Figurines

A Short Story by Ian O'Brien

Artwork by Ian O’Brien

1

I sometimes think that if Sylvia had lived in a different kind of house, a house like ours, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe we would have been kinder. To have found the front door to be just like ours, the same protective wire running through the glass, maybe something would have clicked, slowed us down. If we’d gone inside and found the layout just the same, hall and kitchen with paper thin doors and holes the shape of fists, or the council issue woodchip, we might have stopped. Perhaps the familiarity would have tempered whatever it was that took us there, reminded us of our parents just streets away, consequences. I am lying to myself, I know. Seeing the same paper on the walls would not have made her one of us, made us care. Nothing would.

Sylvia’s house marked the end of something. There, the clipped privets stopped and our fences began. She lived in the last of the old red houses, built just after the war when the council planned with sunlight and space in mind. When the regulations changed and the town expanded, our brownbrick houses were added on, rows spreading like knotweed across the fields. Even the street signs were sturdier where Sylvia lived, the lettering ornate, painted. Ours looked mass-produced, printed on thin tin that you could bend at the edges if you kicked hard enough. Sylvia’s street had a history, a name you could find in the library. That wasn’t the reason, but it helped.

Her mum always seemed to be working - weeding the garden, scrubbing the step, like the women in black and white we’d seen in a video at school. She would talk to herself, murmur, sometimes shout or sing, and we’d laugh when we passed, shout words - unkind, unimaginative words. Mad Margaret. Get a bath. She would heave herself up, red-faced and shout, spit, her heavy glasses slipping, too big. And Sylvia would come out and beg her to stop, tug at the thick overcoat she always wore, even in the baking heat. Margaret would shrug her off and we would laugh all the louder, throw things sometimes from over the road. Mad Margaret, Mad Margaret, Mad. A casual cruelty, a laziness to it. Margaret would spit as she shouted back, her hair wild, broad cheeks flushed and shining. ‘Stop!’ she would shout, ‘I tell you, THIS IS TO STOP.’ The same refrain every time, sending us into a spin, revelling in the ease of what we had created. Sylvia would shout back too sometimes, stand at the gate, torn between honour and embarrassment. We would home in, then.

Tramp, we would shout. And that was lazy too because Sylvia was always immaculately dressed. Her hair was old-fashioned and the dresses she wore were from another age, like her name, but always clean in a starched, formal way. Like something from a 1950s film, she was both young and old at the same time. Those shoes, the girls that orbited Max would say. Max was the leader, if this was a gang, though it felt more like a tide, a debris of boys sweeping home from school the same way each day. Those shoes though, and we’d laugh, feign embarrassment, as if disgraced even to have to look at her.

Sylvia had gone to a different school, ‘special’ someone said, stripping the word of its dignity. But one day her school had closed and Sylvia had suddenly found herself at ours. We would watch her, lost in the corridors. That skirt, the girls would say, below the knee, and they’d whisper in Max’s ear as Sylvia just stood and stared, the faintest trouble sharpening her eyes, which shone like chipped glass. She never cried.

We would follow her sometimes on the way home from school. She had a way of walking that brought our attention, smirks. She walked like an adult, a purposeful stride, heels clicking on the pavement. She was like a woman in a Hitchcock film, minus the bag and gloves, the hair pinned in the past. We would cross the road, walk alongside or creep behind. She looked with a knowing distrust if the girls made conversation first, or when Max asked questions he wasn’t clever enough to make sound sincere. How’s your mum, he would offer and the girls would laugh in approval. ‘Fine, thank you,’ she would reply, as if rehearsed, her Hitchcock-blonde voice clipped like the snapping of a purse.

I never spoke to her, not then. I’d listen to the others and I’d fill with something like heat when they spoke to her. A pang. I didn’t want them to stop. And I knew at the time it was wrong, that the loaded questions, the pantomime of friendship was wrong. But at the time I didn’t know why I wanted to hear her voice, that polished voice, watch the reaction unfold, see what she would say, what she would do, how she would hold herself when she moved. If she looked at me, I found, I couldn’t hold her eye.

