by Alex Reeve
A mahogany wardrobe hulked in one corner, the knots in the wood glowering suspiciously at me. I could see myself in the mirror. I looked scared. Inside, three dresses were hanging, including the one Madame Moreau had been wearing at the cemetery. Beneath them, tucked away behind a pair of lumpy shoes, was an embroidered carpet bag with handles. I pulled it out and stared at it, remembering that I’d actually seen it before, in Maria’s room, dangling from a hook on her door.
I was about to open it when I heard a sound from downstairs.
I blew out the candle and waited in silence, sitting on the bed, hugging Maria’s bag to my chest.
For a while I almost thought I’d imagined it, but then there was the unmistakeable clank of a window being shut, and the whir of the finch’s wings in its cage. Someone was making a poor job of creeping about.
All my senses became heightened. The traffic on the City Road was rumbling like an approaching army, and my breath was deafening. I gripped the poker and eked myself on to the floor, slithering underneath the bed and lying flat against the rug.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. The door opened and a pair of shoes appeared – small shoes for small feet. It was just a child, a little girl, perhaps one of the ones who’d been playing outside. She walked around the room, pulling open the cupboard and burrowing in the wardrobe, humming a little song.
The silhouette of a face appeared, upside down, curly hair trailing on to the rug. She squinted, trying to determine if I was really a person; there wasn’t much light under there. I kept still, but she kept looking.
‘What are you doing, mister?’ she said.
‘Hiding.’
‘Who from?’
You seemed to be a ridiculous answer in the circumstances, so I changed tack. ‘This isn’t your house.’
‘Not yours, neither.’ Irrefutable logic.
I slid out from under the bed. She was about six years old with a bony, scrunched-up face like a knuckle, straggly red hair and a frank, analytical gaze. She eyed the bag and took a step backwards towards the doorway, ready to run if she had to.
‘The gentleman give me threepence,’ she said. ‘Another if I find it.’
The only people who knew about the bag and the letter were me and Madame Moreau … and the police.
I peeked between the curtains. There was a man standing in the alleyway opposite. He was dressed in dark clothes and keeping quite still, seeming to want to remain unobtrusive, although his attempt was impaired by his glossy top hat. He stepped out of the shadows to look up at the window, and in the dim light I could see a broad face decorated with a beard and lavish moustache. He was no policeman.
‘Did he tell you to find a bag, like this one?’
She nodded. Part of me wanted to give it to her, otherwise she’d have to return empty-handed, and what would he do to her then?
But I couldn’t.
‘I’ll give you a shilling if you just run away,’ I said, thanking goodness he was such a cheapskate. ‘Sixpence now, and another when he’s gone. Is that a deal?’
I held out a coin and she looked from it to me and back again, assessing her options. She could run downstairs and call out to that man, but then she wouldn’t get that extra sixpence.
‘The back door’s unlocked,’ I said.
Greed won over risk. She grabbed the coin and scampered away. I heard a faint click downstairs as the door closed.
I peeked through the window again, and the fellow was pacing around, impatiently working his jaw. I didn’t know whether to leave or not; if I did, he might hear me, but if I stayed he might come in himself, and I’d be trapped.
I waited five minutes, straining to hear every sound, almost jumping out of my skin when a cart rattled up the street. When I dared to look out again I was mightily relieved; he was striding away down the hill towards the city.
At the entrance to the alleyway I paused, looking both ways for the little girl. I was just about to give up when she appeared, staying just outside my reach in case I demanded my first instalment back.
I found a sixpence in my pocket and held it up to the sky. At arm’s length it was the size of the moon and just eclipsed it, a black disc with an eerie glow. I produced another sixpence and balanced both on the back of my finger, and then did my trick, flicking them up and snatching them out of the air in one movement. She didn’t so much as crack a smile, but glared at me with open suspicion, until I handed her one of the coins. When I gave her the other as well, she positively grinned.
