The Children's Book

8

The Fludds drove slowly along the North Downs, and then south-east towards Rye and the Romney Marsh. Seraphita and her children sat in their shabby carriage, and were alternately followed and preceded by Arthur Dobbin, with Philip, in the pony-trap. They came across the Low Weald, skirting the eastern arm of the Downs, through Biddenden and Tenterden, across the Shirley Moor and onto the road that divided the Romney Marsh from the Walland Marsh, heading towards Lydd and Dungeness. The first part of the journey was over rich country, fields full of cows and festooned with hops, along lanes that wound under thick green branches, and along banks of gnarled roots, clutching. Dobbin tried to talk to Philip, and Philip stared around him, distracted. Once they came to the marshes the air changed—it was cooler, and salty, Philip thought, and less still. There were all sorts of small canals and cuts and runnels to be crossed. There were trees that had been shaped by steady blasts of wind, stunted and reaching sideways. Philip wanted to draw them. They were a stationary form of violent movement. Things croaked and whistled and wailed. There was no soot.

They drove south through Brenzett and Brookland. Dobbin, who might have been expected to point out landmarks, became silent and brooding. He fidgeted the pony’s mouth, and it shook itself crossly. They went along a lane with high hedges and a green, murky ditch, and turned through a gate, into a driveway. There was a house, behind beech trees, with Elizabethan chimneys. They drove in through a gateway, into a yard full of outbuildings, stables, a midden. Philip smelt burning. It extinguished the smells of salt water and blown grasses. It was woodsmoke. It hung heavy in the air.

Dobbin told Philip to hold the pony, and went in, through a latched door, to what looked like a dairy, or a milking-shed. Philip stood with the pony. Someone came out of a door on the other side of the yard, a short, heavy man, moving fast, shaking his head, waving his arms and shouting.

“I told you expressly never to come back. Get out of here. Go away.” Philip stood. Benedict Fludd took in the fact that Philip was not Dobbin.

“Get along with you. Put the pony in his stall, and scarper. Where did he go?”

Philip had no idea where the pony’s stall was. He stood mute. Fludd cursed him in mediaeval English and strode in through the door through which Dobbin had gone. The carriage rolled into the yard. Geraint climbed down and started to see to the horses. There seemed to be no servants to help him. Fludd came out of the dairy building, more or less dragging Dobbin, and still swearing. He had a thick, upright head of dark hair, a heavy, curling black beard and muscular arms and shoulders. He wore a workman’s smock, heavy cotton trousers and fisherman’s boots. “Get out,” he said, repeatedly, to Dobbin. Geraint led the carriage horse into the stables, and came back for the pony, without speaking to his father or to Philip.

Imogen said to her father

“Don’t be angry. We’re back in time to help with the firing. We can all help.”

“No you can’t. We fired it, Wally and I fired it, while you were gallivanting. Total disaster. Total.”

“Why didn’t you wait?” asked Imogen. Her father said curtly that he’d wanted to control his own firing whilst the disastrous Dobbin was absent, and couldn’t muck it up. But Wally had dozed off in the night, and the fire hadn’t been fed right, and not only the firing but the kiln itself was in rack and ruin. And the carter had come with the clay and had had to be paid.

Seraphita stood in the yard, stately and gloomy, and asked whether there was any food in the house. Fludd said no, there wasn’t, he had had neither time nor inclination to go into Lydd, and Wally had been needed in the pottery, and the money had been needed for the new clay, and he had not had the slightest idea when they might condescend to come back, had he? She should have thought of that, shouldn’t she?

The three Fludd women stood like calm statues, and looked at each other and Dobbin, for help. Dobbin said nervously that he could ride over to the farm and get bread and milk, and something for supper, cheese or bacon, and some vegetables. If that seemed a good idea. But he would need money. Seraphita peered into her handbag, and found a few coins, which she handed over to Dobbin. Geraint came out of the stable and said the horse had had enough for one day, and the provisions must be got on foot. Dobbin asked Philip if he would like the walk to the farm. Philip said maybe he could make himself useful with the kiln. Fludd glowered at him.

“Who’s he?” he asked Seraphita.

“Arthur thinks he may be able to help you in the workshop.”

“One clumsy oaf is enough.”

“He’s not clumsy,” said Dobbin. “I grant I am—” Benedict Fludd growled—“I grant I am, but he’s not. He comes from the Potteries. He’s worked in kilns. He wants to work with you.”

