The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [215]
Olive drew him out and gave him sandwiches and iced biscuits. He talked about the mood in the world of the arts. Everyone, he said, was reading stories originally written for children—stories of magic, stories of quests, stories of half-humans who were still in touch with the ancient earth, of speaking beasts, and centaurs, Pan and Puck. He was quite sure she could write him a play along those lines—in that dreamworld that was more real than urban rattle—he wanted to do something delightful and complicated with mirrors, and lights, and wires … and shadows.
Olive said, her voice dragging a little, that she was writing a tale about a boy—a Prince—who lost his Shadow, and went Underground in search of it.
“How did he lose it?”
“Oh, it was snipped off his feet in his cradle, by a monstrous rat, with sharp yellow teeth, who rolled it up, and took it behind the skirting-board, and down horrible holes, underground, to the Queen of the shadows. His family—the King and Queen—try to keep him safe, in a walled garden—you know how these things always—but he meets the Queen of Elfland who needs his help, and carries him away on her white horse with bells—through seas of blood abune the knee, of course—to the opening of a mine-shaft. And he has to go in, and further in, and further in—and meets all sorts of strange creatures down there, some friendly, some evil, some indifferent… ”
“Does he get it back?”
“I haven’t got there yet. It’s an interminable story. I’m telling it for Tom. Each of my children,” she said, in the charming voice with which she had spoken to Miss Catchpole, “has his or her own story, in his or her own notebook. They were bedtime stories, but now the children are older—or some of them are—they’re a kind of game. I don’t know why I keep that going. Sometimes it feels a little silly. You know what you have said, about stories under the hills, of old things and inhuman things, and magic that used to run through everything and has now shrunk to odd little patches of magic woods and hummocks? Toby Youlgreave talks a great deal about the Brothers Grimm and their belief that fairytales were the old religion—the old inner life—of the German people? Well, I sometimes feel, stories are the inner life of this house. A kind of spinning of energy. I am this spinning fairy in the attic, I am Mother Goose quacking away what sounds like comforting chatter but is really—is really what holds it all together.” She gave a little laugh, and said “Well, it makes money, it does hold it all together.”
30
They arrived at the Pension Susskind, in Schwabing, which was managed by Joachim Susskind’s aunt, Carlotta. Katharina Wellwood, being German, imagined this place as a severe and upright dwelling, spotlessly clean, with dull and wholesome food served promptly at fixed hours. “Lotte” Susskind she saw in her mind’s eye as a tall figure in black, with a châtelaine at her waist, an impeccable white collar, and a shiny knot of greying hair. Olive imagined something more informal and rosy—her vision of Lotte Susskind wore a fresh apron over a large bosom, and baked sweetmeats for the lucky residents. In fact Joachim Susskind’s aunt was a young aunt, though she had two teenage daughters, Elli and Emmi. She was bony and angular, dressed in flowing blouses and sweeping skirts, with a mop of wild wiry hair, and a pointed, slightly witchy chin. The pension was a rambling building, with balconies and corridors joining structures which might once have been stables or dairies. Dorothy and Griselda