The Children's Book

by A. S. Byatt

  “It is not quite true that my marriage is childless. I feel I can trust you, Mrs. Wellwood—like all good writers, you let your private self be seen in public, and I know you are wise and kind. I myself have no children. My wife has three daughters. She was the wife of—a vicar in Batley—happily married but unawakened. Living in a dream world of good deeds and pretty dresses. We met—she and I—and tried to deny for two years what had struck into us and struck us down. She was ill. I could not write. She had a mysterious fatigue, she could barely stand or walk. I went to tell her that I was leaving Batley—I thought of emigrating to Canada—and I took her hand—and we saw, together, as one, that I could not leave, not alone, not ever again. So she came with me, and we live happily here, and are, as I said, everything to each other. We do not tell most people of this. Her husband refuses to divorce her. Or to allow her to see her daughters—which may be as well—she has chosen another life, and any step back into the old one would be painful, very painful.”

  Two or three days later, Herbert Methley came alone to the old vicarage. He found Olive in the orchard, sitting at a folding table, writing. She was wearing a simple straw hat and a loose, butcher-blue dress, not unlike her daughters’ aprons. He stood easily before her—his body was always at ease, even if his voice was not.

  “Do not let me disturb you, dear Mrs. Wellwood. No one knows better than myself the horror—the vein-freezing unpleasantness—of having the flow of writing disrupted. I came merely to bring you a little present—here it is—I have taken the liberty of writing in it—it is possibly the best of my work—but you shall be the judge.”

  He handed her a wrapped book, and went away. Olive was moved. Almost nobody knew how painful it was to have the inky thread of sentences snapped by others. He was a considerate man.

  The book was Daughters of Men by Herbert Methley. Inside, he had written

  “For Olive Wellwood, a wise woman and a gifted writer. From her good friend, Herbert Methley.”

  Olive finished her writing stint, and began to read Daughters of Men as she rested in a hammock after lunch.

  It was the tale of a young man in the provinces who liked women. It began by making the point that very few men admitted to liking women, in the plural. A good man should be in search of the One Woman who would partner his soul, but how was he to recognise her if he did not explore, compare, investigate what women were?

  The first part of the novel detailed the hero’s relations with various young girls, classmates at school, girls who sang in the church choir, girls like solid dryads met when he was wandering through the woods in search of peace and quiet, girls who were quizzical behind haberdashery counters. His name was Roger Thomas. The descriptions of his relations with the girls were coded, but somehow the nature and variety of extensive sexual experiment was conveyed. There was enough description of skin and electricity, of hands grasping petticoats, of long young throats and the eye travelling downwards, or lovely young legs, going upwards from fine ankles. There was hair—curly black like blackberries, shiny brown like chestnuts, pale like flax. About halfway through the book Roger Thomas noticed a melancholy woman, a married woman, his elderly headmaster’s young, lovely wife. He felt her intelligent eyes on the back of his head. He began to fear her judgement of his innocent and less innocent flirtations. He was now working as an apprentice teacher. She and he sat side by side at her kitchen table, drawing up lists of exam results, making papers. One day she put up her hand, with the pen still in it, and traced the shape of his mouth with her fingers.

  They became lovers. They lay tragically in each other’s arms on blankets in the woods, on the carpet in front of the little heater, with its red glow, in his rented room. They planned a clandestine weekend in a pub, and loved each other with abandon, grieving over each passing moment as they took delight in it. That was meant to be the passionate farewell to sin, but the story ended in the same way as Methley’s confided tale of his relations with Phoebe.

  Olive thought it must be autobiographical. She thought Herbert Methley was very good at writing about flesh and its stirrings, and was surprised that the book had not been banned by the Lord Chamberlain, or seized by the police. She was interested in the way descriptions of sex incited sexual stirrings in a reader—in this case, herself. The word made flesh, she muttered to herself, half-amused, half-irritated. He had meant to do this to her, she knew it. But her response was confused by the image of Phoebe Methley, whose solid flesh and sensible face came between Olive the reader and her entry into the world of the book. She kept seeing Phoebe’s rather large knuckles, the beginnings of wrinkling on her neck, the slight sag of her stomach and breasts in her bathing suit.

