The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [280]
“I’ve brought you something,” he said. He handed her a small box, wrapped in cherry-coloured paper, with a silver bow. Inside was a pretty ring, the work of Imogen’s jewellery master Henry Wilson, with amethyst and moonstone forget-me-nots set in woven silver leaves.
“The silver is my own,” he said. “I bought it in a warehouse, in the City. I bought the stones, too, from a mining man I know. I hope you’ll wear it. I hope it is the right size. I asked Imogen.”
Florence was startled. It was a very pretty ring. Not what she would have expected from Geraint. Though she could not see why she should not have expected it. She said
“The engagement isn’t announced…”
“You don’t like it?”
“How could I not like it? It’s delightful. Only …”
“I’d be happy if you wore it on the other hand.”
Florence said “I’ve decided to study at Cambridge, at Newnham College. I’ve sent in an application.”
This was a lie.
“I’m glad,” said Geraint. “I think—I think you would be happy there. For a time. I do believe in women studying and working. I could come to the College and take you out.” He was a good man, Florence thought, and she was taking advantage of him. She thought shrewdly that women were tempted to think less well of men they could hurt, if they chose to. She thought: if I felt about Geraint what Imogen feels about Papa, I should put my arms round him and weep. She drew the pretty ring slowly onto the finger of her right hand. It fitted perfectly. Geraint, with courtesy and care, took hold of the hand, and kissed it. Then he kissed her smooth cheek. The vision flashed through his mind of a knot of legs and buttocks on the dishevelled bed of Miss Louise, whom he had lately visited, despite thinking he ought not to. Could Florence ever come to behave like that? He thought how odd the huge, smoky gap was between what you were thinking and what you were doing. He decided to keep hold of the hand, but then Prosper and Imogen came into the room. They had clasped hands, themselves, and brushed a kiss, at the foot of the stairs. Imogen said “Oh, the lovely ring—”
Florence would have liked to kill someone, but did not know whom.
In 1905 Dorothy began to do practical work in the London School of Medicine for Women. The students went on ward visits and began to dissect the dead. Dorothy was well liked by the other women, but she kept herself to herself and made no close friends, returning to the Skinners’ house to study in the evenings, and visiting Griselda, or Florence, at the weekends. In September of that year both Griselda and Florence became freshers at Newnham College, Cambridge, and Dorothy felt doubly lonely, because those two were now such good friends, and because they were no longer in London. Griselda was to study Languages, and Florence had opted for History.
In the autumn Dorothy felt, unusually for her, dispirited and low. She enjoyed the Anatomy, but was fazed by the patience, and terror, and occasional bliss of the women in the gynaecological wards. The Hospital for Women made things comfortable for patients: they had pretty curtains, and stoneware vases of flowers, and brightly coloured bedspreads. The women’s bodies were used. Dorothy’s was not. It was covered in a long skirt—the female students, like the nurses, had to wear skirts with braided hems, long enough for their ankles not to be seen if they bent over a patient. Over the long skirt was a flowing overall. Their hair was tightly coiled on the tops of their heads, or in the napes of their necks.
Quite suddenly and farcically, she fell in love. She fell in love with a demonstrator, Dr. Barty, during a dissection class. He was showing her the human heart, and how to extract it from the cavity where it lay and no longer beat. There was a smell—a stink—of formaldehyde. The room was ventilated by a small opening in the end wall, with a gas jet burning to draw up the heated air. The hospital was a converted house—the space was cramped and full of women, twenty living, one dead, soft and leathery.