Nicki Perrin gazed ponderously at Suzie and wondered. Suzie stared back blankly. She had blue eyes with an everlasting but icy sparkle, a tiny nose, thick black hair tied in pig-tails, and a small red mouth. She was all of 10 inches tall, was made of hard plastic with movable arms and legs, and had a pink, rubber face. She was only a doll to everyone else, but to Nicki she was real, as real as her best friend Lucy Verdi who owned her, and who had agreed that Suzie needed to spend time with her own friends from the Perrin Family – Cheryl, Edith, Amy and Simone, and the rag dolls Becky and Luke.
“I really need to find David,” Nicki muttered to herself, and bit her nail in thought. She was about eight years old, a little old for dolls perhaps, but Nicki didn’t treat dolls the way most girls treated dolls – that is play house, or school. She didn’t even organise fashion parades. Nicki gave her dolls characters from the stories that she wrote – Cheryl was the Queen of Fairies, a heroine of many battles against evil. Edith was the strong one – Cheryl’s body guard. Amy and Simone were little adventurous girls who solved their own mysteries and Becky and Luke were the blue and pink rag dolls that she sewed out of bits of cloth, and were side-kicks to the little adventure seeking girls.
Suzie belonged to Lucy, and Lucy had her own stories going, in which Suzie played a huge part. She was a heroine in her own right – not a queen of fairies but a farm girl with enough spunk to challenge her cruel aunt, and release herself as well as her family from bondage. She was now due to be married as part of the story, to a handsome man called David. And David was to come from Nicki’s family!
But where to find David? They just did not make boy dolls, at least the boy dolls good enough and tall enough for Suzie. Nicki had scoured toy shops with her mother and with Lucy to no avail. No one played with boy dolls. If there were boy dolls the size of Suzie, they were baby boy dolls; those disgusting things with chubby cheeks and podgy limbs – kiddy and idiotic. No – David had to be a grown-up doll, and grown-up dolls – man dolls came made like Ken. Nicki wasn’t interested in Ken. He was too thin, too small and too short for Suzie.
On the far side of her bed lay another doll – if this could be termed a doll. This was a character from the Star Wars series – Boba Fett, the Bounty Hunter – and he was about 14 inches tall, made of hard plastic with an olive-green costume moulded on to his muscular body. He was perfect – just that he didn’t have a face. In the place of a face, he had a helmet with an antenna that could be moved up and down. Nicki looked away. She liked the chap, but how could he be David? She had named him Titan because at that time, little Nicki did not know there was a movie franchise called ‘Star Wars’ where Boba Fett played the part of not exactly a superhero. But then, to Nicki, Titan was a superhero and he was part of Cheryl’s great army of fairies and wood sprites. With a sigh she put her dolls away. She needed to think this through or poor Suzie was not going to get married.
Would it be okay to ask Auntie Patty?
Auntie Patty! Her eyes lit up. Yes, Auntie Patty! Auntie Patty was in Australia on a holiday, and in Australia you got all kinds of things, including boy dolls! Then she frowned. The only way to ask Auntie Patty was through Mummy and Mummy didn’t like asking Auntie Patty for anything. She didn’t know why. Mummy just didn’t like it, though Auntie Patty and Mummy were sisters – twin sisters – they had the same birthday, were the same age and, from the pictures Mummy showed her, they had been very similar as children. Now Auntie Patty was a lot prettier but somewhat stern and distant – not like Mummy who was plump but sweet and kind. How about asking Daddy to ask Auntie Patty? No. Daddy was a bad choice. He always said that Auntie Patty was the ‘high and mighty’ type and that ‘the less he had anything to do with her, the better it was for him.’ Nicki could not understand that. Auntie Patty seemed nice, although she was a little distant. Sometimes when she came visiting, which was but rare, she would sit in her chair, and fan herself with a newspaper because Nicki’s home had no air conditioners to keep the rooms cool. And she would look around with a great pout on her painted lips, and grimace at all the toys lying strewn around the floors, and ask Mummy all the time why the ‘children were so untidy.’ Daddy never liked that question, and once when Auntie Patty had asked it, he, with a big laugh, promptly pulled out a massive trough from under the table, which was brimmed with broken, ‘hand-me-down’ toys, and overturned the lot on the floor at her feet.
