who was pouring tea. He was a little in awe of Florence, who was seventeen, two years younger than he was, one year younger than Pomona, and a good four years younger than Imogen, but seemed wiser and more assured than any of them. He thought Florence was beautiful, like an Italian painting of a saint. He thought she was “just right,” without analysing her dress, or the way she managed a tea-tray. Imogen said “Don’t mind Florence, she’s a friend,” and it was Geraint, not Florence, who blushed as their eyes met. He remembered Florence as he took in Pomona, bundling herself into his embrace, stroking his face. Her eyes were wet. Geraint said
“Have you been all right, Pommy? Are you missing us? Do you have plans?”
Seraphita came sleepily downstairs at this point, and was duly astonished to see her changed son, in his new linen jacket. She asked vaguely if Elsie had “seen to” him, and he said Elsie had. Elsie began, briskly, to clear up the salad plates. Seraphita sat majestically and smiled. Pomona said “Tell us about… tell us about…” but could not think what question to ask about a life of which she knew nothing.
“I came in an automobile,” said Gerry. “Mr. Wellwood sent the chauffeur to bring me here. He is very considerate to me.”
He was never going to be able to tell these two about bullion and loans, about telegrams and dust.
The holiday ticked on, in a sunlit haze. Geraint got in some good solitary walks across the Marsh, and some bicycle rides with Pomona. Elsie produced delicious dishes of fried sprats and dressed crab and potato salad with mustard. Herbert and Phoebe Methley called, and were given tea, and asked all the questions about life in the City which his family had not asked. He described the hurrying march of men over London Bridge, the hurly-burly in the Stock Exchange, the celebration of the Relief of Mafeking. Herbert Methley said it was generally believed that Money was soulless, but this was not so. Mammon was a great spiritual power, and perturbed both angels and demons. Mammon was conducting this horrific killing in the Veld. Gold had made the war, and gold kept it in motion. This disquisition annoyed Geraint. He knew gold was a kind of living force, but the personification weakened and sentimentalised it, which he sensed, without being able to put it precisely into words. He saw gold in his mind’s eye, bright ingots, a hot flood from a crucible. He wanted no moth-eaten demon. Pomona said “We had no idea it was all so exciting. We thought it was dull and—and mechanical.” So it is, said Geraint. Dull, mechanical and exciting. Elsie whisked past with fresh scones she had made, and a pot of excellent gooseberry jam.
He liked breathing the air of the Marsh, he felt stronger in his body; but he was not unhappy when the time came to leave. Before that, he had his little talk with Elsie. He asked her to step into the orchard, he wanted to talk to her. They paced between the trees. “Do you need anything?” asked Geraint. “You seem to perform small miracles with loaves and fishes—I feel I do need to ask, have you enough—enough money— to manage? My mother is not practical.”
Elsie surprised him. She sat down on a grassy hump and stretched out her legs. She took off her bulky sandals.
“Look at my feet,” she said. Her feet were not pretty. They were pinched and bruised, they had corns and lumps, they bled a little. She said, dry and intense,
“I want shoes of my own. I can’t get about and do everything I do with these feet. I get hand-downs from Frank Mallett, none of them fit, I have thin feet. Look at them, Mr. Fludd. Look at them. They are old woman’s feet. They are being smashed into old woman’s feet. I shall truly be more use with shoes of my own.”
“I have to ask—forgive me—are you being paid?”
“I don’t see why you need to be forgiven, and I think you know the answer. No, I am not paid, I get board and lodging and hand-downs. I don’t complain, I know money is tight, but I do need shoes.”
“You don’t—intend to leave, to go elsewhere?”
“Listen. I always swore I would never, never go into Service, whatever I had to do. I would have stayed in the Potteries and decorated the ware, it would have been a trade I would have had. Like my mam, who is dead. I came to look for Philip, when she died, because she wanted me to. I love Philip, Mr. Fludd, he’s all I love. And I know he’s right and has always been right—he’s got a real gift, and he’s driven. This is his dream-world, because your father is a great master. He is learning what he might never have hoped to learn. I don’t think he’s more than half pleased I’m here—he’d got away, into another place, and I remind him of what he’d left. But as long as I make things here comfortable for everyone, Philip is free—he can make pots, he can invent, he can work. I never meant to be a housekeeper. I had my own little ambitions. I can’t bear the fecklessness here—forgive me, that’s rude—I do enjoy tweaking things, mending and making do, and brightening a bit.”
She was working herself up. She spoke rapidly, drily, furiously. She said
“And I feel a fool in all this flowery cloth and embroidered bits and pieces, I’d like the Reverend Mallett to see me in ordinary respectable boring things, I’m not a puppet or an Aunt Sally. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t complain about that, I didn’t mean to. But, you know, Mr. Fludd, the saying is a true saying—my feet are killing me. I’m sorry. Now I’ll shut up. I am sorry.”
Geraint sat down on the grass beside her. To his own surprise, he took one of the hot feet in his hands and bent over it. “How much do shoes cost?”
“I don’t know. You must know that better than I could. You’ve got ordinary clothes now—handsome clothes, I should say—good shoes.”
His City shoes had cost a month’s wages. He looked after their glowing leather like his own skin, and they were indeed smoother than that, as it tended to erupt. Geraint Fludd had only recently had money of his own, earned by his own efforts, in his pockets, and he was what Elsie would have called “close,” very close with it. But he fetched out his purse now and counted four silver half-crowns into Elsie’s hand.
“This should buy some shoes for you. When I come back, I shall expect to see you striding about comfortably, and going on long walks.” He hesitated. He wanted to say that he would come with her, to choose the shoes. He was rearranging in his mind the little luxuries he would forfeit for the shoes and a magnanimous glow filled him at the thought of the fine toes wriggling comfortably in new leather. But there was something intimate, something improper, about going to a shoe shop with this young woman. Either he behaved as though she was—was a kind of vassal, of whom he was lord and master, or he behaved like an almost-lover, making gifts, which might expect a return. He said, a little stiffly,
“I do know how much more you do for my family than you need, or they—we—really appreciate. I do know.”
Elsie smiled ruefully. She would have liked someone to be with her, on her momentous shoe-shop visit. Maybe she should wait for Philip. But her feet were killing her.
Geraint went back to Vetchey Manor in the dog cart, and in a day or two Elsie walked across the Marsh, and up the hill into Rye. There were two or three boot and shoe shops, in the window of one of which—Jas. Plaskett, estd. 1872—was the red leather belt with the arrow clasp. Elsie stood on the cobbles, staring into the window, calculating. She did not want her first pair of shoes to be workingwomen’s clodhopping boots and she knew, with fatal realism, that if she bought herself any shoes remotely shapely, or almost dressy, she wouldn’t ever be able to bring herself to wear them, for what she
