The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [63]
“We all try to rediscover the sang de boeuf. This was meant to aim at the Iznik red, but it’s nearer sang de boeuf. I hadn’t a lot of hope of it.”
Philip said that the other glaze—the blue-green-gold one—was like the Todefright pot.
“That’s another hit-and-miss. More miss than hit. Have you done glazing work?”
“I worked in th’ kilns. Packing the saggars at the top of the bottles. But me mother is a paintress. She’s sick, with the lead and the dust. They all are. But she knows colours, and I’ve watched her.”
“Hmm,” said Benedict Fludd. “Hmm.”
They continued to clear up, in a now reasonably companionable silence.
Pomona came timidly to the doorway, and said that there was supper, if they wanted it. Fludd said, amiably enough, that he was ravenous, and Philip noted the loosening of Pomona’s muscles, in face and shoulders, where she had braced herself for rage. He noticed the same thing in the rest of the family—even Geraint—who were sitting round the kitchen table, on which were soup bowls, honey-glazed, with burnt umber snakes coiled inside them, a large platter of cheeses, a loaf of bread, and a dish of apples. Fludd sat at the head of the table, and patted the seat next to him for Philip. He bowed his head, and began to say Grace, rapidly, in Latin. “Gratias tibi agimus, omnipotens Deus, pro his et omnis donis tuis …” The family bowed their heads, and Philip copied them. Then Imogen served steaming vegetable soup from an iron pot, and they ate. Nobody said anything. Everyone watched Philip, who had a confused sense that much depended on him, and that he was perhaps not equal to his task.
When they had finished, Fludd said he was considering employing Philip in the workshop. Dobbin said “Oh, good” and attracted another series of snarling remarks about his own uselessness. Dobbin said bravely that if only Mr. Fludd had reliable assistance in the workshop, it would be possible to rebuild the big kiln, and…
“And save ourselves from starvation,” said Fludd. “It’s a long prospect, with little hope.”
He seemed almost pleased with this prognostic.
Imogen said her father should see Philip’s drawings, which he had made in the South Kensington Museum. These were fetched out again, with his pad of paper, and everyone admired the lithe dragons and helmeted gnome-men from the Gloucester Candlestick. Philip kept the pad, and his pencil, and began to draw. Fludd watched him. He drew from memory, the underwater forms on the Todefright pot, the way the tadpole creatures floated between the rising strands of weed. He found he remembered remarkably accurately. He knew that for the first time in his life, maybe, he was deliberately showing off his talent. Fludd should know he could see, and keep proportions, and remember. His hand skated over the paper. The fish-forms, the swimming embryos, flickered into life. Benedict Fludd laughed. He said he had forgotten how good that pot was. He was surprised he had parted with it, that charming lady had cajoled it out of him. Dobbin wondered if he had been paid at all for his work, but this niggle—anyway pointless—about past insouciance was swallowed in his relief and delight that the potter was smiling. He had been at Purchase House long enough to know that Fludd’s mood moved in repeated—though unpredictable—cycles, from rage to geniality, from grim, inactive despair to superhuman efforts of work and invention. Between the extremes, things got done, pots got made, even, with luck, sold to keep off starvation. The family sat round in the lamplight, looking like a family, the laughing father, the graciously attentive mother, the two lovely daughters handing out apples, even Geraint admiring the drawings. Geraint was thinking that Philip could be really useful and would be worth cultivating. He needed help, to make it possible for him to get out of this house. He had given up any idea that the ineffective Dobbin might be help. But Philip—possibly—might be.
Purchase House had many rooms. More of them were empty, and in a state of