  What did Methley want her to feel? She thought about the relation between readers and writers. A writer made an incantation, calling the reader into the magic circle of the world of the book. With subtle words, a writer enticed a reader to feel his or her skin prickle, his or her lips open, his or her blood race. But a writer did this on condition that the reader was alone with printed paper and painted cover. What were you meant to feel—what was she meant to feel—when the originals of the evanescent paper persons were only too solidly present in flesh and bone and prosaic clothing? A gingery tweed jacket, a faded cotton skirt with lupins on it, and an elastic waist that clumped oddly?

  Herbert Methley came and sat beside her on the beach a few days later. Tom, Charles and Geraint were swimming. The girls were walking barefoot at the edge of the sea, in their swimming costumes. Julian was reading a book. Methley said to Olive

  “Did you read my book?”

  “With great interest,” Olive said, substituting the word “interest” for the word “pleasure” at the last moment.

  “You are a shrewd reader. You will see that parts of it are taken from life. More than is usual in my work. I wanted you to have read it, to know me.”

  “Ah—” said Olive, looking down. He put his hand over her hand, on the sand. He gripped a little. She did not withdraw her hand.

  “A love like that—a history of such—such pain, and such fulfilment—is a sacred history. It changes a man. Like Roger in the book, I used to take myself lightly, I was consumed with what I believe is normal widespread curiosity about the sex-feelings. But once a man has truly given himself—and sacrifices have been made—there can be no further question …”

  Olive thought, rather sharply, I do not need warning off. She extracted her hand, and used it to rearrange her hair. It was probable, of course, that he was not warning her, but shoring up himself, against his own inclinations, which he seemed to be only too much aware of. She said, demurely, with a little smile, that what he said was very right, very honourable. She thought to herself that this kind of conversation was altogether more perturbing than Toby’s devotion, or Prosper’s courtesy. She would be glad when Humphry came back from wherever he had gone—he had said it was Leeds, but it could well be Manchester.

  Olive Wellwood was thirty-eight. She came from a class where many, perhaps most, women did not live much beyond that age, where what was in women’s minds was diminishing strength and the looming of real death. Yet here she was in the magical Garden of England, with a good body, and a face that was, she thought, more interesting, more defined, yes indeed, more beautiful, than when she had been a green girl. And spider-webs of sexual attraction floated everywhere, and touched their skins, like dandelion seeds on white spiralling parasols, like ozone wafting in from the sea. It was still her time, she thought, looking out at the Channel and the children—and Toby who was leaping with them, and Violet camped with nanny and pram—and Prosper who was striding towards them in a smart panama hat. The children were children, blessed children, not yet formed. Though she saw that Herbert Methley had detached his attention from her, and was staring with a pleased expression at the gaggle of girls, pale, fine Griselda, brisk dark Dorothy, dreamy Pomona and inhibited Imogen, pretty Phyllis and composed Florence, the only one in whom could be seen a shadow of the w
oman she would be. “Aren’t they lovely?” she said to Methley, who gave her a sharp look, smiled conspiratorially, and agreed.

  The boys were coming out of the water, onto the sand. They were like sealfolk, Olive thought. Sleek creatures of the deep, beaching themselves and taking human form. Shaggy Geraint and precise-gestured Charles, and behind them, riding in prone on a wave, then standing thigh-deep in the moving water, his hair streaked and streaming with it, Tom. He seemed reluctant to come out. He bent and stirred the surface of the water with his golden arms. He was the most graceful creature she had ever seen. It was noon. The sun was high and shone directly down on her golden boy, who was not reflected in the moving surface of the sea, which he had broken into shining particles, myriads of slanting glassy fragments, a mosaic of surfaces, as there were myriads of glittering water-drops catching the light and making rainbows along his shoulders and in his long hair. He had fine gold hairs all over his body, too, she saw. Fine gold hairs long enough to cling together and make dripping patterns on his chest and thighs. Olive saw—it was the effect of dandelion-plumes and ozone—that his thin rod (she had no familiar word for it) was half-upright along his stomach. She loved Tom. She could not keep him. Tom loved her—this was still her time, with him, too—but he would go away, and be changed.

