The Children's Book

by A. S. Byatt

  There was a brief discussion as to whether the Firing should be called off because of Benedict’s absence. But too many people expected too much, and Geraint, and to a certain extent Philip, were hopeful that he would reappear dramatically in time to set the torch to the timber. Philip sat for three afternoons at a trestle table in the stable yard, vetting the pots. An air bubble, a too-wet texture, an unevenness of shell could cause a pot to explode, or sag, or simply collapse during the firing, and bring down all its neighbours, or at worst, the whole kiln, the whole conglomerate of work. Young ladies were sent away with rejected vases, unbalanced dishes were rejected. Elsie helped him, in the absence of Benedict Fludd. She helped him also with the puzzle arrangements of pots in saggars and saggars in the kiln. She was not in charge of the provision and cooking of the picnic—that was left to Patty Dace and Marian Oakeshott. At the weekend of the Firing Dorothy Wellwood came to help, with Charles/Karl and Griselda.

  On the day of the Firing, Prosper Cain had ordered a luncheon in the Mermaid Inn. He had invited the Fludds, and his own family. He had gone as far as discouraging Julian from bringing Gerald, who was still hovering around the camp and going for long walks along the coastline. Julian had assumed that his father was worrying about Florence. The luncheon took place in the parlour, with sunlight pouring in through the leaded lights of the Tudor windows, and shining on the white damask cloth and heavy silver. There were little nosegays of white and red rosebuds round the table. Seraphita and Pomona clattered up the narrow cobbled street in a pony-trap, dressed in embroidered party-dresses.

  A place had been set for Benedict Fludd. Prosper was at the head, between Imogen and Seraphita. Julian was between Seraphita and Pomona, who was next to Geraint and Florence. The empty seat separated Imogen and Florence.

  They ate whitebait and broiled lobster, samphire and Vichy carrots, followed by a Queen of Puddings in a porcelain dish. They chatted about the camp, and everyone praised Geraint for his organisational powers, his coup with the army tents, his imaginative ordering of events. Julian said it was always oddly disturbing to find one was living inside works of art, rather than observing them in museums. Seraphita made one of her rare contributions to say dreamily that life would be better if it were all artful. Florence observed that the word “artful” had a curious double entendre. Seraphita cast her look down at her plate, and speared a decorative shrimp, with some difficulty.

  When they had eaten, Prosper ordered champagne to be brought. Everyone was given a glass. Prosper rose to his feet.

  “At the end of the successful cooperation that made such a success of this camp—the meeting of art, craft, art teaching, practice and criticism—I should like to drink to Geraint Fludd, who had such good ideas, and put them into effect.” They drank. Prosper did not sit down, though Geraint was stirring to reply.

  “I am sorry my old friend Benedict Fludd is absent. I should nevertheless like you to drink to the happiness of Imogen, who has done me the honour of agreeing to become my wife. I have already asked her father for her hand and I believe we have his approval.”

  This announcement caused consternation. The first person to drink was Imogen herself, perhaps to fortify herself. She was white. Seraphita took a large mouthful, and could be heard to be murmuring either “My dear” or “Oh dear…”

  Julian raised his glass and said “Of course we all wish you well. Long life and happiness!” he said awkwardly, and then flushed darkly. Imogen nodded at him, looking overwhelmed. Florence stood up.

  “As it happens, we have not had time to ask my father, but I also should like to tell you all that I am engaged to be married. I have agreed to marry Geraint. I am telling you myself because I asked him to say nothing. But now, you all need to know, I think. The relationships of the people round this table have suddenly become very confused.”

  She gave a sharp little laugh. She went on, staring darkly at her father across the silver and white.

  “So Imogen is to become at once my sister and my mother. It is like a Greek myth. Or those things in the Prayer Book you aren’t supposed to do.”

