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The girl came in from the slanting rain, deflating and then shaking her umbrella so that a fine shower dampened the crystal wine glasses and the careful display of French porcelain. An untidy young woman: a halo of wild, yellow hair, torn black jeans and a tee shirt imprinted with the picture of a rock band. A tattoo snaked down the side of her neck.
Caitlin watched her nervously. Not their usual type of customer. The girl walked too fast through the shop, her large bag swinging perilously close to the glassware, straight to the doll section where Caitlin stood guard. The dolls were kept in the darkest corner, away from direct light that might fade their clothes, away from the heat of the window that might change the meticulous shading of their bisque and porcelain faces.
“I’ve got something to sell,” the girl said, lifting a doll from the bag and placing it on the counter.
Caitlin had learned enough to know that the doll was old, possibly German, possibly Armand Marseille. Jack would know at a glance. Caitlin pinched the rough linen of the dress: vintage. Could be the original.
“My boss should look at it,” Caitlin said. “Wait a second.”
Caitlin called out, gestured to Jack, then turned back to the doll.
“She’s antique,” the girl said. “She was my grandmother’s. I don’t want to give her away.”
“Of course you don’t,” Caitlin said. “You shouldn’t.”
“She has little teeth, see? My grandmother said that makes her rare.”
“Not rare, no. But some collectors like it.”
Collectors of dolls prefer an open mouth, Jack had said. Remember that.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Caitlin said.
A lie. Caitlin hated the German dolls, their fat cheeks, their hollow eyes. And disliked the French dolls, too, with their fussy clothes. When collectors gushed over a new Marie Leontine Rohmer or an Etienne Denamur, Caitlin stood bewildered, wondering what they saw in the pudgy faces and blank stares that excited them so.
Jack strolled over finally, gave the young woman an assessing glance, his small, bearded face tight with disapproval, then looked down at the doll and began to examine it. He tilted the head, lifted the skirts to view how the jointed legs met the torso and leaned in close to study the shading of the bisque face. Then he turned the doll over, lips pursed, looking for marks. Caitlin saw the pink, snake dart of his tongue.
He wanted it.
“Sorry,” he said, after the fake, inevitable sigh. “Not much call for these today.”
“But you’ve got dolls up there,” the girl said, pointing. “How much are you charging for those?”
“Display only.”
“Are they all display only?”
“Of course not,” he said. “So, do you want to buy also? Perhaps a swap?”
“Swap her? Why? No. Course I don’t. I’ve got to sell her. I don’t want to but—”
The girl stopped, regarded him, unsmiling.
“So, how much will you give me?” she asked.
*
Caitlin turned to Jack when the girl had left.
“That wasn’t fair,” she said. “It’s worth more.”
“And how would you know what she’s worth?” he asked, whispering into her neck. Caitlin could feel his warm breath, the tickle of his beard on her skin. He stepped back, looked down at the doll, now held tight in his hands. “This one has imperfections. Not serious ones, but nevertheless. Come on, darling. You do your job. I’ll do mine.”
He was pleased about the purchase, his happiness spilling over into bed that night.
“Come to bed now,” he called to her afterwards, as she stood at the bathroom sink, swilling mouthwash, spitting the taste of him out of her mouth. “We have an early start. And,” he added, as she walked to the closet to hang up her clothes. “Wear the beige tomorrow. In case any of my regulars come in.”
He liked the beige suit almost as much as the black. Classy, he said. Classy was his mantra. He wanted a classy shop and classy staff. Caitlin had met him in her second year of design school, the year her mother died, the year she knew she would fail because of too much time lost and a lack of focus. Jack had given a talk on Murano glass and, in the café afterwards, he approached her and offered her a job in the shop, promising that she would learn more from him than she could ever learn in class, saying that a beautiful girl like her should be surrounded by beautiful things. She had frowned at him, astonished. No one had called her beautiful before. Later, when she talked about finding other work, Jack always persuaded her out of it. Advertising? he asked once, when she returned from an interview. Caitlin, darling. Really? So tacky. She was living with him then, in the fastidiously arranged minimalist apartment above the shop. He bought her gifts of designer accessories, helped her choose the right shoes, pulling out his wallet to pay for them. He arranged for haircuts, gave her solid gold chains and classic pearl earrings and said Understated, always. Remember that.
On dark days, she planned an escape to the life she had once imagined – a job in a gallery perhaps, an apartment of her own, a place by the ocean. She dreamt of the ocean, a wide blue expanse under a washed sky, though she had only seen it twice in her life. She tried to save the small salary he gave her but the saved sum grew so slowly. She wondered if it would ever be enough.
*
The girl came back to the shop the next day. Caitlin, alone at the counter, removing a sticky label from the bottom of a Wedgwood plate, looked up, surprised.
