The Doll Factory

by Elizabeth Macneal

  He tries to pull a stone free from the ceiling. He tugs with all his strength, but he only grazes his knuckles and chips a nail. No, she will stay safe here. He will let her back into the world when she proves that she loves him. That it will happen, he does not doubt.

  He climbs back up to the shop, arranges his tools neatly. The bindings are made of a thick, dense fabric and he will loop her hands as tightly as a surgeon’s bandage. There is a gag, and most importantly a handkerchief and the glass vials of chloroform he has travelled all over London to obtain from different chemists. He counts them out, wagging his finger over them. Twenty-eight. Twenty-eight bottles! He remembers the foolish lapdog, its brimming eyes, the fading thrum of its heart as he smothered it.

  All he has to do is wait for the time when she will not be missed, when she is alone. His shop has been ready for a week. It feels like he has been ready his whole life.

  Teeth

  Albie has begun to smell that chemical scent of Silas everywhere, even finds it embedded in his grimy palms. There have been moments when he’s begun walking to Iris’s door, convinced he will warn her, but every time, he pictures his sister with her throat cut, and him, mourning her alone.

  He notes the shift in Silas’s mood; the hazy stumbling replaced by a more alarming attentiveness. Silas watches Iris from the stroke of eleven until four o’clock, and then he hurries back to his shop. He has left his window locked, not that Albie would dare to climb in again. Albie remembers the pink-dyed ostrich feather tucked under the bed, and when he asked after Bluebell, he was told that a few weeks ago she’d slipped and fallen and died in a gutter – and Albie had choked back a cry.

  His sister has teased him about his endless fidgeting, his inability to concentrate, to entertain her with his street ditties as he once did. ‘What’s wrong, my buttercup?’ she asked. ‘If you’re fretting you’ll be given to the men too, you needn’t worry – Moll’s brother needed the tin more’n I do. You’re to go to the Ragged Schools and get an ed-cashun.’ But he wriggled free of her and wouldn’t tell her a thing.

  It is five o’clock now. He knows Silas won’t move from his shop until the morrow, and he tries to relax, to snatch these precious hours of sleep before he’s booted out at eight o’clock and not allowed to return until his sister’s night labour is over.

  He stares at her, with her white hair splayed against the pillow, mouth slack. She lies so still with her limbs at such an awkward angle that he is gripped by a fear that she is dead. He touches her cheek. Her breath steams his hand.

  There is a rap at the window, and Albie jumps – it will be Silas again.

  ‘Alb,’ someone calls, but it is the boy who used to lead him to the dead creatures.

  ‘Shhh,’ he whispers back, ‘Sister’s trying to sleep.’

  ‘Can’t hear you,’ the boy bellows back. ‘Meet me outside.’

  Albie casts off the grey blanket and plods up the stairs.

  ‘There’s that woman again what wants to see you,’ the boy says. ‘Gave me a penny if I found you.’

  Albie shakes his head. ‘Tell her you couldn’t.’

  He shrugs. ‘Tough. She’s down there.’

  Albie turns, and Iris waves. Her red hair is crinkled and she picks her way through the rivulets of piss and vinegar and horse and human shit, and Albie holds up his hand.

  ‘Miss – wait – this ain’t a fit place for the likes of you.’

  She points at the stained building, its walls crooked. ‘You live here?’

  ‘I do, miss,’ he says. He won’t look at her.

  ‘I have something for you.’ She opens her arms to embrace him, but he stays where he is. ‘You’re harder to track than a ghost these days. Come – I’ve got tea and a surprise.’

  He follows her through the streets, with all the enthusiasm of a miserable lapdog being dragged by a capricious owner.

  But when they get to Louis’s door, he shakes his head. ‘I ain’t got time to come in.’

  ‘I bought cold custard especially,’ she says. ‘Easy to eat with your tooth—’

  ‘Ain’t hungry, miss,’ he says, just as his stomach defies him by growling, and he wonders that she hasn’t noticed his missing fang. He pulls his lip lower. ‘Got a sickness.’

  ‘Won’t you step in?’

  ‘I’ve errands to run.’ He speaks churlishly, forcing a distance between them.

