The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [10]
“Thank you, mam,” said Philip.
“If you want anything at all, I’m the one. Remember that. There’s a nightshirt on your bed, and a pot under it, and a toothbrush by the pump. I’ll give you matches and a candle when you come back. You’ll sleep deep in the good Kent air.”
Supper was ready in the dining-hall. The table was laid with pretty earthenware plates and mugs, glazed in yellow, with a border of black-eyed daisies. Robin and Florian had been put to bed, but Hedda, who was five, was still there, as they ate early. Olive summoned Philip to sit at her side, and said he was handsome. Humphry Wellwood nodded to him from the other end of the table. He was a tall, thin man, with a fox-red beard, neatly trimmed, pale blue eyes and a dark brown velvet jacket.
There was cauliflower soup, followed by a lamb stew, and a vegetable and pumpkin pie for the vegetarians (Olive, Violet, Phyllis and Hedda). Philip took two bowls of soup. Prosper Cain’s fruitcake was a long time away; he had two weeks of near-starvation and a lifetime of perpetual hunger to feed. He had supposed Mr. Wellwood, who worked in the Bank of England, would be like the factory owners in the Potteries, stiff, grand and condescending. But Humphry told the children what was clearly an instalment in a running tale of secret naughtiness amongst the bank clerks in the depths of the Bank, who kept tethered bull terriers attached to the legs of their desks, and divided sides of meat from Smithfield before going home for the weekend. Phyllis and Hedda shuddered dramatically. Humphry recounted a jape in which one young man had tied the laces of another man’s boots to his high desk-stool. Dorothy said that wasn’t really funny, and Humphry agreed immediately, saying with half-mock sadness that the poor young creatures were confined in the shadows with no outlet for their animal energies. They are like the Nibelungen, said Humphry, they go to the bullion-vaults to stare at the machines that weigh the gold sovereigns—like half-human creatures that swallow the good coins and spit out the light ones into copper vessels. Tom said they had seen an amazing candlestick which Major Cain had said might be made out of melted-down gold coins. With dragons on it, and little men, and monkeys. Philip had made some wondrous drawings of it. Everyone looked at Philip, who stared into his soup. Humphry said, as though he really meant it, that he should like to see the drawings. Violet said, don’t embarrass the poor lad, which embarrassed him.
From time to time, during the meal, Olive turned gracefully and impulsively towards Philip, and urged him to tell her all about himself. She elicited, slowly, the information that his dad was dead in a kiln accident, and that his mam worked at painting china. He had worked himself, carrying full saggars to the kilns. Yes, he had sisters, four. Brothers, asked Phyllis. Two, both dead, said Philip. And a sister, dead.
And he had felt he had to get away? said Olive. He must have been unhappy. The work must have been hard, and maybe people weren’t kind to him.
Philip thought of his mam, and found his eyes, to his horror, hot and wet.
Olive said he didn’t need to tell them, they understood. Everyone stared at him with warmth and sympathy. “It weren’t,” he said. “It weren’t…” His voice was unsteady.
“We shall see you have somewhere to live, and work to do,” said Olive, her voice full of gold.
Dorothy asked rather abruptly if Philip could ride a bicycle.
He said no, but he’d seen them, and thought they must be real exciting, and wished he could try one.
Dorothy said “We’ll show you tomorrow. We’ve got new ones. There’ll be time to show you, before the party. We can