The Children's Book

by A. S. Byatt

  Purchase House had many rooms. More of them were empty, and in a state of decay, than were inhabited. There was an uncarpeted stone staircase, with a metal banister, leading to the first floor: it must once have been imposing, but now wound gloomily up into the dark. Imogen led Philip up with a candle, and showed him into a bare little room, with a bed, and a washstand, a small chest of drawers and a high window, too high to look out of. It was a little like a monastic cell. There were sheets and a woven bedcover, embroidered with a bunch of lilies. Imogen seemed undisposed to talk to Philip, and almost embarrassed by finding herself alone with him. She showed him the water-closet at the other end of the landing, past several closed doors. Then she left him, with a matchbox, and his little flame.

  He lay down, composedly enough. His incoherent plan had brought him to a potter, and possible work. He thought about the Fludds as he lay on the edge of exhausted sleep. He had not much to compare them with—the family at Todefright, perhaps. Violet had packed him a nightshirt, and the borrowed clothing, now a gift. That family was running, and laughter, and hugging and reciting nonsense, and he did not know how to behave with it, but felt a kind of grief that he was not part of the charmed circle. Here everyone was unnaturally still and watchful, apart from the potter himself, who had moods, a state Philip recognised from the temperamental master-craftsmen he had seen from a distance. He thought he didn’t like Geraint, but was not sure. Geraint had a nice face, as though he would have talked, if he had had anyone to talk to. Arthur Dobbin meant well, but Philip had unthinkingly accepted Benedict Fludd’s and Geraint’s assessment of his uselessness. Dobbin, too, had a bedroom somewhere in the house. If he had particularly enraged the potter, he sometimes slept in the parsonage, with Frank Mallett. Seraphita had once said she was always glad if he stayed overnight, but it was always “overnight” however long it went on. He was a guest, not part of the family, something Philip had understood without reflection. He had also understood that there was little money, and that Dobbin was the only person who had any sense about provisions.

  In the middle of the night, something odd happened. The latch on his door lifted, and the door creaked open. His eyes were used to the dark, and there was enough moon- and starlight for him to see. The person who came in was female, with flowing hair loose on her shoulders. She was white like bone china in the moonlight, and naked. She walked barefoot, with delicate little steps, across the rug on the floor, and stood by his bed. It was Pomona. She had new little uptilted breasts, and—he saw clearly—a little bush of soft gold private hair. Her mouth was relaxed, and unnaturally calm. She breathed as though she was sleeping, and Philip thought she was, she must be sleepwalking. He kept his eyes open, and his body quite still. Her eyes were open, and unseeing. He knew from hearsay and gossip that you must not wake sleepwalkers. It could kill them, it was said. Maybe she would go away. In the interim he looked with aesthetic pleasure and moral distress at the naked form, and the white skin. Quite suddenly, she bent down, lifted the blanket, lifted a knee, and slid into bed beside him, putting a surprisingly solid arm across his neck, and curling up to him. Her leg was over his thigh. He held his breath. He had not the slightest idea where she had come from, so could not carry or lead her back to her own room.

  He waited. He almost dozed, with keeping still and breathing shallow and even. What if she woke? But she did not wake, and finally, after a lapse of time, she swung her legs out of the bed again, and moved like an automaton towards the door. Philip padded after her, and opened it wide, to let her through. Perhaps he ought to have gone after her, to see that she came to no harm. But he was embarrassed and fearful.

