"Well, we'll have to find them, won't we? But you can't find anything while you're crying, you know, and what's all this baby talk? I haven't heard you say "widdle" instead of "little' for six months! Here, blow your nose again and then pick up poor . . . Agnes? If you don't put her clothes on, she'll get sunburned."
He made her sit on the edge of the path and gave her the doll gently, then he crawled about searching the grass until he gave a triumphant whoop and held up a pearl.
"There! First one! We'll find them all, you wait and see."
Meggie watched her oldest brother adoringly while he picked among the grass blades, holding up each pearl as he found it; then she remembered how delicate Agnes's skin must be, how easily it must Burn, and bent her attention on clothing the doll. There did not seem any real injury. Her hair was tangled and loose, her arms and legs dirty where the boys had pushed and pulled at them, but everything still worked. A tortoiseshell comb nestled above each of Meggie's ears; shetugged at one until it came free, and began to comb Agnes's hair, which was genuine human hair, skillfully knotted onto a base of glue and gauze, and bleached until it was the color of gilded straw. She was yanking inexpertly at a large knot when the dreadful thing happened. Off came the hair, all of it, dangling in a tousled clump from the teeth of the comb. Above Agnes's smooth broad brow there was nothing; no head, no bald skull. Just an awful, yawning hole. Shivering in terror, Meggie leaned forward to peer inside the doll's cranium. The inverted contours of cheeks and chin showed dimly, light glittered between the parted lips with their teeth a black, animal silhouette, and above all this were Agnes's eyes, two horrible clicking balls speared by a wire rod that cruelly pierced her head.
Meggie's scream was high and thin, unchildlike; she flung Agnes away and went on screaming, hands covering her face, shaking and shuddering. Then she felt Frank pull at her fingers and take her into his arms, pushing her face into the side of his neck. Wrapping her arms about him, she took comfort from him until his nearness calmed her enough to become aware of how nice he smelled, all horses and sweat and iron.
When she quietened, Frank made her tell him what was the matter; he picked up the doll and stared into its empty head in wonder, trying to remember if his infant universe had been so beset by strange terrors. But his unpleasant phantoms were of people and whispers and cold glances. Of his mother's face pinched and shrinking, her hand trembling as it held his, the set of her shoulders.
What had Meggie seen, to make her take on so? He fancied she would not have been nearly so upset if poor Agnes had only bled when she lost her hair. Bleeding was a fact; someone in the Cleary family bled copiously at least once a week.
"Her eyes, her eyed" Meggie whispered, refusing to look at the doll.
"She's a bloody marvel, Meggie," he murmured, his face nuzzling into her hair. How fine it was, how rich and full of color! It took him half an hour of cajoling to make her look at Agnes, and half an hour more elapsed before he could persuade her to peer into the scalped hole. He showed her how the eyes worked, how very carefully they had been aligned to fit snugly yet swing easily opened or closed. "Come on now, it's time you went inside," he told her, swinging her up into his arms and tucking the doll between his chest and hers. "We'll get Mum to fix her up, eh? We'll wash and iron her clothes, and glue on her hair again. I'll make you some proper hairpins out of those pearls, too, so they can't fall out and you can do her hair in all sorts of ways."
Fiona Cleary was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes. She was a very handsome, very fair woman a little under medium height, but rather hard-faced and stern; she had an excellent figure with a tiny waist which had not thickened, in spite of the six babies she had carried beneath it. Her dress was grey calico, its skirts brushing the spotless floor, its front protected by an enormous starched white apron that looped around her neck and tied in the small of her spine with a crisp, perfect bow. From waking to sleeping she lived in the kitchen and back garden, her stout black boots beating a circular path from stove to laundry to vegetable patch to clotheslines and thence to the stove again.
She put her knife on the table and stared at Frank and Meggie, the corners of her beautiful mouth turning down.
"Meggie, I let you put on your Sunday-best dress this morning on one condition, that you didn't get it dirty. And look at you! What a little grub you are!"
"Mum, it wasn't her fault," Frank protested. "Jack and Hughie took her doll away to try and find out how the arms and legs worked. I promised we'd fix it up as good as new. We can, can't we?"
"Let me see." Fee held out her hand for the doll. She was a silent woman, not given to spontaneous conversation. What she thought, no one ever knew, even her husband; she left the disciplining of the children to him, and did whatever he commanded without comment or complaint unless the circumstances were most unusual. Meggie had heard the boys whispering that she stood in as much awe of Daddy as they did, but if that was true she hid it under a veneer of impenetrable, slightly dour calm. She never laughed, nor did she ever lose her temper. Finished her inspection, Fee laid Agnes on the dresser near the stove and looked at Meggie.
"I'll wash her clothes tomorrow morning, and do her hair again. Frank can glue the hair on after tea tonight, I suppose, and give her a bath." The words were matter-of-fact rather than comforting. Meggie nodded, smiling uncertainly; sometimes she wanted so badly to hear her mother laugh, but her mother never did. She sensed that they shared a special something not common to Daddy and the boys, but there was no reaching beyond that rigid back, those never still feet. Mum would nod absently and flip her voluminous skirts expertly from stove to table as she continued working, working, working.
