The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [166]
When they were safely back in Todefright, Humphry sat down to write an article on Exhibitions and the Arts of War and Peace.
Olive wrote a tale in which, at night, the silky ladies and resplendent peacocks, the manikins and marble men and maidens, the puppets and the glimmering butterflies and dragonflies and fishes in the tapestries, came to life and held their own market of magical goods in the shadowy spaces and the sumptuous uninhabited chambers of the Bing Pavilion.
24
The hot summer days were long in the Marsh. In the absence of Benedict Fludd and Philip there was less for Elsie to do, and Seraphita and Pomona did nothing anyway. Sometimes they sat in the orchard with their embroidery. Elsie cleared up, and shopped, and did sewing of her own. She had reached an age where every surface of her skin was taut with the need to be touched and used, and all she had to occupy her was a dusty old house and two mildly crazy women dressed in flowing floral gowns. She herself was also dressed in clothes constructed from altered hand-downs, covered with faded golden lilies and birds and pomegranates. What she wanted was a sleek, dark, businesslike skirt and a fresh white shirt with a collar, that would show off her narrow waist. She had no money, and did not know how to ask for any, for she knew there was very little in the household to cover the bread and milk and vegetables. She also had a problem with handed-down shoes, none of which fitted her exactly. She had red rubbed places on what she knew were pretty feet, scraped heels and bruised toe-joints. She tended to walk around in basketlike sandals that were too big, but didn’t hurt. More than anything she admitted to herself that she wanted, she wanted new shoes, her own shoes. Shoes that wouldn’t destroy her feet. More than anything, in fact, she wanted to be made love to, to have hands gripping her waist and stroking her lovely hair. She burned, but it was no use repining, or even admitting to herself that she burned. She set about remedying what little she could, taking dressmaking shears to the Morris & Co. fabrics, and converting the loose aesthetic robes to neatly shaped skirts, with darts and seams. She had seen in a shop window in Rye a soft, dark wine-red leather belt, with an arrow-shaped clasp at the front, that she desired passionately, as a substitute for hands, as a provocation to eyes.
Seraphita said nothing about the skirts. She stared vaguely, like a china doll, or a garden goddess, Elsie thought. The house now had few secrets from Elsie. She knew where Seraphita hid bottles, brown bottles of stout, little blue bottles of laudanum, amongst her wool-baskets and hairbrushes. She never touched or moved these bottles; she thought, indeed, of offering help with procuring them, but Seraphita had a trick of not hearing anything that was said, and must have had a satisfactory system already in place, though she never looked awake enough to contrive one.
Elsie knew she ought to be sorry for Pomona. The girl liked to follow her around, never offering to help with the housework, though sweetly admiring of Elsie’s achievements, such a delicious soup, such a pretty flower arrangement, such clean windows as there had never been, the sun had never come in so brightly. Pomona did touch Elsie. She stroked her, timidly, when Elsie sat down to sew, she asked if Elsie was happy. She said “We aren’t very lively here, now Imogen is gone,” and Elsie replied tartly that there was plenty of work to be getting on with. Somebody ought to be educating the girl, taking her out to meet possible husbands or teaching her a trade, Elsie thought, not very sympathetically. She wished Pomona would keep her distance. She preferred sitting alone to sew. She was making a not-bad, reasonably sober skirt, covered with willow boughs.
She went,