The Doll Factory

by Elizabeth Macneal

  ‘Wrote to you?’

  Iris sighs. ‘You don’t listen.’

  ‘Oh, that letter. Of course I listen,’ Louis says. He traces the marks on her arm. ‘But it does rather sound as though the man who caught hold of you merely recognized you from the painting and was struck by the likeness. You are very captivating.’

  ‘It isn’t like that,’ Iris says. How can she explain how she feels? How naked, how afraid all of a sudden? How all her life she has been careful not to encourage men, but not to slight them either, always a little fearful of them. She is seen as an object to be gazed at or touched at leisure: an arm around her waist is nothing more than friendly, a whisper in her ear and a forced kiss on the cheek is flattering, something for which she should be grateful. She should appreciate the attentions of men more, but she should resist them too, subtly, in a way both to encourage and discourage, so as not to lead to doubts of her purity and goodness but not to make the men feel snubbed – she is tired, her limbs heavy. She tries once more. ‘I know it sounds like nothing . . .’

  ‘It doesn’t at all,’ Louis says. ‘Look at your arm – the bruises he made. If I knew who he was . . .’

  ‘But what if he’s –’ She almost says obsessed or besotted, but it feels arrogant. ‘I don’t know. It’s as if he’s singled me out. What if he’s out there now, watching me? It just makes me –’ she shudders – ‘uneasy.’

  ‘What do you know of him?’

  ‘I know his name – he’s called Silas, and he gave me a bauble. It had a butterfly wing—’

  ‘The Cadaver!’ Louis says, sitting up. ‘What a beast.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Of course I know him. He makes us the creatures for our paintings. Well, he is an odd sort, but you needn’t worry about him, not really.’ Louis looks thoughtful for a moment. ‘Somebody told me that – Albie it was – yes, Albie. He said he thought he was loitering outside, that . . .’ Louis shakes his head. ‘No matter.’

  ‘What did Albie say?’

  ‘I can scarcely recall. I just remember he was afraid of him. I was absorbed in my sketching.’ He pauses. ‘But truly, I think it’s nothing. If you knew the Cadaver like I did, you’d know what a pitiful soul he is. He always used to loiter around Gower Street, trying to sell me and Millais dead whatnots for our paintings. He’s known for it. He flocks to any places where painters might be, peddling his creatures and bones. That will be why he was at the Academy too.’ Louis’s face is triumphant, as if he has solved a riddle. ‘Now it all makes sense. He’s quite harmless, I assure you, not as talented as he seems to think. He’s rather deluded.’ Louis shrugs. ‘I can go to his shop if you like, have a word. Ask him what he was doing, frightening you like that.’

  For a moment, Iris wavers. She pictures the scene: Louis playing her rescuer, elbowing his way in, raised voices, coaxings, threats, Silas recoiling. But she wants to forget this man, and she worries that Louis will provoke Silas, or magnify a cinder heap to a slag pit. Even now, he occupies the air between them. She shakes her head. ‘No. I’m sure you’re right. He’s just a fool. And it was mere chance.’

  Louis settles back. ‘Only if you’re certain – and if he bothers you again, you must tell me.’

  They take alternate drinks of port, and Louis’s hand is in hers. She traces her shoe along a roof tile. It is the kind of quiet love that she has always wished for, and she lays her cheek on his shoulder. He strokes her hair. Silas feels absurd, irrelevant, when she is this happy. Louis has reassured her that the man is just strange and lonely, and there was nothing premeditated in it. He merely held her wrist a little too tightly.

  ‘You know, a chap wanted to buy my painting.’

  ‘I couldn’t help overhearing.’

  ‘Well, I’ve decided not to sell it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because—’ he says. ‘Oh, you’ll think me sentimental.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You will,’ he says, and he starts to tickle her.

  ‘Fine!’ she gasps. ‘I will.’

  He sits back, his lips port-bruised. ‘I don’t know. It feels as though the painting is you. Isn’t that odd of me?’

  ‘But I’m me. I’m not a piece of canvas – I’m a real woman.’

