The Dollmaker's Daughters (2 page)

‘Shut up, Mum,’ Sarah said, chafing Aldo’s hand. ‘Aldo, love, it’s me, Sarah.’

Aldo’s eyelids fluttered and opened. His mouth worked but no sound came from his pale lips.

‘You’ve had one of your turns, ducks,’ Sarah said gently. ‘You sit there quiet-like and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’

Billy backed towards the front door. ‘I’d best be going then.’

Sarah snapped to attention. ‘Don’t think I ain’t grateful but I’d be obliged if you didn’t come here again. We got our reputation to think of.’

‘Mum!’ Ruby felt the blood rush to her cheeks; everyone knew that Billy was an undesirable who ducked and dived and only kept one step ahead of the coppers, but he had done them a good turn. ‘That ain’t fair.’

‘Don’t you cheek me, my girl,’ Sarah said, bristling.

‘It’s all right, Mrs Capretti, I’m going.’ Billy put his cap back on his head and was about to open the door when a girl, almost identical in
appearance to Ruby, rushed into the room bringing with her a gust of cold, smoke-laden air.

‘Well now,’ Billy said, eyeing her appreciatively. ‘If it ain’t the other half of the pair.’

‘Shut the door, Rosetta.’ Sarah picked up the brown teapot from the trivet by the fire, pointing the spout at Billy. ‘He’s just going.’

‘Hello, Billy.’ Rosetta shot him a sidelong glance beneath long, black lashes, her full red lips curved in a provocative smile. ‘And goodbye. Pity you can’t stay.’

Knowing that Rosetta had a soft spot for Billy and that Mum didn’t approve one bit, Ruby caught her twin by the arm and dragged her into the room. ‘G’bye, Billy. You was a great help.’

‘Glad to have been of service, ladies!’ Angling his head towards Rosetta, Billy flashed her a wink and a smile. ‘See you later, Miss Rosetta.’

‘What did he say?’ demanded Granny. ‘I hates people what mumble.’

Sarah glared at Rosetta over Aldo’s head as she held a cup of tea to his lips. ‘He’d better not have said nothing. I don’t want either of you two mixing with the likes of Noakes. He’s bad news and we’re respectable folk in Tobacco Court.’

‘Not like them in Spivey Street,’ Rosetta said, with a suggestive wiggle of her hips.

‘Don’t be crude, Rose. Your father is a craftsman, a master dollmaker. We’re not like them in Spivey Street. We may not be rich but we
got standards and don’t you girls forget it.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing!’ Rosetta threw off her wet shawl and tossed her bonnet onto the table. ‘Any tea left in the pot, Mum? I’m bloody freezing.’

Aldo raised his head, scowling. ‘Wash your mouth out. I’ll not have no child of mine using foul language.’

Rosetta’s bottom lip trembled. ‘Sorry, Poppa. I love you, Poppa.’

Aldo smiled weakly. ‘You’re a minx, my little Rosa.’

‘You’re better, Poppa.’ Ruby flung herself down on her knees by his chair. ‘You had us worried sick.’

Aldo patted her hand. ‘It’s nothing. Just a bit of colic.’ He pushed his tea away. ‘Can’t drink no more, Momma. Tastes a bit funny.’

Sarah bridled. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my tea. It’s you, old man. If you ate proper then you wouldn’t go falling down faint and scaring us all to death.’

Aldo’s expression darkened and he struggled to his feet. ‘I don’t have to listen to you nagging me. I’m fine now. I go back to the arches.’

Sarah pushed him back onto the chair, holding him down with her considerable weight. ‘You’re going nowhere, Aldo Capretti, except up to bed.’

Aldo cast an agonised glance at Ruby. ‘Father Brennan!’

‘He’s out of his head with fever,’ said Granny, wagging her finger. ‘Thinks he needs a priest to give him the last rites.’

Ruby knew instantly what was worrying her father. Poor little baby Jesus with the squashed face was not going to go down well with Father Brennan. She chewed the inside of her lip, wondering if she could fix the damage on her own. Although it wasn’t her choice, she had become quite competent at some of the aspects of doll-making. Poppa fashioned the bodies from linen stuffed with sawdust, the heads and limbs from papier mâché, but he kept to himself the secrets of mixing the wax with red and white lead in order to achieve perfect skin pigmentation. Ruby had learned a little about how to mould the wax but she was by no means an expert. Mainly she did the finishing off, tinting the lips and cheeks, as well as pricking in the eyelashes and the hair.

‘Priest indeed!’ Sarah folded her arms across her ample bosom. ‘I dunno how a good Church of England girl like me got herself hitched to a blooming papist.’ When no one ventured an explanation, she threw her hands up, rolling her eyes to heaven. ‘What has Father Brennan got to do with the price of fish, anyway?’

