THE DOLL FACTORY: Excerpt | Just One More Chapter

Silas Reed's Shop of Curiosities Antique and New

Silas is sitting at his desk, a stuffed turtle dove in his palm. The cellar is as still and quiet as a tomb, aside from the slow gusts of his breath which ruffle the bird's plumage.

Silas puckers his lips as he works and, in the lamplight, he is not unhandsome. He has retained a full head of hair in his thirty-eighth year, and it shows no sign of silvering. He looks around him, at the glass jars which line the walls, each labelled and filled with the bloated hulks of pickled specimens. Swollen lambs, snakes, lizards and kittens press against the edges of their confinement.

'Don't wriggle free of me now, you little rascal,' he mutters, picking up the pliers and tightening the wire on the bird's claws.

He likes to talk to his creatures, to make up histories which have landed them on his slab. After considering many imagined scenarios for this dove – disrupting barges on the canal, nesting in a sail of the Odyssey – he has settled on one pretence he likes; and so he rebukes this companion often for its invented habit of attacking cress sellers. He releases his hold on the bird, and it sits stiffly on the wooden post.

'There!' he exclaims, leaning back and pushing his hair out of his eyes. 'And perhaps this'll teach you a lesson for knocking that bunch of greens out of that little girl's arms.'

Silas is satisfied with this commission, especially given that he rushed the final stages to have it ready by the morning. He is sure the artist will find the bird to his liking; as requested, it is frozen as if in mid-flight, its wings forming a perfect 'V'. What's more, Silas has skimmed further profit by adding another dove heart to one of the yellowed jars. Little brown orbs float in preserving fluid, ready to fetch a good price from quacks and apothecaries.

Silas tidies the workshop, wiping and straightening his tools. He is halfway up the ladder rungs, nudging the trapdoor with his shoulder as he cradles the dove, when the consumptive wheeze of the bell sounds below him.

Albie, he hopes, as it is early enough, and he abandons the bird on a cabinet and hurries through the shop, wondering what the child will bring him. The boy's recent hauls have been increasingly paltry – maggoty rats, ageing cats with smashed skulls, even a half run-over pigeon with a stumpy claw. ('But if you knew, sir, how hard it is with the bone grubbers pinching the best of the trade—') If Silas's collection is to stand the test of time, he needs something truly exceptional to complete it. He thinks of the bakery nearby on the Strand, which made a poor living with its bulky wholemeal loaves, good only for doorstops. Then the baker, on the brink of debtors' prison, started to pickle strawberries in sugar and sell them by the jar. It transformed the shop, made it famous even in tourist pamphlets of the city.

The trouble is, Silas often thinks he has found his special, unique item, but then he finishes the work and finds himself hounded by doubts, by the ache for more. The pathologists and collectors he admires – men of learning and medicine like John Hunter and Astley Cooper – have no shortage of specimens. He has eavesdropped on the conversations of medical men, sat white with jealousy in drinking holes opposite University College London as they've discussed the morning's dissections. He might lack their connections, but surely, surely, one day Albie will bring him something – his hand trembles – remarkable. Then, his name will be etched on a museum entrance, and all of his work, all of his toil, will be recognized. He imagines climbing the stone steps with Flick, his dearest childhood friend, and pausing as they see 'Silas Reed ' engraved in marble. She, unable to contain her pride, her palm resting in the small of his back. He, explaining that he built it all for her.

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