A very special place for the Dolly Darlings

By Julie Myerson, FT.com site

Published: Nov 24, 2006 

It is a rather grand, red-brick Georgian house, with a shiny red roof, Palladian porch and a mass of creeper over the front door. The kind of house where you'd crunch up the sweeping, mile-long driveway on a chill winter's night to hear dogs barking, people laughing and the sway of dance music drifting from inside.

Well, in my dreams anyway. In fact, though the first part is true, the house is way smaller inside than you'd think from the airs it gives itself. Just two meagre bedrooms, a narrow bathroom, a drawing room, hall and kitchen. There's a slightly wonky four poster bed with Laura Ashley sprigged curtains and a bath with a working plug but the fireplaces are only painted on. The once-pristine cellophane window panes are all torn now. And, though there used to be real electric light in all the rooms, it stopped working the day I dropped a doll's plate of bacon and eggs down the chimney.

Then the roof caved in because a cat sat on it and then, because I started to grow up, the rooms gathered dust and fluff, my sister's hamster chewed the banisters and slowly my doll's house fell into disrepair. The Dolly Darlings (you'll know who I'm talking about only if you're a British female and over 40) who used to live there very happily were wrapped in apricot-coloured Kleenex and laid in an old shoe 
box and the house sat dolefully on the landing outside my bedroom while I took exams, kissed boys, discovered Abba, played tennis and wrote poetry.

Its collapsing roof was occasionally used as a resting place for piles of freshly laundered towels on their way to the airing cupboard. And one spring a whole family of kittens amused everyone by squeezing their way in and out of the front door. But gradually the place took on a forlorn and derelict look. It became a forgotten house, unloved, unlived in.

When I went off to university, it was put in the loft, where, sealed in an old black bin bag, the only damage it sustained was a slight further caving in of the roof. Finally my mother moved house and dropped it on my doorstep along with a box of old pony annuals and - yes! - the famous forgotten Dolly Darlings.

My daughter, Chloë, was five and a half then - blonde-haired, dungareed, serious, tomboyish, not really a doll person. But, just like me, she gazed in awe the first time she saw it.

"Can it be mine? "

I looked at her.

"You really want it? You'd look after it? It's a very special house. "

She wiped her nose on her sleeve.

"My Sylvanians could live in it. "

"You don't want the Dolly Darlings? " I asked her hopefully, even though she'd never been a doll person (and I still was).

She picked up the dollies and looked them over. "Tea Time " still wore her tulle party dress, her Alice band, her white gloves. "Slumber Party ", with bobbed red hair and turquoise baby-doll pyjamas, looked almost fashionable. "Boy Trap " was still cute with her long white tights and green waistcoat. I used to long for a waistcoat like that.

"Why's she called Boy Trap? " Chloë asked.

"Because, I don't know, all the boys used to like her, I suppose. "

"And do they now? "

I shrugged.

"She's old now. She's nearly as old as me. "

My daughter considered this.

"I think my Sylvanians ought to live here. But I might let Boy Trap stay in the bathroom. "

"The bathroom? "

Chloë blinked.

"My animals need the other rooms. "

And so a clutch of Sylvanian badgers, owls, ducks and hedgehogs moved into the grand house and Boy Trap slept in the bath like a poor relation. Tea Time and Slumber Party were never very welcome, though you might occasionally catch them propped up outside looking in. A rabbit had the four-poster bed all to himself. It seemed an awful waste but what could I say?

I mended the red cardboard roof with packaging tape and, to our joy and amazement, Chloë's father made the electric lighting work again.

"Now they can do stuff at night, " Chloë announced, and it was true that whenever you peeped in, the house seemed to be crammed with woodland animals clustered excitedly around the electric-lit furniture. It was a relief to see the house restored to its former life and grandeur.

But that was 10 years ago. Chloë is now a guitar-playing teenager, too old for the house and too young to provide it with the new owners it needs. And last month I came across it while clearing out the cupboard under the stairs and had to decide whether it was really worth keeping. It's looking quite battered now. The roof has come right off and I doubt the lights will ever work again.

But then I did what I used to do. I lay on the floor and peeped in through the windows and breathed in its particular smell and suddenly it was a sparkly winter's night again and I was in a grand place, on my way to a wonderful party. Forty years had gone by but the thrill was the same.

The house is safe in my study now. I'm going to look into what a new roof would cost and see about the lights. And when it's all fixed up I'm going to see if the Dolly Darlings want to move back in again. I don't think of it as playing. I think of it as property renovation.