Seraphita said, staring into the distance, that if no one could be got to help with the work, no work would be done. Fludd said it might all just as well go to rack and ruin. Philip said

“I saw your pot, at that house, at Todefright. I do want to work for you. I do know my way round.”

He began to walk into the pottery, which had been the dairy. He knew enough about the evil-tempered to know that you had to walk away from them, or they couldn’t give up their wrath, even if they needed to.

The pottery was in chaos. There was a small kiln, at one end, its doors hanging open, revealing slumped shelves, and a mess of ash and shards of exploded vessels. There were pots drying on shelves along one wall, and floating ash and grit was settling on them in an undesirable way. There were bins of water, and bins of slurry, not properly covered. There were all sorts of dishes of glaze and brushes, not neatly ranged, but dangerously slopping into each other. In the middle of the floor was a heap of broken biscuitware that looked as though someone had been jumping on it. Philip thought carefully. Don’t touch a man’s tools, unless you have permission. Don’t empty his kiln, he needs to note what went wrong where. Inside the door he found a broom, with which he began to clear the surface of the tiled floor. He saw a tin bath in which some of the broken pieces had been put to make grog, and added a few, as he worked, the clean ones. Benedict Fludd followed him in. He stood gloomily in the doorway, and watched him sweep. Finally he said

“You can help me get all this stuff out of the kiln. It’s got to be done. I need to find my test pieces.”

It had been a glost firing, with a load of glazed vessels in what Philip could see to be mostly greens and honey colours, all scorched, blistered, scarred and shattered. He helped Benedict Fludd in total silence, putting the pieces in a clothes basket, sweeping up the debris. Everything had collapsed in towards the centre. Right at the top, Philip found an intact small saucer, and then another. They were still warm, about blood-heat. He blew on them softly, to move the ash. One was the same gold and turquoise colour as the Todefright pot, and one was a very striking brilliant red that he thought he’d never seen before, a kind of rich cochineal crimson. Both had been painted with a swirling cloudy grey, a smoky web through which a tiny creature peered up through the veiling. The creatures were little demons, with nasty, snarling expressions, full of life. Philip broke the silence.

“There’s some little’uns here as aren’t smashed. Glaze has held pretty well.”

He handed them to their maker, who turned them over, humming tunelessly. Philip ventured to say that he’d never seen that kind of red.

“We all try to rediscover the sang de boeuf. This was meant to aim at the Iznik red, but it’s nearer sang de boeuf. I hadn’t a lot of hope of it.”

Philip said that the other glaze—the blue-green-gold one—was like the Todefright pot.

“That’s another hit-and-miss. More miss than hit. Have you done glazing work?”

“I worked in th’ kilns. Packing the saggars at the top of the bottles. But me mother is a paintress. She’s sick, with the lead and the dust. They all are. But she knows colours, and I’ve watched her.”

“Hmm,” said Benedict Fludd. “Hmm.”

They continued to clear up, in a now reasonably companionable silence.

Pomona came timidly to the doorway, and said that there was supper, if they wanted it. Fludd said, amiably enough, that he was ravenous, and Philip noted the loosening of Pomona’s muscles, in face and shoulders, where she had braced herself for rage. He noticed the same thing in the rest of the family—even Geraint—who were sitting round the kitchen table, on which were soup bowls, honey-glazed, with burnt umber snakes coiled inside them, a large platter of cheeses, a loaf of bread, and a dish of apples. Fludd sat at the head of the table, and patted the seat next to him for Philip. He bowed his head, and began to say Grace, rapidly, in Latin. “Gratias tibi agimus, omnipotens Deus, pro his et omnis donis tuis …” The family bowed their heads, and Philip copied them. Then Imogen served steaming vegetable soup from an iron pot, and they ate. Nobody said anything. Everyone watched Philip, who had a confused sense that much depended on him, and that he was perhaps not equal to his task.

When they had finished, Fludd said he was considering employing Philip in the workshop. Dobbin said “Oh, good” and attracted another series of snarling remarks about his own uselessness. Dobbin said bravely that if only Mr. Fludd had reliable assistance in the workshop, it would be possible to rebuild the big kiln, and…

“And save ourselves from starvation,” said Fludd. “It’s a long prospect, with little hope.”

He seemed almost pleased with this prognostic.

