by Sylvia Waugh
“The shop’s closed,” said Lorna. “We’re not customers.”
“Neither are we,” said Jamie with a smile. “We’re family. We’ve come to see Aunt Daisy.”
Billy passed by Albert, brushing his sleeve. He looked up at him and saw a face he felt was familiar. But three years is a long time, and he had seen Albert briefly only twice. Lorna smiled at Molly. Then she and Albert went on their way.
“Jamie!” said Daisy, rising slowly from her seat as she saw her cousin’s son and his family enter. She grasped her stick and walked to meet them. “With all the business I’ve been up to, I clean forgot it was today you were coming.”
“Well, we’ll go out and come back, if you like,” joked Jamie, “give you time to collect your scattered wits.”
“Cheeky!” said Daisy. “Come on through to the back and sit yourselves down. I’ve plenty of leftovers from the tea we’ve just had. And I’ll soon make you a nice cuppa.”
“It’s all right, Aunt Daisy,” said Molly, “we’ve just eaten.”
“Nonsense,” said Daisy, filling the kettle and plugging it into the point on the wall, “you’ve got to have a cup of tea now you’re here.”
The back kitchen had been built on some years ago. It was small but it had a cooker, a sink, a fridge, a set of sturdy kitchen chairs and a big square table. It was less formal than entertaining at the round table in the shop with the lace-edged cloth and the silver tea-service. But Jamie was family.
The Maughans drank tea and even managed to eat some of the cakes and sandwiches, feeling that Daisy would be disappointed if they didn’t.
“Now,” said Daisy, after they had declared that they could eat and drink no more, “I have a surprise for you. A big surprise.”
She was clearly excited, the expression on her face as young as Billy’s.
They all looked at her expectantly.
Daisy got up slowly and made her way towards the coat-stand.
“Well, where are we going?” said Molly as she saw her take down her outdoor coat.
“Just upstairs,” said Daisy, “to the flat. But you know me by now. If I go out I like to have my coat on.”
“Been buying something big?” said Jamie, knowing that the flat had long been used as a storeroom.
“Bigger than you can possibly imagine,” said Daisy with a laugh.
CHAPTER 31
Just a Memory
“SO WHERE IS it?” said Jamie.
All four were standing at the top of the stairs in the flat above Daisy’s shop. The doors around them were closed.
“What is it?” asked Billy, beginning to feel curious in spite of himself. Inside every thirteen-year-old there’s a ten-year-old fighting to regain lost ground.
Daisy smiled up at him. Small he might be, but he was still a bit taller than Aunt Daisy.
“It’s a dolls’ house,” said Daisy.
“A dolls’ house!” said Billy in tones of disgust. “Them’s just for little girls. I thought you had something really interesting!”
“Don’t be so bad-mannered, Billy,” said his mother. “A dolls’ house can be very valuable if it’s old and special. It can be a collector’s piece. And your Aunt Daisy would know all about that if anybody would.”
“Well, where is it?” said Jamie.
“Here,” said Daisy, indicating all of the doors with a wave of one plump arm.
“What do you mean?” said Jamie.
“I’ll show you.”
She opened the door that led to the kitchen.
Vinetta was still standing there, frozen in the act of ironing.
As Billy looked at her, he felt a shiver. He had never seen her before, or anyone precisely like her. But she was somehow familiar, recognisable as a special sort of rag doll, generic with at least two that he had seen before. The recognition was imprecise and fleeting, but Billy stood still staring at her.
Daisy looked at him, amused.
“Dumbstruck?” she said. “Thought you might be.”
She went closer to Vinetta.
“This is Mrs Mennym,” she said. “I call my family Mennym after the people who have looked after them for the past fifty years or so. This one’s first name is Agatha. I haven’t named all of the others yet. I want to get names with the right flavour.”
They went to the living-room. Jamie and Molly exclaimed on the furnishings and the dolls at the table and on the floor.
