The Dolls’ House (2 page)

‘One will come. One will come,’ sang Birdie.

‘How do you know?’ asked Mr Plantaganet.

Birdie could not say how she knew. The thought of it rattled in her head with the thought of that tiny raffia hat that Emily had now found for her; it was no bigger than a half-crown and Emily
had fixed in it a feather from her aunt’s canary. Remembering that, Birdie suddenly remembered what she had thought about the house. ‘Emily fixed the hat,’ she said.
‘Someone will fix the house.’

Of course there were dolls’ houses advertised in the newspaper, even sometimes in the part of the newspaper Emily cut up for Mr Plantaganet.
Dolls’ houses for sale. Four rooms,
fully furnished, electric light, loggia. Garage with miniature cars. £25
.

‘That’s an enormous heap of money,’ said Charlotte.

‘But I don’t want electric light,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘A little pretending candlestick would do for me, and I wouldn’t know how to drive any kind of
car.’

But even the plain dolls’ houses,
Four rooms . . . Two rooms . . . Some furniture . . .
were seven or eight or three even four guineas each, and neither Emily and Charlotte nor
their father had that much money to spare. ‘We shall never get one,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

At the moment the Plantaganets were as uncomfortable as anyone in London; they had to live crowded together in two shoe-boxes that were cramped and cold and that could not shut; when they hung
their washing out to dry, even the smallest pattern duster, it made the cardboard sodden and damp. ‘You can’t play with them properly,’ wailed Charlotte.

‘It doesn’t feel like home,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘Though of course it is ever so much nicer than the toy cupboard,’ he added hastily. ‘But I am too heavy for
it, and so is Apple. It doesn’t feel safe.’

‘I don’t mind it,’ said Birdie, but then Birdie, aggravating creature, never minded anything. She was happy anywhere.

‘It slips about. Everybody knocks it over. It doesn’t feel safe,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

‘Long long ago,’ began Tottie in her comforting voice (and it is the best wood that gives out the most comforting voice – ask the men who make pianos and violins and flutes),
‘long long ago, I knew a dolls’ house. I lived in it. It belonged to Laura. She was Emily and Charlotte’s great-great-aunt. That was a hundred years ago,’ said Tottie.

Tottie had stayed the same all that time, for all that hundred years. Does that surprise you? It is easier for dolls than children. From the moment they are made, finished, they never have to
alter, they never have to grow. ‘I wouldn’t be a child for anything.’ Tottie often said. ‘First you have to be a baby, then a little child, then a bigger child, then a
schoolboy or girl, then a big boy or girl, then grown up.’ Of course Tottie knew she could not, even if she would; there is no power of growing in dolls, and she knew that was why, for
instance, any live little girl, however stupid, had power over her. ‘I am as I am,’ said wise little Tottie. ‘I couldn’t be all those things. In all these years, these
hundred years, I can still only be me.’ It is very important for dolls that children guess their right ages; some thoughtless children make their dolls vary between six and six months. Mr
Plantaganet for instance was born twenty-eight years old. Tottie was about seven. Apple would always be three. Darner was so cross that it was easy to guess he was old. Birdie was more difficult,
it was her flightiness, but even Birdie was easily seen to be between twenty and thirty.

‘I was telling you about the dolls’ house,’ said Tottie. ‘It was not too big. It could stand comfortably on the table and outside it was a glossy cream colour painted
with ivy. It looked as good as real ivy,’ said Tottie.

‘It would be better than real ivy,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘Real ivy chokes things and can even pull down a house. Painted ivy is safer. I like painted ivy. Go on.’

‘Go on. Go on,’ cried Apple. Emily had put him on a chair, but he had deliberately fallen off upside down because he wanted to practise standing on his head.

‘Don’t do that, Apple dear,’ said Tottie. ‘The dolls’ house? Oh, yes. In the front there was a front door with steps leading up to it.’

‘How many steps?’

‘Six,’ said Tottie, ‘and the door was painted green with a knocker; it didn’t really open but that didn’t matter, because the whole of the front swung open, leaving
the inside ready to be played with.’

‘Leaving the steps?’ asked Mr Plantaganet anxiously.

‘Leaving the steps,’ nodded Tottie, and she added, remembering, ‘On the steps was fixed a little tiny scraper.’

‘Would my foot go on it?’ asked Apple, ‘my foot, in its red shoe?’

‘Perfectly,’ said Tottie. ‘And yours,’ she said to Mr Plantaganet before he need ask. ‘There was a kennel,’ she said, ‘just outside.’

‘For Darner?’ asked Apple.

