The Children's Book (7 page)

They wandered into the orchard. Phyllis pointed.

“These two trees are the magic trees from the story. The golden apple and the silver pear. You can only see the gold and silver in certain lights, you have to believe. These two are the centre. Their branches touch the ground, and their heads are in the sky. And all this—stuff—the bryony and the wild roses—grows over them to make them lovely—”

They were old, neglected, beautiful trees. Philip looked at the shapes of the snarling of their branches and wished he had a pencil. Phyllis took his hand and pulled him forward.

“This is where Rosy lies. See this circle of white stones. Rosy is under these, under the apple and the pear.”

A kitten, a bird?

“We bring her flowers on her birthday. We pour out libations of apple juice for her. We don’t forget her. We will never forget her.”

Her voice was solemn, and creamy with warmth.

“She lived for a week, just one little week, that was all she lived. She had the most perfect little fingers and toes. Now she sleeps here.”

She bent her head reverently. Philip, without putting it into words, detected play-acting. He wondered unkindly if Phyllis even thought about what was really under the white stones, amongst the roots. He said vaguely and falsely

“That’s good.”

He threw several of the hard little apples into the bramble patch.
Then he hung a lantern with a crescent moon and a black bird-shadow in the branches of the pear tree, over the white stones.

Phyllis took his hand. She pushed her little body against his side. He had the sense that her flesh had always been clean and pleasant, and that, by contrast, his own
never had
. This was a feeling, again not in words. He pulled away.

After the decoration of the garden, and the bread and cheese lunch, the business of dressing-up began. Violet dressed the children—including Philip—in the schoolroom whilst Humphry and Olive went to put on their robes, which were a gesture towards “their” play,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, not rigidly Elizabethan, not yet Athenian, but more flowing Arts and Crafts silks and linens, silver and gold, flowery and floating.

There was a large painted chest in the schoolroom, an imitation of a Renaissance marriage-chest, with woodland scenes of dark glades, pale ladies, hounds and a white stag painted on the sides. This was the dressing-up chest, and it was unusually well stocked with silken shifts, frilled shirts, embroidered shawls, fillets for veils and coronets for princes.

“It helps,” Violet said to Philip, “to have a dressmaker as an auntie, who can turn a toga into a ball dress and back, or magic silk flowers out of old stockings. I think we should dress Hedda as Peaseblossom. Here is a lovely pink and violet shift.”

Hedda had her arms deep in the silks, rummaging.

“I want to be a
witch
,” she said.

“I told you, dear,” said Violet. “Hallowe’en’s for witches. Midsummer is for fairies. With pretty wings, organdie, look.”

“I want to be a
witch,”
Hedda repeated. Her small face was an angry frown.

Olive had come in with a sparkling buckle she needed Violet to stitch to a sash. She ruffled Hedda’s hair.

“She can be a witch if she likes,” she said easily. “We want them to be comfortable, don’t we, so they can run about and have fun. Have you found witch clothes, darling? Here’s my old black shawl with a lovely fringe and a fiery dragon on it. And here’s Phyllis’s old black dancing-tunic—if you just put a few stitches, Vi, so she doesn’t spring apart. And here’s a glass beetle-brooch, just the thing. And Philip will make you a hat with black paper. Not too big, Philip, so it stays on—”

“And a broomstick,” said Hedda.

“You must ask in the kitchen for the loan of a besom.”

Violet’s face had a mutinous look, not unlike Hedda’s, but she did as she was asked, or told, and the little girl was soon spinning in a whirl of black batwings and floating fringe. Violet did up the unresisting Florian in yellow and green, with a scalloped jerkin, as Mustardseed. He had a pointed felt cap, which he kept patting uncertainly. Phyllis accepted the rejected Peaseblossom, and was lovingly hung with silk gauze, mauve, rose and ivory; she had a silver cloak, like folded dragonfly-wings, and a wreath of silk flowers on her hair.

Dorothy was Moth, in a grey velvet tunic with a cloak with painted eyes. Violet tried vainly to persuade her to wear wired antennae.

Tom had to be Puck. He went barefoot in brown tights and a leaf-coloured jerkin. He too rejected a headdress and said he would put twigs in his own hair. Phyllis said Puck didn’t wear glasses. Tom said “This one does. Or he’ll fall into the pond and get trapped in brambles.”

