dolly heaven

Katie’s slippers were more in the dog’s mouth than on her feet. Knuckles the Alsatian looked at her with hopeful eyes, slobbering all over her slipper. She shifted her weight on the pink bedspread and cuddled her dolly, Molly. Knuckles nudged her arm with his snout. She knew he wanted to play tug of war, but she pushed him away. ‘No, Knuckles, go away, Katie said in her little big voice.  ‘No want to play,’ she hissed through the gap in her front teeth.

She watched Knuckles pitter-pattering on the fading diamond pattern of linoleum between the beds and out of her room. The dog turned its head and looked back at her when it got to the open door. She scowled and shook the ghost of a bounce out of her red hair. Clutching her dolly with one hand, she pointed with the other and mimicked her papa’s annoyed tone, ‘Go lie down’.  

Sitting up a little straighter in the bed, she peered at the darkness of the hall, waiting for Knuckles to sneak back into the room, ready to chide him, especially when he climbed up on the bed, bringing the damp doggy smell and unwanted hairs when he slept at her feet—when he knew that was bad! Very bad!

She felt the weight of the dog at her feet when she woke. Knuckles growled in the back of his throat. Her body was like a tuning fork, the dog’s tight muscles bunching and tension travelling up through her body before he barked. Knuckles jumped off the bed, ears rigid, and hackles on the fur of his back puffed out ready to spring. Curtains open. The third floor of a tenement. We’ve nothing to hide but our poverty was what her papa said. And nobody was interested in that. The full moon was bright enough to illuminate the back of mirror of the chest of drawers  doilies, and silver the bottom of the empty bed beside her.

‘It’s still there,’ she said.

When she woke up she could hear fiddles and accordions on the radio, which she knew meant her papa hadn’t left for work yet. She experimentally kicked her feet, the weight of the dog gone. There was some half-remembered thing she had to tell her papa. She scrambled up before she forgot and dashed into the toilet and then through to the living room.

‘Papa,’ she cried.

He was sitting in his chair at the fireplace, a cigarette in his mouth, and the dog at his feet. His frizzy red hair was flattened at the top but spilled onto his overalls, his dark eye twinkled when he spotted her.  He stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray on the mantelpiece, next to the ceramic knickknack and wedding photo and radio turned sideways and tuned to the station he liked.   He made a place on his knee for her when she stumbled across and pressed his shaven cheek against her hot cheeks and whispered, ‘We’ll make you a bit of toast and tea…and we’ll take some through to Mummy.’

‘Papa, I’ve got a secret,’ she said.

‘Hairbrush,’ he laughed. ‘That’s a good secret.’ But he didn’t use a hairbrush. Mummy used the hairbrush, but she was in bed not well. He used his fingers, running them through her scalp, fluffing out her curls and straightening her hair. ‘You know you’ve got to be good for your mum, and when we take her in a cuppa tea, you get in beside her, until she gets up.’

He nudged Knuckles with his feet to move the dog out of the way, when he stood up. And the dog seemed to yawn.

‘A monster came in the window last night and stole my dolly, Molly,’ said Katie. ‘And it would have stole me too, but Knuckles bit it and scared it away.’

Papa tried to remain tight lipped. ‘That’s a real shame.’ He guffawed into the side of her neck as he stood up, swinging her up into his arms and carrying her with him into the kitchen. The dog padded in behind them. ‘Yer Mummy told me what you said to Mrs Griffin and I’m very proud of you. Sometimes adults are very stupid.’ He winked. ‘But it’s not nice tell them.’ He bent his knee as he turned on the grill and sidestepped and reached into the cupboard for the loaf of Mothers Pride and Stork margarine.

She clung to his neck and the lingering whiff of tobacco, but he lowered her onto a kitchen chair. Washing, socks and yellowing knickers, dangling from the pulley above her head.

‘I just told Mrs Griffin what you told me to say, I wasn’t a bastard because you adopted me and loved me very much…And if she didn’t like it, she could put it in her pipe and smoke it.’   

‘That’s right,’ said Papa. He patted his chest and coughed. The grill pan rattled against the sides as he stuck the bread under the grill. ‘But you’ve no to swear.’

‘I didn’t swear, I just said what she said.’

His eyebrows lifted into his forehead as he nodded and the grin reached the corner of his eyes. ‘But sometimes you’re too smart for your own good.

Outside the window they heard a car horn tooting and the throaty rev of an engine. A door slammed in the building, the sound of running feet. The dog raised its head, looked up at Papa.  

Papa rubbed at the top of her shoulder as he went for his work jacket and shouted orders. ‘Got to go. Get your Mummy up. Mind take the dog out. And don’t bite Mrs Griffiins.’

‘You’re silly Papa.’

His lips brushed her cheek before he rushed away. ‘You’re silly too.’

‘Papa,’ she shouted. ‘What about the monster?’

He waved a hand as he ran and the front door slammed. ‘Don’t worry,’ echoed. ‘I’ll get it later.’