The Children's Book (75 page)

“I always like talking to you. About anything at all.”

“I don’t know about this—”

“Try me,” said Geraint.

“It’s Papa,” said Florence.

They began to walk away, towards Rye.

Charles/Karl was left with Elsie Warren.

“You don’t recognise me, do you?” she said. “I’m out of place. You’ve met me at Purchase House, carrying dishes and clearing up. We’ve not been introduced, so to speak.”

He could not place her accent, which was not local, but he could tell
that it was working-class. He considered her. She had made the best of herself, he thought. She had a pale grey high-necked shirt, with tight cuffs, and a swinging skirt in a dark grey cotton. She had a bright red belt, round a shapely waist, and a straw hat with a bright red ribbon and a dashing bunch of stitched anemones, red and purple and blue. He did not know what to say to her, or indeed, how to speak to her. He was also aware that she knew this, and was amused by it. Amusement was not a reaction he had expected.

“Did you enjoy the talk, then?” she said.

“It was of great interest. I am trying to decide whether to study these matters—statistics, poverty—at the London School of Economics.”

“Or?”

“What you mean, or?”

“If you don’t do that, what will you do?”

He could not say, be a good anarchist and foment a revolution. He blushed. “I might go to Germany.”

“Might you? Nice to have a choice. I should like such a choice.”

He looked at her and she looked back, intently. They saw each other clearly. She went on

“Being as I am both a woman and working-class, choice don’t come into it, much, for me. I do what I must.” Charles/Karl wanted to say he was sorry, and couldn’t.

“I imagine you don’t talk to many of us, as against studying us in bulk. The dangerous masses. To be put in camps, and set to work on projects.”

“You are being unfair,” said Charles/Karl. “You are mocking me.”

“We can do that, at least, if we dare.”

“Miss Warren,” said Charles/Karl, “I wish you would not talk as though you were a group, or a class, or a committee. I should like to be talking to you as a person.”

“Can
you?”

“Why should I not?”

“For every reason. I am both working-class and not respectable. I am a Fallen Woman. I have a daughter. You don’t want to be talking to me as if I were a
person
, Mr. Wellwood.”

This information, far from shocking him, excited him. In Munich the goddess, Fanny zu Reventlow, was the mother of a lovely child with no known father. Desire should be free, they said in Schwabing, and Charles/Karl listened, and desired in the abstract, and agreed in
principle. He could not—not now—discuss Fanny zu Reventlow with this pugnacious person with a narrow waist, in a red belt.

“Do you talk to everyone like this, Miss Warren?”

“No. I don’t. Only to well-meaning persons like you.”

“I should like—” said Charles/Karl. He would like, he realised, to undo the belt, and several of the buttons, and slap her and kiss her. He was astounded. He was also gratified to find such a spontaneous reaction in himself.

“What would you like?” asked Elsie, in a way that almost persuaded him she had read his secret mind.

“I should like to get to know you. I should like you to stop treating me as a representative of a class, and allow me to talk to
you
. I should like to be permitted to walk you home, if you are going home.”

“I am. You can come, if you want. I really should be looking for Mr. Fludd, but if he don’t want to be found, he won’t be. He is a secret man.”

They set off together. Motion made them easy with each other. He said “Do you think a man and a woman can be good friends, Miss Warren?”

“Elsie, why don’t you. I suppose you call Philip, Philip.”

“Karl.”

“I thought it was Charles. Karl for Karl Marx?”

“You know a great deal.”

“I have friends—women friends—who are teaching me. I hope to become a teacher myself. I do not fancy cleaning and carting for ever. And, in answer to your question, I think yes, a man and a woman can be good friends. But it isn’t easy for them, being as no one else will suppose that that is what they are. And then, there’s the problem of men and women being different sexes. You are not to laugh. It
is
a problem.”

“I know that. What I do think—”

“What do you think?”

“I think if they are good friends—then whatever else they are—or are not—is better.”

They went on walking. He said

“You will only laugh if I say you can be just as trapped in a house in Portman Square, and a public school and a university, as in the kitchen.”

“Yes, I will. I will laugh heartily. I will listen, Karl, and I will laugh and laugh.”