Giving Aldo’s clammy hand a squeeze, Ruby said nothing; it was almost impossible to pull the wool over her mother’s eyes but she knew there
would be big trouble if Mum found out what had happened at the arches. They were relying on the money from Father Brennan; without it, there would be no food on the table or coal for the fire.

‘Well?’ Sarah said, arms akimbo. ‘I’m waiting. What have you two been up to?’

When Aldo did not offer an explanation, Ruby was forced to reply. ‘Nothing, Mum. Honest! It’s just that Father Brennan’s coming to collect baby Jesus.’

‘And?’

‘And he won’t be best pleased if he finds the door locked and no one there. I’d better get back to the arches.’

‘No, I got to go myself.’ Aldo got to his feet but doubled up, holding his belly. His face twisted with pain and beads of sweat broke out on his brow. ‘Maybe I go later.’

‘Maybe you go bed,’ Sarah said, and hitching his arm over her shoulder she guided him towards the staircase. Pausing to catch her breath, she turned on Rosetta who was sitting at the table sipping a cup of tea. ‘Ain’t you going back to Bronski’s?’

‘No,’ Rosetta said, with a defiant lift of her chin. ‘I ain’t never going back to that place, not for nothing. I done me last seam and snipped me last thread.’

Her knees bending beneath Aldo’s weight, Sarah took a deep breath, her face flushing to the
colour of a boiled beetroot and her blue eyes popping from their sockets. ‘That’s what you think! I’ll have a few words to say to you, my girl, once I’ve got your dad to his bed.’

‘I can manage on me own,’ Aldo protested.

‘Save your breath, old man, you’re weak as a baby.’ Half lifting Aldo and half dragging him, Sarah stomped up the stairs, which creaked and groaned beneath their combined weight.

Rosetta grinned at Ruby. ‘I’m in for it now.’

‘Oh, Rose! What you been and gone and done?’

‘You know I hate this place,’ Rosetta said, twisting a strand of her glossy black hair around her finger. ‘I always told you I’d get out one day and now I got a chance and I’m taking it.’

Glancing anxiously at Granny Mole, who had nodded off now that the excitement was over, Ruby lowered her voice. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Got me a job in the chorus at the Falstaff Music Hall in Old Street. Don’t tell Mum.’

‘You never!’

‘I blooming well did. I weren’t never going to meet a rich bloke stuck in that filthy basement, choking on cotton fluff all day and ruining me eyes.’

‘Mum will kill you when she finds out.’

‘Well, she won’t, will she? Not unless you tells her. I got Aunt Lottie on my side. She’s the one what suggested I have a go.’

‘Shhh!’ Ruby put her finger to her lips. ‘You know what Mum and Granny think of Aunt Lottie.’

‘I don’t care. Lottie started in the chorus and she had rich admirers begging for her favours. Even the Prince of Wales, so she said.’

‘She drinks and she’s gambled all her money away. Joe told me so.’

‘Our big brother likes a flutter too, but I bet he never told you that. He thinks Lottie’s a good sport and so do I. Anyway, she says I got talent.’ Rosetta jumped to her feet, picking up her shawl and pulling a face. ‘Soaking! Lend us yours, Ruby, there’s a love.’

‘You’re going back to work?’

‘Not on your life! I’m not hanging around here just to get it in the neck. I’m going to Shoreditch to stay with Lottie. It’s nearer the theatre and she won’t give me earache going on and on all the time. Give us your shawl, please.’

‘No, sorry,’ Ruby said, snatching her shawl from the stool by the fire. ‘I got to go back to the arches, right now.’

Rosetta pulled her mouth down at the corners, pouting. ‘Aw, go on, Ruby. You’ll be there in two ticks. I got to walk all the way to Shoreditch and you wouldn’t want me to catch me death, now would you?’

Ruby hesitated; Rosetta had always been the one to fall sick with chest complaints ever since
they were nippers and it was a long walk from Whitechapel to Shoreditch, especially on a bitter cold and wet day like today. Reluctantly, she swapped her almost dry grey shawl for Rosetta’s scarlet shawl that was damp and studded with melting hailstones. ‘What’ll I tell Mum?’

‘You’ll think of something. You was always the clever one.’ Wrapping the shawl around her head, Rosetta did a triumphant little dance, lifting her skirts to show a shapely leg even if it was clad in a thick and much-darned woollen stocking.

‘I ain’t going to lie,’ Ruby said, trying not to laugh at Rosetta’s antics.

