The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt

Author:A. S. Byatt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780307272096
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2009-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

The People in the House in the House

There was once a little girl who was very kind to little creatures. She used to make nests and put them out hoping that birds would find them. She went fishing in the park for tadpoles and kept them in a big jam jar, and cried bitterly, when they all died. She made homes in matchboxes for caterpillars and ladybirds. And she had a beautiful doll's house, in which there lived a family of dolls with tiny china faces and stuffed bodies.

She made lovely little meals for the dolls in the doll's house. She made jellies with individual bits of blackberry in them, and currant buns with one currant, and tiny tarts which slightly overlapped the pretty china plates in the doll's house. She put out tiny glasses of ice cream with red-currant jelly on top, and little biscuits with icing flowers on them. The awful bit was when the food went limp and had to be disposed of – in case it attracted mice, or other nasty creatures, like beetles and silverfish, her mother said. Her mother was keen on hygiene.

Her name was Rosy. Her mother liked roses. The doll's house was decor ated in a variety of rosy pinks. Rosy sewed quilts and blankets and rugs for the dolls. She had tried clothes, but her sewing was not fine enough and the dolls looked ridiculous in the hats and jackets she made. So she made more and more sheets and blankets. Some of the dolls had ten or twelve each.

She pretended that the dolls made their own beds and cooked their own meals, and went to school, and slept, but she wasn't very good at pretending, and knew very well that they depended on her sharp fingers for every movement.

One day, going to the park in the city centre to look for creatures, she thought she saw a beetle running under a tree root. She laughed aloud because it looked like a little old lady in a stiff coat. Then she saw it was a little old lady in a stiff coat, waving some sort of stick in front of her, which Rosy had mistaken for the beetle's horns. So she sat down, very quietly, not too close – she was good at watching creatures – and after a time she saw two more little people run across the grass – sheltering in the shadows of leaves and pebbles – dressed in the same kind of stiff, tube-like brownish clothes. Their heads were encased in round black shiny hats. It was as though they were trying to disguise themselves as beetles.

She came often to watch them, after that. She saw that they had paths, as ants do, along which they always scurried. She brought a magnifying glass her uncle had given her, and studied the roots of the trees, when the little folk had gone into the ground. She found cupboards and larders, with rough, hardly visible shelves containing parcels and

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