“I never talk to anyone as you talk to me.”

“I shall teach you, Mr. Deprived-Rich-Man. I may even introduce you to my very little, very clever daughter.”

She looked into his face to see if she had gone too far, had lost him.

“I should like that,” said Charles/Karl.

Herbert Methley leaned confidentially out over the lectern. He told his audience that he was a workingman. He worked hard as a gardener on a smallholding in this county, the Garden of England, and he worked also at his desk, describing life in that Garden. But the fruits of his labours had been taken from him by the police in their boots and helmets, and had been cast into a fiery furnace, and consumed. He had been told that what he had written was shameful. But it was the men in gowns and helmets who had real cause to be ashamed.

He was a stringy sunburned man, with a crimson silk neckerchief round his prominent Adam’s apple. He had that habit good lecturers have of letting his eye rove over the audience, looking for listening faces, or expressions of boredom. He saw Griselda and Dorothy with Tom and the two Germans, near the front. At the back, at the side, Julian and Gerald sat together. Florence was not with them. She was with Geraint, towards the front, in the centre. There was a row of older, judiciously composed women, Marian, Phoebe, Patty Dace, towards the back. Also near the back was Elsie Warren. Charles/Karl had seen that the seat next to her was empty, and had sat in it. She was sitting very upright, with her arms folded round her chest. Phyllis came in late, and sat down just behind Leon. Frank Mallett and Arthur Dobbin were there. Methley acknowledged them with a nod, before embarking on his attack on the clergy.

Where did the concept of shame come from? he asked. Our fellow creatures in the garden of earth do not know shame, though we persuade ourselves sometimes to feel it for them, to our shame. Shame began, we are told, in the Original Garden, when the innocent man and woman saw that they were naked, and were ashamed. What caused this? The wily serpent caused it, by making them eat the forbidden fruit, which he told them was the knowledge of good and evil.
Thus
, said Herbert Methley, insinuating that good and evil originated in those parts of the body that the shamed human beings now felt they must cover. Yet why should this be so? Are good and evil not much more—
infinitely more—to be found in cruelty, in humiliation of others, in selfishness, in abuse of power, in theft—I could go on in this way, said Herbert Methley—for the rest of this little talk. Good and evil do not reside in human flesh, in which we should rejoice, about which we should not—neither men nor women—feel shame. Every day in this camp the young folk come out and perform graceful, and strenuous, and delightful bodily movements. He smiled, imagining them.

Gerald whispered to Julian, with the grave naughtiness of the Apostles, “I think he emits some kind of musk. From under his armpits. He has well-developed armpits, you can see.”

“Hush,” said Julian.

The lecturer developed the Garden metaphor. He passed on to Blake and the Garden of Love, in which a Chapel was built, with

He said much of the distorting shamefastness of the world we lived in was the historical consequence of the centuries of celibate priesthood. He looked at Frank Mallett, who looked blandly back.

The novel had suffered. In England it was written to be read aloud round the fireside of a married vicar or curate, with his wife gravely listening. In France the priests took charge of the women and children, and novels were written for the separate—and often salacious—male readers.

It was not possible in a novel to describe most of the world as it really was.

It should be. We need honest novels much more than we need moralising tracts.

His own novel
Mr. Wodehouse and the Wild Girl
had been about a modern man of the woods, a Wodwose, who had loved a woman as men do love women.

He believed, he said, in a pagan unity of nature. We are all
one life
which began long before there were any gardens, or any men in black gowns. Our feelings developed subtly, over millions of years, from the feelings and stirrings of jelly in the marshes, of slow, cold-blooded reptiles in hot swamps, of beings who clambered in trees that were now coal. It was possible, he said, to make a strenuous attempt to rediscover the strong, primal joy in being. One must go back to the roots of things. He quoted Marvell

Elsie’s arms were still tightly clutched around her. Her mouth was set firm. Charles/Karl wanted to pull her fingers, to unwind her, and knew he must not.