It was cigarettes that won me to Max. I didn’t even smoke, I’d taken them from my Dad’s coat one morning before school. I don’t know why I sought the approval, the slick grin, the leer of him, but when it came I felt heavier somehow, taller, the worn shoes and my brother’s uniform normal. And Max was thirteen already, which made a difference. And girls would look at me different, seeing me with him in the corridors. Ask for gum. I never really spoke to them, would flush red or stammer if I tried. Though I found my name beneath a girl’s once on a wall behind the gym, joined with a 4. The next day it had gone, of course, scribbled over.

Sometimes, on those stretched walks home through the town, the girls would walk ahead, fall in line with Sylvia’s determined steps and we would hang back, listen to Max’s dirty stories, his lies, bask in the temporary, shifting approval of him.

‘I love your hair,’ the girls would say. ‘How do you get it to stay that way?’ And ‘Is that lipstick yours? I wish I was allowed my own. I have to sneak mine from my mum’s room, don’t you? I wear my mum’s perfume too, don’t you, Sylvia? What does she wear? She always smells nice, your mum.’ And the giggles would be too much for some and they’d do the whole turning away and wiping a tear routine. At the time I thought it was defiance, her smile, her polite pursed lips. She must know what they mean. But a part of me knew the truth, saw her face navigating, the eyes slow, moving from one face to another. And soon she spoke freely, the cautious crease around her eyes would soften and words came bubbling, liquid and trill like birdsong.

And even when the questions turned, tilted into something else, tricking her into confessions, Sylvia would smile, polite.

‘I can never be bothered changing every day,’ a girl said one day, as we held back, trying to light a cigarette.

‘Me neither,’ another chimed.

‘You don’t have to,’ the first girl said, her gestures exaggerated like in a bad school play. ‘Not your underwear, not every day, I only change once a week.’

‘Every week? That’s daft! I don’t, just every month, that’s the normal thing to do. Isn’t that right, Sylvia?’

And when Sylvia, who had watched their mouths, smiled and nodded like she hadn’t quite heard, there was an explosion of laughter from the girls, the words sounding sharp and smashed in their throats, as if they couldn’t get them out in time.

‘Sylvia changes her underwear only once a month!’

‘Wears Mad Margaret’s lippy!’

‘Her perfume too!’

Sylvia simply walked inside, heels clipping on the path, and I lied to myself that it was alright, it was fine because she didn’t understand. And besides, she had smiled. The boys pulled faces, made crude gestures. I never said a word, just played with the lighter inside my pocket, holding my thumb against the flint.

2

It was the last day of term and no-one was in a rush to get home. School had kicked out at noon and some kids took the bus to town, giddy with the freedom and heat. We were snagged at the shops. Max leaned against a wall, asking occasional customers to buy cigarettes for him, holding out a palm of sweaty coins, but they either ignored him or swatted him away. He looked edgy, harassed, eyes flitting to the end of the street.

‘Let’s go to yours,’ he said. He always wanted to be indoors, was always asking whose house was free. ‘Somewhere we can smoke,’ he said, kiss girls he meant, without anyone seeing. He winked.

‘My dad’ll be in,’ I shrugged. I already had the lie rehearsed. ‘Mum’s at work but my dad’s laid off.’ Laid off. The wording wasn’t right, didn’t work. He gave me a sour look. He knew they didn’t approve. Mum had made him wait on the step that morning when he’d called for me on his way to school, closed the door while I rushed, embarrassed, upstairs for my shoes.

One of the girls, leaning in the shade of an empty bus shelter, seemed to notice for the first time that Sylvia was with us. She eyed her coolly.

‘Your mum won’t like you being with us,’ she said.

Sylvia was standing in the middle of the pavement, her eyes closed against the sun, head tilted up, as if experiencing sunlight for the first time. She opened her eyes and looked at us surprised, as if she wondered how she had found herself there, on this pavement, with these people, at this time of day. Her eyes passed over our faces and finally looked at the girl who had spoken. I felt a kind of stab as her searching eyes passed over mine.

