Doll (6 page)

I’m sitting at my mother’s sewing machine, my feet on the treadle. I’ve lit some incense, nag champa from Bangalore. It took me a while to find the incense holder, the simple wooden stand Inti gave her. I discovered it eventually, clean and in a drawer. Grandma’s work. My mother always lit incense when she worked. And sang. “
Pluie d’amour
, my soul dances in your eyes.
Pluie d’amour
.” I turn the hand wheel of the machine and begin paddling with my feet. It’s as I remember it, that rhythmic, comforting clunk, the background noise of my childhood.
Pluie d’amour
, my soul dances in your eyes.

“What is it?” my father asked once. “That tune?”

“Big’s theme,” my mother replied and laughed.

Big.

That was my mother’s market name. All the traders had nicknames, not that I understood that at first. For years I thought the dun, wiry man who sold honey and mead and beeswax candles really was called Wasp. Just as I believed that Sir Henry, the second-hand clothes man (a public-school boy who bought his wares by the hundredweight, threw most of them away and still made the best profit –
  
so he said – in the market) was a genuine member of the nobility.

Clunk, clunk-de-clunk. This machine is spooling memories as it once spooled thread. Inti. Was that a nickname? I don’t think so. It was probably just strange enough for the other traders not to have to invent something new for him. Inti with his gappy teeth and Latin grin. Inti who looked out for me when my mother was busy with a customer, when she was loading or unloading. Inti who made the time pass by telling me stories about the fire inside a Mexican opal, or showing me how to blow a run of notes on the panpipes, or pointing out the flies in his new delivery of amber.

“This one,” he’d say, cradling a large honey-coloured drop with an eternally dancing fly inside, “this I give to your mother.” He charged her half what
he wrote on the tickets for his stall. “But hey,” he would shrug, “not everyone wears amber the way Big does.”

Big.

Does it all come down to this? Big. Was Big a nickname or just a description? I don’t know. Maybe it was simply a truth. For Big was Big in the same way that earth is earth or sky is sky. A big woman with a big laugh. Someone you remembered. Someone to be reckoned with. As much part of the market as the steel stalls, Big was essential, Big belonged. Big was big, her status clear. The only woman the male traders allowed to play the Football Game. And probably the only one who would have wanted to.

It was Sir Henry who started it.

I treadle faster.

“Reckon we’ve got a centre forward,” Sir Henry’d shout, if he spotted an attractive woman near his stall. Centre forwards were always dark. If it was a blonde (I was eight before I realised this) he’d yell, “Striker.”

Then all the other men – and Big – would pause, look up and admire the passing goods.

A bit later he might shout, “Midfielder, what do you think?” The aim of the game was to assemble a full team by the end of the day.

“Goalkeeper, more like,” Wasp would remark.

“Nah,” said Inti. “On the bench.”

“On the transfer list, I’d say,” said Big.

And they’d all laugh and Sir Henry would go to the off-licence and bring back a bottle of plonk. It would be eleven in the morning and they’d need it by then. That was Sir Henry’s view. It could be cold at the market and, if it rained and the tarpaulins weren’t tight, a gust of wind might gush a freezing roof-pool of water down your neck. Didn’t a person standing alone against the elements deserve some comfort? It was always too rainy, or too cold, or too hot. “So hot, you could die of thirst,” said Sir Henry, bringing the bottle back concealed in a plastic bag. The game with the plonk (for everything was a game at the market) was to guess the country of origin. If you guessed right, you didn’t have to pay your share. If you guessed wrong, you paid for Sir Henry’s.

Sometimes there were arguments about accuracy. You couldn’t just say “France” – you’d have to name a region: Bordeaux, Rhone. I learnt more about regions in Europe from Sir Henry than I did from school. But Big wasn’t always so patient.

“Quit haggling,” she’d say. “Just get the cork out.”

“You’ve got your own nip, haven’t you?” Wasp, who enjoyed the haggling more than the wine, would retort.

And she had. A little silver flask she kept in her hip pocket. But then so did Sir Henry. And Inti. You couldn’t always leave the stall. They took food and drink, all of them. Even I had a sandwich box and a Dalmatian flask of Ribena. I went so often with her, I was the market kid. They all knew me, looked out for me. Though it was Inti I loved.

