The Mannequin Makers

by Craig Cliff

  There was Sandow as I’d seen him many times, wearing just a loincloth and Roman sandals, the waxed tips of his moustache swooping upward, his arms folded across his pectorals, a thick vein running from elbow to wrist on each forearm. To the right of Sandow stood a boy, slimmer and slightly shorter but still quite impressive, holding the same pose and staring at the same point in the distance. I looked back at Jesse.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he said, reaching for the photo, ‘no need to squint. I admit I’ve let myself go these past few years.’

  I looked at his outstretched hand, the fingers wiggling, and pulled the frame closer to my chest. For a moment he left his hand there, his eyes drilling into mine, before he sighed and slumped back into his chair.

  I turned the frame around so the image was facing him. ‘How old are you in this?’

  ‘I must have been, oh, sixteen. It was taken in Wellington, just before we caught the ferry to Christchurch. How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘Sixteen,’ I said.

  ‘A confluence of coincidences.’ He opened a drawer. ‘You look much older,’ he said, his head down, rummaging through the drawer. ‘Take it as a compliment.’

  ‘How old do I look?’ I asked.

  ‘Old enough to vote.’ He placed a pipe and a tin of tobacco on the desk and sighed. ‘You don’t see many twenty-one-year-olds around Marumaru these days.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  He looked up at me and narrowed his eyes.

  ‘I helped raise the funds for the memorial clock tower,’ he began stuffing tobacco in his pipe, ‘but workmen are hard to find. Every bleeding town wants a tower or an obelisk or a fountain. I love this town dearly, but as a guest you will understand how we must wait in line for our bigger brothers to receive their portion before we can step up to the table.’

  He lit his pipe and drew on it a few times. He must have seen my expression. ‘John, let me tell you something your hero told me the first day I laid eyes on him. He enjoyed a cigar, did old Sandow. “One small pleasure a day is sufficient,” that’s what he said. Not that you’ve asked, but here’s what I say: the only thing better than one small pleasure is two small pleasures.’ He laughed. ‘Or one big pleasure, I suppose. Oh, come on boy, it’s as if you’ve never seen a man smoke a pipe before.’

  I had, but only through the window. The smell was something else.

  ‘At the risk of offending you for a third time in quick succession, may I say that you don’t sound particularly American?’

  ‘You may,’ I said.

  He laughed again.

  ‘Tell me about Sandow,’ I said, still pressing the photograph to my chest. ‘When was he last in Marumaru?’

  ‘Just after that photograph was taken.’

  ‘He has only been here once?’

  ‘Just the once. Last I heard he was still calling Britannia home.’

  ‘Tell me about the time he came here.’

  Jesse’s eyes widened. ‘You know what the folks out there will tell you?’ He nodded toward the street. ‘The best way to lose an afternoon is to ask me to tell you a story.’ He laughed again, his hands bouncing on his belly.

  ‘I have all afternoon,’ I said and leant back in my chair.

  Jesse told the story of his arrival in Marumaru, how he got off the train at the wrong station with Sandow’s plaster statue and had to convince Harry Rickards to put on a show in the town. He went on to explain the revelry afterwards that culminated in him losing his virginity with his dear sweet Julia. Sandow hardly featured and I was frequently confused, but there was something thrilling about listening to him talk.

  When he finally checked his pocket watch he announced, ‘True to my word as always. Your afternoon, sir, has been soundly squandered.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It hasn’t been a waste at all. I only wish you would continue.’

  ‘Perhaps another day.’ He smoothed the edges of his moustache with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Mrs Hikuroa controls the vote in the domestic sphere and I am expected home.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said, rising from my seat.

  He laughed. ‘Well, I can’t guarantee I will be free, but there’s no harm stopping by.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said and held out my hand for him to shake it.

  My father was waiting for me when I got home.

  ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’

  ‘To town,’ I said and folded my arms.

  ‘I thought I told you to stay put?’

