“Are you lost?” A young man, with a buzz cut, had stopped to ask her. He carried a portfolio case and the heels of his shoes were unevenly worn down.
“No.” She scowled. “I’m just early.”
He nodded in acknowledgement and continued walking.
Maybe she looked suspicious, staring grimly at a public building for minutes on end. But she needed the time to cool down. She had walked across London, from Paddington Station, and it had taken an hour and a half. These days it was unthinkable to use the Underground. Too many people might be pressed together, their arms and backs disastrously crammed against her own. All she needed was for a ring of strangers to be convinced they loved her from Edgware Road to Tufnell Park. She shuddered.
Bells pealed, four times, from the church around the corner. The same bells he would have heard. It was time for her to go in, and she crossed the road, thinking: he crossed this road, often, for years.
The receptionist let her in and directed her upstairs. Professor Madoc’s office was only a single flight up. She had brought with her a Frozen Charlotte, the little bridal doll enchanted with Selflessness. More men would benefit from a Selflessness enchantment, she believed.
“Miss Kendrick!” Madoc greeted her on opening the door. “Do come in. And disregard the mess – it is shameful.”
It was barely messy, and she would not have taken it for the office of an artist. He must create elsewhere. This was a room for admin: beech laminate chairs, a blue grey carpet, the cork board upon the wall with various memoranda and flyers.
She took an empty seat.
“I need to know where Larkin is,” she said.
“Then you’ve come to the wrong place. He isn’t here.”
“But you know him well. You can guess where he’s gone, better than me.” Persephone took the Frozen Charlotte from her bag, and told him its value. “Take it. Just answer my questions.”
Madoc leant against his desk as he turned the doll over for inspection.
“Very well,” he said. “I will sing like a canary. But as soon as the conversation is over, I will deny it ever happened.”
“What can you tell me about Larkin?”
Madoc laughed. “That isn’t his name, for a start. Legally, he’s Callum Lorcan. There was a rift from his parents that prompted the change.”
“He didn’t speak about them,” Persephone said. “But I guessed there was some paternity issue – was his father a priest?”
“Assuredly; and the priest is my brother. Miss Lorcan was the housekeeper. A sordid business. While still a minor, Larkin got into some trouble for desecrating a grave. The church is – now I always get it wrong – St Ingrid’s?”
“St Ignatius,” Persephone said. “The burial place of Jemima Ramsay.”
“Yes. You may draw your own conclusion.”
“But we were never notified of her grave being desecrated.”
“My brother covered it up. Maybe he felt guilty about his bastard offspring. Or maybe he didn’t want word to get out, and that was easier if the boy was kept out of trouble.”
“And Larkin’s not Jemima’s descendant?” Persephone asked, remembering her vision of Lucy, and Lucy’s insistence Jemima never ran away. “He just lied about that?”
Madoc snorted. “He’s a fantasist. Jemima Ramsay’s child died, there was no secret lineage – Larkin made the whole thing up, and forged parish records. Eventually, I fear, he came to believe his lie. I’ve always felt uneasy about my own role in it – you know I love dolls; I may even have pointed out Jemima’s grave to him when he was a boy, and perhaps that seeded something. His poor mother has always been utterly bewildered by the story, but then, she shares her portion of blame, too. If you bring up a child telling them to pretend to the world that their family situation is significantly different from the reality, should you be surprised when they weave another familial fiction they prefer? Lies and family secrets were the air he breathed.”
“You’re in regular contact with his parents?”
“Indeed, though I don’t often update them of Larkin’s whereabouts. If he thought I was too pally with them, he’d cut me out, too.”
“So there’s no chance his mother knows where he is?”
“I doubt that very much.” Madoc pursed his lips and shook his head. “He tried to maintain as much distance between them as possible. I’m afraid he’ll avoid you in the same way. He’s very slippery, and you can be sure he’s already left the country.”
“Does he have any other family?”
“His wife, obviously.”
Persephone swallowed. “Larkin’s married?”
“Technically; the union is more often in the breach than the observance. She’s Italian, from a doll-making family in Florence. Her father hated Larkin – he thought Maria had been led astray. She did end up in a lot of trouble, she even spent a spell in prison for fraud, I believe, but the girl was capricious without Larkin’s help. These days she continues to do a fine line in art forgeries, under a pseudonym, and she tends to be secretive about her whereabouts. She and Larkin are one of those tiresome couples who explosively split up and reunite at regular intervals.”
This was not the account Persephone had hoped for, though it made an intuitive sense. “They must love each other, to try again.”
“Love? Good lord, no. Larkin likes having money and she has plenty of it. Normally he goes back when he runs out, and he’s canny enough to offer her something in return.”
“This time he has the enchantments.”
“Yes – but in fact he hasn’t offered them to her – as of yesterday morning she doesn’t know where he is any more than you do. She rang me to check if I knew anything.”
Don’t read too much into that, Persephone warned herself. It was dangerous to think he had ended his marriage because he was pining for her.
“I suppose it’s only a matter of time until he sells the enchantments to someone. He can tell who he likes.”
“Does that thought bother you?”