‘She’s at the centre,’ Sylvia said, eventually.

‘What?’ the girl laughed, a thin snort, lazy and hollow.

‘My mum is at the centre today.’

Max became alert. ‘You’re home alone then?’

‘Let’s go to town,’ I said, trying to shift the focus. A bus was approaching, lumbering as if struggling in the heat. He ignored me, brushing past.

‘How will you get in, Sylvie?’ he asked in a mock-adult voice, concerned.

Sylvia looked to him as if he had reminded her of something and she reached into her stiff blouse, unembarrassed, oblivious to the passing glances and almost nervous laughs as she reached in, fumbled against her chest. She produced something that glimmered on a string.

‘I have my own key,’ she said, a pride in her clipped voice, and smiled, as if she had performed a trick. The bus passed and a man in the window looked up from a newspaper, just for a second, before looking away again.

It happened quite quickly after that. Max moved in first, put his arm around her, moving off in the direction of her street, the girls circling, springing into action, like cats stretching in the sun and suddenly snapping to.

‘I’d love to see inside your house,’ Max said, as casual as he could. Max wasn’t quite as tall as Sylvia and there was something ridiculous in the way he hung off her. She walked slowly and she had that look on her face, as if clouds were crossing it, as if she was trying to process each step, each voice, each crack in the pavement. She still held onto the key.

‘Me too,’ the girls chorused, ‘I bet you’ve got a really nice house,’ and again the silent, wild screams of contained joy behind her back. Sylvia let go of the key and it swung against her chest on the string. She brought her hands up to her temples, pushing loose strands of hair behind her ears. She watched the shadows dancing on the pavement and for a moment I thought she was going to resist.

‘I’m really thirsty,’ Max went on, ‘I haven’t had a drink all day,’ and he stretched his words in a singsong way, pulling his bottom lip into a droop. She looked back into his cartoon face with something like concern.

‘And there’s not even water in my house,’ he added, ridiculously. And the look in her eyes intensified as the giggles bubbled behind her.

‘I have water in my house,’ she said, the words not an invite but a kind of echo, a jigsaw falling into place, as if she was placing her words next to his and realising they made a pattern.

‘I’m so thirsty,’ and he contrived a cough so ridiculous that the girls openly laughed.

‘I have water,’ she repeated, ‘in my house,’ and there was a pause, as if they savoured the moment, wanted to see it unfold, delicious. We were at the gate.

Something must have been conflicting inside, thoughts bobbing, balancing, and Sylvia looked at us all in turn. I looked down when she looked at me.

‘You can come into my house,’ she said at last, and she walked through the gate, stiff yet calm, taking the key from around her neck. The others fell in line behind her, passing wild looks and silent laughs, waiting patiently, quiet as she fumbled with the lock, before disappearing into the dark of the house.

I was the last.

I could have walked away. I don’t think they would have even noticed, but I didn’t. I could hear my heart beating. I looked around, desperate to see a neighbour, a passer-by, anybody, so I could shout in after them that someone was coming. I even thought of lying, shouting that Mad Margaret herself was coming. But I didn’t. I took one last look around, I went inside and closed the door behind. Wooden panel. No glass.

3

As soon as I closed the door, I knew this was a mistake. The hallway opened onto a small parlour and there was a quiet at first as we stood around, as if the tidiness of the place and the smell of polish that hung in the air reminded us of our grandparents’ houses on this side of the estate, and something had triggered, a sudden respect or fear. But soon laughter cut through from the living room that some had followed Sylvia into.

I followed them in and they were moving quickly, greedily, gentle at first, perching on the edge of the old-fashioned couch and then springing up as if too excited, giggling at the old furniture, bouncing up and down on the chairs and picking up ornaments. The room was heavy with age and polish. The netting in the window filtered most of the sunshine and there was a stillness to the room, despite the commotion, as if it had a whole consciousness of its own and was waiting for us to leave, to be left alone with its pictures, its silence, its figurines. Sylvia stood in the middle of the room and there was a dull panic in her face, the eyes sharp and wide. She fidgeted with the key in her hands, winding the string round and round her fingers. I wondered then if she knew she had made a mistake.

