The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [270]
Hedda went behind the golden box, and flute music was heard. The puppet Hedda appeared as a shadow on the screen, and then in the centre of the feasting in the castle. With strong gestures of her arms, and swinging of her hair, she refused to taste food, or sip drink, and brandished the knife at the creatures, who hissed loudly and collapsed into dislocated heaps of cloth and tangled limbs. The puppet Hedda bent over the sleeping puppet and took his hand.
In the dark tower, behind the golden casket, slits of light appeared between the building blocks, one of which fell forward, as the Girl stepped out, carrying her knife, holding the hand of the Boy.
Tom’s big dolls sat in the audience. At the final performance, these creatures rose, and waddled, or rolled, or hopped, or trundled through the barn towards the dark tower. Two of them (Wolfgang and Leon, to be safe) carried away the golden castle, and the rest of the creatures fell upon the dark tower, and tore it brick from brick to shrieks of laughter from the audience, and a few tears from children. Tom had begged to be allowed to orchestrate this mayhem every night. He had said he would reconstruct the tower with his own hands, for the fun of bringing it down again. But Steyning said it was not to be risked, until the very end. So when the destruction came, it was thorough and savage. Things flew through the air, and lumps rolled into the audience. It was ghastly and comic. Everyone was exhausted.
37
The climax of the camp was the Firing. During the first half of the camp students and professional potters had been constructing vessels and objects and figures, some of which had been given a previous biscuit firing before being returned to their makers to be decorated in various ways. Geraint had prevailed upon his father, when the camp was only a project, to allow the Firing to take place in the big bottle kiln in the field at Purchase House. The kiln was wood-fired. The Firing would last forty-eight hours, more or less, and the cooling another day or more. At the end of the second day there would be a celebration for the workers, potters, wood collectors and campers. Benedict, in the euphoria which had led to his public lecture, had agreed to give a talk on the firing and management of the kiln. But he had disappeared, and the task fell to Philip, who was anyway more practical at packing and setting the kiln. He knew its hot places and its draughty places, the parts where the fire raged strongest, and the parts where it was cooler and more even. It was customary, given the size of this kiln and the infrequency of its use, to fire green, or clayshapes (biscuit) at the same time as the glazed shapes needing the hotter fire of a glost kiln. Philip had put a lot of thought and experiment into the packing. He had constructed saggars to hold the pots, which stood in carefully ordered heaps, or bungs, allowing the flames to rush and flicker between them. They stood on layers of quartz sand and were protected by fire bricks and tiles. Delicate ware stood on clay stilts in the saggars. Clay pugging was placed around the rims of the saggars. Fire-cones of clay which changed colour at certain heats were placed at spy-holes to be watched during the firing. Like all professionals Philip had his own refinements—a new form of stilt, a pacing of the baiting, or feeding, of the fire in the three fireholes.
There was a brief discussion as to whether the Firing should be called off because of Benedict’s absence. But too many people expected too much, and Geraint, and to a certain extent Philip, were hopeful that he would reappear dramatically in time to set the torch to the timber. Philip sat for three afternoons at a trestle table in the stable yard, vetting the pots. An air bubble, a too-wet texture, an unevenness of shell could cause a pot to explode, or sag, or simply collapse