The Children's Book

never alone, with Geraint, or—once or twice—with Florence. She had her mother’s long neck and large eyes, and might have been beautiful if she had been more animated. In 1901 she was already twenty-two. At Easter she presented Prosper with a little jewelled egg she had been working on in secret, midnight-blue outside, pure milky white inside, studded with little moons and stars and crescents made of fine slivers of gold and pearl. Inside the egg was a gold charm in the shape of a phoenix, with crimson eyes and flaming crest. When she handed it to him, the blood flared up her neck and cheeks. “I owe you so much,” she said, in an almost- whisper. Cain put his arms round her, and felt the liveliness of her spine and the soft weight of her breasts. She needed a husband, he thought. She needed love, and a life of her own.

He conceived the romantic idea of giving a dance—a dance for Florence and also for Imogen. He would have given it on Midsummer Eve, but he wanted to invite the Todefright Wellwoods, and it would not do to clash with their annual festivities. So he decided on May 24th, the birthday of the late Queen, which fell on a Friday. He discussed the matter with Olive Wellwood, when she was visiting the Museum and checking gold and silver treasures. It was hard for him, he told Olive, to bring up a motherless daughter as he should. His Florence was eighteen, and should be thinking about things like “coming out,” he supposed, though she also talked about following Julian to Cambridge. He had the idea of giving a supper and dance—not too formal—in the Museum itself. He thought a small orchestra—the Regiment could make one up—could play in the tea-room in the evening. It would be very pleasant to see the young people dancing amongst the ceramic work of the students, and between the Minton pillars. And the Morris Green Dining-Room could be used as a kind of retirement room, where guests might sit and chat, or eat sorbets.

Olive was enthusiastic. It would be wonderfully romantic, she said. Like the dancing princesses in the hidden palace under the lake—it would have the pleasure of being secret and impossible. The Museum was impossible, in many ways, at present, said Major Cain. It was full of dust from the huge building works, it was not peaceful, as the hammers crashed and the drills howled. But in the evenings the tea-room was quiet and the dust had settled. He was in need of a fairy godmother to help organise everything. He did not think his company sergeants would understand romantic dances for young ladies. He wondered…

Olive Wellwood, like very many women who have risen from the lower classes, felt a primitive terror, a gulf opening at her feet, when asked to deal with social complexities she had never learned. She could not do it, she saw immediately, she would betray herself again and again. And yet, the delight of working with Major Cain, of being confided in, of exchanging confidences. Her mind whirled, frantically in her head, like a rat in a cage. She could give socialist, unconventional parties in her own garden. She made her own rules, and Humphry could carry off anything. But something semi-military, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is quite another matter. She said

“You know, I think you would do best to consult Katharina Well-wood, my sister-in-law. She wants so much to give parties and buy dresses for Griselda, and Griselda retreats into books, and says she wants to study at university. Griselda and Dorothy are quite naughty. They won’t join in. But here—she would be in her element—it is just what she most wants—”

Katharina was delighted. She discussed catering and flowers with Prosper. She recommended dressmakers and shoe shops. Griselda submitted to being measured for a new, grown-up party dress. Dorothy was to have her first real evening dress and Florence her first grown-up dance dress. They were like princesses in fairytales who had been given magic walnuts or acorns, which they cracked, and out floated beauty.

Florence’s dress was white lace over dark pink silk, with a silk rose in the low neck, and elbow-length lace sleeves. Griselda’s was made of Liberty silk, in grass-green strewn with floating white and gold flowers, lilies of the valley, pale primroses, bluebells.

Prosper Cain would have liked to give Imogen Fludd a ball dress—an elegant, modern, shapely ball dress. But he felt it would not be proper. He deputed Florence to ask her what she would wear. He had invited Benedict Fludd, Seraphita and Pomona to come to the party, and had found lodgings for them in a house near the Museum, with a retired sergeant-major and his wife. Florence repeated that Imogen had said that Purchase House was full of stunning embroidered silks and linens, all baled up and folded away. She suggested they both go down to the Marshes, find something possible, and bring it back to be refashioned by Katharina’s dressmaker into something less mediaeval and more up-to-date. What about Pomona? Florence asked Imogen. “She will just have to wear what Mama puts on her,” said Imogen. “She’s very pretty, whatever she’s wearing. She doesn’t seem to notice things like that.”

When they went to Purchase House, things were more than usually chaotic. Elsie was nowhere to be seen, and Benedict and Philip had just lost a whole firing of porcelain bowls. Seraphita was limp and pale, and Pomona scorched some grilled fish and boiled vegetables.

Imogen took Florence into a closed room, where dusty leather trunks full of folded materials and barely worn dresses were piled on top of each other. Pomona crept after them, and stood, large-eyed, half-in half-out of the room. Florence noticed that the sisters seemed to have nothing to say to each other. Imogen, resourceful and deliberate, turned over garments, shook out folds. She found what she was looking for—a dark green and ribbed silk, embroidered with pink and white daisies. It was shaped like a mediaeval gown, with a high waist and a little train. “We can do something with that,” she said. “And it will look good in the Green Dining-Room with the Burne- Jones panels and the Morris paper. It will blend in.”

It was Florence who asked Pomona what she would wear, if they could help…

Pomona replied flatly that her mother spent her life sewing, it was what she did, she would put together something, as she had done before. Her face was lovely, her voice was vanishing. Florence asked, where was Elsie?

“She went away to have a baby. She’s coming back, it’s all arranged.”

She did not invite questions. Florence asked lightly whether Pomona, too, would come and study at the Art School, and noticed that the question distressed both sisters, in different ways. A look went between them. Pomona said she thought not, she was needed here, in Purchase House. She looked down at the dusty floorboards. Imogen said they must go, they must go back to London, now.

In the train, on the way back, she said suddenly to Florence “I’d be happy if I never had to go back there again.”

“Why?” asked Florence, lightly.

“I can’t bear to be so odd and so hopeless. It’s a place without hope. Well, the pots are hopeful, when the kiln doesn’t melt down. But—but—I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you and your father.”

Florence dared not ask what Imogen thought about Elsie’s baby, or whose it might be. She did not dare raise the question of what was to happen to Pomona, though she didn’t know why. They went back to South Kensington where a delicious dinner, and the secretive, grave young men awaited them.

Violet said she would make Dorothy a dress. Humphry was told to bring ladies’ magazines from London, and Violet looked at the photographs and drawings. She said it wouldn’t suit Dorothy to wear a girlish colour—Dorothy was handsome, but not pretty. It should be deep rose, perhaps, or dark blue, maybe in shot taffeta with a glow in it. Dark blue like the midnight sky, said Violet, and insisted on taking Dorothy on an excursion to London, for if she was to have a grown-up dress she must have some sort of shaping bodice. Everything this year, in the magazines, was lacy. She