  Pomona put down her champagne glass, and broke it. Her fingers were bleeding—not very much, but blood was on the white damask. A waiter came with a silver brush and miniature dustpan and moved round her, clearing the splinters. Geraint said, pacifically and practically, “We are all surprised by suddenness, I should think. But most of you must know that my feeling for Florence is not sudden. You must all have seen that I have loved her for many years, from boy to man. We didn’t mean to say anything yet. I am not in a position to support a wife and household, and I mean to do it well. I cannot tell all of you how happy her consent has made me.” He paused. “Imogen’s engagement is—to me at least—very sudden. But for my part, I know just how many good things Major Cain has brought into her life already. He has already made her happy.” He raised his glass. “I wish them well.” He bowed to Prosper, and to Imogen, with an awkward grace, and sat down again.

  Prosper Cain stood and faced his daughter, who had not sat down. Her face was full of energy and her eyes glittered. She had been, since she was born, the creature he loved most in the world, and he was partly angry that he had noticed no change in her, no softening or excitement that might suggest she was in love. He felt full of energy. He was a military man, faced with a difficult situation, out of which he must extricate everyone with no losses. He looked from his daughter to his beloved, who was looking at the tablecloth. He loved Imogen, he wanted Imogen. That was a source of power. He loved Florence, he would find what was best for her, which might or might not be Geraint Fludd, and because he loved her, he would find a way to open a path for her. It came to him, as he stood there, that he must marry Imogen very soon, as Imogen’s position was anomalous. This delighted him. He raised his glass to Florence, and included Geraint in the gesture.

  “I wish you both every happiness. We have much to talk of and think about. Now, if you are all in agreement, I think we should do as we planned, and make our way to the Firing. It is possible that my old friend Benedict is already at Purchase House.”

  And he more or less swept them all out of the parlour, and into the traps and dog carts that were waiting to take them to Purchase House.

  The sun was setting. Over the wide, flat expanse of the Marsh, the sky was red and seething with brightness. There was a red light on the salty grass, and a strange fiery liquid dancing over the slate-dark liquid of the sewers and ponds they passed as they drove. They went past Rye golf course, where the players were silhouetted against the hot ball, black and two-dimensional, waving a club, trundling a buggy. Flocks of plovers wheeled and re-formed, and wheeled again. The few strips of cloud were purple, and violet, and mauve, and shifting in the light. Everything had a metallic sheen, like a lustre glaze. Even the fat sheep had radiant rosy patinas on their creamy fleeces.

  The Firing was going, as far as Philip could see, smoothly. He had been steadily baiting the fire, controlling as best he could the amount of smoke and the evenness of the flames. He peered in through various spy-holes at the roaring scarlet holocaust, the odd swirl and spatter of flame, the brilliance, the dull edges. He had willing helpers with the baiting but he had to oversee what was fed into the fireholes. Ware irregularly fired, or fired with impure fuels, could become sulphured, discoloured, gloomy and dulled. Too much oxygen meant sulphur vapour; so did too little. He was keeping back the best wood for the finish. An enthusiastic helper was Tom Wellwood, who had carried many of the crates and boxes which had made up the Dark Tower in the play, and thrust them in at the fireholes. He had also brought his army of puppet-scarecrows—”They can go in at the end, into the fiery furnace” said Tom. Philip checked them for components that would contaminate the flame, or make it burn unevenly. Dorothy was there—it was the weekend, she was not studying—with Griselda and the Germans, who were helping to carry wood. Everyone was remembering the tale of Palissy, thrusting his own furniture into a firehole to complete the trial
burning and testing of the new white glaze. The sun went down further, and the sky grew dark. Inside the chimney, light and heat sang and danced.

  Frank Mallett was sitting with Arthur Dobbin, drinking a glass of ale and chewing homemade bread and crumbling cheese. A young man in fishermen’s boots and a heavy jacket came and pulled him by the sleeve. Frank listened, shook his head as if to clear it, stood up and looked at the gathering. Seraphita was sitting in a glow of firelight from a bonfire on which potatoes were baking. She looked dazed, which was not unusual. Frank continued to look around, and saw Prosper Cain, who was bending over Imogen Fludd. Frank walked over to them, not too urgently, smiling at parishioners as he passed them.

