The Children's Book

47

In February 1910 Richard Strauss’s Elektra was put on in Covent Garden. It is a drama of fated royal families stirring violently in bloody passion, matricide and revenge. Elektra took hatred to her bosom as a bridegroom, “hollow-eyed, breathing a viperous breath.” The English critics were divided. The Times said the opera was “unsurpassed for sheer hideousness in the whole of operatic literature.” Shaw diagnosed anti-German hysteria. He said Elektra was “the highest achievement of the highest art.” “If the case against the fools and their money-changers who are trying to drive us into war with Germany consists in the single word, Beethoven, today I should say with equal confidence, Strauss.”

The English were reading novels about the invasion of England, and the invaders were Germans, men in steel helmets who bit into the globular world with iron teeth. There was the legendary William Le Queux, whose tales were serialised by Lord Northcliffe in the Daily Mail and hugely increased its circulation. He began with The Great War in England in 1897 which was published in 1894. In those nineteenth-century days the hypothetical invaders were French: they were driven back, with the help of Germany, when they besieged London.

In 1906 Le Queux wrote the Invasion of 1910, a futuristic tale of a German invasion of England’s green and pleasant land. The places of German landings, and German battles with the English, were changed, before publication, to suit the readership of the Daily Mail, to the places where Lord Northcliffe had most readers, who would feel the most poignant frisson of armchair terror. Among Le Queux’s innumerable other works was Spies of the Kaiser, published in 1909, a mock-factual series of descriptions of infiltrating Germans and dangerous new weapons. The Secret of the Silent Submarine. The Secret of Our New Gun. The German Plot against England. The Secret of the British Aeroplane. These plots were foiled by a “patriot to his core,” a pipe-smoking barrister, with excellent taste in furnishings. There were emotive illustrations, depicting, for instance, the “execution of von Beilstein” standing blindfold in the Horse Guards Parade, facing an execution squad of guardsmen in bearskin hats, a white-surpliced priest, and two solemn English policemen.

• • •

The Kaiser himself sat in his study on a stool in the shape of a horse’s saddle and wrote letters to his family, his uncle Edward, his cousin Nicholas in Russia, making and proposing many different treaties, against many different enemies. In September 1908, in concert with Colonel Stuart-Wortley, he had written in the Daily Telegraph on German—British relations. German diplomats toned down the passages about how unpopular Britain was in Germany.

The article claimed that William’s “large stock of patience is giving out… You English are mad, mad as March hares … my heart is set upon peace.” He claimed that he had sent his grandmother tips about how to win the Boer War and ended

Germany is a young and growing Empire. She has a worldwide commerce which is rapidly expanding, and to which the legitimate ambition of patriotic Germans refuses to assign any bounds. Germany must have a powerful fleet to protect that commerce and her manifold interests in even the most distant seas.

This article pleased no one. The English press were “sceptical, critical and grudging.” The Japanese were upset by the shrill remarks about the fleets in distant oceans. The Germans were furious with their Emperor; there was a political crisis, the Kaiser made a confused speech when honouring Graf Zeppelin with the Black Eagle for his airship, and there were calls for his abdication. He went away to go hunting in yellow leather boots, and gold spurs, wearing a cross of his own design—a combination of the Order of St. John and of the Knights of the Teutonic Order. He went to a fox cull with Max Furstenberg and killed 84 of the 134 slaughtered foxes. In the evening he was resplendent, with the Order of the Garter below his knee, the ribbon of the Order of the Black Eagle across his chest, and round his neck the Spanish Golden Fleece. He had signed a letter to the English First Lord of the Admiralty about naval competition between Germany and England “by one who is proud to wear the British naval uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet, which was conferred on him by the late Queen of blessed memory.”

In May 1910 the Kaiser’s uncle, Edward the Caresser, died. He lay in state in Westminster Hall, and Wilhelm, in another splendid uniform, doffing his plumed helmet, stood by the bier, holding the hand of his cousin George. He went back to Windsor, the old family home, “where I played as a child, tarried as a youth and later as a man and a ruler enjoyed the hospitality of Her Late Highness, the Great Queen.” The English cheered him in the streets. He went home, and spoke in Konigsberg of divine right.

