The Children's Book

relied on his son to get the young people dancing. He went to speak to the orchestra, smart in their uniforms and shining buttons.

Julian looked around the Refreshment Room, which he secretly rather liked, but knew Gerald despised for its cluttered detail and congeries of styles.

“We shall have to dance. Who would you choose to dance with, out of all these beauties?”

“I couldn’t ask him, alas,” said Gerald, sotto voce, barely indicating Tom, who was standing alone in his formal suit, his fair head bent over a group of amorini on a pillar. Julian was both pleased to have Tom’s beauty recognised, and briefly, ludicrously, jealous on his own behalf.

“That’s his sister,” said Julian. “She’s changed. She was a tomboy.”

“I shall ask your sister,” said Gerald. “Then we can talk about you. That will be easy.”

“I hope you don’t,” said Julian. “I don’t know what she might say.”

Gerald strolled over towards Florence, who was standing with Imogen and a few female art students. Geraint Fludd, from the other side of the room, was making his way towards her a great deal more decisively. He had secured her hand by the time Gerald got there, to Florence’s distress, though she was able to write down a dance for Gerald later in the evening, in a pretty little book with a hand-painted cover, made by the Royal College calligraphy class, who had contributed a collection of these, all original, to the festivities. Geraint felt a sense of awe, and a rush of blood, as he put his hand in Florence’s, and took hold of her waist. Florence did not notice. She was wondering what, if anything, Gerald would have talked about. Julian told Gerald to ask Imogen Fludd. “The pater wants her to have a good time. She’s his protegee.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t. He’s a good officer. Cares for his men. Students count as men.”

“These aren’t men,” said Gerald, with comic regret. He did as he was told, and asked for Imogen’s hand. For some time they sailed round the pillars in stately silence, occasionally getting out of step. Then Gerald asked her a few questions about silversmithing. It is a rule in Cambridge colleges that you do not talk professional shop on social occasions. Gerald thought it a foolish rule—he was a serious man, and did not really want to inhabit a world of clever banter. Imogen’s face lifted into life. She talked almost animatedly about the innovations of the new Professor Lethaby, who had abolished the miserable copying of ancient drawings of watercress, and had given the students new live, recalcitrant clumps of the vegetable to look at closely, and study the form. “And then,” said Imogen, “you really do understand how leaves grow on stems when it comes to formalising them in silver. I hope I’m not boring you?”

“No. I like learning new things. I mean that.”

They both smiled. Julian saw the smile, and was irritated. He went to ask pale Griselda for a dance, but everyone had decided that she was the most beautiful of the young women, and students and teachers were clustered about her. So he wandered, in an accidental-looking way, after Tom, who was retreating out of the Refreshment Room into the Green Dining-Room. Tom was headed towards his mother, who was sitting in her chair tapping her toe to the music, every inch of her resenting her reduction to a sedentary dowager.

Tom liked the Green Dining-Room. It reminded him of his vision of sleeping Lancelot, an unreal world more real than stiff collars and shiny shoes.

“I can see you want to dance,” said Tom to Olive. “I can see your toes moving. Come and dance with me, like we do at midsummer.”

“You must go and dance with the girls, my dear,” said Olive. “That’s what we’re here for, for you to dance with the girls. I’ll dance with you when you’ve taken a turn with two of those pretty creatures, not before.”

Julian joined them.

“I can ask you to dance, Mrs. Wellwood. I’m a kind of host, you can’t say no to me. Come and dance. Tom is quite right. I know you would like to dance.”

“Go along, Tom,” said Olive, standing up, arranging her skirt and purse, giving her hand to Julian. “Ask a girl.”

Olive and Julian progressed in an elegant way, pleased with the way their steps matched. Olive said

“I’m dancing with you because I’m at my wits’ end about Tom. Is that dreadful?”

Julian thought it would only be dreadful if they were dancing, man and woman, as a couple, which they were not. He had a half-philosophical idea about the nature and the importance of formal dancing, in terms of that idea about who was, and who wasn’t, a couple, a man and a woman. He thought about Jane Austen. “Whom are you going to dance with?” said Mr. Knightley to Emma. “With you, if you will ask me,” said Emma. Julian thought that was a perfect moment. And would never—not dancing—happen to him. He said

“I know what you mean about Tom. He doesn’t know what he wants.”

At that moment Tom danced jauntily past them, flashing a mild smile at his mother. He had found a partner who was indeed a young woman. She was also his sister.

Olive said “You care about him, I can see. I can’t tell if he is too contented, or somehow so discontented he’s just floating. Nothing we suggest seems to—interest him. He doesn’t take us seriously. He’s the most evasive person I know, for all his attentiveness and charm.”

“I know,” said Julian. “I know.”

Olive’s hand patted his shoulder.

“Do try to make him take things seriously.”

“I have enough trouble doing that, myself.”

Tom told Dorothy that she had suddenly become a young lady. She looked very pretty, he said. Different.

“That’s not very gallant.”

“I don’t have to be gallant to you. And anyway, you know what I mean, you’re just being difficult. You’re turning