The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [328]
Julian and Griselda did not go to this camp. Charles/Karl went to the camp for the campaign workers. The women wore gym tunics. The men wore flannels or breeches and stout socks. There were sensible shoes, and gymnastic exercises, and swimming. Charles/Karl had managed to persuade Elsie Warren to leave Ann with Marian Oakeshott and come to the camp. Elsie was reading and thinking with a speed and intensity much fiercer than Rupert Brooke’s little dives into Elizabethan poetry. As though her life depended on it, said Charles/Karl. It does, said Elsie. She read Matthew Arnold and George Eliot, A Modern Utopia and News from Nowhere, Morris’s poems and Edward Carpenter. She wrote down what she liked and disliked about her reading in an exercise book she did not show to Charles/Karl.
There was supposed to be no sex at Fabian camps. There was companionship, and purpose, and a clean mind in a clean body. Elsie asked questions, and questioned the answers she got. When she arrived, her accent was defiantly midlands. In fact she could, if she chose, neutralise it to a flat, nondescript intonation. Charles/Karl watched her engage battle and make friendships with a teacherly pleasure. There was also sex. Charles/Karl knew, he thought, that Elsie “liked” him. They had private jokes. They were at ease with each other. Too much, Charles/ Karl thought. Much depended on the weather. On one of the sunnier days they took a walk together, and sat down on a hummock nibbled by sheep. I should like to kiss you, said Charles/Karl.
“And then what?” said Elsie, moving neither closer nor further, lying at his side and examining the earth.
“Well, and then we might find out.”
“Find out what?” said Elsie steadfastly.
“Hurting you, in any way, is the worst thing I can think of.”
“And losing my independence is my worst.”
“You can give me an independent kiss.”
“Can I? I don’t think so. One thing leads to another.”
“You can’t say,” said Charles/Karl, daring greatly, “that you haven’t been led before. You know about it. I don’t.”
Elsie frowned. “You haven’t met a real snake in human form, I don’t think. A bird-charming snake with cold eyes and a will.”
“I have a will. But I don’t want to hurt you—”
“There’s a lot of things you don’t want to do, as well as that. Another thing I don’t want, is not to be friends with you. It means a lot to me.”
Charles reached for her hand. She let him. He moved his face towards hers, and she closed her eyes. And then snapped her lips shut and turned away.
At the end of the camp, Charles/Karl and Elsie set off a day early, missing a talk by Herbert Methley on “Art and Freedom, Social and Personal.” Elsie said she didn’t want to hear him, and Charles concurred. “We can change trains,” he said, “and look at the countryside.” He waited. “All right,” said Elsie.
They ended up at a pretty pub in Oxfordshire, with a garden sloping down to a stream, and roses, and pinks, and forget-me-nots. Charles said: “Elsie, you are Mrs. Wellwood.”
“No I’m not, and won’t be. But you can say so, this once. Just this once. I’ve thought it out, and I owe you.”
“Owe,” said Charles. “Damn you. I want you to be happy.”
“I’m not ever going to be happy. I’ve got out of my place, and not into any other. But here we can play-act, if you want, I said we could.”
In the bedroom to which they were shown, he thought of kissing her, and thought he would not kiss her, and opened the window on to the lawn so that