The Dollmaker

by Nina Allan

  The children dissolved into spasms of laughter, elbowing each other and doubling over in their merriment. I walked past them without stopping and on up the road, the scene – not just them, but me alongside them – etching itself into my brain like a woodcut illustration from one of Grimms’ fairy tales.

  Heigh ho, I thought to myself, and laughed aloud. I arrived at the crossroads where the bus had dropped me. There was a bus stop sign, I noticed, but the timetable was either missing or stolen. I had no idea how long I would have to wait – it could even be that there were no more buses that day. I decided to give it an hour. If I was still waiting after that I would have to go back into Tarquin’s End and ask at the post office – someone there would surely have the number of a taxi company.

  In the event, a bus hove into view just twenty minutes later. I bought a ticket for Bodmin Station, hoping I would not have to wait too long there, either. Bodmin, like all the towns and villages I had passed through on my journey west, had suddenly become too painful for me even to think about, its streets and cottages and shop fronts symbolic of my unsatisfied yearning and of my grief. For it was grief I felt, alongside my happiness, a soup of pain so thick it threatened to choke me. You have not lost her, I kept reminding myself, your goodbye was temporary. But in the half-hour on that potholed B-road that did not feel true.

  I realized with horror and frustration that I would have to call in at The Tarquin to collect the rest of my luggage. What I wanted was to be on a train and heading back eastwards as quickly as possible.

  “Artist,” to do her credit, spoke not one word. I felt glad of her presence, though I would not have admitted it, least of all to her. She understood what I was going through, I knew that, and was grateful. “Artist” would know what it meant to play for high stakes. She would know about grief, too, even though she would consider it beneath her dignity to speak of it.

  It was only once we were actually on the train that she made her suggestion: that we should stop for the night in Dawlish, before heading home. I was resistant to the idea at first – I wanted to be back in London – but “Artist” insisted.

  You’re exhausted, she said. You’ll feel like hell if you don’t take a breather. She said she’d write, remember? Anyway, I want to see the sea.

  At her mention of the sea I felt something inside me unclench a little. When was the last time I had looked upon it, stood beside it, scented its salty exhalations? I could not remember. I imagined a room, small and clean and high up, overlooking the water. Good coffee and fresh croissants in the morning, then the journey home.

  “Yes, all right,” I conceded. “I suppose we could do that.”

  I know an OK place, “Artist” said. You’ll like it, I promise.

  “Why are you being so decent all of a sudden?”

  She was silent for a moment. Because you’re a king amongst men and don’t know it, she said. Either that or I’m losing my edge. You decide.

  * * *

  —

  WE ARRIVED IN DAWLISH at around five o’clock. The shops were just shutting, dusting the streets with that aura of faded glory that is the inimitable preserve of the Victorian seaside resort in decline. Liquid sunlight slipped like syrup from the striped awnings of seafront cafés. The town’s famous black swans lumbered nonchalantly around the ornamental lake that formed the centerpiece of the municipal gardens, alternately grooming each other and pecking for food. The atmosphere of the place – retrograde and somehow defunct – served only to accentuate my mood.

  In spite of the affectionate manner in which we had parted, the mere fact of Bramber’s absence from my side – the increasing distance between us – had set up within me a cycle of self-doubt and apprehension I was finding it impossible to reason away.

  Had she truly meant what she said about us meeting again?

  Was I a fool for leaving so hurriedly?

  What must she think of me for being so candid about my feelings?

  This disconsolate town with its down-at-heel amusement arcades and tattered bunting served only to put me in mind of how many similarly desperate no-hopers must have washed up here through the decades, how many weekend breakups, broken-down addicts, hotel-room suicides…

  Enough already, “Artist” grumbled. Who do you think you are, F. Scott Fitzgerald? Keep walking.