‘We have water,’ she said, but they ignored her.

The boys had moved into the small back kitchen. I could hear the fridge door opening and cupboards banging open and shut. A girl picked up a framed wedding photograph from the mantlepiece and held it up for the others to see. It was Mad Margaret, but the face was a lot younger, happier, the hair like Sylvia’s. The man had a kind face, a shirt and tie, and wore a great coat that I recognised.

‘Is this your mum?’ the girl said. And the laugh that followed betrayed the motive of her question.

‘Where’s your dad?’ the girl said.

‘I told you,’ said another, ‘he’s dead.’

A slump in the laughter, and then another cut in, picking up a porcelain figure from a dresser, a dancing girl, and put it back the wrong way, as if she didn’t want her to see. ‘Mad Margaret did it. Everyone knows that.’

New laughter, darker.

Shadows passed over Sylvia’s face and she looked from one to the other. I hovered in the doorway.

‘We have water,’ she said again, the voice brittle.

Max pushed past me and rushed up the stairs.

‘Come on,’ the girls said, following. And for a minute I was alone with her in the front room, the heavy stillness had returned and there was only the ticking of an old clock. She looked through me. I wanted so much to tell her it would be alright, that I would get them out. There was a heavy thud upstairs and cloaked laughter. Sylvia looked at the ceiling with clear concern.

‘They’re not allowed,’ she said, and she brushed past me too and ran up the stairs.

They were in Margaret’s bedroom. The room had the same stuffiness as the parlour, the floral wallpaper and the thick curtains reminding me again of my grandparents’ house. More figurines. The double bed had a thick bedspread, and the boys were already jumping on it. A girl sat down at a dresser and laughed as she toyed with a powder puff, bringing it down into its little tub and making clouds of dust.

‘You’re not allowed,’ Sylvia said, as if she genuinely thought the girl didn’t know.

We were stood in the doorway like parents. I moved inside, hesitant, not knowing what to do. The boys were pushing at each other and one fell from the bed. Another girl squeezed herself onto the chair at the dresser, preening in the mirror and twisting at a lipstick, pretending to apply it as another took a silk dressing gown from the back of the door and threw it around herself. She cupped her hands to her eyes to make crude spectacles.

‘Look at me, I’m Mad Margaret,’ and the boys snorted approval.

‘Ew, you’ll get the mange!’ the girl in the mirror shouted, gorging on the words, and the other came up behind her and combed her hair with a brush she had found, an ornate thing that looked old and expensive. The girl suddenly twisted and grabbed at it, throwing it from her and shrieking in a cartoonish way.

It was only afterwards I thought that the clothes, the brush, the lipstick, didn’t look like something Mad Margaret would own. It didn’t match the woman who heaved herself up and shouted at us, baited, in the greatcoat, red-faced and spitting. These must have belonged to her a long time ago, another Margaret, the time in the photograph.

‘We should go, I think I can hear someone,’ I said at last.

Max stopped bouncing and stepped from the bed.

‘What’s that, what you say?’

‘Come on,’ I said, and I felt a new sickness as he circled me.

‘Baby wants to go home,’ he said and the others stopped bouncing too.

The boy who had fallen off the bed picked himself up and Max tugged at my ears.

‘Poor baby,’ he said, and I shrugged him off.

And then I heard Sylvia’s voice, it was louder now, authoritative.

‘Stop,’ she said, and that sharpness was in her eyes.

‘You have to stop.’

And it was like a trigger. There was movement everywhere. The girls laughed and tugged at drawers, pulling out beads and silk scarves. Boys jumped on the bed.

‘Stop! Stop!’ they mimicked her, and one pulled out something and screamed. We all looked. The girl held the underwear up to the light, stretching the pants out before throwing them at another girl. They were all screaming, and someone threw them at a boy who threw them back and swore. Sylvia’s voice was getting louder and louder and she held up her hands to her ears as she shouted.

