, and finds himself retracing his earlier footsteps, to Soho and the Dolphin, and as he sits outside waiting, waiting, waiting, the tremor in his hand steadies and he feels a calmness pass over him.

  Sea-Cow Ivory

  The shelves are stacked with glass jars brimming with teeth as yellow as stained pearls. Display cabinets show them in plaster sets with two hinged gold springs. Albie wonders who they all belonged to, remembering a girl in his rookery having hers pulled the day she died of consumption. Waterloo teeth, plucked from the soldiers, isn’t that what they say?

  He pictures them nestled in his own mouth; the grins he would flash, the gristle he could eat. He lives on pap: soft potatoes, boiled pigs’ ears, dripping. He could crack walnuts between his molars like his sister can, and chew an onion like an apple.

  The proprietor and his apprentice haven’t seen him yet, and Albie ducks below the counter, smearing his grubby finger against the glass case. The apprentice has his back turned and is wielding a ferocious set of pliers, a child pinned to the chair. The boy squeals like a blood-let pig, and Albie feels a hot rush of jealousy: what’s a bit of pain when the swine’ll get a set of ivories out of it, all paid for by his careless mama? Albie’d knock out his last tooth with his own fist if he knew a set of falsies would come hot on it.

  The proprietor is talking to an old dandy. ‘Four guineas for a set of the sea-cow ivory,’ he says. ‘They discolour less than Waterloo teeth – but my, those brave soldiers were devilish careful of their pearls, weren’t they? And only three guineas for the porcelain, but it’s worth spending a little more – they can be frightfully prone to cracking—’

  Four guineas! Hearing the sum spoken rekindles his distance from them. He’ll have his gummy mouth for ever, his lone tooth like that of an imbecilic rabbit. His sister says there’s bigger things to worry about, that he’s as vain as any swell.

  He considers smashing the glass and grabbing a pair, or slitting the man’s pocket for the tin – or he could make his fortune as a drag sneak pinching luggage at the stations and buy a dozen sets if he cared to – but he knows it’s nothing but a far-off dream. Stealing handkerchiefs is as daring as he’ll get. He couldn’t bear to be parted from his sister if he was rumbled, couldn’t bear leaving her to suffer through the men on her own.

  The owner catches sight of him: ‘Oi! You! I’ve told you before not to hang around here – begone, I tell you!’

  The man starts towards him, making to grab his jacket and Albie cries, ‘Gerroff, you infernal hyena, you pickled sow!’ and he leaps up and away down the street, swerving into Mrs Salter’s Doll Emporium.

  Rose is waiting, her ugly eye white and rolling. He wonders if she knows she could get a glass eye for a pound, and hang it if anyone could tell the difference.

  He hands over the bag, and she thumbs through the tiny velvet skirts and bodices. She counts aloud.

  ‘Three bodices, four skirts, four bodices, five skirts—’

  Albie gnaws on a loose fingernail.

  ‘Iris says—’

  ‘Please don’t,’ Rose says.

  ‘She says—’

  ‘Please.’ Albie hears the quiver in her voice, catches her expression of resigned sadness as she glances around the shop. ‘I asked you not to mention her.’

  ‘Do you miss her?’

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ she snaps.

  ‘She says to say she misses you.’

  ‘Will you—’

  ‘She says you’re her sister and she never wanted to leave you, miss,’ Albie says, before he can help it. ‘And she’s happy, she really is, and she says you could escape too.’

  He expects a fight from her; a spider-fast pinch delivered to the inside of his elbow, a particular speciality of Mrs Salter. Or at the very least hissed words: I told you to shut your trap!

  But Rose says nothing, and there is such a downturned sadness in her purplish face that Albie has to look away.

  Albie’s footsteps drag, like a locomotive which has run out of steam. He has no energy for a lark, and he heads home, longing to see his sister, to make her laugh and to fall asleep next to her.