Herbert Methley’s eye wandered over the upturned faces like a bumble-bee over a flowerbed. He had a skill the younger men had not developed. He could tell which of the women were, as he put it to himself, in need, potential wild girls. Dorothy’s dark face was judging him and made him uncomfortable. Griselda, blonde and peaceful, was weighing up the arguments—there was
something
alive there, and the face was lovely, but not in need. Phyllis was prim and pretty and undeveloped. He did not look at Elsie, though he had glimpsed the red belt. The agitated one, the one who breathed fast, and shifted in her seat, and looked about her for something, was Florence Cain. He took note of her.

After he had finished, some people left rapidly. Others came to talk to him. Frank Mallett said

“You have not given enough attention to the remarkable persistence of shamefastness. Men must need it very much if it is so tenacious.”

“A good point.”

“Marvell also said

“Indeed. There is a time for mutual love, and a time for solitude. I myself am solitary and celibate when pursuing my calling.”

Out of the side of his eye he saw Florence leaving with Geraint. There would be another time. Or another woman.

Florence and Geraint walked along a footpath by the Military Canal. Dragonflies skimmed the water. Moorhens paddled, and a rat slid out of a hole and swam busily away. The sun was still bright, though going down. Footsteps hurried after them. Geraint turned, irritably. It was Frank Mallett.

“I won’t keep you, I just wanted to ask you—”

He joined them.

“Yes?” said Geraint.

“Have you spoken to your father recently?”

“Not for some days. He hasn’t been around since his lecture last week. He tends to go into hiding after things like that. I was going to Purchase House when I’ve walked Miss Cain back to Rye.”

There was a silence. Geraint said

“Have you seen him?”

“Not for some days, also.” He strode along, looking at the water, and seemed to come to a decision. “No matter. No matter. When you do see him, please tell him I was asking after him.”

He turned back. Geraint said to Florence

“Something is worrying that man. My father does worry people.”

“I know.”

There was a long silence. They moved on, companionably, walking at the same pace. Geraint said, not looking at Florence,

“I am probably an idiot to choose this moment. When we are going on calmly, that is. You needn’t answer this, now, yet.
But
—I want you to be my wife. Don’t speak. I have wanted it for years, you know that, I think. I don’t have much to offer, yet—but I shall, for certain. I am doing well in the City, and Mr. Wellwood treats me as a son, almost. I am saving money. Also, I love you. I do love you. Don’t speak for a moment. It couldn’t be for a year or two. I ought not to tie you down. It may be only my fantasy. I have never seen—never—anyone like you. I think of you—you don’t know how much of the time.”

“May I speak now?”

“If you think it is even
possible
—I will ask again—later—if you—”

“May I speak? I was going to say—yes. Yes I will marry you. There.” They stopped walking and turned and looked at each other. Geraint said

“I haven’t just
worn you out
, with waiting and watching?”

“I said, yes. I do know my own mind.”

“I want you to be happy. You haven’t been looking happy, lately. I want—more than I want anything—for you to have what you want. Of course, I should like it to be me.”

“I haven’t been happy, it’s true. We can be happier together, I do think.” She gave a small smile. “We can
try
. Stop worrying.”

Very gently, he put his arms around her. She stiffened. He wished she had not, but he had learned patience.

“May I speak to your father?”

She gave a strange little laugh. “I shall be very happy for you to do that, yes. Then we can make plans.”

Dorothy Wellwood had set off alone, for a walk across the marshes. She had given herself a sick headache, with studying anatomy, and told herself that it was for the good of her own health that she was going out. She had been having trouble with willpower. She wanted to be with the German father and the German brothers, who were making intricate things in the barn, and laughing together. She was somehow hurt that Griselda could laugh with them, in German, and make clever suggestions for scenes in the puppet play, whilst she could not. She did not want to, of course—somewhere inside her there was a puritanical rejection of imaginary worlds, that was tough and largely unquestioned. Nerves and tendons, veins and arteries, were both more real and more mysterious than wired joints and dangling strings. She knew Griselda was far from trying to steal her new family—she was, on the contrary, hurt when Dorothy went off to do her hours of study, angry as much because she, Griselda, had no calling of her own, as because Dorothy was abandoning her. She walked faster and faster, running over the articulations of her body in her head. She found herself at Purchase House, looking up the avenue of trees beside the shabby drive.