Chapter 35
Jake stood holding both ends of the dustsheet, which was now almost black, thick with years of accumulated dust. He remembered William throwing off the dustsheet with a flurry, in the same way he recalled his mother throwing a clean sheet in the air and letting it gently settle like a feather onto the bed.
Jake tensed his arms, then threw them both up high in the air. Almost immediately he was hit by a fit of coughing and sneezing as the thick black dust whipped off the sheet and surrounded him.
He dropped the sheet instantly and furiously waved the air with his hands, trying to dissipate the dust. His eyes watered. He backed away until his shins hit the bottom stair. Fumbling for a tissue in his jacket pocket, he sat on the stairs, blew his nose and wiped his eyes.
Stuffing the tissue back in his pocket, Jake leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in the palm of his hands. He sat motionless, staring straight ahead at the object now uncovered on the workbench. From this vantage point, his eyes travelled along a bright hallway, through rooms busy with furniture, up the wide curved stairwell, in and out of strikingly decorated rooms – all this in miniature.
He sat for some considerable time, taking in the intricate detail of the custom-made doll’s house on the workbench. It still gleamed and sparkled and looked as wondrous as the day he had first set eyes on it.
‘Exactly how long has it been?’ he murmured. He remembered that Christmas in particular because it was the first year he hadn’t believed in Santa. He reckoned that maybe it was something everyone remembered if they’d been fortunate enough to have kind-hearted parents who had allowed them to believe in the first place.
‘How old was I?’ he got up from the step and walked over to the doll’s house. ‘Nine?’ He bent down and peered into the second-floor bedrooms. ‘Ten?’ He bent down further, peering into the rooms. He picked up a tiny chair. ‘I was almost eleven, so Eleanor must have been five.’ He turned it over in his hand, careful not to snap the matchstick-thin legs. Then he carefully put it back it in the dining room.
He felt it was important somehow to place the events in time. He remembered now. She’d spent hours drawing a doll’s house of her own design – how could he have forgotten?
Jake’s vision blurred. He blinked and felt a faint tickle as tears ran delicately onto his cheeks. ‘Damn dust,’ he said as he wiped his face dry with the sleeve of his jacket.
Jake picked up the dustsheet from the floor and carefully draped it back over the doll’s house, tucking it under the base as best he could as the memory of that day re-surfaced once more …
‘You know, I heard Santa’s elves down here, night after night, hammering and sawing. They certainly had their work cut out for them this year, Eleanor.’ William smiled at his daughter.
Eleanor tentatively held out a podgy finger and touched the doll’s house as if she couldn’t quite believe her eyes.
Jake watched in awe. ‘Santa’s elves worked in this house?’ A part of him still wanted to believe, still wanted to stay in that magical place for just a bit longer.
‘That’s right, son.’
It made him feel good when William called him son , even though he knew he wasn’t really William’s son. They were fostering him after his parents died, which William explained meant that he could live with them as part of the family.
‘It was too big for Santa to bring on his sleigh, otherwise he would have had to leave everyone else’s presents behind at the North Pole,’ explained William. ‘We wouldn’t want that – would we?’
Jake shook his head vehemently, looking at Eleanor, who was doing the same. He suddenly realised why Marcus had been left out. It was because he would just spoil things. And besides, he wasn’t really sure that he believed Marcus about there being no Santa. Just because he was a year older than Jake, it didn’t mean he was right all the time, did it?
‘What say us fellas,’ he patted Jake on the back, ‘carry it upstairs to Eleanor’s bedroom?’
‘Yes sir,’ Jake said excitedly.
Marcus was standing at the living room door, watching, as Eleanor appeared in the hallway. His eyes went wide as William and Jake emerged from the cellar with the doll’s house. ‘See! I told you that Santa used my drawing – he said so in my letter,’ Eleanor said triumphantly. She stuck her tongue out at Marcus before racing down the hallway to the stairs.