  I followed where she led, along the seafront and then up through the town, the famous cliffs flamed to scarlet in the last of the sunlight, like a Martian landscape. The gradient exhausted me but I was glad. The climb gave me something definite to focus on, at least. At the head of a narrow side street, a flight of stone steps took me still higher, between two sandstone columns and into the courtyard of a hotel named, somewhat improbably, Castle View.

  “This better be it,” I muttered. A sign in the window indicated that there were indeed vacancies, as well as a three-star restaurant actually on the premises. So far as I could recall, the hotel was not listed in Coastage’s English Almanac, but then again I had not planned on spending the night in Dawlish, so my memory might well have been faulty in that regard.

  “No wonder there are vacancies,” I said to “Artist.” “You could put yourself in hospital just climbing those steps.”

  Never mind, “Artist” said. We’re here now.

  The young man at reception welcomed me courteously and asked if I would prefer their queen-size room or the super-king. He was striking to look at – elegant, gold-rimmed spectacles, pale cropped hair. He reminded me of Wil, and although the resemblance was only fleeting, I found it deeply disconcerting, nonetheless.

  “Whichever one faces the sea,” I said quickly.

  “The super-king, then. Fourth floor.” He made a note in his ledger, then inquired if I would be dining with them this evening.

  “Most definitely,” I assured him. When he asked if I needed help with my luggage I swiftly declined. I wanted to get away from him, from everyone. “Artist” was right. I was exhausted.

  The room, when I finally reached it, was a kind of paradise. Its wide bow window offered a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view of the ocean, its position beneath the eaves removing it entirely from the hackneyed tawdriness of the town below.

  The sun was finally going down, immersing itself, like Phaeton’s chariot, beneath the softly rippled surface of the glimmering sea. I gazed for long moments, bewitched, alive only in the present, a gift that is offered to us only seldom, and that we rarely accept.

  Then I lay down on the bed, losing consciousness almost immediately. I slept for two hours. When I awoke it was getting dark, the backlit horizon glowed a pale orange. When I went to close the curtains, “Artist” asked me not to.

  I want to look at the lights, she said. Could you let me have some air, do you think?

  I took her out of the holdall and sat her on the wide window seat that ran around the edge of the bow window. I couldn’t see any harm in it – we were too high up for anyone to look in and besides, I had more or less given up worrying about the police. “Artist” did not want to be found, and for this reason alone I pitied the detective who had been tasked with attempting to discover her current whereabouts.

  I showered and changed and went downstairs to the dining room. This would be the last of my meals away and, in spite of my persisting anxieties over Bramber, I experienced a twinge of nostalgia for my brief period of life on the road. The menu at Castle View was traditional and some would say old-fashioned, but the coq au vin I ordered was substantial and delicious. Now I was rested and had food in my stomach I felt somewhat less melancholy, distanced from myself, as if the lone man sipping Merlot at the corner table were the subject of a fascinating yet somewhat depressing documentary on the British seaside.

  I, the real Andrew Garvie, bestowed my supercilious gaze upon him from somewhere just outside the frame, pronouncing myself an idiot without having to be one.

  I orde
red the lemon tart for dessert and then a snifter of Armagnac. When eventually I returned to my room I had no other plan in mind than to watch Newsnight and then catch an early night, but “Artist” started in on me right away.

  When are we going to talk about this? she demanded.

  “Talk about what?” I said. I could hear myself sounding testy, though I wasn’t so much irritated as bone-tired.

  About what happens tomorrow?

  “What happens is that I go to the post office first thing and buy one of those Royal Mail packing cartons. Then I send you back to the museum, recorded delivery.” This was at least one definite decision I had reached over dinner. My words as they came out sounded positive and sane.

  They’re like prisons, those places, you do know that?

  “They are not like prisons. You get to travel the world. You have thousands of people to wait on you instead of just one.”

  From the inside of a glass case.

  I sighed. “I can’t keep you, you know that. I was never meant to be a criminal. I’m hopeless at it.”

  All artists are criminals, to a degree. Have you thought about that?

