Clover Moon Read online

  ‘You are not my mother, thank the Lord,’ I’d said, so she shook me harder, flapping me like a dusty doormat. For two pins I think she’d have used a carpet beater on me.

  Still, I was the winner that day. I’d bought the buns and shared them immediately because I knew that once she saw the money she’d want to get her hands on it. We all had our buns safely in our stomachs. In fact Megs had two because there’d been one left over and I insisted she have it because she’s the skinniest.

  I looked hopefully at passing gentlemen now, and any ladies with dangling reticules, but couldn’t spot any fallen wallets or purses today. I walked on, chewing the last of my carrot, dodging in and out of the stalls, then skipping quickly down the length of the road to warm myself up. I didn’t have a shawl, let alone a coat, and my feet were always cold because the soles of my boots were patched with newspaper.

  I saw myself reflected in the shop windows and turned my head abruptly. That ragamuffin girl with tangled black hair and ugly rags wasn’t me. I wasn’t Clover Moon from Cripps Alley. I was little Miss Clover-Flower Moonshine from one of the big villas opposite the park, and I was on my way with my mama to choose a new doll for my birthday present.

  I slowed down and walked more decorously because my imaginary mama told me it wasn’t ladylike to skip in the street.

  ‘Watch your conduct, Clover-Flower,’ she said. ‘You need to set an example to all the poor ragged children who play in the gutters.’

  Oh, I was good at mimicking her swanky voice and stiff manners!

  ‘We’re nearly there, child! Can you see the sign over the road? There, under the candy-stripe awnings. Dolls Aplenty! G. A. Fisher Esq., doll-maker to the gentry.’

  That was Mr Dolly’s real name, Godfrey Arthur Fisher. I never used his proper name, though he was well-christened, because he was a true godfather to me, and though his hands were old and gnarled with rheumatism, each doll he created was a work of art.

  I peered in his shop window eagerly. He had a new display for the coming autumn season. There were small brown and gold and green leaves scattered all over the bottom of the window, and a couple of cardboard trees spread almost bare branches at the top. Two jointed dolls were having a leaf fight in the middle of the window, caps on their heads, little mufflers and knitted mittens keeping their wooden necks and clenched fists warm. Little girl dolls with fur-trimmed bonnets and velvet coats were sharing secrets in a corner, pink painted smiles on their pale wooden faces. A larger nurse doll wheeled twin wooden babies in a miniature perambulator while a small black wooden dog with a red tongue ran behind. I sniggered when I saw another dog lifting its leg against one of the trees.

  ‘You’re a naughty rude man, Mr Dolly!’ I said, bursting into his shop.

  Mr Dolly came out of his workshop and beamed at me. His chin barely cleared his counter top. He was bent over sideways because he had a crooked back, but he kept himself as upright as possible by leaning on his carved cane.

  ‘Hello there, Clover! And just why am I a naughty man?’ he asked, peering at me over his spectacles. His brown work apron was streaked with red and pink and white paint. It looked as if someone had been randomly embroidering berlin woolwork roses all over him. He even had pink streaks in his wild white hair.

  ‘You’ve got a little wooden dog weeing in your window!’ I giggled.

  ‘Nonsense! He’s just stretching one leg, that’s all,’ said Mr Dolly. ‘It’s a treat to see you, my dear. You haven’t paid me a visit for a little while. You’ve not been ill?’

  ‘No, just busy. You know what Mildred’s like. She lolls on our sofa while I have to do all the work,’ I sighed.

  ‘She’s in a delicate way at the moment, isn’t she?’ said Mr Dolly.

  ‘Delicate? Mildred? She’s as delicate as a warthog!’

  ‘I meant there’s going to be a stork visiting soon with a new little baby.’

  ‘A stork!’ I scoffed. ‘I’m too old to be fobbed off with stork stories. I had to help Mildred when Bert was born and I was only just ten then.’

  ‘So you’re an old lady of eleven now,’ he said, pulling a lock of my hair. ‘And you know all about babies being born.’

  ‘I bet I know more than you, Mr Dolly,’ I said, ‘seeing as you’ve never been married.’

  ‘I’ve certainly never experienced wedded bliss, but I give birth to babies every week of my life,’ said Mr Dolly, glancing through the door at his workbench. ‘My dolls are my babies.’

  There were bits of dolls not yet born – bald heads, and pieces of arms and legs, and woolly wigs, and a velvet case of beady glass eyes set neatly along the bench. Then there were assembled dolls, big and medium sized and very little, all with jointed arms so they could wave and kick their legs, but their heads were eerily blank, needing to be painted. The dolls who had happy smiles and rosy cheeks and shiny varnish were hanging from the ceiling to dry, but they were still naked. Yet more dolls were clustered together in their underwear – tiny bodices and petticoats and white muslin drawers – all patiently waiting for their frocks to be cut and fitted.

  ‘So many babies!’ I agreed. ‘Imagine if they all started crying at once, Mr Dolly! And how happy you must be that their napkins never need to be changed! Do you know something? I am never, ever getting married and having babies.’

  ‘But you’re so good with all those children.’

  ‘Yes, but I’d like to do something else with the rest of my life.’

  I ducked under the counter and wandered into the workshop. I picked up a half-finished doll and twirled her in my hands. ‘Maybe I could come and be a doll-maker too?’ I suggested. I said it playfully enough, but I was suddenly serious. ‘Oh please, Mr Dolly, do consider it! I could be your apprentice and learn all your doll-making tricks and then you wouldn’t have to work so hard.’

  ‘I’d love that, Clover, but how could I ever pay you? I don’t make enough to pay myself more than a few florins a week,’ said Mr Dolly.

  ‘You wouldn’t have to pay me at all! Just give me a midday meal. I’m not a big eater. If necessary I can go foraging in the market. And I’d stay up late every evening, sewing by candlelight. I don’t need much sleep either. I could just curl up on the floor with a blanket,’ I said earnestly.

  ‘And what might your pa say, hmm?’

  ‘Pa wouldn’t mind too much. Jenny’s his favourite now. Jenny and Mary. He favours the girls.’ I said it lightly but my heart thumped hard in my chest. I’d been Pa’s favourite once. He’d sit me on his lap and run his fingers through my dark hair and kiss the tip of my nose and say I was his little lucky four-leaved Clover, then pop a sweet from his pocket into my mouth.

  He tried to make a fuss of Megs too, but she was always a sad little thing, wailing miserably most of the day and half the night, and she also had itchy rashes, so her little mouth had big red sores and her elbows and knees were covered in crusts.

  But then Pa foolishly courted Mildred at the factory, wanting a warm wife to look after him and comfort his two poor motherless daughters. I’m sure she didn’t love him and she didn’t like the look of Megs and me, but she was already thirty and no other man had shown any interest in her, so she promised to love, honour and obey him when they wed. She didn’t do any of those things, but she did provide him with more children – too many: Jenny, Richie, Pete, Mary, Bert, and another due in a couple of months.

  Jenny was fair and rosy with curly hair, tall and strong like her mother – much taller than Megs, the same size as me – and she had a winning smile. Pa gave her so many sweets she often needed the toothache rag tied round her head.

  There were only eleven months between Richie and Pete so most folk took them for twins. They were very alike in nature as well as looks, rowdy fidgety boys, forever up to mischief. They tried tormenting little Mary when she was a baby, but she was born shrieking and stood up for herself. She had a mop of curls too, and a smile that could melt even Mildred’s hard heart.

  ‘What about your st