  ‘Don’t remind me,’ he says, and he nuzzles against her neck. ‘It isn’t for sale. Not even if Ruskin himself were to ask. I did offer Mr Boddington The Shepherdess when it’s finished, and he’s taking it for three hundred.’

  ‘Three hundred pounds!’ She thinks of all the hours in the doll shop. It would take her fifteen years to earn that, hundreds of thousands of pink-lipped dolls. In that time, her sister would be worn away to nothing.

  ‘I’m going to give you fifty of it.’

  ‘What? You can’t.’

  ‘Why can’t I?’

  ‘But all I did was stand—’

  Louis scoffs. ‘I’m not paying you for that. No, you painted the meadow, the sky, those blasted buttercups. Dozens of them. It was a simple commission, and I won’t allow you to do it for free.’

  ‘I can’t accept it,’ she says, but when he puts up his hand to stop her resistance, she does not try again.

  She imagines Rose, mistress of her own shop, piles of fabric stacked like boxes of sweetmeats. Iris could accept it for her sister. And Albie with his blackened gums. She could give him three pounds towards his new teeth – an absurdly generous sum, she knows, but why shouldn’t she? She touches the rosette on her breast. Apart from Louis, he’s been the only friend to her in the last few months, and she sees how he suffers even if he doesn’t utter a syllable of it. He spoke to Rose, tried to coax a resolution between them, ran letters for her for nothing. And that would leave thirty-five pounds for Rose; she’ll keep twelve for herself.

  He kisses her on the forehead. ‘I don’t want to be apart from you, ever.’

  ‘You are sentimental,’ she says, though her chest feels expansive and sore at the same time. ‘What’s in your port? I worry I’ll have to carry you off to Bedlam soon.’

  ‘Very well. Carry me to bed.’

  ‘To Bedlam, you fool.’

  His words are as hot as wine. She sips from the decanter, and leans over and kisses him, hard. She passes the drink into his mouth, and he splutters and tells her that she is beastly, but she can tell he is aroused, too. He tastes sweet, of cinnamon and pipe tobacco. Aren’t they as good as married? She nudges her hand down his chest.

  ‘Should we climb back inside?’ he asks.

  ‘Should we?’ she asks, and there is nobody to see except the pigeons and the gulls as she tugs the studs free of his shirt. She does not worry over Silas any longer.

  Later that afternoon, Louis and Iris sit in her studio. The sun is ticking down for the day, and Louis is feasting on a bowl of peeled pears and chocolate.

  ‘Some gamboge, please,’ Iris says, and he drinks the last dregs of syrup.

  ‘You need some ultramarine too, to draw out the shadows.’ He picks up two oil-paint bladders and squeezes yellow and blue on to her palette.

  In her painting, behind the sketched outline of the man and woman arm in arm, there is a vase filled with irises and roses. She has drawn each petal, each stem. Now she needs to fill in their colours, breathe life into them with each turn of the brush. The bunch of irises which Louis bought her is browning fast, the petals crisping, but they will do. She sucks the sable to a point, then adds a thin wash of ultramarine watered down with linseed oil, but she leaves the canvas clear where the petal is milky and where the light lies. Louis says she is moving too fast, that she should do more preparatory sketches before committing to paint, but she ignores him.

  As she works, she makes demands like a pompous customer. ‘More blue. A little emerald – no, more – yes, and oil too.’ And he cleans the brushes she has finished with, splaying their soft fur.

  ‘Iris,’ Louis says, interrupting her steady, abstract concentration.

  ‘Mmm.’

  �
�Do you mind that we won’t ever be married?’

  She wipes her hand on the turpentine cloth and doesn’t reply. It feels too loaded a question for her to answer. She knows that he would like her to ease his concern, but she can’t. Because she does mind it, though she would rather have this than nothing.

  ‘I really do love you,’ he says.

  ‘I’m trying to paint.’

  ‘My cold-hearted Queen.’ He pauses. ‘Is that the bell? I’ll answer it. I wouldn’t want your masterpiece to be disturbed for a moment.’

  When the door closes behind him, she stares out of the window at the angles and pitches of London’s skyline. The city looks as small as a picture, conquerable, within reach, as if she could prise off all the roofs and play with the figurines inside them. Albie and his sister, Rose in the shop, her parents sitting at supper with their Bible.

