The Children's Book (57 page)

Florence dared not ask what Imogen thought about Elsie’s baby, or whose it might be. She did not dare raise the question of what was to happen to Pomona, though she didn’t know why. They went back to South Kensington where a delicious dinner, and the secretive, grave young men awaited them.

Violet said she would make Dorothy a dress. Humphry was told to bring ladies’ magazines from London, and Violet looked at the photographs and drawings. She said it wouldn’t suit Dorothy to wear a girlish colour—Dorothy was handsome, but not pretty. It should be deep rose, perhaps, or dark blue, maybe in shot taffeta with a glow in it. Dark blue like the midnight sky, said Violet, and insisted on taking Dorothy on an excursion to London, for if she was to have a grown-up dress she must have some sort of shaping bodice. Everything this year, in the magazines, was lacy. She had the idea of making a lacy jacket—not in bright white, in some silvery thread—with short sleeves and a collar that would stand up when Dorothy had put her hair up.

Dorothy found the expedition, and the subsequent sessions of fitting and pinning, both stressful and alarming. Before Hedda’s revelations, she had found Violet’s proprietary motherliness rather sad, when she thought about it at all. Violet was a spinster aunt whose role was to free their mother for her creative work. It was natural that she should insist on her affection, perpetually require that they repay it, that they love her, that they should be grateful for her life, which she had given them.

But now, Violet seemed, and felt, different. She moved around Dorothy’s hem on hands and knees, her mouth pressed tight over bristling pins, her thin hands tugging at Dorothy’s skirt, or tweaking and clasping her waist. Dorothy looked down into Violet’s tightly drawn scalp and the knob of her dark hair on her narrow neck. It was true, her body was more like Dorothy’s was going to be, than was Olive’s maternal amplitude. Dorothy, who was going to be a doctor, who had to keep telling herself she was going to be a doctor, since everyone was paying half-attention, at best, to this fact, had made it her business to inform herself thoroughly about how babies were born. She had cut open dead pregnant rats, full of tiny, pink, blind, beanlike sleepers. She had looked at a midwifery textbook, with a fat, full-term baby curled in a diagrammatic womb, the crown of its head in the pelvic cavity, the umbilical cord floating and twining in the fluid. She had stopped short of imagining either such a creature inside herself, or herself blindly waiting to be ejected from Olive,
down there
. But now, as Violet fussed over her, and admired her, she involuntarily had a vision of a Dorothy-puppet—snug or stifled, which?—inside Violet’s lean stomach. She did not feel a flow of filial warmth. She felt repelled. She stood in her midnight silk, in its stiff rustle, and wondered what had happened to the baby Hedda had been so sure was on the way. Violet was as flat as a board. As she always had been. It would be nice if Hedda was lying, or had deceived herself, but Dorothy did not think so. Hedda believed what she said, and what she said was convincing.
Either
Violet had been wrong about her condition,
or
she had been trying to upset Humphry,
or
she had done something to get rid of this unwanted brother or sister. That seemed the most likely. And yet here she was, her mouth full of pins, skinny and sexless, making “mmn” noises of satisfaction over Dorothy’s waist, over the bodices that gave her, for the first time, pushed up and into shape, a pretty little bust.

She ought to feel kind to Violet, indeed, indignant on her behalf. She did not. She was embarrassed and irritated to the depth of her soul.

Violet said “You’re growing into a good-looking young lady after all, my love. You were scraggy as a little ’un but you are going to blossom after all. You must put your hair up, and I’ll make you some silk flowers to put in it. Or maybe moons and stars on some frothy bits of illusion. To go with the sky. How do you feel?”

“Whatever you think.”

“
I
think you are going to be the belle of the ball. You must stand up straight and not slouch. You’ll surprise them all.”

The note was—possessive? Fierce beyond what was needed? “What are you going to wear, yourself?”

“Am I invited? I think I may not be. It is a supper dance for young things. I’m not the mother, even if I do a lot of the mothering.”

The obvious irony hurt Dorothy, who did not know what to think or say.