They came to the question of Philip. He said he couldn’t dress up, he would feel silly. No one wanted to suggest he should be a rude mechanical. It would be insensitive. Tom said “Can’t you put on a sort of toga and be one of the Athenians?”

Philip did not know
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and was totally baffled by the costume selection. He said he didn’t think he could wear a toga. He was not, in fact, sure what a toga was.

“I don’t like to be looked at,” he said, strangled. All the children, even those who were prancing about flaunting their disguises, understood the need not to be looked at. Dorothy had an idea, and took down the butcher-blue painting smock Tom wore for crafts lessons.

“You could go as an artist. You might wear this anyway, to make pots and things.”

The smock had a high neck, full sleeves, deep pockets. It was a coverall. It was in many ways less of a disguise than the borrowed clothes he had on. Philip looked down at his legs.

“You could go barefoot,” said Dorothy. “We do.”

“You could just stay as you are,” said Tom.

Philip put on the smock. He felt comfortable. He allowed Violet to change his boots for sandals. Everyone who was not barefoot wore sandals.

“Now you can run and jump,” said Dorothy.

His feet under the straps were whitish but not white. He felt a moment’s pleasure at the idea of running and jumping.

•  •  •

The guests began to arrive in the midafternoon. They came at intervals, from far and near, in carriages, pony-traps, station flies, on foot, and, in one case, on a tandem tricycle.

Humphry and Olive stood on the steps to receive them. They were dressed as Oberon and Titania. Humphry had a silk jerkin embroidered with Florentine arabesques, black breeches and a voluminous velvet cloak, swinging at a daring angle from a silken cord across his shoulder. He looked absurd and beautiful. And amused. Olive wore pleated olive silk over pleated white linen, with a gauze overcloak, veined like insect wings. Her hair was dressed with honeysuckle and roses. She looked warm and wild. Violet, beside her, wore a dress stitched with ivy-leaves on satin, and held her head girlishly on one side, heavy with silk ivy and white feathers. The children were running around. They would be called to order when other children arrived.

The firstcomers—they had only to walk across the meadow from their farm cottage—were the Russian anarchists. Vasily Tartarinov had escaped from St. Petersburg in 1885. He gave lectures on Russian society, and received generous assistance (including the cottage) from English socialists. He had two sets of clothes, his working smock and the dress suit in which he gave his lectures. He had come in the dress suit. He was a dramatic figure, inordinately tall and thin with a long pointed white beard like a wizard. His wife, Elena, wore the better of her two dresses, which was brown poplin with black braid and black buttons. Her hair was scraped back. They had made no concession to fancy dress. The children, Andrei and Dmitri, both around Phyllis’s age, wore their usual aprons, red and blue. They mostly pretended they could not speak English.

The tricycle rolled in, vigorously pedalled by Leslie and Etta Skinner, fellow Fabians. Skinner worked on human statistics and heredity at University College, London. He had sleek black hair, white skin and blue eyes. Etta Skinner was older than Leslie. They had met in the Men and Women’s Club, at the college, in the 1880s. They had discussed the Woman Question, birth control, animal passion and the sexual instincts. Skinner was very serious and had a beautiful voice. He aroused a great deal of animal passion in colleagues and students. The Wellwoods
agreed he had married Etta to protect himself from frenzied maenads. Etta was a dedicated Theosophist, attended gatherings on esoteric and astral matters in Albemarle Street, lectured on vegetarianism, and taught reading, writing and arithmetic to the London poor. She had a round face, tight lips and pepper and salt hair with a fuzz of broken ends. She looked as though she had once been expectant and greedy, but had learned better. She was distantly related to the Darwins, the Wedgwoods and the Galtons, which, Humphry pointed out, must have been attractive to a specialist in heredity. But the Skinners, married for ten years, had no children. Humphry said it was odd that people interested in ancestry often were not ancestors. Olive replied that she didn’t like Etta’s clothes, which were home-dyed and sacklike. The usual dress appeared, in an unsteady plum colour, as she divested herself of her cycling skirt and veil.

Close on their heels came Toby Youlgreave, also on a bicycle. He had a tiny weekend cottage in the woods. He and Etta began a discussion of folk customs at midsummer.

