The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [13]
She nestled closer to him, so he could feel the warmth and weight of her body, almost leaning on him, almost cuddling.
“They are Elsie and Nellie and Amelia and Hope,” said Philip reluctantly.
“And the dead ones? Our dead ones are Peter, who died just before Tom was born, so he’s fifteen, and Rosy, who was a dear little baby.”
“Be quiet, Phyllis,” said Tom. “He doesn’t want to know all that.”
Phyllis insisted, moving closer to Philip. “And your dead ones? What are their names?”
“Ned,” said Philip flatly. “And Robert Owen. And Rosy. Well, Mary-Rose.” He tried very hard to remember neither their faces nor their bodies.
Dorothy said “After lunch we’re going to take Philip out and teach him to ride a safety-bicycle.” She told Philip “We’ve all got one. They’ve got names, like the ponies. Mine’s called Mona-Bona-Grona, because she creaks. Tom’s is just the Steed.”
“And mine is Tiptoes,” said Phyllis. “Because my legs are almost too short.”
“It is the most wonderful sensation,” said Dorothy. “Most especially running away downhill. Have some more paper, make another, we have to hang them from all the trees in the shrubbery and the orchard.”
I were begging scraps of paper in South Kensington, Philip thought. And here they throw away whole sheets with one gone-wrong bird in one corner.
He looked up and had the disconcerting sense that Dorothy was reading his mind.
Dorothy had indeed, more or less accurately, followed Philip’s thoughts. She did not know how she had done that. She was a clever, careful child, who liked to think of herself as unhappy. Faced with Philip’s hunger and reticence, she was forced, because she had been brought up in the Fabian atmosphere of rational social justice, to admit that she had “no right” to feel unhappy, since she was exceedingly privileged. She was unhappy, she told herself, for frivolous reasons. Because, as the eldest girl, she was treated as a substitute nanny. Because she was not a boy, and did not have a tutor, as Tom did, to teach her maths and languages. Because Phyllis was pretty and spoiled, and more loved than she was. Because Tom was much more loved. Because she wanted something and did not know what it was.
She was just eleven—born in 1884, “the same year as the Fabian Society,” Violet pointed out. They had been the Fellowship of the New Life, in those days, and Dorothy was the new life, drawing in socialist ideals with her early milk. The grown-ups made further pointed and risky jokes across and about her, which irritated her. She didn’t like to be talked about. Equally, she didn’t like not to be talked about, when the high-minded chatter rushed on as though she was not there. There was no pleasing her, in fact. She had the grace, even at eleven, to know there was no pleasing her. She thought a lot, analytically, about other people’s feelings, and had only just begun to realise that this was not usual, and not reciprocated.
She was busy thinking about Philip. He thinks we are being kind out of condescension, whereas actually that isn’t so, we are just being friendly, like we always are, but it makes him suspicious. He doesn’t really want us to know about where he comes from. Mother thinks his home is unhappy and his family are cruel—that’s one of her favourite stories. She ought to see—I can see—he doesn’t like that. I think he feels bad because they don’t know where he is or how he is. He feels more bad now we’re making all this fuss of him than he did hiding under the Museum.
I wonder what he wants, she asked herself, without finding an answer, since Philip was silent on that subject—as, indeed, he was silent about almost everything.
The safety-bicycle lesson took place in the afternoon, as promised. Philip was lent Violet Grimwith’s cycle, a solid machine, painted blue. Violet had named it Bluebell. The Hanger Woods were full of bluebells. Nevertheless Tom and Dorothy felt it was a weak name.
Tom, on the Steed, rode round and round the grassy clearing between the back door and the woods, demonstrating