The Dollmaker

by Nina Allan

  I received my payment in full, plus a generous tip, by return of post.

  By then I had enough orders on my books to keep me busy for months to come.

  * * *

  —

  THE BROUHAHA SURROUNDING the troll dolls was pure accident. A private collector showed one to a friend, who happened to work as a desk editor at Crafts magazine, and things snowballed from there. One minute I was an anonymous amateur, creating dolls in his own time and mainly for his own pleasure. The next I was a “contemporary maker” being interviewed for Art Now.

  The article, when they finally sent me the proofs, was entitled “Little Monsters.”

  I wanted to call them and insist they change it but Clarence advised me strongly to leave things as they stood.

  “They’re journalists, remember,” she said. “They have to have an angle. The title is provocative but there’s no harm in that. People see the word ‘monster’ and they want to know more.”

  Clarence and I first met when Art Now hired her to photograph the troll dolls for the article. Clarence was working for the Crafts Council at the time, but she still did bits of freelance photography here and there. She introduced herself as Nadia Clarence, though I soon learned that everyone including her husband called her just Clarence. She was tall and well muscled, with a dark complexion and long and very wavy black-brown hair.

  “I was born in Bristol,” she told me. “My mother came from Malaga originally. My dad was from Jamaica but I never knew him.”

  She spent an hour or so photographing the troll dolls, then asked if I would be willing to take part in an exhibition she was organizing for the Crafts Council of work by new craft toymakers and textile artists.

  “I think your work is fantastic,” she added. “Original and striking.”

  I was already thinking about going part-time at Clark Cannings, and a year after the “Little Monsters” article was published I found myself in a position to hand in my notice. I had never dreamed that such a life-change might be possible, but it appeared that at least a proportion of those gallery patrons who prided themselves on their instinct for quality were also willing to put their money where their mouths were. At some point I began to feel embarrassed at my own prices, which was when Clarence took over the business side and became my agent.

  “Your dolls will always sell, because they’re so personal to you,” she said. “They communicate a unique vision of the world.”

  Clarence has always maintained that it was signing me as her first client that gave her the confidence to go ahead and open her own gallery.

  Of course I didn’t coin the term “troll dolls” – I don’t even remember where it came from, just that it started being bandied about and then seemed to stick. I don’t make that many of them. Indeed you could argue that I don’t actually make them at all, that they are accidents of nature.

  The first was called Nonie. I spotted her at a house clearance auction in Forest Hill: an exquisite Eduard Marshal, her loveliness concealed beneath a purple nylon peignoir with a faded “Made in Taiwan” label poking out beneath the hem. I was staring at her in what I hoped was a covert manner, wondering if any of the other bidders might have their eye on her and what she might go for, when Brian Alperin came up behind me and blew my cover.

  “She’s worthless, mate.” He clapped me hard on the shoulder. “Just look at that face.”

  Brian Alperin owned a thriving antiques business in Wimbledon village but it was the auctions he loved best, the riskier the better. Our paths often crossed and I enjoyed his company, in spite of the fact that he treated my interest in dolls as a mental aberration.

  “Nothing you can do with that,” he added. “Not without making it look like something out of a field hospital in Vietnam.”

  Half the doll’s hair was off, but that was of lesser consequence. The damage Alperin was referring to was far more serious: a wide, crescent-shaped gouge in her right cheek, running from the corner of one eye to just below the base of the ear. It was impossible to guess at how it had happened, but judging by the depth of the cut it was a miracle the head was still intact.

  The facial damage notwithstanding, she had luminescent gray paperweight eyes and refined, hand-molded features of the utmost delicacy. I knew I had to have her. What I proposed to do with her afterwards I had no idea.

