chocolate, bread, pies.
David began, ‘Two children, a boy and a girl, set off one day to have an adventure in the forest. They went a long way into the forest. It was hot outside, but under the trees it was cool. They saw a deer lying down, resting. Birds flitted about and sang to them.’
David stopped to eat soup. Helen and Luke sat with their eyes on his face, motionless. Jane listened, too, but differently. Four years old: she looked to see how they took in the story, and copied them, fixing her eyes on her father.
‘Do the birds sing to us?’ enquired Luke doubtfully, frowning. He had a strong, severe face; and, as always, he demanded the truth. ‘When we are in the garden and the birds sing, are they singing to us?’
‘Of course not, silly,’ said Helen. ‘It was a magic forest.’
‘Of course they sing to you,’ said Dorothy firmly.
The children, first hunger appeased, sat with their spoons in their hands, wide eyes on their father. Harriet’s heart oppressed her: it was their open trustfulness, their helplessness. The television was on: a professionally cool voice was telling about some murders in a London suburb. She lumbered over to turn it off, plodded back, served herself more soup, piled in the bread…She listened to David’s voice, tonight the storyteller’s voice, so often heard in the kitchen, hers, Dorothy’s –
‘When the children got hungry, they found a bush covered with chocolate sweets. Then they found a pool made of orange juice. They were sleepy. They lay under a bush near the friendly deer. When they woke up, they said thank you to the deer and went on.
‘Suddenly the little girl found she was alone. She and her brother had lost each other. She wanted to go home. She did not know which way to walk. She was looking for another friendly deer, or a sparrow, or any bird, to tell her where she was and show her the way out of the forest. She wandered about for a long time, and then she was thirsty again. She bent over a pool wondering if it would be orange juice, but it was water, clear pure forest water, and it tasted of plants and stones. She drank, from her hands.’ Here the two older children reached for their glasses and drank. Jane interlaced her fingers to form a cup.
‘She sat there by the pool. Soon it would be dark. She bent over the pool to see if there was a fish who could tell her the way out of the forest, but she saw something she didn’t expect. It was a girl’s face, and she was looking straight up at her. It was a face she had never seen in her whole life. This strange girl was smiling, but it was a nasty smile, not friendly, and the little girl thought this other girl was going to reach up out of the water and pull her down into it…’
A heavy, shocked, indrawn breath from Dorothy, who felt this was too frightening at bedtime.
But the children sat frozen with attention. Little Paul, grizzling on Alice’s lap, earned from Helen ‘Be quiet, shut up.’
‘Phyllis – that was the little girl’s name – had never seen such frightening eyes.’
‘Is that Phyllis in my nursery school?’ asked Jane.
‘No,’ said Luke.
‘No,’ said Helen.
David had stopped. Apparently for inspiration. He was frowning, had an abstracted look, as if he had a headache. As for Harriet, she was wanting to cry out, ‘Stop – stop it! You are talking about me – this is what you are feeling about me!’ She could not believe that David did not see it.
‘What happened then?’ asked Luke. ‘What happened exactly?’
‘Wait,’ said David. ‘Wait, my soup…’ He ate.
‘I know what happened,’ said Dorothy firmly. ‘Phyllis decided to leave that nasty pool at once. She ran fast along a path until she bumped into her brother. He was looking for her. They held each other’s hands and they ran out of the forest and they ran safely home.’
‘That was it, exactly,’ said David. He was smiling ruefully, but looked bemused.
‘And that was what really really happened, Daddy?’ demanded Luke, anxious.
‘Absolutely,’ said David.
‘Who was that girl in the pool, who was she?’ demanded Helen, looking from her father to her mother.
‘Oh just a magic girl,’ said David casually. ‘I have no idea. She just materialized.’
‘What’s materialized?’ asked Luke, saying the word with difficulty.
‘It’s bedtime,’ said Dorothy.
‘But what is materialized?’ Luke insisted.
‘We haven’t had any pudding!’ cried Jane.
‘There’s no pudding, there’s fruit,’ said Dorothy.
‘What is materialized, Daddy?’ Luke anxiously persisted.
‘It is when something that wasn’t there suddenly is there.’
‘But why, why is it?’ wailed Helen, distressed.
Dorothy said, ‘Upstairs, children.’
Helen took an apple, Luke another, and Jane lifted some bread off her mother’s plate with a quick, conscious, mischievous smile. She had not been upset by the story.
The three children went noisily up the stairs, and baby Paul looked after them, excluded, his face puckering, ready to cry.
Alice swiftly got up with him and went after the children, saying, ‘No one told me stories when I was little!’ It was hard to tell whether this was a complaint or, ‘and I’m better for it.’
Suddenly, Luke appeared on the landing. ‘Is everyone coming for the summer holidays?’
David glanced worriedly at Harriet – then away. Dorothy looked steadily at her daughter.
‘Yes,’ said Harriet weakly. ‘Of course.’
Luke called up the stairs, ‘She said, “Of course”!’
Dorothy said, ‘You will have just had this baby.’
‘It’s up to you and Alice,’ said Harriet. ‘If you feel you can’t cope, then you must say so.’
‘It seems to me that I cope,’ said Dorothy, dry.
‘Yes, I know,’ said David quickly. ‘You’re marvellous.’
‘And you don’t know what you would have done –’
‘Don’t,’ said David. And to Harriet: ‘Much better that we put things off, and have them all at Christmas.’
‘The children will be so disappointed,’ said Harriet.
This did not sound like her old insistence: it was flat and indifferent. Her husband and her mother examined her curiously–so Harriet felt their inspection of her, detached, unkind. She said grimly, ‘Well, perhaps this baby will be born early. Surely it must.’