Imogen said her father should see Philip’s drawings, which he had made in the South Kensington Museum. These were fetched out again, with his pad of paper, and everyone admired the lithe dragons and helmeted gnome-men from the Gloucester Candlestick. Philip kept the pad, and his pencil, and began to draw. Fludd watched him. He drew from memory, the underwater forms on the Todefright pot, the way the tadpole creatures floated between the rising strands of weed. He found he remembered remarkably accurately. He knew that for the first time in his life, maybe, he was deliberately showing off his talent. Fludd should know he could see, and keep proportions, and remember. His hand skated over the paper. The fish-forms, the swimming embryos, flickered into life. Benedict Fludd laughed. He said he had forgotten how good that pot was. He was surprised he had parted with it, that charming lady had cajoled it out of him. Dobbin wondered if he had been paid at all for his work, but this niggle—anyway pointless—about past insouciance was swallowed in his relief and delight that the potter was smiling. He had been at Purchase House long enough to know that Fludd’s mood moved in repeated—though unpredictable—cycles, from rage to geniality, from grim, inactive despair to superhuman efforts of work and invention. Between the extremes, things got done, pots got made, even, with luck, sold to keep off starvation. The family sat round in the lamplight, looking like a family, the laughing father, the graciously attentive mother, the two lovely daughters handing out apples, even Geraint admiring the drawings. Geraint was thinking that Philip could be really useful and would be worth cultivating. He needed help, to make it possible for him to get out of this house. He had given up any idea that the ineffective Dobbin might be help. But Philip—possibly—might be.

Purchase House had many rooms. More of them were empty, and in a state of decay, than were inhabited. There was an uncarpeted stone staircase, with a metal banister, leading to the first floor: it must once have been imposing, but now wound gloomily up into the dark. Imogen led Philip up with a candle, and showed him into a bare little room, with a bed, and a washstand, a small chest of drawers and a high window, too high to look out of. It was a little like a monastic cell. There were sheets and a woven bedcover, embroidered with a bunch of lilies. Imogen seemed undisposed to talk to Philip, and almost embarrassed by finding herself alone with him. She showed him the water-closet at the other end of the landing, past several closed doors. Then she left him, with a matchbox, and his little flame.

He lay down, composedly enough. His incoherent plan had brought him to a potter, and possible work. He thought about the Fludds as he lay on the edge of exhausted sleep. He had not much to compare them with—the family at Todefright, perhaps. Violet had packed him a nightshirt, and the borrowed clothing, now a gift. That family was running, and laughter, and hugging and reciting nonsense, and he did not know how to behave with it, but felt a kind of grief that he was not part of the charmed circle. Here everyone was unnaturally still and watchful, apart from the potter himself, who had moods, a state Philip recognised from the temperamental master-craftsmen he had seen from a distance. He thought he didn’t like Geraint, but was not sure. Geraint had a nice face, as though he would have talked, if he had had anyone to talk to. Arthur Dobbin meant well, but Philip had unthinkingly accepted Benedict Fludd’s and Geraint’s assessment of his uselessness. Dobbin, too, had a bedroom somewhere in the house. If he had particularly enraged the potter, he sometimes slept in the parsonage, with Frank Mallett. Seraphita had once said she was always glad if he stayed overnight, but it was always “overnight” however long it went on. He was a guest, not part of the family, something Philip had understood without reflection. He had also understood that there was little money, and that Dobbin was the only person who had any sense about provisions.

In the middle of the night, something odd happened. The latch on his door lifted, and the door creaked open. His eyes were used to the dark, and there was enough moon- and starlight for him to see. The person who came in was female, with flowing hair loose on her shoulders. She was white like bone china in the moonlight, and naked. She walked barefoot, with delicate little steps, across the rug on the floor, and stood by his bed. It was Pomona. She had new little uptilted breasts, and—he saw clearly—a little bush of soft gold private hair. Her mouth was relaxed, and unnaturally calm. She breathed as though she was sleeping, and Philip thought she was, she must be sleepwalking. He kept his eyes open, and his body quite still. Her eyes were open, and unseeing. He knew from hearsay and gossip that you must not wake sleepwalkers. It could kill them, it was said. Maybe she would go away. In the interim he looked with aesthetic pleasure and moral distress at the naked form, and the white skin. Quite suddenly, she bent down, lifted the blanket, lifted a knee, and slid into bed beside him, putting a surprisingly solid arm across his neck, and curling up to him. Her leg was over his thigh. He held his breath. He had not the slightest idea where she had come from, so could not carry or lead her back to her own room.

He waited. He almost dozed, with keeping still and breathing shallow and even. What if she woke? But she did not wake, and finally, after a lapse of time, she swung her legs out of the bed again, and moved like an automaton towards the door. Philip padded after her, and opened it wide, to let her through. Perhaps he ought to have gone after her, to see that she came to no harm. But he was embarrassed and fearful.