The Children's Book (55 page)

“Someone,” said Frank, “would need to talk to the people at Purchase House. They cannot do without either Philip or Elsie. They should, in my view, be paying both of them good wages for everything they do. They could be talked into seeing their own best interests, as well as their charitable duty—”

“If—if the father of the child is not in that family,” said Miss Dace, blushing.

“He is not,” said Phoebe Methley. “I am certain of that.” She too was blushing. Frank handed round a plate of shortbread. He said

“First, we must put this—this very satisfactory and generous plan—to Elsie. Then, one of us must talk to Mrs. Fludd. I am never quite sure that she really hears what I say, or remembers it. Who shall we send?”

The three good fairies looked at each other. Which of them could be most calm, most reasonable, most pragmatic?

•  •  •

In the end they decided they would all three speak to Elsie, and deputed Frank to ask Philip to bring her to Miss Dace’s little house. They were enjoying each other’s company—each felt—in the discussion of this intimate problem, that they had discovered new, real, friends.

Elsie came into Miss Dace’s drawing-room and stood to attention, looking angry. She was wearing her hat, and one of Imogen’s loose mediaeval gowns, neatly darned and patched. Miss Dace begged her to sit down, and gave her a cup of tea, some cubes of sugar, a slice of fruitcake. They had agreed that they must not frighten the young woman with moral lectures. She sipped her tea, and drew her head back, like, Marian Oakeshott thought, a frightened snake ready to strike. Miss Dace spoke. It was her drawing-room.

“We know about your problem, Elsie, your predicament, and we haven’t asked you here to lecture you, but to tell you how we intend to help you. I myself know a respectable—and kindly, very kindly—lady who will help with—with the birth of the child.”

“We don’t know,” said Marian Oakeshott, “what you will want to do when the child is born. I should like to say that—if you so wish, if you want to… if you like… I would be happy to ask Tabitha to take on its care so that you could continue to work for Mrs. Fludd and to be with your brother.”

Elsie was silent, her head still back. Marian said

“Then you could come to the child, or he could come to you, in your time off—you would not be separated.” Elsie said nothing.

Phoebe Methley said “We propose to speak on your behalf to Mrs. Fludd, and make the arrangements clear and satisfactory.” Elsie said slowly

“There’s been a deal of talking about me behind my back.”

“You are in a situation,” said Marian, “where that inevitably happens. We are truly trying to help.”

“I came to your meeting about women. I suppose I’m a single woman, and a Fallen Woman.” She paused. She said, looking pale, “I really don’t feel very well. I don’t know as I can go on, anyway, hauling buckets and hanging over stoves.”

“I shall ask my good doctor to examine you,” said Miss Dace. “He will tell you what you may and may not do, in your condition, and give you tonics to help you, things like that.”

“I
am
grateful,” Elsie said slowly and flatly. “It’s more than I could hope for.”

“But—” said Marian Oakeshott, “there is a
but
in your voice. You may speak freely to us, we should prefer it.”

“I never meant to go into Service, ma’am.
What I do not want
is to slave in someone else’s kitchen and wash their clothes for the rest of my life. I didn’t and don’t want that. And now it seems my only way forward. I thought it was temporary, till Philip got to know his craft and got well known, as he
will
, and has the help here he needs. My mother was a paintress—she was a good paintress, the most delicate with her brushes of any in the studio—she died of it, of the chemicals in the air. She wasn’t a skivvy, she wasn’t a scullery-maid, she was an artist. You care about women’s work, I’ve heard you talk. All of you. So I’ll admit to you, I don’t have Philip’s talent. He has a
right
to expect to be an artist. I don’t. But that don’t mean I want to be a skivvy.”

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.