Dorothy had no one to talk to about what Hedda had said, or about what she felt about it. Tom had closed it out as though it had never happened. Phyllis was “too young”—younger sisters are always too young to be talked to. She had not discussed this matter with Griselda, with whom she discussed almost everything. She felt that anything she said, any speculation she voiced, even to Griselda, would immediately become hard fact, out in the world. And then she might need to
do
something, or at least begin to
be
something she hadn’t known she was.

On the day of the supper dance, which the Wellwoods called the Ball, Prosper Cain persuaded the Museum, which was open until ten in the evening, to close the Refreshment Corridor early, so that the rooms could be decorated with flowers, and a dais built for his regimental music-players: a fiddle, a cello, a flute, an oboe, a clarinet and a horn. Food was prepared in the Grill-Room, and fragile gilt chairs were scattered around the Centre Refreshment Room. This had been designed to be washable, or possible to swill out, with the result that it was set out entirely in ceramic tiles. It was a light room, with huge arched windows, of light stained glass. There was a domed ceiling, supported by immense majolica pillars made by Minton, in peppermint-green and creamy white majolica, with dancing putti, supporting a crown of coat-hooks, at shoulder height. The floor was tiled in chocolate, the dado was faced
with dark tiles, between maroon and umber, and the walls were tiled in yellow, green, white, with strips and stripes of complicated running designs, a text from Ecclesiastes, in cream pottery on a red-brown ground: “There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labour—XYZ.” Amorini cavorted and gambled along the dado. More decoration had been woven in, in more styles, than might seem possible. It was sumptuous and utilitarian, a cross between a fairy palace and a municipal dairy, with electric globes on gilded stems hanging from the ceiling.

The Royal College of Art backed onto this corridor, and Prosper Cain had judiciously invited both teachers and students from the College to make up his numbers. They came to the Refreshment Rooms from various directions, the guests, some through the great golden doors, which were originally designed to be the entrance from the Cromwell Road, some having wandered through those courtyards and corridors that were still open. There was a sullen background noise of thumping and slicing, from closed-off areas where Aston Webb’s prizewinning quadrangles and courts were at last being constructed. Olive held on to Humphry’s arm, and said that what with the dust that inevitably flew about the floor from the workings, and the dust-sheets that were thrown over various displaced glass cases, like palls over coffins, you felt you had entered both the palace of the Sleeping Beauty and the tomb of Snow White. The visitors to the gallery looked at the young women in their dance dresses and velvet cloaks as though they were a wedding-party, or an irruption from some other world.

In the dark, warm Grill-Room, with its blue and white tiles, and its ceramic panels of the Four Seasons, food was cooked and offered, patties of shrimp and trout, cups of consommé, confections of cherries and meringue and cream, a fruit punch shimmering and hissing icily in a great glass bowl, champagne with the bubbles wavering upwards in fine threads in misted, frosty glasses. In the Green Dining-Room the mothers and fathers could sit on more comfortable, Jacobean-style chairs.

Other military officers were there, with their wives, and Basil and Katharina, who was elegant in a gown with a lace overdress over black silk, with roses at her waist, and a short train behind. Seraphita was there, without her husband, who was, she said, packing a kiln with Philip. She was wound in a reddish-brown, flowing garment which by accident or design matched the twelve figures by Burne-Jones, representing the months, or the signs of the Zodiac with the sun and moon,
no one was sure. She looked as though she belonged inside the dark green wallpaper with its woven willow boughs and dotted cherries and plums. Olive, on the other hand, was dressed for the dancing in the pillared hall, in a simple dress in a rich fabric, a darker green than the Minton pillars, with borders of gold and silver braid.

Prosper opened the dancing with Katharina and complimented her on Griselda’s beauty. Then he danced with Seraphita, who was taller than he was, and managed to be simultaneously graceful and ungainly, making exaggerated swoops, not on the beat. The young were clumped in separate clutches of males and females, talking distractedly and looking across the room. Julian and Gerald Matthiessen were there, leaning against the dado in a darkish corner. Prosper wandered past them, having returned Seraphita to the Green Dining-Room, and said he relied on his son to get the young people dancing. He went to speak to the orchestra, smart in their uniforms and shining buttons.

Julian looked around the Refreshment Room, which he secretly rather liked, but knew Gerald despised for its cluttered detail and congeries of styles.

