The Dollmaker

by Nina Allan

  It was my first full act of intercourse since leaving Wil. I took off my jacket and dropped it on the dressing table. I remember how careful Run was with the rest of my clothes, folding them carefully over the back of the bedside chair, a squat and ugly thing, button-backed, upholstered in pink velour. At some point he must have asked me my name because he kept calling me Drew – Drew, Drew, Drew, right through it all. I don’t know how, but he seemed to know I could never bear to be called Andy. Afterwards, just once, he called me boy.

  I wiped myself on the flimsy sheet then fumbled my clothes back on, half-tripping over my trousers in the process. I heard the sound of running water, splashing against the pink porcelain of the ancient washstand. By the time I turned to face him, Run was fully dressed.

  “Would you like to go downstairs and have a drink?” he asked. “The bar isn’t bad here, surprisingly.”

  “Not now,” I said. I tried to think of a passable reason why I could not stay, but it seemed none was necessary. Run passed me my jacket, then a shade more deliberately my wallet, which had fallen out of my pocket onto the floor. I opened it, counting money into his hand until he closed his fingers around the notes and put them away.

  “Will you be all right getting home?” he said. I reassured him that I would be and then left. There were taxis outside the Atlantic but I ignored them and carried on walking until I came to the underground. When I arrived back at Hammersmith I bought a newspaper from the all-night supermarket just outside the station entrance and then continued up the road to the Orion. I was just in time for last orders. I usually avoided the Orion, especially at the weekend – it was the kind of pub where people went to get drunk – but on that particular evening the ribald anarchy of the packed saloon bar was a blessed relief. I sipped at my brandy, letting the thoughts and images that coursed through my brain gradually wear themselves away into dust.

  Raucous laughter erupted as someone vomited outside the gents’ lavatories, then everyone was turned out into the street. The rain had stopped. Backlit by the moon, the muggy West London sky was mottled with cloud.

  It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I found Run’s business card in my jacket pocket – he must have put it there while I was getting dressed. I was relieved to find it, though I didn’t call his number for almost a month. When I finally rang him, he gave me the address of his house in Highgate, where he showed me into a small, spotlessly clean bedroom at the back and performed his services upon me. Afterwards we sat in the kitchen. Run made tea and we talked. Sometimes, if he didn’t have to go out later, we would eat a meal together. Run collected theater programs and other stage memorabilia that I enjoyed looking at. He in turn was fascinated by my dolls.

  On the second Christmas of our acquaintance I presented him with Adrien, a narrow-waisted, long-limbed doll in the traditional black-and-white silks of a pierrot. Under the harlequin’s hat, her beautifully domed china skull was shaded along the hairline but was otherwise bare. Her feet were glorious: high-arched, with each toe distinct and just a little longer than would usually be considered normal.

  “Is she a girl or a boy?” Run asked, after he’d unwrapped her.

  “I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said. “Does it matter?” In fact, Adrien looked a little like one of the Ibsen twins, although of course I couldn’t have known that at the time.

  I stopped seeing Run six months after I began writing to Bramber. I knew by then that I loved her, you see, and my relations with Run seemed wrong, suddenly. I would have liked to continue with the second part of our visits – the meals, the theater programs, the conversation – but Run had never given any indication that he wished for our relationship to be anything other than it was, and I did not want to take advantage of his good nature.

  Clarence knew all about Ursula but I never breathed a word to her about Run. When I told her what Bramber had written to me in her letter – about wanting to come to London, to change her life for me – her reaction was strange.

  “It’ll never work out,” she said. “It’s a crush, that’s all. People say all sorts of things in letters, but they don’t really mean them. They can pretend anything they like.”

  “Bramber’s not like that,” I said. Bramber always used the same paper for her letters, pale blue and semitransparent, like airmail paper. She wrote in ink with a very fine nib and her small, backward-sloping script was difficult to read on occasion. I had never shown any of her letters to Clarence. I felt no need to prove anything. Bramber had told me things about herself that would be impossible to fabricate. It is not so easy to invent a life as people make out.

  “I think you’d like her,” I added. “I’ve told her all about you.”

  Actually this was not true. I had named Clarence as the owner-manager of the gallery that represented me, but that was all. I didn’t want to mention Clarence too often in case Bramber got the wrong idea. Clarence never asked me a single question about what Bramber and I said to each other in our letters, and as time wore on I began to feel as if there were whole layers of my existence that remained hidden from her.

  As Bramber became more real to me, Clarence became less so. What was strange was how little I minded.

  * * *

  —

  I LEFT THE MUSEUM and returned to my room at the White Hart. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, listening to the noises that seeped through the walls: the opening and closing of doors, the muted chatter of televisions and radios, the creaking of the floorboards at the top of the stairs as other guests passed to and fro along the landing. I found these sounds restful, and I fell into a light doze. By the time I went back downstairs it was seven o’clock.

  My mobile battery was almost on empty, so I telephoned Clarence from the pay phone in reception. It rang and rang, and I found myself hoping that Clarence had gone out somewhere, that I wouldn’t have to talk to her. When she finally answered she sounded distracted and out of breath.

  “Is everything all right?” I said.