Her smile fading, Rosetta clutched Ruby’s hand. ‘You will look after Poppa, won’t you? You’ll let me know if he gets any worse?’

‘Course I will, silly billy. And you won’t do nothing stupid, will you, Rose?’

‘As if I would!’ Rosetta’s irrepressible sense of fun bubbled into a wicked grin, banishing her fleeting look of concern. ‘You know me, Ruby.’

‘Only too well.’ Flinging her arms around Rosetta, Ruby hugged her. ‘Take care of yourself, Rose.’

The thump of the bedroom door closing and the heavy thud of Sarah’s feet on the stairs put a stop to their conversation and Rosetta was first out of the door, with Ruby hard on her heels. The sleet had turned into feathery flakes of snow,
swirling down from the sky as if a giant feather pillow had burst above their heads. Rosetta was out of sight almost before Ruby had closed the door behind her. Putting her head down, she hurried back towards the arches, her feet slipping and sliding on the slushy cobblestones.

As she left the relative security of Tobacco Court for Spivey Street, a gust of warm air, laced with the stench of stale beer and tobacco smoke, oozed in a steamy cloud from the open door of the Nag’s Head. A man lurched out of the pub, staggered and slid on the snow, colliding with a lamp post and clinging to it for dear life as his feet shot from under him like a puppet with its strings cut. He looked so comical that Ruby had to cover her face with her shawl so that he wouldn’t see her laughing but, all the same, she hoped he hadn’t hurt himself too badly. She crossed the street to avoid walking past the disreputable row of boarded-up, four-storey houses that hadn’t seen a lick of paint since the day they were built some seventy years ago. Ragged, barefoot children hurled snowballs at each other, their thin faces wizened and pinched making them look like small gnomes, their screams and shrieks sounding more like feral animal snarls than human laughter. Ruby knew better than to interfere when they fell upon each other, snapping and snarling like wolf cubs. She quickened her pace, pulling her shawl down
over her brow to shield her eyes from the snow. The east wind brought with it the stomach-churning stink of boiling bones from the glue factory, cancelling out the aroma of freshly baked bread from the bakehouse on the corner of Spivey Street. Ruby quickened her step and made her way down Cable Street to the arches. She half expected to find Father Brennan standing outside, dusted with snow and fuming with righteous anger having found the workshop closed, but mercifully there was no one waiting. Inside was barely warmer than outside and Ruby’s fingers were numbed and stiff with cold. The fire had gone out in the small brazier where Poppa melted the wax and kept it malleable enough to mould. She poked the cinders, hoping to resurrect enough heat to work with, but it was no use. Her hands were cold, the wax was even colder, and, examining the damage to the once perfect face, Ruby realised that it was beyond repair.

Sifting through a wooden crate of dolls’ heads, Ruby came across one that had been made for a baby doll but had been discarded by Poppa when it failed to meet his rigid standards. Father Brennan would be here at any moment and Ruby was desperate. Gritting her teeth, she prayed forgiveness for desecrating a holy object as she cut off the original head and stuck on the new one, securing it with a thin collar of wax that she
had softened by slipping it down the front of her blouse. The daylight was fading fast and Ruby lit a stub of a candle. She could hear the unmistakeable brisk tread of Father Brennan’s leather-soled boots slapping down on the pavement outside. The gate screamed on its rusty hinges and he stood in the doorway, his black outline absorbing the sliver of remaining light.

‘Well now, Ruby, my child. Have you something for me?’

Ruby’s hands were clammy with cold sweat; she swallowed hard and held the tiny figure out towards the priest. ‘Yes, Father.’

‘You know that this should have been ready a week ago. It’s really not good enough.’

‘No, Father.’

‘And where is Aldo?’

‘He’s sick, Father.’

‘You don’t mean he been on the drink, do you, my child?’

‘Oh no, Father. Poppa doesn’t take a drop. He couldn’t afford it even if he wanted to.’

Father Brennan tucked baby Jesus under his arm and reached beneath his robe, pulling out a leather purse. ‘You’ll want payment, although I daresay you would take it badly if I were to deduct money for late delivery.’

‘Yes, Father. I mean, no, Father. I’m sorry, Father.’

As he tugged at the purse strings with fat,
mottled fingers that reminded Ruby of raw beef sausages, the purse flew from his grasp. With surprising agility, he swooped and caught it, but the sudden movement dislodged the improvised head of baby Jesus and sent it flying across the workshop floor. There was a moment of complete silence; even the rumbling of cartwheels and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves in the street outside seemed to stop, as Ruby and Father Brennan watched the severed head rolling in the dust.

Father Brennan recovered first with an almighty roar. ‘Sacrilege!’