Doll Page 3

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

  “Taquiri de Jaine,” 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?”

  “Your mother!” exclaims Charlie. “If she wanted a photographer from Hello! she’d have one for a friend.”

  “Yeah, well. Cindy’s copying something from a magazine. Something Britney actually wore. It’s gauze mostly. Blue gauze. It’s going to be amazing. Just you wait. Got a fitting on Sunday. Got to look my best, you see.” Mercy pauses. “Jan’s coming.”

  “Jan?” queries Charlie.

  “Yes. It’s spelt with a J but pronounced like a Y. Yan. Yan Spark. And that’s his real name, not a stage name. How cool is that? Ready-made star quality. But he’s the strong silent type, you see. So I’m going to need more than my sparkling conversation.”

  “Is he going in for the contest?”

  “Of course. He’s Mr Guitar, apparently. Plays brilliantly, according to his mother who told my mother. But forget guitar, you should take a look at his face. Is he gorgeous or what? His features, Charlie, they’re kind of sculpted. Like he was some Inca god. And his eyes, they’re so dark, so deep you feel like you are looking down a tunnel right into his soul. And …”

  And then, with her boy, comes my boy. The one up at the bridge. I’ve felt him tracking me all day, a hound at my back. But I haven’t turned round once to look. Because of his eyes. They are not tunnels you can look down, they are fierce, dark drills. They bore into you. Make you feel that, with a glance, he could pierce your heart right through. Know things about you that even you don’t know.

  But I could have stood that. Wouldn’t have cared, except that, at the bridge, he turned those eyes on Gerda. Stared like he could see right through her, too. My Gerda. And I couldn’t bear that again. Stared and stared, as if he had the right. As if he knew something.

  I cannot stop my hand, it’s reaching into my pocket. I have to touch her. Put my fingers on Gerda’s warm, white skin. My breath is slamming against the glass of the bus shelter.

  This is for you, beloved.

  But somehow I fumble. A bus is coming and someone is barging and pushing. It’s an old lady and the handle of her shopping bag is snagged round my arm. I cry out, so as not to drop Gerda. The old woman pulls against me, glares, curses and butts her way on to the bus. I’m still spinning when Mercy says:

  “Well, well. If it isn’t Tilly M.”

  I come to a stop. We are face to face. Mercy is not getting on the bus. Not this bus anyway.

  “Did you bunk off school today to assault senior citizens?”

  Charlie sniggers.

  I work at composing my features, pay attention to keeping my hand so still she will not see what is clutched at my heart.

  “What’s that then?” she asks.

  Did I look at Gerda? Did I?

  “It’s one of those creepy things her mum makes,” Charlie says.

  “Oh,” says Mercy. “A little dolly. Let’s see then.”

  A second bus arrives. This has to be their bus. People shuffle and move. Mercy and Charlie don’t move. They stay. The bus drives away. I could run. I could run again. If Mercy touches the doll … If she brings her hand anywhere near …

  “I said, let’s see.”

  “No!” I jam Gerda into my pocket. And then: “Nothing to see.”

  “How old are you, Tilly?” Mercy laughs. And I remember how that laugh used to be full of kindness. How it seemed “quaint” to her that I came to school dressed in non-regulation cardigans and black gym shoes when everyone else had trainers. Mercy was so sure of herself that difference didn’t seem to matter. How I adored her for that. And how bereft I was the day it stopped. The day she came to my house.

  “I said, how old are you, Make-Believe?”

  Make-Believe. That was my fault too, of course. I wouldn’t tell them my middle name. Mercedes Alice Van Day. Charlotte Elizabeth Ferguson. Matilda M. Weaver. They all had middle names but I didn’t, or not one I was prepared to admit to. Was I afraid they would trample my soul? No. I never shared the secret with Mercy, not even when we were at our closest. The reason was – shame. And, give credit where credit’s due, Mercy never pushed me. Other people did. Small enquiries, a few tentative jokes. But I never cared. What were a few jokes compared with the truth?