‘But would he go in it?’ asked Mr Plantaganet doubtfully.

‘In this kennel I think he would,’ said Tottie.

Darner did not growl as he would have if he had thought the kennel was dangerous. He always growled ‘Prrick’ at danger.

‘There was a hall with a staircase and a polished wooden floor. I remember the floor particularly,’ said Tottie, ‘because it looked like a draughtboard. Draughts is a game you
play on a board checked in squares of light and dark wood,’ she explained to Apple. ‘The walls of the hall were red. Red paper,’ she said, ‘that looked like
satin.’

‘Are you sure it did?’ asked Mr Plantaganet doubtfully. ‘I haven’t seen any paper like that.’

‘You would have once,’ said Tottie. ‘I am quite certain. I remember it looked cosy and rich. There was a hall window with lace curtains; the white looked pretty on the red;
there were Christmas scraps for pictures and a clock glued on the wall, and two dolls’ house dark wood chairs and a tiny rug.’

‘Everything!’ said Mr Plantaganet.

‘Everything. And in the hall,’ said Tottie, ‘was the figure of a butler.’

No one asked her why she said ‘the figure of a butler’ instead of ‘a butler’. They knew that whoever had made, or tried to make, that butler had not been successful.
There are some dolls like that. There was no need to pity him because he never had been a butler.

‘We could put him outside,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘Go on.’

‘To the left was the kitchen,’ Tottie went on. ‘You know which the left is, Apple, your left hand, the one you don’t shake hands with. On the left, then, was the
kitchen.’

‘What was it like?’

‘What was it like?’

‘What was it like?’

‘There was a blue tin stove with saucepans and a kettle. There was a heavy iron on a stand, no bigger than Emily’s fingernail. There was a rolling pin and a wooden pudding basin
smaller than a thimble. There was a dresser with flowered china cups and plates on it, a table and another rug and kitchen chairs and a mangle and a pot of pretending geraniums on the window
sill.’

‘Oh, dear!’ said Mr Plantaganet longingly.

Up to now the thought of the house and the thought of her hat had been knocking together in Birdie’s head; now she asked, ‘Was there a little feather broom?’

‘I think there was,’ said Tottie.

‘Dear!’ said Birdie, and the feather broom and the feather in her hat seemed to float before her eyes.

‘Could you make buns for tea in that kitchen?’ asked Apple. ‘What is a bun?’

‘To the right of the hall,’ said Tottie, ‘you know your right hand, Apple dear, the one you do shake hands with, to the right was a sitting room. It had a green carpet,’
said Tottie, ‘the colour of holly leaves, and it had real wallpaper, like the hall, only this one was white with cream stripes. On the wallpaper were two little pictures; their frames were
made of glued-on shells that Laura had picked up at the seaside. There was another window—’

‘Did it open?’

‘No, it didn’t open, but it had lace curtains too, and there was a fireplace and a fire of shining red gelatine paper. There was a sofa covered in red velvet and two chairs to match,
and a table and a piano; its notes were paper notes glued on. On the table,’ said Tottie slowly, ‘was a lamp with a white china shade; it would really light if you used a birthday cake
candle.’

‘We should have to be careful of Apple with that candle,’ said Birdie suddenly, and they all stared at her because that was such an unusually clear thing for Birdie to say.

‘You are right to be afraid of fire,’ said Tottie. ‘You are celluloid, Birdie, and that would flare up in an instant if you went anywhere near fire.’

‘You would, you know,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘Better not go near the candle, Birdie.’

‘I?’ asked Birdie, surprised. ‘I was thinking of Apple.’

‘Also on the table,’ said Tottie, ‘there was a vase of wax roses; they were modelled in wax and they were no bigger than a thimble.’

‘Like the pudding basin,’ murmured Mr Plantaganet.

‘Yes,’ said Tottie, ‘and in the sitting room there was a golden cage and inside the cage was a bird.’

‘A bird?’ asked Birdie. ‘A-ah! Did it sing?’

‘No, it couldn’t sing,’ said Tottie, ‘but it was there.’

‘It could sing,’ said Birdie, and her eyes seemed to shine. ‘I know how it sang.’ Scraps and pieces of all the songs she had ever heard knocked together gently in her
head with bird songs, chiefly sparrow because she had heard little else, being a London doll; she could not sing any one of them but they all ran together and seemed to make a chain of song in her
head such as might be sung by a bright toy bird. ‘A-ah! sighed Birdie. Music, delicate clockwork musical-box music, was what Birdie liked to hear.