Inti admired my mother’s craftsmanship. He’d examine a new doll (there were always new lines), hold it, run his hands over it, comment on the stitching.

“Big,” he’d murmur. “But what hands! What skill!”

Was he in love with her? I don’t know. I stop treadling. I think maybe I was just in love with her, and alert to any mirror that seemed to reflect that love.

I’m aware of eyes. In the boxes lined up against the wall, the market dolls stare. Two Hallowe’en witches, with black hair and black eyes. Six of Big’s top-selling “My Baby” dolls, with the Velcro strip across their pink breasts, so the customer could attach the name of their choice. If she took a liking to a customer, Big would embroider a name to order, otherwise she’d just say,
“No Tiffany? Now there’s a shame.” In a box labelled “Christmas” are some chubby-faced babies in red and white fur hoods. Next to this is the Nursery Rhyme box, with a half-finished Bo Peep and two pairs of Jack and Jill dolls. But it’s into the plastic container marked “Fairy Tales” that I push a tentative hand. In here is a Cinderella, a Tinkerbell and two Prince Charmings. The Prince Charmings never sold very well. But she kept making them. “The triumph of hope over expectation,” she said. I turn over a Rapunzel, and then I feel the velvet skirt of a Red Riding Hood.

“
Get
your grubby fingers
off
,” my mother says. “
They’re to sell
.”

But today, I don’t get my fingers off, I slide my hands deeper, lift Red Riding Hood’s skirt. And there it is, the cold, glassy shape my furtive fingers expect. I pull my hand out immediately, as though I’m in the wrong, as though I’ve unscrewed the lid from the bottle and let that twisting, reeling smell escape. My cheek are flushed, I know they are. I’m hot, guilty. I wait for someone to come in and catch me. But no one comes. Not even Grandma. Don’t you know about the Red Riding Hood skirts, Grandma? Don’t you?

“
Mama’s
sick. Mama’s not well. She’ll be better in the
morning
.”

Then I want to be away from this room. I push my way out and along the landing, past my mother’s bedroom. The door is shut. But it shouldn’t be shut, not against me. I turn the handle, let myself in and make straight for her clothes cupboard. I need to smell my mother, bury my face in her. I open the wardrobe door. It’s empty. A rail with a few wire hangers and a huge space. No clothes. Not one dress, not a skirt, not a blouse, not a pair of trousers. Nothing. Nothing at all. Except the smell of wood polish.

Grandma.

Grandma!

And now she’s here, standing behind me in the doorway, watching.

“You’ve thrown them away,” I shout. “You’ve thrown all the clothes away. How could you do that?”

“They were cut,” says Grandma. “You know that.”

And of course she’s right. “You still shouldn’t have done it,” I say. “You should have left things.”

“Maybe I’ve left too many things,” she says. “Over the years.”

I turn my back on her, yank open my mother’s underwear drawer. This drawer has been spared. It
springs with socks and knickers and stockings my mother never wore. I select a thick pair of black towelling socks. Though my mother was big she had tiny feet and poor circulation. Her feet were always cold. When it was really icy outside shed come home and ask me to bring her a bowl of tepid water. Shed take off her socks, sometimes three pairs, and plunge her feet into the warmth. As her feet thawed, tears would run down her cheeks. I didn’t understand it was pain, I thought it was her heart melting.

I also extract a pair of knickers, plain cotton, white once but now grey, the elastic stretched and giving. I clutch my trophies to my face, inhale. And there she is again, the perfume of her, powdered flesh, jasmine, conkers …

“Tilly,” Grandma begins but is, in turn, interrupted by the doorbell.

Neither of us move. The doorbell rings again. And I know who it is. The ring is angry. It’s furious. And the next thing we hear is a key in the lock. Because of course he still has a key, even after all these years. Though, out of courtesy, he normally waits for the door to be opened to him.

My grandmother goes out on to the landing.

“Richard,” she says.

“Tilly,” he yells and he bounds up the stairs. “Tilly, Tilly!” He barges past Grandma. “What the hell do you think you were playing at?”

“What the hell do
you
think you’re playing at?” says Grandma, swift to defend me. I wish I loved her more.

My father pauses, he comes to a stop. Not because of what Grandma has said, but because he finally sees me, standing in my mother’s room with some socks and a pair of knickers clutched to my face.