“I see Myself as an instrument of the Lord. Without regard for the views or opinions of the day I go My way, which means the whole and sole well-being and peaceful development of our fatherland.”

That winter he added a decoration of real dead birds to the hat he wore to shoot, along with the high, shining yellow boots, and the gold spurs.

In August that year, Griselda Wellwood was working as a research student at Newnham, like Julian Cain, whose study of pastoral was spreading pleasantly, but unconstructively, into Latin, Greek, German, Italian and the possibility of Norwegian, without acquiring order or shapeliness. He earned some money by supervising undergraduates, who liked him. Griselda did not have any teaching, but attended classes with Jane Harrison. She was working steadily on the folktale, starting out from the Grimms. In their work both Julian and Griselda found much overlapping and repetition: motifs of death and grief and springtime and ripeness: motifs of flesh-eating and punishment and exoneration and the triumph of beauty and virtue. Both of them had moods in which the Cambridge weather—the chill winter winds blowing in from the Steppes, the luscious summers with boats and willows and perfect lawns and May Balls—seemed like an enchantment, a spider-web from which they needed to break free in order to taste and touch reality.

They spent time together: they attended some of the same lectures and had coffee afterwards. They attended the Cambridge Fabian Society. They discussed their states of mind. Julian made self-mocking mutterings about wanting to join the army, or make money in the City. Griselda laughed at him and said he had put himself into the story of the parting of the ways, or the story of the choosing of the caskets, gold, silver and lead. He went on making notes on Andrew Marvell, who had written so little and so well. He was improving his Latin. It was much harder to discuss either Griselda’s alternative lives, or what story she was in. You could not—not if you were a man, a young man—ask her if she had rejected marriage to devote herself to scholarship. It was hard for a man and a woman to be friends with no underthought or glimpsed prospect of sex. They wanted to be friends. It was almost a matter of principle. Julian was nevertheless in love with Griselda. She was as intelligent as any Fellow of King’s—though he thought she did not know it—he was in love with her mind as it followed clues through labyrinths. Love is, among many other things, a response to energy, and Griselda’s mind was precise and energetic.

He wanted to make love to her, too. She was now almost too perfectly lovely to be attractive. Her calm, clear face had a carved look, which could easily be read as a cold look. She coiled her pale hair perfectly so that one was led to admire it, rather than to want to ruffle it. He did not detect in her—and he watched her—any flash of the sex instinct. He managed to raise the topic by discussing her London Season as a debutante. She became animated. She said it was horrible. “All that eyeing each other, and pairing off. Like a cattle market. Horrid. I have no small talk and I never met anyone who had anything else. And it was noisy. They bray, the upper classes, about their titillations and curious ceremonies. They shriek. And you have to be dolled up with feathers in your hair. I was rejected and rejecting. Firmly, in both cases.”

He had asked himself if she preferred women. She might. The Newnhamites had passionate friendships and flirtations: they proposed to each other, he had been told. She had been friends with Florence, who had rushed into an odd story he hadn’t been told, and didn’t understand. She was friends with her cousin Dorothy, who had just qualified as a surgeon, which he could not but think of as a male occupation, knives, lancets, commands.

Then she said “I didn’t really mean to get me to a nunnery. I didn’t really mean to live in a world of knitting and gossip and—oh—petty jealousies. I wish I was you.”

“I don’t. I like talking to you.”

And then that silence, that was the end of that conversation, as of others.

