The Children's Book

“Of course not. I shall come next weekend, which is Julian’s holiday. It will all appear quite casual.”

“May I come?” said Olive impulsively. “I should dearly like to see the new work, too. I may be able to help. Or Humphry may, he knows all sorts of financial people. I could bring Tom and Dorothy, it will be a pleasant excursion …”

Prosper said he would be very happy if she came. Geraint thought of saying that large numbers of visitors might have a bad effect on his father, and then thought he had achieved all he could have hoped, and should let things be. Olive read his mind in his face.

“I don’t think we should all necessarily bother your father, not all at once. We will linger in the background and see if we can be helpful. And look at the sea, it will be wonderful to see the sea again.”

Geraint smiled at her. She smiled back. “And you? What do you mean to do with your life? Are you artistic?”

“Good Lord, no,” said Geraint, with excessive vehemence. “It got left out of me altogether, anyone would think I was a changeling. I’m clumsy with my hands, and my family say I have no taste.”

“So what do you hope to do, then?”

“What I want,” said Geraint, relaxing after his huge effort, “what I want, is to make a lot of money and be comfortable. I’d like to be in a bank, or something. I don’t know where to start.”

“You start by asking my husband,” said Olive, who loved giving people things. “He gave up his bank position, but he knows exactly how to set about finding one. When you are quite sure that is what you want.”

“Oh, I am. I think and think about it. I am quite sure.”

13

The Cains and the Todefright Wellwoods came to Rye, and stayed in the Mermaid Inn. The weather, which had been stormy and chilly, was suddenly bright, clear, and even warm. St. Martin’s Summer, said Benedict Fludd, who was invited to lunch in a private room in the Mermaid, with Seraphita and his children. There is often a false summer in the third week of November, a pleasant enough delusion. Prosper had made military arrangements. He had ordered a roast goose, with onion sauce, and heaped roast potatoes and buttered carrots, to be followed by a huge apple pie with thick cream. They had come by train; the Todefright party included Tom and Dorothy; Violet remained in charge of the lower half of the family. After lunch, Prosper had explained to Florence, all the young folk would go for a ramble—maybe along the beach at Dymchurch, since the weather was so mild and tempting. He needed to talk to his old friend, and he needed to do it quietly. The Fludds were hungry: the food was plentiful and comforting. Geraint talked to Julian, who was sitting opposite Tom, at the youthful end of the table, studying his face. Dorothy talked to Florence, about schooling. Florence was going to Harley Street College in the next academic year. Dorothy did not know what would become of her though she did know that Tom was to be crammed for entrance to various schools.

Seraphita, Imogen and Pomona smiled serenely. Fludd spoke about St. Martin, St. Martin of Tours, that was, who had been a Roman soldier and given his cloak to a beggar. He was often depicted with a globe of fire, or with a goose, since they flew over round about his feast. There was a good window in St. Martin’s Church at Puxty, which used the glass very effectively in the ball of fire.

Philip had not been included in the party, and had not expected to be. He had taken some bread and cheese and set out in the strangely unseasonal weather on a long ramble. He walked to his favourite Marsh church, the diminutive, brick-built church of St. Thomas Becket, near Fairfield. Philip thought of this church as his own particular church; he knew little about Thomas Becket, and did not know that the church was built on Becket lands. He had never seen a church so isolated. It stood amongst water-meadows, stretching flat and far, on which for miles the fat sheep busily cropped the salty grass. There was no road leading to it, and from it no village, no high road could be seen, only the marshes and the weather. The marshes often flooded in the winter, and then the church appeared to float mysteriously on sheets of floodwater, reflected in the dark-bright surface on calm days, blustered and beaten by howling winds and spray on stormy ones. Philip made his way from tuft to tuft of the marsh grass, for it was sodden underfoot and water welled up between tussocks. When he got to the church, he looked around at the endless sky, the flat horizon, the apparently endless sheep-studded meadows, and felt peaceful. He didn’t think exactly in language. He noticed things. The dabbing movement of a duck. The awkwardly beautiful, almost crippled look of the trailing legs of a flapping heron. Fish squirming in mud. Patterns made by the wind.

He sat for a long time on a stone in the churchyard, not even thinking. Time was so slow, there was no reason ever to stand up, or to move on.

A figure appeared on the Fairfield path, at the limit of vision. A woman in silhouette, in a skirt, with her hair bound in a scarf, and what looked like a small suitcase in her hand. She stopped to lean on a gate, and then walked a little way, and then sank to the ground, like a kind of hummock, and stayed down. Philip stood up, and set off across the marsh, feeling that this other person, who now shared the emptiness with him, was both an intruder and perhaps in need of help.

It took him some time to reach her. During his striding, leaping, occasionally bogged approach, she did not stir.

She appeared to have fainted or died. She had crumpled quite compact, her body in a ball, her face on her outstretched hand, the cardboard suitcase on the wet dust, within reach. Philip knelt down. He did not want her to be dead. He took her shoulder, and turned her face slightly towards him. The face was grimy, the lips slightly cracked, the eyes closed. Her nostrils and lips trembled: she was breathing. A breeze tugged at the edges of her gipsy-scarf, which was more animated than she was. She was wearing a felted coat, bunched over a grey skirt. Her ankles were swollen, and her shoes cracked and dusty. She had walked a long way.

Philip squatted beside her amongst the wayside grass, and took her hand, which seemed the politest thing to do. He bent over, and said in her ear, gently,

“Can I help?” and then, “How do you feel?”

She trembled a little and stirred, and opened her eyes, briefly, staring out past Philip’s occluded head at the sunlight. What she said, however, was his name.

“Philip Warren.”

Philip stiffened.

“I’m looking for Philip Warren,” she said. “I keep getting lost.”

Philip pushed back the scarf and the hair from her face, rearranged her features in his mind’s eye and saw she