The Children's Book

“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 balance. Dorothy helped Philip, holding his saddle, whilst he balanced precariously.

“It’s much easier if you’re going,” she told him. “No one can balance at a standstill.”

Philip set off and fell off and set off and fell off and set off and pedalled halfway round the clearing, and fell off, and set off and rode, a little wobbly, right round the clearing. For the first time since he had come to Todefright, he laughed aloud. Tom was wheeling figures of eight. Phyllis appeared and executed some neat circles. Tom said Philip was now good enough to go out into the lanes, so they went out, Tom in the lead, then Philip, then Dorothy, then Phyllis. They pedalled along Frenches Lane, which was flat, between hawthorn hedges, and then turned up the wooded hillside, up Scarp Lane, between overarching trees which made deep wells of shadow, interspersed with dazzling blades of brightness. Philip had an idea for a dark, dark, cauldron-like pot, with shiny streaks on a matt surface. When he thought of the imaginary pot, and not of the metal construction that carried him, his balance improved, and he accelerated.

Behind him, Dorothy also went faster. She had the passion for speed which is strongest in girls of eleven or twelve. She dreamed of riding a racehorse along a beach, between sand and sea. Since she had had the bicycle she had dreamed frequently of flying, quite near the ground, skimming the flowerbeds, seated like a fakir on an invisible carpet.

At the brow of the hill they rode along a glade, and Tom said

“Shall we swoop down Bosk Hill?”

“It’s steep,” said Dorothy. “Will Philip be all right?”

“I’m doing finely,” said Philip, grinning.

So they turned into Boskill Lane, which had both a sharp gradient and crooked-elbow corners. Dorothy was now in front of Philip, behind Tom, who was speeding away from them. Dorothy felt the usual, delightful tightening in her insides. She looked back to see if Philip was all right. He was nearer than she thought, and she wobbled across his track. He shuddered, skidded, and went through the air, more or less over Dorothy. She fell over on the track, scraping her shins, wheels and pedals spinning. Phyllis sailed past, gripping her handlebars, primly upright.

Dorothy picked up Mona-Bona-Grona, and went to look at Philip. He was sprawled on his back under an oak tree, deep in a mass of wild garlic, crushed by his landing into extraordinary pungency. He was lying still, staring up through the leaves.

“My fault,” said Dorothy. “All my fault. Are you hurt?”

“Don’t think so, no. Winded.”

He began to laugh.

“What’s funny?”

“There are things in the country that smell quite as foul as things in the town. Only vegetable foul, not smoky. I’ve never smelt anything in the least—like this.”

“It’s wild garlic. It isn’t very nice.”

Philip could not stop laughing. “It’s horrible. But it’s new, you know.”