The Children's Book

42

In October 1908 the Ledbetter Gallery in St. James’s Street, Piccadilly, put on an exhibition of the ceramics of Philip Warren. Philip had been working like Vulcan all summer; idea after idea had risen to the surface of his mind, and taken shape under his fingers. Successive firings were successful. Prosper and Imogen, visiting, went into the studio that had been Benedict Fludd’s, and saw the work. Imogen said it needed a bigger space than The Silver Nutmeg, and Prosper said that Philip could be thought the equal of his master. He came back with Marcus Ledbetter, the owner of the gallery, who said this work must be seen.

Everyone was invited to the opening. Everyone included the warring factions in the Victoria and Albert, and also included the Todefright family, the Purchase House family, the Portman Square Wellwoods, August Steyning, Leslie and Etta Skinner and Elsie. Philip said to Imogen that he was sure Elsie would be too shy to accept her invitation but it was only right that she should be asked. He asked the ladies from Winchelsea and Dungeness, too. Elsie made herself a dress from a remnant of blue-black grosgrain, and a lace collar she found in a shop in Rye, which was old, and complex, and looked as though it was worth twenty times what she paid for it. She put one new blue silk rose on a plain hat and looked elegant. When she came into the gallery, which was hung with white silk and had black lacquered stands and shelves, Philip did not, for a gap of time, recognise her as his sister, and thought she looked unusually interesting. He was about, when he had come to his senses, to tell her this, but found she had turned aside to talk to Charles/Karl Wellwood. They were laughing together. Geraint Fludd was in attendance on his mother, who was looking fragile but beautiful. Griselda and Imogen both looked at him with curiosity and pity to see how he was taking what must have been a mysterious and sudden rejection. He was most elegantly dressed, and was drinking rather a lot of champagne. He must be doing rather well in the City.

Even Dorothy Wellwood was there. Her mother, handsome in dark red velvet, said to her

“There is Tom, lurking again in a corner. Do go and make him talk to people. He used to be so charming.”

Dorothy thought of a retort, and then thought she did, after all, want to talk to Tom. He had a sweetly uncertain look about him. He was drinking champagne as though it was lemonade.

“Come and look at the pots, Tom. This is all your doing. If you hadn’t found Philip, when he was hiding in the Museum, none of this would have happened.”

Tom said he supposed Philip would have found a way. Philip knew what he wanted.

They walked round, looking at the work.

There were various clusters of pots. The central exhibit was a group of vessels—bowls, jars, tall bottle shapes, with formally abstract glazes, many of them with a dull hot red like molten lava at the base, bursting into a sooty black layer on top of which raged a kind of thin sea of sullen blue with a formal crest of white foaming shapes rearing and falling. Other pieces had intricately random glazes that raced and climbed and plunged and scattered like forces driving in the glassy curls of wild sea water. There were greens and greys and silvers like needles of rushing air in dark depths. Dorothy turned to speak to Tom, and found that he had disappeared, and the presence at her shoulder was Philip.

“These are for Fludd,” said Philip. “In memory of. Some of them are his shapes.”

“Yes,” said Dorothy.

“The ones over here are my own.”

The second group was glazed gold, or silver, or lustre shot with both. The pots were covered with a lattice of climbing and creeping half-human creatures, not the little demons of the Gloucester Candlestick, not the tiny satyrs of the Gien majolica, but busy figures—some bright blue with frog-fingers, some black, some creamy-white, with white manes tossing—unlike anything Dorothy had seen.

“Pots are still,” said Philip.

“Nothing keeps still on your pots.”

“I make things keep still. That don’t, naturally, keep still. Sea water. Things in the earth. You need to hold the pots to see how it works.”

He reached over and picked up a round golden jar, covered with silver and soot-black imps.

“Here. Hold that.”

“I’m afraid to drop it.”

“Nonsense. You’ve got good hands. Remember?”

Dorothy stood with the pot in her hands, which held the cool light weight of the shell. The moment it was between her fingers, she felt it three-dimensional. It was a completely different thing if you measured it with your skin instead of your eyes. Its weight—and the empty air inside it—were part of it. Dorothy closed her eyes, to see how that changed the shape. Someone said “Excuse me, sir, madam, you must put that back, it is not allowed to touch the exhibits.” A small man was pulling at Philip’s sleeve.

“I can touch them if I like,” said Philip. “They’re mine. I made them.”

“Please, sir. Put it back. Madam, please.”

He had blond hair plastered to a red-hot head. He said “You have to understand, everyone wants to pick them up, the pots ask for it, and if you start…”

Philip laughed. “Put it back, Dorothy. He’s made his point.” He said to the attendant “This lady is studying to be a surgeon. She’s got steady hands.”

“Yes, sir. Even so—”

Dorothy returned to the pot to its stand.

