Doll

In the eye of his mind, he watches the way the girl touches her doll, observes again how she closes the doll against her chest. That’s when she realises, he thinks. She has to run again. There is no way back, unless she wants to swim the river.

She begins at once. Her hand still on her heart. Starts to cross for a second time. But she isn’t running now, she’s jogging. Barely that, she’s ambling. It’s the confidence; she doesn’t have to hurry. The doll has absorbed her fear. Is that why she doesn’t react to the noise down the track? It’s loud enough. Not a drone this time but the circular-saw noise. Surely she can hear it? The whine of the Intercity. The whoosh of pushed air and, coming closer, the scream of speeding metal? There is no alarm at all on her face. And she’s looking right at him now, gliding across the bridge towards the oncoming train. Her face a moon of content. He wants to go on to the bridge and shake her. Hurry her up.

Time is passing so slowly and still the train comes. She must be able to see it now, though he has his back to it. Hurry up. Run. Run! The train is not air now but thundering steel, bawling and sparking down the track. And then it’s past him and she’s still on the bridge. Against the wall on the inside track, where the train is coming. There’s a moment, a long, eight-coach moment, when he can see nothing but moving metal. And then, like an arrow, the train’s gone.

But the girl remains. She’s at the edge of the bridge. Bending down, picking a flower. And now he really does want to shake her. Now he wants to pick her up and punch her in the face, even though she’s small and he doesn’t know her. How dare she! How could she put him through that! He moves out from the shadow of the elderflower tree (although he’s not given to interventions) and walks towards her. She stands up. But not, he thinks, because she hears him, but because she’s finished looking at the flower. Her skin is creamy pale though there’s a flush in her cheeks, he notices as he comes closer, and her eyes, which are so dark they look almost black, have a wild brightness in them.

For a moment she doesn’t seem to register him. And then, quick and defensive, she moves her body square to his, glares up at him. And something in him wants to laugh, she looks so ridiculous, a fierce little sprite who’s nevertheless run the bridge. But he doesn’t laugh, partly because of the intensity of her gaze, which makes him feel the intruder, and partly because of the doll. Around its neck are large ungainly stitches, black, like you use to sew up a wound.

She feels his eyes, snatches the doll from his sight.

“What’s it to you?” she yells, the spots in her cheeks burning.

And then she’s off, tumbling down the mound, flailing through the brambled undergrowth, and on, into the field beyond. As though he’s after her. Which, of course, he is not.

He watches her for as long as she stays in view. Her body fighting, jagged and twisting, even when the terrain gets easier. He is ashamed to have sent her on this desperate flight.

But he knows what he saw.

“Jan, Jan.” His mother is coming. Her footfalls are on the stairs.

But he certainly cannot answer his mother now. He must reach the end of his thought. He needs to say aloud the thing that he has not been saying aloud. The thing that is worrying him although, as the girl said, it’s nothing to do with him. But it is to do with him. Why else would the blood beat so hard in his breast?

“Jan!” His mother comes into the room. “Didn’t you hear me?”

He heard her.

“Jan, oh Jan.” She sits down beside him on the bed. “Jan, they rang me at work. They said you didn’t go in today. Why is that, Jan?”

He doesn’t know. He knows only he had to be at the bridge.

“You understand how important your education is, don’t you, Jan? You can do nothing, be nothing, without it. Tell me you understand?”

He understands.

“Jan, why don’t you speak to me?”

Jan has nothing to say on the subject of education.

“Jan, please speak to me.”

“The doll,” Jan says aloud, “I think it’s evil.”

3 (#ulink_038ad5c3-1e09-5db8-9c73-79d5b044fecd)

Gerda.

This is the name of the doll. It came to me on the bridge, when I was running. Running like I was the wind and the trains were paper.

“Trust me. Trust me, trust me, trust me.” The noise of the wind and the wheels and the wings at my feet. Did she whisper the name to me herself? Or was it my mother’s voice I heard? I don’t know. But the name is right. The name of the child in the Snow Queen. How I loved that story. Had my mother read it over and over again. In those long-ago, happy-ever-after days. How the little girl scoured the world for Kai, the boy with ice in his heart, and how she found him, and held him, and how her tears melted that ice.

And I do trust Gerda. Know that I would follow her to the ends of the earth. Knew it from the moment she uttered that first word: “Come.” Was I waiting for her to speak? It didn’t surprise me. I’ve always believed that love can stretch between worlds. That the dead can speak. That the past stands close enough to whisper in your ear.