Jake smiled at the memory. Before Santa, with the help of his elves, had made her that huge doll’s house right there in the cellar of The Lake House, she’d always asked for furniture or little figurines for her old doll’s house. She loved delicately arranging furniture and playing families. There was a time that she decided she wanted to do a bit more than just play with her doll’s house. She’d put on her dungarees – the ones she didn’t mind getting paint and glue on when she used her arts and crafts materials to draw and paint. She’d tied up her mass of brown hair as best her little chubby fingers could and then she had set to work.
Jake recalled hearing raised voices in Eleanor’s bedroom one day. Her mother was standing over her, demanding to know what she thought she was doing. Even Jake got a shock when he saw the inside of her doll’s house, walls and all, lying discarded in a heap, leaving nothing but an empty shell.
Jake remembered Eleanor’s mother turning away from the bedroom door, mumbling something to herself about why her daughter was such a disappointment; why she wouldn’t wear pretty dresses and play like a normal daughter? Jake had remained in the doorway, watching, fascinated, as she erected new walls and pasted little bits of wallpaper.
She’d let him join in and together they’d chosen colours and made little pieces of furniture. Jake smiled when he remembered Marcus crossly calling him a sissy when he’d discovered Jake playing with Eleanor and not him. Marcus had hovered at the door, watching, and then had grudgingly edged closer until he too was sitting on the floor beside them, totally absorbed in refurbishing Eleanor’s old doll’s house.
Then, a few weeks before Christmas one year, when she’d turned five, Eleanor’s father had crept in late one night from work to give his sleeping daughter a kiss goodnight – so the story went – and stubbed his toe on her part-refurbished old doll’s house. When he’d moved it out of the way, he’d spied some drawings of a doll’s house underneath. The next day after school, Eleanor set to work on her doll’s house, but the drawings were nowhere to be found. Jake remembered searching for them. Even Marcus joined in the search, helping his sister, which was a first.
‘You can draw them again, can’t you?’ Jake had suggested, seeing her distress when they couldn’t find them. She’d said that she couldn’t. The drawings were special. It was a plan for how she wanted her doll’s house to look the next time. She had made drawings and chosen colours, and on her drawings for each room she had stuck little material swatches – all the things she could think of for a new design were on that drawing – but it was gone. Her mother told her that the cleaner had probably thrown it out as rubbish; what did she expect if she was going to be so careless and leave things lying around on the floor?
Eleanor had been inconsolable until the letter from Santa had arrived. Jake knew that so many kids posted their Christmas list to the North Pole, but how many got a reply from Santa? The reply said that he’d magically found her drawing. It was Eleanor’s fondest childhood memory. William had told her that on Christmas night, while doing his rounds delivering presents, Santa must have found her lost drawings and had an idea: why not use her designs to have a very special doll’s house made for a very special girl?
Jake remembered with fondness how William had told Eleanor that Santa must have drafted in his elves, sending the reindeer with the sleigh back to the North Pole to collect them, along with all the materials and tools they’d need to build the doll’s house right there in The Lake House. Then he had finished his rounds, delivering presents all around the world, before returning to collect the elves.
Of course, Eleanor had believed every word, and for one more magical Christmas, Jake had ignored Marcus and had chosen to believe too.
Jake stood for a moment, astounded by the miniature house, the miniature rooms that had been created by a specialist bespoke company, they had found out later, all from a five-year-old’s clever design.
He hadn’t really appreciated what talent she’d had, what talent she’d been born with – until now. He felt responsible for taking away her opportunities because of the life they’d led. If they’d never married, moving back and forth between London and America as the Ross Corporation dictated, perhaps she’d have had the opportunity to create the life she’d wanted. If they’d never married, maybe she would have settled down somewhere and started a business making bespoke doll’s houses for other children to enjoy. For her children to enjoy, though Jake sadly.
Perhaps he wouldn’t be standing there in an empty house, staring at a discarded doll’s house.
Jake climbed the cellar steps and shut the door on those memories, sad memories, and thoughts of a future that would never be.