  “Oh Andrew, we’ve lost Anneke. Jane won’t stop crying. You know how she loves that doll.” I felt a stab of dismay, not so much for Clarence but for Anneke, a curly headed toddler doll based upon a little-known Denis Chaud model named “Clarice.” I had presented her to Jane on her ninth birthday. According to Clarence, the two were rarely parted.

  “How did it happen?”

  “I’m not sure. It must be at the Ibsen twins’. Jane’s been round there all day.”

  An image came to me of the mansion in Highgate, the vast garden with its rotting outbuildings and overgrown pathways. You could hide a double decker bus there, if you felt so inclined.

  “When did Jane tell you?”

  “Not until we were home – she was obviously too upset to say anything earlier. And the Ibsens’ phone line is down again, so I’ve not been able to call. If Jane goes on like this I’ll have to drive over there.” She paused. “That place gives me the willies in the dark.”

  “Is Lucan not home from work yet?”

  “He had to fly back to Rome, first thing. It’s a long story.” She sighed. “I’m tearing my hair out here.”

  What she meant was, she wanted me with her. Clarence believes I have a special way with Jane.

  “Have you tried putting on one of her records? The Scarlatti? Tell her you’ll go and look for Anneke tomorrow, as soon as you’ve had breakfast. So long as they stayed in the garden she can’t be far.”

  Limp platitudes, but they were the best I could muster. I didn’t want to be talking to Clarence, much less cooped up in the flat with her and Jane. I wondered if that feeling might change, once Bramber and I were together in London, or whether it would be better if I started seeing less of Clarence altogether.

  Suddenly the pips went.

  “Shall I call you back?” Clarence asked.

  “It says no incoming calls,” I lied. “I’ll
call again once I’ve charged my mobile.”

  There was a long pause. I asked Clarence if she was still there, then realized we’d already been cut off. There was a click and the line went dead. I replaced the receiver. I wondered if Lucan really was having an affair, whether Clarence knew and didn’t want to talk about it. The thoughts irked me but didn’t intrude. Clarence might as well have been speaking from another world.

  I had been planning to eat in the hotel restaurant, but on the spur of the moment I decided to find somewhere in town instead. The phone call had made me feel restless again, and there was always the chance that Clarence would look up the number of the White Hart and try and call me back anyway.

  I crossed the road and followed a sign for the cathedral, leaving South Street via a narrow cobbled passageway between a fast food outlet and a florist’s. After walking for a hundred yards or so I found myself in Cathedral Yard.

  The heat of the day had diminished. I caught the scents of honeysuckle and wisteria, as well as the greener, more astringent aroma of nettles and yarrow, the kind of wild plants that will flourish anywhere, even in the heart of the city. Ivied stone walls concealed the dean’s residence and the chapter house, the famous Exeter Cathedral School. The cathedral itself was magnificent and pleasingly robust. I stood for some minutes looking up at the tower, watching the sunlight as it lit up the great west window. There was an atmosphere of unblemished serenity, a sense of timelessness that existed in marked contrast with the rest of the city. I felt almost as I had done in Wade: that I had discovered another town, a truer town, hiding behind the facade the place presented to the outside world.

  I chose a restaurant overlooking Cathedral Green, a pleasant seeming Italian with whitewashed walls and a flagstone floor. I ordered the ham risotto and a bottle of Chianti. I had eaten nothing substantial since breakfast and so I was hungry but my appetite for the wine was even stronger. The smell of it made my head spin. By the time the waiter brought my risotto I had consumed a third of the Chianti and the edges of things were beginning to blur. I knew it was unwise to drink on an empty stomach, but all the same I felt gratified and semi-blissful. Thoughts of Clarence, the idea of her almost, seemed far away.

  The food brought me back a little and I became more aware of my immediate surroundings. To my left sat a middle-aged couple, the man running to fat but the woman still handsome, with strong, patrician features. Each time she turned her head, the diamond earrings she wore snatched greedily at the light. The table to my right was occupied by a younger man, eating alone. He wore a canary-colored short-sleeved shirt. His forearms were tanned and muscular, the arms of someone who is used to working out of doors. When the waiter came to refill his glass, the man thanked him in Italian. After the waiter had gone, he caught my eye.

  “Lovely evening,” he said. He had a Scottish accent. I have never felt comfortable exchanging small talk with strangers and normally I would simply have agreed with him and left it at that. As things were, the man’s proximity, coupled with the effects of the Chianti, made me feel more loquacious.

  “It is indeed,” I said. “A fine night for drinking fine wine.” I raised my glass to him. Quite suddenly I felt glad of his company. His gray eyes displayed the usual curiosity about my appearance but on this occasion I found I didn’t care. I leaned back in my seat, letting him have a good look.

  “And what are we celebrating?” he asked finally, nodding towards the half-empty bottle of Chianti at my elbow.

  “Running away from London,” I said impulsively. “Going west to rescue the woman that I love.”

  The Scotsman laughed. “Congratulations,” he said. “It’s not every day one crosses ways with Sir Galahad.”