  I acquired her for less than a quarter of the price you would normally expect to pay for a Marshal, but as Brian Alperin had suggested she was practically worthless. If anything I had paid too much. Once I got her home I discovered that in addition to the wound on her face she was leaking stuffing from a three-inch gash in her back, a tear that was impossible to close because the material had worn so thin it was almost transparent. Her leather joints were fraying and cracked. She wasn’t even good enough for parts. I realized with horror that if I hadn’t bought her, some other dealer would have paid a courtesy amount to the seller before smashing open her head to get at her eyes.

  I was able to save her arms and legs without too much trouble, though the body I sewed them onto was essentially brand new. I threw away the revolting nylon peignoir and created a new gown for her, a simple yet elegant design based upon a 1920s flapper dress by Fortuny. As Alperin had said, there was nothing I could do about her face. I could have tried repairing the gouge with one of the composite fillers used by ceramics restorers, or I could have sent the head to one of my suppliers in Germany and asked them to attempt a re-firing. Neither procedure seemed worth the risk to me, especially since the chance of it being successful stood at less than fifty-fifty.

  In the end I decided to leave her face the way it was. I replaced her hair in its entirety, cutting it high and straight across her forehead in a classic Charleston bob. The glazed patina of her skin was simply stunning: milky and lustrous in the way you only see in the genuine article, and by the time I finished working on her I had grown so accustomed to the scar on her cheek that she would have appeared odd to me without it.

  * * *

  —

  THE WOMAN WHO CAME to interview me for Art Now was called Sylvia Chambers. She positioned herself opposite me in the faded green wing chair I had owned since my days at Woolfenden, staring at me relentlessly over the rim of her teacup.

  “Most people think of dolls as idealized representations of humanity,” she said. “Doll-face, living doll, that kind of thing. Your current work seems actively to be in conflict with that ideal. There are those who would argue it contradicts it entirely.” She bent forward to take a biscuit. “Would you say you do what you do in order to help counteract stereotypical presentations of physical deformity?”

  “I don’t know about that,” I replied. “Mostly I would say that I love old dolls. Antique porcelain has a unique quality. It seems a tragedy to waste it.”

  Sylvia Chambers scribbled her notes. She wasn’t satisfied with my answer, I could tell. “I don’t like to compare dolls with human beings,” I added. “The two are very different.”

  “Would you say dolls were alien?” She had brightened up considerably.

  “Not alien exactly, just…their own thing.”

  She wrote down what I said, humming faintly to herself in what I could only interpret as glee. I had officially fulfilled my remit as a weirdo. Andrew Garvie sees his creations almost as representatives of an alien race, was how Sylvia Chambers interpreted my remarks for her article. His little monsters are an allegory for persecution and alienation in our pressurized and sometimes repressive urban environment.

  As with the title, I did not protest. I felt annoyed by the way my words had been twisted, altered selectively to suit the writer’s own agenda. And yet I found I did not entirely disagree with what Chambers had written, either. My dolls were little dissidents, in their way. As human beings they would have faced lives of oppression, everything from run-of-the-mill name-calling to full social exclusion. And yet they per
sist, I told myself. Their very existence was a kind of protest, if not against anything so grand as “the political consensus” then at least against those bullies and tyrants who saw it as their business to dictate to others – at whatever level – how they should be living their lives.

  Yes, I was proud of them. I was proud of the Art Now interview, too, though I didn’t fully realize it until much later.

  * * *

  —

  THE TROLL DOLLS ALWAYS sell, and it is the children who like them best. I once happened to be at the gallery when a Mr. and Mrs. Halloran came in with their daughter to select a doll. Mrs. Halloran was explaining to Clarence that their daughter had just won a scholarship to attend a prestigious summer school in the United States and they wanted to mark the occasion with a special gift. The Hallorans were both company lawyers, and highly paid. Their daughter Millie was ten years old, her tiny oval face so perfect she could have modeled in advertisements for soap flakes or yogurt. It was unusual to see a child in the gallery – a contradiction that pained me constantly. Millie Halloran wandered among the displays for at least half an hour, hands clasped behind her back and with an expression in her eyes that was close to rapture.

