The Desk

Though the sky was heavy hung with creamy terracotta clouds like the fleshy belly of a salmon— clouds that promised rain to come— Doll did not give a second thought to the laundry she had left out on the washing line. Something had happened, something so inexplicably wonderful that even now, when she held the slip of paper with her name and that number printed in such wondrous, terrifying proximity that she could scarce believe it, or even allow herself to consider believing it.

She had not lingered in bed in her usual way that morning, instead leaping up at first light, sweaty and dishevelled from a night so fraught with and unreal to allow anything close to sleep or rest of any kind. The stairs were taken in groups of three; only when she came in sight of the old desk in the living room did she manage to gain enough control of herself to pause.

The squat, solid, old-fashioned roll top, with its shining brass fixtures, its mahogany gleaming like dark chocolate on a warm day had always shown up the otherwise shabbily furnished room for its lack. That is unkind: until the arrival of the desk, the living room furniture that Doll had managed to collect from charity shops and the less than occasional skip or road-side fly-tip was comfortable, if rather modest.

Her fingers, dancing lightly across the burnished wood, found that newly discovered groove to the left of the inkwell. A soft click— that sweet, musical sound! — emanated from deep within the bowels of the desk, followed by the low metallic creak of hinges. Her chest heaved and her lungs felt fit to burst as she stood back to see if the mechanism still worked, to see that miraculous opening of what had been until last night an odd little protrusion behind the front left leg.

Not a single gossamer wisp of breath escaped her lips as she reached her stubby fingers into the secret drawer. Blood roared a tempest in her ears, building, swirling, leaping up and crashing down, until at last, the crisis point came as her she brushed the velvety covering of the little black notebook that had hidden away in this cloister all this time. So deafening was the pounding of her own heart in her chest that she thought that this might be the end. Clutching the book in her hands, she sat down, cross-legged, and pressed her spine against the scroll-carved leg of the desk. The prickly fibres of the carpet poked through her thin pyjama bottoms— sage green, with small frogs and lily pads dotted over them— but Doll was grateful for it. Every shooting pain, every irritation of her skin, every sensation was insisting over and over that this was real. She had not dreamt it. She could breathe.

She did, finally, when she had worked her courage to the sticking place and slid the folded paper out from the inside. She read her name, printed neatly: Dolores Furious. She read the number, which had been helpfully written numerically and in full words, to ensure that Doll truly, completely understood the enormity of the situation she had found herself in. Or had it found her? There was no telling the way anything worked now.

Silence filled the room. Golden beams of dawn light stretched themselves out across the valley to pick out specks of dust that floated faelike in the wake of Doll’s frantic entrance. She herself remained still, her abdominal muscles relaxed, and she felt her spine groan in thanks of being reprieved from its unwarranted punishment. Her eyes flicked repeatedly around the entirety of the cheque, trying to uncover its hidden meaning, its catch, the date at which it would be taken away from her, or some clause about having to slay a dragon or spend the night in a murder house. Gradually, her eyes slowed, and came to rest on the neatly printed script that read: Twenty Thousand Dollars Only. Only felt like a bizarre word to put next to the phrase twenty thousand dollars. There was nothing only about it. She continued to stare until her eyes began to lose focus and the black ink began to scuttle and shift around the paper like little spiders; only when wetness began to soak the corner did she realise she was weeping.

Somewhere outside, a cockerel crowed. She folded the cheque again and replaced it in the book, with which she did likewise into the safety of the desk. The compartment clicked shut again. The whole world looked new.

Three large shaggy dogs bounded up to greet her when she entered the kitchen, with one almost knocking her off of her feet with its overenthusiastic pawing. An old wiry coated terrier with one eye sat in a basket and barked but did not inconvenience himself to get up. Doll pushed through the roiling bodies as they danced surprisingly nimbly around her feet in the hopes of some small tidbit being tossed to their grateful mouths from the breakfast table. She went to the fridge to collect the milk, and her eyes lighted on a open packet of sausages left over from her parent’s visit last week. There was enough for one each between her and the four dogs, and she smiled as she picked them up off the shelf and set them on the worktop to be cooked shortly. She would take a walk to the butcher later on and buy some knuckle bones and pigs’ ears for a treat for them: they had been patient with her as she cooked up pots of slightly soft vegetables and old dry pulses for their dinners, and content enough to eat it.

The chicken with a frostbitten foot that had been sojourning in an old rabbit hutch by the back door raised its head and clucked quietly. Doll, breaking the ritual of her morning ministrations, scampered towards her with glee:

‘We can get that leg seen to Missus! I am not forgetting about you! How could I? Hm?’ she cooed and smiled through her tears. The chicken, in turn, ruffled her amber feathers with satisfaction and waddled over to her bowl. Doll, well- versed in this particular interspecies conversation, decanted some straw-coloured pellets into the waiting vessel, and fetched some salad leaves on the verge of becoming pondweed and sprinkled them on top. The little hen cackled and started at her repast with wild abandon.

It was as if the discovery of the cheque in the book in the desk had given Doll a new lease of life. Everywhere she went in the little farmhouse, she no longer saw damp and felt despair, or saw fault and lack wherever she went, but simply things that could now be fixed. The toilet in the upstairs bathroom that hummed incessantly; the peeling paintwork; the moth-eaten curtains; everything that had previously chipped away at what little reserves of inner strength she had left. It had been a long winter, and a hard one; her crops had failed, and her family had waited for her to return home and admit defeat. She had stuck it out, however, out here in the country on her own, and now Spring was returning, and so was she. The rubbery noise of her wellington boots on the hard ground in time with the sweet, spritzing melodies of twitterpated birdsong made a smile curl at the sides of Doll’s mouth. She hummed softly as she opened up the henhouses, and chatted amiably to the multicoloured hens as she sprinkled food around the coop. The pigs grunted cheerfully as they trotted over to receive their daily crate of vegetables on the turn that Doll had managed to agree to pay a pound a day for to the big supermarket by the river. She decided to be guarded in her exuberance when she drove into town to collect it later— there was no sense in disrupting an ideal system, especially one that had taken so long to negotiate.

Her car! She had not even thought about her car which was so desperately in need of repair she thanked any Gods that would listen every time she made it home without being killed, killing someone else, or worst of all being stopped and given a lecture by the police about. No longer! She would phone the garage as soon as she went inside. She unlocked the gate of the paddock and the small flock of elderly sheep that roamed around ambled towards her while she sprinkled the last of the molasses-covered muesli feed she had been given as a Christmas present. Only now, it occurred to her, this need not be the last of it. She she imparted this information to the sheep, who did not answer or even acknowledge her. They had breakfast to think about.

The sky was shining and slick like a cut peach, so orange it seemed to be on fire. The cashmere softness of the clouds undulated across the contours of the hills, playing off the rough green and brown patchwork of fields like candlelight. As she wound her way back through the paddock, and along the path under the trees, Doll Furious felt wholeheartedly glad. Here was a time of peace, of incoming summer with its long hot days and porcelain blue nights where she could truly live in her little ramshackle slice of paradise, instead of just inhabiting it. There was work to be done, but there was always work to be done, and she was happy to do it.

Doll sat on the front stair of her house to catch her breath, her own little house that she could now afford to buff and shine and fix a bit; her own little house with all the lives that depended on it, all the paws and claws and beaks and snouts that relied on her to keep things running. And now, at least for a while, she could.

It was as simple as that.

She could.