The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [193]
Elsie was silent, her head still back. Marian said
“Then you could come to the child, or he could come to you, in your time off—you would not be separated.” Elsie said nothing.
Phoebe Methley said “We propose to speak on your behalf to Mrs. Fludd, and make the arrangements clear and satisfactory.” Elsie said slowly
“There’s been a deal of talking about me behind my back.”
“You are in a situation,” said Marian, “where that inevitably happens. We are truly trying to help.”
“I came to your meeting about women. I suppose I’m a single woman, and a Fallen Woman.” She paused. She said, looking pale, “I really don’t feel very well. I don’t know as I can go on, anyway, hauling buckets and hanging over stoves.”
“I shall ask my good doctor to examine you,” said Miss Dace. “He will tell you what you may and may not do, in your condition, and give you tonics to help you, things like that.”
“I am grateful,” Elsie said slowly and flatly. “It’s more than I could hope for.”
“But—” said Marian Oakeshott, “there is a but in your voice. You may speak freely to us, we should prefer it.”
“I never meant to go into Service, ma’am. What I do not want is to slave in someone else’s kitchen and wash their clothes for the rest of my life. I didn’t and don’t want that. And now it seems my only way forward. I thought it was temporary, till Philip got to know his craft and got well known, as he will, and has the help here he needs. My mother was a paintress—she was a good paintress, the most delicate with her brushes of any in the studio—she died of it, of the chemicals in the air. She wasn’t a skivvy, she wasn’t a scullery-maid, she was an artist. You care about women’s work, I’ve heard you talk. All of you. So I’ll admit to you, I don’t have Philip’s talent. He has a right to expect to be an artist. I don’t. But that don’t mean I want to be a skivvy.”
A sudden moment of involuntary spite came over her.
“And that lot are so useless and helpless and don’t pay me a penny. And I’ve got this lump in me, that turns about and about, and will come out and need vests and caps and milk, and how can I make do, when I get nothing—”
“Don’t cry,” said Marian.
Elsie gulped.
“I shan’t. I daren’t. I’ve got to keep myself together.”
Phoebe Methley said “What you say is true and moving. But you must admit—you are in this situation because of things you have done—about which Philip tells us it is no good to ask, so we are not asking. You are probably not the most guilty person in this muddle, but we are talking about help, not about guilt. And there is one entirely innocent person, who is not yet born, and must be cared for.”
“Will you agree to us talking to Mrs. Fludd?” asked Miss Dace.
“I don’t seem to have much choice. No, don’t listen to me, that’s not fair of me. I am grateful to you ladies—I couldn’t have expected so much—I am, I am. But I am scared stiff, too. I’ve always been a strong one.”
The three good ladies became more frank as they grew more intimate over the moral problem of the fate of Elsie Warren’s baby. They held, and enjoyed, a long discussion of how best to approach Seraphita Fludd. They agreed that they had little idea what she thought or felt about anything. “Never have I met a woman so determinedly vague,” said Miss Dace, whose disposition was the opposite of vagueness. They imparted to each other what was common knowledge about her history. Her name was not Seraphita. She had been separated from her class by her great beauty. She had been, in late Pre-Raphaelite, early Aesthetic days, a “Stunner” and had modelled for Millais. The ladies agreed that she was still a lovely woman. The proportions of her facial bones were perfect, said Marian Oakeshott. “And all that mass of hair, hardly faded,” said Phoebe Methley. “She doesn’t look you in the eye, ever,” said Patty Dace. “It isn’t that she’s devious, it is that she’s absent.” They agreed comfortably that she had no idea how to run a house, or how to bring up children. Geraint had