The Children's Book

said

“You will do no good. He will not come back, and you will bring down ill luck on yourself and all your family.”

She was afraid. She sat like clay, staring through the hole in the stone.

“Go home,” said Pucan. “I’m around and about. I’ll come to see you, one of these days, quite soon.”

“Promise?”

“Oh yes,” he said, and took up his beaker, and drank whatever was in it.

She put the self-bored stone carefully in her apron pocket, so as no longer to hear the buzzing and the laughter. He had said he would come, quite soon.

As she hurried out of the shrubbery, and saw the sunlit windows of the house, and her eldest daughter with the smallest child, looking out of the door for her return, she remembered the tales of those who visited the friendly folk, and for whom seven years passed like a day and a night.

8

The Fludds drove slowly along the North Downs, and then south-east towards Rye and the Romney Marsh. Seraphita and her children sat in their shabby carriage, and were alternately followed and preceded by Arthur Dobbin, with Philip, in the pony-trap. They came across the Low Weald, skirting the eastern arm of the Downs, through Biddenden and Tenterden, across the Shirley Moor and onto the road that divided the Romney Marsh from the Walland Marsh, heading towards Lydd and Dungeness. The first part of the journey was over rich country, fields full of cows and festooned with hops, along lanes that wound under thick green branches, and along banks of gnarled roots, clutching. Dobbin tried to talk to Philip, and Philip stared around him, distracted. Once they came to the marshes the air changed—it was cooler, and salty, Philip thought, and less still. There were all sorts of small canals and cuts and runnels to be crossed. There were trees that had been shaped by steady blasts of wind, stunted and reaching sideways. Philip wanted to draw them. They were a stationary form of violent movement. Things croaked and whistled and wailed. There was no soot.

They drove south through Brenzett and Brookland. Dobbin, who might have been expected to point out landmarks, became silent and brooding. He fidgeted the pony’s mouth, and it shook itself crossly. They went along a lane with high hedges and a green, murky ditch, and turned through a gate, into a driveway. There was a house, behind beech trees, with Elizabethan chimneys. They drove in through a gateway, into a yard full of outbuildings, stables, a midden. Philip smelt burning. It extinguished the smells of salt water and blown grasses. It was woodsmoke. It hung heavy in the air.

Dobbin told Philip to hold the pony, and went in, through a latched door, to what looked like a dairy, or a milking-shed. Philip stood with the pony. Someone came out of a door on the other side of the yard, a short, heavy man, moving fast, shaking his head, waving his arms and shouting.

“I told you expressly never to come back. Get out of here. Go away.” Philip stood. Benedict Fludd took in the fact that Philip was not Dobbin.

“Get along with you. Put the pony in his stall, and scarper. Where did he go?”

Philip had no idea where the pony’s stall was. He stood mute. Fludd cursed him in mediaeval English and strode in through the door through which Dobbin had gone. The carriage rolled into the yard. Geraint climbed down and started to see to the horses. There seemed to be no servants to help him. Fludd came out of the dairy building, more or less dragging Dobbin, and still swearing. He had a thick, upright head of dark hair, a heavy, curling black beard and muscular arms and shoulders. He wore a workman’s smock, heavy cotton trousers and fisherman’s boots. “Get out,” he said, repeatedly, to Dobbin. Geraint led the carriage horse into the stables, and came back for the pony, without speaking to his father or to Philip.

Imogen said to her father

“Don’t be angry. We’re back in time to help with the firing. We can all help.”

“No you can’t. We fired it, Wally and I fired it, while you were gallivanting. Total disaster. Total.”

“Why didn’t you wait?” asked Imogen. Her father said curtly that he’d wanted to control his own firing whilst the disastrous Dobbin was absent, and couldn’t muck it up. But Wally had dozed off in the night, and the fire hadn’t been fed right, and not only the firing but the kiln itself was in rack and ruin. And the carter had come with the clay and had had to be paid.

Seraphita stood in the yard, stately and gloomy, and asked whether there was any food in the house. Fludd said no, there wasn’t, he had had neither time nor inclination to go into Lydd, and Wally had been needed in the pottery, and the money had been needed for the new clay, and he had not had the slightest idea when they might condescend to come back, had he? She should have thought of that, shouldn’t she?

The three Fludd women stood like calm statues, and looked at each other and Dobbin, for help. Dobbin said nervously that he could ride over to the farm and get bread and milk, and something for supper, cheese or bacon, and some vegetables. If that seemed a good idea. But he would need money. Seraphita peered into her handbag, and found a few coins, which she handed over to Dobbin. Geraint came out of the stable and said the horse had had enough for one day, and the provisions must be got on foot. Dobbin asked Philip if he would like the walk to the farm. Philip said maybe he could make himself useful with the kiln. Fludd glowered at him.

“Who’s he?” he asked Seraphita.

“Arthur thinks he may be able to help you in the workshop.”

“One clumsy oaf is enough.”

“He’s not clumsy,” said Dobbin. “I grant I am—” Benedict Fludd growled—“I grant I am, but he’s not. He comes from the Potteries. He’s worked in kilns. He wants to work with you.”

Seraphita said, staring into the distance, that if no one could be got to help with the work, no work would be done. Fludd said it might all just as well go to rack and ruin. Philip said

“I saw your pot, at that house, at Todefright. I do want to work for you. I do know my way round.”