Down below on the sand were encampments of deck chairs and windbreaks, tiny children toddling in the waves, parents sunbathing, old men with trousers rolled to the knee, a few brave souls jumping over waves. Jean longed to join them, but it would have to wait.
There was hardly a cloud in the sky, which was the deep blue of midsummer, and just the right amount of cooling breeze. Jean had thrown off her cardigan, exposing her winter-white arms to the sun. By evening they would be pink and prickling, and the V of skin revealed by her open-necked blouse would be a fiery red, but for the moment the heat was delicious and comforting.
Her sandwich finished, Jean bought an ice cream from a café on the hill. She was a messy eater at the best of times and this particular treat, a rectangular slab of vanilla ice cream between two wafers, rapidly melting and vulnerable on all sides, presented a challenge too far. Her blouse took a direct hit and she had to eat the rest of the slippery mess leaning over a rubbish bin to catch the drips. Eating in public, something her mother would never do, even assuming she were to go out in public, still struck her as bold and rebellious, adding greatly to her enjoyment.
Number 1, Wickfield Drive was a single-story cottage on a large corner plot, shielded from the street by overgrown laurels and tall trees, an arrangement at odds with the rest of the houses in the street, which had neat, unfenced lawns running down to the pavement. In Jean’s experience, this kind of foliage barrier usually heralded a certain level of dilapidation beyond, but she was surprised to find it concealing a well-tended garden and a pristine cottage. The red tiled doorstep was polished and dustless; the windows, dressed with white nets, were clean to the corners, their paintwork bright and new.
Having buttoned her cardigan to cover the ice-cream spill, untied her headscarf and raked a hand through her flattened hair, Jean pressed the bell. Somewhere inside the house it chimed faintly and a moment later the door was opened by a white-haired woman, dressed as if for midwinter in a woolen dress, housecoat, thick stockings and sheepskin slippers. She was instantly recognizable from the photographs in the St. Cecilia’s archive, and there was in any case something both authoritative and soothing in the steady gaze now fixed on Jean that was decidedly matronly.
“Come in, I’ve been expecting you,” she said, then seeing Jean’s look of surprise, added, “I’m not a clairvoyant. Susan Trevor called from the school and told me you were coming.”
Introductions now superfluous, Jean was shown into the back room, which was dominated by an open display cabinet of china dolls. There were perhaps thirty or forty staring down at her with their glassy eyes and still more laid out on the table, amid various rags and sponges, in the process of being cleaned. A fat tabby cat, taking advantage of its mistress’s temporary absence, had jumped up on the table and was trampling on the delicate lace dresses as though flattening grass.
“Get down, Ferdie, you tinker,” said Alice, swatting him away. “You’ve caught me giving my girls a spring clean,” she said. “They are a devil for trapping dust.”
“I can imagine,” said Jean, who found the china faces, limp bodies and dead hair, in such quantities, faintly disturbing, and thought collecting them a pitiable hobby for a grown woman. But out of politeness and perhaps overcompensating for her instinctive aversion, she bent over the specimens on the table, murmuring her admiration, and pointed out one in a shepherdess costume, less ghoulish than the others, saying, “She’s rather pretty. What a sweet face.” Was it the dark curls and blue eyes, the faint resemblance to Margaret Tilbury, perhaps, that had directed her hand? she wondered later.
Alice Halfyard was delighted. “Oh, do you like her? She’s my absolute favorite. Such an intelligent expression—for a shepherdess.”
“And the detail,” Jean added, peering at the miniature smocking on the bodice and the tiny covered buttons, marveling that so much industry should have been expended in dressing a mere toy. Her own clothes were never this well made.
“I dare say you think I’m a silly old woman, playing with her dolls,” Alice said.
“Not at all,” Jean replied, though this was more or less what she did think. “It’s quite a collection—you could open a museum.”
“I keep saying I’m not going to buy any more, but then I pass a secondhand shop and see one looking neglected and I can’t help myself. Do you collect anything yourself?”
“Not really,” Jean replied, remembering with sudden disquiet her drawer of unused “treasures.”