“Have you gone mad?” he says.

“Well, she’d have every right,” says Grandma.

“You keep out of this,” says my father.

“Oh,” says Grandma as if he’s punched her. “Oh.” She sits down on the bed. “You wouldn’t speak to me like that if Gerry were alive. You wouldn’t dare. He wouldn’t let you.”

“Well?” says my father, looking at me.

I say nothing. I don’t move the socks and I don’t move the knickers.

“Well what?” says Grandma, recovering a little. “What are you talking about? Will somebody please let me know what’s going on.”

“Yes,” says my father. “Why don’t you, Tilly? Tell
your grandma what you consider acceptable behaviour in my restaurant.”

Grandma waits.

I say nothing.

The nothing infuriates my father. His breathing is noisy.

“
The
trouble with you, Richard, is you always go off at the deep
end
.” That’s my mother speaking – her calm voice. The one that made him even madder.

“Right,” says my father. “Looks like I’m going to have to tell you, Margaret. My daughter, your granddaughter, thinks it’s appropriate to put blood and glass and chilli seeds—”

“Not glass,” I say from behind the knickers.

“Oh – so you admit the other two—”

“What,” interrupts Grandma, “are you talking about? Blood and chilli seeds and glass what? In what?”

“In the food of my guests, my patrons. So that they choke. So that they vomit. So that I have to apologise. Explain. Although there is no explanation. Unless,” he continues, “you count like mother like daughter.” He comes over to me, shakes me by the shoulder. “Well,” he says, “well?” He drags my hand from my face. The knickers fall to the floor.

“Leave my mother out of this,” I say.

“I’d like to. I’d really like to leave Judith out of this. But there’s a genetic connection, you see. A particular brand of impetuosity, of self-indulgence. Like you think you can do whatever you want whenever you want to and hang the consequences. As if only little people have to bother about consequences.”

He does look little. Standing there, red and angry.

“
Small body
–
small mind
,” says my mother.

“I think that’s enough, Richard,” says Grandma.

“No it’s not enough. Not nearly enough. Because do you know what the consequence of this particular lunacy is – apart from the free meals and the free drinks, that is? It’s that I had to buy two tickets for that stupifyingly stupid Celeb Night event. And have you any idea what those tickets cost?”

“They’re in a good cause, Richard.”

“Right …” He pulls two large floppy tickets from his trouser pocket. “National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,” he reads. “Yes, I see your point. Because they’re going to have a big job to do in this house if you don’t adjust your behaviour, Tilly M. Weaver.”

When I was small enough to climb on his lap and he was shouting, I could sometimes defuse things with
a smile. Not a defiant smile; an enquiring, hopeful, complicitous one. He’d sometimes catch that smile and something would change, break. He’d laugh.

I try a smile.

“And wipe that smirk off your face. You’re just like her. Think everything can be laughed off. Who cares? Well, I care Tilly. I’ve got a business to run. A business that pays for everything you eat and everything you have.”

He says it like he means “and everything you are too”. Like he owns me. I stop smiling.

“I hate you,” I say, very quietly, like she might have done.

“Fine,” he says. “Dandy. I’m not particularly enamoured of you right now either. But I’m going to get more impressed soon because you’re just about to do something responsible, something decent for a change. You’re going round to Mrs Van Day’s house to apologise.”

“Mrs Van Day!” exclaims Grandma. “It was Mrs Van Day?”

“And Mercy,” says my father. “Which is why Tilly’s on her way round to their house. Right now.”

“No,” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “Oh yes.” His hands are on my shoulders. “Come on.” He frogmarches me down the stairs and along the hall, pausing at the door only long enough to haul it open, shove me out and slam it behind me.

As I stand on the doorstep (it’s cold, getting dark and I have no coat) I hear raised voices behind me.

“You’re taking things too far,” says Grandma.

“I’m sorry Margaret, but I have responsibilities. Unless someone starts drawing some boundaries Tilly’s going to wind up in exactly the same place as Judith. If she can’t exercise some self-control, then someone has to exercise some on her behalf. She has to learn there are lines you can cross and lines you can’t. Something Judith never quite …”

I step away from the house then, because I do not want to hear it any more. My mother fouled in my father’s mouth. As I begin to walk I find my right hand in my right pocket. I’m reaching for Gerda.