“I want to buy Charlotte back,” the girl said. “I’ve changed my mind.”
Caitlin stared. This had happened before. He never allowed it.
“Charlotte?”
“My doll.”
“That’s not possible. I’m sorry.”
“Please.”
“I don’t have authority to refund or return. I can ask him when he—”
“When’s he back?”
“Not in the shop until tomorrow. But I can assure you that he won’t—”
“You can assure me?” the girl said. “Oh, you snotty fucking bitch.”
Caitlin swallowed, startled.
“Oh, sorry, sorry,” the girl said and began to cry. Then, she turned and ran from the shop.
*
The next day the girl was standing in the street, looking at the window display, when Caitlin came out for lunch.
“Did you ask him?” she asked. “About Charlotte? What did he say?”
Caitlin looked over her shoulder, moved away from the window. She had forty minutes and was supposed to be at the library.
“Sorry. No. He’s absolutely rigid about it. He’ll give refunds for faulty merchandise but he’ll never give back a purchase.”
“Why? Even though I came back the next day? The next fucking day?”
“You’d have to buy it back at the price he’s asking.”
“How much is that?”
“Too much,” Caitlin said.
“That bastard. What a prick. You sure you asked him?”
“You can ask him yourself if you like. He’s in there.”
“No, you do it. Please. He likes you, doesn’t he?”
Caitlin paused. The girl looked anxious.
“Okay. I’ll try.”
“Thanks.” The girl held out her hand: “I’m Sadie.”
“Caitlin.”
Sadie, squinting, moved closer, looking into Caitlin’s face.
“Well, shit. Look at you. I thought you were older,” she said. “What’s with the clothes? You into retro or something?”
“This is a work suit. He likes me to look professional.”
“Professional what? Undertaker? What do you wear when you’re not working?”
He liked her to wear linen pants, cashmere and silk.
“Jeans,” Caitlin lied. “Like everybody else.”
“Right. Well, okay. Will you ask him about Charlotte again? Please. I really, really want her back. I can’t sleep. I could come into the shop? Do you think? He didn’t seem to like me, though. Maybe I should wear a suit? If I had one. Which I don’t. Anyway, you want to have coffee with me?”
Caitlin, listening bemused to this odd girl, shook her head.
“Sorry. Not today.”
“When then?”
Caitlin hesitated. Why not?
“Thursday?”
*
On Thursday, in a coffee shop in a side street near the library, Caitlin listened as Sadie bemoaned the loss of her doll.
“I wish I’d never brought her in,” Sadie said. “I should never have sold her, never. But the guy said if we wanted to cut a demo we’d need a deposit.”
“Demo?” Caitlin asked.
“For my band. Anyway, this guy that Jimmy knows can do it for us. So, I didn’t need to sell her after all. Oh, he should give her back. He really is a prick.”
“He’s not really. He’s just a businessman.”
“So, is he married? I saw him looking at you. You two having a thing?”
Caitlin hesitated.
“I live with him,” she said finally.
Sadie’s mouth actually fell open. She learned forward, her elbows on the plastic table.
“What? How old is he?”
“Don’t know. Not that old.”
“Got to be fifty. How does he trim his beard like that? So neat. Christ. You live with him? Why?”
“He cares about me. He’s been good to me.”
Sadie stared, shaking her head.
“Jesus,” she said.
*
The following Thursday, Jack’s day to attend estate sales, Caitlin again met Sadie in the coffee shop. The subject of the doll had changed to Sadie’s talk of the band she was forming, Jimmy, the boy guitarist she liked, of her family, an asshole stepfather, a brother she adored who lived in California now.
“I’m going out there one day. When the band takes off. Won’t be long. We’re getting better. Well, Jimmy’s good. And Zak is awesome.”
“Do you sing?”
“Sing. Play guitar.” Sadie grinned. “Don’t look so amazed. You thought I was just for decoration? Anyway, what about you? You never say a fucking thing about your life.”
“Nothing to say.”
“What about your family?”
“My mother’s dead. She had cancer. Dad married again.”
“Breast?” Sadie asked.
Caitlin, surprised, felt her cheeks burn.
“What?”
“Was it breast cancer? Your mother?”
“Oh, no. Lung cancer.”
“She a smoker?”
“She smoked a bit,” Caitlin said, not wanting to describe her mother’s chronic habit, the fog that filled the tiny house even as the illness took a rapid and inevitable path. The addiction never broken, even during those last months.
“Why don’t you live with your dad?”
“He married again. And she’s got twins and they had another baby. There’s no room for me.”
“He married right away?”
Caitlin nodded, biting her lip. Sadie leaned forward to touch her hand.
“Poor baby,” she said and frowned, thinking, and then leaned forward, her eyes bird-bright. Caitlin could hear the small throb of excitement in her voice.
