Ragged Little Doll (The)

The Ragged Little Doll

In the corner of a dusty barn sits a ragged little doll. All his
colours have blown off in the wind. All his badges have gone rusty in
the rain. What was particularly annoying was the fact that he had lost
his spectacles and had to squint to see things, which gave him a
headache. Not that there was very much to see; the odd snail, the
occassional spider, white when it snowed, green and brown when it
didn't. There was a hole in the roof and at midday the sun dazzles him
for a while because little ragged dolls can't blink.

Outside the barn is a big and almost empty farmhouse with such small
windows that it almost looks as though it's sqinting too. Beneath the
house lives a family of mice who quietly go about their business and
never tell the youngest mouse about mouse-traps because the house has
been empty for such a long time that none of them remember. For a
person the house might seem a little scary but because it is the whole
world to the mice they are quite accustomed to the long stone corridor
at the back, the inky darkness under the stairs, the noise of creaking
and whistling in the loft when the wind blows very hard.

The great great great great great grandparents of the youngest mouse
knew a very different farmhouse. In those days they could only really
come out during the night because of the stomping green boots and the
playful cat, stalking the long stone corridor. Sometimes there would be
other visiting boots and sometimes the boots belonged to Jemima Corrie
Gibbins, a little girl who owned a doll she loved more than anything
else in the world.

It was a summertime when she last visited the farmhouse with her mother
and older brother. They had come to see her grandmother who, at that
time, was very old and was looking after the house with her youngest
two sons and their families. Everyone called Jemima, Jemi. She was 8
years old and liked to dress in yellow in the summer and blue in the
winter. Her wellington boots were red and the great great great great
grandparents of the youngest mouse very much admired those boots
because they were small and easy for them to hide in at night when they
were playing hide and seek.

The summer was lovely. Jemi would wake very early and, carrying her
doll under her arm, would stand outside the back door and sniff the
morning before going back inside to eat breakfast with her grandmother
who also woke very early. The little doll loved these mornings in the
old farmhouse and would try to look as happy as it is possible for a
doll to look when Jemi sat him down to breakfast and the two people
would make plans for the day. He didn't really know very much but knew
for certain that the town where he lived with Jemi for most of the year
was a much noisier and dirtier place than the cosy farmhouse with its
smell of morning and then frying eggs and bacon.

One particular day Jemi was exploring the outbuildings around the house
with her cousin, Albert who had scuffed knees and a runny nose and a
habit of pulling Jemi's hair when he was a little bit too playful. The
two of them had invented a game called Hide the Doll and were taking it
in turns to ferret the little doll away on top of rickety shelves or
inside boxes or underneath rusty bits of farm machinery. The doll
didn't like this very much because it meant that often he would be
jammed into a very small place in the dark and worse still that he
would be on his own, sometimes for half an hour!

Inside the house the telephone rang and Jemi's mother picked it up. The
sun shone through the leaded window on to her and Albert, who had
hidden the doll behind a bail of hay, was peeking in. He was just
thinking that she looked very beautiful and that he almost wished that
she was his mother too, when the beautiful lady inside suddenly cried
out and sat down - and then Albert noticed that she was crying. It made
him want to cry too and he rushed off to find Jemi and tell her.

Of course the doll didn't know any of this and when, after half an
hour, Jemi hadn't found him he began to get a little bit irritated. The
hay was tickling his nose and because little ragged dolls can't sneeze
he just had to put up with it. He waited and he waited and he waited
and still no one came, not Albert and not even Jenny, who had forgotten
all about the little doll when they had to leave in such a rush. As the
morning turned to afternoon and the afternoon wore on the little ragged
doll even began to think that maybe they had left him there on purpose
and that Jemi didn't like him anymore.

Night time came, the cold barn began to seem very scary and the little
ragged doll began to feel very sad. He really was a doll who needed a
Jemi more than anything and he thought that if he had a heart it would
break if she didn't come back to find him. But Jemi didn't come back
and a few days after she had gone one of the people in big boots came
into the barn and moved the bail of hay. They didn't notice the doll or
the dolls spectacles stuck to the bail. They grunted to themself about
not having a job anymore, or something like that, and then they were
gone.

Slowly, after a very long time, the doll began to think that if he had
a heart then perhaps it would be mended by now. He couldn't really
remember what Jemi looked like anymore or why he had been so sad. He
decided that being on his own wasn't so bad after all. The whole world
had become the barn and after a while, when a piece of the roof had
fallen down, the whole world became the barn and the blurry points of
light some nights which the little ragged doll often wondered
about.

The great great great great great grandparents of the littlest mouse
had lots of baby mice which in their turn grew up and had lots more.
Eventually there was whole different family of mice living in the old
farmhouse and during the warmer months some of the smaller ones would
pretend to be explorers at night. They were very surprised to find the
little ragged doll squinting at them when they turned the corner into
the barn.

If little ragged dolls could speak he would have asked them their names
but instead he just had to sit there as they sniffed around his legs
and squeaked in their own language about what a strange thing they had
found and was it alive? Could they eat it? Eventually they left him
alone and for a while the little doll would imagine their scurrying in
the shadows and their squeaking in the wind.

So he sits there, looking lost, day in and day out, just watching and
waiting for nothing to happen. It is as almost as though time has
stopped for the doll. He doesn't understand that one morning soon a
clapped out old red van will pull up outside and after a while
footsteps will crunch along the path towards the barn. He doesn't know
that there will be a voice, husky with a sore throat, calling out,
"Here, Jem, look at this barn - it's huge, we could fit an aeroplane in
here if we had one..." The man will be looking somewhat disordered when
he comes in, he'll be tall and pale and be red-nosed from the cold and
suddenly he'll exclaim, "Look! A doll darling!"

Because little ragged dolls can't see into the future he doesn't know
that Jemi will be back soon, dressed in blue and all grown up with a
big tummy. He doesn't know that she'll cry out when she sees him with
all his colours blown off in the wind and all his badges gone rusty in
the rain. He doesn't know she'll pick him up and hug him just like she
used to.

He doesn't know that when she's born the new baby, lou will play with
him like her mother used to and that they'll have such fun. But the
saddest thing is he doesn't know that after a while he'll sink to the
bottom of a toybox where he won't even be able to see the stars and
that the great grandchildren of the littlest mouse will find him and
sniff around his feet, squeaking in their own language.