The Doll Factory

by Elizabeth Macneal

  ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s from Sylvia,’ he says. ‘I don’t usually open them, but I recognized Clarissa’s hand on the envelope.’

  ‘Oh?’ Iris tries to keep her voice neutral, to overlook the twist she felt at the name. ‘And what does she say?’

  ‘She’s –’ Louis looks down at the paper. ‘It seems she’s dying.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says again.

  ‘She wants me to go to her. To say goodbye.’

  Iris toys with the charcoal, her palms blackening. ‘And will you?’

  ‘I think – I think I must. She’s requested me there. There’s a steamer which leaves for Edinburgh –’ his eyes flit to the clock – ‘soon, if I hurry. She’s dying. I can’t deny her that. She wants to reconcile.’

  ‘Reconcile?’ Iris keeps her voice level.

  ‘Not that way – or at least, even if she does, I have no interest in it. I should go, you know, put her mind at ease that I bear her no ill will. It would be cruel not to, wouldn’t it? It would be cruel of me not to go, not to let her die with a clear conscience. And my son – I must comfort him too.’

  ‘I thought you said she feigned illness.’

  ‘My sister wrote, and if you don’t believe me . . .’

  ‘It isn’t that I don’t believe you,’ Iris says. ‘I don’t believe her.’

  Louis gives her the letter. ‘Read it for yourself.’

  ‘My love, my strong knight, my Valentine – How can you care so little for me – a lover ought to have bestowed – reconcile with me – come to my side – your Sylvie . . .’

  Iris’s hands are shaking. It is so simpering, so hysterical, so insincere. ‘It’s a billet-doux.’

  ‘That isn’t a billet-doux,’ Louis says, taking it back. ‘It’s the final missive of a dying woman.’

  ‘Of course,’ Iris says, briskly. ‘And do you care for her?’

  ‘How can you ask that?’ he asks, and Iris expects him to insist that no, the idea is absurd. But instead he says, ‘Of course I do.’

  She stares at a patch of wallpaper above his head, where the pattern is not quite aligned. Its annoyance has snagged on her constantly, and now she wants to tear the whole sheet down.

  Louis tries to take her hand, but she shakes him off. She should be more sympathetic, more supportive; but her temper flares.

  ‘I know you think—’

  ‘Please, don’t tell me what I think.’

  ‘You know I love you. I don’t love her – how could I? But she’s dying, and I care for her. I was married to her, she is – was – my wife.’ He looks at her. ‘I will be free then.’

  ‘Free?’ Iris says, and her irritation ebbs. ‘For what?’

  ‘It would make things more honest for us.’

  Iris does not dare frame the question directly. She imagines waking in the morning, untangling herself from the humid warmth of his limbs, and propping herself on to her elbows. My dearest husband, she would say, and her parents would forgive her the indiscretion of modelling, because the match is better, far better than the oily porter, and she loves Louis too – how she loves him! ‘More honest?’

  ‘Well, I would no longer have a wife.’

  ‘And – what difference?’ She picks up the charcoal, and then places it down again.

  His face falls. ‘Oh, Iris – not that. I didn’t mean for you to think – I meant – didn’t I always say I don’t agree with marriage? I meant, we’ll feel free. There won’t be any scandal.’ He pulls at his earlobe, that old sign of agitation, but his words are fists. ‘I wish you knew how I loved you.’

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘But I do! Too much – I want to be with you for ever.’

  ‘You must see,’ she says, and her anger is back, a tight veil which she struggles against, and she articulates feelings she would have been mortified for him to know only two minutes before. ‘You must see how it is for me. My parents won’t even bear the sight of me! You expect me to yield to you, and you won’t give me the basic modesty of becoming your wife – but you did for her, for Sylvia.’

  ‘But I’ve always been clear that I don’t agree with marriage, regardless of Sylvia – who, I should add, is a person, not just an encumbrance between me and a second union.’

  ‘Oh, to be guided by a mere principle! How easy it must be for you.’

  ‘It isn’t easy at all,’ he says.

