Evie
The next day is even hotter and by four p.m. the sunlight is hammering through my bedroom window. Fed up with the stifling heat and my sweaty fingers sticking to the computer keys, I take my sewing basket outside and pad barefoot over the grass to the folly at the bottom of the garden.
It’s cooler there beneath the trees and twining roses. I sit cross-legged on a bench and tip the cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream out onto my lap. This is my little preoccupation: sewing figurines from my favorite stories. Dolls, I suppose you’d call them. Their bodies are all much the same, little calico heads with embroidered faces, and sticklike arms and legs stuffed with cotton wool. The costumes, though, are elaborate. I’ve finished Oberon’s beaded jacket and breeches and this afternoon I’m going to put the last touches on Titania’s fairy queen gown.
There, my proud lady, I think, straightening her skirts and smiling, you’re a match for any fairy king, aren’t you?
I’m engrossed in stitching clusters of tiny iridescent beads to her skirt when a shadow falls across my lap. I look up and see Monsieur d’Estang standing before me in a blue shirt. He holds out my notebooks to me with a smile.
“Hello. These are yours. You left them behind when you were in such a hurry to get out of my car.”
“Oh, yes. Sorry about that.” I take the books from him. “I didn’t mean to be rude, it’s just that... Do you have siblings, Monsieur d’Estang?”
“Frederic, please.” He laughs and sits down next to me. “Yes I do, and if I fell over in front of a stationary car they would crow over it for days. I didn’t tell them you fell, you know. You didn’t need to run.” He looks at the figurines in my lap, and Oberon lying on the bench next to me. Picking him up he examines the costume. He seems to recognize the little troupe as he quotes, “‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.’” But he doesn’t say it to the doll. He says it to me and Titania.
Delighted that he knows the words, I play along, holding up the fairy queen and saying, “‘What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence: I have forsworn his bed and company.’” It’s only as I’m finishing the quote that I realize how flirtatious it is. My heart starts to thump a little too hard.
“‘Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?’” He delivers the line as Shakespeare meant it to be, with all the authority of the king of the fairies. Then he turns to the basket and peers inside.
“May I?”
When I nod, he extracts Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster, Mr. Wickham in his red coat, the White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the duo of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and then finally the Phantom from The Phantom of the Opera.
“What a little basket of villainy you have, Evie,” he murmurs, examining the Phantom closely. I stitched him with dark hair very much like Frederic’s own. Jekyll and Hyde, two more of his characters, have his hair and green eyes, too.
“They’re not all villains.” They’re just mostly villains.
The Phantom has a beautiful black satin cape and a little plaster mask. Frederic smiles as he peers at my handiwork. I feel a compulsion to pull out my phone and photograph him. The Phantom admiring his miniature doppelgänger, what an Instagram post that would make: #themanhimself #musicofthenight
I apply my needle to the pale silk of Titania’s skirts once more, feeling his sharp gaze on the side of my neck.
“Why do you make these?” he asks.
Looking at Titania, I think how to answer. The fabric cost sixty pounds a yard but I only needed a few inches. Still, if anyone knew I lavish my dolls with Thai silk they’d think I was mad. But she’s my friend. She deserves it.
I’ve made these little figurines for as long as I can remember. When I was eight it was because I liked them better than store-bought toys. Who wants a generic doll when you could have all the Bennet sisters from Pride and Prejudice to tea, or Susan and Lucy from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to go adventuring with? By the time I was fourteen I was teased if I played with dolls, handmade or not, and looked on with envy as Lisbet did. Then I discovered that if I sat quietly and sewed, keeping my face blank, no one could tell that I was really playing. Now I’m twenty-four and I still haven’t grown out of it. It’s not just that I like make-believe. I crave it. And lately, I crave make-believe about villains most of all. I want to understand them. I even quite love them, though the infatuation frightens me a little. Is it wise to dwell in graveyards and
Gothic cathedrals with monsters and obsessives? To imagine myself with them as I sew, the willing participant, the enabler, the victim? But their allure is like dark chocolate and stolen kisses, and I can’t help myself.
“It’s a hobby. I just like to.”
Frederic sits back on the bench and looks at me. “Please tell me.”
I just told you, nosy-parker. Mona has referred to the figurines sniffily as my “little dollies,” so I trot out the answer I gave her. “I’m a literature student. Doing this helps me tease apart the characters' motivations. Villains are so much more complicated than heroes: There are few reasons someone might be a hero, but there are infinite reasons to be a villain.”
“Ah, I see. It’s an academic interest, of course.”
Something ironic in his tone makes the back of my neck prickle. He doesn’t believe me?
He turns to the basket once more and pulls out Archdeacon Claude Frollo, the antagonist of Notre-Dame de Paris, who is so obsessed by a beautiful gypsy girl. Frederic played him in the French musical adaptation that toured France and Russia—a far handsomer Frollo than the Disney version, though no less intense. “Here’s another fellow I know well.” He holds Frollo up to his face and mirrors the figurine’s severe scowl.
I enjoyed sewing Frollo and his priestly outfit, though not because of any lofty ideas I had about understanding his character. I was a little obsessed with Frollo at the time, imagining myself as Esmeralda high in a tower of Notre Dame having been dragged there by a sexually frustrated Frollo. He bound my wrists and rent my dress almost in two, and proceeded to whip me, quoting scripture about the Devil and temptation. I remember the heady sensation of being at the center of his world. Vulnerable. Laid bare. I don’t know why it preoccupied me so much. Being whipped must be painful.
There are too many of Frederic’s own characters in his hands and I don’t like it. Desperately I try and think of another literary priest. “It’s not Frollo. It’s Gregory from The Monk.”
“Oh.” He puts Frollo back, though I’m certain I caught another note of disbelief in his voice.
“There you two are.” Mona is coming across the grass toward us clutching a sweating glass of Pimms. She turns to Frederic. “Well, did you ask her yet?”