The Children's Book

determined, capable of beauty. He was surprised that none of the male students seemed to have discovered these qualities. They paid her little attention. Other women students were vivacious or sultry. Imogen Fludd was—as her teachers recognised—an artist, and committed to her art. But Prosper Cain felt she should have life, too. Her douceur was unnatural.

There had been talk of Pomona joining Imogen at the Royal College. She had come up to London, looking flustered and pink, and had taken the exams. She had failed. Neither her father’s reputation, nor her sister’s excellent progress, nor Prosper Cain’s interest in her could disguise the fact that she had no talent, the examiners said, that the work was both childlike and childish. She seemed rather relieved, than not, when the decision was broken to her, and went back to Lydd. It was Imogen whose eyes were red-rimmed at supper that evening, but she said nothing.

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The New Forest camp took place in the peaceful summer of 1902, when the war in South Africa had ended. There was a cottage in a clearing, with two bedrooms, a kitchen and a parlour, made of old, red, crumbling bricks. Its windows were unevenly glazed and slightly opaque. It had a garden, full of plants that love shade and were half-wild—foxgloves and mints, sweet woodruff and forget-me-nots. It had a rough lawn which turned into sandy earth, which ran down to a bathing place in the river, a deep pool, half sunlit, half mysteriously green under branches. Someone had built a rickety wooden pier, which extended over the water, and could be dived and fished from. You could also dive from a woody bank on the dark side (it was deeper there), crushing sorrel and campion between your toes as you arched up and out.

Toby Youlgreave and Joachim Susskind inhabited the bedrooms, and unpacked boxes of books onto makeshift bookcases constructed of bricks and planks. They came early, by train to Ashurst and then in a dog cart, carrying the heavy things, tents and kettles, cooking pots and jars of jam. Tom was already there. He had walked across the Downs and leapt out of the fringe of wood, to help with the unloading. Another dog cart brought Dorothy, Griselda and Phyllis. Hedda had been told she was too little, which at twelve she thought she was not. She had had one of her rages, which were beginning to worry her parents, and had deliberately broken a fruit dish made by Philip Warren. Phyllis, at sixteen, was going to cook. She had brought an apron. Florence Cain also arrived in a trap from the station. Julian had suggested she come along—he was coming with Charles/Karl from Cambridge, the next day. And Prosper Cain had asked whether they could not include Imogen. Florence had demurred—the invitation had been to her. Julian, when approached, asked Toby, who said “Why not?” So Imogen had come.

Toby and Joachim and Tom put up tents. There were four of these, two for males, two for females, erected, stretched and pinned down. The girls gathered armfuls of bracken to put under the blanket bags they unpacked. Julian was walking from the station with Charles/Karl on the following day, and hoped to meet up with Gerry who was catching the same train. Florence had written, lightly, to Julian, that he ought to bring Gerald with him, Gerald would enjoy it. Julian had already that summer joined Gerald at an Apostolic reading party in the Tyrol, which had strenuously discussed truth, friendship, moral obligation, ideal beauty, the working classes and other, naughtier things. Julian occasionally thought that enjoying oneself was a very strenuous occupation.

Dorothy and Griselda set off with cannikins to walk through the woods to the farm for milk. Imogen asked if she could go with them—she was always somehow in the position of asking, mildly, if she could join in—she was not, spontaneously, invited. Florence stayed in the camp watching Phyllis shelling peas and making jellies. She was listening. She was listening for Julian, Gerry, Charles/Karl and Gerald as though she was in suspended animation until they arrived.

Love—fantastic, unrequited love—distorts and tweaks time into terrible shapes. Through the uneven window- panes Tom and Toby seemed grotesque, their bodies changing shape, fatter and thicker, stretched like elastic. Imaginary Gerald, in Florence’s mind, was precise and radiant and perfectly shaped. Several times every minute she imagined him sauntering through the wood, crossing the lawn, smiling his shy smile of pleasure at seeing her waiting for him. Her skin pricked at the sight of the fantom. She willed him to come.

“Here they are,” called Phyllis, running out in an apron. They strode in—Gerry first, then Charles/Karl, and Julian lazily last. Gerald had not come. Florence knew immediately that she had always known he would not come— probably Julian had not even asked him, knowing that he would find their company childish, after his fine friends. And if she had always known he would not come, what had she been doing to herself, imagining? She was hot with shame, and turned crossly away when Geraint strode across to her—“like a puppy” she thought meanly—and said he was so glad she was there.

Later that day, the Germans came, Wolfgang and Leon, with green hats and sticks, having walked from Nutcracker Cottage with packs on their backs. They sang together—Wandervogel songs, songs from the Winterreise and the Ring. Like Imogen, they were outsiders—they had not shared a childhood. They made the young women self-conscious, and sang to them, and they all joined in.

Afterwards, they all said that they must remember this time, they must never forget what it was to be young, and alive. The sun shone down. The air was golden, and blue, and dark dark green and fragrant under the trees. They walked miles, one day, in a long string of purposeful, purposeless, striding bodies, and the next day they sat in the camp, and sang in German and in English, read aloud to and with each other, read silently lying in grass, or under the stars and moon. They bathed naked in the cool water, by day and by night, the girls behind the cover of the patch of yellow flags, the boys leaping from the high bank. They saw each other’s bodies with the kind of milky curiosity—there would be time enough, they thought and knew, time was infinite and elastic. They laughed at the zebra stripes and chevrons where they had browned beyond cuffs and inside shirt-necks. They all stared at Tom. Tom leaped, and pranced, and hurled himself wildly in curtains of water-drops, stirring up mud and pondweed, trailing leaves and cresses like a savage embellishment. Tom was baked golden-brown all over. His hair was bleached and his body was like gilded branches. He must, Dorothy thought, have spent hours and hours getting sunburned at the Tree House, or somewhere else. They all laughed at him, and he laughed back, and then set off again, running, walking, leaping, diving, in perpetual motion.

They read plays—Comus, with Griselda as the Lady, Julian as Comus and Gerry as the Attendant Spirit, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Wolfgang as Oberon, Florence as Titania, Imogen as Hippolyta and Charles, Griselda, Dorothy and Geraint as the confused lovers. Tom was Puck. Toby Youlgreave read Sir Philip Sidney and Malory, Joachim Susskind and the Sterns read poems by Schiller and Goethe, Julian read Marvell’s “Garden” and Tom read Tennyson. Julian had learned conversations with Toby Youlgreave about Philip Sidney. Sidney had written what Julian believed was his favourite sentence—certainly his favourite this year. “Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry, as divers Poets have done, neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers: nor whatever else may make the too much loved earth more lovely. Her world is brasen, the Poets only deliver a golden …” He said he had been looking for a thesis subject, in case he decided to apply for a Fellowship at King’s, and he rather thought there might be something there. “English pastoral, in poetry and painting—” Pastoral was always at another time, in another place. Even the green pool and the long walk, over the Downs, would not become pastoral until they were past. And yet, the sun shone on them, and the leaves and the water and the grass shone with its reflections.

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