  ‘How? How isn’t it?’ She stares at him. ‘You have everything you want! You cleave to your principles, and you are a man with the advantage of station! This – this interaction with me – it doesn’t degrade you. In the eyes of the world, it makes you a rake, but it makes me a whore.’ He flinches, and she says it again, louder. ‘Yes, a whore! And what of my principles? What of the way I’m looked at, sneered at even by your charwoman? Your mere mistress – and if you discarded me I’d have nothing.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘No,’ Iris says, and she looks away from him. ‘I wouldn’t dare to entangle you, to degrade you, to have you suffer the torments of an old wife when there’s the thrill of sweet love.’

  ‘It was Rossetti who said that, not me.’

  ‘It may as well have been you,’ she says.

  He reaches for her hand, but she turns away.

  ‘I love you, Iris.’

  ‘But you’ll never marry me.’

  Louis is silent, and it is enough.

  The disappointment is a slap, a cool rankling, and she can bear it no longer. She has to quicken his departure, like the rapid pulling of a tooth. ‘When does the boat leave?’ she demands.

  ‘Can we—’

  ‘When does it leave?’ she says again, and he holds up his hands.

  ‘Every evening at six.’

  She glances at the grandfather clock. ‘Well, you had better be on your way. Your services as Sylvia’s Valentine are required.’ Her temper mists. ‘And perhaps when you return, you will find yourself gloriously untangled from me altogether.’

  Now she has started she cannot stop. The threat sits in the air between them. As soon as the words have left her, she longs to take them back, but it is too late, she is too proud, and she stares at her reflection in the curved mirror, at this little world, newly shattered.

  ‘Iris – no,’ Louis says, aghast, but she swats him away. ‘You can’t mean it.’

  ‘I’ll find you a cab.’

  ‘I won’t leave until—’

  ‘Leave,’ she says, the final wrench. ‘Go – I will fetch you a cab.’

  And before he can stop her, she has slammed shut the door, and is storming down the street, the straw slippery under her feet.

  Imaginings swirl: Louis, in Venice, his hands tight against Sylvia’s waist as they dance at a ball; him, rising against her, engendering a son – ‘My strong knight,’ she whispers, gripping his back – and now, Sylvia lying on her deathbed, as pretty as a cameo brooch, her hair spread on the pillow behind her. Louis at her side, summoned like an obedient lapdog, and he kisses her hand, easing her departure when he tells her that he loves her. Iris tries to stop the thoughts, but they pile on – more – Louis’s lips on Sylvia’s, the quick reawakening of his desire. Iris shakes her head because she knows she is being unfair, that she is jealous of a dying woman. He should go. He must go. But it isn’t the fact of him going to her side which stabs at her. He loved Sylvia enough to marry her, and he will not allow Iris the same dignity.

  ‘I love you!’ Louis calls from the studio window as she turns the corner on to Charlotte Street. ‘Please, Iris.’

  But she does not answer. She can only just keep a lid on the sobs that she feels building within her.

  Cab

  Summer has come early, and the heat is starting to rise, a thick pall which settles on Silas and makes him sweat under his collar. He takes off his patched blue coat, and his eyes drift to a cat which is clambering along the windowsill of the empty shop. Its spine is oddly curved and he wonders if
it was a partial break or a birth deformity. A few months ago, he might have followed it and tried to trap it, pinned out the backbone on his slab, but he loses interest and returns to his contemplation of Louis’s house. A little boy has come and gone with a letter. He dabs at his brow. It will be evening soon, and when it is cooler he will relax.

  The door slams. He looks up and sees Iris hurrying down the pavement. She walks away from him, and he can see the rustle of her skirts against the cobbles, her dress already dusty.

  A window opens, and Silas pulls himself back from the glass. ‘I love you! Please, Iris,’ he hears Louis call, and Silas’s mouth tastes of lemons.

  Iris will come to him – her chin tilted in the oil-light, just as it was at dawn in the painting. ‘You have helped me to love you,’ she will say. ‘How is it that I never noticed you properly before?’

