The Children's Book (23 page)

Another day, he told the heroic story of the initial discovery of the white glaze. He enacted Palissy’s four-hour wait at a glass furnace for the three hundred broken pieces of clay, each numbered and covered with a different chemical mixture. The furnace is opened. One of the shards has a melted compound on it, and is taken out, dark and glowing. Palissy watched it cool. His thoughts were black. But as the black shard cooled it
whitened—“white and polished”—a white enamel—“singularly beautiful.” Palissy is a new creature, reborn. The glaze contained tin, lead, iron, antimony, manganese and copper.

Palissy ground a quantity of it—he tells
no one
the proportions, of course—coats a kiln-full of vessels, relights his own kiln and tries to raise it to the heat of the glassmaker’s kilns. He works for six days and nights, heaping in faggots, and the enamel will not melt or fuse. “He lost the first firing,” said Fludd. “He went out and bought new pots, and reground his glaze, and relit his furnace, and laboured another six days and nights. In the end, he had to feed his furnace with his own floorboards, and smash up his kitchen table. And still the firing failed, and he was thought of as a mad alchemist or forger, and reduced to extreme poverty. He worked for another eight years, built a new kiln, and lost a whole firing of delicately glazed pieces because the mortar had been full of flints which splintered, and spattered his pots.”

“But in the end,” said Philip. “In the end, he found the enamel, and made the pots.”

“He worked for kings and queens, he designed a Paradise Garden, and an impregnable fortress. He hated alchemists—he knew they were looking for something simply mythical. He liked to watch plants grow, and speculate about how hot springs, and fresh-water springs, rise in the bowels of the earth. He had a theory of earthquakes, which wasn’t unreasonable—he was thinking cleverly about earth, air, fire and water moving mountains—”

“What happened to him?”

“He was a Protestant. He didn’t accept the doctrines of the Church, and he wouldn’t compromise his beliefs. They put him in prison, and condemned him to death for heresy. He should have been burned to death for refusing—in his own words—to bow down to images of clay. He died in the Bastille, tough as ever. He was seventy-nine. I will lend you Professor Morley’s book, you can read it in there.”

Philip said he was afraid that would be no use. His reading was not up to it. He added, reddening, “It’s not up to much, to tell the truth. I can make out simple words, that’s all.”

“That won’t do,” said Fludd. “That’s no good. Imogen shall teach you to read.”

“Oh no—”

“Oh yes. She hasn’t enough to do. You won’t get far if you can’t read. And you’d like to read about Palissy.”

•  •  •

Docile Imogen agreed to give Philip daily lessons in reading. She said she had never taught, and did not know how to teach, but would do her best. She sat with him at a garden table in the orchard, or in the kitchen if the wind was blowing in from the Channel. She wore the same two or three lumpy linen dresses, with uneven necklines and embroidered lilies and irises, on whose petals Philip could
feel
the tiny spheres of blood from pricked fingers. He noticed—he was young and male—that she had a strong and well-proportioned body under the sacklike folds. He thought with the tips of his potter’s fingers about the contours of her breasts, which were round and full. He did not notice any female atmosphere around her—no scent in the hair, no hint of the smell of her skin, no hidden damp, breathing—and he was too young to know how odd this absence was. He did think, as she sat with her head of heavy hair bent over the pages, that she resembled some of the ceramic madonnas in the Museum. Sweetly calm. That was not quite an accurate way of putting it.

For the first two lessons she wrote words on a paper pad in flowing calligraphy. Words like “apple” and “bread,” words like “house,” “studio” and “garden.” She then decided Philip would do better with joined-up stories, and brought out a handsome book of fairytales, illustrated with line drawings by various artists, including Burne-Jones and Benedict Fludd. The stories were an eclectic collection from the Grimms and Andersen, from Perrault and the poets, including Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott.” The illustrations calmed Philip’s sense that he was being asked to read something babyish. This was the world of the Dream scenes enacted at Todefright. He was experimenting with modelling clay snakes and dragons to make handles for pots and he was impressed by Fludd’s wicked imps. He read “Cinderella” and “The Sleeping Beauty,” “The Princess in the Glass Mountain” and “The Princess on the Pea,” “The Little Tailor” and “The Constant Tin Soldier,” and finally “The Lady of Shalott” and “The Snow Queen.” He practised writing—which he was good at, since he was already precise with pen and pencil. He practised drawing imaginary persons, following the flowing lines of Burne-Jones’s garments and hair.