‘Upstairs,’ said Tottie, ‘there were two bedrooms. One had a pink flannel carpet and one had a blue. There were beds with nicked-round blankets, and there was a white tin bath
with taps, and there was a cot with bars.’

‘Would it do for me?’ asked Apple.

‘It would be a good fit,’ said Tottie gravely. ‘There was a jug and basin and a pail to match them, for carrying the water downstairs.’

‘Very thoughtful,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘Did the taps on the bath really run?’

‘Yes, if you put the water in the tank behind the bath,’ said Tottie.

Mr Plantaganet nodded. Apple was thinking about the cot. Birdie was thinking about the bird in the birdcage.

‘Occupied, of course?’ said Mr Plantaganet suddenly.

‘Occupied?’ asked Tottie.

‘I mean there are other dolls living in it, of course?’

‘It was a long time ago,’ said Tottie. ‘Maybe it has gone, been sold or broken up. I don’t know where it is now,’ said Tottie sadly. ‘That Laura,
Great-Great-Aunt Laura, had a little girl, but the little girl is a great-aunt herself now. Why, she is Emily and Charlotte’s great-aunt. Maybe she has given it away or given it up. I
don’t know.’

‘But dolls lived in it then,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘You lived in it once. Did other dolls live there with you? Don’t you remember them?’

‘I remember one,’ said Tottie slowly. ‘Yes, I remember her,’ said Tottie, very, very slowly.

‘Why do you say it like that? What was her name?’

‘Her name was Marchpane.’

‘What a funny name. What does it mean?’

‘Marchpane is a heavy, sweet, sticky stuff like almond icing, very old-fashioned,’ said Tottie. ‘You very quickly have enough of it. It was a good name for her,’ said
Tottie slowly.

‘But what was she like?’ asked Mr Plantaganet.

‘What was she like?’ asked Birdie.

‘What was she like?’ asked Apple.

‘She was valuable,’ said Tottie. ‘She was little and heavy.’

‘What was she made of? I am made of celluloid,’ said Birdie, and ‘celluloid’ knocked in her head against other words like it – ’cellophane’,
‘cellular’, ‘celanese’. Now she did not know which she was made of, but any of them seemed to describe her well.

‘I like you to be made of celluloid,’ said Mr Plantaganet quickly as if he were afraid that what Tottie said might hurt Birdie, but Birdie did not mind.

‘Marchpane was made of kid and china,’ said Tottie.

‘Kid? What is kid?’

‘It is a kind of leather, white leather,’ said Tottie. ‘Her body was made of it and stuffed with sawdust and jointed; her joints worked more smoothly than mine. Her head was
china, and her eyes were china too. Her hair was real, in a plait that they pinned round her head. You could plait it and unplait it.’

‘Was it yellow?’ asked Birdie.

‘Yes,’ said Tottie mournfully.

‘Is there – much – difference between real and unreal? I wouldn’t know,’ said Birdie.

‘Well – ye-es,’ said Tottie as gently as she could.

‘Did her clothes take on and off?’ asked Apple, who hated to have his clothes taken off.

‘She was in wedding clothes,’ said Tottie. ‘They took off and they were all white.’

‘White? I shouldn’t like that,’ said Birdie more cheerfully. ‘I like pink and red and yellow and blue.’

‘But they were beautiful. They were stitched with tiny featherstitching.’

‘Is there a stitch called featherstitching? Oh, I should like that!’ said Birdie, forgetting Marchpane.

‘And they were edged with narrowest real lace.’

‘Prr-ickkk!’ said Darner suddenly. They looked at him in surprise. They all looked round for the danger and could not see any.

‘Were those curtains real lace curtains?’ asked Mr Plantaganet. ‘Those curtains in the house?’

‘I shouldn’t suppose so,’ said Tottie. ‘Real lace is very expensive.’

‘If it were my house,’ said Mr Plantaganet, ‘I should have real lace curtains. Nothing less,’ said Mr Plantaganet firmly. ‘Think! To live in a house like
that.’ His eyes, that Emily now kept quite free from dust, shone (being glass, they shone quite easily). ‘Not to live in a shoe-box any more.’ His voice changed as he said that;
he sounded as if he were shut in the dark toy cupboard again.

‘I could get out of my cot,’ said Apple suddenly. ‘I would. I could climb through the bars and Emily and Charlotte would think I had rolled out.’

Birdie was thinking about the bird, her songs, her hat, its feather, featherstitching, the feather broom.

‘And when they had finished playing with us,’ said Mr Plantaganet, ‘they would shut up the front and we should be alone, quite private in our own house.’