The Children's Book

by A. S. Byatt

  Benedict Fludd had to give one of the first lectures—so that all the aspiring potters could learn first principles from him. He would speak in the Tithe Barn, and Philip would sit at the wheel on the platform beside him, to demonstrate wedging, and fritting, and pulling, and building, and centring, and the rhythm of the wheel. Later they would return, and demonstrate painting and glazing. And at the very end of the camp they would examine the pots that had been made, and choose which were fit to be fired, and fire the great bottle kiln, for which the wood was being collected. At a much later stage in the planning, during an idle conversation with Wolfgang Stern, Geraint conceived the wild idea of dismantling the fairy tower—which itself bore an odd resemblance to a bottle kiln or oast-house—and carrying it through the lanes to add to the firing. Wolfgang said his fabricated audience—a mixture of sagging or rigid scarecrows and stuffed dolls, softly representing smiling women, with pink painted cheeks, or men in blazers and boaters—could rise up and pull it all down, and run through the landscape. The best drama, Wolfgang said, would be, if they put the Puppen in the fire door. It would be an amazement. But I do not know that I could support to burn so much careful work.

  Burn the failures, said Geraint. There always are some.

  Prosper Cain, and Florence, and Imogen were in the Mermaid Inn, in Rye. Geraint came to drive them over to Benedict Fludd’s lecture. Geraint supposed, as the rest of his family supposed, that Imogen would then go on to Purchase House with his family. Over breakfast, Imogen had said, in a thick, swallowed voice,

  “You do understand. I’m not going back.”

  “We understand. Florence needs you. I shall explain.”

  When Imogen had gone to fetch her hat, Florence said

  “I wish you would not say I need Imogen. I don’t. She may need me.”

  “She doesn’t wish to return home.”

  “I know that. You consider all her wishes. There was no suggestion, when she came, that she would be here for ever.”

  “Oh, Florence.” He looked a little helplessly at his rigid, rigorous daughter. “She won’t be here for ever. She must find a way to make a living, and a home for herself.”

  “I’m sure her mother wants to see her,” said Florence, who was sure of nothing of the kind. She said with passion

  “I wish we could go back to Italy, to Florence. I don’t want to spend my summers in dingy Dungeness where I have nothing to do.”

  Prosper Cain was about to put his arm round his daughter, who had been born in Florence, when Imogen returned with her hat, which was very pretty, huge-brimmed, covered with artlessly artful feathery flowers.

  The Cains arrived at the Tithe Barn when the audience for the lecture was largely assembled. There was a raised platform at one end, on which stood a lectern, and next to the lectern a potter’s wheel, and a table on which bowls, jars, models, stood, some perfect and gleaming with intricate design, some pale and matt, with unfired glaze, one or two blown into strange hobbling or deliquescent shapes by misfirings.

  Benedict Fludd and Philip came on together, to mild applause. Philip was cleanly clothed as an apprentice, in a linen overall, his bush of hair smoothed down. Fludd was wearing a kind of overall-robe, in midnight-blue, with gold piping, streaked with clay stains, including a ghostly handprint. His full Victorian beard also had clay in it. He wore small, round spectacles, which gave him the air of a scientific eccentric. He stood quite still, staring out at the audience, checking, and then began to speak. His family was in a row—Seraphita in floating embroidery, Pomona in innocent muslin, Elsie in a round shiny black straw hat, fastidious Florence in brown linen, Prosper Cain in a summer suit, and Imogen, under her flowers. He nodded to them, and began to speak.

  “Potters, like gravediggers, are marked by clay. We work with the cold stuff of Earth, which we refine by beating and mixing, form with our fingers and the movement of our feet and then submit to the hazards of the furnace. We take the mould we are made of and mould it to the forms our minds see inside our skulls—always remembering that earth is earth, and will take only those forms proper to its nature. I hope to show you that those forms are infinitely more extensive than most people may imagine—though not infinite, as earth is not infinite. We are chemists— we must know metals and ores, temperatures and binding elements, weights and measures. We are artists—we must be able to be exact and flourishing together, with a brush or a cutting tool. We are like the alchemists of old—we employ fire, smoke, crucibles, gold, silver, even blood and bone, to make our vessels, our simulacrae, our fantasies and those containers necessary for daily functions, food and drink—which can be lovely, however plain, graceful, however simple …”

  He went on. Everyone listened. He called on his assistant to demonstrate the mystery of the craft, and Philip silently, and skilfully, taking lumps of clay from baths and bins ranged beside him, made airless blocks, or rising coils, or, towards the end, a turning bowl, wavering up against gravity between his strong fingers.

