Free Tamar by Mal Peet

and muffled it with his hand. Because the shop window was packed with dangling puppets, the light inside was dim. He closed the door behind him and waited for his eyes to adjust. It was not a large space, and so crammed that he could not imagine how more than one customer at a time could squeeze in. The longer wall, opposite the window, was completely taken up with shelves and cabinets. One shelf supported the severed heads of clowns, kings, fabulous beasts, ogres, demons; another was filled with silent musical boxes, frozen figurines perched on their lids. A glass cabinet contained a galaxy of glass eyes. Tables and showcases crowded the floor. A host of marionettes hung limply from hooks in the ceiling like dead parachutists.
    There was, Dart now saw, a narrow route through these obstacles towards a curtained doorway at the rear of the shop. Just in front of it, half a dozen ventriloquists’ dummies perched on a counter, staring at Dart as though he had dared to interrupt a private conversation. He was seriously alarmed when one of them — the one with a head sprouting white hair like dandelion seeds — opened its mouth and said, “Dr. Lubbers, I presume?” When Dart didn’t manage a reply, Pieter Grotius took his elbows off the counter and straightened up. It didn’t make much difference to his height; he was a very small man. He moved nimbly through the maze of the shop and held out his hand. Dart shook it; it felt like a clever contraption made of sticks and cords covered in skin.
    “I hope you had no trouble getting here?”
    “Um, no. Not really. But I am worried about Trixie. The Germans at the checkpoint —”
    Grotius made a gesture, like waving away a fly. “Ach, don’t worry about Trixie. She’s an unstoppable force, that one. People with freckles lead charmed lives, have you noticed?”
    “Er, no, I —”
    “But you have noticed that she has freckles?”
    “Yes,” Dart said.
    “Good,” Grotius said approvingly. “Now, let’s go through to the workshop. Trixie will be coming in the back way in just a couple of minutes.”
    Pieter Grotius’s workplace was a complete contrast to the confusion of the shop. It was a long narrow room full of cool light. Two workbenches and two stools stood below the frosted glass windows. Carpentry tools hung in precise order on racks attached to the wall. An immense number of paint pots filled a shelf, arranged in a strict colour sequence like a stretched and flattened rainbow. On one of the benches, a small wooden torso was clamped in a vice.
    Just as Pieter Grotius had predicted, Trixie appeared, shoving open the back door with the front wheel of her bike. Trixie stooped to kiss him on both cheeks, then turned and hoisted Rosa from the trailer. The child was snivelling quietly, and her cheeks were wet with tears. Grotius locked and bolted the door and went to stand in front of Trixie, his eyes almost level with Rosa’s. He put his hand into his trouser pocket, and when he pulled it out again, it was wearing a white glove with two black buttons sewn onto the forefinger. He closed his hand and flexed his thumb, making a bug-eyed face that spoke with the voice of Groucho Marx.
    “Hey, kid! Yeah, you! Wha’s the madder? Looks like water on your ugly face. Is it raining in here, or you got water on the brain? Need a tap on the head?”
    Rosa’s wet eyes stared at the glove face.
    “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: what’s a girl godda do to get a drink in this joint? I was thinking the same thing myself. Waiter! Waiter!”
    The hand looked around the room, recoiling in horror when it saw Grotius. Rosa thrashed her arms and legs delightedly.
    Trixie glanced across at Dart and saw that his smile was forced. The tension showed through it. He felt, she realized, excluded from this familiar routine.
    It seemed that Pieter Grotius also understood this. “Forgive us, please, Ernst. It’s our little ritual. Rosa enjoys it. And so do I, to be honest. She’s the