The Children's Book

45

Dorothy and Griselda had both come to Todefright. Dorothy had told Griselda that Olive was anxious about Tom. She told her about the Tree House, whose fate, irrationally, made Dorothy herself anxious about Tom. Griselda said they had been invited by Wolfgang to go backstage after the performance, and see the complicated machinery that worked the puppets and marionettes. There would be another time, said Griselda. Dorothy thought, not for the first time, that Griselda seemed to know more than she did herself about Wolfgang and his doings, although he was Dorothy’s brother. Half-brother, like Tom.

When they got to Todefright, Olive was pacing the hall, backwards and forwards, like a shuttle in a loom. Be still, said Humphry, watching. Violet made tea for Griselda and Dorothy. Everybody in the house was on the move and watching from windows: Hedda perambulatory, Violet in the kitchen, Phyllis and the younger boys in the nursery. Griselda, in a fading voice, said to Olive that the reception of the play had been extraordinary.

Olive said “What did you mean about the Tree House?”

“When I was last here, I said, let’s go to the Tree House. He didn’t tell me it was all cut down. He just took me there. I thought—I thought it was unkind of him.” She paused. “But like him.”

“Very like,” said Olive.

Hedda said “There’s a motor car in the drive. There’s a driver, and another man, and a woman with one of those veils. They’re getting out. It looks like Maid Marian.”

She had picked up this way of referring to Mrs. Oakeshott by snooping when she was younger. It was possible that she would not have used it, if she had been less anxious. Humphry gave her a dark look.

The car turned out to belong to Basil Wellwood. The male passenger, unwrapped from his goggles and leather coat, was Charles/Karl. They came into the hall, and stood, mute. Marian Oakeshott said

“I had hoped—to be able to speak to you in private.” She addressed this remark to Humphry. Olive said “We are all here—we are all here because. You can speak to all of us.”

Violet took Marian’s driving coat, and Charles/Karl’s. Griselda looked at him with a bewildered frown.

“I was just visiting—” he said, “when. Mrs. Oakeshott has something to tell you.”

Violet said “Why don’t you all come in, and sit down?”

Humphry said “Tell us, Marian, please.”

Marian Oakeshott said that a light overcoat—a town overcoat—and a pair of shoes had been found on the shingle at Dungeness point. There was no name on them. They had not been in the water. The overcoat had been made by a tailor in Sevenoaks. In its pockets were thirteen acorns, a horse chestnut, and half a dozen pebbles from the shingle. And a programme of Tom Underground. Folded and folded, as small as it would go. The coastguard had these things. She needed to add that Elsie Warren’s daughter, Ann, had seen, from the window, someone walk past, in these clothes. She said he was a tall, fair, thin young man, who was walking, she said, these were her words, “too fast.” All this may mean nothing at all. She said, we all remember Benedict Fludd. She said “I shall never forgive myself if I have worried you unnecessarily.”

“I am afraid there is little hope of that,” said Humphry.

Violet said “I really do think we should all sit down.”

Dorothy took hold of Olive—awkwardly, on the forearm—and led her into the drawing-room. A pretence was made of an ordinary tea-party, with cake, on a plate made by Philip Warren.

Humphry said he would drive back to Dungeness with Marian and Charles/Karl, if Charles/Karl was agreeable.

Olive said she would come too.

Not on this journey, said Humphry.

I can’t sit here, said Olive.

You must, said Humphry. You must.

It was not exactly like the drowning of Benedict Fludd. After two days, the body floated into a fishing-net near Dymchurch. Humphry, who had identified the coat and shoes and returned to Todefright, set out to go back to identify the thing. Olive tried to say she would come, and accepted meekly when Humphry told her she must not. When he came back again, he was white, and looked older.

“Not recognisable,” he said to Dorothy. “Not—as a person.”

I know, said Dorothy, who had studied death, but not her own dead.

Dorothy stayed at Todefright. There was an inquest, and a funeral in St. Edburga’s Churchyard, conducted by Frank Mallett. Olive was subdued, and held on to Dorothy. There was a good, warm tea at the vicarage, and conversation, of a kind. Arthur Dobbin was about to congratulate Olive on the success of Tom Underground, which he hoped to see, when the name caught him short, and he did not pronounce it. Olive looked at him darkly, piercing. He saw she knew exactly what had gone through his mind. He said instead that this was a churchyard full of changing weather, and the poor woman—he thought of her as a poor woman—lost her glare, and smiled briefly. She did not say anything about Tom, from start to finish of the proceedings.

Back in Todefright, she still clung to Dorothy. “You are the one who knows,” she said to her. Dorothy stayed on. For two or three days Olive did things she had always done. She answered letters. She thanked people for their good wishes. She stared out at the wintry garden, and the frosted tuft of pampas grass.

Then, one day, Phyllis fell over Olive, unconscious at the foot of the stairs. She was carried up, and put to bed. She lay like a stone for another two days, and then tried to get up, and fell. She nestled back into the big bed, where she had sat with Tom and made up stories that wound along the counterpane.

She allowed herself to think of him, briefly. And suddenly the room was full of every Tom that had ever been, the blond baby, the infant taking his first, hesitant steps, the little boy clutching her skirt, the besotted reader in too low a light, his brows pulled into a frown, the adolescent with his skin broken out, the young man walking, always walking or about to walk. They were all equally present because they were all gone.

She remembered the tale she had told to herself of the young woman carrying the packet containing the deaths of Pete and Petey, the young woman walking endlessly in grim weather across the moors, with the unopened packet. There was no room in that packet, for this.

She thought of the forest of coeval boys, all eternally present, crowding her room, and the old Olive thought idly, this is a story, there is a story in this.

And then she saw that there was not. There would be no more stories, she thought, dramatically, uncertain whether this too was a story, or a full stop.

She gave a great howl, and Dorothy came quickly. She gave her calming medicine that the doctor had left. She smoothed the pillows.

Olive said “You won’t leave me? You will stay, now? You are the only one.”

Dorothy gave a desperate little shrug, and closed her body in on itself. She said stiffly

“I can’t stay. I must go back to my work. You know that.” Silence.

“It isn’t true that I am the only one. There is Papa, and Aunt Violet, and Phyllis, who is much kinder than I am, and Hedda, who wants to help. They all care for you. I care for you, but you know I must do my work.”

A long silence. Then Olive said “Close the curtains before you go.”

Dorothy closed them. She kissed her mother, who did not respond. She went out, and closed the door. Olive lay in the dark, surrounded by a forest of sempiternal boys. They did not exactly see her, that was her hope. She tried to remember the woman with the package, walking… She had asked for the stone with a hole, and had it under her pillow.