The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [138]
“Do you? Do you know that?”
“Too much to part with her easily. But she will love you more freely if you can bring yourself to let her go. And I’ll bear the cost of her move if you’ll let me have that oxblood jar with the smoky snakes on it, which I’ve had my eyes on for a couple of years. It ought to be displayed in the collection, and you know it.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know I don’t know. But I have watched Imogen, and you haven’t given one good reason why she shouldn’t come to London.”
“Oh, take my daughter, and take my jar, and go to the Devil, Prosper Cain. Have a brandy. Look at Philip’s dandelion heads on these plates, with the seeds blowing. He’s a bright lad.”
“He’s a young man, too, as Imogen is a young woman. May I take some of the dandelion work to show to the Keepers, as well?”
Imogen came to London, and Prosper said to his daughter that something must be done to get her a decent hat and dress, but he didn’t know how. Florence said “I’ll find a hat—you know how good I am at hats—and I’ll tell her it’s mine and I can’t wear it. She’s too tall for my dresses. I’ll think of a way.”
“I do love you, my Florence. Will you always be so sensible?”
“No. I quite expect to become very silly as I grow older. Everyone seems to.”
• • •
In the Cains’ house inside the Museum, apart from the crashing and trundling and dust of the building programme, Imogen did indeed seem to settle into a more cheerful normality. She turned out to have an unexpected flair for architectural drawing, she made a few silk rosebuds and forget-me-nots for the simple hat Florence found for her, and she set out of her own accord to restructure her clothing into a usual shape for a lady art student. In the Fludds’ house, things were less cheerful. After Imogen’s departure, Pomona began sleepwalking again. She ended up, several times, in Philip’s bedroom, on one occasion wearing no clothes, and wrapped only in her excessively long, not very clean, golden hair. Philip and Elsie talked about this. Elsie thought Pomona was play-acting. She told Philip that Pomona was throwing herself at him—literally—because he was the only young male person anywhere in reach. She said Pomona was hysterical and was putting it on. Philip said no, she wasn’t, she was deeply asleep, he could tell when she touched him. He wanted to tell Elsie that Pomona’s cold, naked flesh, pressed against him, did stir and disturb him—he was only human—but at the same time as being most desirably creamy-white, with firm little breasts and soft pale pink nipples, she was somehow inert, meaty, kind of dead, he said to himself, so deeply asleep she was. Elsie did not tell Philip of an odd conversation she had had with Imogen, the day of Imogen’s departure. It was so improbable, that when she tried to remember it, she wondered if she had made it up. Imogen had embraced her warmly, which was uncharacteristic, was indeed the first time she had embraced Elsie, whom she always held at arm’s-length, in every way. She said to Elsie that there was something she must say to her. She drew her into the kitchen, in the pretext of checking supplies.
“If he asks you to—to pose for life-drawings, don’t. That is, don’t take your clothes off, even if you feel it’s all right, don’t. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” said Elsie, feeling perversely that she would take her clothes off if she liked, whereas if she had been asked ten minutes earlier whether she would ever pose nude for an artist, she would have laughed sharply, and said “Not on your life.”
Things in the Wellwood families were less happy, and more contentious than in the Cains’. Basil Wellwood’s children were both opposed to the futures their parents desired for them. Charles, or Karl, had done moderately well at Eton, spending parts of his vacations secretly attending meetings of the Social Democratic Federation with Joachim Susskind, and (also with Joachim Susskind) attending meetings of the Fabian Society where his uncle was speaking. The Fabians were going through a contentious period themselves,