The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [314]
A woman journalist had come from The Lady to interview Olive. She wrote about Todefright in the winter sunshine.
She lives in the perfect house for a writer at once so enchanting and so down to earth. I suggested to her that there was something witchy about the name Todefright and she immediately put me right. Todefright comes from the amphibian and an old Kentish word for “meadow.” No death or spectres! And it is such a mellow pleasant house, with bright, unusual pots and plates, with hand-crafted modern wooden furniture that looks centuries old. There is a pleasant lawn for children to play on, which borders a satisfactorily mysterious wood. Mrs. Wellwood has seven children, ranging from young men and women to schoolboys, all of whom have been the privileged first listeners and readers for Mrs. Wellwood’s spellbinding tales! The house is full of their presence—bats and balls, models and exercise books, no question of these children being banished to a nursery, seen and not heard.
We discussed her wonderful inventions, the Silf and the Gathorn, and the splendid acting of Miss Brettle and Master Thornton in those parts. Had she enjoyed the challenge of working with nonhuman actors, with life-size figures and tiny marionettes? She spoke enthusiastically of Mr. Steyning’s innovative lighting, and the skills of the Stern family from Munich.
The interviewer did not want to leave the charming house. Violet gave her coffee, and Humphry drove her to the station. “Where do you think Tom is, Vi?”
“He’s walking about somewhere. That’s what he does.”
“That woman wanted to talk to him.”
“That’s probably why he’s not here. He’s not so unworldly that he doesn’t think of lying low, at the moment.”
Tom had suddenly come to a temporary stop. He had found a barn, at the edge of a coppice, in stubble fields, and had come in and found heaped logs and bales of straw. So he lay spread-eagled on the straw, and heard the mice scampering and the rooks cawing in the wood.
He went into a dreamless sleep and woke not knowing quite where he was, or why. A man with a grey-and-white woolly beard and a squashed hat was looking at him, gloomily.
“I’m sorry,” said Tom. He found it was odd to hear his voice. “I haven’t done any harm.”
“I wasn’t about to say you had.”
“I’ll be on my way.”
“And where is that?”
They went out onto the downside, and looked up at the skyline. “Over there, I think. Todefright.”
“Over there. Aye. Take the track by the woody bits and bear right, and you’ll come to the road, with luck. Are you hungry?”
“A bit,” said Tom. He had meant to tire himself out, and was pleased at how slowly he thought, and how his hunger seemed not to be part of him. The old man offered him an apple, a red and yellow and juicy apple, which Tom bit into. The old man then offered him a broken-off piece of pasty, containing mostly vegetables, a bit of turnip, some carrots, some onion.
They went out onto the track in the bright light, and Tom set out again, over the chalky track and the short grass of the downland, up towards the skyline.
The easy way home was to join the main road which skirted Biggin Hill and ran south to Westerham. He stood on a ridge, with the cold wind in his hair, and looked about him.
Then he turned left, not right, towards Downe, and then he continued to go east into the heart of the North Downs.
He meant to exhaust himself. His body was something he observed, loping along, muscles pulling and ripping.
He thought, As for my head, there has never been much in my head, not really.
Full of an unreal world, he thought, maybe a question of a mile further on. A creature tried to materialise in his head, a boy-woman with a gilded cap of hair, shapely legs in black tights, an improbable Sherwood Green doublet with an elegant wide leather belt, with a silver buckle. He fought back. He imagined it bleeding, covered with blood. He tried to stop imagining.
He did this by concentrating on his steady feet, and