The Children's Book

They discussed Peter Pan. Toby had seen it, and was enthusiastic. Nothing like it had been done before. He supposed the young Well-woods had enjoyed it. Especially Tom.

“Tom hated it,” said Olive, sadly. “I thought he’d like it. He always liked the stories more than any of the others did. But it seemed to make him angry. He said it was make-believe and cardboard. He didn’t like the women playing boys.”

“He refused entirely to suspend disbelief,” said Steyning. “It was odd, and almost alarming.”

Toby asked how old Tom was now. Olive said she thought he was twenty-two: Toby said that his history of failing exams, or failing to be fit to sit exams, was perplexing, given his intelligence. Humphry said maybe they should think of some other course. He could not do nothing for ever. Dorothy was only twenty and had passed her Highers, and the Preliminary Scientific Exam, and begun her medical studies. She was lodging with the Skinners in Gower Street. Phyllis was the home-loving daughter. He did not know himself what Tom did with his time. He was out of doors, for much of most days. Olive said doubtfully that he had said from time to time that he meant to be a writer. Humphry asked irritably whether she had ever seen any writing he had done. No, she said. No, she had not. He thought it was private.

“You can’t make a living out of private writing,” said Humphry. Toby said Tom was a Wanderer. He meant that he had a vision of Tom as an inhabitant of woods and downs, something out of Hudson and Jef-feries. Steyning said drily that maybe he disliked Peter Pan because he recognised something. Olive said indignantly no, it was not that, she was sure it was not that, he found the play simply unappealing.

Steyning said that Tom had seemed to enjoy being occupied with the puppet play in the summer. He had made some good lay figures. Maybe the theatre would suit him.

Olive looked into the candle-flame, and across at Steyning’s long, pale, regular face, lit, with dark shadows, from beneath. For most of Tom’s life she believed she had known in her body—as though held to the boy by a myriad spider-threads—exactly where he was, how he felt, what he needed. He had been part of her, part of her had gone running with him, she had felt his sleep after he was tucked up. Or so she thought she had felt. Lately, she had found herself using, and then rapidly rejecting, the word “coarsened” in her thoughts of Tom. He was bristly. He was sulky. He was automatically argumentative. He did not seem to read her needs, as before he always had. She thought she would be glad if he found something to do, and stopped, as she almost put it to herself, lurkingin the bushes.

August Steyning said Peter Pan had renewed his interest in writing a different kind of magical play. Peter Pan had used children’s make-believe—”slapstick” said August Steyning. It had drawn on the English pantomime, which was a connivance between actors and director and audience. He stopped for a moment and did it justice. “Not that it doesn’t get under your skin, and infest your mind. It does. In ways I think that odd little person who wrote it can’t conceive. He is both sweetly innocent and positively uncanny about mummies and daddies—and what are we to make of the identity of the daddy in the dog-kennel and the evil Hook? Who would have thought of casting the same actor? It’s a work of genius, but the genius is twisted like a corkscrew.”

He said “I want to stage a fairy play that shall be closer to Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk than to pantomime. We made a beginning in the Denge Marsh Camp. What is needed is new versions—but only versions—of the old, deep tales that are twisted into our souls. The dark Palace under the Hill, the guest, the lights dancing on the marsh. We could use stage machinery, yes—not to lift sweetly pretty girl-boys in pyjamas—but to make dames blanches float, and bats and lizard-dragons cluster on rocks and branches. I know things about lighting—and shadows—no one else in this country knows. There are Germans doing clever things with masks and puppets that would entrance an audience of children and disturb an audience of grown-ups, rightly deployed.”

“If Gesamtkunstwerk,” said Humphry, “will you not need singers?”

“It will not be an opera. It will have unearthly music. I envisage hidden flutes and concealed drums and tambourines. And wailing voices, singing in the wind.”

He said “I am relying on you, dear Olive, to write me such a tale.”

“It would be hard—”

“But you could do it.”

“I have an idea …”

“Yes?”

“But I need to think about it. I promise I will think.”

Florence Cain tried hard not to be depressed by the new, extravagant happiness in the Kensington home. She had watched, with Imogen, the new double bed on its way up the narrow staircase. It was a festive bed with a bedhead carved with cherubs, not the catafalque of Prosper’s dream. It embarrassed Florence, though she tried hard to prevent it. They could not keep their hands off each other, Prosper Cain and his new wife, though they tried to do so, when Florence was present. She felt aggrieved—she was de trop in her own house, for reasons nothing to do with her own conduct. Imogen had tried, once, to open a discussion. “I can see it must be strange for you, now, now that I’m …” Florence snapped. “Of course it’s strange. It doesn’t matter. We needn’t speak of it.”

“But, I—”

“Just be happy. I can see you are.”

“I—”

“I said, we needn’t discuss it.”

•  •  •

She also did not wish to discuss it with her fiance, Geraint Fludd. Geraint came often, running administrative errands between Purchase House, to which its owner had not returned, The Silver Nutmeg and the V and A. He had managed to become a Member of the Stock Exchange during a brief period of easy admission in November 1904, before the rules were tightened. On New Year’s Eve, in 1905, he came to dine with the Cains, and was received by Florence.

“I’ve brought you something,” he said. He handed her a small box, wrapped in cherry-coloured paper, with a silver bow. Inside was a pretty ring, the work of Imogen’s jewellery master Henry Wilson, with amethyst and moonstone forget-me-nots set in woven silver leaves.

“The silver is my own,” he said. “I bought it in a warehouse, in the City. I bought the stones, too, from a mining man I know. I hope you’ll wear it. I hope it is the right size. I asked Imogen.”