  He won’t look at her. He won’t. All the same, he reads the surprise, the disappointment in her voice.

  Coward.

  ‘At least come for your surprise,’ she says, and he has no option but to step inside.

  He sees her shoes turn towards him. They are grimed like the braiding of her skirt, a sticky brown stain caused by his street.

  ‘Well, if you don’t have long.’ She clears her throat. ‘Louis sold the painting of The Shepherdess, the one he was painting you for, and I – he, rather, gave some of the proceeds to me.’

  Albie is barely listening. He stares at the patterned carpet, thinking of the rotten steps in his rookery. His sister, the way she slept so peaceably.

  ‘The thing is,’ she continues, ‘I wanted to give you three pounds towards your teeth.’

  ‘What?’ His head snaps up, and he makes the error of looking in her face, at her kindly eyes. He glances away, resuming his study of the rug.

  ‘For your teeth. I know it’s a significant sum, and some might think it foolish, but you’re as good as a brother to me.’ She pauses. ‘I didn’t know that – do you really live in that rookery? Does your sister—?’

  Albie says nothing.

  Warn her, you lily-livered pup – you selfish wretch – you milksop!

  He starts to scratch his arms. Little bubbles of blood form, as shiny as paste diamonds, and still he gouges with his nails.

  He sees her reach into her pocket, and he wishes she wouldn’t, that she’d leave him be. He deserves nothing.

  Tell her, you blasted fool!

  And before he can stop himself, he seizes the money from her hand as fast as a thief, and starts to run.

  ‘Albie—’ she calls after him, and she sounds shocked, wounded by his rudeness.

  Good, he thinks, because he didn’t ask for the money – he didn’t – and he wants to slam himself on to the pavement, to hurt himself against the wheels of a cart.

  Megalosaurus, Megalosaurus, Megalosaurus—

  He tries to concentrate on the words, but they twist.

  Megalosiris, Megalosiris, Iris, Iris, Iris, Iris—

  He can’t run for long, not when his chest is gasping and his nose is blocked.

  Albie arrives at the shop, snot on his upper lip, the whites of his eyes as pink as sherbet. He scrubs at the wetness on his cheek with one hand, the other clamped around the notes. He daren’t let go, not even for a moment.

  ‘Scram!’ the proprietor bellows, shielding his jars of teeth from Albie’s reach.

  ‘I got the tin, don’t I?’ Albie insists, but he won’t make a show of it, not when he’s seen a costermonger knifed for two guineas.

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘I ain’t going to, not ’til you’ve showed me a set of fine ivories.’

  ‘Who you gulled for it? Pinched it, I ’spect.’

  ‘What’s it to you? Ain’t nothing to you where I got it, even if it was from honest means.’

  The proprietor sighs, and lets him in, though he keeps a hand on the scruff of Albie’s jacket.

  The teeth are laid out in pearly splendour, as valuable as silver lockets. Hard pink gums, white polished teeth.

  ‘Got three pounds, sir – will you take that for the sea-cow – only three shillings short I am, what with your Exhibition sale on, and those are the ones I want, sir, won’t crack like the porcelains or stain yellow like them Waterloos.’

  He checks the notes, a surreptitious glance, and is horrified to see that he holds five curled bills for a pound each.

  Was it the lowness of his rookery that made her give him more o
n a whim? Hearing about his sister?

  You’re as good as a brother to me.

  ‘Ain’t enough,’ the man says.

  ‘I got enough.’ Albie says. ‘I was mistaken.’

  ‘And don’t even think of running off with them in your filthy maw, or I’ll box them so far down your throat they’ll stick in your stomach.’ The man unlocks the glass cabinet, and hands Albie the teeth.

  The gold hinge is handsome, like a coiled lock of hair, and the teeth – why, he’s never seen a sight like them. He shakes a little as he forces them into his mouth.

  They feel obscenely large, swollen, and he tries to speak but just says ghrggghhh.

  ‘Takes a time to get used to,’ the man says, handing him a mirror.