Prosper Cain came from Iwade House in a carriage, with Julian, and his daughter, Florence. They wore fancy dress. Prosper was disguised as Prospero in a sumptuous black robe covered with signs of the zodiac. He carried a long staff, made of a narwhal tusk, with a pommel stuck with moonstones and peridots. Julian was Prince Ferdinand, in theatrical black and silver. Florence, who was twelve, was very prettily dressed as Miranda, in a flowing sea-coloured shift, with her dark hair flowing, and a necklace of pearls. Julian and Tom eyed each other cautiously. They had shared an adventure, but were not sure they wanted to be friends. Olive came smiling forward and Prosper kissed her hand. He said in her ear

“I borrowed this fantastic object from the collection, dear lady, but tell no one.”

“I don’t know whether to believe you.” He was still holding her hand. “No one ever does. I encourage uncertainty.” Julian caught sight of Philip in the smock. “I didn’t recognise you.”

Philip shifted from foot to foot. Tom said “He’s made topping lanterns. Come and see.”

They went off, and Florence followed.

The Dungeness party were in a kind of brake; the ladies had brought
their party dresses in wicker baskets, because they had come a long way. Benedict Fludd, as Olive had predicted, had not come. Seraphita, in the days when she was a Stunner from Margate called Sarah-Jane Stubbs, had been painted by Burne-Jones and Rossetti. Now in her forties she still had the fine bones, the knot of black hair, the huge brow, the wide-spaced green eyes and calm mouth of the paintings, but her body was heavier and her expression less mildly beneficent. She was travelling in a loose Liberty robe, but had brought a grander one, with a confection of veiling to throw round her head and shoulders. Her children were Imogen, a child of sixteen embarrassed by breasts, Geraint, a little older than Tom, who had inherited his mother’s eyes and hair, and Pomona, who was Tom’s age, had flowing chestnut-coloured hair and had brought a home-woven gown, embroidered with crocus, daffodils and bluebells. Both girls had also brought beaded and embroidered Juliet caps. Geraint had a kind of handwoven smock, not unlike Philip’s.

The Fludds were accompanied by a solemn young man whose name was Arthur Dobbin. Dobbin saw himself as Benedict Fludd’s apprentice. He hoped to found a commune of craftsmen in the salt marshes round Rye. He was smallish, and plump, with slicked hair and an anxious, determined look. He would have liked to come dressed as Oberon, or Sir Galahad, and he knew it would not do. He was dressed in the knitted Jaeger woollen garments, popularised by G. B. Shaw, which were a little sweaty in flaming June.

Dorothy was waiting for the next carriage. So was Humphry, who drew in a breath as it pulled up smartly in front of the house. The other Wellwoods were here. They had driven over from Vetchey Manor, their country house. They were soberly dressed in travelling costumes, and had bandboxes with them. Basil and Katharina sat looking forwards; their son and daughter, Charles and Griselda, sat behind the driver, looking back.

Dorothy was waiting for Cousin Griselda. Cousin Griselda came into her mind when she had to use the word “love” which she tended to be careful with. Griselda was the same age as Dorothy, and was closer to Dorothy than her sister Phyllis. Dorothy, a realist, rather thought she did not love Phyllis, though she knew she ought to. Perhaps because of this she loved Griselda—whom she did not see very often—a little more emphatically. Dorothy was sometimes afraid that she had started out with a smaller capability for love than most people. Phyllis loved everything—Mother, Father, Auntie Violet, Hedda, Florian
and Robin, Ada and Cathy, the ponies, the fluffy kitten, dead Rosy in the orchard, the Todefright toads. Dorothy had varying feelings for most of these people, some of them loving. But she did love Griselda, she had fixed on Griselda to love.

Frieda, Katharina’s lady’s-maid, had the seat beside the driver. She came down to oversee the unloading of the bandboxes.

Basil Wellwood was shorter and more muscular than his younger brother. He wore a well-cut pale grey suit, which he did not intend to change, and had a diamond ring and a multiple watchchain of complicated links. He did not quite suppress a frown when he saw Humphry’s bright garments which he thought were absurd. He complimented Humphry on the hot sunlight, as though Humphry had found someone to procure it, which Humphry in turn found absurd.

Charles, aged fourteen and preparing for the Eton scholarship exams, resembled both brothers, with red-gold hair, sandy lashes and strong features. He too wore a suit, with a cravat with a pearl tiepin.

Katharina was thin and pale, her head on its slender neck dwarfed by a hat with dove-wings on its rim, and a closely tied spotted veil. Her hair was between faded grey and mouse-blonde. She had large, mixed-coloured eyes in slightly ravaged sockets of bruised skin, finely wrinkled and folded.