“This,” he had said gesturing to the toys that were already on the floor, “is nothing Pat. Sandy and I have to pick this pile up as well, every – single – day.”
And though Mummy was looking at Daddy and smiling, Auntie Patty didn’t appear too pleased. Nicki couldn’t understand why. Nevertheless, Daddy was an awful choice. Pat didn’t like Dad and Dad didn’t like Pat. Even an eight-year-old could see that. Nicki realised that she would have to take that chance and ask Mummy. The conversation with her mother went this way:
“Isn’t Suzie pretty Mummy?”
“You shouldn’t be bringing Lucy’s toys here.”
“Suzie’s on a holiday here. She needs to spend time with the family that she is going to marry into.”
“One of your stories I presume?”
“Well Lucy’s story.”
“And who is Suzie to marry? Titan?”
“Yuck! No. David.”
“David? Who’s David? Don’t tell me you have someone else’s doll here?”
“No. We haven’t found a doll good enough to be David.”
“And David is from our family?”
“Yes.”
“But there’s no David here.”
“No.”
“Oh! So then how is Suzie spending time with the family she is to marry into?”
“I was thinking,” began Nicki.
“Uh-Hum?”
“I was thinking.”
“Go on. You were thinking?”
“Mummy, I was thinking…will you ask Auntie Patty?” This came out in a rush.
“Ask Auntie Patty? For what?”
“To bring me a boy doll.”
“Nicki!”
“Please.”
“No”
“Please Mummy, please,” pleaded Nicki. “I’ll give her all my pocket money for it.”
Mummy burst out laughing and ruffled the little girl’s hair
“No Nicki. No. I won’t let you do that. Neither will I ask her. If you can’t get David, make do with Titan. I won’t ask Auntie Patty.”
“Mummy please. Just this once. I won’t ask for anything from Auntie Patty again. Please Mummy. Please.”
“Nicki!”
“Just one boy doll Mummy. He only has to be taller than 10 inches – see Suzie’s about 10 inches. David needs to be about 12 inches – as tall as a foot ruler. Please ask Auntie Patty. Please. You get all kind of dolls in Australia.”
It was perhaps the pleading look in Nicki’s eyes that bid her mother to do what she normally would never have done. Later that night when Nicki had gone to bed, she requested her sister for the article, but the moment she put the phone down she regretted it entirely.
When Auntie Patty was not on holiday, she lived about 2 miles away in a big house that stood on a huge compound dotted with many flowering trees. Jessica, Nicki’s cousin was Auntie Patty’s daughter and was perhaps the same age. Uncle Ken, Jessica’s Dad was a very wealthy man with two cars in his driveway and two others parked in a big garage at the back of his mansion. They had many servants who also lived in the back houses, and the children of these servants often bore the brunt of Jessica’s scale when she played “School” with them, and her many, many, many dolls. She had toys that could fill a room, and books that could shame a library. Every time an uncle or an aunt flew down from Australia, she would get toys, books and clothes as presents. Jessica was a beautiful little girl with long limbs, silky, flowing hair and jet-black eyes. She was the only child of her parents, in fact the only child in her family. Jessica had no cousins on her father’s side, despite having two uncles, an aunt and grandparents and therefore was cuddled and pampered by all. She had just finished teaching her dolls the alphabet and had sat down, having given them an assignment. Then she raised her foot-scale and welted it across one pitiable doll, with matted gold hair and a broken eye that had been made to sit right at the back of her class.
“You are a naughty girl Cookie,” she scolded the doll. “Look! Your writing is so untidy. And why are you talking to Mary?” The foot-scale welted the plastic arm again; the doll tipped over like a ninepin and was promptly straightened. “Two black marks for you,” she said and proceeded to make a note in Cookie’s report card.
