The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [195]
“We came to discuss with you the possibility of not doing that, Mrs. Fludd. We are very aware of the importance of Elsie’s work to the comfort of this household—you and your family,” she said, lying, “have often told us so. And it is a very happy circumstance that both Elsie and her brother have been so welcome here, and contributed so much. Philip confided in the Reverend Mallett, who consulted us, as, so to speak, busybodies or good fairies, we hope. With your agreement, we can make arrangements for the lying-in, and for the care of the child, should Elsie wish to keep it, and continue to keep her place here.”
Seraphita went white, which might have been thought impossible. Even her lips blanched. She breathed a series of unachieved phrases, kind, too kind, such a shock, so unexpected, and again who… ? and the whispered word “responsible”? Marian could see her trying not to think of either her husband or her son in connection with that word. Unlike Phoebe Methley, Marian did not have a clear idea of the unmentionable male, and had wondered about both Benedict Fludd, and the lively and handsome Geraint. She answered obliquely
“I am sure if Elsie feels that there is no obstacle to her staying here, you need not worry, Mrs. Fludd. And we have talked to Elsie, who accepts our plans, or appears to.”
“She doesn’t feel very well,” said Miss Dace. “I hope you will encourage her to work less hard for a few months. I am arranging for her to see my doctor.”
Seraphita did not offer to pay the doctor. She was beginning to tremble. She said
“Do as you think best… infinitely grateful…” She said, in a different voice, staring into space,
“It is a terrible thing to be a woman. You are told people like to look at you—as though you have a duty to be the object of… the object of… And then, afterwards, if you are rejected, if what you… thought you were worth … is after all not wanted… you are nothing.”
She gave a little shrug, and pulled herself together, and said “Poor Elsie,” in an artificial, polite, tea-party voice, though she had not offered, and did not offer, to make tea.
The secrets in the house in Portman Square were of a more innocent kind, which might be thought odd, since Basil and Katharina Wellwood inhabited the fringes of the new, naughty social world of the pleasure-loving King. Both children, Charles/Karl and Griselda, were secretive, which distressed their parents, who nevertheless did not bring the subject up. Katharina Wildvogel had inherited a great deal of money, and employed a large number of servants. Her secret was that she was temperamentally a hausfrau. She would have loved to bake and sew and discuss clothes with her daughter, and perhaps even advise her son on affairs of the heart. She herself had no pretensions to beauty—she was slender, and carried herself well, and chose her hats and shoes and jewellery with taste. She saw Griselda as the being who would do, rightly and easily, everything she herself had had to struggle with, contrive, approximate. Griselda at seventeen was indeed—in her pale, fragile way—almost a beauty, with a pretty figure and a clean-cut face under her white-blonde hair. She was, or said she was, not interested in dressing-up. She spent as much of her time as she could with her cousin Dorothy. They were trying to become educated women, though in both cases their parents were only half-hearted about the education, and had to be badgered and pestered to arrange classes at Queen’s College, or tutorials with Toby Youlgreave and Joachim Susskind.
Dorothy’s path was harder—she did not live in London, and had to travel up by train, or stay for days together in Portman Square, aware that Katharina, though she liked Dorothy well enough in herself, deprecated her influence on Griselda’s ambitions. Dorothy got moral support from Leslie and Etta Skinner, who arranged for her to attend demonstrations and experiments at University College. But she