The Children's Book

“There are things you don’t know,” she said.

“The world is full of things I don’t know, and shan’t know. I know what I need to know when I am in a campaign, and I know what I need to know about how to run a museum department and buy gold and silver. I don’t know what I need to know about young women. I am not well equipped, as regards young women. But I am very good at not seeking to know what does not concern me. Often it is best to remain ignorant for ever of painful things. I have known several people who have brought themselves to confess this, or that, or to complain violently of this, or that, and have regretted it for the rest of their lives.”

He looked at her portmanteau.

“When I was a boy,” he said, “I used to pack a suitcase, and form a project of running away. Sometimes the packing was enough. Sometimes I set out, and had to be brought back. Once I was away a whole night, and was savagely beaten, on my return, and then cuddled and kissed.”

“I am not a child, and I do know I must go.”

“I hope you will let me look after you.”

“You can’t. I see that, now. For every reason.”

“My dear,” said Prosper Cain, very stiffly, his back rigid, “I have not forgotten, and cannot forget, what you said to me in Clerkenwell.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Did you not? It has made me see what I myself feel. For my own part, I can think of no greater happiness than making you my wife. And giving me the right to look after you. I am much older than you are. I know that. So do you. But in some timeless place, I do believe, we see each other as equals, face to face. I don’t want to let you go. Perhaps I should, but I cannot. And will not.”

He looked at her, almost angrily.

She looked at him. Her large eyes were steady. She said “I love you. I do love you. Perhaps that is all that need matter?” He thought of cross Florence, and raging Benedict Fludd, and knew it was not. He was a strategist, he would devise a strategy. He said “Come here—”

She stood up and came. He took her in his arms and kissed her brow, and her neck, and then, gently, her lips, and then, less gently, her whole mouth, and he knew that she did indeed love him.

He said “We won’t tell Florence, until we have thought things out, further. Or Julian, of course. I do not think that will be easy, but I think it may be managed. What I shall do, as soon as possible, with your permission, is drive over to Purchase House—no, my love, you will not come with me—and ask your father, very formally, for your hand in marriage. Everything else, we will plan calmly, and carefully. Do you feel able to go to the metalwork school in the camp? I could drive you there, on my way.”

Elsie let him into Purchase House. She pointed across the yard, to the studio in the dairy. She opened her mouth to impart some information or other, and closed it again.

“He’s in there. I saw him go in,” she volunteered.

“Thank you,” said Cain, and marched across the yard. Fludd was standing at a high table, modelling one of his facing-both-ways jugs. He was incising more sullen lines into the sullen side. The other was a blank oval.

“Who is it?”

“Me, old friend.”

“Ah, you.” Fludd turned round, at bay. Cain did a mental calculation about their respective ages. Fludd must be less than ten years older than himself. He was not yet fifty and Fludd was not, he thought, sixty, though he looked older, grizzled and heavy.

“I have come to ask you something.”

“You have done enough harm.”

“I don’t think it’s harm. It is—I agree—unexpected how it has turned out. I have come to ask you for your daughter. Who has agreed to become my wife.”

“Wife—”

“I am older than she is, but she is happy to set it aside. She says I may ask you for your goodwill.”

“I don’t give it.”

“Wait. Think. She does love me. I do love her, Benedict. I think in an odd way we have a chance of happiness. We are at ease with each other. I can make her comfortable, and encourage the talent she has inherited from you —”

“What have you done to her?”

“Nothing. She has been like my daughter, together with my daughter. And very recently things have changed— developed, one might say—”

“Stop making reasonable noises, for Christ’s sake. You can’t do this. That’s final.”

“She is of age, and I don’t need your consent. But I do beg you to think for a moment of her—this is a chance of happiness for her—I have assured myself that—”

“She was happy here.”

“I think not, Benedict. I do think not. But this is a new beginning.”

“Howl,” said Benedict unexpectedly. “Howl, howl, howl.”

After a moment Prosper realised that this impossible person was quoting King Lear, as he came on stage bearing his dead daughter in his arms.