The Children's Book

Something in Tom evaded remarking stupidly that maybe she would get out and be married. He felt she was not all there, but then, there were moments when he felt he was not all there himself. Maybe, like him, she was somewhere else. He would have liked to get away from her, and this made him sorry for her, so he asked for another dance.

Gerald was enjoying the dance, against his expectations. He actually liked the physical exercise of dancing, which he had learned very thoroughly as a little boy in weekend dancing classes. There was no call to dance in King’s College. He looked at the young women to work out which would be pleasurable to dance with, from this point of view. The best dancer was Griselda Wellwood, who moved elegantly, almost like a perfect mechanical doll. But her little book—decorated with lilies of the valley —was crowded. He booked what he could, and went back to Florence Cain. She had more space, having refused to give Geraint as many dances as he wanted. She was, in Gerald’s view, the second-best dancer, less perfect in her movements, but also less mechanical, and, he discovered after stepping out with both young ladies, more responsive to his leading, readier to follow him in inventing variations on the steps. She annoyed him, at first, by what he saw as a tedious attempt to make conversation that would interest him. She discussed dancing in Jane Austen, she went on to Shakespeare and Dante. It took him quite some time, between the creation of steps-on- the-spot and sudden swirls, to realise that she was talking perfectly good sense—even wittily—about Shakespeare and Dante, even if a supper dance was the wrong place. He answered with amusement, and twirled her again. Both Prosper and Julian observed her flush of delight with irritation, bordering on fury. They were too far away to see that her knees were trembling, and only she knew what was going on inside her, under her flowing skirt, as she swayed in time to the music.

There was a late arrival, when the dancing had been interrupted for supper. The young went to collect their plates and glasses in the Grill-Room, and came back to the Centre Refreshment Room to eat in groups at the tiny, but heavy, tables, made of ornamental ironwork with small grey marble slabs, encased in more ironwork. In the Refreshment Corridor were plaster bas-reliefs, depicting abstract craftsmen—Industrial Science and Industrial Art—and real humans. Arkwright inventing the loom, Palissy taking baked pots from a furnace. Tom pointed these out to Pomona, to whom he had somehow become permanently attached. She shuddered when she saw Palissy, and said “That’s Palissy. You see, I can’t get away from weaving and pots.” Tom knew nothing about Palissy, and observed that he looked benign. Pomona said he might well have been, if you were interested in pots.

Geraint had managed to secure Florence for supper, since Gerald had insinuated himself into that place in Griselda’s little book. Geraint deciphered the inscription on the porcelain painting on the Grill-Room buffet, and read it out in a funny voice.

“May-Day, May-Day, the Blithe May-Day, the Merrie, Merrie Month of May.”

The Victorians were earnest, even about being merry, said the Edwardian young man. Florence laughed. But she felt a kind of loyalty to the ambition of the Museum, because of her father.

The late arrival was August Steyning, who went to join the elders in the Green Dining-Room, where waiters were serving supper on Minton plates. He was given a chair next to Olive. The table centre-piece was a large, glowing lustre bowl by Benedict Fludd, depicting that odd moment in the Rheingold when Freya is up to her neck in gold loot, the golden apples are turning grey and papery, and the two giants stretch out huge hands to take the young goddess. Fludd’s depiction of the heaped treasure, in ceramic, was masterly—goblets, bracelets, glinting crowns, trickling coins and the shape of a young woman underneath the heap, hinted suggestively. On the other side of the bowl lurked, not Wotan struggling with the ring, but Loge, holding a very lively golden apple in a cloak of flame.

August Steyning was rehearsing The Smart Set, a drawing-room comedy by J. M. Barrie, with an edge of pain and irony. Olive asked him how it was going.

“The actors are good. It has a pretty pace. It is not without meaning, even though too much of it turns on undelivered letters and impertinent servants. But—dear Mrs. Wellwood, dear Olive—it isn’t what I want to be doing. It’s bread-and-butter work, and I do it to the best of my ability. But if I could have my way, all the tasteful furniture which makes the stage like an airless mirror of daily life would be whisked lightly up—sofas like flying elephants, tables galloping into the wings like wild ponies—and we should see through the looking glass into the world of dream and story. The stage doesn’t have to reproduce drawing rooms with false balconies and unreal windows. We can put anything on the stage now, daemons, dragons, Worms, sly Elves, slow trolls, malign silkies, even the Brollachan and Nuckelavee. Instead of which I have actresses quarrelling over the waists of tea- gowns and freshly made egg-and-cress sandwiches every rehearsal.”

“We all went to see Bluebell in Fairyland, with Seymour Hicks,” said Olive. “The children loved it. The songs were pretty.”

“But it wasn’t fey, or uncanny, now was it? It was prettily whimsical, very English. The Germans know that otherworld creatures aren’t pretty little misses with wings and flower hats. They know that things lurk in dark woods and deep caves. Things we need to remember. Look at that, Olive. The bowl. I long to pick it up, but I dare not for it would certainly slip through my fingers and I should be cursed by the wraiths of Victoria and Albert, and a very lively Major Cain. The man—Fludd—is a genius. He takes the great—perhaps the only— Gesamtkunstwerk of our time and produces a version in a chilly, still world—that went through the fire all flowing with elements and elementals, and fused into colour and form—a regular-shaped bowl holding passion. Look at Loge’s wicked laughter. Please turn the bowl carefully, Major Cain, so that Olive may see Loge. See how the golden apples shimmer and fade, and the light is fiery and lucid and golden as the bowl turns. We need mystery.”

“Your rehearsal has upset you.”

“It has. This mysterious room restores my good nature. The eternal hounds, pursuing the eternal deer, under the dark eternal forest boughs. Those glooming Burne-Jones wodewomen. Prosper, your quails’ eggs are dainty and delicious, and your champagne is a chilly fountain of youth.”

“Why don’t you put on such a play, yourself?” asked Prosper Cain.

“Because I haven’t the imagination and can’t write. I need a mythmaker. You, Olive, you could do it. You could write me an Otherworld. You have the true sense of what is beyond window and mirror alike.”

After supper, they danced quadrilles. The elders mingled with the young. It was both more stately and more frivolous, more playful, than the waltzes and polkas. Olive and Steyning danced with Tom and Pomona: Humphry led out Katharina, and made a square with Dorothy and Charles. Prosper and Seraphita danced with Florence and Geraint.

Afterwards, as the evening drew to a close, fathers danced with daughters. Basil Wellwood claimed Griselda, clasped her firmly, whisked her round and round, and said he was proud of her, and she had made her mother very happy. Prosper danced with Florence, lightly, and said he hoped she had enjoyed her ball. She said she loved dancing and had danced every dance, and the Museum had been transfigured. Then he danced with Imogen, whose father was absent. She gave a little sigh, and settled into his arms as though she was comfortable there. She said he was a magician, who had conjured up a palace, which was, for her, an unexpected flight of fancy. She reported to him, as a daughter might, that Henry Wilson, from Jewellery, had danced with her twice, and had complimented her on her silver-work. “He said I understood both pennywort and silver,” she said. “I am in hope of being able to earn my living.” She rested her head briefly against his shoulder and he resisted the temptation to stroke her hair. Instead, he asked her whether she thought he should try and persuade her father to send Pomona to the Royal College, in her footsteps.