by A. S. Byatt
Pomona came in and rushed into his arms, kissing and hugging him. He told her, as he had not told Elsie, that she was becoming a beautiful young woman, and she tossed her mass of pale hair and cast down her eyes. Imogen had asked him to look out for Pomona. She herself was taking a course in jewellery, and making drawings of designs for small silver and enamel pendants. She seemed calm, which made Geraint aware that in earlier days she had not seemed calm, only dulled, or dimmed. She said she worried about Pomona, who would have, she said obscurely, to “bear everything” now that both she and Geraint were gone. Geraint had looked anxiously across at Florence Cain, who was pouring tea. He was a little in awe of Florence, who was seventeen, two years younger than he was, one year younger than Pomona, and a good four years younger than Imogen, but seemed wiser and more assured than any of them. He thought Florence was beautiful, like an Italian painting of a saint. He thought she was “just right,” without analysing her dress, or the way she managed a tea-tray. Imogen said “Don’t mind Florence, she’s a friend,” and it was Geraint, not Florence, who blushed as their eyes met. He remembered Florence as he took in Pomona, bundling herself into his embrace, stroking his face. Her eyes were wet. Geraint said
“Have you been all right, Pommy? Are you missing us? Do you have plans?”
Seraphita came sleepily downstairs at this point, and was duly astonished to see her changed son, in his new linen jacket. She asked vaguely if Elsie had “seen to” him, and he said Elsie had. Elsie began, briskly, to clear up the salad plates. Seraphita sat majestically and smiled. Pomona said “Tell us about… tell us about…” but could not think what question to ask about a life of which she knew nothing.
“I came in an automobile,” said Gerry. “Mr. Wellwood sent the chauffeur to bring me here. He is very considerate to me.”
He was never going to be able to tell these two about bullion and loans, about telegrams and dust.
The holiday ticked on, in a sunlit haze. Geraint got in some good solitary walks across the Marsh, and some bicycle rides with Pomona. Elsie produced delicious dishes of fried sprats and dressed crab and potato salad with mustard. Herbert and Phoebe Methley called, and were given tea, and asked all the questions about life in the City which his family had not asked. He described the hurrying march of men over London Bridge, the hurly-burly in the Stock Exchange, the celebration of the Relief of Mafeking. Herbert Methley said it was generally believed that Money was soulless, but this was not so. Mammon was a great spiritual power, and perturbed both angels and demons. Mammon was conducting this horrific killing in the Veld. Gold had made the war, and gold kept it in motion. This disquisition annoyed Geraint. He knew gold was a kind of living force, but the personification weakened and sentimentalised it, which he sensed, without being able to put it precisely into words. He saw gold in his mind’s eye, bright ingots, a hot flood from a crucible. He wanted no moth-eaten demon. Pomona said “We had no idea it was all so exciting. We thought it was dull and—and mechanical.” So it is, said Geraint. Dull, mechanical and exciting. Elsie whisked past with fresh scones she had made, and a pot of excellent gooseberry jam.
He liked breathing the air of the Marsh, he felt stronger in his body; but he was not unhappy when the time came to leave. Before that, he had his little talk with Elsie. He asked her to step into the orchard, he wanted to talk to her. They paced between the trees. “Do you need anything?” asked Geraint. “You seem to perform small miracles with loaves and fishes—I feel I do need to ask, have you enough—enough money—to manage? My mother is not practical.”
Elsie surprised him. She sat down on a grassy hump and stretched out her legs. She took off her bulky sandals.
“Look at my feet,” she said. Her feet were not pretty. They were pinched and bruised, they had corns and lumps, they bled a little. She said, dry and intense,
“I want shoes of my own. I can’t get about and do everything I do with these feet. I get hand-downs from Frank Mallett, none of them fit, I have thin feet. Look at them, Mr. Fludd. Look at them. They are old woman’s feet. They are being smashed into old woman’s feet. I shall truly be more use with shoes of my own.”
“I have to ask—forgive me—are you being paid?”
“I don’t see why you need to be forgiven, and I think you know the answer. No, I am not paid, I get board and lodging and hand-downs. I don’t complain, I know money is tight, but I do need shoes.”