  ‘I don’t see why I need to hide away any more. I’m not going back in that window. They’re talking about us in the newspaper.’

  ‘Who’ve you been talking to?’

  ‘No one. Just a bunch of wheezing, snivelling invalids. I need to wash my hands.’

  ‘Eugen,’ he said sharply. I stopped and turned back to face him. ‘Did you find out anything about your sister?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about The Carpenter?’

  ‘I thought that was your job. I thought that’s what you were doing. If you wanted me to help, you should have asked me. I’m not useless, you know. You may have tried, but you didn’t raise a fool. And I’m stronger than any man in this crummy town.’

  For a moment I thought he would come for me, finally. But he just said, ‘Go on, wash your hands.’

  ‘You’ve lied to me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Always. You and her.’ I pointed to the barn, though Flossie’s body was long gone. ‘The world is nothing like you said. Don’t think I don’t know. It’s your fault Avis is missing.’

  He hadn’t shaved since returning from Christchurch and he rubbed the dark but patchy beard that was developing. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It is my fault. It’s up to me to get Avis back, to make things right. But I could use your help. How about helping me tomorrow? I’m going to talk to Maggie Donaldson. I think she might know where The Carpenter is hiding.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said and walked away.

  VI.

  I didn’t go with my father to Maggie Donaldson’s the next day, or wherever his search took him the day after that.

  The only place where things seemed to hold together was in Jesse’s company. When he wasn’t free, I sat on the beach, watched the rollers and slowly let my dream of being Sandow’s heir dissolve and disperse. Funny to think about it now, but I never even got my toes wet.

  Though I had many questions for Jesse, when I was with him I found myself leaning back in my chair, closing my eyes and letting him tell his stories: Sandow inspecting his troop in Wanganui; Jesse joining Rickards’ company and leaving his mother in Kai Iwi; his decision to return to Marumaru and Julia after Sandow’s tour ended in Invercargill; his work as a signwriter’s apprentice; joining the army at the start of the war against Julia’s wishes and the accident at Sockburn Camp that gave him his waddle and kept him from shipping out.

  ‘I don’t think Smithy was aiming for me,’ he said. ‘I just hope he was a better shot in the field, or else Lord help his battalion, eh? After that, I was a real misery guts. Julia had gone. I’d always been this strapping young lad. Now I was useless. Couldn’t even climb a ladder. There went my livelihood. But I was still in my twenties. I just wanted to be useful. I saw all my friends shipping off to Europe and I couldn’t help. Eventually I stuck a bung in that barrel of pity and looked around for another way to be useful. That’s when I met Josephine, the future Mrs Hikuroa, and blossomed into a politician,’ he said, his hands rising out above his belly, his lips pursing, a twinkle in his eye.

  News of the war hadn’t reached our property. I didn’t fully understand the seriousness of it as I sat in the back room of the signwriter’s. Come the Second World War, however, I would get a taste of combat—of men biting into their own biceps to forget the pain, the smell of cauterised flesh, the concussive blast of shells striking you long after you’ve seen them explode. I was thirty-six when that one started, still fit as anyone, quick as
a panther, strong as an ox. But individual speed and strength didn’t count for much any more. The war, in Europe at least, was all about machines. What they wanted was an army of reel-turners, never anyone to run into the surf and come back alive.

  All that was beyond me, though, when I was sixteen and fresh out of the window.

  Everything my father had said about the window and the custom of arranged marriages was a lie, I knew that soon enough, but I couldn’t see the reason for this deception. Standing in front of Donaldson’s other window, the one with the two wooden figures, didn’t bring any answers. But when I finally walked down Regent Street and saw the window of the town’s other department store it was as if the wind had vanished and everything had gone silent. The figures in this window—four females of different ages, dressed as though they were all off to separate events—were still made of wood, but they possessed the grace and beauty that Avis and I had aspired to. They were not alive, I could tell that, but they seemed about to move.