“We shall have to dance. Who would you choose to dance with, out of all these beauties?”

“I couldn’t ask him, alas,” said Gerald,
sotto voce
, barely indicating Tom, who was standing alone in his formal suit, his fair head bent over a group of amorini on a pillar. Julian was both pleased to have Tom’s beauty recognised, and briefly, ludicrously, jealous on his own behalf.

“That’s his sister,” said Julian. “She’s changed. She was a tomboy.”

“I shall ask
your
sister,” said Gerald. “Then we can talk about you. That will be easy.”

“I hope you don’t,” said Julian. “I don’t know what she might say.”

Gerald strolled over towards Florence, who was standing with Imogen and a few female art students. Geraint Fludd, from the other side of the room, was making his way towards her a great deal more decisively. He had secured her hand by the time Gerald got there, to Florence’s distress, though she was able to write down a dance for Gerald later in the evening, in a pretty little book with a hand-painted cover, made by the Royal College calligraphy class, who had contributed a collection of these, all original, to the festivities. Geraint felt a sense of awe, and a rush of blood, as he put his hand in Florence’s, and took hold of her waist. Florence did not notice. She was wondering what, if anything,
Gerald would have talked about. Julian told Gerald to ask Imogen Fludd. “The pater wants her to have a good time. She’s his protégée.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t. He’s a good officer. Cares for his men. Students count as men.”

“These aren’t men,” said Gerald, with comic regret. He did as he was told, and asked for Imogen’s hand. For some time they sailed round the pillars in stately silence, occasionally getting out of step. Then Gerald asked her a few questions about silversmithing. It is a rule in Cambridge colleges that you do not talk professional shop on social occasions. Gerald thought it a foolish rule—he was a serious man, and did not really want to inhabit a world of clever banter. Imogen’s face lifted into life. She talked almost animatedly about the innovations of the new Professor Lethaby, who had abolished the miserable copying of ancient drawings of watercress, and had given the students new live, recalcitrant clumps of the vegetable to look at closely, and study the form. “And then,” said Imogen, “you really
do
understand how leaves grow on stems when it comes to formalising them in silver. I hope I’m not boring you?”

“No. I like learning new things. I mean that.”

They both smiled. Julian saw the smile, and was irritated. He went to ask pale Griselda for a dance, but everyone had decided that she was the most beautiful of the young women, and students and teachers were clustered about her. So he wandered, in an accidental-looking way, after Tom, who was retreating out of the Refreshment Room into the Green Dining-Room. Tom was headed towards his mother, who was sitting in her chair tapping her toe to the music, every inch of her resenting her reduction to a sedentary dowager.

Tom liked the Green Dining-Room. It reminded him of his vision of sleeping Lancelot, an unreal world more real than stiff collars and shiny shoes.

“I can see you want to dance,” said Tom to Olive. “I can see your toes moving. Come and dance with me, like we do at midsummer.”

“You must go and dance with the girls, my dear,” said Olive. “That’s what we’re here for, for you to dance with the girls. I’ll dance with you when you’ve taken a turn with
two
of those pretty creatures, not before.”

Julian joined them.

“I can ask you to dance, Mrs. Wellwood. I’m a kind of host, you can’t say no to me. Come and dance. Tom is quite right. I know you would like to dance.”

“Go along, Tom,” said Olive, standing up, arranging her skirt and purse, giving her hand to Julian. “Ask a girl.”

Olive and Julian progressed in an elegant way, pleased with the way their steps matched. Olive said

“I’m dancing with you because I’m at my wits’ end about Tom. Is that dreadful?”

Julian thought it would only be dreadful if they were dancing, man and woman, as a couple, which they were not. He had a half-philosophical idea about the nature and the importance of formal dancing, in terms of that idea about who was, and who wasn’t, a couple, a man and a woman. He thought about Jane Austen. “Whom are you going to dance with?” said Mr. Knightley to Emma. “With you, if you will ask me,” said Emma. Julian thought that was a perfect moment. And would never—not
dancing
—happen to him. He said

“I know what you mean about Tom. He doesn’t know what he wants.”