  There was much applause. Tea and sandwiches were served and Fludd made his way to his own family group. Prosper Cain told him the lecture was both earthy and fiery. He accepted the compliment. He moved step by sideways step to where Imogen stood, talking to Elsie in a self-consciously absorbed way.

  “You came,” he said. “You have come back to us. We are fellow workers, fellow members of the crafts. My dear.”

  He put his arms around her. Imogen stiffened. When he released her, she brushed down her dress, as though slivers of clay were on it. She said

  “You spoke wonderfully. As always.”

  Fludd was bustling and smiling. Members of the audience crowded him, all complimentary. Philip, on the platform, was packing the exhibits into crates. Geraint joined him. He said, “That went well.” Philip frowned.

  “He’s excited. When he’s this full of himself, there’s always a reaction. You know that. I’m bothered. He has set so much on—”

  “On?”

  “On her coming back. But it won’t be for long. And then—”

  When everyone else had gone, the Fludds remained. Benedict said to Imogen

  “Come now. Everything is ready, Elsie has seen to it.”

  “I’m staying—with Florence,” whispered Imogen. “Bring Florence. Come.”

  “I’m going back to Rye.”

  Her father caught her wrist. He gripped and ground it.

  “You are coming home. I’m here because you agreed to come home.”

  He stared, or glared, at her.

  Florence took two or three little steps back, out of the group. Imogen said, inaudibly, “You know I can’t.” Prosper said

  “Benedict, you are hurting her. Let her go. Let her come back to the Mermaid, and we’ll talk things over—” Benedict turned on Prosper Cain.

  “All this is your doing. You seduced her. You are keeping her from me—”

  “Be careful what you say,” said Prosper. “Be very careful.”

  Benedict hit him. Not with a clenched fist, with a flat hand, very heavily, across the cheek, leaving fingermarks that looked flayed, and clay on the tips of the moustache.

  Prosper ducked the second blow.

  Imogen began to shake.

  Prosper said, very formally, to Seraphita, “You must see, madam, that she is a woman grown, and may choose where she sleeps. I shall take her back to the inn until we are all calmer.”

  “Philip—” said Seraphita. “Fetch Philip—”

  Prosper Cain swept his ladies away. He had to support Imogen. Florence trailed behind them, treading with little stamps of her heels. Geraint, annoyed by the failure of his well-planned day, and anxious in some other dark place he did not wish to acknowledge, went back to Philip, and helped him to help Benedict, who appeared to be choking, into a pony-trap.

  The Cain party had its own small breakfast room. Imogen did not appear the next morning. Florence and her father ate largely in silence. He said, once,

  “We might go to Italy later thi
s summer.”

  “Never mind Italy,” said Florence, repressively, chewing toast. “What are you going to do now?”

  “Do?”

  “About Imogen Fludd.”

  Prosper Cain took a long time to answer. Florence observed

  “They are all impossible people, all of them.”

  “Should you like to go for a drive this morning, perhaps.”

  Florence said she was going out to walk with Griselda Wellwood, who was also in Rye. She said her father would be expected at the crafts camp. She went out.

  After a time, Imogen appeared in the doorway, dressed in travelling clothes, carrying a small portmanteau. Prosper asked her to sit down and drink some tea, and eat some toast at least. She did sit down, rather heavily. He poured tea for her. There was a silence. “Where are you going?” asked Major Cain.

  “I thought, to Geraint. He will have to help me. He is my brother, he is the right person.”