  It was Charlie who wouldn’t let go. It was how she wormed into Mercy’s affection. How she pushed me away.

  “What does the M stand for, Weaver? Go on, tell us. What’s the big deal? Friends are meant to share. Anyway, it’s only a game.”

  A Rumpelstiltskin game. What is Tilly’s middle name? Guess, guess, have a good laugh. Tilly Moron, Tilly Misbegotten, Tilly Misery-Guts, Tilly Misfit, Tilly Misnomer and then Tilly Make-Believe.

  It was Mercy who coined it.

  “Make-Believe,” she said, “it’s Make-Believe, isn’t it?”

  And I said yes. To stop the game, but also because it didn’t seem that unkind. There was something innocent in it, something creative, it contained the dust of fairies and of angels. And of course, after that day at my mother’s house, she’d called me many worse things, bitter things. So “Make-Believe” sounded, in my ears, like reconciliation. And I wanted her friendship so much. I wanted her back. How she was, how it all was, before …

  “I’m waiting,” says Mercy and she stands, her bus seat twanging upright behind her.

  Nothing can happen. This is a bus shelter. A shelter. There are other people here. A second old lady, looking the other way. A mother, fussing over a toddler. Or maybe the toddler’s fussing.

  “Are you deaf? As well as infantile? Bet you still have Barbies too.”

  “Walk away,” says Gerda.

  “I saw you this morning,” Charlie says then. “In Tisbury Road.”

  But she can’t have. I looked up and down the street. I looked for her bus.

  “That’s where your grandma drops you, when your mum—”

  Mum. Not even I called my mother “Mum”. I called her “Mama” because this – along with Weaver – is what she called herself. My father called her “Judith”. Inti called her “Big”. No, I will not have my mother in Charlie’s mouth.

  “Leave my mother out of this,” I shout.

  “Whoa,” says Mercy. “Steady on.”

  “As I was saying,” says Charlie, “your grandma drops you in Tisbury Road when your mother—”

  “Shut your mouth. Shut it!” The second old lady tuts and turns to the mother with the toddler. The toddler bursts into tears.

  “You’re upsetting the baby now,” says Mercy.

  I will not cry.

  I will not be angry.

  “Mustn’t lose your temper,” says my grandmother. “You have a terrible temper, Tilly. How would it be if we all allowed ourselves to lose our tempers? Self-control. That’s something I learnt from Gerry. My husband never lost his temper.”

  “Your mother—” says Charlie.

  “Walk away,” says Ge
rda.

  “My mother,” I scream, “is dead. Dead. Dead. Dead!”

  “Oh sure,” says Mercy. And she laughs.

  4

  Jan is dreaming. In the dream he takes the pipes and he can play. Runs his lips along the bamboo openings, and breathes into the hollow canes. The sound that returns to him is the one he recognises; the sound of mountains and wind and his own soul. A love song and yet one of longing. His body echoes with it, as if the instrument was his own hollowed bones and he was playing himself.

  He has dreamed this dream many times. And, though it would break his heart, he longs for it. Feels that if only he could come to the end of the dream, the end of the song, he would understand. More than this, he would be healed, though he is unsure of his wound. But, though he would play to his last breath, the end never comes. He is always interrupted.

  “Veron.”

  Today, it is the girl. The girl from the bridge. She strides right up to him, stands full-square in the dream, and says: “Veron.”

  And then he’s awake. Thrashing on the bed. The song in pieces. Veron.

  This is his name. And not his name. He first saw it on the scrap of paper that did for a Chilean birth certificate. Jan Veron Veron. Written in swirling black and, next to it, a tiny thumbprint. His. They must have inked his baby hand and pressed it there. Jan Veron. He exists. He gives his permission for whatever you are about to do to him.