  ‘Who was it?’ she asks.

  ‘You’d better go down.’ Louis pulls a face. ‘It’s your sister.’

  Iris stands, upsetting the palette. ‘Oh, and for you to answer the door—’

  She hurries downstairs, and catches her appearance in a looking glass. Her hair is loose and untidy, the dress she wears for painting crumpled and paint-stained, her fingernails thick with pigment. ‘Rose,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. I’m sorry – I—’

  ‘I should have written. It was rude of me to turn up like this. But when Mrs Salter sent me on an errand, I had to come, after yesterday.’

  Her sister stands in the hallway, wearing her usual wide-brimmed bonnet which shadows her face and its scars. She holds out a single iris. ‘They are only just blooming,’ she says.

  Iris takes it, and says fondly, ‘You were always so scornful of such extravagances. Did you know, I was painting one just now, but it was half-dead, and this will be perfect – oh, we don’t have any tea, and our biscuits are gone – Guinevere, who is a wombat, she broke into the tin.’

  She realizes how mad she must sound, and stops talking. Her sister follows her into the sitting room, and Iris winces at the mess. She clears a tortoiseshell comb (Guinevere’s) and a dirty brandy glass from the sofa, smooths the cushion, and Rose sits down.

  ‘How different you look! You always were wilder than me,’ Rose says, but she smiles when she says it.

  ‘Oh,’ Iris says, determining not to catch her reflection again. ‘I just look like this when I’m painting.’

  Rose looks at her, and her voice breaks. ‘I missed you. I was so – so jealous.’

  ‘Oh, I was awful too.’ She remembers running from her sister at the Exhibition, leaving her panicking in the crowd. Rose opens her mouth as if to apologize further, but Iris cannot bear it. There is something grotesque about seeing her sister humble herself with an apology (You saw me as pitiful, pathetic, she remembers, realizing again the truth of it) and the unkindness of this thought makes Iris want to cough, as if her throat is thick and oily.

  ‘I am so very—’

  ‘Please don’t,’ Iris says, interrupting her. She realizes how abrupt she sounds, and she sits on the sofa next to her. ‘What I mean is, there’s no need.’

  Iris reaches over, and they curl their fingers together. The feeling is as familiar as if Iris were holding her own hand. She stares at the small craters denting Rose’s knuckles. ‘Is Mrs Salter still half-human, half-pill?’

  ‘Her laudanum fits are worse than ever. She berated me for having a love affair with a china doll this morning.’

  Iris laughs, though it isn’t funny, and she imagines her old mistress in a pique of rage, twisting the soft skin of her sister’s elbow. ‘What if –’ Iris leans forward – ‘you were to set up a shop of your own?’

  ‘And shake a thousand silver pieces from a money tree.’

  ‘No,’ Iris says. ‘If I were to lend you the money for it.’

  Rose scoffs. ‘You’d never have enough. Think of it – rent, and the stock too. I’d need – I don’t know – maybe fifty pounds!’

  ‘You could borrow for the stock, with thirty-five pounds capital.’

  ‘But I don’t—’

  ‘I have it.’

  Rose stares at her. ‘How? How on earth—’

  ‘From painting.’

  ‘Thirty-five pounds? Thirty-five pounds?’

  ‘I helped Louis with the background to his painting, and then he sold it.’

  ‘How much for?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. He didn’t say,’ Iris lies.

  ‘I couldn’t take it. It’s your money.’

  ‘We could call it a loan at first, if you wanted.’

  ‘I’ll consider it,’ Rose says, cutting her off, and Iris worries she has been too hasty, too extravagant, that Rose might think she is lauding her new wealth and opportunities over her. No sooner has she got her sister back than she frightens her off again. She looks around this cluttered room, remembering how impressed she was at the beginning: the gold-framed paintings, the thick blue wallpaper, the peacock feathers, the volumes of periodicals and novels, the oriental cut of the cornicing. Rose must feel as she once did.

  ‘What are you painting?’ Rose asks.

  ‘I’ve just started something new. It isn’t very good, yet. It’s only a few shapes.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘Oh. I suppose you can, but . . .’