“We’re Weavers,” said my mother. “Judith and Tilly Weaver. Weaver by name and weaver by nature. Matilda Weaver. It’s your name but also who and what you are. We Weavers are the weft and the warp, we web things together.”

My father argued with her about that. “You’re only a Weaver by marriage,” he said. “You were born a Barker.” That’s how he crushed her. With small things.

“A name isn’t a small thing,” said Inti. Inti was the molten-eyed Ecuadorian who had the stall next to my mother at the market. “There’s one tribe,” he said, “that never reveal their names to strangers. They believe if a stranger knows your name, he can tramp on your soul.”

And so the day passes in thinking, wandering, wondering, being close. I am content, happy even. I remember how, when I was a small child, I was afraid of the dark. Each night, in order to sleep, I constructed in my imagination fifteen concentric courtyards, each with high stone walls and only one door. And then I walked myself through each one of those doors, locking it behind me. In the innermost courtyard, the fifteenth, was a small square of grass. I bolted the final door, lay down on the grass and slept. Gerda makes me feel as I did in that courtyard. Safe.

So it is a shock to find myself, at dusk, at the glass entrance of the shopping mall. How did we arrive here? Why have we stopped? This is not my place. It belongs to those who thrive in artificial light. It is Mercy’s place. Charlie’s place.

And there they are, the electronic doors swishing open for them. They are coming towards me. Mercedes Van Day and Charlotte Ferguson. Mercy half a step in front. She is captivatingly beautiful. I thought so when she was my friend and I still think so. She’s one of those people from whom you cannot take your eyes. Her skin is flawless, translucent even, as if, beneath the surface, where others have boiling pimples, she has radiant light. I’ve never seen such skin, even on an adult. Her blonde hair swings, impeccably cut, about her face and her eyes are like a cat’s, at once quick and stealthy. They promise you things. Her body is both slim and curved and she has that ability to turn a collar, or hitch a hem so that she looks stylish, individual even in her school uniform. Charlie is larger and darker and drawn to Mercy, as I was, like a moth to a flame.

There is a spring in Mercy’s step. She has made a new purchase. At her side is one of those shining paper carriers with the string handles they give you in designer shops. She will have gone with Charlie for a post-school coffee, and been unable to resist – what? A belt? A skimpy top? A pair of shoes? She smiles and talks and walks towards me.

I’ve tried to walk like that, so the sea of people in front of you parts when you move. I’ve tried to cut my hair so it falls, as hers does, like a kiss against her cheek.

“You are who you are,” said my mother, one foot on the accelerator of her Yamaha Virago 750. “Why try to be someone else?”

“Be yourself,” my mother said, providing me with a non-regulation school jumper. “Why not?”

And of course, I’ve wanted to be as fearless as my mother, as devil-may-care, but not as much as I’ve wanted to be Mercedes Van Day.

They are almost upon me, Mercy and Charlie, but their heads are so close in conversation, they will not see me. I have time to melt away. I choose the bus shelter. I need to be calm, to compose my thinking.

“Inti,” says Gerda. “Concentrate on Inti.”

Inti, my mother’s friend, the gap-toothed South American. Inti, the market man who sold amber and lapis lazuli and opals.

Mercy and Charlie are coming towards the bus stop.

And also panpipes. Inti, who took me on his lap when my mother was busy and told me the names of the Siku, the Latin pipes. Whispered Antara and Malta. Showed me how to fill the bamboo reeds with tiny green seeds. “You have to tune pipes,” Inti said, “in winter. When the pipes are cold, they play too low.”

Mercy and Charlie are going home. They are going by bus. They are taking the bus from this stop.

“TaquirideJaine,” says Gerda.

The rhythm of the carnival, Inti’s favourite tune. I try to listen to it. But all I hear is the flip of two plastic seats. Mercy and Charlie sit down. And there I am, in the corner, trapped.

Mercy and Charlie are animated, they talk loudly, excitedly. They are discussing “Celeb Night”. It’s a charity affair, in aid of the NSPCC, and Mercy’s mother is one of the organisers. Come dressed as your favourite star, that was the original idea. It was Mrs Van Day who introduced the idea of a talent contest. “Like they do on the television. Aspiring bands. Singers. A pound if you want to cast a vote.”

Everyone’s going. Mrs Van Day’s promised the press, scouts from the music business. Everyone that is, except me. Why would I want to?

Mercy is going as Britney Spears. She has the body, the smile, the eyes and she’s bought the hair extensions. Now all she needs is a dress.

“Well, actually,” she’s telling Charlie, “I’m going to have trousers and a top. Cindy, you know my mother’s friend Cindy? The dressmaker?”