  ‘Admiring the competition?’

  I turned and saw Jesse smiling, his hands resting on his belly.

  ‘I’m told you’ve been here for over two hours. I wondered what you got up to when I wasn’t boring you.’

  ‘You don’t bore me.’

  ‘What about the young lady?’ he asked. It took me a moment to realise he meant Avis. I hadn’t told him she was my sister, or that Colton Kemp was our father, though I’m sure he suspected the stories in the newspaper weren’t completely accurate. ‘Is she still missing?’ he persisted. ‘I never quite understood: did she run away, or was it something more sinister?’

  ‘The police are looking for her,’ I said.

  ‘And you’re happy leaving it to them?’

  I turned back to the window. ‘Who made these?’

  ‘You know that, surely. These are The Carpenter’s beauties. Not a patch on—’

  ‘This Carpenter,’ I interrupted, ‘is he old? Short?’

  ‘That’s the one. Been around this town longer than I have. He was the bloke who carried the statue of Sandow from the train station.’

  ‘What do you call these?’ I pointed at the figures.

  ‘Mannequins, I suppose.’

  Mannequins. I remembered the man from Christchurch using this word when he inspected us in the window.

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘The Carpenter? He has a place on Pukehine Hill. I’m sure the police have paid him a visit already.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure they have. Can you take me there?’

  ‘He hasn’t been seen—’ Jesse began.

  ‘Please. Take me there.’

  ‘I’m not sure I should get any more involved than I am.’

  ‘Then tell me how to get there.’

  Jesse waddled off and told me to follow him. At the junction he said, ‘This street here is Albert. You see that hill there, behind those buildings, that’s Pukehine. I’ve never been up to his place myself, but you can see it from Stirling Road. You won’t get up to any mischief, will you? Not with an election in a couple of months.’

  ‘I just want to take a look.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  The hill had been partly cleared for grazing. I could see no structures at first. Then I noticed an oddly sloped iron roof on the portion of hill that was still given over to scrub. I’d imagined at least two buildings, a house and a workshop like my father had, but then we had a larger family and more to hide. When I got further up the hill, it became clear that there was only this one building, which appeared to slump to one side. The timbers of the outer walls varied in colour from almost black to a light brown that was nearly blond. The two sides I could see were dominated by large windows, each made from six smaller panes. I followed the path around to the door. A busted padlock dangled from the latch. The bolt was withdrawn. My father and the constable had been here. But I wasn’t here to find The Carpenter or Avis. I just wanted to understand.

  I opened the door. There was no hallway. There were no internal walls at all. From the threshold I could see each of the four windows streaming with daylight, the small bed, the stove, the armchair, the rows and rows of books, the tool bench, the sawhorses, the saws, gouges, sandpaper—the same implements that occupied my father’s workshop and I’d spent so long staring at while Avis and I practised posing. The floor of The Carpenter’s house was covered with a fine layer of sawdust. The air smelt of honey and gasoline.

  It’s true, I thought. The Carpenter wanted to fool people, just like my father.

  There were no full mannequins—he must have stored his finished pieces at the department store—but there were blocks of wood of various sizes in the far corner. Some were still square, as if fresh from the mill, while others had seen the gouge’s edge.

  A single block about the size of an oil can sat alone on the workbench. I crept closer and saw that it was covered with pencil. Closer still, I recognised the image. How could I not, having spent so long staring at that same face?

  VII.

  When I got home my father asked me the same question he’d asked the last four days: ‘What have you been doing?’

  I gave him the same response: ‘Searching for Avis.’

  For once this wasn’t a lie.

  ‘And?’

  ‘The Carpenter took her. He was obsessed with her.’

  ‘I could have told you that. Come on,’ he said, tucking his shirt into his trousers, ‘we’re going back to talk to Maggie Donaldson.’

  ‘Why do you need me?’