‘For never telling anyone I was here. Agreed? Not a soul.’
‘Yes. Thank you, sir.’ I was sir now, apparently.
‘Are you …?’ I didn’t know what I wanted to ask. Are you safe? Are you healthy? I had the urge to take her back to Alfie’s and feed her a square meal, but she hurtled away with her profit before I could suggest it.
On the underground train, I opened the bag and sorted through the contents: Maria’s clothes and underclothes. I was overcome with the smell of her, transported to her room, watching from the bed while she hung up her frock and straightened the hem. I had to bury my face. The woman seated opposite me looked away.
I could feel something cold and metal in there too: a pair of keys. I held them up, and almost laughed. They were my keys. They had fallen out of my pocket in her room on that last evening, the last time I’d seen her. She must have been bringing them to me. She had meant to meet me at the theatre. She was a sweet, sweet girl.
At the bottom of the bag I could feel something else, a solid weight that wasn’t clothes. I pulled it out and almost gasped with shock; it was that hideous doll that had been sitting on her dressing table amidst all her perfumes and ointments when I was last with her, a loathsome thing, a parody of a baby, stillborn and grotesque. I’d been surprised then – she’d never seemed so sentimental. But this was no dog-eared keepsake; it was new, and expensive.
Jane had collected dolls in the room we used to share. Some of them had been gifts to me, but I had no use for them so they soon migrated towards her embrace, where they were named and posed and placed into the rigid hierarchy of her affections, in which only the finest few, the prettiest and most compliant, ever progressed to the hallowed sanctum of her pillow. None of my cast-offs ever made it that far, being tainted by orphandom, and they had to be content with lesser positions on the dresser and cupboards, but at least that was better than being trampled into the carpet on my side of the room with the books and puzzle pieces and sad, solitary chess men.
I rubbed the doll’s hair between my finger and thumb where it emerged through pinholes in its scalp, framing the doll’s bulbous face. I supposed it was made of a horse’s mane, heated and twisted into curls to encourage little girls to brush it.
An unwilling logic put the parts together in my mind. Maria had been pregnant and people give dolls to babies. Either she’d purchased it herself in expectation, or she’d received it from someone who knew about her condition. Either way, she’d honoured it in pride of place on her dressing table, her equivalent, I deemed, of Jane’s sacred pillow. And if that was true, then at some point, for some reason, she had been content to be pregnant. No one who was unhappy about it would tolerate a doll in their bedroom. I wondered what had changed. Why had she subsequently visited Madame Moreau?
But I had a more urgent concern: the letter from the soldier. That was why I’d gone into Madame Moreau’s house and expended all that energy, not to mention three sixpences. I needed to know who that soldier was.
I rifled through the rest of the bag, searching among her clothes. When I’d finished, and was sure I’d been thorough, I did it again.
But there was no letter.
13
In my room, I combed through every pocket and crevice of Maria’s dress, petticoats and undergarments. I spread them out and lay amongst them, first with my arms wide and then curled up, gathering her to me, hiding my face and sobbing.
Afterwards, I sat on the bed with the doll in my hands. I
didn’t like it looking at me so I faced it to the floor, but that seemed unkind, so I shoved it into a drawer, which seemed crueller still; a punishment. It struck me that perhaps I had wanted Jane to adopt those dolls of mine all those years ago, so they could receive rationed love from her rather than none at all from me.
Maria had never given me a gift. I would have adored a lock of her hair, wrapped in a ribbon, tucked into a little box that I would carry with me always. I half-wished I’d snipped some while she lay on Mr Hurst’s table, but that would’ve been a pretence. It wouldn’t have been a real gift.
But then, what of Maria was real? She had hidden things from me, and, worse, had told untruths. And they weren’t just wishful fantasies, as I had thought, they were substantial: a pregnancy and a soldier. Had she ever been truthful about anything? Perhaps she was no more real than the doll.