  She started making-up, in the other world. The queen in the clearing, on the horse with fifty silver bells and nine at every tett of its mane—whatever a tett was. The woman and the boy, in the clearing. A story. She smiled, at a safe distance now, and Herbert Methley wondered what she was smiling at, and misconstrued it, as was natural.

  Dorothy went to the pottery workshop, to see how Philip was.

  Philip was at the wheel, his wet hands inside the moving, growing clay wall of a pot. Dorothy stood in the doorway and watched him. She touched the tips of her own fingers with other fingers, trying to imagine, in her skin, how this work would feel. It was precise, and extraordinary. Philip came to the end of turning, finished his rim, smoothed the sides with a wooden baton, and lifted the bat from the wheel. He said to Dorothy “Hello, then,” without turning round. She hadn’t been sure he knew she was there. He said

  “Would you like to make a pot?”

  Dorothy said she would. Philip found a smock for her, and ceded his seat at the wheel. He took a ball of clay, and slapped it on the wheel, and centred it for her. “Now,” he said, “press down, so, with both hands—use your thumbs—and feel it come up.”

  Dorothy pressed. The clay was wet and clammy and dead, and yet it had a motion of its own, a response, a kind of life. The wheel turned, the clay turned, Dorothy held her fingers steady inside the red-brown cylinder which rose, with narrowing walls, to the rhythm of the turning. Dorothy was delighted. And then, suddenly, something went wrong—the rhythm faltered, the clay walls frilled, slipped and collapsed inwards, and where there had been a tube there was a flailing blob. Dorothy turned to Philip to ask what she had done wrong. She was half-laughing, half-crying. Philip was laughing. He said “That always happens.” He took the lump in his hands to re-form it, and at that moment Elsie came in from the storeroom door, carrying something, unaware of Dorothy’s presence, holding it out to Philip.

  “Look what I found. Did you ever see the like?”

  Then she saw Dorothy, and blushed crimson. Dorothy wondered why she had alarmed her so—they knew each other, a little, not very well—and then began to understand what she was holding. Philip had understood immediately, and the blood was also rising in his face.

  “It was in a box at the very back of a kind of gloryhole,” said Elsie.

  It was white and shining. It was a larger-than-life, extremely detailed, evenly glazed model of an erect cock and balls, every wrinkle, every fold, every glabrous surface gleaming.

  “I didn’t do it,” said Philip.

  “I didn’t think you did,” said his sister. She said to Dorothy “I’m sorry.” She wasn’t sure if she was on first-name terms with Dorothy or not.

  Dorothy advanced, with her hands covered in wet slip.

  “Can I have a look? I’m going to study anatomy. Do you think it’s for use in hospitals?”

  “No,” said Philip. “I think—I think it’s a phallic Thing.”

  He had learned that word from Benedict Fludd’s talk. Neither of the other two knew what it meant.

  “Religious, sort of,” said Philip, half-embarrassed, half on the edge of hysterical laughter.

  Dorothy took the phallus and brandished it. She said “It’s very big,” and also began to laugh uncontrollably. Elsie joined in the laughter.

  “Do you think—do you think”—Dorothy asked—“it’s a self-portrait, so to speak?”

  She had left brown clay fingerprints where she had clasped it.

  “You’ll have to wash it,” she said to Elsie, and collapsed again into laughter.

  “Give it me,” said Philip. “I’ll run it under the tap. And then Elsie shall put it quickly back where she found it.”

  His fingers recognised just how well it had been made, how its maker’s fingers had felt it out, and followed its swelling veins.

  When they had given up laughing, they did not know what to say to each other, and yet felt very close. Dorothy said she had better be off. She asked if Philip would give her another lesson. She asked Elsie, in a voice still thick with laughter, if Elsie made pots.

