by Sylvia Waugh
“I know you’ll be careful with them,” she added as she handed Billy the key.
He took it from her, smiled shyly, and thrust his gift into her hand, as he made for the door.
“That’s for you,” he said.
“From your mam?” said Daisy.
“No,” said Billy. “I got it for you meself. It’s the thought that counts.”
“Thank you, love,” said Daisy, looking down at the box. “The thought is appreciated, and I can enjoy the fudge as well!”
Daisy had already been playing with the dolls, perhaps one should say ‘rearranging’ them. In the living-room, Joshua was sitting in an armchair, with Vinetta on an identical chair beside him. Wimpey was seated cross-legged on the floor in front of them. The older girls were sitting on smaller chairs. And they were all facing the television set in the corner.
Billy went across and switched it on.
“You might as well be watching something,” he said, “instead of just sitting sat there!”
It was an expression he had learnt from Joe Dorward’s mum, one he had always fancied using.
He picked up the shop doll from the settee, pulled the string and heard the voice, then placed it on the little girl’s knee. He couldn’t help looking wistfully at the one face he felt sure he knew. It was impossible. These dolls belonged to Castledean. They had never been anywhere near Allenbridge. They had certainly never been inside the place they called Comus House. It had to be a different doll. It just had to be . . . and yet?
Next he went to the nursery where Nanny was sitting nursing the baby and feeding her ‘milk’ from an empty bottle. Against the nursery wall, an old play-pen made of polished wood was still folded up. Billy put it in the centre of the floor, had a performance a bit like his dad trying to set up a deckchair on the beach, and eventually turned it into a functional object.
“Here,” he said to the baby, lifting her out of her nanny’s arms. “I bet you’d like to play in there.” He sat the baby up in one corner of the play-pen so that her back was well supported. Then he looked round the room, found a large ball that had a carousel inside it and played a tune as it moved. He passed it over the frame into the baby’s arms. Next he found the rabbit that had once belonged to Poopie. That too was put into the play-pen before Billy passed on to look at the other rooms and other dolls.
He came to the room that had been allocated to the little boy doll. Here he spent the rest of his time as he waited for Aunt Daisy. Only, he wasn’t waiting. He was playing for all his worth and had forgotten his aunt completely.
When he went in he found the doll sitting on the floor with its back against the bed. It was surrounded by Action Man equipment and in one hand it was holding an Action Man that had lost an arm and looked much the worse for wear. The arrangement was artistic. But wrong, all wrong. The pieces on the floor were parts of a training tower from which the soldiers were meant to slide down ropes and then climb up to the top again. The other Action Men, arranged so neatly as if on parade, should have been on manoeuvres. Billy knew that. Of course he did! It was not so very long since he’d played with toys like that himself. And wished he still did! Being thirteen is a terrible responsibility.
“You haven’t a clue,” he said, looking at the doll’s cloth face and blue button eyes beneath a pudding-basin fringe. “Move over. I’ll show you how.”
Billy sat down beside the boy doll and set to work. In a box at the foot of the bed he found enough equipment to make a fantastic game. By the time he had finished, the game had spread over half the room. There were hills and valleys, tents and gun-emplacements, and the training tower was erected to its full height with ropes fixed to the top and fanning out to the earth below. On one side of the tower, two soldiers, bayonets on their backs, were climbing up some netting. Beneath the tower, another two were stretched on their stomachs and taking aim at something with the rifles tucked under their arms.
“That’s more like it,” said Billy. “You don’t deserve such marvellous toys if you don’t know how to play with them. I never had half what you’ve got, but I made the most of them. I didn’t just sit round helpless and leave things all in bits.”
At that moment, Billy heard the downstairs door open and shut. He jumped up immediately and went out on to the landing. Daisy was coming slowly up the stairs. Billy ran down to meet her.
“Are you having a good time?” she asked as she reached the first landing. “Let’s see what you’ve been doing.”