  He wonders if he should follow Iris, but she was not wearing a shawl or bonnet, and she wears them wherever she goes. He waits, expecting her to return quickly. And indeed, he is proud when he sees her a few minutes later: if he were a member of the constabulary, just think how useful he would be, how many crimes he would solve with his skills of observation! Behind her trots a cab, the bay horse frothing in the heat, sweat greasing its hide. The coachman has a curling ginger moustache, like the tusks of a sea cow, and Silas worries that Iris will climb into this hansom, that she will be alone with this man.

  But it seems the cab is for Louis. He stands at the door with a small trunk which he heaves on to the roof and the driver lashes it down with ropes. The horse whickers and snorts.

  ‘London Bridge Pier,’ he hears Louis say. ‘And make haste.’

  Louis tries to take Iris’s hand, but she turns away from him, says something in a raised pitch which Silas does not catch. Louis pleads a little, and then sighs as he climbs inside.

  Silas’s head aches from the grind of his teeth. Such relief: he knew she did not love Louis really. And with it, a thought is springing up. It is just a shoot – a green bud peeping through the soil – but he grasps hold of it – because this is his moment, and it is so perfect, so precisely his that he thinks it can only have occurred by design.

  Everything is ready. Silas has prepared the cellar, bought twenty-eight stoppered vials of chloroform. He is ready for her visit. He remembers a French word, which he heard uttered in a salon from a strumpet visiting from Paris – a séjour. He is ready for her séjour. He must not tarry. What if her sister were to arrive just at the moment when he has everything arranged so precisely? It is exactly as he heard the surgeons discussing when he used to loiter around University College London: the body is laid out, the chloroform has been administered, and the incision must be made swiftly and cleanly at the right angle and with the correct pressure. Precision lies not only in accuracy but in the timing, too.

  As the cab turns the corner, and Louis holds his foolish hand out of the window, Iris stands there, cradling herself with her arms. She starts to cry.

  My life is dreary. He will bring her joy and comfort.

  She is all alone now. It is meant to be, and who is he to deny fate?

  Silas runs for the first time in years. His legs dash, ungainly, angled, and he careers around swells and ladies, sweeps and costermongers. A woman spills a pyramid of oranges over the pavement and bellows after him. He races like he has seen the urchin race, and his heartbeat is percussive, his throat aching from the heat, sweat veining his back, salty beads dripping down his cheek.

  He pictures her following the same route, her footsteps falling into the ghosts of his, but she is a lady, and he is sure she will not run, despite the urgency. He sees the angles of the buildings as if through her eyes. What will she make of it all? He turns into his alley. He has never noticed the green slime on the walls before, never felt how close and cramped the houses are, as if they might topple and compress him, never concerned himself with the dust heaps which slope against the bricks. Will she pass down here or will she wait at the entrance of the passage? It is narrow and fetid. He scans the ground for the spaniel, but a bone grubber must have taken it to sell to a glue factory. At least the dead-end alley is empty: there are no children in rags sheltering out of the wind, and the traffic at this time is deafening, with the iron grind of carriage wheels on the Strand, and the chatter of black clerks scurrying home after their office days are finished. Nobody will hear her cry out. Will someone glance up the passageway? But no – it is too dark – their eyes would not adjust in time, and he will be quick. Even now, he can barely see. The street outside with its white houses was blinding, and now in the darkness he sees green and yellow shapes whirl across his vision. She will experience the same and will not notice him crouching behind the doorpost.

  Although he knows the answer, he wants to check one final time that everything is in order, and he ducks into his house. He lifts the deerskin which covers the trapdoor, and imagines carrying her through the shop, light and dainty in his arms. If she breaks an ankle as he ferries her down to the cellar, it will only hamper any attempt she might make to escape. He tries to calm the tremble in his hand. He touches the chloroform bottles on the dresser, strokes the thighbone he will use as a club. Soon he will have his companion.

  All he needs is a letter-writer, and there are dozens on the Strand, often used by the clerks who don’t have the education they pretend to.

  He has prepared the words that will be written.

  Flea

  ‘What did he want?’

  The snooty boy with the quill pauses.

