The Children's Book

by A. S. Byatt

  A sudden moment of involuntary spite came over her.

  “And that lot are so useless and helpless and don’t pay me a penny. And I’ve got this lump in me, that turns about and about, and will come out and need vests and caps and milk, and how can I make do, when I get nothing—”

  “Don’t cry,” said Marian.

  Elsie gulped.

  “I shan’t. I daren’t. I’ve got to keep myself together.”

  Phoebe Methley said “What you say is true and moving. But you must admit—you are in this situation because of things you have done—about which Philip tells us it is no good to ask, so we are not asking. You are probably not the most guilty person in this muddle, but we are talking about help, not about guilt. And there is one entirely innocent person, who is not yet born, and must be cared for.”

  “Will you agree to us talking to Mrs. Fludd?” asked Miss Dace.

  “I don’t seem to have much choice. No, don’t listen to me, that’s not fair of me. I am grateful to you ladies—I couldn’t have expected so much—I am, I am. But I am scared stiff, too. I’ve always been a strong one.”

  The three good ladies became more frank as they grew more intimate over the moral problem of the fate of Elsie Warren’s baby. They held, and enjoyed, a long discussion of how best to approach Seraphita Fludd. They agreed that they had little idea what she thought or felt about anything. “Never have I met a woman so determinedly vague,” said Miss Dace, whose disposition was the opposite of vagueness. They imparted to each other what was common knowledge about her history. Her name was not Seraphita. She had been separated from her class by her great beauty. She had been, in late Pre-Raphaelite, early Aesthetic days, a “Stunner” and had modelled for Millais. The ladies agreed that she was still a lovely woman. The proportions of her facial bones were perfect, said Marian Oakeshott. “And all that mass of hair, hardly faded,” said Phoebe Methley. “She doesn’t look you in the eye, ever,” said Patty Dace. “It isn’t that she’s devious, it is that she’s absent.” They agreed comfortably that she had no idea how to run a house, or how to bring up children. Geraint had run wild, and the poor girls—though lovely to look at, as their mother was—had no social nous, no common sense even. They had heard that Geraint was doing well in the City, having thrown over the whole pastoral aesthetic.

  Marian said it was quite possible that Seraphita had come from much the same world as Elsie, but she entirely lacked her common sense or her willingness to make do.

  Patty Dace said that that fact could make her harsher with Elsie’s predicament, or more sympathetic, there was no way of knowing. She might feel she had to keep up appearances.

  “What appearances?” asked Phoebe Methley, tartly. “They’re all darned and draggled, or were before Elsie took over.”

  “And Elsie seems to be saying that she isn’t paid.”

  “That isn’t right.”

  “It’s not. Is it our business?”

  “What about him in all this,” asked Marian Oakeshott. “He’s another, you don’t know what he thinks, or feels, or what drives him, except the making of beautiful pots. For which it appears he needs Philip.”

  “I do not know them well,” said Phoebe Methley. “But I have to say, I have never seen him address one word to his wife. Not one word. Once I had noticed this, I observed him a little. He may have married her for her beauty, but his eye passes over her as though she were a jug, and not a masterwork of ceramics, but a common earthenware crock.”

  They were overexcited by their own openness. Miss Dace did not feel able to speculate about anyone’s sex instinct or sexual behaviour.

  Indeed she preferred to ignore such matters. But Marian Oakeshott, daring, said to Phoebe

  “I saw him brush against her on the lawn. He flinched. And she turned that head of hers the other way.”

  “Are we any nearer to knowing what to say to her?” asked Miss Dace.

  “Has she any substance to oppose to our decisiveness?” asked Marian. “Can we not overwhelm her with our calm certainty about what is best to be done?”

