The Dollmaker

by Nina Allan

  “That’s the stolen Chaplin,” she said. “They were talking about her yesterday, on the local news.”

  I held “Artist” out to her, because what else could I do? Sunlight clawed at her russet hair, turning it the ragged, last-ditch auburn of autumn leaves. “I brought her for you,” I said, stupidly. “I know you’ve always wanted a Chaplin doll.”

  If you think you’re leaving me behind in this dump you’ve got another think coming, “Artist” said. I ignored her.

  “Andrew?” said Bramber. Her voice was filled with wonderment. “My goodness, are you all right? You look…”

  Again, words failed her, and it was only then that I became aware of the state I was in: the grass stains on my shoes and the elbows of my jacket, the sweat on my forehead, the dust coating the seat of my trousers where I had fallen down. In addition to that, I had been walking in hot sunlight for what seemed like most of the morning. I was filthy and overheated and confused.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I lost my bearings once or twice. This place is hard to find.”

  “I did try to warn you,” she said. She smiled, with the kind of faraway longing that made me imagine she must be thinking of someone she loved. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  West Edge House

  Tarquin’s End

  Bodmin

  Cornwall

  Dearest Andrew,

  Jennie and Paul are leaving. I knew something was wrong, because of Paul. He was much quieter than usual, and his face had filled up with a darkness that looked like rage. He’s so cheerful normally. On Sunday afternoon I went up to the first-floor lounge as usual to collect the used teacups and found Jennie and Paul in there, sitting opposite one another on the sofa with their knees touching. Paul looked like he’d been crying. I left immediately without saying a word, but half an hour later Jennie came to see me in my room.

  “I didn’t want you worrying about us,” she said. “Everything’s going to be all right.” She used both hands to push back her hair, then told me she and Paul were going to live with Paul’s parents, in London.

  “It’s not ideal,” she said. “Paul’s mum can drive you mad. But it’ll do until we find a place of our own.”

  “Where will you get the money?” I said. I felt stunned.

  Jennie shrugged. “Paul’s good with numbers. He hates to admit it, but he’s actually a qualified accountant. Again it’s not ideal but it means we can manage until we get the business up and running.”

  “Farewell to the circus,” I said, to make her laugh, but suddenly her eyes were bright with tears.

  “It’ll be all right,” she repeated. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “It’ll have to be.” Then she took an envelope out of her jeans pocket and handed it to me. “I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said. “But if you read this you’ll understand.”

  The letter in the envelope was from Maurice Leslie. I knew that even before I saw the signature because I recognized his handwriting. He wrote about how he was in love with Jennie, and then went on to describe the things he wanted to do to her. He dwelled on her body, articulating his perverse fascination with her in precise, almost scientific detail. He even wrote that Paul could be involved in their arrangement, if that was what Jennie wanted. I really don’t mind, was how he put it. He’s a beautiful boy.

  I read the letter through twice then put it back in its envelope. I felt numb.

  “Has he – tried to touch you?” I said at last. Even speaking the words aloud felt wrong.

  Jennie laughed bitterly. “He’s examined me so many times I’ve given up thinking about it. I never noticed anything but that’s pure Maurice, isn’t it? It’s always the quiet ones.” She rubbed at her forehead. “We can’t stay here though, not now I’ve read that letter. Paul’s been beside himself. He can’t get over thinking he should be doing something – about Maurice, I mean. But I just want to get away.”

  “Don’t you think – I mean, what if Maurice, if it’s not just you?”

  “I might be able to think about that some more once we’ve put this place behind us. Think what to do, I mean. But not right now.”

  I reached out and took her hand. It was tiny, porcelain-white, almost a doll’s hand. Maurice Leslie’s hands were large, nimble-fingered, with prominent blue veins and a light ticking of hair across the knuckles.

  Paul was strong for his size, but he was a full eighteen inches shorter than Dr. Leslie.

  “It’s time we were going, anyway,” Jennie said. “You know what people say – hang around in a madhouse long enough and even the doctors can’t tell if you’re crazy or sane. I’m looking at this as a wake-up call.” She sighed, and squeezed my hand. “Maybe you should do the same.”

  A fortnight after my mother died, my father bought me a doll. She was a “Pamela Anna,” from the Chisholm factory, in Stoke-on-Trent. We were in Truro for my doctor’s appointment. I noticed the doll afterwards, when we were on our way back to the car, in the window of a tiny and expensive antiques shop on Cuthbertson Road.

  She had straight brown hair and a green velvet dress. She looked nothing like Rosamund and I felt glad.

  “Do you like her?” said my father, when he saw me looking. “I know you love those old dolls.”

  I don’t remember what I said in reply, but Dad went into the shop and bought her anyway. I stood outside in the street, watching through the glass as the woman behind the counter took the doll out of the window and wrapped her in tissue paper. I don’t think my father had ever bought anything that expensive before, not even as a gift for my mother.

  He came out of the shop and placed the package into my arms.

  “You know you can always talk to me, don’t you?” he said. “About anything.” I nodded, because I knew that was what he wanted, though in fact we hadn’t talked at all, not even after the ambulance crew had loaded Mum onto a stretcher and driven away.

