The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [296]
She stood in the restaurant doorway so as not to have to see Methley negotiating payment for the damaged covers. She thought she might die, standing there, in public, waiting. She sensed that Methley did not know how to deal with the owners of the café to which he had so confidently brought her. He looked a fool, and she would never forgive him for that. She noted that he looked as though he had had to pay more than was comfortable for him.
Outside, he hailed a cab, and had to ask her if she had money to pay for it to take her home.
“Yes, I told you,” said Florence, in nausea and scorn. He ought to have offered to come with her, to see that she was all right, for she knew she was not, but by then she already hoped never to see or hear of him again.
The cab-driver took her, half-fainting, back to the Museum. She walked into the little house, and up the stairs. Imogen was in the drawing room and expressed mild surprise at seeing her there, in mid-term. Florence said that she had suddenly felt she must get away from Cambridge for a couple of days. She did not feel very well. She would go to her room and rest. Imogen bent her head to her book, and Florence went, with difficulty, upstairs. The next day she went back to Newnham, and worked harder than usual.
When she came back for the summer vacation, she found that Imogen had put aside her silverwork and begun to embroider—pink rosebuds and blue forget-me-nots, on nuns’-veiling fine wool. Florence watched her for some time in silence. Imogen looked dreamy, and plumper than before—a contented Pre-Raphaelite madonna …
“What are you working on?”
“A coverlet.”
“It’s small.”
“It’s to cover a small bed. I am expecting a baby.” She pushed the needle in and out, resolutely, and did not look up.
“I am very happy for you,” said Florence, mechanically. “When are we to expect the happy event?”
“At the turn of the year. Maybe even Christmas, which is a hard time to be born.”
“How strange, “ said Florence.
“Is it not? I feel very strange. Everything is hazy and I am sick.”
Florence didn’t want to know. She had just understood that the child would be her half-sister, or brother. The idea was uncouth.
“Please—” said Imogen, and could not finish her sentence.
Florence said that she and Griselda had agreed to go back, more or less immediately, to Cambridge and keep the Long Vacation Term, which provided an opportunity for more intensive study. Imogen bent her head lower over her moving fingers.
Prosper Cain was much exercised in his mind by events in the Museum, where the battle was still in progress over how to arrange and exhibit the whole collection. The Director, Arthur Skinner, was being, in Prosper’s view, brutally harried by the Civil Servants. Cain was sitting in his office, writing a memorandum, when Florence found him. He looked up reluctantly, frowning.
“I am to congratulate you, I’m told,” said Florence.
“Oh, yes. It is a very happy—” He couldn’t find a word.
“You might have told me.”
“I left it to Imogen. Woman to woman.”
“You are my father,” said Florence. “She isn’t.”
“Oh, my dear, please don’t be difficult. Please be happy.”
“I shall try. I’m going to Cambridge tomorrow.”
“Isn’t it the Long Vacation?”
“Yes it is. I want to study. We are allowed to stay in College and study for some weeks. Griselda is coming.”
Later, this conversation haunted Prosper Cain. He should have paid attention. Damn Robert Morant, and his browbeaten staff, and his lack of imagination and his interfering ways. Damn him. It was hard for him to imagine the unborn child. And now he had failed to imagine the grown child.
In Cambridge,