  In Chile a child is called after both father and mother. But his father would not put a name to him, so he got double his mother’s name: Jan Veron Veron. Sometimes he thinks even the “Jan” is a mistake. That they were careless at the registry (for what did it matter? What did he matter?) and so changed his forename, changed him, with a slip of a pen, from Spanish “Juan” to Dutch “Jan”. But there again, maybe “Jan” was the gift of his mother, a special name that meant something to her? How can he know? All that is certain is that he has moved continents and his name has changed again. Now he is Jan Rupert Veron Spark. Is this what the argument is about? Is this what caused his mother (his English mother) to cry?

  He thought he put it kindly, he thought he’d said it so she’d understand.

  “I just want the Veron part of my name to be my surname.”

  “Instead of Spark?” The fear was white around her eyes.

  “No. No.” He is aware of what he owes. And besides, he loves his English mother. She must know that.

  From under his pillow he takes the stump-armed Worry Doll. Violeta. She has not performed her miracle. She has not removed his worry. But that is, maybe, because she is the worry. Violeta Veron, his Chilean mother. He holds her in his hands. He searches for her everywhere. Not the doll of course, the mother. He looks at every Latin woman in the street, on the bus, in the cinema. He has never seen a picture of his mother, no one thought to take a photograph. But he has a picture in his head. Violeta. A violet violated. A Chilean Cinderella, dark and utterly beautiful and dressed in rags. He wants to stop searching, but he can’t. She is always there, just out of reach, just around the next corner. He thought maybe if he carried part of her name, with his name, if he could become Veron-Spark, then maybe there would be some peace. It was only a hyphen he was asking for. Not a big thing, he thought.

  “It would be,” said his mother, “as if you were turning your back on us. Your family.”

  And of course they are his family. Susan Spark and her husband David. They have cared for him since he was three months old. Susan Spark has held him in her arms and poured love into him. She has sat by him nights when he woke screaming with terrors he couldn’t communicate. She has never lied to him. “You are an adopted child,” she told him as soon as he was old enough to hear. “Your father and I love you. We chose you. Wanted you – want you – more than life itself.”

  And what could his life with Violeta have been? If they had lived, that is. For nothing and no one would have guaranteed those lives. Another mother and child dead on the streets of Santiago. Who would have cared? Who would even have noticed? But perhaps they might have scraped a life, her as a maid (though his father, a white lawyer, would not have employed her in his house any more) and Jan perhaps making shoes from old tyres or, as he grew, offering his services as a male prostitute. No, he is under no illusions. But Veron is his name. That is all. Is he asking for anything that isn’t his?

  “Only she won’t have another child,” he says to his English mother (even though he knows he is not Violeta’s firstborn and therefore unlikely to be her last), “and then her name, then she … she’ll die.”

  “No,” his English mother cries, “please don’t ask it, Jan.”

  So he will not. Not again. He won’t say a word. He will lock Veron inside him though it screams to be out.

  He gets out of bed and picks up the panpipes. Puts his lips to the bamboo. Blows. A thin sound returns. A weak, reedy, hopeless noise. But some part of the dream is still in his head, and he is determined. It is a long while now since he bought the pipes and at least he can make a sound now. Before there was just spit and breath. He doesn’t like to play in the house, which is why he goes to the bridge. Some of the sounds he is searching for are up in that loneliness. But tonight he has no choice. It is one in the morning and he cannot go to the bridge. Besides, the song is in his head. Or fragments of it. There may not come another time like this.

  So he takes the pipes again, wets his lips, breathes evenly, tries one of the longer canes, for these are more mellow, easier to play. They do not squeak and complain at being played by Jan Rupert Spark. But the music is not as it is in his head, it’s just reedy noise, and he feels the anger rising. As though the pipe is resisting him, refusing him. And all the while Jan Spark’s guitar looks at him from the corner of the room and laughs. No one taught him where to place his fingers on these strings, he just took the instrument and played. Simple chords, a simple strum, and the songs were right. What need you of the pipes, says the guitar, when you have me? Aren’t I enough for you? I who sing so sweetly to your tune?