“A new student will be joining our class in a few days,” she announced primly as she took her seat. “She is a very clever and pretty girl. Mumma is going to bring her from Australia. All of you must be her friends or I will give you black marks,” and the ‘black marks’ was accompanied by a hard welt of her foot-scale on the table. That announcement completed, she proceeded to start correcting imaginary notes until her Dad came home, and her classroom of dolls was forgotten in the excitement of there being a new toy for her hidden in the back of his car.
On the following Monday morning after Nicki’s mother had called Auntie Patty, a note was silently passed from the middle of the class to the back. It was from Nicki to Lucy and was in code which only Lucy could decipher. Nicki had written:
My mum called my Auntie. David will be home next month. He will be about a foot tall.
Nicki sneaked a look behind to Lucy when the teacher’s back was turned, and gave her a jubilant thumbs-up sign. Now all they needed to do was to prepare for the wedding.
Nicki lived in a small cottage with her parents and two brothers. One was older and was interested in making rope ladders and model boats. The second was five years younger. He was the baby of the family and the Boba Fett doll, Bounty Hunter or Titan, as she had named him was actually his toy. Another toy of his was an old hand-me-down rubber doll, a soldier boy on a horse with a hole in its back that had once been the place for a whistle. The horse’s head and hooves had been bitten off, but the boy had been perfect. The face also had been rather nice – a bit chubby for a soldier but passable. Since the mounted soldier boy and horse had already been destroyed with all the years of play, her brother Danny neatly cut off the soldier’s face from the rest of the toy (on Nicki’s pleas and instructions,)and this was tied to Titan’s helmet, making him look human. Nicki smiled when she looked at Titan.
“Wow,” she commented. “Like the Phantom. Sometimes he’s in his costume and no one knows his identity, and sometimes he’s normal, like when he’s at home. That’s when he has his human face.” She looked at Titan’s soldier face and smiled again, thinking up a new chapter to Cheryl’s story.
Danny called her an idiot and went back to his boat making.
Nicki wasn’t a pretty child. Her face was peppered with freckles and her hair was short, like a boy’s. She was shy and reserved with most people, and that made people misunderstand that she was ‘stand-off-ish’ and arrogant. She didn’t indulge in games that most girls played – at least not in the way that girls played them, so her many female cousins on her dad’s side and Jessica gave her little company, making her rather unpopular with her own uncles, aunts and grand-parents. Her immediate family loved her as any family would love their children, and accepted her shyness as shyness only. They accepted her fantasy world of fairies, witches, heroes, heroines, monsters and demons and read her stories, or listened to them. Sometimes Danny would draw pictures for her stories because he was good at sketching and painting, and she would make a book and give it to Lucy to read. But she wasn’t pretty, and she wasn’t girlish, and she wasn’t engaging in the way her uncles and aunts, and Auntie Patty and Uncle Ken wanted her to be, so very often her extended family forgot that she existed.
When Auntie Patty returned from her holiday, she first stopped over at Nicki’s home because they lived close to the airport – so close that many times planes coming in to land appeared like they were only just up there in the sky, huge metal birds gliding over the trees, with the occasional sonic explosions that followed in their wake. The pretty, powdered lady was glad to be back – she told her sister as much and quickly greeted her nephews and niece with hurried kisses. Nicki peered at the three big suitcases that lay on top of the car and wondered with bated breath which one contained David Perrin.
David wasn’t tucked away in any of them. Auntie Patty opened her hand-luggage bag and pulled out a bag of chocolates which she pushed into Mummy’s hand.
“Here,” she said. “For the children,” and then, with a wave of her arm, she pushed something into Nicki’s hand.
It was the most amazing and handsome boy doll in the world, and Nicki gasped. He had brown moulded hair, blue eyes, a strong jaw line, and wide shoulders.
He was also only six inches tall, and probably had been part of a racing car, or bike game because he had a white riding suit on with a blue band across the shoulders.
“Thank you, Auntie Patty,” Nicki murmured and looked up at her mother with a smile. She had momentarily forgotten about Suzie. She loved David instantly and was already planning a part he’d play in Amy and Simone’s adventures because his size was just right for them.
But Mummy’s face was red and her brows were drawn into a frown. She looked at Daddy and then with a silent shake of her head, left the room. Auntie Patty had hardly noticed. She was busy packing away her things and was getting ready to leave.