  ‘I don’t need to explain myself to you, do I, John?’ He said the name with spite.

  ‘No, you don’t. But I don’t need to obey you any more. And my name isn’t John, it’s Eugen.’

  ‘It’s John as long as I say it’s John.’

  ‘Best of luck with Maggie Donaldson,’ I said and untied a bootlace.

  He grabbed one of my ears and twisted it, pulling me back up until our eyes were level. I could have knocked the arm away. I could have hit him in the solar plexus. I could have caved his skull in. But I concentrated instead on not wincing. I kept my expression plain, my eyes cool and unblinking, my chest held out at its full extension.

  He barely opened his mouth to speak. ‘You’ll do what I say.’

  I held my pose, but second by second my defiance became more and more like acceptance.

  ‘Good lad,’ he said and let go of my ear.

  We rode to Donaldson’s farm, both of us on the same struggling horse, my father holding the reins, my arms around his chest and one side of my face planted into his back. I’d never learnt to ride a horse. It didn’t seem like something people did: Emily and Charlotte were made for pulling carts and wagons, not for sitting upon. Another lie of omission from my father to keep us pinned to our property.

  The Donaldson farmstead was a two-storey wooden affair with a corrugated iron roof fronted by a wide porch. The house was painted the colour of creamed spinach, though the elements were at work, bubbling and flaking the paint and revealing the whitish undercoat.

  I followed my father onto the porch and stood behind him as he knocked on the door. I heard movement inside, but it was a full minute before the door opened.

  Maggie Donaldson was wearing a black dress with a large square lace collar. Her face was criss-crossed with wrinkles.

  ‘Mr Kemp,’ she said. ‘Two visits in one week after so long without the pleasure of your company. I am truly fortunate.’

  My father placed his hand on the door frame, as if to pull himself inside the house, but she didn’t move.

  ‘I’m told your father gave The Carpenter the land on Pukehine Hill,’ he said.

  ‘I believe he did.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she said. ‘It must be very confusing for you. The founder of your precious store and your great rival . . . in cahoots.’

  ‘Why?’ he repeated.

  She turned to the side and swung her hand down the hall. ‘A few st
eps inside and you’ll see.’

  My father entered. I followed. To the right of the passage was a staircase with a balustrade of rich brown wood, the length of it carved with an intricate pattern featuring what looked like leaves and shoots. The banisters were carved in this same style, though you could tell on first glance that each was a slightly different pattern. The final post was capped by a sphere that wasn’t perfectly smooth, but featured raised, undulating blobs surrounded by hundreds of tiny peaks. I didn’t recognise it as a globe at the time, never having seen one.

  My father stepped forward and ran his hand over the finial, his lips slightly parted.

  Maggie Donaldson went into the first room off the passage. ‘I’m frightful with dates,’ she said, expecting us to follow, ‘but he did this for my father before that other store opened.’

  My father and I entered the drawing room. We both raised our eyes to the carved curtain rails and cornices.

  ‘You mustn’t feel too betrayed, dear boy,’ the woman said. I thought she was addressing me for the first time, but I saw she was staring at my father.

  ‘He did all this,’ he said, still surveying the room.

  ‘Yes, I thought we had established that. My father was a cruel man at heart, but he had a soft spot for Mr Doig. I believe he helped him get his job at Hercus & Barling.’

  ‘Doig?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Gabriel Doig. I thought the man’s name was common knowledge in town and that nickname of his was just some kind of elaborate parlour game.’

  ‘Gabriel Doig,’ he repeated. ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this the other day?’

  ‘Please, Mr Kemp, I am an old spinster. I am liable to feel threatened if you continue to raise your voice.’

  He closed his eyes but I could see his neck muscles twitching.

  ‘Do you know where we can find Mr Doig?’ I asked.

  She looked at me properly for the first time. ‘If I didn’t know better, Mr Kemp, I’d say you and this lad bore a family resemblance, however faint.’