The Children's Book (37 page)

“I am mostly a student of inhuman nature—imaginary nature,” said Olive, evading. “I tell fairytales to children. The prince always marries the princess. Or the daft young man gets the princess because of his good nature and because he is the third son. Or the prince becomes a roe deer, or a swine, and has to be disenchanted by the clever princess. I don’t know what it has to do with what you call the needs of the species. All the tales stop off with marriage, or perhaps foretell a large number of progeny, undefined.”

They were going past a fenced field with a herd of cream-coloured cows, heavy, muddy, staring cows. In a corner, under an elm tree, one female cow was busily mounting another, making the movements a
bull would make, although unequipped, and provoking—they both noticed—a quiver of response (or irritation) in the strained area under the lower cow’s tail.

“Does not that prove my point?” said Herbert Methley. “The poor things are deprived of the presence of a bull—who would in nature be there, guarding his harem and snorting defiance at other bulls. Yet they feel a need…”

Olive felt a blush mounting from her bosom to her face.

“I hope I have not shocked you. I did not mean to shock you.”

“I think you did. But I am not shocked. And I take your point. Scientifically, your example—look, she has got down, and sauntered away—is evidence for what you say it is.”

“When we can prevent the unfortunate consequences of following our instincts to what John Donne called the one true end of love—our society will be different, and we shall be transfigured.”

“By sexual freedom? Instincts are one thing. Donne uses the word, love.”

“Is not desire always love, whilst it exists? Whatever it may become. I sometimes think, there are as many ways of loving women, as there are women. And I sometimes think, if women were honest, there are as many ways of loving men as there are men.”

“Ah, but a good student of human nature needs also to study indifference, and even revulsion and distaste. For these also are instincts.”

Methley thought for a moment or two about his remark, and then attacked directly.

“I hope I inspire none of those in you?”

He laughed, not quite easily.

“Don’t be foolish,” said Olive. “We are not talking about ourselves. And we are good friends, which is yet another relation between men and women, hard to manage and rare to find.”

When she got back to the inn where they were staying, she found herself shrugging her whole body with a mix of emotions. Of course such talk aroused some kind of—yes, sexual—pricklings in her. It had to. She knew what desire was, and what its satisfaction was. But she had no idea whether she desired Herbert Methley. The presence of his body aroused her own in some way, but it was not clear to her that what it aroused wasn’t indifference, revulsion and distaste. He was not lovely to
look at, as Humphry was. Though he had a kind of dreadful energy which is always—how did she know these things?—stirring, like a huge octopus quivering through water, or flailing on a slab and slipping back into the sea.

What was very certain was that she had had none of these thoughts at Elsie Warren’s age. They were a grown woman’s thoughts.

Benedict Fludd held classes in clay modelling in what had been the grand coach-house. Elsie had cleaned its little row of spider-webbed windows and Philip had brought tubs and buckets of clay and slip. There was a serious group of five young women from the Royal College, whose previous experience of ceramics had been painting tiles, and one or two young men also. Then there were locals who wanted to try their hands—Patty Dace, Arthur Dobbin, a schoolmaster from Lydd, and the new schoolmistress-to-be from Puxty, a young widow called Mrs. Oakeshott. Mrs. Oakeshott had come from the North, to make a new beginning, she said, after the tragic death of her young husband in a railway accident. She was accompanied by her small son, Robin, who would start school at Puxty in September, with the few Marsh children who attended—the whole school, from five to eleven, was only fourteen children. Frank Mallett, who was on the local education committee, had been delighted to find Mrs. Oakeshott, and was already afraid she would find the harsh weather and the loneliness unbearable. She had excellent qualifications and a mild wit. Her son had come with her to Purchase, accompanied by a kind of nursemaid, twig-limbed, diminutive, frizzy-haired, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, called Tabitha. Mrs. Oakeshott had a thick, coiled plait of strawberry-blonde hair, golden, creamy, rose-tinged. She had a fine face, square in shape, placid but watchful, and a delightful smile, when she smiled. She wore glasses, which she tended to mislay, and which were returned to her by the young men, and by Dobbin, when they found them in clumps of grass in the orchard, or lying amongst the drying pots in the studios. She was good at modelling.

Fludd had prevailed on Elsie to sit for the classes, although she sat there running over in her mind what should be fetched from the farm and the market for the next meal. No one dared contradict Benedict Fludd, in case he should cease to be amiable and become moody or irascible.
He was teaching them to model a head. No one was modelling Elsie below the neck. They were trying to render her flying hair, and sharp mouth, and wide eyes. Mrs. Oakeshott’s effort was much the best. She had got the angle of the jaw and the neck right. The brows over the empty eyes were promising and lively.