This was not quite what he had wanted. This wasn’t his style. Fludd had illustrated “The Snow Queen.” His Queen had a long, sharp face and a
sad
smile in a whirlwind of snowflakes over a lake of ribbed ice.
She was attended by deformed imps, and tiny Kai was curled at her feet, like a sleeping snail. The pattern of lines was mesmerising and frightening. Philip wanted to learn from it, and do something different.

The stories—for better or worse, for insight or danger—gave him ways of describing the people around him. Imogen was the Sleeping Beauty, she had pricked her finger and was sleepwalking. He alternated this image with a half-dream image of her as a figure half-baked, fried in biscuit, not yet glazed or coloured, a pale first attempt at a living creature. Geraint—who was at home as little as possible—was some version of the Ashlad, careering about the outside world looking for his fortune. Pomona was all the Cinderella daughters in the hearths, woebegone and unregarded. She had come to his bed twice more, and frightened him terribly. What could he do, if she woke and found herself there?

Imogen never touched him, even accidentally. Pomona pulled at him constantly, fingering his smock, his clay-covered hands, standing behind him at table and ruffling his hair. No one commented on this behaviour, and Philip put a lot of energy into pretending it was not happening.

He made two more dangerous analogies, more or less simultaneously. In his daily work he was slowly making order in Fludd’s storerooms, arranging crocks and sacks, sweeping and mopping. When he could write fluently he would label everything, he told himself. The pottery had colonised much of the servants’ quarter of the manor house—which didn’t matter, because there were no servants, only an old woman who came in from the Marsh and cleaned, slow and creaking, and her daughter, who helped out with the laundry. Philip found a pantry that was locked. He asked Fludd if there was a key, and Fludd replied curtly, no, there was not. Philip remembered this when he read “Bluebeard.” He noticed for himself that people in stories always did what they were told not to do, and went where they were told not to go. He couldn’t see why, and had no intention of trespassing. But, perhaps because of Bluebeard, he thought the pantry was
odd
.

One day, putting his book together in the kitchen where he had been reading, he saw Seraphita coming in from one of her rare excursions outside.

She came with little skimming steps across the grass and across the gravel path, very slow, very rhythmic. Unlike her daughters, she paid a lot of attention to her dress. She wore white muslin decorated with
violets, and a violet shawl. The muslin flowed from a high yoke: she was uncorseted, with a simple violet sash. Her gleaming hair was coiled on her head, and pinned with silk violets. She looked straight ahead, dreamy and distracted, her mouth composed in a pretty, unchanging half-smile. Philip thought it was as though she was skating on unseasonal ice—or rolling along on invisible balls or wheels. She came in through the door and progressed past him, still smiling fixedly, acknowledging his presence with an inclination of her long neck so transient that he wondered if he had imagined it. She reminded him of something. He remembered what it was. It was the puppet Olimpia, from the brilliant performance of Anselm Stern, Olimpia who was an automaton—a puppet
playing
a puppet, where the other characters had been lifelike.

He did not know what ladies did—he supposed they called on each other, went to parties, went shopping, went riding, played tennis. Not Seraphita. She walked, sat in her chair and stared pleasantly forwards till lunch, stitched a little, operated a loom a little, waited a little more, and arrived at supper-time. He thought she passed whole days without speaking. When he read about the Lady of Shalott, who was under a curse, and saw the world only in a mirror, he thought of Seraphita Fludd, and her large, glaucous, luminous eyes. But the Lady was awash with desire and discontent. The Lady rushed across a room and opened a window. Mrs. Fludd rushed nowhere.

Another peculiarity of the family was that they all went for walks in the countryside, but no two went together.

Geraint associated with gangs of young men on the marshes. These local youths, when Philip encountered them, tended to avoid him, or, if they were in groups, to gather and mock at a distance. Geraint made no attempt at all to introduce Philip to the boys he knew, and indeed barely spoke to him. Fludd went out for whole days, wrapped in a caped oilskin, carrying a gnarled walking-stick and wearing a brimmed hat pulled down over his brow. He never invited Philip to join him. Imogen went into Lydd, and occasionally, by bicycle, into Rye or Winchelsea, to buy food and sewing things. Sometimes Pomona went with her. They did not invite Philip—not, he thought, because they did not want him, but because it did not occur to them. He waited a few weeks until his writing had improved, and then wrote a careful letter home. He waited
a little longer, and asked Dobbin, who had called in, about posting it. Dobbin explained about the post office in Lydd, and gave Philip a postage stamp. He asked Philip if he would like to walk with him to Lydd—or borrow a bicycle from the Fludds. Imogen said of course he could borrow hers. Dobbin asked if Philip had seen much of the countryside and Philip said he had not left Purchase House. “Not seen the sea?” said Dobbin.

