by Janet Lunn
The book was retrieved from the museum man across the hall in the hospital and back in Papa’s hands by nightfall. He was so pleased to see it that he said no more about it. In fact he was in such a good mood that when Patrick came in from delivering his newspapers Papa asked him if the Huffs still wanted to give away their little dog and how big was it. When Patrick described its size as about a foot high, Papa said he guessed it wouldn’t get too seriously in the way and that if Pat would promise to care for it completely, he could accept it.
The only other thing that came of Aunt Alice’s sick basket concerned the twins alone – and the little doll. A night or so after they had put together the basket, a night or so during which Elizabeth had an exciting thought running wildly around in her head, she spoke to Jane about it. Just before they went to bed while Jane was putting her hair into two neat braids and Elizabeth was spreading hers artistically over her shoulders.
“Remember when we were deciding about the sick basket?” she asked, “And you had my dream?”
“Umhm.”
“Don’t you think it was funny? I mean don’t you think there’s something fishy about that?”
“What do you mean fishy? You mean being twins? Yes.”
“No, stupid, not being twins. Having the same dream – and twice.”
“Why?”
“Well,” Elizabeth sat down on the edge of her bed looking over at the doll propped on their tall dresser top. Then she looked back at Jane. “Ever since we’ve had this doll,” she said hesitantly, “we’ve had funny things happen – the same dreams and knowing things and stuff like that.”
“Oh, Elizabeth! Just because we had the same dream. Just what Joe said, twins, remember?” Jane leaned way over the top bunk and thrust her face down next to her sister’s.
“Twins,” she said, “twins.”
“No,” Elizabeth said seriously, “it’s more than that. There’s something really queer about the whole thing. Finding it the way we did and knowing its name and having that dream. And there have been a couple of other things too. I’m sure there have. … I mean I’m not sure, but I almost am. I …” She stopped, not entirely sure just what she did mean.
“Look,” she went on, “sometimes I see things I don’t really see. I know I do. Long ago things with long dresses and bonnets and once it was the doll with its dress all new. It’s weird, but kind of exciting, too.”
“Honestly!” Jane bounced back up on her bed. “Mama’s right. You have the wildest imagination in all Canada. Maybe even the world. What do you think the doll is – a witch doll or something?” Jane giggled.
Elizabeth was undaunted. “No, I don’t. But I think there’s something about it. Something more than just us being twins and having the same dreams. They were pretty funny dreams for just one of us to have anyhow – the horse and cart and the little house and knowing the doll’s name. How did we?”
“Lots of times we know things both at once.”
“I know, but how did even one of us know it?”
“Oh pooh. Just thought it up, I guess.”
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it at all. Anyhow, you wait. There’ll be more things. You’ll see.”
But there weren’t. (At least, not before they moved.) Times were too busy. The doll was completely ignored in the last frantic packing days under Mama’s tightly organized command.
“You’ll feel more at home in Aunt Alice’s old house, anyway,” Elizabeth told Amelia when she packed her away in the leather box. “You’ll like it there.”
Another Dream – And a Pigeon
The first thing Elizabeth thought about on moving day was the little doll. She took it with her on her lap when she left for the big house. Elizabeth left early with Papa and Jane; Mama wanted her weak leg out of the way of the heavy moving and Papa and Jane were to manage the moving in when the furniture van arrived. Privately, knowing how easy it was for Papa to wander off somewhere with his book, Mama gave Jane complete instructions and a written list about which things were to go where and exactly what to do until she, herself, should come with Pat and Joe and William and the last of the furniture.
The day was fair and shining. Dressed for work though they were – Papa in his old khaki pants and faded green shirt, the twins in their jeans, T-shirts, and running shoes – all three felt as though they were on a holiday. With Mama’s last-minute instructions about calling the telephone and electricity people still sounding in their ears, Papa began to sing “What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor?” Pat’s little white dog yipped excitedly in the back seat. Marble sat disdainfully in her corner and noticed no one. Elizabeth drummed her fingers on the lid of Amelia’s leather box in time to Papa’s singing, and Jane gave up trying to read Mama’s list and just looked happily out of the window.
Papa did wander off along the beach with his book. The little dog got lost three times. Jane never managed to decipher Mama’s “tbl in lgrm l” or “put chst insfhl” (which Mama told her later, and quite disgustedly, meant the big table was to go on the left side of the living room window and the old chest in the second floor hall). Elizabeth had the distinct impression she was being spied on in the kitchen, which frightened her horribly for a moment (then made her fear, with sinking heart, the new neighborhood was going to have its own Willy Wallet). All the same, the Hubbard family was moved by nighttime.
Mama arrived with Pat, Joe, and William in the back of the last load in the moving van. She was set for an evening of shoving furniture into place, but Papa sent Joe to the Chinese restaurant up on Queen Street to bring home supper. They took it to the beach and ate happily and lazily, watching the sun ease itself into the quiet lake.
After supper the twins went straight to their tower. There was no time and no energy that night to sort out their things. All they did was put their mattresses on the floor for a place to sleep – and one other thing: Elizabeth unpacked the little doll.