  “He is a very young man, and he works long hours in a difficult place, and lives in a lodging-house. Much better stay here, and we will think about what is best, together, sensibly.”

  Imogen sipped her tea. The tension in her usually calm face made it, Prosper thought, wild and beautiful.

  “There are things you don’t know,” she said.

  “The world is full of things I don’t know, and shan’t know. I know what I need to know when I am in a campaign, and I know what I need to know about how to run a museum department and buy gold and silver. I don’t know what I need to know about young women. I am not well equipped, as regards young women. But I am very good at not seeking to know what does not concern me. Often it is best to remain ignorant for ever of painful things. I have known several people who have brought themselves to confess this, or that, or to complain violently of this, or that, and have regretted it for the rest of their lives.”

  He looked at her portmanteau.

  “When I was a boy,” he said, “I used to pack a suitcase, and form a project of running away. Sometimes the packing was enough. Sometimes I set out, and had to be brought back. Once I was away a whole night, and was savagely beaten, on my return, and then cuddled and kissed.”

  “I am not a child, and I do know I must go.”

  “I hope you will let me look after you.”

  “You can’t. I see that, now. For every reason.”

  “My dear,” said Prosper Cain, very stiffly, his back rigid, “I have not forgotten, and cannot forget, what you said to me in Clerkenwell.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Did you not? It has made me see what I myself feel. For my own part, I can think of no greater happiness than making you my wife. And giving me the right to look after you. I am much older than you are. I know that. So do you. But in some timeless place, I do believe, we see each other as equals, face to face. I don’t want to let you go. Perhaps I should, but I cannot. And will not.”

  He looked at her, almost angrily.

  She looked at him. Her large eyes were steady. She said “I love you. I do love you. Perhaps that is all that need matter?” He thought of cross Florence, and raging Benedict Fludd, and knew it was not. He was a strategist, he would devise a strategy. He said “Come here—”

  She stood up and came. He took her in his arms and kissed her brow, and her neck, and then, gently, her lips, and then, less gently, her whole mouth, and he knew that she did indeed love him.

  He said “We won’t tell Florence, until we have thought things out, further. Or Julian, of course. I do not think that will be easy, but I think it may be managed. What I shall do, as soon as possible, with your permission, is drive over to Purchase House—no, my love, you will not come with me—and ask your father, very formally, for your hand in marriage. Everything else, we will plan calmly, and carefully. Do you feel able to go to the metalwork school in the camp? I could drive you there, on my way.”

  Elsie let him into Purchase House. She pointed across the yard, to the studio in the dairy. She opened her mouth to impart some information or other, and closed it again.

  “He’s in there. I saw him go in,” she volunteered.

  “Thank you,” said Cain, and marched across the yard. Fludd was standing at a high table, modelling one of his facing-both-ways jugs. He was incising more sullen lines into the sullen side. The other was a blank oval.

  “Who is it?”

  “Me, old friend.”

  “Ah, you.” Fludd turned round, at bay. Cain did a mental calculation about their respective ages. Fludd must be less than ten years older than himself. He was not yet fifty and Fludd was not, he thought, sixty, though he looked older, grizzled and heavy.

  “I have come to ask you something.”

  “You have done enough harm.”

  “I don’t think it’s harm. It is—I agree—unexpected how it has turned out. I have come to ask you for your daughter. Who has agreed to become my wife.”

  “Wife—”

  “I am older than she is, but she is happy to set it aside. She says I may ask you for your goodwill.”

  “I don’t give it.”

  “Wait. Think. She does love me. I do love her, Benedict. I think in an odd way we have a chance of happiness. We are at ease with each other. I can make her comfortable, and encourage the talent she has inherited from you—”

  “What have you done to her?”

  “Nothing. She has been like my daughter, together with my daughter. And very recently things have changed—developed, one might say—”

  “Stop making reasonable noises, for Christ’s sake. You can’t do this. That’s final.”

  “She is of age, and I don’t need your consent. But I do beg you to think for a moment of her—this is a chance of happiness for her—I have assured myself that—”

  “She was happy here.”

  “I think not, Benedict. I do think not. But this is a new beginning.”

