The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [203]
“Go along, Tom,” said Olive, standing up, arranging her skirt and purse, giving her hand to Julian. “Ask a girl.”
Olive and Julian progressed in an elegant way, pleased with the way their steps matched. Olive said
“I’m dancing with you because I’m at my wits’ end about Tom. Is that dreadful?”
Julian thought it would only be dreadful if they were dancing, man and woman, as a couple, which they were not. He had a half-philosophical idea about the nature and the importance of formal dancing, in terms of that idea about who was, and who wasn’t, a couple, a man and a woman. He thought about Jane Austen. “Whom are you going to dance with?” said Mr. Knightley to Emma. “With you, if you will ask me,” said Emma. Julian thought that was a perfect moment. And would never—not dancing—happen to him. He said
“I know what you mean about Tom. He doesn’t know what he wants.”
At that moment Tom danced jauntily past them, flashing a mild smile at his mother. He had found a partner who was indeed a young woman. She was also his sister.
Olive said “You care about him, I can see. I can’t tell if he is too contented, or somehow so discontented he’s just floating. Nothing we suggest seems to—interest him. He doesn’t take us seriously. He’s the most evasive person I know, for all his attentiveness and charm.”
“I know,” said Julian. “I know.”
Olive’s hand patted his shoulder.
“Do try to make him take things seriously.”
“I have enough trouble doing that, myself.”
Tom told Dorothy that she had suddenly become a young lady. She looked very pretty, he said. Different.
“That’s not very gallant.”
“I don’t have to be gallant to you. And anyway, you know what I mean, you’re just being difficult. You’re turning into a woman.”
Dorothy, determinedly medical, considered she had been a woman, willy-nilly, since her monthly Curse began. She had been proud of the bloodstains, and also, despite her academic anatomical interest, dismayed by the speed of the changes in her body. She was also niggled by the fact that it was Violet, not Olive, who had taken upon herself to explain this momentous event—about which Dorothy, of course, was already informed, through reading books. She thought, as she and Tom stumbled more or less companionably across the tiles, that Tom probably knew nothing at all about the Curse. She was right. But she had not stopped to think about Tom’s own reaction to puberty, which had tossed him about on waves of emotion, and rather disgusted him. He said, out of The Golden Age,
“You’re turning into a Grown-up. Is it nice?”
“You’re older than me. You should know.”
“Girls grow up quicker. They say. I’m not sure it is nice.”
The conversation was odd, rather formal, because they were in formal clothes, stepping formal patterns, between majolica pillars, to sentimental rhythms. Dorothy saw that Tom had chosen a daft moment to try to talk to her about something important. His hair was a shining mess. It was not parted and slicked down, like Julian’s hair, and Gerald’s and Charles’s, and Geraint’s, even though Geraint’s bush showed signs of rebellion. She gave a twitch to the waist of her shapely dress. She was thinking of an answer when the music stopped. Charles, who had put his name in her little starry book, came to claim her. She said to Tom
“Do go and ask Pomona to dance. Nobody seems to, and she looks desolate. It would be a kind act.”
Tom went over to Pomona, who was drooping a little, in a beautifully embroidered, less than perfectly tailored gown, white with a deep border of apple boughs, and embroidered strips of apple-blossom round waist, neck and sleeves.
Charles asked Dorothy if she was having a good time. He told her she looked quite the thing. He danced well—his mother had seen to that—and Dorothy followed, and they twirled cheerfully.
“What are you thinking?” Charles asked, after five minutes.
“Do you want the real answer?”
“I always do. There’s no sense in telling fibs. What are you thinking?”
“If