The Children's Book Read Online Free PDF Page B

ever sleep, in such a roar of silence, how could he forgo a conscious moment of the bliss of solitude? He stretched arms and legs to all points of the compass and fell asleep almost immediately. He woke and slept, woke and slept, time after time before dawn, each time taking possession again of the dark and the silence.
    The next day, they prepared the Midsummer Party. Violet gave Philip a breakfast of eggs, toast and tea, and told him he was co-opted to make lanterns. The garden would be full of them. He was to go up to the schoolroom, where the lanterns were being made.
    The imposing staircase took an interesting turn as it went up. In an alcove, at the turning, standing on an oak coffin stool was a jar. It was a large earthenware vessel, that bellied out and curved in again, to a tall neck with a fine lip. The glaze was silver-gold, with veilings of aquamarine. The light flowed round the surface, like clouds reflected in water. It was a watery pot. There was a vertical rhythm of rising stems, water-weeds, and a dashing horizontal rhythm of irregular clouds of black-brown wriggling commas, which turned out, inspected closely, to be lifelike tadpoles with translucent tails. The jar had several asymmetric handles which seemed to grow out of it like roots in water, but turned out to have the sly faces and flickering tails of water-snakes, green-spotted gold. It rested on four dark green feet, which were coiled, scaled lizards. Or minor dragons, lying with closed eyes and resting snouts.
    This
was what he had come to look for. His fingers moved inside its contours on an imaginary wheel. Its form clothed his sense of the shape of his body. He stood stock still and stared.
    Olive Wellwood came up behind him and put an arm about his shoulder. She smelled of roses. Philip resisted shrugging. He disliked being touched. Especially at private times.
    “It’s an amazing pot, don’t you think? We chose it for the pretty tadpoles—they go with our idea of Todefright. The little ones love to stroke them.”
    Philip could not speak.
    “Benedict Fludd made it. He works in Dungeness. He’s invited to the party, but he probably won’t come. His wife will. She’s called Seraphita, though she was born Sarah-Jane. The boy’s Geraint, and the girls are Imogen—she must be about your age—and Pomona. Pomona’s Tom’s age and lucky enough to be as pretty as her name—so dangerous, don’t you think, giving romantic names to little scraps who may grow up as plain as doorposts. Pomona isn’t very appley—you’ll see—more a pale narcissus.”
    Philip was interested only in the potter. He managed to mutter that the pot was extraordinary.
    “He has religious fits, I’m told. They have to hide the pots, to prevent him smashing them. And he has anti-religious fits.”
    Philip made a strangled, noncommittal sound. Olive ruffled his hair. He didn’t flinch. She led him up to the schoolroom.
    “Schoolroom” to Philip meant a dark chapel annexe with long benches, and a heavy atmosphere of unwashed bodies, baffled thinking and prickling fear of the cane. Here, in a room full of light, with pimpernel chintz at the windows, everyone was at work in his or her own space. The girls wore bright aprons, like coloured butterflies, Dorothy butcher-blue, Phyllis deep rose, Hedda scarlet. Florian had a cowslip-yellow smock. The long, scrubbed table was covered with coloured papers, glue pots, paintbrushes, paintboxes, jars of water. Waste-paper baskets overflowed with crumpled, rejected efforts. Violet presided, helping with a snip here, a finger on a knot there.
    Tom made room for Philip to sit next to him. “No,” said Phyllis, “next to
me
.”
    Phyllis had hair the colour of butter, slick and shiny. Philip sat down next to her. She patted his arm, with a gesture that belonged to a child younger than she seemed to be. Or a gesture you might use to a pet, Philip thought unjustly. He remembered his sister Elsie, who had never had her own space