“No,” she said with certainty. Keeping enchantments a secret had done her no favours. Having fought to access the enchantments herself, how could she protest other people doing the same? It would affect business, no doubt. But who said Kendricks deserved to benefit from contrived scarcity? The knowledge wasn’t their property, although they had convinced themselves it was.
“My dear,” Madoc said. “Why are you looking for him?”
“Why do you think? It’s safe for him to come back again now; I fixed things so that I didn’t have to tell the police.”
“It would be better to forget him. I’m fond of him, as you know. In his own way he’s fond of me, or so I hope. But the only way to engage with him is on very narrow terms. He is incapable of ordinary depths of feeling.”
“He once told me that envy is the only real emotion,” Persephone remembered. “And love and happiness could only be felt with the help of enchantments.”
“What is it people say – when someone tells you who they are, believe them? I’ve always suspected that Larkin feels less than most people do, and that’s behind his bad behaviour – a drive for sensation, because ordinary things don’t get through to him. He wanted the enchantments for the same reason. They give him something he’s missing. He lacks a conscience, he shirks responsibility, he is impulsive, and he doesn’t understand what truly loving someone is. What a vacuum to fill!”
“But he could fill it, if he wore the right enchantments all the time.”
“He won’t. Larkin enjoys the transient thrill of unaccustomed emotion; that is not the same thing as wanting to be a better person. He is now a Sorcerer; if he were willing to permanently develop the qualities he lacked, he could do so himself. And if he did, perhaps he would no longer be the same person, in any meaningful sense.” He paused. “Ask yourself this, Persephone; I believe, when he stole the Paid Mourner, he was armed. Do you think – if his escape had depended on it – he would hesitate to use that knife?”
/>
The question was pertinent. Her hope that things might still come right was false, and his words made her confront a harder truth.
“Do you know,” she said softly, “I’d love Larkin no matter how he behaved, as long as his talent remained. That means I’m not a very nice person.”
“But it’s natural you should love him for his talent. It is the one truly good thing about him.”
“He said he saw my talent, too. I’m scared he’s taken it with him.”
“Tosh. I saw your creations in the catalogue, Miss Kendrick, and it is obvious you are your own artist. Believe me – I’ve taught for more years than I care to admit. You will be fine.”
In her lower back, Persephone felt the familiar cramp that augured her period. She had never taken the emergency contraception, and now she knew there was no need. It was a relief – for she doubted that she would be a decent parent, and knew Larkin would be less so – and yet it was also the loss of a fantasy, that she and Larkin might be the kind of people with that kind of mundanely meaningful future, making a family and a business.
She took a blister packet of painkillers from her bag. “I need some water.”
Madoc walked to a water fountain in the corner, and filled a paper cup, which he brought back to her. She swallowed the chalky tablets and drained the cup.
“I’m sorry I wasted your time.” Persephone closed her bag.
“No, no – not at all. I’m only sorry I couldn’t give you better news.”
He reached out to shake her hand.
“I don’t do that,” she said.
“Very sensible.” He gestured towards the door. She saw, as she had not when she entered, a small automaton to the right of the frame. It stood upon a plinth. The work was clearly Larkin’s. The material was battered tin, and the subject was a young woman, her flesh dimpled and undulating from the impressions of the hammer.
“It’s the Maiden of Spring,” Madoc said, seeing where her attention had fallen.
“May I activate it?”
“Be my guest.”
She turned the handle at the side. The maiden touched the rocks around her, and a series of ceramic flowers spiralled from their crevices. They reminded Persephone of the porcelain wreaths that Victorians had laid upon graves. But the strangest thing of all was the feeling that swept over her. An unaccountable, Uncovered Grief.
“When did he give this to you?” she asked.
“It was in my pigeon hole, two days ago.”
She accepted then, for the first time, that he had really left. It would be easy to interpret the doll as a portrait of her – and the Grief as Larkin’s regret, for what he had thrown away. That might have sent her deeper into denial that they were over. But she grasped that you only grieve what is dead.
54
On the second of January, Persephone went to work early. Now no one could say that she was trespassing if she strayed from the service counter. The building was empty, apart from Rieko, who was contemplating the Interior Design floor with dissatisfaction. Persephone wondered what Rieko was distracting herself from to be there before anyone else. Possibly Alastair was yet to forgive her betrayal, as he saw it.
“The whole building needs reorganisation,” Rieko said. “The current arrangement is impractical; six men take up the top floor, the whole floor, and as doll makers they have least need of the space! Building and decorating houses requires a far larger working area.”
“Let’s look at areas of overlap,” Persephone suggested. “The tools for wooden doll-making and wooden housebuilding should be in the same place. There’s no need for wooden dolls to be made on the same floor as ceramic or metal or cloth ones. House design and interior design should happen in the same space, too, surely?”
The two women commenced a tour of the building, labelling equipment and tables with Post-its signalling where they should be moved to. On the third floor, Persephone saw Larkin’s workbench, still bearing the last project he was working on: a porcelain shoulder bust, with a kid leather body. The torso was half stitched, with the needle jabbed into the doll’s heart till work resumed.