  9

  Arthur Dobbin sometimes stayed overnight in the Puxty vicarage with Frank Mallett. He did this both when Benedict Fludd had threatened him with violence, and when he and Frank had cycled into Rye, or Winchelsea, for a lecture. Frank’s vicarage was a pleasant old stone house, thick-walled against the wind and weather, with small windows, and deep fireplaces. It stood by the side of Frank’s Norman church, built in the twelfth century when there had been a harbour, and great waves driving in from the Channel. The church dated from the draining of the Walland Marsh, and was built on land taken from the sea, and enclosed by mud dykes. In the thirteenth century the land was battered, ravaged, and reshaped by monstrous storms, and the sea carried silt into the harbour of Romney and piled it there, so that many prosperous ports found themselves slowly moved inland, and no longer able to trade. The farmers died of the Black Death in the fourteenth century, and the congregations dwindled. Sheep were everywhere on the marsh, cropped the rich grass, wandered along the flat horizon. The wall of St. Edburga’s Church could be seen from the windows on one side, alongside its small, grassy graveyard, with flagged path, lych-gate, and stunted yews. From the other side, where Frank Mallett had both his study and his breakfast-room, there was a view of the marshes: grass, sheep, clumps and long stands of reeds moving in the air, plovers and gulls. This room was the room where Dobbin had passed the happiest moments of his life. Breakfast at Purchase House tended to be burned, or raw, or in short supply, or all of these at once. Breakfast in the vicarage was bacon and eggs, precisely fried with soft centres, warm toast wrapped in a linen cloth, freshly churned butter, honey and plentiful strong, newly brewed tea. Dobbin particularly liked eating these things in bad weather, when squalls raced across the reeds, and the sky was pewter, and the sheep huddled grimly. He felt it was a sacramental meal, but had not dared to say so to Frank, who presided at real sacraments, however exiguous his congregation.

  They talked, a lot of the time, about what went on in Purchase House. Frank had found it difficult to understand why Arthur Dobbin had not long ago been discouraged by Benedict Fludd’s temper, and even by his own increasingly obvious unfitness as a helper. Dobbin had a cult of genius. Benedict Fludd was a genius, the only one Dobbin knew. Dobbin himself had no artistic talent but he wished to serve it, and seemed to feel, against the evidence, that he had been led to this place, and this task. The poverty of the landscape and the people led him to think this was the right place for a community centred on genius, making beautiful, wholesome things. And then, he had found Frank Mallett. And then, in moments of despair he did not have any idea where to go next. Frank—who was also lonely—thought Dobbin was obsessed and irrational, but joined in his vague projects because he liked his company, and because the Fludds were by far the most romantic and problematic of his parishioners.

  One day, some weeks after Philip’s arrival at Purchase, Dobbin and Frank were taking breakfast together, before riding their bicycles into Winchelsea, to find out about a new series of lectures, set up by the local Theosophists. Dobbin spread butter, and spread honey, and remarked that the honey was particularly well-flavoured, he could taste clover, he thought, very delicate. Frank replied, as Dobbin had known he would, that it was his own honey, from his own bees. He had sent some pots, with Dobbin, to the Fludds, with his compliments. He had received a note of thanks from Seraphita, in round, childish handwriting.

  Dobbin said that Benedict Fludd had been transfigured by Philip’s workmanship. They were rebuilding the little kiln, in the outhouse, and talking of building a big one, with a bottle chimney, and a revolving flue grate. Philip had drawn his idea of the flue grate for Fludd, who had been truly interested. If there was a big kiln, of course, said Dobbin, more helpers would be needed. He himself did his best, and could use his shoulder-strength to feed a kiln on spent hop-poles—“under supervision,” he said ruefully. But it was, he said, chewing the crisp toast and the soft, sweet honey, a case of chicken and egg. There was no money to increase production, and there was no produce to earn more money. And pottery kilns, which he had always thought of as stable, down-to-earth, solid no-nonsense means to art-works, turned out to be both violent and temperamental, like Fludd himself. You could lose months of designing and throwing, and decorating, in one flare of fire, or gas, or explosion of a blister of water in an ill-made vessel. He thou
ght that now Philip was there, Fludd might be induced to make some saleable small pots—or tiles perhaps—which could help to feed the family. Seraphita and her daughters had their looms of course, but they worked slowly and stiffly, and their work depended on Fludd being in the mood, and having the energy, to design patterns for them. They didn’t do too well, left to their own devices. There was a conversation the two friends always had, at this point, going over the same ground, making the same baffled, owlish points, as though they were newly perceived discoveries, about the curious lifelessness and inhibition of the three female members of the Purchase House family. Dobbin, since the Todefright party, was able to bring new observations to this discussion—he had observed the three at both Todefright and Nutcracker Cottage, half-hoping that out of sight and smell of Benedict Fludd they might relax or chatter. But they had not. “It is as though they have sleeping sickness, or are under a spell,” said Dobbin, as he often said. He added that Geraint had got on very well with the other young people, the Wellwood boys, Charles and Tom, young Julian Cain, and his sister, Florence. He felt happy to be offering all these new persons to Frank, to be solemnly discussed. Frank knew, or should have known, Geraint, of course. He gave him lessons in classics and history and nature study, which were most of the education Geraint had received. Geraint was good at maths, and Frank was not. He tried to teach Geraint, and Geraint laughed at his mistakes. Geraint did not confide in Frank, though Frank had initially hoped he would. He was bored and bitter, Frank was sure of it, and had a basically agreeable and outgoing nature, Frank was also sure, though he could not quite say why. Unlike his sisters Geraint had made friends with local youths, and went out as crew in fishing-boats, or helped to pick apples and harvest onions. He ran wild on the marshes, chatting to poachers and gamekeepers, and listening to the tales of smuggling, which everyone told. Frank and Dobbin discussed all this, too, and tried to think what would become of Geraint, without coming to any clear vision or prospect. They were not very good planners, that was why they were where they were.

