The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [350]
He had really nothing to say to them. He sat for hours in the window seat, staring out at the garden. Phyllis tried very hard to love him. They were Violet’s children, and shared an unspoken anger that Violet’s death had been so little marked, had been swallowed up in grief for Tom, as her life had been swallowed up in Olive’s. Neither of them was comfortable discussing this. Neither of them had ever discussed feelings. When Phyllis tried—falling awkwardly over whether to say “Violet” or “our mother”—Florian did show signs of feeling. It was an impatient, sullen rage. She made him little presents of cakes and sweet things, which he ate greedily.
In the day he sat and sat. At night he walked. He could be heard, his limping leg thumping, his wheezing a steady, sinister sound, on stairs and in corridors.
Olive woke one night as he passed the door and felt pure hatred. It was like living with a monster, a changeling, a demon. Then she hated herself, worse than she hated him. Then she went to find the whisky, avoiding the returned soldier because it was so easy to hear where he was wandering.
They noticed he was cutting advertisements out of the newspaper. One day he said he had accepted a post as a teaching assistant at Bedales school. He was, he said, with a sad, grim little smile, good at making camps and things like that.
They said they would see him in the holidays, and he said, “Yes, probably.”
Phyllis wondered why she didn’t go too. She thought, perhaps she would. Perhaps.
From
ROLL CAN AND OTHER POEMS,
by Julian Cain
THE WOODS
When Alice stepped through liquid glass
The world before her was deployed
In ordered squares of summer grass
And beasts, and flowers, and gnats enjoyed
The power of speech and argument.
Logic is fine-chopped, roses and eggs
Insult each other; legs of lamb resent
Imputed insults. Peppers and salts have legs.
Clouds scud above, and flying queens
Like startled birds, and sleeping kings
Snore unperturbed in serious dreams
Of knights and dinners—serious things
That come and go amongst the roots
Of little lines of sportive wood
Run wild, where no one ever shoots
To kill or maim, and beasts are good.
Alice skips serious from square to square
Hedges and ditches hold their form
And make a chequered order there.
No creature comes to serious harm.
Our English Alice, always calm
Interrogates both gnats and knights,
Reasons away her mild alarm
At bellicose infants and their fights.
The foolish armies do not die
They fall upon their stubborn heads
And struggle up and fall again
And when night comes, rest in their beds.
Reds clash with whites in the great game.
Their fights are dusty but have rules
And always end with cakes and jam
And Providence is kind to fools.
The woods are dangerous. You lose your way.
The sky may darken and the Crow
Make black the treetops, dim the day
Shatter the branches, blow by blow.
Crump of a tea tray, rat tat tat
Of nice new rattle on tin hat
Saucepan and scuttle flat in mud
As fire flings past and black smokes scud
And no shapes hold. I watched a wood
Mix the four elements so air was flame
And earth was liquid: nothing stood
Trees were wild matchsticks, wild fire came and came
Bursting your ears and eyes. And men were mud.
Were severed fingers, bleeding stumps between
The leafless prongs that had been trees. And blood
Seeped up where feet sank. Helplessly we trod
On dying faces, aimlessly we fell
On men atop of men ground into clods
Of flesh and wood and metal. Nothing held.
There was no light, no skyline, up and down
Were all the same. Our lifeblood welled
Out of our mouths and nostrils.
In another wood
Alice walked with a fawn. They had no name.
Nor girl, nor beast, nor growing things. Plants stood
Things flew and rustled. They were all the same.
Quiet was there, indifferent, good,
Stupidly good, like that disguised Snake
In the First Garden, where the First Man named
The creatures, and knew Sin, and was ashamed.
In Thiepval, for a time, and in a space
Extreme of noise