He invited her to go with him to see the Marlowe Society, who were reviving their successful production of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. The audience consisted mostly of a group of visiting German students, ready to see what Goethe had read. Because it was not term-time there was not only no strict chaperonage, there were women playing female parts—which were admittedly non-speaking and brief. There were no transvestite Kingsmen as queens or temptresses. There were the Fabian Nursery with Brynhild (“Bryn”) Olivier, daughter of Sir Sidney Olivier, founding Fabian, and Governor of Jamaica, playing Helen of Troy, the “face that launched a thousand ships,” in a low-cut dress, her hair powdered with gold. Francis Cornford, the classical scholar, was Faustus, Jacques Raverat (who was eventually to marry Gwen Darwin) was Mephistophilis, and some female Fabians were Deadly Sins. Rupert Brooke was the Chorus looking marvellous, and speaking the verse somewhat squeakily.

Griselda asked if he could get another ticket. A friend was visiting Cambridge—Julian knew him, in fact—he was Wolfgang Stern, from Munich. The Sterns were over in England, planning changes in the puppets and marionettes for the reopening of Tom Underground in the autumn. Julian got the ticket and Wolfgang appeared, looking a little Mephistophelian with a sharp black beard and jutting brow. They sat in the centre, a few rows back. Behind them the Germans commented in German, supposing they were not understood. Wolfgang turned round and told them to be quiet. They laughed, and attended. Griselda sat sedately between Wolfgang and Julian. Behind them were some more Darwins, Jane Harrison and her lovely student, Hope Mirrlees. Harrison must have come to see Francis Cornford, with whom she corresponded daily and rode rapidly about Cambridge on bicycles. There was a party afterwards, at the Darwin house on Silver Street, to which the three were not invited. Julian took them to a restaurant near Magdalene Bridge. It was French and cheerful, with checked tablecloths.

Wolfgang Stern said rather aggressively that the voices he thought were good, but none of these English people knew how to move. They stood like melting candles bending over. Their gestures were polite when something else was required. Griselda said that was most unfair. The Mephistophilis had been quite snaky in his movements. He was French, said Wolfgang, that was why. The English should—was it “stick to”?—tableaux vivants. Charades. He seemed quite cross.

Griselda said placatingly that she meant to ask him—Wolfgang—about an essay she was writing on the differences between the Grimms’ two versions of the Cinderella story—“Aschenputtel” and “Allerleirauh,” Cinderella and the Many-furred. She said she loved the word

“Allerleirauh,” every kind of rough fur. Cinderella was persecuted by a stepmother, but Allerleirauh dealt intelligently with an incestuous father and a cook who threw boots at her. And somehow she was moved by the fact that Allerleirauh, hiding her gold, silver and star-spangling dresses under the skin cloak, became a furry creature—an animal—neutral in German—not an object of desire.

“Until she chose,” said Wolfgang. “And then she blazed out like the sun and the moon—”

“The English and the French have sweetened Cinderella—”

Julian felt an electricity. It sparked and flickered between the other two. Their hands were just too near together. Griselda looked too intently or not at all at the German.

“And what does that mean?” Julian asked himself, and did not quite know.

He and Wolfgang walked Griselda back to her College, into which she had to be locked, although a grown woman, at a ridiculously early hour. She stood on the step, smiling at both of them. “A lovely day,” she said. “Civilised,” she added. It was, Julian knew, one of her highest words of praise.

• • •

He invited his newly discovered rival into a pub and bought him a brandy. The German was prickly, a man out of his place where he was easy. Julian talked about many things—theatres, Goethe, Marlowe—and on the third glass of brandy said

“Let us drink to Griselda. Die schöne Griselda.”

“Die schöne Griselda. You don’t speak German.”

“No, I don’t. I am learning. I need to read it, for my work.”

“She is like a statue in a story. Or a marionette. She doesn’t feel.”

Julian said carefully “I don’t think that is true.” He did not know if he wanted to share his discovery with this edgy creature, who didn’t seem to have made it for himself.

Wolfgang said “There is no good in coming to see her. She smiles and sees nothing. Such a nice English lady. Such a princess. All her hair is controlled on her head. No one has ever disturbed her. Maybe no one can or will. Forgive me. It is the brandy.”

There was a long silence. Wolfgang said “I am sorry. Maybe you—maybe you yourself—”

“Oh no. Nothing of that kind.”