And yet I loved her anyway. Even if it was no more than infatuation, or worse, gratitude, I loved her, because she was the only person who knew what I was and didn’t care. In her eyes, I was as male as any other man. I may never have known the real Maria, but there was one thing I was certain of: she had known me.
Enough snivelling. I scooped the doll back into the carpet bag and made a decision. It was everything I had of Maria, but I still couldn’t abide it. Better it was loved by somebody else.
Late the following morning, after another shift at the hospital and four hours of sleep, I stumbled downstairs to the shop where Alfie was fiddling with some mechanical equipment, a drill of some kind. In his shirtsleeves, his forearms were hard and sinewy; no one would treat him lightly.
‘Have you seen anyone suspicious around here?’ I asked him. ‘A furtive, weaselly fellow.’
‘No.’ He frowned at me, running his fingers, shiny with grease, through his hair. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘He was hanging about outside. I didn’t like the look of him.’
‘I’ll keep an eye out.’
Constance came in when she heard my voice. ‘Nitrate of sodium,’ she barked, and Alfie grinned. He knew the answer, but I didn’t. My mind was slurry.
‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’
‘I’m helping Father with his machine.’ She gave me a monkey grin. ‘But I can still find time for tea and cake at your expense …’
‘Only if I get it wrong. All right then. Fever?’
She cackled at the suggestion. ‘Not even close.’
‘Indigestion?’ But I knew that was wrong. It was just the mention of cake that had made me think of it. ‘I think I should have more guesses for the last one. It’s only fair.’
‘You should’ve thought of that when you made the rules.’
She knew I wouldn’t get it. She actually licked her lips in anticipation, the wretch, and I couldn’t help but think of the urchin I’d met in Madame Moreau’s house. She’d been half Constance’s age and a quarter of her weight, a rat in the slums, breaking into houses and risking the workhouse or worse, and for what? That man would most likely have stolen back his money and beaten her too for good measure.
‘Well?’ demanded Constance.
I sighed, tired of the game. Tired of everything.
‘Ulcers!’ I declared with a kind of grim brio. ‘It has to be ulcers sometime.’
‘No it doesn’t,’ she beamed. ‘Nitrate of sodium is for heart disease!’
‘Very well, you win, young Miss Smith.’ I shook her hand formally. ‘If your father can spare you, we’ll head to the bakery forthwith so you can drain my resources with cake and cream and jam!’
In all my life I’d never seen anyone so thoroughly delighted.
Constance admired a high-class place on Regent Street with the name ‘Celine’s’ inscribed in exotic writing across the window. It was warm and cosy, with zinc-topped tables and a strong smell of coffee. She ordered a small selection of cakes, peering over the menu at me to be sure I didn’t mind such extravagance.
I ordered a pot of tea and felt my shoulders relax. I realised I’d been hunching them ever since I left Cripplegate.
Constance was enthralled, staring at the gilded mirrors and neat, efficient serving girls as if she’d fallen into a fairy tale.
‘I’m going to Paris one day,’ she declared.
‘Why? Is it so different from here?’
‘I don’t know. That’s why I want to go there.’
I glanced around at the room – at the staff dressed in the French style, a picture of the Parisian skyline pasted on to one wall, English people drinking Indian tea and crunching on Italian biscuits.
‘I don’t suppose it’s very much like this.’
‘Exactly!’
She sat back, her mood drooping as we waited for the cakes.
‘Father’s very worried,’ she said eventually.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘He’s at his ledgers all the time.’ She wound her fingers into the tablecloth. ‘I know we’re running out of money.’
Alfie had told me that the pharmacy had thrived when Helena, his wife, was alive, but since then it had diminished despite all his efforts. I had never met her – she died six years previously – but he said she was quite a lady, a former schoolteacher, intelligent and forthright. He also said that Constance was the image of her, which always made Constance blush, although she confessed to me once that she could scarcely remember her mother, and there were no pictures of Helena in the house.