“No,” said Philip. He said “I don’t exactly have working hours, or wages … So I keep doing what I can.”

Dobbin said Philip must walk with him and the vicar to see the sea. He could not be wanted
all
the time in the studio, encouraging though his work was. Dobbin asked Seraphita, who said she was sure Philip should go out now and then, they should ask Mr. Fludd. Fludd, when asked, said of course Philip should see the sea. He was a canny boy. He would know when he could go. And when he could not, of course, he would know that too.

So he walked, with Frank Mallett and Dobbin, to the seaside village of Dymchurch. Dymchurch has a seawall to keep back the ever-encroaching stormy salt water, and the seawall has to be climbed in order to see, or get to, the beach. The three went up the narrow steps, and Frank and Dobbin watched benignly to see their artistic protégé from the Midlands take his first look at the sea. It was a still, sunny day, and waves wrinkled in peacefully, one after the other, and soaked into the sand. Philip felt the mass of the water in his bones, and was changed, but found nothing to say, and stood there looking stolid. Frank and Dobbin waited. Philip said, after a time, that it was big. They agreed. He remarked on the salt smell, and the sound of the gulls screaming. It was a very long time, he felt, since he had been expected to
say
what he did or felt, as opposed to simply doing or feeling. He knew he needed to make acquaintance with the sea on his own, by himself. Children were paddling in the edge of the water. He wondered what it felt like, but his body shrank from it. Frank and Dobbin walked with him along the beach, and he got better at making the required exclamations of interest and amazement. He picked up a piece of seaweed, interested in its texture and little bursting cushions of water. He picked up some fragile pink shells and a razor shell. Frank
and Dobbin were delighted. They walked him back into the village, bought him a good lunch in the Ship Inn, and told him tales of smugglers, in whom he was less interested than in the texture of the sea-surface and the seaweed. It was Frank Mallett who asked if he had a sketch-pad and pencils. Philip said no, he had used up the one he had had in South Kensington. Mr. Fludd had given him one and he had used that too. Frank bought him a new one in the general store in Lydd—the paper was not very good, it was greyish and too porous, but it was paper. They took him home.

On the way back to the vicarage at Puxty Frank Mallett asked Dobbin if he felt worried about Philip’s position at Purchase House. He seemed to be doing a lot of work, for no reward, said Frank. No one thought of providing things for him, personal necessities. Dobbin said that Fludd
liked
Philip. He thought for a moment, and then said he thought maybe Philip was the only person Fludd liked. He said he hoped Philip could make things workmanlike enough for the pottery to earn some money. And then he could have wages. They must just keep an eye on his welfare.

In the studio Philip told Fludd he had been to see the sea. He said he hoped to go again. Fludd said, why not, and that Philip should go to Dungeness, Dungeness would interest him.

Philip made his way to Dungeness, on foot, one hot day when the broom was shining gold and the seakale was covered with spherical seeds, turning from pale green to bone. Dungeness is bleak and rich, the longest shingle stretch in the world, swept by winds from the sea, westerlies and easterlies. It is inhabited—boats are drawn up on the pinkish bleached pebble banks, and there are strange, soot-black wooden huts, in which fishermen live, and round which lobster pots, anchors, broken oars, nets, accumulate. You walk out, over the stony surface, which is in fact full of strange life, plants and creatures, which prosper and suffer in extremes of weather. At the end of the promontory pebbles are banked high above a shingle beach which is constantly sucked back into the dark wake, churned and thrown up elsewhere. Between the pebbles, ochre-pink, seakales sprout with fantastic fringes of frills or leaves that are purple or rich green or blue-green. Philip saw viper’s bugloss, spiky blue and sinister (maybe only because of its name) which he knew from
meadows in Staffordshire, but which here seemed bluer and livelier. He saw cotton lavender, and scarlet poppies and clumps of pink valerian. All this was both bright and provisional: in winter it all disappeared as though it had never been.