  The day they went to speak to Mrs. Fludd was a bright spring day. They found her sitting in the orchard in a sagging basket chair, working—or about to work—on a circular tapestry frame, with a basket of wools open in the grass at her side. Marian Oakeshott, who had seen some Impressionist paintings, thought that Seraphita resembled a painting by Monet or a painting by Millais. The apple branches cast dappled shadows over the chalky face, which gave the impression of being blurred, as though rapidly and sketchily filled in. She was wearing floating dove-coloured muslin, which again appeared brushed-up, in the half-shadow, and her long fingers and long neck were insubstantially slender and very slightly textured, shantung, not smooth silk. Her large eyes were surrounded by slatey skin, slightly puffed, with liquid under it. The skeins of wool in the basket were bright jewel colours, emerald, amber, jacinth, sapphire, ruby. They were precise and sharp amongst the floating cloudiness. She greeted them without rising. It was delightful to see them, she said. Where was Elsie? Elsie would bring more chairs, and make tea. Marian said Elsie had gone into Rye, and that she herself would find more chairs, which she did, dragging them in from other parts of the orchard and garden. They had something particular to say, said Marian. It was no accident that Elsie was out.

  Seraphita dropped her frame into her lap, and had to hunt for her needle. She said she hoped Elsie had done nothing bad.

  “Have you noticed nothing—about Elsie?” asked Phoebe.

  “No,” said Seraphita flatly, her eyes widening.

  “Elsie is expecting a baby,” said Miss Dace. “In the summer. She hasn’t seen a doctor, it is not precise.”

  There were several long moments whilst Seraphita took this in, and seemed to decide what to say. Her face creased up, with thought perhaps, although it looked as though she was about to cry. She said in a faint voice “Who…?”

  As she didn’t finish the sentence, none of the ladies felt a need to answer.

  Seraphita next brought out “I should send her away …?”

  This exasperated all three ladies, who all knew that Elsie cost Seraphita nothing, and saved her a good deal. Marian, more kindly, noticed a plaintive hint of social fear in the wavering voice. Seraphita was afraid of being judged for not sending Elsie away. Marian said

  “We came to discuss with you the possibility of not doing that, Mrs. Fludd. We are very aware of the importance of Elsie’s work to the comfort of this household—you and your family,” she said, lying, “have often told us so. And it is a very happy circumstance that both Elsie and her brother have been so welcome here, and contributed so much. Philip confided in the Reverend Mallett, who consulted us, as, so to speak, busybodies or good fairies, we hope. With your agreement, we can make arrangements for the lying-in, and for the care of the child, should Elsie wish to keep it, and continue to keep her place here.”

  Seraphita went white, which might have been thought impossible. Even her lips blanched. She breathed a series of unachieved phrases, kind, too kind, such a shock, so unexpected, and again who… ? and the whispered word “responsible”? Marian could see her trying not to think of either her husband or her son in connection with that word. Unlike Phoebe Methley, Marian did not have a clear idea of the unmentionable male, and had wondered about both Benedict Fludd, and the lively and handsome Geraint. She answered obliquely

  “I am sure if Elsie feels that there is no obstacle to her staying here, you need not worry, Mrs. Fludd. And we have talked to Elsie, who accepts our plans, or appears to.”

  “She doesn’t feel very well,” said Miss Dace. “I hope you will encourage her to work less hard for a few months. I am arranging for her to see my doctor.”

  Seraphita did not offer to pay the doctor. She was beginning to tremble. She said

  “Do as you think best… infinitely grateful…” She said, in a different voice, staring into space,

  “It is a terrible thing to be a woman. You
are told people like to look at you—as though you have a duty to be the object of… the object of… And then, afterwards, if you are rejected, if what you… thought you were worth … is after all not wanted… you are nothing.”

  She gave a little shrug, and pulled herself together, and said “Poor Elsie,” in an artificial, polite, tea-party voice, though she had not offered, and did not offer, to make tea.

  The secrets in the house in Portman Square were of a more innocent kind, which might be thought odd, since Basil and Katharina Wellwood inhabited the fringes of the new, naughty social world of the pleasure-loving King. Both children, Charles/Karl and Griselda, were secretive, which distressed their parents, who nevertheless did not bring the subject up. Katharina Wildvogel had inherited a great deal of money, and employed a large number of servants. Her secret was that she was temperamentally a hausfrau. She would have loved to bake and sew and discuss clothes with her daughter, and perhaps even advise her son on affairs of the heart. She herself had no pretensions to beauty—she was slender, and carried herself well, and chose her hats and shoes and jewellery with taste. She saw Griselda as the being who would do, rightly and easily, everything she herself had had to struggle with, contrive, approximate. Griselda at seventeen was indeed—in her pale, fragile way—almost a beauty, with a pretty figure and a clean-cut face under her white-blonde hair. She was, or said she was, not interested in dressing-up. She spent as much of her time as she could with her cousin Dorothy. They were trying to become educated women, though in both cases their parents were only half-hearted about the education, and had to be badgered and pestered to arrange classes at Queen’s College, or tutorials with Toby Youlgreave and Joachim Susskind.

