Something appalling happened to Florence. She had a vision of Gabriel Goldwasser, like the angel he was named for, walking on the surface of the lake, scattering brightness from his sunny hair. She saw that she ought not to marry him, not because he did not love her, but because she might come to love him. And he was queer, and had secrets, which he was not looking into.
“What would you do,” she said, on a dangerous impulse, “if I married you, and then came to love you?”
“I do not think that would happen,” he said. “You are too intelligent. You know we love each other, in an— unusual?—way, and that that is all. It is a good reason for marrying. I need to help you.”
Florence began to weep. Gabriel stroked her hair. The child inside stretched its frog-fingers and its stick-legs, and put a fine thumb into its unfinished ghost-mouth, and sucked.
Prosper Cain came back to Ascona, and Florence explained Gabriel’s plan.
“I could be Frau Goldwasser. I could come home.”
“And what would Herr Goldwasser gain from this? Does he need money?”
“No, no, he needs nothing, that is why I trust him. He says he needs to live on the surface. He is a kind of
“Don Quixote was anything but a monk.”
“Don’t mix me up. You always do. I know it sounds mad, but I do believe it may work. What did you think would happen to this child? I shan’t lie on these sunbeds and drink juice for ever.”
“I imagined it would be given away. No, Florence, don’t, don’t be angry. I thought you must decide. I thought that was what you
“I could not give away the child, Papa, and come home and see you and Imogen
Prosper Cain met Gabriel Goldwasser and took to him. It was hard for him not to, though the soldier was trim and upright, and the Austrian was shaggy and bearlike. Prosper prided himself on being able to judge character: here was an honest man, who proposed a viable solution to the problem that tormented him. Frau Goldwasser and her child could return to South Kensington, and Prosper could protect them. He organised. The marriage could not take place in the Catholic village; he found a Swiss Protestant church in an Alpine valley and took rooms in the White Rose Inn. There was a wedding-party, of a kind. Griselda was visiting Florence, accompanied by Charles/Karl, Joachim Susskind and Wolfgang and Leon Stern. Of these, only Griselda knew Florence’s secret: the others believed she was suffering from nervous prostration owing to the pressure of work in Cambridge. Florence had a cream-coloured linen coat and skirt, over a rose-pink silk shirt, and a linen hat with a severe ribbon in a blushing pink. The bridegroom was unrecognisable in an old-fashioned frock-coat and complicated grey silk necktie. Joachim was best man, and Griselda attended the bride. At the last moment it was discovered that there was no ring for this wedding. Florence gave her mother’s ring to Gabriel, who gave it to Joachim, who remarked how elegant it was. They were married by a stolid pastor. Prosper gave his daughter to Gabriel, who put Prosper’s ring back on Florence’s finger and kissed her. Griselda wept. They all dined companionably in the White Rose. Griselda talked to Gabriel Goldwasser in German. His descriptions of the clinic, and the psychiatrists, made her laugh, with an uneasy pleasure. What was Florence doing? What was happening?
Nothing was happening, said Florence. Gabriel was helping out. She was now a respectable married lady.
There were many things Griselda could have said in reply, and she suppressed them all. Florence was relaxed and smiling: she had not relaxed or smiled since Dorothy had examined her. Griselda wanted to know what Gabriel Goldwasser really felt. Perhaps he was secretly in love with Florence? He appeared to be mildly friendly. Helpful. Smiling. Wolfgang Stern said patients often fell in love with their nurses. But the nurses were usually women.
42
In October 1908 the Ledbetter Gallery in St. James’s Street, Piccadilly, put on an exhibition of the ceramics of Philip Warren. Philip had been working like Vulcan all summer; idea after idea had risen to the surface of his mind, and taken shape under his fingers. Successive firings were successful. Prosper and Imogen, visiting, went into the studio that had been Benedict Fludd’s, and saw the work. Imogen said it needed a bigger space than The Silver Nutmeg, and Prosper said that Philip could be thought the equal of his master. He came back with Marcus Ledbetter, the owner of the gallery, who said this work must be seen.
Everyone was invited to the opening. Everyone included the warring factions in the Victoria and Albert, and also included the Todefright family, the Purchase House family, the Portman Square Wellwoods, August Steyning, Leslie and Etta Skinner and Elsie. Philip said to Imogen that he was sure Elsie would be too shy to accept her invitation but it was only right that she should be asked. He asked the ladies from Winchelsea and Dungeness, too. Elsie made herself a dress from a remnant of blue-black grosgrain, and a lace collar she found in a shop in Rye, which was old, and complex, and looked as though it was worth twenty times what she paid for it. She put one new blue silk rose on a plain hat and looked elegant. When she came into the gallery, which was hung with white silk and had black lacquered stands and shelves, Philip did not, for a gap of time, recognise her as his sister, and thought she looked unusually interesting. He was about, when he had come to his senses, to tell her this, but found she had turned aside to talk to Charles/Karl Wellwood. They were laughing together. Geraint Fludd was in attendance on his mother, who was looking fragile but beautiful. Griselda and Imogen both looked at him with curiosity and pity to see how he was taking what must have been a mysterious and sudden rejection. He was most elegantly dressed, and was drinking rather a lot of champagne. He must be doing rather well in the City.
Even Dorothy Wellwood was there. Her mother, handsome in dark red velvet, said to her
“There is Tom,
Dorothy thought of a retort, and then thought she did, after all, want to talk to Tom. He had a sweetly uncertain look about him. He was drinking champagne as though it was lemonade.
“Come and look at the pots, Tom. This is all your doing. If you hadn’t found Philip, when he was hiding in the Museum, none of this would have happened.”
Tom said he supposed Philip would have found a way. Philip knew what he wanted.
They walked round, looking at the work.
There were various clusters of pots. The central exhibit was a group of vessels—bowls, jars, tall bottle shapes, with formally abstract glazes, many of them with a dull hot red like molten lava at the base, bursting into a sooty black layer on top of which raged a kind of thin sea of sullen blue with a formal crest of white foaming shapes rearing and falling. Other pieces had intricately random glazes that raced and climbed and plunged and scattered
