you - how d'you know I haven't? - and are you going to
tell me I'm wrong?' Then, suddenly, her tone lightened. 'Anyway,
who did it? Come on, Alan, who did it? Who did it?
Who?'
She stamped her foot, and a moment later caught my two
hands, swinging herself round like an eight-year-old in a
playground and singing, 'Was it nice? Was it nice? Tell me,
Alan, was it nice?'
I gave up. Evidently there were two worlds - hers and
another. But which Pretender is and which is King, God
bless us all When
we were indoors again she said, 'Alan, are you going
back to the shop?'
'M'm-h'm. I must. It's Saturday afternoon.'
'Then I'll come too. Never mind those glasses and things.
Spater genugt.'
Her suitcase was still in the hall and out of it she took a
cardboard shoe-box tied with string.
'Look after that till I come down; and you're absolutely
not to open it!'
There were several customers in the shop and Mrs Taswell
and Deirdre were both serving. Kathe, having spoken
briefly but warmly to each of them, led the way down the
glass passage to the office and put the shoe-box on my desk.
'This is what I really bought at the Faringdon sale, Alan.
As I said then, I may have been silly, but I do hope not.
You're going to tell me now.'
'China?'
'Porcelain.'
I cut the string, took off the lid and removed two folded
layers of tissue paper. For a few moments I remained looking
dubiously at the rather insignificant porcelain figure
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bedded in cotton-wool below. Then, suddenly - just as they
say in books - my jaw fell open and I caught my breath.
'Kathe, what is this? Do you know? Have you found out
already? Have you consulted anybody?'
'No, darling, I haven't shown it to anybody. I tell you, I
just thought it looked nice, and worth more than twenty
pounds. I was hoping it might be Chelsea. I saw it the day
before the sale, lying in one of those old saucepans - very
dirty, too - so I just put the lid back on and decided to buy
it without saying anything to anybody. Oh dear, surely I
haven't wasted all that money, have I? I mean, it is porcelain
and it's undamaged, and unless I'm quite wrong at least it's
eighteenth-century English, isn't it?'
'Yes, it's all that. But - but - oh, God, I'm afraid to say
what I think it is! It must be a forgery.'
'But, darling, why would a forgery be stuffed into an old
saucepan in a job lot?'
'I don't know. But it simply can't be what I think it is."
Kathe, standing beside my chair, put one ringer on the
soft glaze and rubbed it gently.
'Why, what do you think it is, then?'
As though the Eumenides might be somewhere about
with a hammer, I paused for a few moments, dropped my
voice and said 'The Girl in a Swing'.
'The girl in a swing? Alan, I'm lost. Explain. But come on,
take her out first and let's look at her properly.'
I took the figure out and stood it on the desk. It was about
six inches high and represented a girl in a round-skirted, lowcut
dress. She was half-smiling with a rather enigmatic, teasing
expression and leaning sideways in a swing, her arms
raised to the ropes, which hung inward from two extremely
improbable tree-trunks covered with great, serrated leaves
as big as her own head. From these also projected several
porcelain spouts or nozzles, obviously intended to hold the
stems of flowers. The upper side of the base was plain but
incised (and as I recognized these my breath came hard)
with curious crescent marks, rather as though someone had
pressed his finger-nail repeatedly into the soft paste before
firing. The glaze was glassy and unusually close-fitting. But
274
what startled me more than anything else was that the
piece was enamelled - the bodice blue, the skirt sprigged
with flowers and with a kind of tiny trefoil motif in pink.
The girl's hair was yellow and the bows on her shoes the
same green as the leaves by which she was surrounded.
I sat in silence, trying to collect my thoughts.
'Alan,' said Kathe, 'I'm asking you to tell me. What is the
Girl in a Swing?'
'Well,' I answered rather slowly, picking my words, 'let's
pretend for a moment that that figure - well, that it isn't
there at all. The Girl in a Swing, as she's called, is one of a
number of porcelain toys and ornaments made in London
some time during the early seventeen-fifties. Only two figures
of the girl herself are known to exist, though altogether,
something like seventy or eighty of the pieces have been
identified. One of the girls is in the Victoria and Albert and
the other's in the Fine Arts Museum at Boston, Massachusetts.
