Running to Paradise by Virginia Budd Read Free Book Online Page A

years later: it was, for diverse reasons, not considered suitable for children’s ears at the time. Annoyingly, I can remember little of the immediate aftermath of that incredible afternoon apart from being lifted down from the dog cart by a grey-faced Pa still in his City clothes and being carried up the front steps into the hall to be greeted by an assortment of people all talking at once, in the centre of which was Nurse Jump having hysterics. I remember little, too, of subsequent interviews with the gentlemen of the press, except for one nice man with a ginger moustache and a brown bowler hat, who referred to me as ‘the brave little Madam’ and gave me a lollipop. Sadly, the latter was immediately confiscated by my mother, who was present at the interview and strongly disapproved of all forms of bribery.
    But it wasn ’t all excitement: nightmares became frequent. One in particular plagued me for many years. I would find myself clinging with all my strength to someone or something, I was never sure which, but it would feel warm, lovely and secure. Then, without warning, there would be a crash as of shattering glass and I would be alone, suspended in mid-air, high above a sort of vast emptiness. My hands would scrabble desperately for something to catch on to, but there would be nothing: from this dream I would awake screaming, no matter how familiar it became.
    *
    Now for my piece. A little on the pompous side, but not bad really, I suppose.
    Biographical Note
    Henry Arthur Elliott was born in 1872, the son of a country parson who had married a rich wife. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, arriving at the latter in the early 1890s, when he at once became a member of the Aesthete Set that flourished at Oxford during the period. His first poems were published at the age of twenty and for the next few years he was very much part of the London fin de siècle literary scene. However, as the century drew to its close, Elliott’s poetry began to change: it became harsh, brutal even, and its metre and vibrant rhythms incomprehensible to many. With the change in his work, there also came a change in his personality. From being gregarious and fun-loving, he became reclusive and would disappear for weeks at a time, no one knew where. Then suddenly, he who had never appeared to be interested in women, announced his engagement to a young woman whom, it was rumoured, he had picked up off the streets. The couple were married shortly afterwards amid more or less universal condemnation and from then on Elliott appears to have dropped out of London literary circles. His publishers turned down his next batch of poems: ‘My dear fellow,’ they said, ‘we can’t, we simply can’t — such coarseness...’ and that was that.
    Several years elapsed during which little was heard of Elliott and no work published: there was talk of a child, but no one knew for certain. Then suddenly the amazing news broke; Elliott had killed his wife! The couple had apparently gone to live in a remote cottage somewhere in Gloucestershire and late one night Elliott had turned up at the local police station ‘looking wild and dishevelled’, or so the newspapers reported, and informed the police he had killed his wife. It later transpired he had, in fact, killed her in self-defence; she’d attacked him with a knife and there was a witness. The murder charge was changed to one of manslaughter and Elliott was sentenced to ten years’ hard labour. After doing only six months in Wandsworth Gaol, however, he managed to escape in the course of being moved to another prison, half killing a warder in the process. Thereafter, he was on the run for three months before the law finally caught up with him on Bagland Common, where, as a little girl of five, Mrs Seymour met him and where, tragically, he was shot in the back whilst trying to escape his pursuers.
    It was while he was in prison awaiting trial that Elliott ’s notebooks were first discovered and the