“Is old beardy chops out all day?”
“Back late tonight.”
“Come to my place. Hear us play. We’ve got a session later.”
“I can’t do that,” Caitlin said.
“Course you can. Why not?”
“I can’t close the shop all afternoon. What if he finds out?”
“He won’t. Say you got sick. Say you had to go to the dentist. You’ll think of something! Come on,” she said, her voice urgent.
Caitlin thought for a moment longer.
“Okay,” she said.
Outside, a storm was brewing, dark clouds massing in the northern sky. As they headed across town, the storm began. Sadie grabbed Caitlin’s hand and they ran, giggling, through the empty streets, the hard rain flattening their hair, soaking their clothes until they reached, at last, an apartment on the second floor of a crumbling conversion. Sadie, shrieking, ran upstairs, retrieved the key from under a plant pot and ran straight through an untidy living room into the bathroom.
“Holy shit, I’m soaked,” she called. “Hot shower. Now.”
Caitlin took a rumpled towel from the bathroom rail and stood awkwardly, dabbing at her drenched hair.
“Come on,” Sadie said, laughing as she peered out of the shower door. “There’s plenty of room in here. If we squash up.”
“No. I’ll wait,” Caitlin said.
“What about your clothes? That suit!”
“I’m fine.”
“There’s a radiator in the bedroom. And a dressing gown on the door.”
“No, I’m—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Caitlin. You want to get pneumonia or something?”
In a bedroom that was barely the size of Jack’s closet, walls covered with rock posters, the bed littered with clothes, CDs and music magazines, Caitlin stripped down to her bra and pants and hung her saturated clothes over a radiator that looked none too clean. The dressing gown was flamingo pink in a cheap acrylic but its thick texture was soothing, soft against her skin.
Minutes later, Sadie, wrapped in a towel, came into the bedroom.
“See? That’s better. Hey, you look good in pink. Suits you. And you should wear your hair down. Or cut it? Wow. I bet you’d look cute with it short. That would be so cool.”
Sadie dropped the towel, stood naked for a moment, rustling around on the bed for clothes. The filtered light from the blinds cast fine shadows on her ivory skin, on the fuzz of pubic hair. Caitlin swallowed, looked away, was about to walk into the other room when the bang of the front door startled them both.
“Here they are!” Sadie cried, tugging on sweat pants.
Caitlin panicked, pulled the dressing around her, tying the belt tightly.
“They’re inside? Don’t they knock?”
“Key under the plant. So we can all come and go.”
As three boys crowded into the place, Caitlin stood in the centre of the room, trying to smile as she was introduced, wanting to run now, thinking furiously of excuses she might make so she could return to the safety of the shop, the immaculate apartment above it. But Sadie began to open beer cans in the kitchen, the boys were setting up instruments. The place, already strewn with empty coffee cups, candles, was suddenly noisy, with overlapping talk and laughter.
The boy called Zak, a boy with dark curly hair and dark eyes, approached Caitlin, smiling.
“Here, have a beer,” he said, handing her a can. He reached down to lift a coat and a pile of magazines from the only armchair and dumped the items on the floor. “And sit down.”
While Sadie and the boys tuned instruments, Caitlin sipped at the beer. The familiar taste gave her a sharp jolt. She hadn’t tasted beer for a long time. Her father, on the stretched evenings they sat at her mother’s bedside, would sometimes hand her a cold can even as he chided her: You should be out with your friends. You shouldn’t be sitting here night after night.
In Sadie’s apartment, Caitlin swirled the cold yeasty freshness around her mouth, took a long swallow and then leaned back, settling into the chair. Sadie had begun to sing in a clear voice, surprising in its sweetness. Jimmy, her boyfriend, and another boy who was called Sean, joined in. Zak played what looked to Caitlin like a double bass, though she couldn’t be sure. He leaned forward, his hair falling onto his face. Caitlin had been expecting heavy metal or punk, but the music was some kind of modern rock, surprisingly mellow, so she closed her eyes, tried to focus on the melodies, tried to still the anxious trembling of her limbs.
After a second beer, she felt calmer. The room was warm and smelled of lavender candles, young bodies and ale. She was aware of the rain hard on the window, could see it sliding down the glass. When Sadie called for a break, throwing herself onto the sofa, Jimmy beside her, she called over to Caitlin.
“So? What do you think?” she asked. “Tell the truth.”
“You’re good,” Caitlin said. “Really.”
“Yeah?” Sadie asked, pleased.
Zak dropped down onto the floor and sat at Caitlin’s feet, leaning back against the chair. The fabric of his shirt felt soft against her legs. After a moment, he lifted Caitlin’s bare foot and studied it.
“Tiny feet,” he said.