The thing about the girl is that she's a riddle - an
enigma. Within living memory it was generally accepted
that she was Chelsea - from the Sprimont factory - until
during the 'thirties someone proved that she couldn't be,
because of the impossibly high proportion of lead oxide in
the paste. She had no factory-mark, but she and most of the
other pieces are more-or-Iess unarguably the work of a single
modeller. Since she's obviously London style but neither
Chelsea nor Bow, she can only have come from some other
London factory. No one has ever been able to discover where
that factory was, how it started or who ran it.'
'You mean they really have no idea at all?'
'Well, they have up to a point. The theory is that some
time about seventeen forty-nine or fifty, some of the potters
working for Sprimont's Chelsea factory decided they could
do better on their own and left to have a go. It's always been
supposed that they must have set up somewhere else in
Chelsea. We know they went bust in 1754, because Sprimont
bought up their stock and sold it. He may have bought the
moulds and master-models too, but if he did they were never
used again. And that's all I can remember, without going off
and looking it up.'
275
'So a third Girl in a Swing would be important?'
Til say she would! But besides that, the two figures in
Boston and the V. & A. aren't enamelled - they're just plain
white. Only a minority of the identified Girl-in-a-Swing
factory figures are enamelled. Two-thirds of them are plain.
Not only is that girl on the desk enamelled, but as far as I
can remember her colours aren't characteristic either of
Chelsea or of Girl-in-a-Swing factory stuff at all. But I'll have
to check that too.'
'Do you think she's valuable?'
'If she's not a forgery - and I must agree with you that
I don't see how she can be - extremely: both for herself
and for the new light she may throw on the whole problem.'
'But - but would any ordinary person care a pfennig about
any of this? I mean, I didn't. I just thought she was probably
eighteenth-cent
ury porcelain and worth bidding twenty
pounds for.'
'No ordinary person would think more than that, if as
much. But that's neither here nor there. If she were proved
to be genuine, the V. & A., the English Ceramic Circle, Morgan
Steinberg and several hundred other people on both sides
of the Atlantic would go through the roof, nothing less.'
Kathe, absorbing this, said nothing for a little while. Then
she asked, 'Alan, do you know what I wished in the eye of
the White Horse last Monday?'
'You know I don't.'
'I wished that I could find something of great value at the
sale and buy it on my own.'
We stared at one another. At last I said, 'Well, we'd better
tackle this slowly, hadn't we? We'll take her home with us
to-night and on Monday I'll get in touch with Mallet, the
expert at the V. & A.'
I picked the figure up in both hands and turned it sideways
to put it back in the box. In doing so I caught sight of
a mark on the under-side of the base and held it up to the
light. It was a crude incision reading 'John Fry'.
'Oh, good grief!' I said. 'Is this witchcraft, or what?'
'What is it? It doesn't mean she's not real, does it?5
Tm beginning to wonder what is real. John Fry was a chap
276
who's known to have been living near the Bow factory in the
early seventeen-fifties. It's never actually been proved that
he was in the porcelain racket, but it's generally supposed
that he must have been some relation of Thomas Frye, the
proprietor of the Bow factory.'
'Not the Chelsea factory?'
'No. So if she's real, it'll suggest fairly strongly that the
Girl-in-a-Swing factory wasn't in Chelsea at all - that it was
related not to Chelsea but to Bow. Darling, I simply can't
get all this together. I'm lost in it - I'm completely confused.'
'Well, I'd better make some tea. That's the proper British
thing to do, isn't it?'
21
THE evening came out warm and sunny. Kathe, having
changed into a peasant blouse and blue skirt, cleared up the
party while I pruned and tied the dahlias and gave them a
good soaking with the hose. Already a bud on one of the King
Alberts was on the point of blooming. It was high summer,
I reflected, or pretty well. Whatever might come of all this,
one way or the other, thank God there would always be the
blessed continuum of the seasons - lupins, dahlias, chrysanthemums:
peas, runner beans, celery. Law, say the
gardeners, is the sun.
