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By Root 2173 0

and when he and Frank had cycled into Rye, or Winchelsea, for a lecture. Frank’s vicarage was a pleasant old stone house, thick-walled against the wind and weather, with small windows, and deep fireplaces. It stood by the side of Frank’s Norman church, built in the twelfth century when there had been a harbour, and great waves driving in from the Channel. The church dated from the draining of the Walland Marsh, and was built on land taken from the sea, and enclosed by mud dykes. In the thirteenth century the land was battered, ravaged, and reshaped by monstrous storms, and the sea carried silt into the harbour of Romney and piled it there, so that many prosperous ports found themselves slowly moved inland, and no longer able to trade. The farmers died of the Black Death in the fourteenth century, and the congregations dwindled. Sheep were everywhere on the marsh, cropped the rich grass, wandered along the flat horizon. The wall of St. Edburga’s Church could be seen from the windows on one side, alongside its small, grassy graveyard, with flagged path, lych-gate, and stunted yews. From the other side, where Frank Mallett had both his study and his breakfast-room, there was a view of the marshes: grass, sheep, clumps and long stands of reeds moving in the air, plovers and gulls. This room was the room where Dobbin had passed the happiest moments of his life. Breakfast at Purchase House tended to be burned, or raw, or in short supply, or all of these at once. Breakfast in the vicarage was bacon and eggs, precisely fried with soft centres, warm toast wrapped in a linen cloth, freshly churned butter, honey and plentiful strong, newly brewed tea. Dobbin particularly liked eating these things in bad weather, when squalls raced across the reeds, and the sky was pewter, and the sheep huddled grimly. He felt it was a sacramental meal, but had not dared to say so to Frank, who presided at real sacraments, however exiguous his congregation.

They talked, a lot of the time, about what went on in Purchase House. Frank had found it difficult to understand why Arthur Dobbin had not long ago been discouraged by Benedict Fludd’s temper, and even by his own increasingly obvious unfitness as a helper. Dobbin had a cult of genius. Benedict Fludd was a genius, the only one Dobbin knew. Dobbin himself had no artistic talent but he wished to serve it, and seemed to feel, against the evidence, that he had been led to this place, and this task. The poverty of the landscape and the people led him to think this was the right place for a community centred on genius, making beautiful, wholesome things. And then, he had found Frank Mallett. And then, in moments of despair he did not have any idea where to go next. Frank—who was also lonely—thought Dobbin was obsessed and irrational, but joined in his vague projects because he liked his company, and because the Fludds were by far the most romantic and problematic of his parishioners.

One day, some weeks after Philip’s arrival at Purchase, Dobbin and Frank were taking breakfast together, before riding their bicycles into Winchelsea, to find out about a new series of lectures, set up by the local Theosophists. Dobbin spread butter, and spread honey, and remarked that the honey was particularly well-flavoured, he could taste clover, he thought, very delicate. Frank replied, as Dobbin had known he would, that it was his own honey, from his own bees. He had sent some pots, with Dobbin, to the Fludds, with his compliments. He had received a note of thanks from Seraphita, in round, childish handwriting.

Dobbin said that Benedict Fludd had been transfigured by Philip’s workmanship. They were rebuilding the little kiln, in the outhouse, and talking of building a big one, with a bottle chimney, and a revolving flue grate. Philip had drawn his idea of the flue grate for Fludd, who had been truly interested. If there was a big kiln, of course, said Dobbin, more helpers would be needed. He himself did his best, and could use his shoulder-strength to feed a kiln on spent hop-poles—“under supervision,” he said ruefully.