The Children's Book

And the foster mother—a willow-warbler, maybe, a bunting perhaps, feeds the stranger fledgling as though it was her own, even when it grows much larger than she is, even when it is almost too large for the nest, it cries for food, and she answers …”

“What happens to her real children?” asked Hedda.

“Maybe they leave early,” said Violet vaguely.

“It pushes them out,” said Dorothy. “You know it does. Barnet the gamekeeper showed me. It pushes the eggs out, and they go splat on the ground, and it pushes the fledglings out. It goes round and round and shoves with its shoulders, and tips them out. I’ve seen them on the ground. And the parents go on feeding it. Why don’t they know it isn’t theirs?”

“It’s surprising what parents don’t know,” said Violet. “It’s surprising how many creatures don’t know their real parents. Just like Hans Andersen’s ugly duckling, which was really a swan. Mother Nature means the baby cuckoo to survive and fly away with the other cuckoos to Africa. She takes care of it.”

“She doesn’t take care of the willow-warblers,” said Dorothy. “If I were the willow-warbler, I’d let it starve.”

“No you wouldn’t,” said Violet. “You’d do what comes naturally, which is feed what’s crying out for food. It’s not so easy to decide who are your own real children.”

“What do you mean?” said Dorothy, sitting up.

“Nothing,” said Violet, retreating. Then, almost sotto voce, she said to the mushroom-stocking “Who is a child’s real mother? The one who feeds it, and cleans it, and knows its little ways, or the one who leaves it in the nest to do as best it can …”

Dorothy could hear Violet’s thoughts, as she had heard Philip’s. This was not the first time Violet had spoken this way. She said, turning to science for help,

“It’s just natural instinct. For the cuckoos, in their way, and the willow-warblers in theirs.”

“It’s the kindness at the heart of things,” said Violet. She stabbed at the sock with a needle. Charles said, in an audible undertone,

“Lots of people aren’t really their parents’ children, don’t really know who their real parents are, you hear about it all the time—”

“You shouldn’t be listening to such things,” said Violet, with a return of force. “And folk shouldn’t be telling you.”

“I can’t help having ears,” said Charles.

“Then you’d better wash them,” said Violet.

Hedda took up her shoe-dolls. “All these have no father or mother, only a shoe. They are mine to look after.”

Something had become very uncomfortable. Tom put his nose in his Latin. Griselda proposed to Dorothy that they go for a walk in the woods. Charles said he would come, and Tom.

“Cuck,” said the cuckoo in the wood. “Cuck, cuck, cuck.”

“It’s funny,” said Dorothy, “how it knows it’s a cuckoo when it comes to flying to Africa, it goes with the cuckoos. I wonder what it thinks it is, when it goes. It can’t see itself.”

They went into the woods, two by two, two boys, followed by two girls, all four clothed in shabby, serviceable Todefright clothes in which trees could be climbed, and brooks could be forded. They were going to the Tree House, which was a secret, hidden place, which very few people knew about or could find. It was woven into the tentlike lower branches of a Scots pine, which was the central roof-tree, stitched together with cord and strings, thatched with heather and dead bracken, disguised with more random branches. It had two rooms, with spy-hole windows. It was possible to lie out on its roof, amongst the arms of the tree, and there were couches of heather, and wooden box tables inside. It was Tom’s favourite place on earth. Inside, and wholly hidden away, he was himself. He thought of the Tree House as his place, although the designing intelligence, the solidity of the construction, were Dorothy’s. Dorothy liked to bring things to it, to study them—small skulls, and unusual plant forms. She also liked to go into it with Griselda and talk intensely for hours. Tom assumed that they talked, for he had the grace not to go with them. And because he left them together, they in turn left him his long periods of solitude, when the house was his hiding-place. There was always the problem of Phyllis, who insisted on tagging along, if she noticed they were going there, and was unwelcome both because she tried to “play house” in it, with mummies and daddies, and because Tom, Dorothy and Griselda knew that she was the weak spot in their tissue of silence. She might tell, she might enjoy telling, and had to be both threatened and bribed.

Charles was allowed to come because he was not very interested in tree houses—he was urban by nature—but suitably admiring of the constructive skills that had gone into the building. Tom had wondered whether Philip would like the house. He thought he might, since he had been found in a hidey-hole. But Philip had already gone to the marshes in the carriage with the Fludds and Dobbin. Tom had also wondered whether to show it to Julian. Julian might not see how special it was. And Dorothy might not like Julian’s dominating presence. It was altogether too early to have views about Julian.

They sat down on the heather couches, which were covered with blankets, and Tom offered them all apples and toffees, from a store he kept in a box.

“What did you mean,” Dorothy asked Charles, “when you said lots of people aren’t their parents’ children?”

Griselda said that her friend Clementine Burt was always being teased because she didn’t look anything like her father, and then people pointed out that she did look very like Lady Agnes Blofeld, and her mother had said that was natural, because they had an ancestor in common. But her brother Martin had overheard their parents talking, and had told Clementine he was sure her father was Lord Blofeld. Charles elaborated. Lord Blofeld and Clementine’s mother had to have adjacent rooms at big country-house parties. It was well known by everyone. Dorothy asked if Clementine was very upset. Griselda said she wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to talk about it. Dorothy was distracted by wondering whether Clementine was more Griselda’s friend than she was. Griselda added that Clementine had said she was sure she wasn’t the only one. Charles said Agnes Blofeld was quite put out, because Clementine was prettier and nicer than she was, the same sort of girl, but much more attractive. Tom did not like talk about whether people were attractive. He said, musing,

“If you found out your parents weren’t your parents, would you be a different person?”