“You don’t—intend to leave, to go elsewhere?”
“Listen. I always swore I would never, never go into Service, whatever I had to do. I would have stayed in the Potteries and decorated the ware, it would have been a trade I would have had. Like my mam, who is dead. I came to look for Philip, when she died, because she wanted me to. I love Philip, Mr. Fludd, he’s all I love. And I know he’s right and has always been right—he’s got a real gift, and he’s driven. This is his dream-world, because your father is a great master. He is learning what he might never have hoped to learn. I don’t think he’s more than half pleased I’m here—he’d got away, into another place, and I remind him of what he’d left. But as long as I make things here comfortable for everyone, Philip is free—he can make pots, he can invent, he can work. I never meant to be a housekeeper. I had my own little ambitions. I can’t bear the fecklessness here—forgive me, that’s rude—I do enjoy tweaking things, mending and making do, and brightening a bit.”
She was working herself up. She spoke rapidly, drily, furiously. She said
“And I feel a fool in all this flowery cloth and embroidered bits and pieces, I’d like the Reverend Mallett to see me in ordinary respectable boring things, I’m not a puppet or an Aunt Sally. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t complain about that, I didn’t mean to. But, you know, Mr. Fludd, the saying is a true saying—my feet are killing me. I’m sorry. Now I’ll shut up. I am sorry.”
Geraint sat down on the grass beside her. To his own surprise, he took one of the hot feet in his hands and bent over it. “How much do shoes cost?”
“I don’t know. You must know that better than I could. You’ve got ordinary clothes now—handsome clothes, I should say—good shoes.”
His City shoes had cost a month’s wages. He looked after their glowing leather like his own skin, and they were indeed smoother than that, as it tended to erupt. Geraint Fludd had only recently had money of his own, earned by his own efforts, in his pockets, and he was what Elsie would have called “close,” very close with it. But he fetched out his purse now and counted four silver half-crowns into Elsie’s hand.
“This should buy some shoes for you. When I come back, I shall expect to see you striding about comfortably, and going on long walks.” He hesitated. He wanted to say that he would come with her, to choose the shoes. He was rearranging in his mind the little luxuries he would forfeit for the shoes and a magnanimous glow filled him at the thought of the fine toes wriggling comfortably in new leather. But there was something intimate, something improper, about going to a shoe shop with this young woman. Either he behaved as though she was—was a kind of vassal, of whom he was lord and master, or he behaved like an almost-lover, making gifts, which might expect a return. He said, a little stiffly,
“I do know how much more you do for my family than you need, or they—we—really appreciate. I do know.”
Elsie smiled ruefully. She would have liked someone to be with her, on her momentous shoe-shop visit. Maybe she should wait for Philip. But her feet were killing her.
Geraint went back to Vetchey Manor in the dog cart, and in a day or two Elsie walked across the Marsh, and up the hill into Rye. There were two or three boot and shoe shops, in the window of one of which—Jas. Plaskett, estd. 1872—was the red leather belt with the arrow clasp. Elsie stood on the cobbles, staring into the window, calculating. She did not want her first pair of shoes to be workingwomen’s clodhopping boots and she knew, with fatal realism, that if she bought herself any shoes remotely shapely, or almost dressy, she wouldn’t ever be able to bring herself to wea
r them, for what she needed, trotting across the yard, running up and down stairs, walking into Lydd. She should buy something sensible, which, if assiduously scraped and polished, would look acceptable below her plain skirt, when she got it. She hoped for a moment that Geraint might have given her enough to buy both shoes and the red belt. She calculated. As long as she didn’t go into the shop, she could imagine owning the belt.
“I have been wondering what you are dreaming about,” said a pleasant voice behind her. Elsie jumped. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” said Herbert Methley. “I’ve been watching you thinking for maybe twenty minutes, and I couldn’t resist, in the end, asking about what you are thinking and frowning and murmuring to yourself. You don’t have to answer, I know I’m impertinent.”
Elsie laughed. “Shoes. I’m thinking about shoes. For the first time in my life I’m buying new shoes, for me. I can’t make up my mind. I don’t know how to decide.”