‘Stop! Stop!’ and then the tone was deep and the voice was her mother’s.

‘Stop!’ she said, and the punchline came.

‘I tell you THIS IS TO STOP!’

There was a roar of laughter and the girls collapsed onto the clothes they had pulled from the drawers and from the wardrobe and I turned to Max who was eyeing me coolly by the bed.

‘What you gonna do?’ he said. ‘Baby.’ And I felt a surge of fear and hate all intertwined and I looked from him to the others, to the girls, as if I hoped that they might stop it first. Sylvia was starting to cry. And I felt the words coming out but the voice belonged to somebody else.

‘This is out of order,’ I said. ‘You need to get out.’ The word ‘we’ had stalled in the throat.

And they laughed, harder than they’d laughed at Sylvia, and the room spun. Boys clambered from the bed and surrounded, pushing me from one to another, a tightening circle.

‘He fancies Sylvia,’ someone said to more guttural laughs.

‘Yeah,’ Max said, ‘he’s sticking up for his girlfriend isn’t he?’ And there was a frenzy of voices and suddenly someone pushed me and a girl pushed Sylvia and before I knew it they were pushing us together, in the middle of this circle by the bed and I could smell the perfume they had sprayed.

Sylvia was terrified, open terror, not the cloud-shifting sky of her face anymore but open blank terror, and they were pushing and pushing and singing my name against hers and spinning us and spinning until there was one heavy shove and we fell together onto the bed.

Sylvia screamed then and there was a collapsing of laughter as if the room imploded. I tried to get up but I felt hands holding me down and someone grabbed at Sylvia who was screaming and screaming and they pushed her head towards mine.

‘Kiss your girlfriend then!’ I heard Max shout and I pushed back against it. Sylvia’s face had blanked into a white doll’s, her eyes empty, resigned, though her neck was rigid, fighting back against the hands that pushed at her. Our faces were almost touching. I managed to turn away and pushed with a newfound energy and struck out, scrambling from the bed. The others stood, grabbing. I lashed out and struck Max in the face. He punched back instantly and I felt a spring of pain bloom across my face.

‘Fight! Fight!’ the boys shouted and jeered, and I punched blindly until they fell back from me.

I stood there then, a distance flared between us. The fight was over before it had really begun. They were against the bed and I’d made it to the door. The girls had stopped and Sylvia was now standing by the window again.

The room seemed to sag, silence returning. Someone dragged an arm across the dresser, knocking a figurine to the floor, but almost gently. It was over. The girls moved first and filed out and down the stairs, their laughter no longer convincing. Max pushed past the others and I moved to let him through. For some reason I knew the fight was over and that he wouldn’t do anything now. He glared, as I moved to stand beside Sylvia. Max picked at his bleeding lip and looked at the blood on his fingers.

‘You’re a dead man,’ he said in his Hollywood voice, and shrugged at his jacket that had dragged down from his shoulder. But the words sounded hollow, young, and his voice wavered. He looked smaller. He moved off and the last of the boys followed, down the stairs, one after the other.

The door banged against its frame as they left and I heard it creak back open. I hurried down the stairs and closed it again. I felt a sudden steadying, stabilised by the knowledge I had at last done something right, and I rushed back upstairs. Sylvia was still standing in the room, her hands behind her ears, the chipped eyes trying to take in the mess. Her hair had come loose, the pins undone, and it fell down into her face. For a moment, she looked her age.

I moved slowly towards her and she jerked, startled.

‘It’s ok,’ I said. In a film I would have touched her shoulder.

The clouds returned to her face and the voice was steady. ‘You have to go.’

There was a heaviness again, the stillness of the room restored.

‘I’ll help,’ I said, and I picked a scarf from the floor. She rushed a few steps and snatched it from my hands, stepping back defensively. Her eyes became wild.

‘Don’t touch,’ she said. She was panting, eyeing me like a cornered animal.