Nevertheless, excitement was burning steadily away inside
me; so strongly, indeed, that I even forgot to ask Kathe
for her opinion of Gerald Kingsford. I thought of Lord
Carnarvon in his green grass grave, up on the southern skyline
on Beacon Hill. 'Can you see anything, Carter?' 'Yes wonderful
things!' Kathe's discovery might not set the world
on fire like Tutankhamen's Tomb, but it would set the
ceramic world on fire all right, no danger. I added a few
fresh ties to the purple clematis on the trellis and went
indoors to find Kathe just finished.
'You know, I feel the need to talk to some bloke or other
about this, in confidence, off the record and all that.'
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'Joe Matthewson?'
'No, he wouldn't do. Porcelain's only a side-line to him.
I'd like to ring up someone totally committed, hard-headed
and knowledgeable. Geoffrey Godden, Reginald Haggar someone
like that.'
'But what could they say, Alan? "Seeing's believing?"
Where would that get you?'
'Well, not far, I agree: and certainly they couldn't say
more at this stage.'
'I wonder you don't tell Tony. After all, you only want
someone to share the excitement and suspense. The experts
will be next week.'
'You're dead right, as usual. Let's ring him up and see if
he'll come out for a pint. It's your discovery, you miraculous
girl, not mine. Don't you feel some suspense, too?'
'Vielleicht.' She hung up a tea-towel to dry. 'Yes, of course
I do, darling, but a woman can sort of hand it over to a
man and carry on underneath, you know? And I'm a very
irresponsible woman.'
"You're a continuum, too, aren't you? What a splendid
thought!'
'Well, I've been called a lot of things at different times, but
never that.'
'And in Ausonian land, Men called him Mulciber.'
'Did they now? Who was he really?"
'Satan. This angel, who is now become a devil, is my particular
friend. We often read the Bible together. Come on,
let's ring Tony.'
As luck would have it, Tony had just finished his sermon
and was perfectly agreeable to being asked out for the second
time that day.
'But look, Alan, I've got to go and see a bloke out at
Stockcross first. It won't take long. Suppose I come on to the
'Halfway' and meet you both there in - what? - an hour and
a half from now?'
We had a couple of pints in the Halfway and then strolled
down to the Kennet, spangling and glittering in cool evening
solitude by the plank bridge at the end of the little lane. I
caught a glimpse of a kingfisher in the willows, but it darted
278
away before I could point it out to Kathe and Tony. We
crossed the bridge and sat on the open grass in the light of
the sunset.
For some time no one spoke, until at length Tony asked,
'Are you going to sell it?'
'Oh, yes. I mean, complete security - financial stability why
be ashamed of wanting that? And - well - our children
and so on.'
'It'll really fetch all that much?'
'Well, I keep crossing my fingers every time I open
my mouth, but if there's no catch in it, it'll fetch an awful
lot.'
'Come on, Tony,' said Kathe, 'warn us about the evils of
riches.'
'Not me. Dr Johnson was dead right. Riches put it in a
man's power to do more good. I just hope you won't be
moving away from here or anything like that.'
'We shan't, I can assure you.'
'I don't want to leave Bull Banks, ever,' said Kathe, 'or the
shop or the downs or the Kennet. This is Seligkeitl Alan, is
that a trout rising over there, by those Erlen - what do you
call them - alders? I just want to hide myself here for ever,
and be safe and happy.'
'Hide? What from?' asked Tony.
'Oh, things that frighten me. It's dark outside, isn't it?
I'm afraid of the dark.'
'That reminds me of a story of Jack Cain's,' I said. 'He told
me that when he was out in Burma during the war, apparently
they were on church parade and some rather emotional
padre was haranguing them. And this padre said, "You
fellows don't have to be afraid of anything! Christ is everywhere
- He's with you at home and abroad, in darkness and
light. He's never absent." And the corporal next to Jack
muttered, "Well, I 'ope 'e ain't 'angin' around whe
n I'm
shaggin' my missus." '
'I wouldn't mind if He was,' said Kathe. 'Might teach
Him a thing or two.'
