The Children's Book

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 this caused him to stumble.

He saw a hawk overhead, and that made him briefly happy. He didn’t ask himself where he was going. It didn’t matter. He was not going home. The Downs were empty and he was empty. He was possessed by energy and even thought of running.

Olive sent a letter to Dorothy. She persuaded Florian to cycle to the railway station to make sure it went quickly.

I wonder if you have seen Tom? He went out of the theatre after the play—everyone was talking, he doesn’t like crowds. It seemed quite natural he should slip away but it’s now three days and he hasn’t come home. I remember when he disappeared before, you found him in a sort of hiding-place you had in the woods. Do you think he could be there? When can you come home? It has been very exciting here, with all the commotion about the play, but I’m worried about Tom. I hope your work is going well.

She sat and chewed her pen. She wrote

I should say, and haven’t said, how much I admire your determination and hard work. You said you got it from me. I should like to be able to believe that.

She sat a little longer. She stared out of the window, at the quiet lawn.

She wanted to say why she was so worried about Tom. Dorothy was the only person who knew Tom. But she could not tell Dorothy that she had not told Tom the whole truth about the play. He had nodded and closed his face when he saw the title of the play on the programmes and then on the posters, but he had come along quite quietly to the opening.

He was doing what he always did with difficulties, persuading himself they didn’t exist if he didn’t name them. She knew him, he was her beloved son. It was she who had named Tom Underground.

It was only a fairy story.

It wasn’t.

•  •  •

Dorothy answered.

I don’t think Tom can be in the Tree House, in fact I know he can’t, because he took me there and showed me, the gamekeeper had cut it down and made it into logs. He didn’t seem upset, but then, he never does.

I haven’t seen the play yet. We got the tickets you sent, and I was going at the weekend with Griselda and Charles and Julian Cain and a medical friend of mine. But perhaps I had better come home instead. What do you think?

Olive answered. “Please come home. There is still no sign of Tom. Violet says it is a storm in a teacup but then she would say that.”

She sealed the letter, and wrote several answers to letters from friends and the public about the originality of Tom Underground.

Tom had got onto the heights of the North Downs. He walked. He found himself crossing what he believed must be the London Road—he went across, looking neither to right nor to left, and saw a slow cart going south, and a sputtering, grinching motor car, with its heavily veiled and scarved passengers, going north. He came to a junction with a signpost, faded, and hard to puzzle out. It said he could go down Labour-in-Vain Road, to Labour-in-Vain. He liked the words, so set off along the track, to