“And as long as you don’t decide, all the shoes are yours to think about,” said the writer.
“Yes, and the smart red belt with the arrow there. I could just about manage the belt if I bought cheaper boots—but I don’t need the belt, I need shoes that don’t hurt.”
“This is indeed a momentous decision. I am a storyteller, you know, and I do need to know how it will come out. I think you must try on the shoes—as many as you can, so that you may see your feet in every possible light and every possible form. You will certainly find that some of the shoes that look good in the window, that promise comfort and prettiness, will turn out to be deceivers, will pinch your heel or hurt your great toe. And others, that look like nothing much sitting there on the stand, will turn out to feel like gloves that were made specially with your feet and your elegant ankles in mind. In an ideal world you would be buying walking shoes, and dancing shoes, and everyday housework shoes, but you need to find one pair that can be all these at once, I assume, and that isn’t easy. I hope you will let me help you. I do have a good eye for women’s feet, I have always been told. I really want to know how this tale will come out—”
So they went into the dark, leather-scented shop, and Elsie sat on an upholstered chair, with Herbert Methley kneeling on one side of her and the shoe-shop boy on the other, bringing more and more shoe-boxes from his store behind his counter. Methley stroked her feet as she inserted them carefully into black shoes and brown shoes, shoes with little heels and shoes with punched trimmings, and serviceable brogues. He was uncannily accurate about which shoes would prove to fit her feet comfortably, rejecting those that were too heavy, and also those that might prove to pinch. He made her walk in the shoes, and turn her body round so that he could see from all angles, and asked where the tips of her toes reached, and whether her heels scrubbed. It was oddly intimate. They had it down to two pairs, long after Elsie on her own would have made a rushed decision for the cheapest and ugliest, out of a sense that she didn’t “deserve” to have anything better.
“They need to feel like gloves, Elsie. They need to support all those tiny little bones that do so much work in the arch of your foot, and you need to be able to move all your toes, without feeling you’re wearing a shoe-box instead of a shoe. I myself like this black pair with the little heel best. At a pinch—or not at a pinch—they have a certain elegance—severe but fine—and yet I am sure they will be serviceable.”
Elsie agreed to buy those shoes and was prepared to walk back to Purchase House in them. Methley told her she must not. “Wear them every day for a short time, until you and they know each other. You need to warm and stretch them, little by little. To make them yours. May I walk back to Purchase House with you? I was out for a stroll anyway, and should like the company.”
Elsie was confused. Herbert Methley was, in her eyes, old, part of the father’s generation. Maybe his friendliness and—and—assiduity were fatherly, though she didn’t think so. He was much uglier than Geraint, and much more interested and interesting than Geraint. She had change from Geraint’s half-crowns, though not the price of the red belt. She said she would be glad if he walked back with her, and then he produced, like a conjuror, a small parcel, tied with string.
“For you,” he said. “Open it.”
It was, of course, the red belt.
“I can’t.”
“Why not? It isn’t often that one can surprise someone with their heart’s desire. And you are quite right, you have excellent taste, it is a lovely belt.”
It was shaped to sit on the hips, and point downwards, like an arrow, between them. Herbert Methley insisted on fastening it round her, his long hands, very briefly, echoing its form, lingering a few seconds, pointing down.
After this they walked back, over the Marsh, side by side, aware of each other. Methley said
“I wonder if you would mind very much if I put your feet—and your shoes—into a novel I am writing? They are just what I need as a solid example—”
“Example of what?” Elsie asked, neither pleased nor displeased.
“It’s a novel about—about what’s wrong with women’s lives. Women’s clothing is a form of oppression and confinement.”
Elsie considered the jump of subject from shoes to freedom. She said she’d never had occasion to think about these things. She had too much to do, she almost said, and restrained herself, for she felt the sentence would sound silly.
“But you should think, Elsie. Why should your brother be in gay Paris, and you here as a domestic slave, with no shoes?”
“He’s a real good potter. I’m not.”
“Have you ever thought what you might be, if you had a real choice?”
