The Children's Book (73 page)

“There is a lot one can do with lighting,” said Steyning. “Even in a barn, without a conflagration.”

“These small pieces of tales are like a kaleidoscope,” said Stern. “Without end to be reshaped, differently ordered.”

It was an odd play. It grew like a vegetable from its story-seeds, and the metaphors in Olive’s mind. The early days of the camp were spent on construction and reconstruction. Marian Oakeshott appeared and took charge of an army of wardrobe workers, who brought old clothes and new bales, and cut, and stitched, and decorated. Wolfgang had a workshop for life-size puppets and mask-construction, in which he involved Tom, who was full of inventiveness. The workshop was in an old barn where bales of straw still stood about, and Tom began to make a strawman. This creature turned out not to be benign, like the one in
The Wizard of Oz
, but vacant, swollen and menacing. He had a huge boll of a head, with black tunnel-eyes and a mouth stitched with string, jaggedly. This head lolled and revolved above a larger-than-life-size bale of a body, with swivelling dropsical legs, and short, useless arms, no more than fringes of sticks at the shoulders. Wolfgang said it was full of horror, and should be one of the enemies met on the way. I’ll act it, said Tom. It can burn up. It should burn up, said Steyning, admiring it, but we can’t risk it, not in a barn full of children and dolls.

“Blasebalg,”
said Anselm Stern. “I do not know the English.”

“Bellows,” said Steyning. “Of course. Straws in the wind. A small tourbillon, leaving nothing.”

“And
I
shall be a Wolf-man,” said Wolfgang. “Someone has brought a coat of fur and a fox with some paws, and I was going to use them for Allerleirauh, but I shall make me a wire Beast, with a hot red tongue and a how-do-you-say,
zuckender Schwantz
, and great tearing
nails.”

“Twitching tail. Claws,” said Steyning.

“Ja
, claws. I shall be killed with a sword.”

“Our heroine doesn’t have a sword. She is a girl, not a woman.”

“Why?”

“Because she has been promised to my sister Hedda, and because my sister Dorothy will have nothing to do with it.”

“Cold iron,” said Steyning. “Those who go out against the Good People, or the Pharisees, must go armed with cold iron. She takes a kitchen knife.”

“I wouldn’t like to face Hedda with a kitchen knife,” said Tom.

Olive thought the final adversary should be a metal man, a machine-man. A suit of armour, said Steyning. Tom remembered the night-black rider in
Gareth and Lynette
. He recited, and Olive joined in

Wolfgang liked that. A helmet which was a skull, a skeleton which was a carapace. Ah, said Tom, but there is a twist. Inside there is a blooming boy. With a bright fresh face. Nothing bad. A part for Robin, said Olive. Florian can be the stolen changeling. Leon can move the Death figure, said Wolfgang. He’s no good at making, but he is good moving.

Geraint enjoyed planning, he enjoyed finding the right person for a job, he was, in his City form, as good at compromise and consultation, as in his Marsh form of sulky boy he had been inept and sulky. He met an army quartermaster from Lydd in a pub near Old Romney, and arranged to borrow a number of tents and some cooking equipment, which amazed everyone. He drew up an agenda, a timetable. Gymnastic exercises and dance movements after breakfast. Excursions to churches.
Classes in embroidery, silversmithing, ceramics, theatre design, acting. A lecture at the end of most afternoons before the evening meal.

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 this 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.”