The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [30]
They turned to Florence Cain. Florence had had a governess who had borne in upon her that she had caused her mother’s death, and must devote her life to caring for her father. Florence had not mentioned these admonitions to her father, who was quite unaware of them, and was also well looked after by housekeepers and sappers. He liked to play games with both Julian and Florence, filling brass trays with miscellaneous buttons, beads, bottles, snuffboxes and so on, and asking his children to remember them, describe them and identify them. He took quite as much delight in Florence’s acuity as in Julian’s. Florence did, indeed, look like his lost Giulia, but he thought of the likeness in terms of a Van Eyck angel, serene amongst its crimped hair.
“Well,” he said, “Florence. What will you do?”
“I shall keep house for you,” said Florence, who thought this was understood.
“I hope you won’t. I hope you’ll have a home of your own, and before that, an education. I hope Julian will go to Cambridge, and I hope you will too. Newnham College offers a great deal. I hope you will want to go there.”
Florence was confused. They had never discussed this, and now firm statements were being made, in the middle of a large party. She did not know anything about Newnham College. It was just a name.
“She doesn’t want to be a maiden lady,” said Julian. “A bluestocking.”
This annoyed Florence, who said she didn’t see why she shouldn’t learn something. Julian was going to. She would do so. She fell over her words, and fell silent. She couldn’t imagine what she might try to learn.
That left Griselda. Basil and Katharina were clear about her future. She would be Presented at court, become a debutante, and make an advantageous match. Katharina said she hoped Griselda would be as happily married as her parents.
Griselda twisted a puce bow rhythmically round and round. Her mother tapped her fingers. Griselda had been shocked—deeply shocked—when Dorothy said she wanted to be a doctor. She had not thought of wanting anything beyond release from puce bows. She had an intense secret life, which consisted of reading novels about women reduced to silent attentiveness, full of inner rebellion, or of the effort of resignation. Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, Fanny Price, Maggie Tulliver. But all these had really wanted love and marriage. None had wanted anything so—so destructive—as to be a doctor. Why had Dorothy never said anything of this intention? Griselda loved Dorothy as Dorothy loved Griselda. She loved Todefright with a passion she dared not admit to, even in Todefright. She came to stay there, and was immediately released from her good clothes and set loose to run wild in the woods. There were books everywhere. She had it in her pale head that she and Dorothy might live in the country together, and never bother with stays and hatpins and button-hooks. That was all she had thought of. And now suddenly Dorothy’s world was black bags, and blood, and sickbeds, and grief and drama, and Griselda was nowhere. Dorothy had a secret. Griselda, her face white, said
“I mean to study. Like Florence. I learn German and French. I mean to study languages.”
Katharina said that Griselda had the best possible teachers, and her progress was exemplary.
Basil remarked to the surrounding bushes that women’s education simply made them dissatisfied. He did not say with what.
Griselda twisted another bow, and her mother tapped her hand. Humphry Wellwood picked up Florian.
“And what do you want to be, Florian?”
“A