  “Aye,” said Elsie. “Tiny little ’uns, when there’s no one watching. I like ’em thin and small.”

  “You never told me that,” said Philip.

  “You never asked,” said Elsie.

  16

  Olive rewrote the beginning of Tom’s story yet again.

  TOM UNDERGROUND

  T WAS A CURIOUS FACT that when the young prince was a small child, with a sunny nature, and a normal quantity of childish curiosity and naughtiness, the absence of his shadow appeared more to amuse and enchant those who noticed it, than to cause them any alarm. But as he grew older, and began to show the first signs that he must put childhood behind him, his family and courtiers began to murmur when they thought he was not listening, and to consult wise men, without his knowledge, about what the meaning of this singularity was. They began to cover mirrors in rooms where he was, as though he might become aware of his absence, or partial absence, at the least. The boy himself noticed other people’s shadows, which he studied intently as they fell across courtyards, or were suspended on walls, stretching and contracting, visible human-shaped intangible nothings. He could not see his own shadow, and for some time assumed that no one could see his own shadow, but only other people’s shadows. Then he saw a little girl, playing a laughing game of making her shadow climb a wall, and making shadow-rabbits with her fingers against a light. There were no rabbits and no dragons in his fingers, or if there were, they were invisible. He did not know who to ask about this problem. He felt his parents would have spoken to him, if they wanted to, or were able.

  He took to going for long walks in the grounds of the palace, which were extensive. He was not allowed to ride out of the gates because of the fear of kidnapping, by lawless bandits, or foreign schemers. But there were little woods, within the walls, and pretty semi-wild clearings, and long rides, overhung with trees. He noticed he was going out more and more either in grey weather, when everything was the same colour as the shadows, or at noon on bright days, when nothing cast a shadow, under the high sun.

  He had a favourite place, where a clump of birch trees surrounded a small mound, where he would sit, and watch the busy insects going in and out of their holes under the earth, or read a book, or look at the sky through the leaves. He called it a magic place, in his mind, and always felt that the air had a different quality there, was full of movement and sparkles, in the stillness.

  There was a stone bench, but he didn’t sit on it. He sat on the turf, which was warm, in summer, and cool in the autumn.

  Sometimes he dozed. He must have been dozing, for he found his eyes were closed, and th
ere was a sound of very faint bells ringing, very large numbers of very small bells, as though the trees were full of them. And there was a sound of rushing, as though a large bird were alighting in the clearing. He was reluctant to open his eyes. The bells became still, and he felt he must look up, or time would be suspended.

  There was a fine lady, on a white horse, in the clearing, where no one and nothing had been. The horse was both creamy and silvery: it had ivory-coloured hooves, and a proudly arched neck, with a flowing, heavy mane of fine hairs, into which were woven myriads of tiny silver bells, on crimson threads, that glinted in the sunlight like raindrops, and rang when the horse tossed its head, or turned to look at Thomas. Its saddle was crimson leather, and the sweeping skirt of its rider was grass-green velvet, with a sheen on it like a green field of tall grasses, rippling in the light. She had fine green leather boots, and silver spurs, and he lifted his eyes upwards and finally took in her face, which was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It was fine and pale and pointed, with high cheekbones, and a sharp mouth. The lady had a mass of pale gold hair, which was caught in a silver snood under her brave cap with a curling green feather from no bird he had ever seen or imagined. She had long gloved fingers, and carried a little whip, with an ebony stock and a silver pommel. Her eyes were green. They were green like a great, watchful cat, not like any woman, or any man he knew. She looked neither kind nor unkind, and it occurred to him that perhaps she could not see him, perhaps she was in some other world that had become briefly visible in his. He saw, then, that neither she nor the lovely horse cast any shadow. They rippled with lights and light, from the bells and the gleaming coat of the horse, and the lady’s hair and her velvet skirt, but they cast no shadow.

  She looked down on him, and smiled, neither kindly nor unkindly. He stood up, and gave a little formal bow, which seemed the right thing, and stood shadowless next to the shadowless pair. He meant to say something like “Greetings,” or “My lady,” but he said