‘I want to help,’ I said. I reached down again and picked up an ornament carefully, as if it was broken. It was a small thing, a porcelain bird. It was weighted in a way that when you rested its bill on a point on its wooden base, the bird floated there, perfectly balanced, bobbing gently as if gliding. I handed it to her. She snatched it back, held it to her chest, ran a thumb across its wings. The base was still on the dresser and after a moment she placed the bird there, and we watched as it dipped and bobbed, steadying. We were standing quite close. She turned and looked at my smiling mouth, as if to read it. Her eyes moved from my lips to my nose and to my swollen eyebrow.

‘There’s blood,’ she said.

I moved to the mirror. My eye was swollen slightly and a thick drop of red hung in my brow. She moved to join me, cautiously, in the mirror. Her hand came up to my brow as if to touch it and she looked at me, calm. I heard my heart in my chest, in my ears. She finally looked me in the eye just as the blood dripped and she stopped it with her fingers. The sun strained in through the netted window.

There was the sound of a key in the front door.

Sylvia pushed me back towards the bedroom door and I felt a thick fear. The room seemed to contract, shrink to me and I felt the blood thumping in my temples, in the eyebrow, the blood dripping down onto my shirt.

‘You have to go,’ she said, and we rushed down the stairs and into the kitchen as the front door was opening, and I thought for a minute I could get away, through the back door, but it was too late. The back door was locked.

‘What’s going on?’ The voice grew.

‘Who is this? What’s going on? Sylvia?’

Margaret stood in the living room doorway, blocking out the sun from the open door behind her, the greatcoat hanging from her. And Sylvia stood between us. I sensed the mess around us, the cupboard doors still open and the food that had been taken from the fridge and poked at and sniffed and left on the side. Margaret must have seen it too because she moved forwards, through the living room and towards the kitchen. The room was small and Margaret did not come inside. I sensed she was both angry and afraid.

‘What’s been going on?’ her voice was thick and low.

‘It’s ok,’ I heard Sylvia say and she moved back with me towards the sink on the back wall. Margaret filled the doorway, confused, and in some strange way embarrassed, I thought.

‘There was a fight,’ Sylvia said, ‘I am helping him.’

Sylvia moved to the sink and turned on a tap. She grabbed at a teatowel, rinsing and squeezing it, brisk and controlled. She came to me and dabbed my eye, gently. The room was thick with tension, Margaret standing stock still in the great coat and somehow awkward in her own kitchen. Sylvia dabbed, gently, gently.

‘Like this,’ she said. ‘Is that right, Mamma?’ The words, so old, in her voice.

Margaret, who had stared and stared from the doorway and clenched and unclenched her hands, came in fully and looked frightened, moved round me to the back door, as if backing away from a wild dog. She put a bag down on the side and watched me warily through the thick glasses. ‘Tell him to go,’ she said, low at first and then louder, finding her voice again. Her eyes on me.

‘I’m helping, Mamma.’ Sylvia continued with the cloth.

Margaret watched us, her face red and shining, the huge frame swaying a little, as if reeling from a blow. Or comforting herself, soothing. I thought of the bird on the stand upstairs, dipping and bobbing, steadying.

‘I should go,’ I said and Sylvia nodded, her chipped eyes warm, calm and calming.

‘Yes,’ she said, and we walked in a kind of daze back through the house to the front door.

And suddenly I was outside, looking back, halfway down the path. Sylvia was in the doorway, her hand keeping the sun from her eyes. I heard the voice behind her.

‘It’s him,’ Margaret said, the voice growing, swelling,

‘It’s him, it’s that boy, one of those boys!’ She grew behind Sylvia and I turned and got through the gate, looking back, ready to run. And I heard Sylvia’s voice, calm and calming.

‘No, Mamma,’ she said, watching me, her hand held out behind her, as if to keep her mum at bay, or to steady or to soothe, the fingers moving like the bird.

‘No, Mamma. It’s not.’

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Author: Ian O'Brien is a teacher living in Mid-Wales. His novelette-in-flash 'What The Fox Brings In Its Jaw' was published by Retreat West in 2021. His debut novel, 'Slow The Road Shows', will be published by Black Bee Books in October, 2026. He's online @ianobrienwriter

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