Together they went from room to room.
“You’ve not spent the time watching telly, have you?” she said as they went into the living-room where the lunch-time news was being broadcast.
“Course not,” said Billy. “The picture’s not very clear anyway. I just thought that since you’d set them up facing the telly, it would look good if there was something on for them to watch.”
Daisy nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. It does.”
Daisy was delighted with everything Billy had done. She looked at the game he had set up for Poopie.
“Some day,” she said, “you’ll be a wonderful dad. You have something special inside that noddle of yours. Never, ever lose it. Do you hear?”
They returned to the living-room to switch off the television set.
“The news is about finished,” said Daisy. “I don’t suppose they’ll want to see anything else just now.”
Billy took one more look at the doll that Daisy called Miranda. It was uncanny. He knew her. He knew he knew her. But where was the doll he and his friends had once kidnapped? Where was the blue one?
Downstairs in the kitchen behind the shop, Daisy gave Billy tea and scones and sandwiches. She had left the SHOP CLOSED sign facing the street.
“When does your lunch-hour end?” asked Billy, worried in case more customers would come and bring his visit to an early end.
“When I want it to,” said Daisy with a laugh. “It’s a very flexible arrangement. I don’t think there’ll be a queue at the door just yet. Most of my customers tell me when they’re coming.”
Billy did not really intend to say what he said next. He just couldn’t help himself.
“The dolls upstairs,” he began tentatively, “are there any more of them?”
“Not as I know of,” said Daisy, looking at him curiously.
“You’re sure? Is there not a blue one?”
It was the wrong question to ask Daisy. Before another half-hour had passed she had wheedled out of him the whole story of the kidnapping of a blue rag doll from a house that he and his friends had thought at the time was empty. He was emphatic that the little girl doll was the doll he had seen through binoculars, skipping in front of that house in the country, near the farm where he lived. He had begun by making Daisy promise never to tell his mam and dad. He ended saying, “You do believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Daisy. “I do.”
“You’re not just saying that, are you?”
“No,” said Daisy, but yes and no are not satisfactory answers. They seldom tell the full truth. Daisy knew that and so she tried to explain.
“I believe you saw what you say you saw,” she said, “but I can’t explain it any more than you can. I wasn’t there, which makes it even harder. And, I have to say it, I am appalled at what you did. Your mam and dad take good care of you and they love you very much. Yet you sneaked out with them other lads and got up to all sorts of mischief. And you were only ten. You were lucky nothing really bad happened.”
“I wouldn’t do it now,” said Billy anxiously. “You’ve promised you won’t tell.”
“And I’ll keep my promise,” said Daisy, “but you’ll have to promise me something.”
“What?” said Billy, hoping it wouldn’t be something too hard.
“You’re not to tell any of those lads about the flat above the shop and the dolls I’ve got there.”
“I won’t, Aunt Daisy. Honest I won’t. I won’t eve
n tell Joe.”
“Especially Joe. He’s the sort could shin up drainpipes.”
A customer rattled the door.
“I’d best be goin’ now,” said Billy. “I don’t want to be late back.”
“What time’s your bus?” said Daisy.
“Three o’clock,” said Billy. “If I miss that one, there’s not another till ten to four.”
“Well, you’ll be going none too soon then. But come again. Come next week if you can. I love to see you – and so do me dolls!”
Daisy was left not knowing what to think. But she made up her mind to keep a careful eye on her Mennyms, ready to detect any signs of life. She found herself wondering how she would feel if she heard noises from the flat above. Then, with an effort, she gave her full attention to the woman who had walked into the shop and was saying something about a table.
“The gate-legged table, Mrs Woodhouse?” said Daisy. “I’m sorry. I sold it this morning. If only you’d said the other day! I’d have held onto it for you. The candlesticks are still here if you want them.”
CHAPTER 34
Soobie
AND THERE WAS a blue one. Of course there was!