The touch sent a shock through her body, a muted tingling. He took her foot in both hands and began lightly stroking it, and then stroked her ankle and, so gently, her calf. She became quite still. The longing ebbed quietly, a current through her veins. She could not see his face clearly, dared not look, but studied his dark hair, the curves and swirls of curls. She wanted to touch it. She wanted to touch him.
She stood quickly.
“I’ve got to go,” she said.
“What?” Sadie cried. “You just got here. We’ll get take-out.”
“I forgot something,” she said, hurrying into the bedroom, dressing quickly, the damp clothes now cold on her flesh. She was back into the living room in minutes, pushing her feet into shoes.
“Oh, come on,” Sadie said. “Don’t go back there.”
“Sorry. I’ve got to—”
“Leave him. Come live here.”
“Maybe I will,” Caitlin said, before she stumbled down the stairs. “Maybe.”
*
That night before she slept and at odd times during the next day, Caitlin remembered the boy’s hands on her feet and legs. At the memory, she felt her flesh tingle, dampen, and she thrust the thoughts away, shocked at her own response. As she moved around the flat and the shop, she had the oddest sense that the light had changed – a curtain pulled back, a window thrown open. The pristine bathroom now felt clinically cold, the aggressively uncluttered bedroom like a treatment room. When she looked at Jack as he talked to a customer that afternoon, she saw his pink mouth though the beard and it seemed to her slippery and slug-like. The next morning she watched as he trimmed his beard and nose hair and felt a small choke of revulsion.
Jack, looking through the bathroom mirror, caught her watching and frowned. Caitlin wondered if he sensed something, wondered if the confusion of her thoughts had somehow transmitted to him like radio waves across the ocean.
Later, with terrified care, she began to pack a case and stored it in the spare bedroom, a room they never used. In the late afternoon, she slid more into it: clothing, jewellery, passport, and all the money she had available.
She would leave that night.
They were late in from the shop and so dinner was simple: grilled chicken breast, a salad. Caitlin poured Jack a large wine and another and added a double shot of vodka to his last glass of Chardonnay. In bed, after murmuring into her hair, he fell asleep and she lay rigidly still beside him, listening to his breathing. When his snored intensified, she slipped from the bedroom, tiptoed to the spare room and dressed fast, her hands trembling.
She crept downstairs, barely able to breathe, the suitcase banging against her leg. Her coat touching the wall made a rustling sound. She moved slower. At the bottom of the stairs, she paused: one more thing, just one more thing. She inserted her key into the lock of the shop door and slowly, the key sliding, sticking, she fumbled until at last the door opened. She keyed in the security number and moved, swiftly, silently, to the back, to the darkest corner.
Yes, there was Charlotte, high on the shelf. The dolls lined up on the middle shelf appeared to stare at her with hard pebble eyes, cold as a stream. The Tete Jumeau, the ugly Heubach Kopplesdorf with the cropped hair, and the one Jack loved most, the early Marie Leontine Rohmer. She could hear the hum of the old fridge and traffic far away and for a terrifying moment thought she heard footsteps on the stairs and froze, her heart hammering. But no, there was only silence. She reached for the doll. The others swayed as she touched it, as if leaning together for safety. She steadied them, closed the gap, so that the absence would not be obvious immediately, and then hurried to the door, snapping the alarm back on. Lifting the suitcase from the ground, not daring to risk the muted whir of the wheels, she walked quickly, the doll under her arm, running finally, to the corner, to the main street, to the taxi rank and a waiting taxi.
She gave Sadie’s address.
Outside the dark building, she paused before getting out of the cab, taking long, deep breaths. She wanted to be sure. She thought of Sadie asleep upstairs in the messy room with its dingy sheets and beer cans and casual friendships and easy loves. No, she thought. No.
Wait here, she told the driver. Upstairs, she lifted the key from under the plant pot. The only sound in the bedroom was Sadie’s soft snoring. Caitlin took the note from her pocket and smoothed it out before she tucked it under the bedside clock.
Sorry, sorry, it said. And thank you. Then, a kiss.
She placed the doll next to Sadie. The doll, once settled, mouth slightly open, looked almost as if she were breathing.
Downstairs, Caitlin walked briskly down the path. She saw that the light was brightening in the east, it would soon be morning. The cool air tasted fresh, had the scent of eucalyptus.
The taxi driver looked over his shoulder as Caitlin climbed back in.
“Railway station, please,” she said.
“Travelling far?” he asked.
A place with a wide blue sea, a washed sky.
“Oh yes,” she said. “As far as the ocean.”
About Mary McCluskey
Mary McCluskey is a journalist with a base in Los Angeles and a home in the UK. Recently she's been concentrating on fiction which she loves because she can make things up. Her short stories have been published in literary journals in the UK, US, Australia and Hong Kong. Her novel, INTRUSION, is to be published by Little A in June 2016.