Another silence. Damn it, it was only fair. And moreover, it had a certain narrative interest.

“I noticed,” Julian said, and searched for words. “You noticed I was—unhappy.”

“No, no, as a matter of fact, not. I noticed her. I saw her look at you.”

“Look?”

“I haven’t seen her look at anyone else, like that.”

“Look?”

“Oh, don’t be exasperating. She’s interested in you. Not in anyone else. That I’ve noticed.”

“Oh.” Wolfgang pulled himself together, and gave a somewhat demonic rueful smile, because that was the shape his face was. He said “I am an idiot. That idea makes it worse. You see—she is a fairytale princess. She has ingots and ingots of gold in the Bank and she must marry another such, or find a donkey that shits ingots, forgive me. I make dolls. I make artificial men move around.”

“You could say you are an artist?”

“I could, but I should not be heard. I should have boots thrown at me and be ejected.”

“I don’t see why you give up so easily,” said Julian. He added, with real venom, “It is hardly fair to her …”

“On the contrary,” said Wolfgang. “That is what it is.”

In September 1910 the Second International Workingmen’s Association held its Congress in Copenhagen. Joachim Susskind and Karl Wellwood went together and attended groups on antimilitarism. Socialism was international, it crossed frontiers, it was the brotherhood of men and women. Susskind was also in touch with Erich Mühsam and Johannes Nohl’s “Gruppe Tat” (the Group for the Deed) in Munich, a very Munich mixture of men of letters, workmen, revolutionaries. Leon Stern was passionately interested in this. So were Heinrich Mann, Karl Wolfskehl and Ernst Frick. The deliberations in Copenhagen concentrated on the possibility of calling an International General Strike, an act of defiance to prevent a war. The resolution was proposed by an Englishman, Keir Hardie, just returned to the English Parliament with an increased majority, and Edouard Vaillant of France. They recommended that “the affiliated Parties and Labour organisations consider the advisability and feasibility of the general strike, especially in industries that supply war materials, as one of the methods of preventing war, and that action be taken on the subject at the next Congress.”

Hardie was supported by the Belgian, Vandervelde, and by the charismatic Jean Jauràs. He was opposed by the German socialists, who were established in the German government, and whose unions had money and investments which they feared to put in jeopardy. As large congresses tend to do, faced with demands for precise, planned actions, they passed another resolution, condemning militarism, suggesting that organised labour in member countries “shall consider whether a general strike should not be proclaimed if necessary in order to prevent the crime of war.” Conditional verbs, and future decisions, said Joachim Susskind, still at heart an anarchist. Keir Hardie wrote to his lover, Sylvia Pankhurst

Sweet, nay but did you not promise to have no more imaginings. There was nothing, darling, only on the typewriter it seems to come easier.

From 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. I have been at it every day. Today there is a pleasure sail to which I go not and so I write to you instead. Voilà!… I have accepted invitations to speak at two meetings in Sweden next week and from there I go on to Frankfurt on Main for a demonstration…

After that is uncertain. I shall post card from place to place but dearie, do not expect letters … I am in splendid condition and thoroughly enjoying the work. With affection and bundles of kisses. Yours K.

It was not clear whether, in the event of any war, the workingmen and-women would feel a greater loyalty to their comrades or to their country. It was, however, clear that the General Strike needed planning and organising, though the image of a spontaneous uprising moved many minds.

Charles/Karl Wellwood was working energetically at the London School of Economics. He went to the lectures of the founding Fabian, Graham Wallas, who, as a principled agnostic, had resigned from the Fabian executive when the Society supported giving state aid to religious schools. Wallas’s book, Human Nature in Politics, analysed the psychology of politics. Human beings, he said, were descended from paleolithic men, and had preserved many instincts and inclinations which had helped their ancestors. Political philosophers had believed that humans were rational creatures. They had not studied the structures of impulse. He analysed the nature of friendship, the emotional response to political candidates and monarchs, the forming of groups, crowds and herds. He introduced students like Karl to the essays by William Trotter on the Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. Karl learned to think that men acted from irrational impulses, and that groups, crowds and herds behaved differently from individuals. He himself was an isolated individual, despite having signed the Fabian Basis, despite his socialism. He wanted to help the massed poor, but he did not know what to say when he met them, most particularly when they were in a group, or crowd.