  He is outside his house when Silas runs past him. Albie is confused – the rookeries of St Giles may be close to the man’s shop, but they are a world away in every other sense. Could he have been looking for him? But then he notices Silas’s half-done trousers, the expression on his face – hand over his mouth – and Albie drops his Dead Creatures bag and races inside, the rotten step splintering underfoot. No, he thinks. No, no, no, please not—

  He barges past the women in the hall (‘What fire’s caught his breeches?’) and past red-headed Moll in tears on the bottom stair, Nancy’s hand locked on hers (‘There’s no harm done, is there, my sweet? Just had a fright – we all have ’em’), and he leaps over them, and almost falls down the stairs. He pushes aside the stained old theatre curtain, and his sister is sitting on the bed, staring at the wall. A candle is drowning in its own fat.

  ‘Oh! You’re fine – I thought . . .’ He sits next to her and takes her hand. ‘There’s a man – a wicked man – and if he comes in here, you can’t see him, not at all, you’ve got to shout and say no. I don’t care if Nancy don’t like it—’

  ‘What you talking about?’ his sister says, ruffling his hair. ‘Who? Who’s wicked?’

  Albie takes a breath. ‘A man was here just before. He’s got black hair and he smells so strange, and you ain’t to see him, not at all. I got a bad feeling about him—’

  ‘He came,’ his sister says, in her dull monotone. ‘I saw him.’

  ‘You didn’t—?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Said I weren’t to his liking. That he wanted a redhead. Nancy weren’t happy, says she’s sick to her back teeth of the men not liking me – that my debt’s gone up to two pounds. But the Exhibition should pull in the punters, shouldn’t it?’ She tugs at her hair. ‘Alb, sometimes it’s worse if they doesn’t want me than when they does.’

  The Wombat’s Lament

  The Factory

  APRIL 9TH

  Dearest Queen,

  Thank you for visiting briefly earlier, and it certainly is no inconvenience for you not to come today. I am glad you will still attend dinner with us tonight. I am sorry for what happened to your painting. I know you have been gracious about it, but it was careless of me. I will make good on it, to say nothing of the lengths our disgraced friend will have to go to in order to redeem herself.

  In fact, that is the principal purpose of this missive. Just after breakfast, I happened upon this poem, accompanied by an ink-stained paw-print bearing a striking resemblance to that of your repentant nemesis. Could she be the author of this work? I admit her style is lacking but she is a fat quadruped who prefers snoozing to any form of intellectual fulfilment, so we can hardly blame the naughty beast for it.

  Yours,

  Louis

  The Wombat’s Lament

  CANTO I

  Ah, me! What tragic happ’ning could divide

  A muse and wombat? May this poor poem guide

  A reconciling, ’twixt two gentle souls

  Oh, Goddess, pray! inspire me in this goal.

  To trace the source of this most sombre tale

  Turn to Colville Place, a girl outside, milk-pale

  Dare she enter, low abode of this poet

  Or flee, return to life as she knows it?

  CANTO II

  And lo! ere the sun barely seem’d to rise

  Three months departed, our goddess sighs,

  And three could not live in much greater bliss

  Than poor artist, wombat, most dear mistress.

  Each morn, the sun would light its tender rays

  On her sweet locks, e’en clouds avert their gaze.

  And wombat Guinevere, no servant more devoted,

  Her mourning of Lancelot ’came less noted.

  But oh! Great doom and tempests loom
ahead,

  Because the naughty beast was left unfed.

  CANTO III

  For wombat, from true hunger almost fainting

  Seized ’pon a morsel – but ’twas a painting!

  She lick’d her lips, ignorant of the feud

  Just then a-brewing: she meant nothing rude.

  But darling Iris – sweet flower, bloss’ming blue,

  Rail’d and wept, howl’d and scream’d, ‘Vile wombat, SHOO!’

  Cursing painting, artist, wombat, enrag’d hops,

  Weeping, howling, her tears she mops.

  And what of wombat? I hear you cry,

  No creature ever lived who louder sigh’d.

  CANTO IV

  Poor wombat in t’studio slaved away

  Till her face grew lined and fur turn’d grey.

  While the shadow o’er her life forever loomed:

  ‘It’s me, Iris!’ her cruel voice boomed.