“Last time I saw this place it was a total shambles, all boxes and crates and what-have-you,” said Jamie. “There’s some work gone into this, not to mention money.”
“Did it all meself,” said Daisy and then laughed at Billy whose face was a picture.
“We-ell,” she added, “I did have some help. It’s a few years since I packed in the weight-lifting!”
Billy didn’t know quite what to say. So he said nothing.
Daisy lifted the girl doll from the hearth rug and sat it on a chair. Then she held up the American doll and pulled its string.
“My-name-is-Polly,” said the doll. “What-is-your-name?”
Daisy pulled the string again.
“Would-you-like-a-Chocolate-Milk?” asked the doll.
“This is just a shop doll,” said Daisy. “No more than ten years old, if that. I’ll tell you the whole story of where they all came from and how they’re all here, when we go downstairs again.”
Billy looked across at the girl doll in the chair, golden hair tied in bunches, and suddenly he knew! He had seen Wimpey skipping along the path in front of Comus House. That was three years ago, but it was a strongly etched memory, part of that series of events that he would never forget. If this was not the same doll, it was certainly the work of the same factory that turned them out. Daisy saw him looking.
“I’ve called that one Miranda,” she said, “but I haven’t fixed on any names for her sisters yet. It all takes time.”
“Where did you buy them?” said Billy. “Did you get them from up our way? In Allenbridge mebbe?”
“No,” said Daisy with a long, slow no that implied that such a thought was ridiculous. “We’ll see the rest of them first. Then we’ll go back to the shop for a natter and another cup of tea.”
When the story was told, Billy was none the wiser. He did not mention his memory of any of them. He did not want them asking questions. Goodness knows where questions might lead! But he kept on thinking and thinking as he trailed behind his parents on the road up to the car park.
Billy was sitting in the front seat next to his dad, and was still trying hard to think of some way of getting back to Aunt Daisy’s on his own. They were a few miles out of Castledean, nearly within sight of Tidy Hill, when Molly gave him the idea he had been looking for.
“You’ve been very quiet all day, Billy,” she said, talking from the back seat over her husband’s shoulder. “If there’s something wrong, say. You know I always listen.”
Billy knew only too well what the emphasis meant. His dad was no listener!
“I wish you’d let me be like other lads,” said Billy. “There’s kids in my class go all over the place by themselves. Jimmy Reed’s no bigger than me – and he’s two months younger – but his ma lets him go on his own to see his gran in Rimstead every other Sunday. Me, I can never go anywhere on me own!”
“Don’t say ‘ma’,” said Molly. “It sounds common.”
“You’re as bad as he is,” said Billy. “You’re not listening to me at all.”
“Call me what you like, so long as you call me,” said Jamie, trying to make a joke of it.
“Shut up Jamie,” said Molly. “I’m sorry, Billy. I know what you’re trying to say. But I’m not sure what you want me to do about it.”
“Just trust me a bit more,” said Billy eagerly. “Let me come into Castledean by meself. I’ll not get lost, y’know. You’re worse for gettin’ lost than I am.”
“Where would you go?” said Molly.
“I could go to Aunt Daisy’s and see the dolls
again,” he said. “That would do for a start.”
“You said that dolls were just for girls,” Jamie reminded him.
“Not them dolls,” said Billy. “They’re too big. They’re like figures in a waxworks museum.”
“They’re made of cloth, not wax,” said Jamie.
“I know that,” said Billy, “but you know what I mean. Mam does.”
He looked at his mother for support.
“I know,” said Molly, “and I don’t see why you shouldn’t go and see them again – on your own. Next Saturday maybe.”
“How would he get there?” said Jamie. “By bus? It’s not as easy as coming down in the car. I won’t have time to fetch him back, either.”
“I don’t want you to fetch me, Dad, and I don’t want you to take me,” said Billy loudly. “I want to go there and back, by meself, on the bus, like any other person would.”
“So you’re a person now?” said Jamie. “A proper-sized person, ready to take on the world?”