  Frank Mallett, however, knew more than a little more about Benedict Fludd than he ever disclosed in his pleasant coil of discussion with Dobbin. He had once been asked—urgently, desperately beseeched—to hear Benedict Fludd’s confession. This would be two years past, now, when Frank had been more Anglo-Catholic than he now was, had had moments when he yearned for the mysteries and solidities of sacraments and the presence of saints and angels who might answer his need for the larger life, and make his spirit less lonely and meagre. His church, like most Marsh churches, had been despoiled at the Reformation. The Virgin had been smashed, and the stone angels bashed and beheaded, though the ghosts of a fresco in which they played on trumpet and psaltery at the Creation, still stained the east wall, under the oval text-boards which had replaced them with Puritan admonitions. “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.” And Solomon’s saying “Sand and gravel are very heavy things, yet the anger of a fool is much heavier.” And Job: “As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: So man lieth down and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.” Marsh Puritans were obsessed with the shifting dangers of masses of water and sand.

  Most of the Norman windows had been smashed and Frank had had the idea of raising money in the diocese and commissioning a window from the great artist living in the parish. He had called on Fludd, and put the proposal—as a very vague beginning—to him, and Fludd had said he had many ideas, the spirit of God brooding on the waters, maybe, or a Tree of Life with gold and crimson fruits. For a few weeks these images had been discussed enthusiastically, over mugs of beer, and drawings had been produced, in chalk, and ink, and watercolour. Frank Mallett still had one or two. The rest had been destroyed by Fludd in an excess of despair. Frank had called one day, as usual, and found the potter sitting in his great chair and staring at nothing. He seemed almost unable to speak, almost catatonic. He had muttered “I can do nothing,” and “Leave me,” and Seraphita had come into the kitchen and said—tonelessly—placidly?—that her husband was unwell, and would not be ready to do anything for some time, she knew this well, and could assure Mr. Mallett that there was nothing to be gained from visiting, until Fludd was well again. Mallett had ventured the opinion that artistic powers perhaps ebbed and flowed like the tides. (He would not now dare to utter any such platitude.) Seraphita had agreed, flatly, that this might be so, and had stood, statuesque, waiting for him to take his leave. He knew, as her spiritual advisor, that he should offer her help, or comfort, or a chance to share her burden. But she looked at him, dully, patiently, waiting for him to go, and he went. Another time might be better, he told himself. This was all before Arthur Dobbin and the vanishing Martin Calvert had turned up at Purchase House.

  • • •

  And then, one winter afternoon, when Frank Mallett was in St. Edburga’s Church, kneeling in fact, in prayer in the chancel, trying to combat the seeping away or silting up of his faith, Fludd had come in search of him. He had flung open the door, letting in a roiling gust of wind, which rattled papers and briefly disturbed the altar-cloth. He stood in the nave, his bull-shoulders jutting forward, his large head hunched between them, paying no attention to the fact that the priest was kneeling. He said

  “I am in mortal need. Will you hear my confession?”