  What was the point? She was gone. There was nothing to say.

  The doctor’s consulting room was in a large Victorian house not far from the library. The sun was shining on the day I first went there, I remember that, although I also remember my father was wearing gloves. There was a fish tank in the waiting room, angel fish gliding about amidst underwater ferns. I don’t remember the doctor’s name, only that he spoke with a Scottish accent.

  “Death is difficult to make sense of, however it happens,” he said. “Would you like to tell me something about your mother?”

  I stared down at my hands, folded in my lap. I wanted to return to the waiting room and watch the fish swimming back and forth in their glassy prison.

  “Do you remember how you were feeling the evening she died? Would you like to tell me about that, instead?”

  I smiled at him and clung fast to the pain. So long as I still felt the pain, I could convince myself my mother was still in the world. I thought she was sleeping, I imagined myself saying. She was lying on the bed with her back to me, that’s what I remember. The curtains were shut, but that was all right, because it was getting dark outside anyway. I noticed how heavily she was breathing, like a dog snoring, or a pig grunting. I thought that was funny and awful at the same time. Gross, Helen would have said. “Gross” was one of her words.

  Mum was lying very still. So still she seemed inanimate, which is another word for dead. It was scary, seeing her like that, I remember that too. What if she is dead, I remember thinking, and my heart lifted just for a second, because my mother was always unhappy and I was tired of it. I thought about going over and touching her shoulder, just to check she was OK, just so I could prove there was nothing wrong.

  What could be wrong, though? She was asleep, that was all. If I woke her up she would have a go at me, she’d ask me where I thought I was off to at this time of night.

  Did I understand that she had taken an overdose?

&
nbsp; Did I smell the vomit on the pillow, by her face?

  Did I see the empty pill bottle on the bedside cabinet?

  All my life I’ve told myself yes, you did see those things. You could have saved her if you’d told someone, called an ambulance. You left your mother to die because you were jealous and selfish and because – even if it was just for a moment – you wished she was dead.

  The truth is, I have been over that night in my mind so many times I can no longer properly remember what really happened, if those details are details I can remember, or bits and pieces I picked up from what I found out afterwards. When I arrived back at the house after dropping Rosamund off the viaduct, I found Dad waiting for me, outside on the pavement, still in his slippers. He told me my mother was seriously poorly and that an ambulance was on the way.

  “Dad?” I said.

  “You couldn’t have known, Ba, you couldn’t have known.” He was, in his way, beside himself, a silent shriek. There wasn’t enough room for him in the ambulance, so he said he’d follow in the car. When I offered to go with him he said it would probably be best if I stayed at home.

  He didn’t ask me where I’d been. I don’t think he properly realized I’d been out.

  The moon was very bright, I remember that. How stupid, I remember thinking. Mum won’t see the moon again now, not ever. I felt faint but I bit down on my knuckle and that brought me back.

  I sat in silence for the appointed hour in the doctor’s office then Dad drove me home. The living room was bright with sunshine so I went upstairs to my room and drew the curtains. Later on that afternoon I dreamed that Helen came to the door and asked if she could see me. My mother told her I was sleeping, and sent her away.

  Dear Andrew, you have become my lifeline. I don’t know what I’d do without you.

  Always your

  Bramber

  12.

  YOU KNOW THERE WERE times,” Bramber said to me, “when I had to ask myself if you really existed. It’s not forbidden to have friends from outside but I forgot what that was like. It felt a bit frightening. At first it did, anyway. I started wondering if I’d invented you, the way Ewa Chaplin invented characters to put in her stories.”

  “You knew my letters were real, though?” I said. “Weren’t they proof of something?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I knew there was a real person named Andrew Garvie writing to me, a man who made dolls and collected art books and traveled the world. I was afraid I was reading too much into you though – into our friendship. You sounded too good to be true, I suppose.” She laughed. “I felt as if we’d known one another forever. I expect that sounds silly to you but that’s how it was.”

  “It doesn’t sound silly at all. I felt like that too.”

  We had been talking for what seemed a long time, though in reality it was not quite an hour. I had been anxious at first that someone – the doctor, the youth – would burst in on us, demanding that I leave West Edge House immediately before the police were summoned. The more time passed the more I sensed that this would not happen. Bramber’s room seemed a place apart, an oasis in time.

  Bramber told me she hadn’t been well, that she hadn’t been properly herself since her mother died.

  “Helen said I’ve let life get away from me and she was right,” she said. “Being in here has made things worse, I can see that now. I should have left years ago but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to manage.” She paused. “I’m so glad you’re here, Andrew. Are you upset, that I mistook you for Anders Tessmond? Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “I think Anders Tessmond is a great character,” I said. “I wouldn’t call him a role model, exactly, but he’s more interesting than most of the dwarfs you find in other people’s stories. And he has better dress sense.” I glanced down at my crumpled shirt and we both burst out laughing. Then she leaned forward in her seat and took my hands. Her touch, not just the delectable warmth of her skin on mine but the very fact that we were touching, that after all my plans and dreaming we were finally here together in the same place, made my heart hammer and my head spin. I could see that Bramber was just an ordinary person, edging towards middle age as I was, yet to me she was enchanting. I gazed upon her as I had once gazed upon the glowing reproductions of Pre-Raphaelite paintings in the books in the art section of Welton public library, taking in the magical arrangement of colors, the aura of mystery, above all the promise of stories yet to be written and still to be read.