  “Howl,” said Benedict unexpectedly. “Howl, howl, howl.”

  After a moment Prosper realised that this impossible person was quoting King Lear, as he came on stage bearing his dead daughter in his arms.

  36

  The important lectures were at the weekends, so that audiences might come in from outside, or even travel down from London. On the first weekend, in the late afternoon, on the Saturday, Humphry Wellwood spoke on Human Beings and Statistics: Changing the Condition of the Poor. On the Sunday, Herbert Methley spoke. His subject was Leaving the Garden: the Shamefulness of Shame. Miss Dace had asked him if he was quite sure about this title, and he had answered, flatly, “Yes.”

  Prosper Cain and Imogen Fludd were in a state of exultant tension. They smiled too much, and Florence watched them, and they watched Florence watching them. They touched hands, secretly, in doorways, and when they were sure they were quite alone, Imogen ran into his arms. He had not expected his intense, quasi-fatherly affection and concern to become blind physical passion, but that had happened and he felt reinvigorated and renewed. As for Imogen, the slight stoop she had had, the deferent low voice, the slow movements that resembled her mother’s had turned to eagerness and quickness. Prosper knew he should tell Florence, and found himself taking intense pleasure in secrecy.

  Things were complicated by the arrival of Julian and Gerald, who were on a walking holiday and had decided to walk to Lydd and hear Humphry’s lecture. Gerald was trying to decide between becoming a moral philosopher and going into politics, if he could find a party that met his exacting standards. Julian had an idea for a thesis on English pastoral poetry and painting. He wanted to write about the bright, transparent visions of Samuel Palmer and the woodcuts of Calvert. Gerald was writing about Love and Friendship and the Good, when he was not talking late, or swimming in the Cam, or bicycling across the marshes, or climbing in the Alps. He thought Humphrey’s Fabian socialist views on human nature were interesting. The young men arrived at the Mermaid in time for lunch, and were shown up to the family sitting-room, where they found Florence, writing.


  “You could have said you were coming,” she greeted them, taking in Gerald’s beauty under his floppy linen hat.

  “We didn’t know. Then we saw a poster for this lecture, so we thought we’d call on you for lunch, and go to hear it. Where’s Papa?”

  “Silversmithing.”

  “Is he coming here for lunch?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Julian looked at Florence, who was looking at Gerald. He said “Well, we can lunch with you, and cheer you up, can’t we?” He saw that she needed cheering up. He said

  “Are you not helping with the silversmithing?”

  “I have no skill. And I don’t want to.”

  Gerald had walked across to the window, and was staring out. Julian said “What’s up?”

  “You’ll soon see,” said Florence, darkly.

  At the lecture, they found themselves in a row of old friends. Julian was on the end, and Florence was next to him, and Gerald was on the other side of her. Beyond Gerald was Geraint, and next to him the young woman from Purchase House, Elsie Warren, decorously dressed and looking severe. Next to Elsie was Charles/Karl Wellwood, who was thinking what to do at the end of his Cambridge studies, whether to go to the London School of Economics or to Germany, to be an anarchist or a socialist or some kind of worker. Dorothy and Griselda were not there. They had gone into the hay barn where the marionettes and life-size puppets were being constructed. Griselda wanted to speak German. Dorothy was watching Anselm Stern stitch a tiny costume on to a slender silken trunk. Wolfgang and Tom had made a lolling platoon of death-still scarecrow men and women, decked with hay and flowers, stretching out rigid arms of coat-hangers and hoes.

  Humphry more or less bounded onto the stage, his red hair and beard darkly glowing. His wife was in the front row, looking queenly, and Marian Oakeshott was towards the back, looking thoughtful.

  Humphry talked about the paradox of statistical surveys and individual human fates. The Christian religion, he said, which had formed our thought, insisted that each human soul was unique and valuable in the sight of God. Jesus Christ had advised the rich man to sell all he had, and give to the poor. He had also said that the poor were always with us. He had said that where every prisoner and sick man and pauper was, there He was also among them. He had urged charity on his followers.