'I doubt it,' said Tony. 'Christ didn't grow up a Galilean
peasant for nothing.'
279
'Well, I wasn't just making fun, Tony, I assure you. I
admire Christ. I just wish I could have talked to Him a bit
before He started, that's all.'
Tony burst out laughing. 'Why, what would you have
said ?'
'Well, He wanted people to be kind and generous to everybody,
good and bad alike, didn't He? - a sort of sacred ach,
was ist "Grossmut", Alan?'
'Well, "magnanimity", I suppose.'
'Danke. A sort of sacred magnanimity. But they can do
that just as much as they feel themselves fulfilled and blest
and satisfied, and they have to feel it in their bodies as well
as their minds. People live in bodies, you know. They can't
feel kind and merciful if they're not loving properly with
their bodies. They've got nothing to give away then. It's
lovers who can afford to feel generous.'
'I think perhaps Christ knew that all right,' said Tony
rather defensively.
'But He didn't say it, Tony! He didn't say it!' cried Kathe
passionately. 'He taught that spiritual love was a difficult
business, and so it is. But He didn't say physical love was
too - that's supposed to be easy, just - well, the satisfaction
of an appetite, like eating. The idea of skilful, unselfish
physical love's never been tied up with Christianity at all:
and that's why so many people find it difficult to love their
fellow men and women - because that particular staircase
wasn't built into the house to begin with. They're not taught
to attach any religious importance to it. I was looking at your
Prayer Book the other day. There's not a word about it in
the marriage service - and the German book's no better, you
can take it from me.'
'Is that why you wouldn't-' I began; but Tony interrupted
me.
'Do you think the ancient world's pagan cults were any
better in that respect, then?'
Tm certain they were.'
'But surely," I said, 'it's not Christ's own ideas that are in
such marked contrast to pagan fertility cults as the contemporary
Jewish ideals of monogamy and chastity which
280
formed part of the general base from which He took off? I
always reckon, myself, that His great innovation was the
notion of compassion. I'm trying to recall who wrote a crack
I remember reading somewhere or other - "From Jesus we get
pity. From the Greeks we get almost everything else." All the
same, Tony, you must admit Kathe's got a point. There's a
lot that's very attractive about the ancient world's great
fertility goddess - Aphrodite, Ashtaroth, Atargatis, whatever
you like to call her - with all her marvellous attributes the
water and the moon, and hares and sparrows and lime
trees and so on. It's very numinous and beautiful.'
'I don't deny it for a moment,' said Tony, 'but Jesus and
His idea of pity have had such an effect on the western world
during the last two thousand years that I doubt whether any
of the goddess's cults that we know about would be
tolerated if they were revived now. People stress their sexuality
because that's attractive, naturally. But either they
don't know about their callousness and cruelty, or else they
conveniently forget it: the bridegroom-victim and the sacred
drownings and the infanticide and all the rest of it. And I'd
just hate to have got in her beautiful way, wouldn't you?
If you were a nuisance she'd have no pity at all.'
'But, Tony, you know people thought these things represented
a particular aspect of divinity and the cosmos, like
the darkness of Kali. Go on, tell Kathe that story you told
me, about the Indian chap who saw Kali come up out of the
river.'
'Oh, Sri Ramakrishna?'
'Who on earth was he?' asked Kathe.
'Ramakrishna was a nineteenth-century Hindu mystic in
Calcutta, a priest of the Universal Mother goddess. The
story goes that one day, when he was meditating, he saw
a beautiful, pregnant girl come up out of the Ganges. He
watched her, and she gave birth to a child, there on the
bank, and nursed it. Then, soon afterwards, she changed into
a frightful witch, gnawed the child and swallowed it and disappeared
back into the river. He believed that what he'd
seen had been a profound and rarely vouchsafed vision of
Kali.'
281
'Well, there you are,' I said. 'I'm being devil's advocate
and I say that was a valid manifestation of divinity.'