Rieko put a Post-it on the bench top. “This should be moved one floor down, along with the others.”
“Hm. Yes.”
“We also need to do something about this.” Rieko tapped her foot on the glass floor. “To make it walkable for anyone with a skirt.”
“Most of the workers wear overalls.”
“You don’t.”
“No. But we can’t cover the floor. It lets natural light through the building.”
“We could obscure it,” Rieko said. “There’s frosting spray in the paint store.”
“All right. If we do that now, it’ll be dry before everyone else is back at work.”
They fetched several cans between them, donned respirators, and fastened aprons. They opened the skylights, letting in the cold January air. Persephone took one corner furthest from the paternoster, and Rieko took the other. Together they worked quickly and neatly, creating arcs of mist on the floor below.
“We can’t do much more now till we have more hands on deck,” Persephone commented.
“No,” Rieko said. “We should wait for the others to arrive.”
“I was just thinking,” Persephone said. “I could guide you in some doll-making today. If you’d like a lesson.”
“I could instruct you in furniture-making, as an exchange. What type of doll should we make?”
“Porcelain dolls,” Persephone said. “Have you done that before?”
Rieko shook her head. “I’ve only used wood. I know how to whittle, because I use that in furnishings; and I’ve tried whittling dolls in my free time. I’ve picked up basic points about jointing dolls just from watching Alastair work at home.”
“You probably know more than you think.”
“Did you know that it’s highly prestigious, in Japan, to be a ceramicist?”
“No.”
“I thought that might have informed your interest, if your mother had told you.”
“She didn’t. My mother’s more British than Japanese.” And they spoke infrequently. The sacrifice had finally paid off; Persephone won her hex, and all the sorcery she could wish for, years after letting her mother leave alone. It might still be some time before Persephone knew if her decision was the right one. She hoped their relationship could still be mended.
“Do you think the collectors should hear that things are changing around here?” Rieko asked. “Everyone at Kendricks could make a doll – and lay an enchantment upon it for sale. And we’ll advertise it to our customers as a new collection. Except – I don’t know if I can make something good enough for sale.”
“Make something that says exactly what you want it to,” Persephone responded. “That tells the collectors you’re here. Don’t worry about making them like it.”
Rieko laughed. “That’s no way to succeed in business, Seph.”
So they heated the kiln. They chose plaster moulds from the Sorcerers’ shelves. Each mould split in half, and contained the impression of a limb or a head. Most had been cast from the Sorcerers’ own clay figurines. A few used Lucy Kendrick’s china dolls as a model, which allowed the Sorcerers to make sculptural replicas of her work, and modify them as they wished through the choice of glazes or wigs. It was one of Lucy’s designs that Persephone and Rieko settled upon.
As Persephone arranged the heavy plaster cubes across the workbench, she judged herself to be a hypocrite because she had told Rieko to ignore other people’s expectations of her work, and to focus solely on what she wanted to say. But for the past several months Persephone had been driven by a desire to be as good, as skilled, as Larkin, and to have him tell her so.
She forced herself to speak, because Rieko was awaiting her instructions.
“Notice the size of these moulds,” Persephone said. “They need to be larger than the finished doll, because there will be shrinkage from firing and sanding. Now let’s prepare
the slip.”
She opened the mixture of water, minerals, and white kaolin that made up the porcelain paste, and explained it must be watered down to form a slippery liquid.
“Keep adding water, and keep stirring it, to get rid of the bubbles,” Persephone said. Rieko did so, while Persephone found a square of nylon for straining the mixture. When it was the right consistency, without any lumps of paste remaining, Persephone held the moulds while Rieko tipped the slip into them. It would take fifteen minutes for the slip layer to thicken. Accordingly, Persephone and Rieko swapped roles; they discussed Persephone learning to make her own, diminutive furnishings.
“I’d like to get you working on chairs, first of all,” Rieko was saying. “Maybe some nice modernist designs, with clean lines, would be a good learning project.”
“That sounds good.” How odd it would be, to be taught by a new person. Would she fall in love with Rieko too, given enough lessons? For Rieko excelled in her field as Larkin did in his. Persephone couldn’t imagine falling in love again at all. Perhaps that was for the best; rather than follow her heart, which was self-evidently flawed in its inclinations, she should dispassionately choose a partner on objective merit, then lick the hex for Love upon their skin, just as she had upon her own.
Rieko talked about Arne Jacobsen and Ray Eames, Eero Aarnio and Hans Wegner; Persephone took mental notes until the slip layer was ready. They removed the pieces from the moulds so Persephone could show Rieko the seams that had been left in the clay. She demonstrated the scraping smooth of the legs and arms and head using a knife. Where parts must be adhered, she did so with slip, and kept them hydrated all the time, so they wouldn’t crack.
They could hear voices on the floor below. People were finally arriving to start the new year of work.
“The doll will be in the kiln for hours,” Persephone said. “If you have the time – I’d love to learn how to make that chair.”
“I’m glad we’re sharing,” Rieko said. “We will make something good here, won’t we?”
The Thief on the Winged Horse Page 27