That was too much for Molly.
“Yes, he’s a person. Hadn’t you realised?” she said, irritation showing in her voice. “You can go on Saturday, Billy. I’ll give you the fare, and I’ll leave you to find out the bus times yourself. I would like to know what time bus you’ll be getting back, that’s all.”
“He’ll be off gallivantin’ with that Joe Dorward, I’d like to bet,” growled Jamie.
“No he’ll not,” said Molly. “I trust him, if you don’t. By yourself means by yourself, doesn’t it, Billy?”
“It needn’t,” said Billy, anxious not to commit himself for future outings, “not always. But this time it will. I’ll not even tell Joe where I’m going.”
CHAPTER 32
The Empty House
ON FRIDAY AFTER tea, Albert and Lorna left Matthew with his grandmother once more and went to pay a visit to Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove. Some day soon, Jennifer would have to be persuaded to inspect and approve the empty house. No one in the family was sure whether she would ever agree to live there, no matter what plans had been made.
“I’d like to go and look at it, now that it’s empty,” said Lorna. “I’d like to try and see it through my mother’s eyes. She can be very unreasonable at times.”
“Can’t we all?” said Albert, the most reasonable of men.
“Well,” said Lorna, “in this case it is Mother’s unreasonableness that is our concern. And in case you’ve a mind to go all scholarly and pedantic on me, it is her unreasonableness with regard to moving house. She knows it will be for the best, but to my mind she is still dragging her feet.”
So Albert and Lorna took on the responsibility of looking at Number 5, checking that everything was in order.
They let themselves in by the front door and saw at once that the job had been done very thoroughly. The wood boards of the floor were spotlessly clean. A faded patch on the wall showed where the mirror had hung. Outlines of departed pictures and furniture were all they saw as they inspected each room in the house. Even the picture-hooks had been carefully removed from the walls. There were still bulbs in the ceiling lights, but every lampshade had gone.
Lorna and Albert were aware of their footsteps ringing loudly on the bare floorboards. It was not an eerie sound, rather the reverse, healthy, robust and assertive. The Mennyms, they felt, were well and truly ousted, like ghosts that have been exorcised.
“She should be satisfied,” said Lorna as they walked along the top landing. “This is as empty a house as anyone could hope to find. It can be redecorated from top to bottom before they move in.”
But then they came to the staircase at the end of the landing, the narrow, half-hidden staircase that led to the attic.
“Oh!” said Lorna abruptly. “We never looked up there. It could need clearing.”
“Daisy might have done it,” said Albert.
“I doubt it,” said Lorna. “She would only take the things that were on the checklists we gave her. If she found anything else she would have said. You must know that. You know her better than I do.”
“We’d better go up there and have a look,” said Albert. “With a bit of luck, we’ll find only water-tanks and pipework.”
They climbed the narrow staircase and stood outside the attic door. Its wedge-shape, one side longer than the other, made it look more like the door to a cupboard.
“We might not be able to see much,” said Albert as he turned the door-handle.
But as the door opened, they saw pale shafts of evening sunlight slanting down from two dusty skylights in the roof. They found themselves looking at a great space spreading beneath the rafters to the wall at the gable-end of the house. The air was musty. Cobwebs like fragile stalactites hung down from the underside of the roof. The area beyond the skylights was deep in gloom. In a socket attached to the central rafter was a light bulb, unlit of course.
Albert and Lorna looked helplessly at the mess. The floor space was covered with all sorts of objects that would need closer inspection. And the attic was growing darker by the minute.
“We’ll have to switch on the light,” said Lorna. “Can you see the switch anywhere?”
Albert found it just outside the door.
“Good job we didn’t have the power turned off,” he said.
The bulb was not very strong, but it gave enough light for them to see things a bit more clearly. In front of them, slightly to their left, they saw the back of a big old-fashioned wooden rocking chair. Over it was draped a dark-grey knitted blanket. Just visible beside it was a velvet footstool with little, curved legs. Albert and Lorna walked into the room.
