She had slept six hours. That was enough. She dressed as quietly as possible, putting on a simple black dress from her suitcase, another new and expensive garment chosen by another woman, and perhaps more extravagant than anything she might have bought for herself. Pearls and pearls. Shoes that laced above the instep, but with dangerously high heels. Black stockings. A touch of makeup.
And then she walked through the silent corridors. Press the button marked M, they had said, and you will see the dolls.
The dolls. What did she know of dolls? In childhood they had been her secret love, one which she had always been ashamed to confess to Ellie and Graham, or even to her friends. She had asked for chemistry sets at Christmastime, or a new tennis racket, or new stereo components for her room.
Wind howled in the elevator shaft as if it were a chimney. She liked the sound.
The elevator doors slid open, revealing a cab of wood paneling and ornate mirrors, which she scarcely recalled from this morning, when they’d arrived just before dawn. They had left at dawn. They had arrived at dawn. Six hours had been given back to them. It was evening for her body and she felt it, alert, ready for the night.
Down she went, in mechanical silence, listening to the howling, thinking how utterly ghostly it was, and wondering if Ash liked it too.
There must have been dolls in the beginning, dolls she didn’t remember. Doesn’t everybody buy them for girls? Perhaps not. Perhaps her loving foster mother had known of the witches’ dolls in the trunk in the attic, made of real hair and real bone. Maybe she had known that there was one doll for every Mayfair witch of past years. Maybe dolls gave Ellie the shivers. And there are people who are, regardless of background, taste, or religious beliefs, simply afraid of dolls.
Was she afraid of dolls?
The doors opened. Her eyes fell on glass cases, brass fittings, the same pristine and shining marble floors. A brass plaque on the wall said simply, THE PRIVATE COLLECTION.
She stepped out, letting the door rush closed behind her, realizing that she stood in a vast, brilliantly lighted room.
Dolls. Everywhere she looked, she saw their staring glass eyes, their flawless faces, their mouths half open with a look of frank and tender awe.
In a huge glass case right before her stood a doll of some three feet in height, made of bisque, with long mohair tresses and a dress of finely tailored faded silk. This was a French beauty from the year 1888, made by Casimir Bru, said the little card beneath it, greatest dollmaker perhaps in the world.
The doll was startling, whether one liked it or not. The blue eyes were thick and filled with light and perfectly almond-shaped. The porcelain hands of pale pink were so finely wrought they seemed about to move. But it was the doll’s face, of course, her expression, that so captivated Rowan. The exquisitely painted eyebrows were ever so slightly different, giving movement to its gaze. Curious and innocent and thoughtful it looked.
It was a nonpareil of its kind, one couldn’t doubt it. And whether or not she’d ever wanted dolls, she felt a desire to touch this one now, to feel its round and brightly rouged cheeks, to kiss, perhaps, its slightly parted red lips, to touch with the tip of her right finger the subtly shaped breasts pressed so erotically beneath its tight bodice. Its golden hair had thinned with the ages, obviously. And its fancy little leather shoes were worn and cracked. But the effect remained timeless, irresistible, “a joy forever.” She wished she could open the case and hold it in her arms.
She saw herself rocking it, rather like a newborn, and singing to it, though it was no infant. It was just a little girl. Little blue beads hung from its perfectly fashioned ears. A necklace hung about its neck, fancy, a woman’s perhaps. Indeed, when one considered all the aspects of it, it was no child at all, really, but a sensual little woman of extraordinary freshness, perhaps a dangerous and clever coquette.
A little card explained its special features, that it was so very large, that it wore its original garments, that it was perfect, that it had been the first doll ever purchased by Ash Templeton. And no further identification for Ash Templeton was given or apparently required.
The first doll. And he had told her briefly, when he explained about the museum, that he had seen it when it was new in the window of a Paris shop.
No wonder it had caught his eye and his heart. No wonder he had lugged it with him for a century; no wonder he’d founded his enormous company as some sort of tribute to it, to bring, as he had said, “its grace and beauty to everyone in new form.”
There was nothing trivial about it, and something sweetly mysterious. Puzzled, yes, quizzical, reflective, a doll with things on her mind.
In seeing this, I understand all of it, she thought.
She moved on, through the other displays. She saw other French treasures, the work of Jumeau and Steiner and others whose names she’d never remember, and hundreds upon hundreds of little French girlies with round moonlike faces and tiny red mouths and the same almond eyes. “Oh, what innocents you are,” she whispered. And here came the fashion dolls, in their bustles and exquisite hats.
She could have spent hours wandering here. There was infinitely more to see than she had imagined. And the quiet was so enticing, the vision outside the windows of the unceasing snow.
But she was not alone.
Through several banks of glass, she saw that Ash had joined her, and had been watching her, perhaps for some time. The glass faintly distorted his expression. When he moved, she was glad.
He came towards her, making no sound at all on the marble, and she saw that he held the beautiful Bru in his hands.
“Here, you may hold it,” he said.
“It’s fragile,” she whispered.
“It’s a doll,” he said.
It evoked the strongest feeling, just cupping its head in the palm of her left hand. There came a little delicate sound from its earrings, tinkling against the porcelain neck. Its hair was soft, yet brittle, and the stitching of the wig was visible in many spots.
Ah, but she loved its tiny fingers. She loved its lace stockings and its silk petticoats, very old, very faded, apt to tear at her touch.
Ash stood very still, looking down at her, face rested, almost annoyingly handsome, streaked hair brushed to a luster, hands a little steeple beneath his lips. His suit was white silk today, very baggy, fashionable, probably Italian, she honestly didn’t know. The shirt was black silk, and the tie white. Rather like a decorative rendition of a gangster, a tall, willowy man of mystery, with enormous gold cuff links, and preposterously beautiful black-and- white wing-tip shoes.
“What does the doll make you feel?” he asked innocently, as if he really wanted to know.
“It has virtue to it,” she whispered, frightened of her voice being louder than his. She placed it in his hands.
“Virtue,” he repeated. He turned the doll and looked at her, and made a few very quick and natural gestures of grooming her, moving her hair, adjusting the ruffles of her dress. And then he lifted her and tenderly kissed her and lowered her slowly, gazing down at her again. “Virtue,” he said. He looked at Rowan. “But what does it make you feel?”
“Sad,” she said, and turned away, placing her hand on the case beside her, looking at the German doll, infinitely more natural, sitting inside in a small wooden chair. MEIN LEIBLING, said the card. She was far less decorative and overdone. She was not the coquette of anyone’s imagination, yet she was radiant, and as perfect as the Bru in her own way.
“Sad?” he asked.
“Sad for a kind of femininity that I’ve lost or never had. I don’t regret it, but the feeling is sadness, sadness for something perhaps I dreamed about when I was young. I don’t know.”
And then, looking at him again, she said, “I can have no more children. And my children were monsters to me. And my children are buried together beneath a tree.”
He nodded. His face was very eloquent of sympathy, so he said not a word.
There were other things she wanted to say-that she had not guessed there was such craft or beauty in the realm of dolls, that she had not guessed they could be so interesting to look at, or that they were so different, one from the other, that they had such a frank and simple charm.