  But slave she did, and a palace built

  To show her mistress th’extent of guilt.

  No finer temple ever was created

  Than that made by wombat, so deeply hated.

  CANTO V

  And, after such cruelty, will she be forgiv’n?

  We leave our tale here – the break unriven.

  Moonlight

  ‘Iris,’ Louis says, opening the door. He half-smiles at her, but she does not return it. Over the course of the day she has wandered to the site of the Crystal Palace, visited her favourite painting, The Arnolfini Portrait, at the National Gallery, and taken a secret pleasure in missing Louis’s call, the invitation unanswered for her to accompany him to Brown’s to pick out a new canvas.

  She thinks of the painting that she laboured over, the way she’d thinned the oils so that the white background shone through behind the hand. When Louis showed it to her after he’d put his painting into the carriage, she struggled not to cry. The threads of the canvas were torn, the paint chipped and flaking – she knew there was no repairing it. She hurled it into the grate before he could stop her. The flames blackened and smoked and Louis had to wrap the poker in a blanket to swat out the fire.

  He draws a hand across his face. ‘Come in, come in. Look, Iris, I’m sorry.’

  There is a noise behind them, and Guinevere ambles into the hallway.

  ‘Avaunt, beastly creature,’ Louis says, flapping his hands. The wombat looks at him with sad eyes and then waddles upstairs. ‘You aren’t welcome here – if you stay, she may challenge you, and what good are your soft claws against her sharpened wits?’

  ‘It’s just a diverting joke for you, isn’t it?’ Iris says, following him into the sitting room. She has borrowed a blue silk dress from one of the girls in the lodging house to wear to the dinner Millais is holding, and it is as tight as swaddling. The discomfort heightens her irritation. ‘You wouldn’t have found it so amusing if it’d been your painting. If you cared for my work, you wouldn’t have discarded it on the side table like a piece of rubbish. I left it on the easel, out of her reach. I know you don’t think much of it—’

  ‘I do. I wanted to show it off to Hunt.’

  ‘But you needn’t make fun.’

  Louis looks at her. ‘I’m sorry. I am, truly. I only make light of things because – well, I don’t know what else to say. It is vexing.’ He tucks his hair behind his ear. ‘I really am sorry.’

  He is so close that she can smell the mint tea on his breath and the cigar smoke in his clothes, and she feels her anger fade to nothing.

  ‘Will you ever forgive me?’

  ‘Oh, I should think not. You’ll still be repenting in half a century’s time.’

  ‘I’ll ask them to inscribe a final apology on my tomb.’

  ‘Died of remorse.’ She looks at him anew, takes in the tight floral waistcoat, the fob watch, his hair oiled into a sharp crease. ‘And what in heaven’s name are you wearing?’

  ‘Millais’s cast-offs, as if I’m his butler.’ Louis tugs at his sleeve. ‘Now. Guinevere – I trust you received her poem?’

  ‘I did. It was good of her.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see the palace she built you?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The poem,’ Louis says. ‘Honestly, to think she went to all that effort, curling her fat paw around a quill. It wasn’t easy for her, I’ll wager. And you paid it no heed, not a jot, when she went to such lengths to demonstrate her repentance.’

  ‘Do you have a fever?’

  ‘Come. I think we should investigate,’ Louis says, and he pinches his earlobe twice, one of his nervous tics.

  She follows him to the studio, feeling as stiff as a dressed-up doll in her borrowed outfit.

  ‘Tell me, disgraced creature,’ Louis says, approaching Guinevere who is sleeping on a bolster. He crooks his ear towards the wombat’s mouth. The animal’s fur is greasy, heavily pomaded with Macassar oil. ‘Where is this promised palace? Where have you built it?’

  ‘It had better not be one of her mud nests or I’m afraid our friendship is quite ruined.’

  Louis lifts Guinevere’s paw and points up the staircase. He shrugs. ‘I suppose we’d better follow where she directs.’

  Iris does not know what to think. She wonders if he has bought her something – a matchstick house, or a snow globe, perhaps. She follows him past the floor where his bedroom must be, up to the maid’s attic at the top. She has never been this far.