The blue rag doll sat in the rocking chair in the attic, imprisoned in stillness and silence, but living. Deep down in his being he was still alive and had never known death, just immobility.
How does a rag doll die? Sir Magnus had asked himself that question and the answer had been simple. Soobie had asked himself that question, and there had been no answer. He had sat in the rocking chair and seen the light of paradise flash through the attic. It had struck him dumb and left him paralysed. But not dead. It was as if an anaesthetic had worked on every bit of him except his powers of perception. For months, he could not raise his head or move his limbs. Yet he could hear most acutely. He could see most clearly.
I am not to know death, he thought, as he sat in the darkness after the light that should have killed him died away. I am not to know death.
At the other side of the attic, when daylight came, he saw the door that had once been mystic and magical. Now it hung open on damaged hinges. The space behind it was a wall of bricks with old plaster oozing out of them like cream between layers of cake. Soobie felt waves of terror and emptiness and grief. But never death. Frustration and boredom and weariness. But never death.
His left arm lay across his knee. The watch on his wrist, that perfect present, told him when October became November. The house remained sealed like a tomb. And all he could hear was the noise of the wind when it howled in the chimneys, or the rain when it lashed the window-panes.
December came. And in the second week of that month, Soobie heard someone enter the front door. It was three floors below, but the sound was unmistakeable. Emotions of fear, frustration, misery and even a sort of joy invaded his spirit. For weeks there had been no sign of life in the house.
Now footsteps, heavy footsteps, could be heard making rapid progress through all the rooms. Doors opened and closed in quick succession. At last, the feet reached the bare boards of the attic staircase. Soobie was filled with terror. There had been no voices. This was a single intruder. One man, heavy-footed and purposeful.
The attic door opened. Whatever the man was doing, standing in the doorway behind him, Soobie did not know. He could not turn to see. On the floor beyond the footstool was the mirror he thought of as Pilbeam’s, an old mirror hanging in a wooden frame. Through it, he could just make out the bottom of a long overcoat, and a pair of pin-striped trousers above well-polished shoes. The man stood still for a few seconds. Then he turned and went out, closing the door behind him. He would be able to put in his report that the roof appeared to be sound. But Soobie was not to know that.
Forever passed. To do nothing, nothing at all, is almost to be nothing. This was not watching the world as Joshua had once imagined it. The view was limited to the walls, the floor and the rafters. The only movement was that of clouds as they roamed across the sky, seen vaguely through the increasingly dusty skylight windows. Soobie’s watch gave him the news that it was January. His heart was near to despair. How, oh how, does a rag doll die?
Sometimes, it seemed to him, any end would be preferable to such prolonged imprisonment. Any noise better than eternal silence. So it was wonderful to him when he heard the street door open and close once more. It was a heavy, noisy door, and Soobie could hear it quite clearly. In fact, his hearing became more acute, the less there was for him to hear.
He listened to the Gladstones going through the house. He could hear their voices and he struggled to make out what they were saying. He wondered if the rest of his family were in the same case as he, tortured by the nightmare life-in-death. He doubted it. Something told him that they were truly dead, returned to their original state of lifelessness.
Suddenly, there was an almighty yell and the sound of running feet.
“There’s a room full of dead bodies,” a child’s voice shouted. Then Soobie knew that his family had been found. He expected to be next. They could take me to pieces, he thought. They could throw me away. And I would not be able to lift a finger. What would I feel like? Which part of me would take this life with it? For by now he felt that the life inside him must be totally indestructible. Would a piece of blue rag in a dustbin somewhere end up thinking, I am . . . and I am Soobie Mennym?
But he was left undiscovered. The family went away again without ascending to the attic.
After that there were more visits to the house. Soobie heard Albert when he called downstairs to Lorna to get her to come and see Granpa’s brilliant white naval uniform. He did not recognise the voice, of course. Even acute hearing cannot be so perceptive at such a distance.
