The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [214]
“You know you can’t find the money to send the girl to Munich, which is to say that I must. And I can’t work any faster. And we must do something about Tom. There’s something going on, that I don’t know about.”
“I told her she isn’t my daughter. It slipped out. I’m sorry.”
Olive stood in her dressing-gown and looked hard at him.
“We don’t know that she isn’t.”
“Yes we do. Be honest, Olive. We do.”
“Why did you tell her? It wasn’t your right.”
Humphry, crestfallen, stared at the carpet.
Olive considered him. Reasons for his madness flickered across her mind and were rejected. The writer in her could have imagined a scene in which the secret had “slipped out.” The woman in her felt both threatened and enraged. The woman needed to keep calm, or the writer would be unable to work tomorrow. The woman was afraid of age and loss. Toby was abandoning his devotion to her to go jaunting off to Munich with two blossoming girls. She hadn’t heard from Herbert Methley for months. He had besieged her, and then had abruptly retreated. She looked coldly at Humphry who was sitting on the edge of the bed, with his arms folded round himself.
“It all seems very odd to me,” she said, mildly enough. And added “It will do her good, to get away from here, for a time. She’s growing up.” She thought hard. “I shan’t speak to her, myself.”
“No need,” said Humphry.
Olive knew that there was a need, and that she had not got the required courage.
On the day Dorothy left for the Continent, escorted by a debonair and smiling Toby Youlgreave, August Steyning came to tea with Olive. Humphry had shut himself in his study to write. Tom had vanished into the wood, as he did vanish. Violet was out with the little ones. Hedda was hanging around, when August Steyning’s trap came up the drive. She looked angry and resentful. Olive came out on the step to greet the visitor, and saw Hedda kicking gravel. Everyone seemed to be surly, Olive thought. She said
“Go and find yourself something useful to do, Hedda. I’m sure you should be studying.”
Steyning climbed down, and handed the reins to the stable boy. He took Olive’s hands.
“I trust you have some time for me? I have sunk into a slough of despond, and need your strong hands to pull me out.” He saw Hedda. “Good afternoon, young lady.” He turned back to her mother. “I need you, my dear, I really need your help.” His voice was light and cool, his emphases almost mocking. Hedda shuffled her feet.
“Hedda, do go away, I’ve already asked you to go away. I need to talk to Mr. Steyning and he needs to talk to me. Go and—go and read a book.”
She said to Steyning that they would have tea on the lawn, and took his arm. They turned their backs on the glowering girl.
“Do you remember,” Steyning asked Olive, “the appalling boredom of being that age? With nothing to do, and only oneself to think about? There are compensations to being older.”
Olive sat in a basket chair and spread her skirts. She turned an eager face to her visitor, as he took his chair. Humphry was sulking, Methley had vanished, Toby was going to the station with Dorothy, laughing and insouciant. She flirted in a serious way with August Steyning, of whom she was slightly in awe. He was hidden a long way behind his quizzical smile and his narrow face. She thought he really liked her, but was not sure. She knew he liked to look at her, but did not think he felt desire, as Toby and Herbert Methley did. She did not know him well enough to know how he lived. She supposed he might, like the imprisoned Oscar, feel romantic love for young men. This was common in the theatre. She tried to be broadminded—she would have liked to be Bohemian—but felt in fact a squeamish distaste for the physical descriptions in the newspapers of the hotel rooms to which Oscar had taken his boys. She smiled at August Steyning who smiled back.
The maid brought a tea-tray, and set up a table. She poured tea. August said it always did him good to be in that garden. It was a hive of energy. He could feel Olive