Nevertheless, he undertook to lecture for the newly formed National Committee for the Break-Up of the Poor Law. This body, Beatrice Webb’s brainchild, had its offices between the Fabian Society’s premises and the London School of Economics, all just off the Strand. Their members overlapped considerably—they were all working to the same end. They hoped to be more realistic than the socialists. Beatrice Webb said that the vision of a socialist could stand as a long-term aim, but in the meantime something must be done with “the millions of destitute persons which constitute an infamous and wholly unnecessary accompaniment to an Individualist State.”

Individualist politics was difficult. There were meetings, conferences, summer schools, study groups and leaflets. There were sixteen thousand members, and branches everywhere. There were eleven paid employees and four hundred lecturers on call. The lecturers included, as well as Charles/Karl, Rupert Brooke, who travelled in a picturesque caravan from the New Forest to Corfe and back. He and his friend spoke engagingly on village greens and street corners. Beatrice Webb meant to bring about “a rapid but almost unconscious change in the substance of society.” Rupert Brooke was euphoric about human beings and human nature.

I suddenly feel the extraordinary value and importance of everybody I meet, and almost everything I see… that is, when the mood is on me. I roam about places—yesterday I did it even in Birmingham!—and sit in trains and see the essential glory and beauty of all the people I meet. I can watch a dirty middle-aged tradesman in a railway-carriage for hours, and love every dirty greasy sulky wrinkle in his weak chin and every button on his spotted unclean waistcoat. I know their states of mind are bad. But I’m so much occupied with their being there at all, that I don’t have time to think of that.

In 1910 also the Fabians held a summer camp. The camps were on the North Welsh coast—two weeks for the campaign workers who included a mix of Fabian Nursery, lower-class professionals, elderly ladies, teachers and politicians. These were followed by a conference of Fabians from universities. The University Fabians were high-spirited and the Cambridge contingent were camp. Rupert reported, to Lytton Strachey, late-night titillations and rampages. Beatrice Webb complained that they held “boisterous, larky entertainments” and were “inclined to go away rather more critical and supercilious than when they came … They won’t come unless they know who they are going to meet, sums up Rupert Brooke… they don’t want to learn, they don’t think they have anything to learn… the egotism of the young university man is colossal.”

Julian and Griselda did not go to this camp. Charles/Karl went to the camp for the campaign workers. The women wore gym tunics. The men wore flannels or breeches and stout socks. There were sensible shoes, and gymnastic exercises, and swimming. Charles/Karl had managed to persuade Elsie Warren to leave Ann with Marian Oakeshott and come to the camp. Elsie was reading and thinking with a speed and intensity much fiercer than Rupert Brooke’s little dives into Elizabethan poetry. As though her life depended on it, said Charles/Karl. It does, said Elsie. She read Matthew Arnold and George Eliot, A Modern Utopia and News from Nowhere, Morris’s poems and Edward Carpenter. She wrote down what she liked and disliked about her reading in an exercise book she did not show to Charles/Karl.

There was supposed to be no sex at Fabian camps. There was companionship, and purpose, and a clean mind in a clean body. Elsie asked questions, and questioned the answers she got. When she arrived, her accent was defiantly midlands. In fact she could, if she chose, neutralise it to a flat, nondescript intonation. Charles/Karl watched her engage battle and make friendships with a teacherly pleasure. There was also sex. Charles/Karl knew, he thought, that Elsie “liked” him. They had private jokes. They were at ease with each other. Too much, Charles/ Karl thought. Much depended on the weather. On one of the sunnier days they took a walk together, and sat down on a hummock nibbled by sheep. I should like to kiss you, said Charles/Karl.