  ‘Louis is upstairs.’

  ‘Yes,’ Iris says.

  ‘Well,’ Rose says, pulling down her sleeves to hide the bruises on her arms. ‘Well, we met just before – and if he doesn’t object, of course.’

  ‘Come,’ Iris says, and Rose tucks her arm into hers as they take the stairs to Iris’s little studio.

  The Cellar

  Silas twists his sleeve. He is unaware that his hand is trembling, and he only stops when he hears the rip of fabric. He does not recognize the man he has become – agitated, untidy, unable to find joy in the simple pleasures which amused him before. She has done this to him – she and her trickery. He thinks of the painting, of the sweet look of adoration on her face, and he does not know why she will not love him. How can she fail to understand how deeply he adores her, how kind his interest has been, how much he has given her, the time and money he has spent on their friendship? She inflicts these wounds on him with such careless abandon – what for her may seem like a thoughtless scratch scores a deep ravine into his chest.

  If she hates him, he hates her even more. When she pulled her arm from him, his rage giddied him, and he could scarcely hold back from hurling himself at her, from throttling the life out of her pathetic wiry neck, from smashing her head against a gold frame, again and again and again. She deserves it – she has scorned him, rejected him, over and over, and he has given her more chances than he can count. Each time, she has flung back his kindness with a mounting rudeness.

  He falls to the floor. He gives way to grief, to anger, to loneliness, to jealousy, to feelings that he cannot name. And then, at last, he rubs his cheek and his expression stills. No, he thinks, he will not let this break him. He must have her. He will have her. He has been too hasty, made himself too vulnerable.

  He stands, climbs down to the basement where the walls are as dense as rock, where the only sound is the hum in his own ears, and he begins to plan.

  Over the next two weeks, he works relentlessly, harder even than he worked on the conjoined pups. He stitches the tears in his clothes, washes himself and dabs on his scent. Slowly, carefully, he moves his cellar specimens up to the shop, draining the fluid of the larger bottles jug by jug, and then transporting the wet creatures. It tires him, but he takes a satisfaction in the detail of it, the curated minutiae of his work. The excavation of each bottle yields a thrill, because it brings him closer to the time when everything will be ready. He fingers the shelves that he has emptied, proud of the labour that he undertook to clear them. No bridegroom was more scrupulous in his arrangements for his beloved, no lover more thoughtful. He has considered everything.

  It is different from his pr
eparations in the countryside – that small green world, the sky little more than a blue bead. The bushes thick with blackberries – he whispered to Flick about them. She looked surprised, and arched her lip because he was speaking to her and that was what people always did when he addressed them, and she checked over her shoulder to see if any of the other boys or girls were watching. He told her there was so much fruit in this place he’d found: the ground was carpeted with wild strawberries and there were plum trees, and apples so plentiful that the earth was soft with their pulp. He knew she was hungry from the way her bones poked through her clothes. She tucked her hair behind her ear and regarded him with a sly frown. He could see that she wasn’t sure if she believed him, and again that quick glance to check that nobody saw them speaking, that nobody would mock her for the association.

  The next day, with money from his London fund, he went to the markets and he bought fine fruits and told her he had picked them, and if she came with him, he could show her where. She took the harvest from him hastily, a snatch that nobody else saw. Her wrists were as thin as twigs, there was nothing but dusty, stale bread soaked in water for her noontime meal, and she devoured those fruits as if she had never been fed before.

  When the cellar is emptied of all but a wooden chair, it looks nothing more than a cave. A nest. He would like to make it homely for her like the cell in her painting – he is generous that way – to hang paintings, to add an armchair, bowls of rich food – but first he will have to trust her.

  He sits and imagines how he would escape if he had to. He stares at the damp stone walls, the way they bow over him like the roof of a mouth. He touches the rock. It is wet but it does not crumble. The floor is flat earth, polished and compacted from years of his foot-treads. The only light is from his lamp which he places on the ground – all brackets are gone, all fixtures removed. There can be no shard of glass, no possible weapon remaining. He has even taken the shelves away, though he dithered over removing the bell and decided to leave it as that way he will be able to hear the arrival of customers when he is with her.