Dolly (6 page)

She ran up the steps, and through the French windows which he had left ajar, but as he came up behind her, shut them quickly and turned the key. Then she stood, her face close to the glass, looking out at him, smiling.

Edward woke when his room flared white and then for a split second, vivid blue. The thunder came almost simultaneously, seeming to crack the attic roof open like an axe splitting a log. He sat up watching it through the curtainless window for a while, until hail spattered so fiercely onto the glass that sudden light and sudden dark were all he could see. He lay down and listened. He had been two or three years old when his half-brother had taken him on a boat and out to sea; they had huddled together in the small cabin as a storm flared and crashed all round them. His brother had been bright-eyed with excitement and Edward had sensed that this was something to revel in, knowing no danger, only the drama and
heightened atmosphere. He had loved storms from then, though there had never been one so momentous. Now, this was almost as good, vast and overpowering across the fens and around Iyot House.

The lightning flickered vividly across the sky again and in the flash, he saw Leonora standing in the doorway of his room, her eyes wide, face stark white.

Edward sat up. ‘It’s amazing! I love storms.’

She went to his window. ‘Yes.’ She spoke in a whisper, as if she were afraid speaking aloud might change it.

Edward got up and stood beside her.

‘You should see the storms in the East. A storm across the water in Hong Kong. A storm over the mountains. They race through your blood, such storms.’

He understood her at once and for the first time they shared something completely, bound up together in the excitement and pleasure of the storm, so that he clasped hold of her hand when a thunderclap made the house shake and the walls of the attics shudder and her nails dug into his palm at a blue-green zigzag of lightning.

‘I thought you would be crying,’ Leonora said, glancing at him sideways.

‘Oh no, oh no!’

‘We could go out.’

‘Don’t be silly, it’s like a monsoon, we’d be soaked in a minute.’

‘Have you been in a monsoon? I have. The earth steams and you could boil a pan of water on the ground. It brings down whole trees.’

‘I want to go there.’

They were linked in a passion to soar from this storm to that one.

‘My mother is there now,’ Leonora said.

‘Where? In a monsoon?’

‘In India, I think. Or Burma. Or perhaps she is back in Hong Kong. They move about so.’

He was unsure whether to be envious or sorry for her.

‘When will she come back for you?’

Leonora shrugged and flicked her hair about her shoulders. The storm was receding, the lightning moving away to the east and the sea, the rain easing to a steady, dull downpour.

‘I hope she’ll come before too long,’ Edward said. ‘You must miss her very much.’

‘I don’t,’ Leonora said, ‘and I don’t.’ And sailed out of the room on her bare and silent feet.

The next morning, the parcels began to arrive. There were two, one very large, one small, and after that, as the post from abroad caught up, one or two almost every day. Leonora took them upstairs, ignoring the remarks made by Mrs Mullen about spoilt children and the concern of Aunt Kestrel that perhaps some should be put away until later.

‘They are my parcels,’ she said, dragging a heavy one behind her, refusing help.

‘But you,’ she said to Edward, ‘may look if you like.’

Most of the parcels contained clothes, few of which fitted, dresses made of bright silk embroidered with gold thread and decorated with little mirrors, trailing fine scarves and long skirts with several floating panels. Leonora glanced at each one, held it up to herself, then tossed it away, to fall on the floor or her bed. Once or twice she put on a scarf and twirled round in it and kept it on. There were silver boxes and carved wooden animals, brass bells and on one day a huge box of pale green and pink Turkish delight that smelled of scent and sent a puff of white sugar into the air when she lifted the wooden lid. They ate several pieces, one small, sticky bite at a time, and the intense sweetness set their teeth on edge.

‘My mother never sends what I really want. She just doesn’t.’

‘But the sweets are nice. What do you really want?’

‘One thing.’

‘What thing?’

‘And she knows and she never sends it.’

‘When is your birthday?’

‘August the tenth; I am a Leo.’

‘That is quite soon. So I think she is going to send it for then.’