“Whatever did she want a boy doll for,” she was muttering to herself. “Some children are just so strange.”
Nicki blushed at her Aunt’s words and wondered why she was thought of as strange. She followed her mother and whispered in her ear. “He’s so good-looking Mummy.”
“Really?” Mummy had a smirk. “And what does Suzie think?”
“He’s too short,” she giggled. “But Amy and Simone need a big brother to help them in their adventures. David’s perfect for that.”
“Okay,” her mother said and gently pushed a lock of hair away from her daughter’s face. “Go and write up another story.”
Jessica was jubilant. Added to her classroom of dolls was a two-foot baby doll made with rubber limbs, and a rubber face, and a soft body that had an inbuilt battery-operated mechanism within, which allowed the doll to speak when a small switch was turned on. It was beautiful. When the doll was carried, it handled like a real slumbering child. Its arms fell lovingly over the shoulder and its legs tucked comfortably over the arm.
“Now Jessie, you must look after this doll,” her mother told her with a smile. “It’s not for taking outside because it can get stolen.”
“No. No,” agreed the child, and with an obedient nod, shook her doll’s chubby hand by way of greeting, smearing it with a liberal layer of chocolate that she had been chewing on.
Just then there was a cry of “madam’s come home, madam’s come home,” from outside and the pitter-patter of feet told Patty that the servants and their children were arriving for their goodies from Australia. She grimaced. This was one part of the return home that she didn’t quite like.
“Quick Jessie, hide that doll,” she hissed, and with a snatch shoved the doll into a box under the bed. “If the other children see it, they’ll want the older toys and I don’t want to encourage them too much.” she muttered.
Two days later, Suzie stood beside Titan and wed him in full ceremony. He had his soldier’s face tied on with a silver string and Lucy’s sister had sewed him a black suit. Suzie was dressed in white lace with a flowing veil and a wreath made of tiny imitation pearl beads. There was cake served in small plates and a dash of wine from the previous Christmas to sip, and all the dolls from both families were present. Nicki and Lucy didn’t have a camera to take pictures, so they made one with paper, pretended to take photos and upon the click, Lucy who was a brilliant artist, even better than Danny, quickly drew up and coloured the image. Nicki’s paternal aunt Mary, who was not more than 20, and George, Lucy’s younger brother were the only other human guests at the wedding, but what fun they had!
About the same time, two miles away, Auntie Patty was plastering the baby doll’s wrist with white tape in an endeavour to close up a big, ugly hole that a mouse had made when it had gnawed away at the chocolate smudge that had come from an unlucky handshake. In later days, the doll would be seated at the back of Jessica’s class, frequently whacked by a foot-scale for being naughty, and black marks recorded against its name in its report card.
Thirty years on, Lucy is married, with two sons and lives far, far away in another country. The distance might be too much, and marriage and family might have come between the two friends but they still keep in touch. They might not be able to meet up often – but then e-mails and phone calls are next best.
Nicki still writes. She is still full of stories and can spin a yarn at the drop of a hat. Cheryl, Amy and Simone are now tucked away in a suitcase, but they still have the hearts she gave them many, many years ago. She made her own road, chalked out her own career, took her higher education in her own hands and spent five years in University while working at the same time. She now holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree in English Literature.
And somewhere there is an eerie parallel.
Jessica is also married – recently her husband met with an accident with a new printing machine he had procured for his very successful printing press. While testing it, he didn’t take the necessary precaution and severed four of his fingers right off his right hand. The doctors managed to fix back three, but his index finger was lost. He is now under physiotherapy to get back sensation and movement in the three fingers, and has made some progress in the last few months.
Nicki married later than all of her cousins her age. Somewhere on a lost and winding country road, one rider thought, and still thinks that ‘everything she does is magic.’ Though small in stature, he looks dashing in his riding gear, steady on his old cult bike that turns every head, no matter where he rides. When he’s not in his riding gear he looks like a regular guy – and a very nice looking one at that.
When they married, the temperate winter had just set in, bringing a hint of chill to cool the sunny days, and to add a sparkle to the stars that hung low from a deep velvet sky.