Over the next few weeks, the noises in the house became more and more frequent. In some ways, Soobie was glad to hear them. But always there was the fear that the attic might be invaded. And worse still, there was the agony of not knowing what was happening to his family on the floor below.
“Mind what you’re doing, Michael,” said a voice one day, a deep, man’s voice, speaking loudly. (How Soobie wished they would all speak loudly. That way he might learn more.) “Them dolls have to be kept perfect. You know what madam’s like. When she says perfect, she means perfect. The sooner they’re properly crated up, the happier I’ll be.”
So, thought Soobie, with something like relief, at least someone wants to make sure that we’re cared for. Only, it wasn’t ‘we’, it was ‘they’. The blue Mennym was no longer sure whether being found was the worst that could happen to him.
After that, nothing much of interest was said in the house below. The furniture was removed and the carpets were lifted. But no one came to the attic.
“What’s up these stairs, Ted?” he heard a voice say one afternoon.
“Don’t know,” said another voice, “but I don’t care either. We’ve enough to do clearing this lot. We check off what’s on the list. That’s what we’re paid for. We haven’t got time to be nosing about.”
For the past week, the watch had been telling Soobie that it was May. And a few days after the workmen left, Soobie received his first real visit from the world outside. The attic door opened. Then the light was switched on. And in came Albert and Lorna.
Lorna came close to him first. She sat him more comfortably and brushed cobwebs from his face and hands. He felt her sympathy, as once long, long ago, he had been aware of the sympathy of Billy Maughan. When she defended him, he learnt more. His family were clearly in good hands, being treasured by someone called Daisy.
But when Albert came forward to look at him more closely, Soobie received a shock that made him want desperately to speak or move. It was Albert! Albert Pond! If I could talk, thought Soobie, what things I could say! If I could move and touch his hand, surely he would remember me. Albert looked at him, seeing only a blue rag doll and never suspecting that this doll had once been a dear friend of his.
By the time these visitors left the attic, Soobie k
new that at least he would not be left in that one place to gather dust forever.
I will be taken to join my family, he thought, to sit among them as if I were as dead as they. At that thought, the bit of him that was still alive wept, and wished profoundly for oblivion. It seemed to be a problem with only one solution.
Then, suddenly, months of patient suffering gave way to anger. His heart cried out savagely to its maker, insisting upon being heard.
“If I must live,” it said, “and live and live, you cannot leave me. You cannot leave us!
“If I must live,” it said, “and live forever, so must you.
“Either restore us all to life,” it said, “or teach me to die.”
This was no self-pitying prayer. It was a howl of indignation, as if some creature bound hand and foot were rattling its chains. The whole house groaned, and the sighing of it was heard within the halls of Heaven.
CHAPTER 35
Saturday Evening
IT WAS SATURDAY evening.
Billy Maughan had just managed to catch the three o’clock bus and was safely home at Bedemarsh Farm after his first outing to Castledean all on his own. He was still mystified about the dolls, but happy at having accomplished the journey. It made him feel like a ‘proper-sized’ person!
“No problems?” said Molly.
“None at all,” said Billy. “Aunt Daisy sends her love, and she says I can go and see her any time.”
Daisy had shut up the shop on North Shore Road and had been ferried home in her taxi. She didn’t even go upstairs to see the Mennyms – once a day was enough for that staircase. The time she’d gone up and down twice, first with the Ponds and then with Jamie’s family, had left her feeling shattered all next day. Her little bungalow in Hartside Gardens might lack character, but it was a more practical place to live.
In Elmtree Road, the Gladstones had been discussing the latest prospective buyer for their home, a young couple who seemed quite keen, but had other properties to look at. Jennifer, still undecided about Brocklehurst Grove, was quite content to let the ‘buyers’ come . . . and go. She needed time to think. If the house in Elmtree Road were sold too quickly, she might be rushed into a move she could regret.