  Albie smiles, and clasps his jaw. They are beautiful. He is beautiful. It is all he’s wanted, all he’s yearned for. His face with a normal grin on it. Smooth, straight rows. He flicks his tongue over the back of them. Why, they’re better than his sister’s—

  His sister, sprawled on the bed. His sister, for whom the men will come soon – what five pounds would mean for her, how it could pay off her debts and untether her from the rookery, while he fritters it away on a mere vanity—

  He spits out the teeth, and before he can stop himself, he’s wriggled free of the man and left the sea-cow ivories on the counter.

  A Review and a Reply

  Excerpt from ‘Exhibition of the Royal Academy, second notice’ printed in The Times of London, 7 May 1851

  We cannot censure at present as amply or as strongly as we desire to do, that strange disorder of the mind or the eyes which continues to rage with unabated absurdity among a class of juvenile artists who style themselves PRB, which, being interpreted, means Pre-Raphæl-brethren. Their faith seems to consist in an absolute contempt for perspective and the known laws of light and shade, an aversion to beauty in every shape, and a singular devotion to the minute accidents of their subjects, including, or rather seeking out, every excess of sharpness and deformity [. . .]

  These young artists have unfortunately become notorious by addicting themselves to an antiquated style, and an affected simplicity in painting, which is to genuine art what the mediæval ballads and designs in Punch are to Chaucer and Giotto. With the utmost readiness to humour even the caprices of art, when they bear the stamp of originality and genius, we can extend no toleration to a mere servile imitation of the cramped style, false perspective, and crude colour of remote antiquity. We want not to see what Fuseli termed drapery “snapped instead of folded”, faces bloated into apoplexy, or extenuated to skeletons, colour borrowed from the jars in a druggist’s shop, and expression forced into caricature. [. . .]

  That morbid infatuation which sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling to mere eccentricity, deserves no quarter at the hands of the public.’

  Excerpt from John Ruskin’s letter to the editor, printed in The Times of London, 12 May 1851

  Sir,

  Your usual liberality will, I trust, give a place in your columns to this expression of my regret that the tone of the critique which appeared in The Times of Wednesday last on the works of Mr. Millais, [Mr. Frost] and Mr. Hunt, now in the Royal Academy, should have been scornful as well as severe.

  I regret it, first, because the mere labour bestowed on those works, and their fidelity to a certain order of truth (labour and fidelity which are altogether indisputable) ought at once to have placed them above the level of mere contempt; and, secondly, because I believe these young artists to be at a most critical period of their career – at a turning point, from which they may either sink into nothingness or rise to very great greatness; and I believe also, that whether they choose the upward or downward path may in no small degree depend upon the character of the criticism which their works have to sustain [. . .] I must take leave to remonstrate with you when you say sweepingly, that these men “sacrifice truth, as well as feeling to eccentricity” [. . .]

  But, before entering into such particulars, let me correct an impression which your article is likely to induce in most minds, and which is altogether false. These pre-Raphaelites (I cannot compliment them on common sense in choice of a nom de guerre) do not desire nor pretend in any way to imitate antique painting, as such. They know little of ancient painting who suppose the works of these young artists to resemble them [. . .] They intend to return to early days in this one point only – that, as far as in them lies, they will draw either what they see, or what they suppose might have been the actual facts of the scene they desire to represent, irrespective of any conventional rules of picture making.

  [. . .]

  I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,

  THE AUTHOR OF MODERN PAINTERS.

  Denmark-hill, May 9

  Malady

  62 Great King Street, Edinburgh

  MAY 11TH

  My love, my strong knight, my Valentine,

  My malady worsens; I grieve that you have ignored my previous letters – how can you care so little for me?

  The doctors say it is hopeless. Clarissa has nursed me through the last months with the kindness a lover ought to have bestowed. I beg you to come to my side before I depart this mortal coil.

  “And call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honour me.”

  Until then, I remain,

  Your Sylvie

  62 Great King Street, Edinburgh

  MAY 11TH

  Dearest Louis,

  I promised I would write when the end neared. I believe it to be imminent; it could be mere hours.

  She calls for you constantly, but before you attend her, you must brace yourself for much physical change. She is thin, wasted by this cancer. Her face bears spots, her figure shows the signs of these tumours. It is a cruel, degrading disease.