Little Tabitha wandered about with the child, Robin, and came upon Violet Grimwith in the orchard, reading aloud to the assembled smaller Wellwoods, Florian, Robin and Harry. Hedda, rather sulky, was with this group but not of it. She was reading a book, lying on her stomach in the grass, thinking this was not enough for her, not enough, she would go mad with boredom.

Tabitha crept up to the very edge of the audience. Violet looked up. “Come and sit with us, if you like, why don’t you? What is the little boy called?”

“Robin. I look after him for his mum.” She was older than Hedda, but smaller. Violet said “Well, bring him into the circle, to listen to the story. We’re reading
At the Back of the North Wind
. Do you know that?”

“No, mam.”

“I do,” said Robin Oakeshott. He sat down, next to Robin Well-wood. “I like it. Go on reading.”

Violet gave him a measuring glance, and went on reading.

Mrs. Oakeshott offered her services to help with the play. She gave Imogen Fludd a hand with the costumes, and turned out to be deft with bits of glitter-braid, and abundant pleats for the pregnant Hermione. Olive liked her. Everyone liked her. It would have been hard not to.

Olive came upon Mrs. Oakeshott, in the place behind the yew hedge, where they waited to go on and off, adjusting the clasp of Humphry’s regal cloak. She saw Humphry’s hand, in the nape of Mrs. Oakeshott’s neck, his clever fingers feeling for tension, and relieving it, as he did for Olive herself. She stepped back.

“All the same, Marian,” said Humphry. “However sensible you
are—we are—the whole idea is simply foolish. I wish you would go home.”

Marian Oakeshott rested her head—intimately—on Humphry’s shoulder.

“It is hard,” she said. And then, “I do love you, I do love you so very steadily, so very much, my dear, however hopelessly it must be.”

And Humphry said “Oh well, I love you too, that can’t be altered. But it can’t
be
, and you know it, you have always known it.”

And Marian Oakeshott put up her arms, and drew down Humphry’s head, and kissed him, and he gave a kind of groan, and grasped her, and kissed her back. Olive saw the crown of hair tremble and sway. She thought of marching forwards, and retreated.

Hedda lay in the long grass, with her skirt rucked up above her knickers, and her lengthening brown legs stretched out. She was fortunate not to have hay fever, as Phyllis did. She was not exactly reading
The Golden Age
. I am a snake in the grass, she thought, a secret snake. Violet was sitting on the roughly mown grass in the orchard, at some distance, in a low wicker armchair, sewing. Hedda spent a lot of time spying on Violet, as a revenge for the fact that Violet spied on her, going through her private drawers and notebooks. Hedda, like Phyllis, was perpetually agitated by being left out of the group of older children, Tom and Dorothy, Charles and Griselda, and now Geraint. But whereas Phyllis was plaintive, Hedda was enraged. She was the traitor in all tales of chivalry and in myths. She was Vivien, she was Morgan Le Fay, she was Loki. She despised the cow-eyed and the gentle, Elaine the lily maid, faithful Psyche, Baldur’s weeping wife, Nanna. She was a detective, who saw through appearances. No one was as nice as they seemed, was her rule of judging characters. She was the darkest of the children, with long black hair and very solid black brows, drawn in a frown more often than not, and long, black lashes which in themselves were beautiful, especially when she was asleep. She had no one to talk to about her investigations. Phyllis was an idiot. Florian was a baby. She had had hopes of Pomona, but Pomona was an idiot, too, of the same kind as Phyllis. Dorothy was who she hated, because she was older, and in the way, and got things Hedda didn’t get. And because she had Griselda, and they were together, and Hedda had no one. But Dorothy didn’t know what Hedda knew, or partly knew. She had even wondered about
Tabitha as a sort of friend—it was odd that she, at ten, was certainly a young child, whereas Tabitha, at twelve, was supposed to be in charge of Robin Oakeshott, and was a sort of nursemaid. She saw that Tabitha’s simple manner was put on. Tabitha had her own thoughts, which she kept to herself. Hedda did not know what those thoughts were, and she saw Tabitha didn’t want her to know. Tabitha was acting, and could not afford a crack in the surface.

