The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [36]
They sat in silence. Dorothy said
“No one asked you what you wanted to be.”
“Just as well, probably.”
“I said I wanted to be a doctor. I didn’t know I did, until I said it, that was what was odd. Because I do.”
Dorothy believed that if you told someone something truthfully, and honestly, you were giving them something, a kind of respect. Philip said
“Can women be doctors?”
“There are some. It’s hard, I think, to get the training.” She paused. “People don’t think women should work.”
Philip wanted to say “My mum works, she has to.” It wasn’t the right thing to say. He said “My mum works, she has to.”
Dorothy gave him her attention.
“And you? What do you want? Why did you run away?”
He said, sounding cross because he was desperate, “I want to make something. A real pot.” He always saw it in the singular. “It might seem odd, like, to run away from the Potteries, to make a pot. But I had to.”
“I think you will find a way,” said Dorothy, serious in the dark. “I hope we can help.”
“Everyone has been very kind.”
“That isn’t the point.”
There was a silence. They were aware of each other’s unspoken thoughts, the form of Dorothy’s apprehensiveness about her newly discovered ambition, and what it might do to her life, the inarticulate shape of Philip’s need. It grew darker. They stood up at the same time, and went out of the shrubbery, back to the dancers.
August Steyning and Anselm Stern had relieved the musicians so that they could dance. Steyning took the flute, and Stern the fiddle. They improvised waltzes and Bavarian folk dances. Geraint, daring, asked Florence Cain to dance, and they took a few tentative steps, treading on each other’s toes, before Humphry swept her off, and signalled to the players to go faster. He held Florence very close, his hot dry hand hard in the small of her back. She felt him controlling and teaching her body rhythms she hadn’t known she knew, swaying and intricate, her face held on his embroidered chest. Her feet were suddenly skilful, as though she was one of Herr Stern’s puppets. She caught her breath. Violet applauded. Olive came circling past, dancing with Tom, as they had danced in the nursery, holding both hands at arm’s-length, swooping round, and round, and round, Tom’s feet scampering on the periphery, Olive smiling and rotating in the centre, so that when they stopped the whole sky went on hissing in a circle, the planets and constellations, the great wheeling moon, the whipping branches of the trees, the blurry flame of all the lanterns.
After the dancing, when they were all breathless, came the now almost traditional tableaux from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. August Steyning produced the ass’s head said to have been worn by Beerbohm Tree, and Toby Youlgreave reenacted Bottom’s enchanted sleep, lying on the rising mound that led to the shrubbery, whilst Dorothy, Phyllis and Florian hovered as Peaseblossom, Moth and Mustardseed. Toby was not in fancy dress apart from the papier-mâché and horse-hair mask he was inside. He lay in Olive’s lap, his modern legs in flannels looking both thick and vulnerable. Olive stroked the mask. Toby could feel her heartbeat, somewhere lower in her body. He snuggled up to her, as a child might, empowered by the drama, remembering with regret the earlier performances, in which he had been in a torment of erotic pricking and pulsing. Just there, under the skirt, was the desired place. His hot cheeks were on it. Or not on it, on a smoothly lined boot with ears, which encased his head. He sang damply into it. “The finch, the sparrow and the lark, the plain-song cuckoo grey—” She was trembling a little. She stroked his mask. She stroked his living shoulder-flesh. Humphry advanced in his cloak, and squeezed juice on her eyelids, and she started dramatically away. The enchantment was over. Oberon had won, and