The Children's Book

Katharina sometimes thought that Griselda and Dorothy were almost unhealthily bound up in each other. Griselda saw that thought pass across her thin face, though it was not articulated.

“And when we come back—you will give a dance, and I will be serious about coming out, and after that you will allow me to study in Cambridge if I still want to—”

Katharina kissed Griselda. She said

“There is something I don’t know—”

“There is always something girls don’t tell. But it isn’t an important thing,” said Griselda, lying splendidly. And Katharina smiled, and agreed to the journey.

Dorothy had formed the violent intention of never returning to Todefright. She would become an exile. She would go to Bavaria, where she had no particular wish to go, to find a father whom she did not particularly wish to see. But she was a practical being, and understood that she could not get away without going back. Clothes must be packed. Money must be discussed. Studies must be arranged. She asked Griselda to come with her. Together they were less approachable, less open to blackmail, or emotional invasion. She dreaded being in the same house as Humphry, and assumed he dreaded confronting her. Olive, too, had shifted in her inner landscape. She had done something, felt something, which had been kept a secret, which changed hugely who she was for Dorothy, in ways Dorothy had not yet worked out.

She stayed a few days in Portman Square, pretending to be ill. She did not say much more to Charles and Griselda than she already had. Any wrong things said, could only make things more dangerous, more precarious.

She dreamed about both her fathers. Her dreams were hectic. She dreamed of Humphry, walking towards her, smiling under his foxy moustache, across the meadow at Todefright. In the dream he stood in the sun, and opened his arms, and lifted her up to kiss her, as he had done when she was a child, and in the dream she understood she had made a terrible mistake—she could not remember what it was—but her father was holding her safe and all would be well. Then she woke up, and remembered.

Her dreams about Anselm Stern were more confused. She could not exactly remember what he had looked like, and in the dream confused him with his own marionettes, so that he advanced towards her swaying and gesticulating, with a fixed, silent, sinister smile. He was always black, as he had been when he came. He was a kind of spider. He floated towards her in many different, unknown rooms, and held out his arms with their fluid joints, to embrace her, and she wanted to run away, and knew she must not, and woke in a fright.

In Todefright, everyone tried to behave well. Humphry and Olive greeted them in the hall, and Humphry, smiling too much, told Griselda she looked very pretty, and welcomed Dorothy without looking at her. Dorothy kissed Olive coldly. Olive could feel a turmoil of feeling, by which she was baffled. Dorothy was closed and cold, and she didn’t know why. This perturbed the writer as well as the mother—she liked to leave her world warm and smiling before she closed herself away with the typewriter.

Over supper that night Griselda explained the Munich project. She was so keen on going herself—Charles was always going there—the tutors had agreed to come—and she so wanted Dorothy to come with her, it was a wonderful opportunity before she had to concentrate on all those terrible exams.

Joachim Susskind’s aunt had a pension. Charles had been there.

Olive thought secretly that she had not known Griselda was such a minx. Butter wouldn’t melt in her pale mouth. Something had happened. Money was short at that moment in the Wellwood house. Travel to Munich and accommodation and tuition for a daughter who could very well stay at home were inconvenient to find. Dorothy, naturally truthful, trying to find a lie, said in an unnatural voice of enthusiasm that she had never wanted anything so much as she now wanted to go to Munich with Griselda and Charles and the tutors. Mr. Youlgreave was coming too. Humphry, also sounding unnaturally enthusiastic, said that in that case, the money must be found. Tom said he couldn’t see why anyone wanted to travel.

In their bedroom at night, Olive turned on Humphry and asked him what had happened.

“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.