  “I’m too tired for philosophy.” I gazed out over the water, the black waves lapping at an invisible shore. It seemed to me that I could just make out something on the horizon, a blacker blackness, pinpricked about its midpoint by tiny lights.

  Our ship, “Artist” said. I could show you such things.

  “I don’t want such things. I want to go home. I want to get back to work. I want to try and form a real relationship with Bramber, if she’ll have me.”

  Have you ever thought, my dear Sir Galahad, that the real purpose of your crusade was not to end up playing house with that foolish woman but to bring us together?

  “Bramber’s not foolish. She’s a good person. I believe in her. I believe in us.”

  I began to weep then, to weep like a child as I rarely if ever had done when I was a child. I wept for myself, and for Bramber’s lost years. I wept for Wil, and the way he had used me, for my never-to-be consummated love affair with Ursula. I wept for Clarence, whom I adored, and whom I had treated so selfishly these past few weeks.

  I wept, as the poets say, because I must.

  You were never meant for this kind of soap opera, Prince Andrei, “Artist” said coldly.

  “Why? Because I’m small?” Such a response would have been monstrous and yet so predictable – so melodramatic – I would almost have welcomed it.

  Because you are great. Imagination comes with burdens as well as privileges. Solitude is one of those burdens. But is that so bad?

  She said other things too, but I had mostly stopped listening. I stood captivated by the dark thing, the hulk on the horizon, which as it drifted closer revealed itself as a ship. Not a yacht or a cruiser but a tall ship, with three masts and numerous sails, a spider’s web of lights festooned in the rigging.

  Your cabin is prepared, “Artist” whispered. And your queen is already on board. Her name is Ambergris.

  What a beautiful name, I thought. I started forward, unlatching the window. Night air poured in, blissfully cool and sweet. The ship’s lights blazed in the offing and I marveled. I thought of the miraculous lands we might travel together, “Artist” and I, the silks and beads and lace I would purchase, the visions that would spring to life beneath my hands.

  Had not my dolls always been my world, from the moment I first glimpsed Marina Blue in Prendergast’s window?

  A king among men, “Artist” had called me. She had been pulling my leg, of course, trying to cheer me up. But even so, to sail forever in pursuit of one’s dreams – to be king of that glittering kingdom, if only for a moment – was that not an enviable fate for a poet of kapok and calico such as myself?

  Was not love imagined often more glorious than hope fulfilled?

  I leaned forward towards the night. She brushed the tears from my face with her chilly hands.

  Come home, you idiot. Clarence’s voice, so clearly imagined I could almost believe she was there beside me in the room. You went on holiday, that’s all. Holidays always make you feel rotten, it’s a fact of life.

  And then, another image: Bramber, in her room at West Edge House. She was sitting at her desk, writing a letter. Her cramped, meticulous script flowed freely across the pale-blue airmail paper I knew so well.

  Today was like a miracle, she wrote. I keep wondering if I dreamed it, but I know I didn’t.

  How could I have thought of leaving her, even for a second? The world was a dangerous place, as Ivan Stedman had said. But it was still my world. I would be damned if I would relinquish my place in it, even for a king’s ransom.

  I drew back into the room and closed the window. In the bay the ship, with its starlit rigging, shimmered brightly into focus just for a moment and then blinked out of sight.

  The Garden Flat,

  143 Asylum Road

  Peckham

  London SE15

  Dearest Andrew,

  You’ll see I have a new address now – Asylum Road! People would find that amusing I’m sure, given my history, though you will probably know that an asylum in medieval England was a place of refuge. Helen’s flat is actually a maisonette, and it has its own entrance. My room is on the first floor, overlooking the garden, which meant I felt at home here as soon as I arrived.

  I left behind most of the things from my old room at West Edge House. The armchair and the bureau weren’t mine to take anyway. I have my sea chest, and my jewelry box, my Hampton Court snow dome, and the brooch in the shape of a beetle that belonged to my mother. And of course there are my dolls to keep me company.