And then they saw the big rag doll, lying in the rocking chair.
Lorna stepped back, startled. The hand that hung over the edge of the chair-arm was made of blue cloth. The foot on the footstool was wearing ordinary trainers, such as any young man might wear. But the head, oddly tilted and partly sunk on its chest, was all blue, except for a pair of silver button eyes that she could fancy were looking at her. The doll was well padded and wearing a blue tracksuit trimmed with white. Dust had settled on it, but not as thickly as on the other objects in the room.
Lorna, with all her knowledge of the dolls that had been found in the room below, quickly recovered.
“If my mother saw that,” she said, “she would never move in here at all.”
“I can’t say I’d blame her,” said Albert. “It is unnerving. Why was this one not with the others? Why did they care for the rest and leave this one all on its own?”
Lorna went up to the chair and looked at the doll more closely.
“It has been cared for,” she said. “That tracksuit is quite new. The doll itself is clean and neat under that layer of dust. It can’t have been here all that long. It’s hard to fathom.”
“Perhaps they put this one out of the way because of its blue face,” said Albert. “It doesn’t match the others at all, does it?”
“Except that it’s another rag doll,” said Lorna, “and presumably it too was made by Aunt Kate.”
She raised the doll’s head and straightened its torso into a more lifelike position. Then, ever a champion of the underdog, she began to feel sorry for this doll that had not been considered good enough to place with the others. With her hands she gently brushed the dust from its blue face. She began to think of a name for it, wondering what one could call a doll that was different.
“We’ll have to see Daisy about it,” she said. “Daisy will understand. She’ll find a place for this one, perhaps a better place than all the rest.”
Albert smiled. Sometimes, he thought, people have to grow down to grow up!
They went on to lift the lid of a wicker chest where they found rolls of material in all sorts of shades and patterns. They looked at a dolls’ house that must have been nearly a hundred years old. Pilbeam’s mirror on its stand was still there and the packing case full of jumble. Lorna picked up a copy of Bleak House from a small pile of books.
“F
ancy putting these up here,” she said, eyeing it with a librarian’s interest. “No book deserves to be banished like that.”
“I think we should leave everything for now,” said Albert. “I’ll give Daisy a ring and explain. But I won’t have time to take the keys down to North Shore Road till next weekend. Unless you’d like to go?”
“No, Albert,” said Lorna, “she’s your friend really. She’ll be pleased to see you again. There’s no hurry anyway. I’ll tell my mother that the attic has still to be cleared out. If I know her, she’ll be glad of the excuse to put off coming here again.”
“That’s not fair,” said Albert.
“It’s perfectly fair,” said Lorna. “She just doesn’t want to make up her mind.”
“Or have it made up for her,” said Albert softly.
CHAPTER 33
Where’s the Blue One?
BILLY WALKED ACROSS Castledean High Street and immediately crossed back again. He was going to see Aunt Daisy, all on his own, for the very first time. He decided to take her a present. So he went to the Chocolate Cabin and bought her a box of fudge with a picture of a castle on the lid. It was not much of a present, but it was all he could afford. His mam had always told him that what counted was the thought.
After that, he hurried as fast as he could down to the shop by the river. When he arrived he found that Aunt Daisy had customers, at least three of them looking at different items in the shop.
“Your mam said you were coming,” said Daisy as he came through the door. “I’m a bit busy now, but I’ll give you the key and you can pop upstairs to the flat. I’m not kidding myself it’s me you came to see! I’ll be up in an hour or so when I close for lunch.”
She had the key ready in the pocket of her tweed skirt.
“You can rearrange them if you like,” she said, not using the word ‘dolls’ and cleverly saying ‘rearrange’ instead of ‘play with’. Not for the world would she embarrass Billy in front of strangers. Though the strangers were not taking much notice anyway. They were too busy inspecting their prospective purchases, inside, outside, and upside down.