“And then what?” said Elsie, moving neither closer nor further, lying at his side and examining the earth.

“Well, and then we might find out.”

“Find out what?” said Elsie steadfastly.

“Hurting you, in any way, is the worst thing I can think of.”

“And losing my independence is my worst.”

“You can give me an independent kiss.”

“Can I? I don’t think so. One thing leads to another.”

“You can’t say,” said Charles/Karl, daring greatly, “that you haven’t been led before. You know about it. I don’t.”

Elsie frowned. “You haven’t met a real snake in human form, I don’t think. A bird-charming snake with cold eyes and a will.”

“I have a will. But I don’t want to hurt you—”

“There’s a lot of things you don’t want to do, as well as that. Another thing I don’t want, is not to be friends with you. It means a lot to me.”

Charles reached for her hand. She let him. He moved his face towards hers, and she closed her eyes. And then snapped her lips shut and turned away.

At the end of the camp, Charles/Karl and Elsie set off a day early, missing a talk by Herbert Methley on “Art and Freedom, Social and Personal.” Elsie said she didn’t want to hear him, and Charles concurred. “We can change trains,” he said, “and look at the countryside.” He waited. “All right,” said Elsie.

They ended up at a pretty pub in Oxfordshire, with a garden sloping down to a stream, and roses, and pinks, and forget-me-nots. Charles said: “Elsie, you are Mrs. Wellwood.”

“No I’m not, and won’t be. But you can say so, this once. Just this once. I’ve thought it out, and I owe you.”

“Owe,” said Charles. “Damn you. I want you to be happy.”

“I’m not ever going to be happy. I’ve got out of my place, and not into any other. But here we can play-act, if you want, I said we could.”

In the bedroom to which they were shown, he thought of kissing her, and thought he would not kiss her, and opened the window on to the lawn so that they could hear the river running. Midges flew in. He closed the window. Elsie, her back rigid, brushed her hair out, and put it up again, her back to Charles/Karl. But she saw him in the mirror, and saw his look of anxiety, and gave him a rueful grin as she stabbed in the last hairpin. He smiled back at the glassy Elsie.

They went down to supper, one behind the other on the shallow steps with their worn carpet. The dining-room had pretty wallpaper and flowery curtains. Elsie sat up straight as a ruler, and clenched her hands in her lap. She chose mushroom soup, and roast leg of lamb with green peas, and plum tart. So did Charles/Karl. He said

“That fellow, Methley, is an ass.”

“He doesn’t write about the real world, that’s for sure.” She looked at her plate. “He takes people in, though.” She said “Mrs. Methley, she was very good to me, along with Mrs. Oakeshott and Miss Dace. Women who might have been prim and nasty. They saved me, really.”

Charles/Karl said “All sorts of things are changing.” He wanted to say something personal and reassuring about her past disaster, but did not know what. He saw she knew that. The soup came, and bread, on little plates painted with flying storks and rising storks and feathery reeds. Charles/Karl asked if there was wine, and was brought a short wine-list and ordered a bottle of white Burgundy. Elsie said

“Minton. The storks. My mum—my mother—used to paint the storks. We got one or two seconds. They weren’t her favourite. Japanese-style, she said they were, and the storks were for long life. For babies, she said, in England, and she had too many of those.” She paused. “She died of white lead. She were an artist, was an artist, if she could have had the opportunity. Philip got it from her. She died o’ white lead and too many children. We had a daft song.”

“Yes?” said Charles/Karl.

“Seven in a bed and one of ’em dead” said Elsie on a sort of rush. “Philip and me made it up. There was nowhere to—to put me brother when he died, so he had to stay there, wi’ all of us coughing and like to go as well.”

She said “I’m sorry.”

“What for? I want you to talk to me. Tell me things.”

“They’re not nice things for this good meal on these pretty plates. It brought it back. You’ve been good to me, like Mrs. Methley and Mrs. Oakeshott. I’m grateful.”

