The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [306]
“These are turbulent pots. Seething pots. Storms in teacups and vases. Creatures running through everything like maggots in cheese. Stately vessels with storms raging on them.”
“You get things right. You are very clever.”
“I wish I could make things, instead of being clever about other people’s things. I remember finding Philip when he was a filthy ragamuffin hiding in a tomb in a basement. I only wanted to stop him trespassing.”
Griselda laughed.
“And now they’ve bought that big bowl with a flood on it, and that tall jug with the creatures climbing, for the Museum.”
“That’s a good story.”
“Rags to riches.”
“Well, to works of art, anyway—”
Dorothy went back to Todefright for the weekend. She got up early, and found Tom eating bread and butter.
“Let’s go out for a walk,” she said. “It’s a bright day.”
Tom nodded. “If you like.”
“We could go to the Tree House.”
“If you like.”
They walked through the woods under turning leaves, yellow and yellow-green, lifeless as green leaves, not yet crisp and brilliant as russet or scarlet leaves. Now and then, one dropped through the branches, resting on a twig, falling a bit further, eddying aimlessly, reaching the mulch under their feet. Dorothy tried to talk to Tom. She did not talk to him about her work, because she sensed a determined lack of interest in it. She talked about the pots, and about Hedda’s school exams, and about Violet’s problems with the bones in her ankles, which she had not known about, and thought must be more serious than anyone appeared to realise. Tom said almost nothing. He pointed out pheasants, and a rabbit. The wood smelt of rich, incipient rottenness. They turned a corner, to where the Tree House used to stand, camouflaged and secret.
“It’s gone,” said Dorothy. The neat heaps of chopped-down wood were still there.
“Yes,” said Tom.
For a moment she thought he had done this himself, in an excess of depression or madness.
He said “It was the gamekeeper. He had no right, it is public land, not part of his coppices.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
Tom said, meekly and meanly, “I didn’t think you’d be interested. Not really. Not much.”
“It was the Tree House. All our childhood.”
“Yes,” said Tom.
“I’m sorry,” said Dorothy, as though she had hacked at the walls herself.
“Not your fault,” said Tom. “There it is. Where shall we go now?”
Olive called Dorothy into her study, before the pony-cart took her back to the station.
“I wish you’d come home more often. I’m worried about Tom.”
The study had changed. It was full of odd dolls, and pâpiér-máché figures, and stage-sets in miniature, and puppets with strings perched on bookshelves. Anselm Stern’s work, thought Dorothy, piqued that her real parents appeared to be working together behind her back. She said
“What do you think is wrong with Tom?”
“I don’t know. He’s hostile to me. I can’t reach him.”
“Maybe you don’t try,” said Dorothy, and wished she had not. Olive put her head briefly in her hands. She said with a weary spite
“You certainly don’t. You never come home. I know you mean to save lives and work wonders, but you’re too busy to notice your family, or be kind to them.”
Dorothy picked up one of the puppets—a small grey, ratlike puppet, with a gold collar and stitched-in ruby-beaded eyes.
“And where do you think I learnt that?” she heard herself ask. “Look at you. Tom looks sick, and your room is full of all these stuffed dolls—”
“I’m writing a play. With August Steyning. We’ve just got the lease of the Elysium Theatre next year. There’s never been anything like it.”
“Well, I hope it’s a very successful play. I really do. But I think Tom is sick. And you’re his mother. Not me.”
“Ah, but he loves you, and trusts you, you were always so close.”
Dorothy set her teeth, and started