  I think Sylvia Passmore was sorry to see me go. She even hugged me, which was unlike her, though she’s been a lot less moody in general since Jennie and Paul left. On the evening of my farewell supper she started telling me about a scheme she’d dreamed up for redecorating the rooms on the first floor. She seemed quite excited about it, although it was probably the prospect of having Dr. Leslie all to herself that was doing the talking.

  I don’t think Sylvia has a clue about the letter Dr. Leslie sent to Jennie. She’ll find out soon enough – Jennie told me before she left that she had decided to go to the police, once she and Paul are settled in London – but it wasn’t my place to tell her and so I didn’t. It will be good for Sylvia to have a change of scene, anyway. Nothing is the same as it was. In a way, the life of the house as we knew it is already over.

  I almost forgot to tell you – Diz and Jackie got married. They’ve gone to live in Diz’s old house, in Horsfall. Jackie showed me a photograph of it, a square, red-brick end terrace with ivy twisting around the porch. Jackie seemed excited about the move, especially as it means she’ll be living closer to her daughter.

  She wore white at her wedding, a high-necked, 192os-style dress in lace brocade. Her daughter Teresa was wearing a blue silk trouser suit and a pair of sunglasses with silver frames that made her look like a movie star. She arrived at Tarquin’s End the day before the wedding and arranged for someone to come over from Bodmin to do Jackie’s makeup and hair.

  Jackie looked beautiful, like brides do in old photographs, as if she had been returned to a time and a place that was more her own.

  On her way out to the car, she smiled at me almost shyly. She raised a hand to the back of her hair.

  “I was always worried about Teresa finding out how her father died,” she said. “I think she might already know, though. Do you think she minds?” She looked down at her feet. She was wearing the most exquisite shoes, a pair of silver stilettos. Sylvia Passmore had given them to her as a wedding present.

  “He killed his first wife, you know, Teresa’s dad,” Jackie added in a whisper. “I didn’t know that when we first got together but after I fell pregnant with Teresa I was so afraid. Afraid for her, I mean. I couldn
’t settle, not with that criminal in the world, knowing what he’d done and with everybody believing he was such a gent. He kept hinting he’d do for me as well if I said anything and I believed him. People say that about murder, don’t they? That it gets easier after the first time.”

  “Jackie,” I said. “It’s your wedding day. We can talk about this later, if you still want to.”

  I’d heard all sorts of rumors about Jackie and why she was in here but they no longer seemed important. Whatever she had done or hadn’t done, it was a long time ago.

  Jackie turned her face away. Her profile seemed delicate and very young-looking and for a moment I barely recognized her.

  “Teresa loves you,” I said. “She knows you’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “You don’t know that,” Jackie said. “I could have done anything.”

  St. Ninian’s was filled with white roses. While Jackie and Diz stood having their photograph taken at the church door, Teresa approached me and thanked me for coming.

  “My mother talks about you a lot,” she said. “Thanks for everything you’ve done for her.”

  “Jackie’s my friend,” I said. We stood together in silence for a couple of seconds. I would have liked to continue the conversation but I couldn’t think what to say. In the end Teresa smiled again and walked away.

  The churchyard was bursting with sunlight. There was confetti on the pathway, and in the grass.

  West Edge House felt completely different with Diz and Jackie gone. The night before I left, I lay in bed listening to the house murmuring to itself and wondering what would happen to it – when everyone finds out about Dr. Leslie, I mean. Will it be pulled down, or will it begin a new life, with new occupants, new stories?

  Houses are like trees, they have long memories. I’m not sure if I want West Edge House to remember me, or not.

  I booked a taxi to take me to Bodmin Station. I could have caught the bus from Tarquin’s Cross, but I couldn’t face it. I didn’t want people from the village asking me questions – I’ve had enough of questions. The main road through Tarquin’s End was strewn with autumn leaves, and just below the duck pond I caught sight of Janey Morris – that’s Meredith Hubbard’s granddaughter – playing hopscotch with a couple of other girls I didn’t recognize.