The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [129]
Fludd had prevailed on Elsie to sit for the classes, although she sat there running over in her mind what should be fetched from the farm and the market for the next meal. No one dared contradict Benedict Fludd, in case he should cease to be amiable and become moody or irascible. He was teaching them to model a head. No one was modelling Elsie below the neck. They were trying to render her flying hair, and sharp mouth, and wide eyes. Mrs. Oakeshott’s effort was much the best. She had got the angle of the jaw and the neck right. The brows over the empty eyes were promising and lively.
Little Tabitha wandered about with the child, Robin, and came upon Violet Grimwith in the orchard, reading aloud to the assembled smaller Wellwoods, Florian, Robin and Harry. Hedda, rather sulky, was with this group but not of it. She was reading a book, lying on her stomach in the grass, thinking this was not enough for her, not enough, she would go mad with boredom.
Tabitha crept up to the very edge of the audience. Violet looked up. “Come and sit with us, if you like, why don’t you? What is the little boy called?”
“Robin. I look after him for his mum.” She was older than Hedda, but smaller. Violet said “Well, bring him into the circle, to listen to the story. We’re reading At the Back of the North Wind. Do you know that?”
“No, mam.”
“I do,” said Robin Oakeshott. He sat down, next to Robin Well-wood. “I like it. Go on reading.”
Violet gave him a measuring glance, and went on reading.
Mrs. Oakeshott offered her services to help with the play. She gave Imogen Fludd a hand with the costumes, and turned out to be deft with bits of glitter-braid, and abundant pleats for the pregnant Hermione. Olive liked her. Everyone liked her. It would have been hard not to.
Olive came upon Mrs. Oakeshott, in the place behind the yew hedge, where they waited to go on and off, adjusting the clasp of Humphry’s regal cloak. She saw Humphry’s hand, in the nape of Mrs. Oakeshott’s neck, his clever fingers feeling for tension, and relieving it, as he did for Olive herself. She stepped back.
“All the same, Marian,” said Humphry. “However sensible you are—we are—the whole idea is simply foolish. I wish you would go home.”
Marian Oakeshott rested her head—intimately—on Humphry’s shoulder.
“It is hard,” she said. And then, “I do love you, I do love you so very steadily, so very much, my dear, however hopelessly it must be.”
And Humphry said “Oh well, I love you too, that can’t be altered. But it can’t be, and you know it, you have always known it.”
And Marian Oakeshott put up her arms, and drew down Humphry’s head, and kissed him, and he gave a kind of groan, and grasped her, and kissed her back. Olive saw the crown of hair tremble and sway. She thought of marching forwards, and retreated.
Hedda lay in the long grass, with her skirt rucked up above her knickers, and her lengthening brown legs stretched out. She was fortunate not to have hay fever, as Phyllis did. She was not exactly reading The Golden Age. I am a snake in the grass, she thought, a secret snake. Violet was sitting on the roughly mown grass in the orchard, at some distance, in a low wicker armchair, sewing. Hedda spent a lot of time spying on Violet, as a revenge for the fact that Violet spied on her, going through her private drawers and notebooks. Hedda, like Phyllis, was perpetually agitated by being left out of the group of older children, Tom and Dorothy, Charles and Griselda, and now Geraint. But whereas Phyllis was plaintive, Hedda