  I urge you to ease the conscience of a dying woman. I would not like you to have cause for regret when it is too late.

  Jane has recalled your son from school; he is travelling home now.

  I pray you will arrive in time.

  With love,

  Clarissa

  Edinburgh

  ‘Have you seen it?’ Millais asks, as soon as Iris opens the door. He rests his topper on the stand. ‘Louis! Louis – where are you, sir? Have you read today’s Times?’

  ‘Seen what?’ Louis asks. His cheeks are a little rosy – Millais rang the bell at the moment when Iris tipped into ecstasy, and they dressed hurriedly, giggling like a pair of flower sellers. His shirt studs are buttoned wrong.

  ‘This,’ Millais says, stabbing at a newspaper. He begins to read, ‘“Your usual liberality” – blah blah – “their fidelity to a certain order of truth etc. – ought at once to have placed them above the level of mere contempt.”’

  ‘What are you jabbering about?’ Louis asks, but Iris can see that his interest is piqued, and he steps forward and takes the paper from Millais.

  ‘Ruskin,’ Millais breathes. ‘He wrote to The Times – he has defended us. John Ruskin! And he has explained our principles perfectly.’

  Iris reads the article over Louis’s shoulder, but she is only halfway through when he says, ‘It is good, really. It isn’t glowing – not at all. But it avoids partisanship, and that may carry more.’

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous? He wrote to me,’ Millais says, taking out a neatly pressed letter as if he were a butler presenting a pristine bowl of turtle soup. ‘He wanted to buy The Return of the Dove but it’s sold. Oh, if only I’d waited! He enquired about your Guigemar too.’

  ‘You can tell him it isn’t for sale,’ Louis says.

  ‘But it’s Ruskin,’ Millais says, aghast, and Iris hides a smile. Louis might as well have announced that he’d just cut and rolled the canvas into a hundred cigars. ‘This isn’t a Mr Boddington, or a city clerk. This is Ruskin, the greatest critic of our times.’

  ‘I know perfectly well who he is,’ Louis says. ‘And it isn’t for sale.’ He seems to absorb the news. ‘But Ruski
n, he really wanted to buy it?’

  ‘He did,’ Millais says.

  ‘Well, abuse is in the air too, let’s not forget,’ Louis says, and Iris recalls his and Millais’s feigned nonchalance when Punch published balloon-headed parodies of Mariana and The Imprisonment the week before, and the review in The Times that made Louis light the broadsheet with a match. Cramped style, crude colour, caricature. Louis rattles the paper. ‘But surely this, this could be our tipping point, couldn’t it? Our moment of stepping into greatness.’

  Millais nods. ‘I believe so.’

  ‘It is too wonderful,’ Iris says.

  She follows the men into the sitting room. Louis leaves briefly to pay a child to bring them hot pies and brandy. Iris does not want to drink any longer; her head aches from the day before. She invited Rose, but she had agreed with Mrs Salter that she would not leave the shop until a new apprentice was found, and Louis and Iris rowed to Richmond with Rossetti and Hunt. They brought two bottles of claret and curaçao. It was a beautiful May afternoon, pink flowers on the riverbanks and the shadows of trout drifting under the surface. All the men were awful boatswains, and she took the oars for most of the way back with Louis’s help, much to Rossetti’s indignation. It was not, as Louis pointed out, an outrage sufficiently strong to drive him to take the paddles himself. But Louis’s arm knocked against hers as she pulled the water back, and he glanced at her, his eyes brimming with affection.

  It is late afternoon when the letter arrives. Millais has gone out for a stroll and Iris is on the sofa sketching a bowl of strawberries in charcoal. She can’t get the smooth roundedness of them right in her painting, the way the stalks should sit in relation to the rim of the bowl. Louis has told her to draw them repeatedly, so her hand can learn their shapes. She is using his tucked legs as a surface on which to lean her sketchbook.

  The bell rings and Louis sighs. ‘I’m sorry to remove your bureau,’ he says, and he is only gone for a minute. When he returns, he sits next to her and does not look at her. He holds a letter.