  Albie shoves closer. He stares at the neat squiggles on the advertising board. He wonders how those loops can form words, how anybody can understand them.

  ‘What did he ask you to write?’ he demands.

  ‘What did who ask?’

  ‘That man what just left. With the blue coat.’ Albie has been following Silas all afternoon, and watched as Louis clambered into the cab, ordering it to London Bridge Pier.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ the boy sneers. He wears a tatty velvet jacket and a boater, the straw unravelling at the brim. The boy looks past Albie, calling out in his voice with its stretched vowels, ‘Letters written for fivepence! Fine letters for fivepence!’ then lowered, ‘Shove off, wretch, or you’ll put off my customers.’

  ‘Listen to me, cur,’ Albie hisses. ‘That man. What did you write for him?’

  ‘Clear off,’ the boy says again, and Albie glares at him, as if he thinks he’s any better because he’s had his education. The boy has a portable desk in front of him, stacks of vellum and paper held tight by a paperweight and string, and a milk-bottle of ink. Albie seizes hold of the jar, uncorks it and sloshes a little ink on to the pavement. ‘Give me that!’ the boy cries. ‘That’s ten bob’s worth!’

  But Albie raises the bottle above his head. ‘I’ll drop it, I will,’ he says. ‘Now tell me, what’d you write for him? I ain’t afraid to smash this, neither.’

  ‘You’ll be sorry – you’ll rue the day!’

  ‘Just tell me what he wanted,’ Albie repeats, trying to keep his voice even, to guard against the urgency. He could smack this wretch about the chops. Tell me, he wills him. Please just tell me.

  ‘He won’id,’ the boy says, imitating Albie’s accent, ‘for me to write a letter.’

  ‘I know that,’ Albie says. ‘But what did it say? I ain’t fooling around.’ He knocks another splash of ink on to the pavement.

  The boy growls, but then relents. ‘It was a note from a girl asking her sister to meet him down some street. Down that alley –’ he thumbs in the direction of Silas’s shop – ‘and saying she was hurt, or something. That’s all I know – that’s it. Damned if I know what it means. Now give me that back, before I smack you.’

  Albie chews on his lip, trying to make sense of the jumble.

  ‘What were the name of the girl he sent it to?’

  ‘Was the name,’ the boy corrects with a sneer. ‘Besides, I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Was it Iris
?’

  ‘Might’ve been. Now,’ the boy says, his accent unravelling, ‘I ain’t teasing. Give me that bottle before I cry out thief, and hang the ten bob.’

  And Albie thrusts the vial of ink at the boy and weaves off before he can give chase. His steps slow as he rounds a corner.

  He thinks of Silas arranging this note and Iris, left alone – Louis must be going for a few days too, what with the trunk he carried.

  Will Iris believe the trick of the letter? Albie’s heart pitter-patters.

  You yellow coward, you weakling – you got her into this fine pickle.

  And his sister is safe now, in her new lodgings with the women’s charity in Marylebone, with three pound notes tucked into her pinny. She’s bought herself freedom from the rookery, started learning the duties of a housemaid. She’s assured of work soon, and they’ll find her a respectable position; Silas would have no way to find her.

  He always told himself he would act when he was certain, and isn’t he certain now?

  You’re as good as a brother to me.

  Albie hops from one foot to the other, an icy shame spreading over him. He would like to kick himself, to beat the breath out of his body. How could he be so tardy in his warning?

  But it isn’t too late. Iris is still safe. He has to warn her.

  He can race quicker than that messenger. He can reach Iris first. And what then? They don’t have enough evidence to lead to an arrest, but at least Albie will have done all he can, and she’ll have her wits close and won’t be harmed and won’t that be something? Perhaps the feather he found – Bluebell’s feather – that will incriminate the man.

  He runs like he has never run before, as if powered by steam. The air is cold in his throat. The journey seems to take hours, and he uses his old shortcuts, the streets he could race around blindfold. He is just a child, just a bricky street brat, and yet he feels a surge of power. He can warn her. He has watched Silas, bided his time – he has knowledge that nobody else has.