  “Major Cain. May I have a quiet word with you?”

  They moved to the edge of the gathering, out of the light.

  “I have just had a message from Barker Twomey. He’s one of those line-fishermen, at Dungeness. He caught a boot. Hadn’t been in the water long. He thinks it’s Mr. Fludd’s boot. Barker Twomey thinks someone should look at the boot.”

  “What are you suggesting, Mr. Mallett?”

  “I have been disturbed by the absence—now the prolonged absence—of Mr. Fludd.”

  “His family and those who know him do not appear to be much disturbed.”

  “They do not. It is true he was always wandering off, just walking out, sometimes for weeks.”

  “And you think you have cause to think this is different.”

  “I am not a Catholic, Major Cain. I am an Anglican, of a liberal kind. Confession is not part of the way of my Church. It isn’t a recognised sacrament. But people do tell me things. Things they expect me to remain silent about. I believe it is my duty to listen. And to keep silent.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I am afraid Benedict Fludd may be dead. I am afraid he may have walked into the sea, down there at Dungeness, where the currents are thick and violent and the water is deep.”

  “And you think this for a particular reason?”

  “He came to see me, just after his talk to the camp. He said he meant to do away with himself. I should add, this was by no means the first time he had expressed such an intention.”

  “He confessed to you, you are suggesting—”

  “He was in the habit—fortunately not very frequently—of telling me things about himself—about his former life—about his life—I don’t know much of the world, Major Cain, I suppose, professionally, I should be surprised by nothing human. I shouldn’t say this, I know. I should keep quiet. But he told me things—he told them—not so that I might be able to offer him the Church’s forgiveness—but so as to hurt me. I don’t even know if what he said was true. I just know—it harmed me to listen to it. And it was meant to harm me. I’m sorry. I’m agitated. I do think he is dead. But we have one boot.”

  “I am going to marry Benedict Fludd’s daughter Imogen,” said Prosper Cain. “So this concerns me, as a member of the family, so to speak.”

  Frank Mallett’s face worked, as though he was about to dissolve into tears.

  “I have known old Fludd for many years,” said Prosper. “Nothing he could do, or say, would surprise me. You are a good man, and a generous man and have done what you should—including telling me. Let us go to see this angler.”

  They went on foot, in the thickening last light. They walked past the military camp near Lydd and across the Denge Marsh, and then the bleak shingle banks of Dungeness, skirting the Open Pits where the birds were settling for the night on the islets. This stony, shifting land supports a colony of caulked wooden huts, for the most part sooty black, some with boats beached before them, some with curious agglomerations of winches and pulleys. Lanterns were already glittering inside some of the small windows. Frank carried a storm lantern himself, but had not yet needed to light it. They came to the lighthouse, striped black and white, with its oil-fired, mirrored shaft of brightness searching the dark. Barker Twomey, said Frank, would not have left his rod; that was why he had sent Mick. They crunched on, over the stones, paler than the sky, towards the high shingle bank on which the anglers perched, black silhouettes like the golfers, their lanterns, next to their stools, ready for complete dark. They were both fit, and went lightly up the ridge, into the air off the sea, full of salt and the sound of the incoming tide throwing wave after wave at the stones, sucking them, grinding them, turning them over and over. A line quivered against the creamy tongues of the incoming surf, tautening, dripping with spray. “That’s Barker,” said Frank Mallett. They looked to see what he was hauling in; it was neither human, nor manmade, but a live fish, arced in protest, turning on the hook. Barker Twomey caught its body in his hand, and killed it with a professional twist and crack. “Mr. Mallett,” he said. “Good evening.”

  He was weathered and oily, not unlike the boot, which he produced from under his bags of tackle. He wore an oiled sou’wester, and an oiled jacket with the collar up.

  “I reckon I seen this on someun’s feet, last week,” he said. He turned the boot over. It dripped. Its laces were still fastened. It was old, but had once been expensive. Its tongue lolled.

  “I think so,” said Frank Mallett.

  Prosper Cain took it in his hands and turned it about.