Leonora ripped open the thin brown paper on her last parcel. It contained a black satin cushion covered in gold and silver beads.

‘How horrible, horrible,
horrible
.’ The cushion bumped against the far wall and fell.

Edward wiped the sugar powder off his mouth. ‘What is it that you do really want?’

‘A doll,’ Leonora said. ‘You would think she could easily send me a doll but she never, never, never does. I hate my mother.’

‘No, you should never say that.’

‘Why? I do.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Because – you just shouldn’t.’

‘You don’t know anything about it. You don’t
know anything about mothers because you haven’t got one.’

‘I know,’ Edward said. ‘But I did once have one.’

‘If she sent me what I wanted I would be able to love her.’

He wondered if that could be true, that someone made you love them by giving you what you wanted, or, that you would not love them until they did. It was confusing.

‘I think that she will send you a doll. I think you will get it on your birthday.’

But the birthday came and she did not.

Aunt Kestrel gave her an ivory carved chess set in a wooden casket, a set of hairbrushes and a jar of sweets, which she had handed to Edward the night before, to hand over as from himself. Leonora’s face had been pinched and sallow and when she had taken her things upstairs, with the handkerchief embroidered with her initial from Mrs Mullen, Edward had gone in to their aunt’s sitting room.

‘She doesn’t mean to be ungrateful.’

‘No. It is hard to know what to give but I thought you might teach her chess as you are so fond of it.’ The Bagatelle board had been damaged beyond repair by being left outside in the storm.

‘Yes. It is her mother.’

Aunt Kestrel sighed.

‘She sends her so many parcels with nice things but never what she really wants.’

‘The trouble is, Violet barely knows her own child and always had more interest in herself than anyone else. You will please never repeat that, Edward.’

‘No.’

He explained about the doll.

‘It seems an obvious thing to send. But I am going to London next week. If Violet has not had the sense to send a doll, I must find one.’

Another storm was building for the whole day Aunt Kestrel was away. The fen was dun green with the river like an oil slick where it ran deep between its banks. Edward watched the lock keeper pace slowly along, peering into the water, cross the bridge, then walk back. The thunder rumbled round the edges of the sky.

Leonora was sullen and silent, not wanting to learn chess, not wanting to have him anywhere near her. In the end, he found a book about adventures in the diamond mines of South Africa, and read it sitting on the windowsill. Mrs Mullen rang them down for lunch, which was cold beef, cold potatoes and hard boiled eggs, with custard to follow, and
they ate it silently in the dining room as the rain began to teem down the windows.

Mrs Mullen did not come near to them for the rest of the day. She rang the supper bell, told them they must be in bed by eight o’clock, and disappeared behind her door.

Eight came and the attics were pitch dark. The storm had fizzled out but the rain was so loud they could not hear themselves speak, but did a jigsaw in silence. Leonora was bored and lost interest. Edward went to bed and read his book. He was not unhappy at Iyot House. He was a boy of equable temperament and no strong passions, who was never seriously unhappy anywhere, but tonight, he wished strongly that he could be at home in his own London bed. How long he and Leonora were staying here no one had said.

He usually slept deeply and dreamed little, but tonight, he fell into a restless, uncomfortable doze, skidding along the surface of strange dreams and hearing sounds that half woke him. He had an odd sense that something was about to happen, as if Iyot House and everyone in it were a bubbling pan about to boil over and hiss out onto a stove. In the middle of the night, he woke yet again, to the sound of crying, but it was not coming from his cousin’s
room, it came from somewhere near at hand and the crying was of a baby not a girl like Leonora.

He sat up. Everything was still. There was very little wind but clouds slid in front of a full moon now and again.

Nothing stirred. No one cried.

He lay down again but the strange sensation of foreboding did not leave him, even in sleep.

And then, a different sort of crying woke him, and this time he recognised it.

He went to Leonora. She had her head half underneath her pillow, which lifted and fell occasionally.

‘It’s all right.’

He pretended not to hear her when she told him to go away. It had been a miserable birthday and he was sorry for her.