  Finally, she pointed to a doll I had only recently completed, a baby doll with unusual hazel eyes and the face and feet of a Gertrud Klasen “Poppea.” Klasen had died young, and not many of her designs had surviving examples. Her most famous creation was a poupée modèle named “Sara,” a gamine with cropped hair and a beaded black shift dress that was daringly short, at least for the time. The “Sara” doll had been a limited edition – only five hundred were ever made. “Poppea” was one of Klasen’s later designs. I had seen two perfect examples, both of them in museums. The doll I purchased – off a market stall in Coventry, of all places – had jagged, brittle stumps in place of hands. In addition to that, the glaze on the upper part of the face had pulled away during firing, leaving a surface with the appearance and texture of orange peel.

  I found her new hands, of course, but they were ever so slightly too big for her. I dressed her in a two-piece romper suit of dusky pink velveteen, appliquéd with dozens of sequined butterflies. She was a most unusual and appealing doll, and extremely lifelike. I could understand perfectly why Millie had chosen her.

  “I want this one. Please,” she added quickly. Up until that moment the girl’s parents had been sitting at the reception desk, drinking their complimentary coffees and making small talk with Clarence’s PA. When they saw the doll their daughter had selected, they glanced at one another anxiously, not saying a word. Mrs. Halloran put out a hand to stroke “Poppea’s” hair then swiftly withdrew it.

  “I think there’s something wrong with that one, darling,” she said. “Why not choose another?”

  Millie shook her head. “I like her,” she said. “She looks like a little baby but really she’s old.”

  Clarence reappeared at that point, as I knew she would. She began explaining the troll dolls to the Hallorans, using phrases like “found artifacts” and “unique properties” and “reclaimed antiquities.” The Hallorans seemed reassured. As the father drew out his credit card to complete the purchase, he even made a comment about the superior quality of European porcelain.

  “Is it German?” he asked. When Clarence confirmed that it was, he nodded vigorously, as if the “Poppea” doll had been his preference, all along.

  Whenever I create a troll doll, it is like reclaiming a fragment of the past. Old porcelain harbors the light. When complemented by the right glaze, it has a glow that is soft and liquid, tender as flesh. Clarence never questioned the troll dolls, she saw the point of them at once. But then Clarence has Jane.

  * * *

  —

  JANE’S BIRTH WAS BESET by complications. Clarence’s labor lasted forty-eight hours. Jane spent the first two weeks of her life in an incubator, and even when she was strong enough to go home, the doctors warned Clarence there might be difficulties later.

  What they meant was that Jane might be brain damaged. When Clarence came to my flat for that first photo-shoot, she arrived with Jane strapped to her back in a canvas sling. Jane seemed large for an infant, flat-faced with pale blue eyes. “She looks heavy,” I said.

  “Getting that way,” Clarence said. “But she cries her head off if I put her down.”

  Clarence talked to me about the shoot, then set up her tripod and backgrounds, all with the baby girl tucked into the space between her shoulder blades. The child seemed to stare at everything and yet register nothing, her eyes the vacant, insipid blue of burnt-out delphiniums. After about twenty minutes she laid her cheek against her mother’s back and fell asleep. Clarence simply carried on working. Some years later she told me it had been impossible to leave Jane by herself – or with anyone else – for even a couple of minutes.

  “She would scream as if she thought I had died,” Clarence said. “Even if I just went to the bathroom. It was so frightening. I kept thinking about what they’d said at the hospital, about Jane being brain damaged. I didn’t tell the doctors though. I didn’t want her being messed around with. I knew they’d only make things worse.”

  On the evening we spent together in the pub, Lucan told me that Jane still sometimes slept in their room.

  “You must think I’m some sort of monster,” he said. “Resenting my own child.”

  “Have you ever told her how you feel? Clarence, I mean?” I stared into my beer glass and tried not to look at him: the heavy, beautiful hands, the dark blotches of sweat staining his shirt under the arms.