  I smiled back at him, then drained my glass. I remembered Bramber’s own reference to Sir Galahad in one of her letters, the one where she was telling me about Jackie and her father. It occurred to me that until that moment I had spoken of Bramber to no one apart from Clarence. Doing so now made me feel giddy, as if I’d fought myself free of a fear I barely knew I had.

  “Well, ‘rescue’ is putting things a bit strongly, perhaps,” I conceded. “But maybe I can be forgiven, since I actually will be venturing close to the birthplace of King Arthur.”

  “Your girlfriend’s from Cornwall, then?”

  “She was born there. She’s been staying in a village near Bodmin, called Tarquin’s End.”

  “I’ve not heard of it.”

  “It’s very small. Not much more than a hamlet, really.” I spoke as if I knew the place well, as if I’d visited frequently. Soon after receiving Bramber’s first letter I had been into WH Smith’s and purchased the Landranger ordnance survey map for Bodmin and the surrounding area. It took me some time to locate Tarquin’s End, which was represented by three black dots midway between the villages of Ravensbridge and Polbrock. Less detailed maps, as Bramber had said, most likely wouldn’t show it at all.

  “Back of beyond, eh?” The man chuckled. “There be dragons.”

  He signaled to the waiter, and asked him to bring us another bottle of wine. “This one’s on me,” he said. When it arrived he downed a glass straight off, as if it were water. I told him Bramber had been ill for a while, but she was better now.

  “The past year has been really hard on both of us,” I said. “But she needed a break from London and I couldn’t afford to be away from work.”

  In an earlier letter, Bramber had told me she’d been to London once with the school. She lost her packed lunch on the tube somewhere between Tower Hill and Baker Street. The Scotsman had left his own table and come to sit at mine, his brawny forearms sprawling, relaxed, across the tablecloth. The material of his shirt, I noticed, was strikingly attractive, a kind of crushed linen.

  “Is she beautiful then, your girl?” he asked.

  “She is to me,” I said. “I’ve known her all my life. I’ve never met another woman like her.”

  “You should hold on to her then, my man, or she’ll disappear on you, that’s all I’m saying.” He stared at me hard, as if daring me to contradict him. His manner seemed to have changed suddenly, becoming simultaneously more aggressive and more vulnerable. I wondered how much he had had to drink before I arrived. “People can change. Leave her alone for too long and you might find it’s you who needs rescuing.”

  “She hasn’t been alone,” I said. “She’s with friends. And she has my letters.”

  The Scotsman sighed and struck the rim of his glass. “Don’t mind me. The truth is I envy you. Reckon it’s my own wife I’ve been talking about but that was a long time ago.”

  He excused himself and went to the gents. His walk was slow and heavy. He was clearly very tired or very drunk. I signaled the waiter and paid my bill. I stayed seated at the table for a couple more minutes out of politeness, but when my drinking companion did not return I put on my jacket and left.

  It was past ten o’clock. Cathedral Green was empty of people, and when I touched my fingers to the grass they came away damp. The sky was infinite: violet, pinpricked with stars. I wondered if it looked the same from Tarquin’s End.

  The bar of the White Hart smelled of beer and overcooked meat. I went upstairs to my room and switched on the television, flicking from channel to channel before settling on a hospital sitcom in which the chief administrator had obviously been modeled on Margaret Thatcher. I found the frenzied actions of the doctors and nurses curiously calming. The program finished and the news came on. I watched the headlines and then had a shower. I thought about the Scotsman, wondered where he was traveling to, or from.

  He missed his wife, that would be clear to anyone.

  Was she dead, or had she left him? I had found it exhilarating, to play at having a wife, a dress rehearsal, perhaps, for the life to come. The Scotsman had seemed to find it natural and acceptable that I would have a partner, someone I loved and who loved me. He had urged me to hold on t
o her.

  Clarence was wrong when she said we barely knew each other. As I had insisted to the Scotsman, we had our letters. What difference did it make, if all our talking had been on paper instead of out loud?

  We had a lifetime of words still to share. But these, our early years, would always be special, and we would always have our letters to remember them.

  West Edge House

  Tarquin’s End

  Bodmin

  Cornwall

  Dear Andrew,

  I keep thinking I really ought to tell you more about Edwin and what happened between us. I don’t want to hide anything. I think it’s important that we’re truthful, don’t you? It all happened a long time ago, after all. I feel like I was someone else then, a completely different person. Does that sound ridiculous?

  Edwin and I became closer as the summer deepened. We went for long walks, out across the allotments, or along the old Newham railway line, to the fields beyond. You’ll ask me how I felt about Edwin and I’ll find it hard to answer. When people talk of being in love, they speak of yearning or terror or agony, of revelation. I never felt any of those things when I was with Edwin, I just felt normal. As if I’d found the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle that had been there in the box all the time.

  I thought we’d always be together because how could we not be? I was scared sometimes when I thought about the summer ending. The weather would turn colder, which would mean fewer walks, and then there’d be school. Even then I didn’t worry all that much. We would still have the weekends, the public library after classes, the same as before. The idea of a future beyond that was too huge to think about, yet at the same time it didn’t seem to matter at all. Edwin liked to say there was no such thing as the future anyway, just a continuous present, only with some of it too far away to make out the details.