  ‘Not much of a palace,’ Louis sniffs, and he smiles at her, artless and brimming. ‘I hope you won’t be disappointed.’

  A sign on the door reads, ‘Beware: Artist Toiling.’

  ‘What is this?’ Iris asks.

  He pushes open the door, and she stares.

  The garret has been turned into a studio – there is an easel in the corner with a stretched canvas the colour of bandages, and neatly shelved bottles of paints and brushes. The little window faces west, and the sun is setting over hundreds of London steeples. It has the pristine look of a painted biscuit box. In the evening light, Louis’s face is golden when he turns to her.

  ‘Guinevere appears to think this is for you. Though how she got the money for the paints is anybody’s guess. Perhaps she has been doubling as a chimney sweep’s brush.’ He laughs slightly, but it is uncomfortable, and his eyes do not smile. He watches her.

  ‘For me?’ she asks. She crosses the room and picks up a jar. Louis has glued a label to it which reads, ‘Iris’s Brushes’. She rubs her finger over it.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he asks. ‘I know it isn’t much, but I felt so wretched about the painting.’

  ‘Like it?’ she repeats.

  He touches a brass hook. ‘This is where your first painting can hang. You can work here whenever you aren’t standing for me – I won’t disturb you – and now you don’t need to draw at that little desk in the corner downstairs and tolerate my insufferable prattling.’ He looks at her, and she can’t read his expression. ‘I’m sorry again about the painting. I really am. You can submit next year – and think what a debut you’ll be then! The critics will run out of ink.’ He adds hastily, ‘In their praise.’

  He is barely a palm’s width from her. She could reach out and pull him to her, feel his weight against her. She feels suddenly uncertain, and says lightly, ‘Oh, Guinevere – she is too naughty arranging all of this.’

  ‘And you are pleased?’ he asks again.

  ‘I am,’ she says, and she is glad too, when he closes the door, and leaves her all alone. She stands by the window, her hands clasped in front of her, and she starts to laugh. She spins round – the room is just big enough, though the dress is too tight for her to raise her arms. This is hers! This is for her – her studio to paint in – she is so happy that she balls her fists and hammers them in the air. What will she paint? The canvas is huge compared to the little painting she worked on before – three foot high at least. She grips the edge of it until she feels the fabric give under her hand. It is all she can do to
prevent herself from tearing it into strips, from hurling the glass bottles at the wall, from destroying the room in her glee.

  She hears a knock on the door and Louis says that they must go.

  ‘Millais will be expecting us,’ he says. ‘And they will need rescuing from the insufferable Mr Rossetti.’

  She composes herself, smoothing her hair with the flat of her hand, resisting the urge to let out a burst of laughter. She doesn’t want to go to the dinner any longer. She just wants to stay in her studio by herself. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting him.’

  ‘I’m sure he is looking forward to meeting you more.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Louis shrugs, and he takes the stairs before her.

  ‘Besides, Millais and Hunt like him,’ Iris says, trying to keep her mind on the thread of their conversation, but it loops back, stitching its way into the room and the easel and the brushes.

  ‘He didn’t poison their pet with a box of cigars. Poor, dear Lancelot.’

  ‘A day ago, I wished he’d poisoned Guinevere too. I was close to having her skinned for my next canvas to make up for it.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ he says, and he corners the wombat in the hallway where she is pawing at the rug, her nails as round as almonds. He picks her up with a ngh and sings behind her bulk, his hands flinging out her paws in expressive melancholy:

  ‘Voi che sapete che cosa è amor,

  Donne, vedete s’io l’ho nel cor,

  Donne, vedete s’io l’ho nel cor!

  Quello ch’io provo vi ridirò,

  È per me nuovo, capir nol so.

  Sento un affetto pien di desir,

  Ch’ora è diletto, ch’ora è martir.’

  Iris has no idea what he is singing, whether it is in French or – or any of the other Continental languages.

  ‘Mozart,’ he says. ‘Le Nozze di Figaro.’

  ‘I know,’ she lies.