  “I think so, too,” he said. “God help us, it’s got clay in its eyelets and under the tongue. And it hasn’t been decently cleaned, it’s cracking. I think we know whose it is. Any further findings, Mr. Twomey?”

  “No, nor very likely to be. The current here is powerful strong. It would pull things—pull a man—deep under and away fast, round the Ness. You won’t find by searching, too hard to know where.”

  “Where this came, more may come to the surface,” said Prosper. “Can you ask your friends to keep their eyes open?”

  He took the wet boot, rewarded the man, and set out to walk back to Purchase House. The Channel was darkening. The colour of the crashing foam was indescribable—you knew it to be white, but it was the ghost of white, light itself with silver sifted in, and the dark swell of the sucking water.

  “I can see him,” said Frank Mallett. “Just walking out into it. He knew how it would take him, what it would do to him.”

  They were walking back past the huts. They stopped, whilst Frank lit his lantern. Stars were showing, pale on the blue-black. The sudden beam of the lantern lit up a kind of clothes-line, stretched from the eave of one of the black huts to a mast-head, from which fluttered a narrow St. George’s cross, on a pennant.

  “What’s that?” said Prosper.

  It was shredded, and crumpled, and mangled. It was stained, and soaked, and it appeared to be the overall-robe Benedict Fludd had worn for his lecture. Flotsam, jetsam, retrieved from the sea.

  “Mr. Mallett,” said Prosper Cain, as they walked slowly back towards Purchase House with a brown paper parcel. “Mr. Mallett—these thoughts may be premature—though I think both you and I think not. If my old friend has done away with himself, we may yet find him. He could hardly have chosen a more final place to disappear. The uncertainty will be very painful for his wife and daughters, very. Now I, too, am confiding my private anxieties to you. I wish to marry Miss Fludd as soon as possible—this event has both made me more anxious to do so, and rendered it harder to arrange. I do not know what would be appropriate mourning for a dead man—where no body exists. I do know that his family would live more easily if I were in a position to look after them with a right to do so. I should like you to marry us, Mr. Mallett. Quietly, but not surreptitiously. With flowers in the church, and a decorous feast. How soon could this be done, do you think?”

  “If—if nothing floats in to shore—if he does not suddenly walk up the drive—maybe in a month?”

  They quickened the pace.

  “A final suggestion, Mr. Mallett. Would you agree to say nothing of this to anyone else until the kiln is cooled and the festivity is over? All we have to convey is doubt, suspicion, uncertainty. If we wait, certainty may come. And
if it doesn’t, the uncertainty itself will be more of a certain thing—a real thing, if you follow me.”

  “Indeed,” said Frank Mallett. “May I say, I am grateful to you for—for taking over the burden.”

  “I have known Benedict Fludd, God rest his soul, for a very long time. He had genius. He was excessive in everything he did. I am not surprised he tried to frighten you. Your response is commendable.”

  38

  Prosper Cain was a man used to getting his own way. He was married to Imogen Fludd, in St. Edburga’s Church, on Tuesday, December 27th, in 1904. Frank Mallett married them. There was still no sign of Benedict Fludd, although a second boot had been fished up, weeks after the first. So they were neither in mourning, nor not in mourning. The congregation was small—the Purchase House people, including Philip and Elsie, Julian and Florence. Arthur Dobbin was there, and Marian Oakeshott, and Miss Dace. It was extremely cold. The stones of the church were like blocks of ice, and the grass in the graveyard was crusted with frost. Frank had two woollen vests under his surplice. All the women had solved the problem of mourning by resorting to discreet greys and violets. Florence had a very smart slate-coloured grosgrain long coat over a blue-crocus-coloured dress; her hat was severe crocus-grey tulle, to match. She was not a bridesmaid. Pomona was the only bridesmaid, in a dark-grey velvet gown, decorated with violets. The same flowers were round the brim of her hat. Seraphita was wrapped in a feather-edged robe in a kind of thick complicated tapestry, purple and grey and silver, edged with dyed swansdown and ostrich plumes.