Charles/Karl said to Elsie “We could go out and eat dinner.”

“And how would I get back?”

“Back to where?”

“Me and Philip are in a hotel in Kensington.”

“I can take you back.”

“I can’t. You can see that. I have to have dinner with Philip, and the—the other people.”

Charles/Karl said “I could cadge an invitation. Then we could—”

“All this is no good, and you know it.”

But he cadged his invitation, and managed to sit next to her, and they both felt hot, and too much alive, and desperate.

Julian was in love with Griselda. He had not known for very long that this was the case. He liked keeping it quiet, a secret even from the beloved, unlike the simmering male gossip and endless speculation at King’s. He was keeping it quiet, too, because he detected no signs that his love was reciprocated. Griselda enjoyed his company, because he knew a lot, and understood her if she said things that would puzzle most people. But she was too cosy with him. There was no quickened consciousness. He discussed Philip’s work with her.

“These are turbulent pots. Seething pots. Storms in teacups and vases. Creatures running through everything like maggots in cheese. Stately vessels with storms raging on them.”

“You get things right. You are very clever.”

“I wish I could make things, instead of being clever about other people’s things. I remember finding Philip when he was a filthy ragamuffin hiding in a tomb in a basement. I only wanted to stop him trespassing.”

Griselda laughed.

“And now they’ve bought that big bowl with a flood on it, and that tall jug with the creatures climbing, for the Museum.”

“That’s a good story.”

“Rags to riches.”

“Well, to works of art, anyway—”

Dorothy went back to Todefright for the weekend. She got up early, and found Tom eating bread and butter.

“Let’s go out for a walk,” she said. “It’s a bright day.”

Tom nodded. “If you like.”

“We could go to the Tree House.”

“If you like.”

They walked through the woods under turning leaves, yellow and yellow-green, lifeless as green leaves, not yet crisp and brilliant as russet or scarlet leaves. Now and then, one dropped through the branches, resting on a twig, falling a bit further, eddying aimlessly, reaching the mulch under their feet. Dorothy tried to talk to Tom. She did not talk to him about her work, because she sensed a determined lack of interest in it. She talked about the pots, and about Hedda’s school exams, and about Violet’s problems with the bones in her ankles, which she had not known about, and thought must be more serious than anyone appeared to realise. Tom said almost nothing. He pointed out pheasants, and a rabbit. The wood smelt of rich, incipient rottenness. They turned a corner, to where the Tree House used to stand, camouflaged and secret.

“It’s gone,” said Dorothy. The neat heaps of chopped-down wood were still there.

“Yes,” said Tom.

For a moment she thought he had done this himself, in an excess of depression or madness.

He said “It was the gamekeeper. He had no right, it is public land, not part of his coppices.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

Tom said, meekly and meanly, “I didn’t think you’d be interested. Not really. Not much.”

“It was the Tree House. All our childhood.”

“Yes,” said Tom.

“I’m sorry,” said Dorothy, as though she had hacked at the walls herself.

“Not your fault,” said Tom. “There it is. Where shall we go now?”

Olive called Dorothy into her study, before the pony-cart took her back to the station.

“I wish you’d come home more often. I’m worried about Tom.”

The study had changed. It was full of odd dolls, and pâpiér-máché figures, and stage-sets in miniature, and puppets with strings perched on bookshelves. Anselm Stern’s work, thought Dorothy, piqued that her real parents appeared to be working together behind her back. She said

“What do you think is wrong with Tom?”

“I don’t know. He’s hostile to me. I can’t reach him.”

“Maybe you don’t try,” said Dorothy, and wished she had not. Olive put her head briefly in her hands. She said with a weary spite

“You certainly don’t. You never come home. I know you mean to save lives and work wonders, but you’re too busy to notice your family, or be kind to them.”

Dorothy picked up one of the puppets—a small grey, ratlike puppet, with a gold collar and stitched-in ruby-beaded eyes.

“And where do you think I learnt that?” she heard herself ask. “Look at you. Tom looks sick, and your room is full of all these stuffed dolls—”

“I’m writing a play. With August Steyning. We’ve just got the lease of the Elysium Theatre next year. There’s never been anything like it.”

“Well, I hope it’s a very successful play. I really do. But I think Tom is sick. And you’re his mother. Not me.”

“Ah, but he loves you, and trusts you, you were always so close.”

Dorothy set her teeth, and started to run over a list of all the small bones in the human skeleton, one by one, in her mind. Work. Work was what mattered. Olive’s work was hopelessly contaminated with play.

“Someone should make Tom grow up,” said Dorothy.

“He is grown up,” said Olive, and then, in a small voice “I know, I know.”

“I’ve got to go. I’ll miss my train.”

“Come back soon.”

“I’ll see how it fits in,” said Dorothy.