“There’s no point,” said Elsie.
She thought about her discontent, making ends meet for those feckless and aimless females in Purchase House. She thought of the pantry, full of lascivious pots. There were several in which the female figure lay back with her fingers between her legs, at the spot towards which the arrow on the new red belt was pointing. She was aroused and disturbed—not entirely pleasantly—by Herbert Methley. He stirred her up, as Geraint, and the fisher-boy, did not. She needed to keep her head.
“And what is to happen to your—your character with no shoes? Does she end well?”
“She works out her own freedom, and is able to dance barefoot,” said Methley. “She learns to live.”
Elsie did not ask who would teach the barefoot girl. She made a remark about the view across the Marsh, and the larks singing. Methley followed her lead, and they sauntered on, demonstrating great interest in wild flowers and marsh sheep, in windblown trees and the Royal Military Canal, along whose deliberately designed bank they walked for some way. Methley turned off the road before it turned towards the drive to Purchase Hall. Elsie thanked him, with some constraint, for his help and for the belt. He said “I think you should come to a public meeting about the rights of women that Miss Dace is organising in Lydd. I think you should take an interest. Women’s lives are about to change utterly. You—you yourself—need to think about that.”
Elsie said she would need to think about whether it could be managed.
“My wife and I will be there. You would be among friends.”
“I shall need to ask,” Elsie said, already a little mutinous at having to ask Seraphita for anything.
“Maybe Mrs. Fludd would also consider coming? We need to speak to all women.”
Elsie did not know how greatly Seraphita Fludd feared that Elsie herself would leave as suddenly and mysteriously as she had come.
25
Miss Dace had booked a kind of glorified wooden hut, in Lydd, known vaguely as the Club Hall, though it did not belong exclusively to any particular club. The army used it, for lectures and social events. The Chapel used it for bring and buy sales. The University Extension Lecturers used it in the evenings, for workers’ education. Miss Dace had put up posters advertising a full day of discussions on the general theme of “The Woman of the Future.” There were five speakers, beginning with Miss Dac
e herself, and ending with Herbert Methley. There was always the risk that the number of the audience would only equal the number of speakers. Miss Dace enticed the Theosophists and the sewing circle with promises of a very good cold lunch to break the day. She spoke to a major’s wife who was a Theosophist, and asked her to encourage other wives to come. The colonel’s wife was known to be a vehement Anti-Suffragist. She might even come—or send a minion—to heckle. The Vicar of All Saints in Lydd could not be expected to come, though some independent women from his congregation might do so. Frank Mallett and Arthur Dobbin would come, because they were good disciples of Edward Carpenter, and because one of the speakers was the schoolmistress at Puxty, Mrs. Marian Oakeshott.
The family at Purchase House were sent a flyleaf. Seraphita put it listlessly down on the kitchen table. Elsie said, slightly too firmly, “I should like to go to that, if that’s all right.”
Seraphita put her head on one side and looked as though she was considering objections, with difficulty.
“Do you think you will go?” Elsie asked Seraphita.
“Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t believe in all this agitation about votes, which is what I suppose it’s about. I don’t see how votes could change anything important. Women are … women must…”
She left most such sentences trailing unfinished.
“I will go with you,” said Pomona. “It will make a change of scene.” She yawned, prettily. Elsie was briefly annoyed. She had wanted to do something on her own. But Pomona was right—she did most desperately need a change of scene.
They set out across the Denge Marsh. It was a hot, still morning. Elsie had dressed carefully. She wore a white cotton blouse, her willow-bough skirt, the red belt and the new shoes. She had made herself a hat, on the base of a broken-crowned straw hat retrieved from Frank Mallett’s hand-ons. She had stitched it together, and trimmed it with some ends of red braid, retrieved from Seraphita’s sewing, and a kind of flower-form she had twisted out of bits of lace and gauze. It was the first time she had gone out in public in a hat. Pomona wore a flowing shep-herdessy smock in apple-green, liberally embroidered with butterflies and blossoms. She was hatless. Her pale hair flowed over her shoulders. She looked as though she might be going to comment on Elsie’s appearance, and in the end, did not.