Olive came through the orchard, running, clutching her skirts. She pulled up a chair near Violet, and leaned forward, and hissed to her in a desperate whisper. Hedda could hear perfectly from where she was, and kept very still.

“I’ve just discovered something frightful, Vi. I don’t know what to do.”

She was all atremble.

“Tell me,” said Violet. Violet liked being told things, Hedda knew. “That woman—that Mrs. Oakeshott—who is no Mrs. anyone—she is the same woman—she is Maid Marian.”

“That was fairly clear from the outset,” said Violet. “What?”

“That was what I thought, myself. What has upset you?”

“She kissed him. He kissed her. I saw.”

“That was stupid of you. Better not see. She’s going away to be the schoolmistress at Puxty. What are you thinking of doing?”

“I am not made of stone, Violet, though you may think so. I have violent feelings. I feel—very angry, very—I can’t stand the mess. I can’t work if there’s a mess. You know that. I can’t afford to get agitated, I need to work.”

“Well then, you must not get agitated. You are the goose who lays the golden eggs on which we all depend. Including, I imagine, Mistress Maid Marian. You’ll be better off if you leave her to go earn her living at Puxty. You don’t need any more dependants.”

“He kissed her.”

“Well, you know what he is and what he does. He won’t leave us, all the same, you can feel safe on that count. Mistress Marian is the victim, not you, you goose.”

“But I saw—”

“Well, take good care to see no more. You’ve had practice. Kiss
someone yourself, there are those who would enjoy that, and you know it.”

There was something going on, Hedda sensed, that she did not understand, over and beyond what she did understand. Olive gave a little laugh.

“Mr. Methley has been lecturing me on the nature of women.”

“He’s another who can’t keep his hands to himself.”

“You’ve noticed that?”

“There’s not much I don’t notice,” said Violet, with quick satisfaction. That was it, Hedda thought, she has to know everything, or she feels—smaller, lesser—

“So you think I should just go on—as though nothing—as though I’d noticed nothing—”

“Isn’t that one of your great accomplishments?”

“Oh, you are hard on me.”

“Rather the opposite,” said Violet.

That first summer school was ad hoc and haphazard, from start to finish. Later schools took up deliberately a pattern that developed casually and at odd moments, in that first year, where one event—a lecture, a drawing class, a poetry reading, the Play above all—became connected to the others, so that Toby Youlgreave gave a lecture on Italian tales of abandoned babies who were returned as beautiful girls, whilst the textile and embroidery group were put to designing floral prints and weaves for the black and white wintry first act, and the spring festival of the second, where Perdita scattered flowers. August Steyning came over to help with stage effects—notably Olive-Hermione, as statue—and stayed to instruct the young Fludds and Wellwoods in theatre and costume design. He took from
The Winter’s Tale
what fitted his version of the theory that marionettes were more profound in their presentation of human passion than clumsy or self-obsessed human actors. He instructed Florence in how to dance “like a wave of the sea,” bending her body with his own hands, inducing a paralysis of self-consciousness and then, inexplicably, a new freedom of flowing movement. Florence said, flicking her wrists and ankles,

“What have you done? I feel as though my hands and feet don’t belong to me.”

“Good,” said August Steyning. “Now, again, skip, skip, glide, make
a full moon of your arms, let your fingers hold it—it is cold to the touch—so—”

Florence felt she was made of quicksilver.

Prosper Cain came when he could, when the business of the Museum allowed it. He gave a talk on the craft of art, and the art of craft, and of how—even in painting and sculpture—the two were inseparable. You needed design, and you needed basic physics and chemistry, or your paint would not dry under its varnish and your clay would not hold its glaze. And you needed also something—a sharpness of vision—which couldn’t be taught, but could not be acquired, in his view, without incessant practice.

He went to a class where several students—professionals and amateurs—were designing
The Winter’s Tale
series of alternating squares, tiles as it were, on stitched or printed fabric. Seraphita Fludd was ostensibly teaching this class, sitting at one end of the barn, and saying “very nice, very acceptable,” to whatever was brought up for her to look at. Cain wandered, with Olive Wellwood, behind the chairs and easels, offering comments. His own children had produced very pleasing, very faintly parodic, floral forms, Florence’s Dutch, Julian’s a version of Sèvres porcelain. “Very nice,” said Prosper Cain to his son. “Very competent, you mean,” said Julian. “I can do this with one hand behind my back. It’s a mockery. I don’t have any of that sharpness of vision you were extolling this morning. It’s not real, as I know you know.”