  Jan puts down the pipes and picks up the guitar. Maybe, just maybe, if he could pick out the notes on these strings, if he could fix that haunting phrase, see where it was leading … He begins to pluck, moving his hands, finding his way. He is intent, his fingers mobile and a tune comes. It’s an alluring tune, but it is not wild enough, high enough, it does not contain mountains. He tries again. And again.

  “Jan.”

  Has he woken her?

  “Jan …” His mother comes to his bedside.

  Is she still angry? He looks up at her eyes. They seem hunted. Perhaps she has lain awake all this time. He is ashamed for the argument they have had. Ashamed for the hurt he has caused.

  She lays a hand on his hand. “You play so beautifully.”

  And then he’s afraid that she’ll ask him once again, mention the Celeb Night, the opportunity to play in front of … No. He shakes his head. Can’t she see it’s not the point? Not what the music is for?

  “Just come with me,” she says. “Just to the restaurant on Sunday. Meet Mrs Van Day. That’s all I ask. Will you, Jan?”

  And it isn’t much to ask. It would be simply churlish to refuse. He only has to say “yes” and she will return to bed. She will sleep. Be happy.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Thank you, Jan.”

  She leaves and then, very quietly, for he does not wish to disturb her at all, he takes up the pipes again.

  He plays and plays. Plays until he is rimmed with exhaustion. Then he lays the pipes aside, gathers up stump-armed Violeta and puts her under his pillow. He is making progress. An end will come.

  He sleeps.

  5

  It’s Sunday so I’m a bus boy. My father’s brasserie has not moved into the twenty-first century, there are no bus girls here. Though, to be fair, my co-worker at the dumbwaiter is Aaron. Very much a boy. Ginger-haired and pimply, he has something wrong with his nose, so he keeps his mouth permanently open in order to breathe. Aa
ron and I press the dumbwaiter buttons and steaming plates of food arrive from the kitchen below. We open the lift doors, extract the plates, put them on trays and present the offerings to the rushed and impatient waitresses. In return the waitresses bring us trays of dirty dishes. We scrape the leavings into Waste Bin 1: chips, lettuce, beef fat, fish bones. We drop empty bottles into Waste Bin 2, stack the greasy crockery in the second lift. Push the buttons. Red. Green. Basement.

  It’s mechanical, repetitive work and it doesn’t stop you thinking. Today I’m thinking about Aaron, about how, when someone finally kisses him, he’ll probably die from lack of oxygen. But then I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kiss Aaron so maybe he has a long life ahead after all. Plates in. Plates out. Actually, I’m not really thinking about Aaron. I’m trying not to think about Grandma, about what she said. Which is stupid, because it was days ago, the day I went to the bridge.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked. “Skip school?Your father said you didn’t have to go. But you wanted to. You agreed to go. So you should have gone.” And then: “We can’t have lying, Tilly.”

  Which always means, plates in, plates out, that Grandma’s going to talk about my grandfather. Gerry. Wonderful, impeccable, dead Gerry. Tomatoes into Bin 1, beer bottle into Bin 2.

  “Gerry never let me down. If Gerry said he’d be home at six, then he was home at six. Even if he’d had to drive six hundred miles that day. That’s what integrity’s all about. Honesty. Trust. Do you want me not to trust you, Tilly?”

  Thai Fish out. Roast Belly of Pork out. Vegetables out.

  “What have you to say for yourself, Tilly?”

  More vegetables out. Poached eggs out. Surely breakfast should be off by now?

  “Speak up, Tilly.”

  “Does being dead make people perfect, Grandma?”

  “Don’t be cheeky, Tilly.”

  “Tilly? Tilly!” It’s Janey now, one of the waitresses. “Are you deaf?” Janey has a problem with the cover at Table Ten. It’s a woman. She asked for soft poached eggs and the eggs are, apparently, like bullets. Janey has to go down and speak to Chef, she has to have soft eggs fast.