The Dolls’ House (7 page)

At that moment the child took one hand from behind her back and stretched it out to the wax doll and, with a finger, very gently touched her satin dress. The wax doll trembled with pleasure from
head to toe. After that the child came most often to look at the wax doll.

‘I believe she is the caretaker’s child,’ said Marchpane.

‘She is my child,’ breathed the wax doll.

Now the day came for the Exhibition to be open. By eleven o’clock everything was dusted and ready; the ladies were waiting, the dolls were waiting, and a great number of other ladies and
gentlemen and a few children, invited guests, were waiting. Marchpane and the haughty doll were preening their necks to hold them to the greatest advantage and setting off their dresses; the wax
doll was looking at the children and thinking they were not as good as the caretaker’s child; Tottie stood dreading and fearing the moment when someone would buy her and her secret must be
told.

The Exhibition ladies kept coming along the tables and shifting and tidying what was arranged and neat already, and putting straight what was straight before.

‘I do wish they wouldn’t,’ sighed Tottie.

‘They are showing us every attention, naturally,’ said Marchpane. ‘We are very important – at least,’ she corrected herself, ‘some of us are.’

‘I don’t like attention,’ said Tottie who had been dusted and flicked with a feather broom and stood up and down until she felt giddy.

There was a stir, a pause, the Queen had come. Presently they heard her voice. The Queen’s voice was as clear, her words as distinct, as separate drops of water.
‘Clear and cool,
clear and cool
’ Tottie had heard that about water once, and the Queen’s voice sounded to her like that.

‘I have great pleasure in declaring this Exhibition open,’ said the Queen’s voice, and there was an immediate clapping of hands.

‘Why are they clapping?’ asked the wax doll.

‘They are clapping us, of course,’ said Marchpane.

‘They are clapping the Queen,’ said Tottie.

Now the ladies and gentlemen, following the Queen, who was attended by the ladies of the Exhibition and her own lady-in-waiting, began to come down the tables, looking at the dolls. The
lady-in-waiting carried a bouquet of chrysanthemums. ‘That is for us, I expect,’ said Marchpane.

‘How could it be for us? It’s too big,’ said Tottie, but by now Marchpane was so far gone in conceit that nothing looked big to her.

‘But – she isn’t wearing a crown!’ said the wax doll, disappointed.

‘She only wears a crown when she goes to Parliament and places like that,’ said Tottie, who had learned about kings and queens when her little girls, from Great-Grandmother down to
Charlotte, learned their history.

‘She has the most elegant hat with grey feathers,’ said Marchpane. ‘I shall have one copied for myself. Shh. She is coming this way.’

‘La! I am nairvous,’ said the walking doll. ‘
Je ne me sens pas bien du tout,
’ which means she did not feel well. The wax doll trembled, but the people thought it
was their footsteps shaking the room. Tottie remained woodenly staring in front of her.

On the Queen came, stopping, looking, touching, this doll or that, asking questions. Then she stopped directly in front of Marchpane, as Marchpane had known she would.

‘What a beautiful doll,’ said the Queen. ‘Surely she is the smallest in the Exhibition?’

Now in Marchpane’s ears, the Queen could not have asked a more unfortunate question. Marchpane was not the smallest doll in the Exhibition. Tottie was, and Marchpane hated her for that.
She almost cracked her china as she heard Mrs Innisfree say, ‘There is one even smaller, Ma’am. This little farthing doll,’ and saw the Queen turn away to Tottie.

‘Oh!’ said the Queen. ‘Oh! I used to play with wooden dolls like this when I was a little girl.’

‘A queen! With wooden dolls! How
very
surprising!’ said the other dolls.

‘
La! Comme c’est drôle!
’ said the walking doll. As for Marchpane she said nothing. She was afraid she really would crack if she did.

‘I haven’t seen one for years and years,’ said the Queen. ‘My nurse used to buy them for me.’ And then she asked the very question Tottie was dreading to hear.
‘Is she for sale?’ asked the Queen.

Every knot and grain in Tottie hardened as she waited for the answer to come. Whispers ran up and down the dolls.

‘I should like to buy her if she is,’ said the Queen.

‘Birdie, Emily, Charlotte, Mr Plantaganet, Apple, Darner, Apple, goodbye,’ whispered Tottie. She wished she could close her eyes to shut out the faces but, naturally, she had to keep
them woodenly open. But – what was this that Mrs Innisfree was saying?

‘I’m afraid not, Ma’am,’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘She isn’t for sale. She is the very dear possession of two little girls,’ and she pointed to the card.

The Queen picked up the cards and read them out:

‘
“Sampler, worked by a little girl in 1846.” “Farthing doll dressed by the same little girl in 1846.” “Lent by her great-granddaughters, Emily and
Charlotte Dane, in 1946.”
’

‘Of course,’ said the Queen, ‘she must be a great treasure. May I look at her?’

And Tottie was picked up in the pale grey glove of the Queen, who examined her and examined her clothes.

‘Dear little thing,’ said the Queen, and gave Tottie back to Mrs Innisfree and passed on down the tables.