  “How can I? It’s not her fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. It would be easier if I wanted to leave, but I don’t. I love them.”

  What Lucan meant was that he loved Clarence. I love Clarence too, but I have never wanted to sleep with her. The largeness of her makes the thought indecent, somehow. Clarence often wears heavy, bulky clothing that makes her look even larger: fishermen’s jerseys and army greatcoats and high-top Doc Martens. I have sometimes wondered what her body might actually be like under all those layers: the musky skin and heavy breasts, the pubic hair as crinkly as the hair on her head. I feel no desire for her, yet the thought of Lucan inside her makes me get hard immediately.

  Lucan’s hand brushed mine across the table, and for a second I dared to wonder if he was sending me a signal that the evening might end up being about more than two acquaintances having a drink together. The idea was preposterous, of course. Lucan left the pub soon afterwards on some vague pretext, and our brief moment of intimacy was never repeated. The next time I saw him at his and Clarence’s flat he seemed embarrassed, as if he had been caught out in an indiscretion. I realized then that he had only confided in me because I was not connected in any way with his and Clarence’s social circle. Most likely he barely even counted me as an actual person.

  Jane will be tall and broad, like Clarence, but whereas Clarence’s movements are dynamic and confident, Jane’s limbs seem slack and slow. Aside from her hands, that is. It is as if the musical life of her mind has sapped her body of all energy.

  When Jane was four, Clarence tried taking her to a small private nursery school in Highgate village. By then it had become possible to be apart from her, for shorter periods anyway, because Jane had learned to tell the time. Before leaving her at the nursery, Clarence would point to the clock on the wall and tell Jane what time she would return. Jane would then sit silently by herself until Clarence came back, making drawings with wax crayons or simply reading. She didn’t seem unhappy, but she refused to have anything to do with the other children.

  After six months of this behavior, the headmistress asked Clarence if she would step into her office.

  “We’re worried about Jane,” she explained. “I’m not entirely sure how we should play it.”

  She told Clarence that although her daughter already possessed the reading ability of a seven-year-old, she
was noncommunicative and passively obstructive. She continued in this vein for around five minutes, then told Clarence about another nursery that might be better suited, a nursery that catered for special needs.

  “They’re doing some outstanding work there,” she said. “They might help to bring her out of her shell.”

  Clarence told me she felt numb all over. She thought of the doctors again and of their warnings. But she thought also of the slow, careful way Jane always kissed her goodnight, the way she put her head on one side when she was reading, as if she were listening to music.

  In the end it proved to be music that was the key.

  “We were in the village one day,” Clarence said. “I’d had a doctor’s appointment, and then we were going to feed the ducks in Waterlow Park. As we were crossing the road, Jane suddenly asked me straight out why we didn’t have a piano. I told her I wasn’t sure, but would she like one? She just nodded, like a little old lady, as if I were the stupid one for not knowing that already. It was remarkable.”

  Soon after her fifth birthday, Jane started to attend the Monica Brundle School, a school for children who showed exceptional musical talent. For the first time she had friends: a Chinese boy named Yundi who played the violin and a twin brother and sister who lived with their aunts in a dilapidated Georgian villa on Highgate Hill. Jane sometimes went there after school to play trios and have tea.

  I’d seen the Ibsen twins once or twice. It was impossible to tell them apart, or at least it was for me. On the surface they seemed more taciturn even than Jane.

  “I’m sure they’ve got rats in that house,” Clarence said, with a shudder. “I suppose it’s all right, though. I don’t want to stop her going.”

  I am sure Clarence thought the odd rat running around under the floorboards was a small risk to take for the sake of Jane finally having some children her own age to spend time with. It must have been good for Clarence too, to have the place to herself for a while. Even when Jane was out of sight you could never forget she was there. The emotional current she generated was so intense it seemed almost audible, a low-level background hum.