The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [76]
Philip did not quite trust the genial mood that had come over the artist. He did not presume. He had noticed—without having analysed—the perpetual quality of watchful fear, or at least anxiety, in the curiously inert female members of the family. He had noticed Geraint’s scornful wildness, and whatever lay under it, though he could not have told anyone that he had noticed. Fludd appeared, even in a good mood, to have no small talk. The family, very unlike the Todefright gaggle, seemed to expect to eat in near-silence, and disperse after meals. On one occasion Fludd announced that Philip must have more clothes, so that those he was wearing could be washed. He seemed to assume that his vague request would be carried out. In fact, a parcel of clothes was put together—but it was put together by Dobbin and Frank Mallett, some things from both of them, some from members of the parish, fishermen’s socks and a jacket, workingmen’s shirts, blue and grey. Another working smock, so that Tom Wellwood’s could be washed. Philip found Pomona, sitting on the terrace in front of the house, altering cuffs and replacing buttons for him. He protested. She said “You can believe it’s a change from embroidering crocus and daisies.” Her voice was breathy and too quiet. Philip said he could sew, and Pomona said, be quiet, and let me measure this against you. Imogen came out through the door with glasses of barley water, and said to Philip “If you can help him—so that work is done, and things are made—and sold—we shall all be greatly in your debt.” Philip said he hoped there would—reasonably soon—be enough for a trial firing.
Fludd and Philip were taciturn, in different ways, and for some weeks they discussed only the weight of clay, or the best place to dry a platter, or the colour of glazes, or why Philip’s pots had gone wrong. Fludd did not think to ask his apprentice about his past life, or his family, and Philip volunteered nothing. Philip himself rarely asked questions, and only after some time asked about the figure in the drawing pinned on the door. He said he thought he might have seen it, in South Kensington, was that possible? Fludd said indeed it was. This was the figure of Palissy, the great French potter, from the Kensington Valhalla in the South Court. Ah yes, said Philip. I saw a dish—with toads and snakes—in Major Cain’s house. He said it was a fake. Fludd said that the Museum had made a horrible error, buying a modern imitation of a Palissy dish, worth at most £10 os od, for thousands of pounds. He added that it was a mistake easily made—the fakes resembled Palissy ware quite astoundingly accurately. Was Philip interested in the potter? Oh yes, said Philip, who was interested in pots.
Fludd began to tell Philip the heroic life history of Bernard Palissy. He told it in vivid, intense instalments, to the rhythm of the wheel, or the slap and thud of the wedging, or the scratch and slush of the sieving. It felt almost like an initiation rite—this was the exemplary tale of what it was to be a true worker with clay, a complete artist. Fludd’s voice was deep, and he left gaps between his sentences, as he meditated on what he was saying. Philip meditated too. He was learning.
He learned that Palissy had been, like Benedict Fludd, an inhabitant of salt marshes, a workingman who painted portraits and had also learned to paint on glass. He was poor and ambitious, and one day someone showed him “an earthen cup, made in Italy, turned and enamelled with so much beauty” that he had been driven to learn how to do such work—“regardless of the fact that I had no knowledge of clays, I began to seek for the enamels, as a man gropes in the dark.”
Fludd stopped, and said “Something like