  Frank had got up, not gracefully. He was afraid. He was a young man, and innocent, despite his pretty pointed gold beard on his chin. He had lived a sheltered life, and had so far encountered no real horrors in his brief ministry, only the present fact of death, and the destructive bad temper of competitive churchwardens and hassock-embroidering ladies. He said mildly that this was an Anglican church, and that confession was not a sacrament. Fludd laid a hand on him, tugged at his sleeve, made him sit down in a box-pew and sat next to him, his breath laboured. He was wearing a black smock, which had a parodic look of a cassock.

  “God,” said Benedict Fludd, “your God, that is, strides in and out of my life with no warning. One day he seems impossible—laughable, laughable—and the next, he is imperious.” He stopped. He said “It is like the phases of the moon, maybe. Or the seasons of the sphere we live on, rolling in and out of the light, skeleton trees one day, and then snow, and afterwards the bright green veil and after that the full heat and shining. Only it is neither regular nor predictable. And there are—others—who stride in, when he takes himself off. Who seem persuasive. Like Hindoo demons who are gods in their own terms.”

  Frank listened. He thought in his young head that the rhetoric was practised. He murmured something about the tenacity of faith in the dark times of the soul, in the lean years of the spirit.

  “I have no will,” said Fludd, with a note of satisfaction. “I am a battleground simply, and yet I live and walk about in the world. But there is—are—chinks of light, moments of stasis, between one state and another, between the victories of the Pale Galilean and the multiform Life-force. If you take my meaning. Times when I look before and after.”

  “Yes,” said Frank.

  “I am at such a cusp. Your God has removed his presence as though it had never been. He sheds no light, he illuminates nothing, all is thick grey cloud, or empty night full of pointless points of brightness whose order is nothing to do with me, but not yet menacing. It will be. Today I am lucid.”

  “Yes,” said Frank.

  “I tell you, young man, of things you cannot really imagine. I must unburden myself. I wish to tell you the tale of my werewolf-changes, so that perhaps the telling may release me. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes,” said Frank, who was physically alarmed by the big body trembling beside him. “So far, yes.”

  “I may be what you may call mad, tomorrow,” said Fludd. “It will not seem so to me then, but from here I see it with nausea. Each visitation is worse. There was no hint of it when I was a child. I was a choirboy with his head separated from his
little body by a great pure white starched collar. If I flicked my own tiny pudenda no one knew and it was all innocent. And the sun shone all the time, round and bright like my collar. And then I began to become a man, and my voice broke, and my collar was taken from me, and my body—you understand—grew a life of his own, not under my control. I had terrible imaginings. I liked to hunt things. Creatures. Frogs and rabbits. I made clay images of them with love, and I destroyed them ingeniously, also with love. Do you understand? I see you do not. I have chosen my confessor intelligently. For you are a person of integrity, and will not speak of this. I went to Art School, and made drawings of the naked—men and women both—and imagined, aha, drawing them in quite another sense, like chickens. I made private drawings of drawing. I walked up and down the Haymarket like Rossetti you understand—looking at the flesh for sale, and slid into my double life in the end with ease. I found a young woman whose trade it was to understand men like me, and gratify their imaginings. I visited her—more and more frequently—and imagined hurting her, more and more ingeniously—and loved her, with my sunny self, more and more deeply and innocently. There was nothing, nothing we could not talk of, and in her presence—in her cheap bed, young man, Father, I became whole, and cleansed. She was called Maria. She was a Maria Magdalena who washed away sins, and she was Venus Anadyomene to me, though she was ill-nourished I think since birth, my artist’s eye saw she was puny, though my lover’s eye saw her breasts as globes of milky marble, and the tuft between her legs as the bushes surrounding the gate to Paradise Lost—and Regained.” He stopped. Frank thought, this is practised rhetoric, he has told this tale before, and polished it. It may be a fiction, or simply a version. He wondered how he knew these things.