The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [9]
Violet Grimwith said she would look out something for Philip to wear. She thought he was too big to get into anything belonging to Tom. But there might be a shirt, in Humphry’s weekend drawer, and even maybe breeches …
Philip mutely followed Ada, who was the cook, into the servants’ part of the house, and then through the back, into the stable-yard and across to the guest cottage, which had a downstairs room with a sink and a pump, and an upstairs loft, reached by a ladder, where Cathy could be heard, thumping bedclothes. Philip stood awkwardly. Ada fetched a tin bath, two jugs of hot water, a jug of cold water, soap and a towel. Then she left him. He took off the top layer of his clothes, and tentatively mixed some of the hot and cold water in the bath. Then he took off the remaining protection of his underpants and singlet. He was not used to baths. He was used to a quick sluicing under a cold communal pump. He lifted a leg to straddle the rim of the bath. Violet Grimwith came in without knocking. Philip reached for the towel to cover himself, and stumbled with a splash into the water, barking his shin on the edge. He made a choked, wailing cry.
“You don’t need to mind me,” said Miss Grimwith. “Let me see that scrape. There’s nothing I haven’t seen. I’ve nursed all their little wounds, all their lives, I’m the one they turn to, when they need to, and so I hope will you, young man.”
Much to his alarm, she advanced on him, bearing the soap, and a cannikin of warm water, which without warning she poured over his thick hair, so that jets sprang into his eyes and over his shoulders.
“Shut your eyes,” she advised him. “Keep ’em tight shut, I’ll get to the roots of it, I will.”
She applied soap and water to his hair as she spoke, pommelling and twisting and then massaging the skin of his scalp, probing with thin fingers for the taut muscles in his neck and shoulders.
“Let go,” said the surprising woman. “We’ll have every cranny clean and lively, wait and see.”
She spoke to him as though he was a baby, or just possibly a fully grown and complicit man. Philip decided to keep his eyes shut, in every sense of shut. He tightened his sphincters, pushed his chin into his chest, and felt the fingers and palms slap and maul him. Under the water they came, accidentally or on purpose, briefly fluttering against what he thought of as his whistler.
“Muck of ages,” said the sharp voice. “Surprising how it accumulates, muck. Now you’re a nice pinky-pig-pink, not elephant-hide. You’ve got a fine thatch of hair, now the dust’s out, and the other stuff. You can open your eyes. I’ve wiped the soap off, it won’t sting.”
He didn’t want to open his eyes.
He was encouraged to dry himself whilst Violet Grimwith held up various garments against him, for size. He struggled, still damp, into some patched long-johns, and chose a plain dark-blue twill shirt out of the three presented to him. Tom’s breeches were too small. “I knew it, really,” said Violet. A pair, presumably belonging to the master of the house, in brown cord, sagged a little, but could be, as Violet suggested, hauled in with a thick belt. She produced a truss of needles and bobbins, told him to stand still, and took in a pleat on each side over his hips, sewing fast and precisely. “I know how young folk are, they are ashamed to look odd and hate things not fitting right. This is only makeshift, but it’ll hold for the duration. You’ll forget they’re too big, this way. One thing less to bother yourself about.” She put one hand on each of his hips and turned him round like a mannequin. She gave him a stout pair of new socks, but none of the shoes she had brought fitted, and he had to put on his old dirty boots—after she had given them a brush over. A tweed jacket with leather trim completed the outfit. She even gave him a clean handkerchief. And a pocket-comb, made from white bone,