“She seems to belong here,” she said. She took the doll out of the box and sat her on the wide window seat where she could look out at the lake.
The two girls stood side-by-side, gazing contentedly out through the window. Light was fading from the sky, which was by now a pale orange-pink. Gulls were screeching. Ducks were calling to each other as they settled down for the night. The lake lapped softly against the beach and, down in the garden, Marble was making her way cautiously toward the lilac bush from which were coming young bird sounds.
“Scat,” hissed Jane down at the cat. The cat looked disgusted and stalked off toward the coach house. Jane looked at the doll.
“She does look more at home here, you know. I suppose it’s because this is an old house and she’s an old doll.” Thoughtfully Jane licked from her fingers the last of the spareribs she had spirited away from the picnic supper.
“Funny little doll, isn’t she? Wonder where she really came from – before the Dolls Mended shop, I mean.” Jane picked up the doll.
Before Elizabeth could answer – as if, in fact, the doll were answering for itself – a vision of the little red brick house came to the twins. Not asleep this time, both at once, they saw it, the image of the house, as clearly as though they stood before it on a bright sunny morning. It was a small house with a peak in front trimmed with the carved wood lace painted white. There was a curved window over the low front door, with white curtains; two square windows on either side and a stone step in front. All around the step grew little white and yellow flowers, but the twins hardly noticed those because of the girl standing in the doorway. She was about as tall as they were, with long blond curls and a dress in the style of Amelia’s, a brown one with a white collar centered by a gold-etched brooch, which had a large white rose on it surrounded by small colored flowers. The girl had an unpleasant expression on her face, and the twins shared a feeling she was about to say something when the picture began to fade – the way a scene in a movie fades – and disappeared.
They stood there in the half dark looking blankly,
first toward the window where the vision had been, then toward each other. The bedroom had darkened to a place of shapes and shadows. The packing boxes, bureau drawers, bedsprings, and coat hangers that had looked funny and out of place a few minutes ago now seemed menacing and mysterious. The bedposts leaning against the far wall had the look of spears or knights’ lances. The shadow from the tree outside, bending black and tall as it crossed the built-in window seat, was like the finger of some threatening supernatural giant beckoning them. Aunt Alice’s blue and white curtains blew softly in the night breeze.
There seemed to be eyes, unhappy eyes, unfriendly eyes, unkind eyes, watching them, waiting for something.
Suddenly something moved. Something made a soft sound in the night.
Elizabeth was frozen with fright. Jane gasped. She grabbed her sister by the arm.
“What’s that?” she whispered. “What’s that moaning?” Her words seemed to stick like taffy to the roof of her mouth.
“Poor Lou,” came the sound on the edge of a whisper, “poor Lou.”
The twins stood there, holding each other tight, the hair on the back of their necks prickling. No words came.
“Poor Lou,” again and the sound of the something – or someone – slapping his hands softly together. “P-o-o-rr Lou,” right under the window. A shadow moved. Elizabeth screamed.
Suddenly Jane began to laugh, shakily at first and then louder in great gusts. “Oh,” she said finally, when she could get her breath, “oh, oh, oh,” while Elizabeth sagged against the window and gaped at her.
Jane shoved open the window screen, leaned way out, and looked straight down into just what she expected to see – the round red eye of a large gray pigeon. It stared back at her. She pulled her head in and, wordlessly, Elizabeth thrust hers out to have a look. She began to giggle. Jane began to giggle. They laughed so hard Elizabeth was in danger of falling right out of the window and Jane had to help her back in.
“Oh,” said Jane through her bursts of laughter, “oh, there’s ghosts and noises for you, oh,” and she was off again. They both were. Completely forgetting the doll and the strange experience they had had, they laughed and giggled and laughed some more until they fell exhausted on their mattresses.
The Fight
The gleaming sun rays fanned out over the lake and reached their long fingers into all the windows of Aunt Alice’s house. The twins were already up, leaning far out of one of their casement windows, investigating the premises of their new friend, Porridge the pigeon. They had given him that name because, said Jane, “he’s that color.” His nest was just below their window in a round hole in the ivy covering the back of the house. He sat there purriting and poorlouing contentedly. Jane reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a crust of peanut butter sandwich and offered it to him for making friends. He looked at it with a wary eye and made no move to take it. She put it on the window ledge and pulled her head back into the room. He looked at it again, at her, and then, while the twins watched breathlessly, he flapped his wings once, fluttered up to the ledge, picked it up in his bill, and was back in his nest looking quite pleased with himself.
“There,” said practical Jane, “there’s ghosts and eyes and … things that go bump in the night.”
Elizabeth laughed remembering the old rhyme Papa used to say to them when they were tiny and afraid of the dark. “All the same,” she said, referring to the rest of it, “who knows there mayn’t be ghoulies and ghosties. It seemed awfully spooky and anyhow,” she faced Jane bringing up the subject she knew her sister had been deliberately avoiding. “What about the doll? and the house? and the girl and everything? Maybe that’s not ghoulies and ghosties or mysterious bumps, but it’s certainly a funny thing to have happen – a very funny thing!”
