The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [247]
Afterwards, they all said that they must remember this time, they must never forget what it was to be young, and alive. The sun shone down. The air was golden, and blue, and dark dark green and fragrant under the trees. They walked miles, one day, in a long string of purposeful, purposeless, striding bodies, and the next day they sat in the camp, and sang in German and in English, read aloud to and with each other, read silently lying in grass, or under the stars and moon. They bathed naked in the cool water, by day and by night, the girls behind the cover of the patch of yellow flags, the boys leaping from the high bank. They saw each other’s bodies with the kind of milky curiosity—there would be time enough, they thought and knew, time was infinite and elastic. They laughed at the zebra stripes and chevrons where they had browned beyond cuffs and inside shirt-necks. They all stared at Tom. Tom leaped, and pranced, and hurled himself wildly in curtains of water-drops, stirring up mud and pondweed, trailing leaves and cresses like a savage embellishment. Tom was baked golden-brown all over. His hair was bleached and his body was like gilded branches. He must, Dorothy thought, have spent hours and hours getting sunburned at the Tree House, or somewhere else. They all laughed at him, and he laughed back, and then set off again, running, walking, leaping, diving, in perpetual motion.
They read plays—Comus, with Griselda as the Lady, Julian as Comus and Gerry as the Attendant Spirit, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Wolfgang as Oberon, Florence as Titania, Imogen as Hippolyta and Charles, Griselda, Dorothy and Geraint as the confused lovers. Tom was Puck. Toby Youlgreave read Sir Philip Sidney and Malory, Joachim Susskind and the Sterns read poems by Schiller and Goethe, Julian read Marvell’s “Garden” and Tom read Tennyson. Julian had learned conversations with Toby Youlgreave about Philip Sidney. Sidney had written what Julian believed was his favourite sentence—certainly his favourite this year. “Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry, as divers Poets have done, neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers: nor whatever else may make the too much loved earth more lovely. Her world is brasen, the Poets only deliver a golden …” He said he had been looking for a thesis subject, in case he decided to apply for a Fellowship at King’s, and he rather thought there might be something there. “English pastoral, in poetry and painting—” Pastoral was always at another time, in another place. Even the green pool and the long walk, over the Downs, would not become pastoral until they were past. And yet, the sun shone on them, and the leaves and the water and the grass shone with its reflections.
• • •
Memory, too, can smooth nastiness and horrors into gilded patterns. A horsefly bit Julian on the buttock, and the place swelled and burned and pricked. Phyllis burned an apple crumble, and they all said they liked its caramel taste, but left it on their plates—it was too cindery. And another night, there were uncooked sausages. Sage Dorothy got badly sunburned, even though she wore a hat. Her crimson face puffed and glistened around her eyes. Cool Griselda had hay fever. Her mouth tasted of tin and dishwashing water, her pretty nose streamed and streamed, her throat swelled and constricted her breathing, her small stock of handkerchiefs was soaked and smelly, and had to be washed and rewashed and pinned down with big stones to dry in the steady sunlight. Charles/Karl tore a fingernail and bled all over his better shirt. Phyllis had acne. Florence and the Germans remained smooth-skinned and intact, browning slowly.
After the partly cooked sausages, they all had loose bowels, which is embarrassing when you are sleeping