  She was ravishingly, uniquely alive, her eyes enlightened not so much by experience as by rapt hope. I once read somewhere that the true definition of love lies in acknowledging that the person standing in front of you is as alive and filled with purpose as you are, as deserving of scrutiny. If this is so then I knew in that moment that I loved Bramber Winters, as I love her still.

  I did not speak of my feelings. I knew it would be wrong of me, the kind of emotional greed that is liable to destroy everything it touches, especially if that thing is fragile, and very nearly brand new. Could Bramber ever care for me as I cared for her? I did not know, and had no wish to ask her. Unlike the dwarf in Schubert’s song, I felt no desire to kill my queen or, like Anders Tessmond, to destroy her integrity.

  Simply to know that I was with her in this room, on this plane of reality, in this universe – that was enough.

  “What will you do?” I asked her instead. “Have you decided?”

  “I’m going to leave,” she said at once. “I’ve already told Dr. Leslie. I want to finish my research – maybe I really could write a book about Ewa. Then I thought I might try and track down my mother’s friends – those who are still alive, anyway – and find out about what she was like before she gave up music. There might be a story there too, don’t you think?”

  “I’m sure there would be.” I hesitated. “You could come and live with me. There’s a spare room. You would be – completely private.”

  I was blushing like a fool. She squeezed my hands. “It’s lovely of you to think of that,” she said, “but Helen has offered me a room in her flat. She says I can stay as long as I like, until I get settled. She says she’d like the company.”

  “And you’ve said yes?” I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  She nodded. “But you and I – we’ll be able to meet now, won’t we? Meet more often. If you’d like to?”

  “Of course I would.”

  “I’ll write to you with Helen’s address as soon as I get there. You will stay for lunch? Here, I mean. I’m sorry about what happened earlier. Diz and Jackie can be nervous around strangers but I know they’d love to get to know you properly.”

  And of course I wanted to say yes, to grab every loose thread of time and bind her close, bind her close for always, but I knew in my heart this would be a mistake. If we were to have a future, this place – this enchanted mountaintop – should not be a part of it. Orpheus-like, I knew I would be better to turn my back and trust that she, my Euridice, would fit her footprints into mine and follow me back into the light.

  It came to me that once I left here I would have no way of contacting her. She would soon be gone from Tarquin’s End, and I had no idea where Helen Mason lived, other than that it was in Peckham. Peckham is bigger than most small towns, and swallows people whole. Again, I had no choice but to trust her.

  How do you bid adieu to the person you love? Not in the company of strangers, that is for sure.

  “I would love to, but I can’t,” I said. I invented something – an auction in Truro – that I was supposed to be attending, that I didn’t want to miss. Did she look disappointed? For a second maybe, as if she had briefly glimpsed a new and shining world, only to see it go tumbling down the sky, lost forever from view. Then something else – relief? – won the upper hand.

  “Well, if you’re sure,” she said. And then: “What about her?” She nodded at “Artist,” who had been sitting on Bram
ber’s bed all this time, lounging against the pillows like an imperial courtesan. I had forgotten all about her.

  I thought about saying that “Artist” was a copy, an identical replica, but anyone who knows anything about dolls would know immediately that this was a lie. There are no Chaplin replicas. None like “Artist,” anyway.

  “I just borrowed her for a bit,” I said finally. “I’ll see she gets home safe.”

  “Be careful, won’t you?” There was a glint in her eye, a quiet amusement that seemed to hint at an unspoken pleasure in the mischief I had caused. I hoped this was so.

  “You can be sure of it.”

  I stumbled to my feet, wondering if it would be permissible to embrace her. Then Bramber stepped forward and put out her arms. I stepped into them, incredulous, rested my head against her chest, against the butterfly T-shirt. I could hear her heart fluttering. Worlds made and unmade themselves, parallel realities slipped in and out of synch. This is where you strike! cried Anders Tessmond. The world is a dangerous place, said Ivan Stedman. Mind how you go.

  Outside the window, the summer sky was painted the false, saturated blue of plastic picnic cups. Ridiculously, I thought of Lohengrin, the knight of the grail, forced to leave his bride before their wedding night.

  He had bound Elsa with a pointless promise. I would not do the same.

  “I’m so glad things are working out for you,” I said. “I’m so happy we met.”

  I stroked my hand across the back of her T-shirt. I felt her lips touch the top of my head, and then we drew apart.

  I RETRACED MY STEPS to Tarquin’s Cross. The distance seemed much shorter than it had done on my way out, and in passing through the hamlet of Tarquin’s End I noted the presence of three or four children, lobbing chunks of dried mud at each other and into the duck pond.

  “Hey, Grumpy,” one of them called after me. “What did you do with the other six?”