‘I offered him the rent early.’
‘But you can’t afford it either. You should try to get your old position back. It’s no good being glum all the time. Have you even tried?’
‘Of course,’ I lied.
But she was wise, even at eleven. ‘You must, and soon.’
‘You needn’t be concerned about money.’ I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘Your father has a new venture that he’s confident will be a success.’
‘I know. He gets these ideas. Last time, he decided to become a photographer and sent away for the parts to make a camera. They’re still outside in the box they came in. And the time before that he took an interest in glass-blowing.’
‘You mustn’t worry about it. He’s doing his best to take care of you.’
‘Someone has to do the worrying, Mr Stanhope.’
She was a little shame-faced, but I hadn’t meant to admonish her. And perhaps she was right to be worried. If the pharmacy failed, Alfie would have to find a position working for someone else and wouldn’t be able to afford Constance’s education. The ragged schools wouldn’t take her at eleven, so she would have to find work too, most likely in a factory. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect. I had hoped she might one day become a governess, but then remembered it was the future my father had intended for me, having little faith I would attract a husband. I vowed to make certain Constance could pursue any path she chose.
The girl arrived with a tray, and unloaded a flowery teapot, two china cups and saucers and a fluted plate of iced fairy cakes. Constance’s eyes were as wide as the saucers. I could tell she was trying to be polite, so I nudged a pastry fork in her direction.
‘Go ahead.’
I tried to drink my tea but it was too hot against my bruised mouth, so I sat in thirsty silence and watched her eat. She was meticulous, making the most of every forkful, holding the plate beneath her chin to catch any crumbs, and then prodding around it with the end of a licked finger.
‘I have something for you,’ I said. ‘It’s not new, but I thought you might enjoy it.’ I produced the doll and waggled it at her, making its head wobble morbidly from side to side.
‘Oh,’ she said, her mouth still full from the last cake. ‘Thank you. She’s beautiful.’
Something in her manner seemed less than excited. ‘Are you too old for such things now?’
‘I still have my dolls from when I was little.’ She was trying to appear grateful, cradling it and examining its clothing. ‘I shall call her … wait.’ She was searching under the neck of the dres
s. ‘There’s something here.’
She withdrew a piece of paper, folded into an inch square, which had been tucked inside the doll’s clothing. She opened it out and it was a sheet of blue writing paper, translucent at the creases as if it had been read and refolded many times.
‘Let me see,’ I said, but she moved it out of reach.
‘It’s a letter. To someone named Maria. Was the doll hers before?’
‘Yes. Can I have it now, please?’
‘From Major Augustus Thorpe. An officer!’ Her eyes were scanning down the page. ‘Oh poor Maria. He’s broken her heart. Who is she?’
‘Someone I … I knew. It’s not your business.’
‘But it’s so sad. Were they in love?’
‘No. Can I see it now please?’
‘Did she move away?’
‘No.’
‘Then why doesn’t she want the doll any more?’
‘For goodness’ sake, just give me the letter, Constance!’
She placed it on the table between us, making clear how offended she was.
I didn’t know why I was so cross. I should’ve just let her read the letter in peace; she’d found it after all, and it wasn’t mine any more than it was hers. I’d intended this to be a treat for her, and I’d ruined it. We sat in silence for a while, as I poked my tongue into the gap between my teeth, feeling the sore strands of flesh in the socket.
‘I need to read it,’ I said.
‘Very well,’ she replied, icily polite.
I picked the damn thing up.
The handwriting was upright and elegant, and it was on well-cut bond paper; an educated gentleman.
Augustus Thorpe (Major), St George’s Barracks, London
January 16th 1880
My dear Maria,
It pains me to write this, and yet I must. It is my duty to my family and my regiment.
I have no desire to cause you anguish, but in all conscience I cannot continue to meet with you as we have these past months. Your circumstances make it impossible. I’m sure you understand why this is.