The Doll's House

The skin on my face is still throbbing. It will bruise more, but there’s no blood. I’ve no intention of leaving Ruby’s room until Martin has gone to work. Orla’s letter is still downstairs on the coffee table.

Opening my compact, I check the damage, twisting to get a better view in the small, round mirror. My face looks like it’s been split down the middle. One side normal, the other side puffed up like an oversized black mushroom fermenting in the dark. It has been a while since Martin hit out. The last time it was because he had been taken for a fool in some property investment deal. They say you always take it out on the ones you love. Well, he showed his love that time all right. I was drinking then. I let it go. Now it’s different. Now it’s more a question of time.

If I wasn’t a battered wife, I might ask why women stay with such men. They’re seen as monsters, best written out of your life. But outsiders don’t understand. Perhaps I’m a coward – yet another label to stamp on my forehead. Martin has his own demons. I’m not the only one carrying hang-ups from childhood. I’m merely the punchbag. What most people see when they meet Martin is an illusion. He can even trick himself, setting himself up as the guy who likes to put things straight, show what a great man he is.

Martin is still moving around downstairs. His next meeting must be late morning. He’s listening to the news on the radio. He drank the bottle of Beaujolais last night, before going out again. Martin isn’t really a drinker. He took it to spite me. I hear the radio being switched off. He’ll leave soon. I wait until he pulls the front door behind him, giving it a few seconds before I open the door of Ruby’s bedroom.

I catch a glimpse of my face in the hall mirror downstairs, and think about my old doll, Emma. The one we put in the attic in the box for broken toys. I had forgotten about that box too. Emma had a white porcelain face, cold and smooth when you touched it, except for her eyelashes, which were long and frail, as delicate as a spider’s web. Her face split in two one summer after a fall. Mum and Dad had had a huge fight. Both Dominic and I were sent upstairs. Dominic was dragging me up by the arm, but I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to be sent upstairs. It was a Sunday. I hated Sundays. Dominic was hurting me, and I was telling him to stop. That was when I dropped her. An ugly jagged crack went from the top of her forehead into her neck. The rest of her body was soft so it wasn’t damaged. Even her eyelashes remained intact. Every bit of Emma’s face was still there; not one piece of the porcelain had fallen out. It had just cracked in two, leaving a gaping black slash where once there had been a beautiful face. I remember looking into the crack, trying to find out what was behind it, wondering if the line was something bad, like the cracks in the pavement I used to skip over as a child so I wouldn’t go to Hell. But all I saw was emptiness.

When she fell, she became a different doll, her insides exposed. I thought there was a change in her expression, a kind of sadness to her eyes, knowing everyone would see her differently from then on.

‘Once broken, it can’t be fixed.’ That was what Dominic had said. ‘You can’t fix her, so throw her away.’ He was being mean. He wasn’t usually mean, but he was upset too. He didn’t want to go upstairs either. He would get like that sometimes. It was the same when I wanted to play with him, Stevie and Martin, and he would tell me I couldn’t be in their gang because I was a girl. But I didn’t throw Emma away. A part of her is still here, living inside me.





Caldine Club, Kildare Street


Kate waited beside an open fire on the upper terrace. The place was the ultimate in chic, with rectangular stone tables, blue-and-white-striped couches on one side, pale-yellow-cushioned armchairs on the other. Each chair and couch had its own charcoal blanket with the emblem ‘CC’ embroidered in silver-grey thread.

She took in the two fifty-something females, with their designer bags, and the men in business suits at the far end. All of them sent only a fleeting glance towards her and O’Connor, then returned to their private conversations, except for the attractive waitress, who’d brought O’Connor downstairs to find the manager, Mr Devoy.

Under her arm Kate had the glossy brochure O’Connor had given to her. Flicking through the pages, she read the section on the upper terrace where she was standing – ‘an exceptional delight, superb dining under the Dublin skyline, with glorious music. A place where friends can meet and beautiful memories can be formed.’ Looking down on the street below, at the rough and tumble of the city, Kate was reminded of Gulliver’s Travels, and how from on high, Gulliver looked down on the little people of Lilliput.