‘My dear, you ’ave ’ad a
succès fou
!’ said the haughty doll. Tottie did not ask what a
succès fou
was. For the first time her wood felt weak,
bending, and then one of the ladies ran forward with a cry. ‘Oh dear!’ she said, ‘the little farthing doll has fallen over and rolled down right off the table.’

Tottie was not hurt.

Such happiness flowed through her that she felt as though the sap of her tree had risen in her wood, as it once had every spring, and was running through her.

‘Tottie is happy because the Queen wanted to buy her,’ said the other dolls.

‘She is happy because the Queen couldn’t buy her,’ Tottie could have corrected them. ‘But what was it all about?’ asked Tottie. ‘Emily and Charlotte must have
had a change of heart.’ That was as near as Tottie ever came to understanding the truth, and it was very near the truth.

‘God bless the Queen,’ said Tottie. ‘God bless the Queen.’

But Marchpane was bitterly jealous.

Meanwhile the Plantaganet family had moved into the dolls’ house.

They had made it completely their own. Though the chairs were not ready yet and the lace curtains had not come, Mr Plantaganet, Birdie, Apple, and Darner had settled down. The house was clean
from top to bottom. There were new sheets and pillows, those mouse-size pillows, and nicked-round blankets on the beds. Apple had his patchwork quilt. The carpets were nailed down and their washing
had made their colours fresh. ‘Mine is pink, as pink as roses and apple blossom and nail polish,’ sang Birdie. The rust had been scoured and scraped from the stove and pots and pans,
and the sea-shells had been glued back again on the picture frames.

No family could have been happier than the Plantaganets were now. Darner had his kennel to himself, and it was filled with real chopped-up straw that Emily had begged from a stable in the mews
and cut up with her scissors. Apple had the whole house to play in and he had learned the dangerous practice of somersaulting down the stairs. He wished that Charlotte would sit him at the top and
then, quite soon, he would manage to overbalance and somersault down to the bottom. Birdie had her room with the pink carpet, and every morning she dusted it with her feather broom while she sang
all the songs that she felt her bird in the birdcage would sing, though what of her was dusting and what singing, Birdie sometimes did not know.

‘Do I sing with my hands and dust with my voice?’ asked Birdie. ‘I might, I do not know, but I am happy, happy, happy,’ and she flicked with the feather broom and sang a
trill. ‘So happy,’ sang Birdie. Emily had made her a flyaway apron with embroidery cotton strings that were pink like the carpet. ‘My carpet,’ sang Birdie. ‘How I like
pink! Trr-la! Trr-la! Trr-la-la!’ How different was the sound of Birdie’s ‘la’ from the walking doll’s.

And Mr Plantaganet? Mr Plantaganet was different. He looked heavier, the porcelain of his face and hands seemed brighter, cleaner, the checks on his suit seemed more clearly marked, his
red-ribbon tie more crisp. When he held his walking stick it looked as if he would swing it at any moment.

The house was a house to be proud of, well built, solid down to the last window sill and up to the wooden chimney. It was warm, gay, comfortable, and there was the lamp and its birthday cake
candle for when it was dark. Emily and Charlotte often lit it, and when they had finished playing they shut the front and left the Plantaganets safe inside.

While Birdie dusted and Apple somersaulted on the stairs and Darner lay in his kennel, Mr Plantaganet sat in the sitting room reading the little papers Emily made for him and thinking what it
would be like when the new chairs and curtains came. For the moment he had to sit on one of the bedroom chairs. He was quite happy, sitting in the sitting room, but he began to feel that, if he
were a real master of the house he should, like Father, go to the office. ‘I wish they would think of getting me an office,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘I should like to go to the
office very much.’

They had kept a place for Tottie. There was a bed waiting for her in the same room as Apple, the room with the blue carpet. Mr Plantaganet slept with Birdie. Tottie’s clothes were in the
cupboard, her red knitted cloak hung in the hall with Birdie’s straw hat with the feather. ‘Of course we are all waiting for Tottie,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

‘Trr-la, trr-la, I wish Tottie were here,’ sang Birdie. ‘Then we could cook, little pretending flour pies and hundred-and-thousand sweets.’ (Do you know
hundreds-and-thousands? They make good dolls’ house sweets.)

‘If Tottie were here she wouldn’t let me somersault downstairs, but I wish Tottie were here,’ said Apple.

‘It doesn’t feel like our home without Tottie,’ said Mr Plantaganet, then his face looked stiff and he dropped his walking stick. ‘Birdie,’ he said, ‘suppose
it isn’t our home after all? Suppose we have made a mistake? They couldn’t take it away from us, could they Birdie?’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Birdie, and she lowered her broom and the embroidery cotton strings of her apron sank and were still. ‘What do you mean? I don’t
understand,’ she said with a sound like a whimper.

‘No. No. Don’t think about it. I was only joking,’ said Mr Plantaganet quickly.

‘W-were you? It didn’t sound like a joke.’

‘Don’t think about it. You go on with your dusting, my dear.’

‘M-may I? Are you sure?’

‘Of course, Birdie dear. Of course. Forget about it.’

Mr Plantaganet soon forgot about it himself. He had discovered that, when the birthday cake candle in the lamp was lit, the roses in the vase threw a tiny real shadow of themselves on the
table.

The Exhibition was almost over. Many people had visited it; it was a great success.