“You are saying that,” said Charles/Karl, “to emphasise—to act—the class difference between you and me. Which we ought to forget.”

“There’s real cream in the soup. Just the right amount. That’s an art, too. We can’t forget the difference.”

His mind was full of a picture of seven—dirty—people, crammed coughing into one bed, and one of them dead. He saw Elsie, wielding her soup-spoon, neatly. It was a strong face, indrawn with self-control, alert with curiosity. It was alien, partly because of the class difference, because of what she had lived, and what he had not lived. He said

“I love you, when you look cross like that, and set your shoulders.”

The firm face quivered. “Don’t make me cry. It would be embarrassing. I should embarrass you.”

There was a silence. The lamb came and was eaten, whilst they talked of the summer school lectures and Elsie said Mr. Shaw could imitate anyone’s accent and then iron it out. She talked about Shakespeare. She talked about Rosalind and Viola, dressed as men, having to take charge of things, full of hope. She asked Charles/Karl “How did he know?” and said there was no other man who wrote so well about women, so you believed he knew them from inside, so to speak.

“And then, there’s Lady Macbeth, who suddenly says she has given suck to a baby. That’s the only mention. She don’t—doesn’t—seem like a woman who has a baby and she only mentions it to say she’d tear it away from its feeding. It’s terrifying. He meant it to be.”

They analysed Cordelia, and Goneril and Regan, and enjoyed their talk. The plum tart had a delicious custard. Cream, again, said Elsie, good rich cream. Thickened with eggs and cream, not just cornflour.

There was no one in the world whose company gave him such pleasure. But he could not say, he was at ease with her. He could not say, he felt “right” or “at home” with her. He didn’t. And then he thought, that was part of it, that drew him to her.

They went up to the bedroom. Charles/Karl said it was a pity about the midges. Elsie began to take off her clothes, in a practical sort of way, finding coat-hangers, aligning shoes under the bed, as though she was alone in the room. She hung her skirt, and blouse, and went, in her petticoat, to clean her teeth, still looking practical. He loved her muscles, as she bent to untie shoes or stretched to hang her skirt. She brushed her teeth fiercely. She said “Don’t just stand.”

So he too began to undress, shoes, woollen socks, breeches, jacket. His feet were long and white. They looked unused. He brushed his own teeth. He brushed his hair, for no good reason, and Elsie laughed. So he walked over to her and began to undo her bodice, with slightly tremulous fingers. She put her fingers over his and helped him. All their fingers were electric. She stepped out of her petticoat, and out of her bodice and stood there in her drawers.

“What the butler saw,” said Elsie Warren.

Her breasts were carved, like a goddess, he thought, and her nipples were brown, chestnut brown.

She turned, and bent, and lifted the cover, and slid into the bed. The cover was white cotton embroidered with white rosebuds and roses.

Charles/Karl took off both his rational vest and his Jaeger underpants. He thought, this sort of thing happens in most lives and always differently. He felt a little drunk, but was not.

He got into the bed, beside her, and did not know what to do, partly because he did not know what she wanted. Beside him, she slid out of her drawers and moved close to him. She stroked him, and he grabbed at her, and she wriggled and laughed, and took hold of him, and guided him—like this, just like this, said Elsie Warren. And she took his hand, and guided it down, between the curls and twists of their underhair, and then he, or it, or they knew what to do, and found a rhythm, and he said, on a caught breath, “Oh, are you happy now?” and she said “Yes. More now. Oh yes.”

Breakfast was happy and sad. There were already things between them that they were not saying, not discussing, deliberately not thinking. He did not think about seeing that fine face over breakfast for the rest of his life, nor did he think of sleeping nightly with his hand on those carved breasts or between the lean, strong legs. He did say, they could find a place for another night, and she did say “I mustn’t stay away from Ann, Ann needs me.”

• • •

Walking across the gravel path to the cab, after paying the bill, he thought confusedly that he could now never marry, because he could not imagine wanting another woman. He had made decisions that had made… muddle … for everyone.