  Dorothy’s path was harder—she did not live in London, and had to travel up by train, or stay for days together in Portman Square, aware that Katharina, though she liked Dorothy well enough in herself, deprecated her influence on Griselda’s ambitions. Dorothy got moral support from Leslie and Etta Skinner, who arranged for her to attend demonstrations and experiments at University College. But she was aware that the Todefright Wellwood family income fluctuated alarmingly, and dared not ask for too much. The life of the mind was easier for Griselda, who sat curled in the window-seat reading—at great speed—histories, philosophies, poems and fiction. Griselda felt both pain and pleasure over being secretly in love with Toby Youlgreave. Of course he must never know, but the tingle of imprecise desire delighted Griselda whilst she felt vaguely frustrated. And it meant she saw herself as set apart. She did not have to worry about Charles’s friends flirting, or her mother’s preoccupation with suitable dancing partners.

  They were troubled, as intelligent girls at the time were troubled, by the question of whether their need for knowledge and work in the world would in some sense denature them. Women worked, they knew, as milliners and typewriters, housekeepers and skivvies. They worked because they had no means, or were not pretty or rich enough to attract a man. The spectre of imaginary nuns haunted them. If Griselda did manage to be admitted to Newnham College, in Cambridge, would it be like entering a nunnery, an all-female community, mutually supporting intellectual desire and ambition which the world at large still saw as unnatural, and frequently as threatening? Griselda’s quiet love for Toby reassured her on this front also—she had ordinary womanly feelings, she was not a freak, or a withdrawn contemplative. She just wanted to be able to think.

  Dorothy was sterner—she had to be—the path she had chosen was still into hostile country, even though there were now a respectable number of qualified women doctors in the world, and a new women’s hospital. The life of the mind, and the truly useful life of medicine, would doom her, too, to the inhabiting of an all-female community. Women doctors treated only women, and worked with other women doctors. One side of her nature would have to be denied, in order for her to become the professional person she meant to be. It was not so for males. Men doctors married, and their wives supported their surgeries, and comforted them when they were tired. In low moments, late at night, Dorothy asked herself if she was some kind of monster. But she went on, at least partly because she could not imagine confining her life to frills, furbelows, teacups, gossip. If women only, better the operating theatre than the sewing-circle. But it wasn’t easy.

  Charles’s secret, his political opinions, caused him paradoxically to live in the frivolous, parasitic way those opinions condemned. He didn’t want to commit himself to university, and kept telling his father he needed time to work out what he really wanted to do and be. He went on European cultural journeys, frequently to Germany, since he was, after all, half-German. He talked Joachim Susskind into accompanying him for tours of six or eight weeks—thus putting a great strain on Dorothy’s instruction and disrupting her planned progress. Susskind was originally from Munich, and liked to go back there and talk anarchism and other forms of disorder—sexual, theatrical, religious—in the Café Stefanie, and in the Wirthaus zum Hirsch in Schwabing. Charles/ Karl was introduced to a psychoanalyst, wild Otto Gross, and the social anarchist Gustav Landauer. He went to satirical cabarets, which he did not follow, because his German was not idiomatic enough, and his local political knowledge was nonexistent. But he loved the smoke-filled air and the smoke-stained ceilings and the air of serious, witty wickedness and idealism. He would have liked to be a writer or a painter, but was not sure he could write or paint. He bought a sketch-pad and drew some secret cows and naked women, both of which were so wooden that he tore them up. Munich was full of serious, laughing women, painting in the open air. He loitered behind them, and watched their wrists turn as they put the strokes of paint on the canvas. He said to Joachim that he would like to stay long enough to take lessons in art or design. Joachim said complacently that München was a cauldron of creativity.