‘I want you to tell me something.’

She flung her pillow off her face. ‘I said to …’

‘I know but I’m not going to. I want you to tell me.’

Leonora turned her back on him.

‘What kind of doll would you like best? I want you to tell me what it would look like, tell me everything.’

‘Why? You can’t get it for me so why would I tell you?’

‘I can’t get it for you but I can do something else.’

Silence. Then she sat up and pushed her hair out of her eyes. Edward was careful not to stare at her.

‘I’ve got paper and some pencils and paints and I can draw it for you.’

She made a scornful sound in her throat.

‘Isn’t it better than no doll? And Aunt Kestrel is bringing you one.’

‘She wouldn’t find anything like this.’

‘But she will find something nice.’

She described the doll she wanted very well, so that Edward could draw and then paint it with the greatest care. It was an Indian royal bride, with elaborate clothes and jewels and braiding in her hair, which Leonora knew in every tiny detail, every colour and shading and texture.

‘Have you wanted one like it for a very long time?’

‘Since I was about two or three. It is the only thing I ever ever wanted and my mother knows that and she has never got it for me.’

‘Perhaps she tried hard and couldn’t. Perhaps there has never been one like it in any shop.’

‘Of course there hasn’t, she should have had it made for me.’

He went on painting the doll, wondering as he did
so why Leonora did not know that it was impolite to demand and want and order presents.

‘I think it’s finished but I shall put it here to dry.’

He was afraid to wait until she had looked at it and went back quietly to bed, and slept at once.

The following morning, he went by himself out to the garden early, before breakfast. Leonora did not follow him for a long time but eventually she came, carrying the picture he had painted.

‘I’m sorry it’s not a doll,’ Edward said.

‘Yes. But there will be a doll. Just exactly like this. I know there will.’

She put the painting down on the grass. She had not thanked him for it and he was not very surprised that she left it there when they had to run in from the heavy rain.

She asked a hundred times when Aunt Kestrel would be back from London. Mrs Mullen said, ‘When she’s ready.’ Edward said cautiously that it might be after they were asleep.

‘I won’t go to sleep until I see the doll.’

She did not. It was after eleven o’clock when she woke Edward to say that she had heard the station taxi.

‘Get up, get up, I’m going downstairs.’

Her eyes were wild with excitement and she had two small spots of colour burning in the pale of her face. She raced down the stairs so fast he was afraid she would trip but her feet seemed not to touch the ground. She burst into Aunt Kestrel’s sitting room but then some sense of how to behave touched her enough to make her stop and say, ‘I am sorry. I should have knocked on the door.’ But her eyes had travelled straight to a large box, wrapped in brown paper, on the round table.

‘You should both be in bed. It is very very late.’

Edward was about to defend his cousin by pointing out that she should be excused because she was so excited about her birthday present, but Leonora had already gone to the table and put her hand on the box.

‘Is this for me, is this it?’

There was a silence. Kestrel was tired, and wanted only to give the child her present and have them all go to bed but she saw Violet in the greedy little face, a carelessness about anyone or anything except herself, let alone even the most ordinary politeness. She knew that she ought to reprimand, to withhold the box until the next morning, to start however belatedly to control this strange, proud, self-centred
child to whom she felt she had a vague responsibility.

But this was not the time and besides, she could not face whatever scene might follow.

‘Yes, you may open it but after that you must go to bed or you will make yourself overwrought and ill.’

Leonora gave her a swift, ecstatic smile and then started to open the parcel but the string had difficult knots, so that Aunt Kestrel was obliged to find her small scissors. The child’s eyes did not leave the parcel. Edward held his breath. He prayed for the doll to be like to the one he had painted for her, as like as possible and if not, then every bit as grand.

The doll was in a plain oblong white box, tied with red ribbon. Now Leonora held her breath too, her small fingers trembling as she unpicked the bow. Edward moved closer, wanting to see, wanting to close his eyes.

There was the rustle of layer after layer of tissue paper as she unwrapped each sheet very carefully. And then she came to the doll.