“Maybe,” Jane shook her head, unconvinced. “But you know it’s always been strange being twins. I mean we’ve always had queer stuff happening that other people don’t. You know what I mean.” Elizabeth made a face. “You do so,” Jane was getting a little cross. “We’ve always been able to sort of mind read each other. So why is it so odd, if you have a dream, that I see it too. Or the other way around,” she added, to even things off.
“Well we never had things like this happen before,” insisted Elizabeth, picking up the doll and shaking it a bit. “It has something to do with the doll. I know it has. It has to have. We only started having these funny dreams after we got the doll – and anyway,” she turned to Jane, remembering something Jane had never answered, “how did we both know its name is Amelia?”
“It was just a coincidence, a twin thing and …”
“And,” interrupted Elizabeth, thrusting out her chin, “what about Hester?”
At that moment William’s head appeared, coming from the stairwell just at floor level, as though on a platter. Jane let out a little scream.
“Oh,” she said, letting out her breath, “it’s William.”
“Breakfast,” said William’s head disappearing, and then it was back, “muffins,” it added. “Hey! You got a pigeon!”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth absently, her mind still fastened to a doll, a small red house, and a girl named Hester.
“Come on,” said William’s head, and they did. And they didn’t return to the doll, the house, and the girl named Hester until the day was done. There wasn’t time.
Breakfast in the new house was a comfortable affair, even in the hodgepodge of the day after moving. In the dining room, the bright yellow walls warmly reflected the sunlight pouring through the windows, and shadows from the leaves outside made moving patterns on Marble, sleeping on the window seat. The big oak table Aunt Alice had left for them gave enough room for the whole family and that, along with muffins fresh from the bake shop up on Queen Street, was enough to make everyone rejoice in the day.
“That’s a nice little dog you have,” Papa said expansively to Patrick. “What’s its name?”
“Haven’t decided,” said Pat, who seemed too absorbed in his breakfast to want to talk much about it.
“How about Claverhouse?” asked Jane brightly, which, for reasons she didn’t mention at the time, startled Elizabeth enough to make her drop her jam. The dog ate it.
“Not Claverhouse,” said Pat definitely.
“Snowball,” said Joe. “And I’ll take him swimming. Come on Snowball,” and Snowball (if that was to be his name) looked quite ready to come. But Mama said quickly, “No swimming, work to do.” And that was the end of the holiday for everyone.
But when evening finally came and the sun lay low over the lake, the house was beginning to look like a house and not, as Mama had said in the morning, like the back storage room at the Salvation Army.
“Nothing wrong with the Salvation Army,” Papa had muttered. “Serves its usefulness.” But all the same Mama had managed to put even Papa to work. Now the sugar canister was out of the washing machine and on its shelf between the coffee and the flour, where it belonged. The hot water bottle was no longer on the mantlepiece in the living room. The cat’s dish had been found in William’s underwear drawer and put beneath the kitchen sink. The bathroom towels had been taken from the oven and the blue vase for the pussy willows, which had been at the bottom of the last packing case, was put in the center of the dining room table to decorate for supper. As a treat, Mama had bought a family-sized steak and potato chips to go with it, and the first whole day in the new house subsided into a comfortable tiredness of eating and trying once more to decide what to call Patrick’s new dog (which they couldn’t and so left for another day). It was the last comfortable day the twins had for a long time.
When they climbed the stairwell to their tower, twilight had settled on the cherry trees in the garden below. The lake beyond was soft and still. The breeze, much the same breeze that had frightened them the night before, was floating quietly through the windows, disturbing only a very little the blue and white ladies that patterned the curtains.
Elizabeth, standing by the window
s looking out at the lake, marshalled the arguments she had been storing all day to convince Jane that something should be done about their dreams. She slid into the conversation gracefully.
“There’s a ship in full sail out there. Come see,” she invited.
Jane, who always liked to get right down to things, was not deterred by Elizabeth’s sideways approach to the conversation.
“I think,” she said firmly, resting back on her heels from sorting the paints, books, tennis rackets, and old dolls’ clothes, “I think all that dream stuff really is just what Joe said.”
“What did Joe say?”
“You know, when we talked about Aunt Alice’s sick basket. It’s what I said this morning. Twins. We’re twins and twins just have the same dreams sometimes.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Twins do.”
“I know what twins do and what twins don’t do and they don’t always have the same dreams. We didn’t have the same dreams before we had this doll.” She shook the doll impatiently. “Why shouldn’t I know what twins do and don’t do. You’re not the only twin around here.”
“Oh,” said Jane irritably, “I didn’t mean that. I know you’re a twin too. I just meant,” she said seriously, “I don’t think that stuff you were saying this morning about the doll and the dreams is true….”
“Yes it is. It has to be. Look at the dreams, two of them, and knowing names and having feelings – all since we bought the doll. I think the doll wants something, wants us to do something. I really do.”
This was too much for Jane. She stood up and marched over to the window where Elizabeth stood holding the doll. “How can a doll want something? Honestly!” She looked closely at the doll’s face as she spoke, half expecting it to show some sign that it agreed. She was rather relieved when its bright blue eyes stared impassively back from its cracked face.
“You’re always looking for magic, dreaming and imagining things,” she said crossly. “Stupid dreams.”
