The Children's Book

unacknowledged German brothers. He was uneasy, yes, but this was because he felt people thinking he himself ought to be, or do, something.

A metaphor for herself came into her mind, which was the equivalent of her metaphor for Dorothy. Dorothy she perceived as a doorless, windowless hut, encountered by a lost soul in a deep forest in need of shelter. The quester prowled around and around, and the blind brick walls emitted no light or sound, and there was no way in.

Sometimes she moved the brick tower to a distant place on the plain. Surrounded—her mind worked busily—by the dried-up skeletons of those who had seen it as a refuge and arrived thirsty and starving.

Opposite it, on the plain, stood a building which was made of hard porcelain, which had once had the shape of a capacious wardrobe, and was now carapace, in which a living creature was enclosed, or self-enclosed, had perhaps excreted the shell, which had graded colours and ridges and frills, as a whelk might, or a monstrous hermit-crab.

There were things—many things—she did not wish to know, was appalled to think of knowing.

The porcelain was light, lighter than air. The wind took it over quicksands. The porcelain was painted with eyes, but they did not see as a peacock’s tail does not see, or a moth’s wing.

If she stopped spinning, the thing would sink.

Another part of the problem was Anselm Stern. When he had first come to England, she had treated him gracefully as an acquaintance, and he had accepted her lead. There was a sense in which he was no more than an acquaintance. They had met in masks, amidst music, in an unreal world where everything is permitted, which seemed more real than the real world, which was always happening to Olive, whether at Todefright, or in Munich, or anywhere, almost, except the Yorkshire coalfield. But now, he too had acquired a lacquered surface, like the faces of his puppets, with their single, fixed expressions to which the lights and shadows added meanings. She had seen him look at Dorothy—quick, quick, think of a story about someone who had a child they never knew they had —stolen away by a witch—would they recognise each other if no one told them, or pass unacknowledged in the street? It was a good story, but it made her profoundly unhappy to see the two smiling secretively at each other. She thought of a story of a puppeteer for whom all human creatures had strings to pull and batons to direct. That was a good story too, but its impulse was unjust. The damned couple were happy. They did not intend her to share the happiness.

There was a kind of relief, and a kind of anguish, to her, to understand that all principal actors intended to maintain this state of affairs.

She was surprised when August Steyning asked her to collaborate on a kind of pageant or play to be worked on during the arts and crafts camp. He had an idea for a play about magic that would use human actors and puppets —puppets moreover, of two kinds, both life-size, with a dark human moving them, and glittering small marionettes, with their own stage. He had in mind one of Olive’s magical tales. Something like The Shrubbery, the human boy entering the land of the Little People, which could be represented by marionettes.

Mrs. Wellwood sat and stared at her teacup; she looked at Anselm Stern, to see what he thought, and he was looking out of the window, with a carved, motionless face, inscrutable. She liked August Steyning. She felt safe with him—he liked her work, there was no human mess or muddle.

“Mr. Stern?” she said, lightly, lightly.

“I think this idea of August is a very good idea. We might make a new art. An art of two worlds.”

“I am so happy to be included,” she said sincerely, sounding insincere, because she was in two worlds.

August Steyning, English and urbane, poured tea.

One advantage of putting on a play —or performance—at a summer camp is that it is possible to use a huge cast, and a large crew of wardrobe and props workers, without paying them. Indeed, Steyning said to Olive, they pay you. They sat down with Anselm Stern and Wolfgang at the dinner table in Nutcracker Cottage and elaborated a plan. Steyning’s first idea had been to use the tale of the stolen child—or possibly of the stolen wet-nurse—who is spirited into the Fairy Hill, and needs to be rescued. This, he explained, would mean that you could “see into the hill” if the marionette theatre could be—a closed, curtained world—in the midst of the human theatre. Anselm Stern said that they might use those versions of the universal Cinderella story—Catskin, Allerleirauh—in which the princess, fleeing her father, finds a prince, only to have him spirited away by a witch, at the ends of the earth and put into a magic sleep of forgetfulness. He had always been particularly drawn to those tales of a resourceful heroine covering the earth in her search, asking guidance of the sun, the moon, the stars, the winds. Wolfgang said he was interested in making life-size masks and puppets. He had had an idea of making a whole audience of great dolls and scarecrows, who would be there at the beginning, and sit quite still, and then suddenly—dangerously—join in the action. Besiege the fortress, maybe. Maybe be invoked by the many-furred girl. Olive said

“There is something in my mind. A search for a real house in a magic world. A search for a magic house in a real world. Two worlds, inside each other.”

“The Wizard of Oz,” said Steyning.

“Humphry says that is an allegory about Bimetallism and the Gold Standard, with its road of gold ingots and its silver shoes.”

“It has a little wizard in a huge machine,” said Stern. “Which is good for marionettes, or other puppets.”

“The fortress is like the Dark Tower in Sir Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” said Olive. “A lightless block.”

“There is a lot one can do with lighting,” said Steyning. “Even in a barn, without a conflagration.”

“These small pieces of tales are like a kaleidoscope,” said Stern. “Without end to be reshaped, differently ordered.”

It was an odd play. It grew like a vegetable from its story-seeds, and the metaphors in Olive’s mind. The early days of the camp were spent on construction and reconstruction. Marian Oakeshott appeared and took charge of an army of wardrobe workers, who brought old clothes and new bales, and cut, and stitched, and decorated. Wolfgang had a workshop for life-size puppets and mask-construction, in which he involved Tom, who was full of inventiveness. The workshop was in an old barn where bales of straw still stood about, and Tom began to make a strawman. This creature turned out not to be benign, like the one in The Wizard of Oz, but vacant, swollen and menacing. He had a huge boll of a head, with black tunnel-eyes and a mouth stitched with string, jaggedly. This head lolled and revolved above a larger-than-life-size bale of a body, with swivelling dropsical legs, and short, useless arms, no more than fringes of sticks at the shoulders. Wolfgang said it was full of horror, and should be one of the enemies met on the way. I’ll act it, said Tom. It can burn up. It should burn up, said Steyning, admiring it, but we can’t risk it, not in a barn full of children and dolls.

“Blasebalg,” said Anselm Stern. “I do not know the English.”