  28

  Prosper Cain was troubled by his responsibility for his motherless daughter, who was becoming a young woman. He feared she was in love, and he feared the love was hopeless. Before Julian went to Cambridge, he and Florence had been very close, reading the same books, taking walks together, arguing about the nature of things. Now Julian was at King’s he had moved into the penumbra of the secret society, the Apostles, and was being watched by young men like Morgan Forster, to see whether he would be a suitable embryo, to be propagated and “born” as a member, on the sacred hearthrug. The sponsor of an embryo was, in the occult language, his “father.” The members of the Society were Reality: everything else was merely Phenomenal. An older student, Gerald Matthiessen, a brilliant Classic, had taken an interest in Julian, with a view to potential fatherhood. He had invited him to breakfast, and taken him on long walks across the Fens. They had discussed Plato, the Aesthetic movement, the nature of virtue, the nature of love. They mocked each other, intently, like sparring partners in a gymnasium. Julian had at first thought that his own penchant for irony, his belief in the dangers of seriousness, would put off Gerald, the passionate thinker, the moralist. Gerald was handsome, in the way Julian himself would have been handsome—fine, narrow, dark, slightly evasive, even sly. Julian’s ideal lover was still someone blond and outdoor and innocent: Tom Wellwood. He was aware that Gerald was interested in him. Many of their conversations turned on male love, and the sublimation of base desires. Tamen usque recurret, murmured Gerald, one night over port. Julian, feeling like a girl, looked down at the cheese and grapes on his plate, and smiled a secretive smile. He rather thought he was putting up with the motes of sexuality in the light from the windows, the sensuality breathed like cigarette smoke and thinning out into the general air, just in order to be able to talk so intensely. But then again, maybe it was becoming his natural atmosphere. He invited Gerald to stay in the South Kensington house—“you will find the quarters cramped, but we have courtyards and staircases and secret cupboards to dream about.”

  • • •

  Prosper Cain was a connoisseur but not a university man. He had spent his life in the army, which was also a male enclave, and he kne
w the value of intense comradeliness, even though he knew nothing at all about the Apostles. He also, with deep alarm, saw that Florence was studying the male couple wistfully, was standing outside the pas de deux wanting to be let in. She could not fall in love with Julian. Nothing more natural than that she should fall in love with Julian’s other self, totally eligible, totally at home in the world she had grown up in. Simply because she was female, Florence was the creature Prosper Cain loved most in the world. He loved his son very nearly as much, except for the extra slight rage of protectiveness. He was offended to see his poised Florence with an expression of anxiety, or wistfulness, or looking lost and left out. He talked amiably to Gerald about majolica and putti, about Palissy and dried frogs and toads, and wanted to stab him in the heart for ignoring his daughter. For Gerald did not see Florence, except as a generic girl. He also did not see Imogen Fludd.

  Imogen was doing good work as a jewellery designer. The small scale, the precision, the concentration suited her. She made some delightful asymmetrical silver pendants, decorated with drooping threads of tiny pearls like water-drops on spider-webs, and some elegant horn combs, to wear in the hair, inlaid with slivers of ebony, mother-of-pearl, and enamelled copper, one of which she gave to Florence. The art students liked her, but she was intimate with none of them, and did not appear to expect to be. She went only occasionally back to Purchase House, never alone, with Geraint, or—once or twice—with Florence. She had her mother’s long neck and large eyes, and might have been beautiful if she had been more animated. In 1901 she was already twenty-two. At Easter she presented Prosper with a little jewelled egg she had been working on in secret, midnight-blue outside, pure milky white inside, studded with little moons and stars and crescents made of fine slivers of gold and pearl. Inside the egg was a gold charm in the shape of a phoenix, with crimson eyes and flaming crest. When she handed it to him, the blood flared up her neck and cheeks. “I owe you so much,” she said, in an almost-whisper. Cain put his arms round her, and felt the liveliness of her spine and the soft weight of her breasts. She needed a husband, he thought. She needed love, and a life of her own.