There is more power in this image, but it is still on condition of being virginal and moony, reflected if pulling tides.

  In Still Life the central figure turned out to be Vincent Van Gogh, rather to my surprise, a whole-hearted sun-driven, light-driven maker (but who also had problems about sexuality and work.) Like Cassandra he was mad with too much light, but he got something done, he made something. In Possession, where there are two poets, both of whom can and do write, and can and do feel sexual passion, even if tragically, the sun becomes quietly female for both of them. This is because I had noticed – to repay debts – that the sun is female in Tolkien, and this made me remember that in my earliest and first-loved book, Asgard and the Gods, the Sun Chariot is driven across the sky by a goddess. In Norse and in German the sun is female. My poets both quietly accepted the personification, destroying the old Nous-Hyle creation myths without even shouting about it.

  In writing this introduction to a thirty-year-old book, I have realised something else I have never thought out before. The visual image that always went with the idea of ‘The Shadow of the Sun’ was that of Samuel Palmer’s Cornfield with the Evening Star – an image I now associate with Van Gogh’s Reaper, working his way through a seething furnace of light and white-gold corn. The Palmer is nocturnal, warm but bright, lit by a reflected moonlight which nevertheless contains the partial sickle within the possibility of a complete circle of light. I see suddenly that images of harvest are also an intricate part of my private-universal imagery. When I was writing The Shadow of the Sun I read a wonderful article in the Manchester Guardian about the turbulences in ripe corn, and incorporated it into Henry Severell’s vision of harvest fields, including several words I’d only learned from there, such as the ‘awn’ of the barley (which caused a farmer my mother knew to say he liked the book, the language was accurate, it was clear I knew about agriculture.) I think I was also partially remembering the magical scene in The Rainbow where Will and Anna meet in moonlit cornfields, which are a kind of creative paradox. For the ripeness and the growth of the corn, the harvest, are brought about by the heat and light of the sun, and yet here they are seen in this milder, darker, colder light, which I think I did take, at that time, for an image of women’s creativity. I wanted my harvest, both in my life and in my work, and I was afraid that my light was a lesser one, a cold one, that could only mildly illuminate, however hauntingly. But I did go on from there, to Queen Elizabeth as Corn Goddess, to Van Gogh’s Death the Reaper working happily, to a poem in Possession by Randolph Henry Ash about the Norse Creation myth, in which the light that gives life to the first man and woman, Ask and Embla, is a female sun. And in his poetry too Ash accepts that the ‘golden apples’ of the underworld dark goddess Persephone, are, according to Vico, the corn that springs from the furrow. It is interesting to reflect, looking back at those first suns, moons and corn how instinctively they were found, how long, although I had all the material for doing so, they took to understand and work out.

  A.S. Byatt

  1991

  PART ONE

  1

  The house was in waiting; low, and still, and grey, with clean curtains in the long windows, and a fresh line of white across the edge of the steps. They had repainted the door in the spring, a soft colour, between blue and grey, which seemed to retreat coolly before the sparkle of the wide lawns under the sun. It was very hot; the air hung, rising and shivering in little fountains over the hedges and the gateposts, snaking in busy rivers across the lawns, and curving round past the steps into the shadows, where it suddenly became invisible again. The roses, massed tidily in beds upon and around the lawns, were damp with it, the petals weighed softly against each other where yesterday they had been crisp, standing out as though they were sugared. But the grass, greener here than at the back of the house where it was less shadowed, was violent; it thrust itself into the sun in neat metallic ranks, its blades shorn away and the fine planes of it catching the light, throwing it about on the lawn like crossed threads of spun glass, silver, green and white. There were no daisies; one of their minor tidinesses was this expanse of lawn, formal in front of the formal house. At the back, where some nineteenth-century owner had added an untidy terrace with a verandah, and where they played croquet or badminton all summer, there were hundreds of daisies and a thriving patch of plantains. But it was here at the front, here in the unbroken order of house and garden and drive, that the waiting was apparent – a certain tension in the placidity, the stiffening of the formation before the attack. It was that time between lunch and tea, when everything is very still, and heavy enough to be sleepy; but here, outside in the silence, the brilliance of the sun gave an extra sharpness, an extra clarity to everything, made it all so definite that it had the brittle quality of a mirage, and it was somehow only too easy to feel, given the transitory lucidity of English sunshine, that it might shatter like a mirage, might flake away and dissolve under pressure, into something grey and ordinary and dispersed.

  In the hall, inside, Caroline Severell stood over a white bowl of flowers, and pushed delicately at the blue spike of the tallest delphinium. Her mind ran wordlessly over her preparations; the little tablets of soap, the clean towels, the lavender bags in the drawers, the carafe, the bowl of roses in the spare room followed each other, rapid little pictures across her inner eye. She had collected and disposed of all the books which her husband had scattered across the drawing room, along the landings, in the bathroom. It was only a matter of time until he discovered their loss, and reclaimed them to pile them up again in some more awkward place, but by then the arrival at least would be over. She had removed her daughter’s riding crop and boots from the kitchen table, a pile of her dirty underwear from the bathroom floor, two filthy Aertex shirts from the banisters where they were hanging – this with a certain distaste – and her son’s electric railway from under the dining table with some compunction – she saw, after all, that it was reasonable for him to need space to play with it – he made so little mess for a boy of his age – but visitors were visitors, and the trains could come out again later. The dinner was prepared, the tea-tray was set, and the kettle was filled and ready on the stove. Caroline thought coolly that that was all; she gave a final organizing twitch to the stems of the flowers, already bitten securely by the wire mesh in the bowl, and untied the strings of her apron. It had all been managed very neatly.

  She looked at her watch. Three ten. Time was slipping away. There was an unwritten rule that her husband was never to be disturbed when he was in his study, which Caroline took pride in keeping, but she was aware without bothering to wonder how, that he had entirely forgotten that he had promised to fetch the visitors from the station, which was some miles away. She went to hang her apron in the kitchen, to give him time, to make quite certain, and then came back through the house and knocked firmly on the study door.

  There was no reply, but she had not expected one. She waited a moment for politeness’ sake, and then walked in.

  The study, for a study, was very large, and full of light, which flooded in through a large french window which opened onto the terrace at the back. It had nothing of the dark leather and silver and tobacco comfort of the gentleman’s study, no steel cabinets, on the other hand, no deliberate austerity, not even the threadbare untidiness of the don’s room, with paper everywhere, and stones collected on odd beaches and brought home because they were interesting. If it had any character, it was that of the outgrown schoolroom – books, on shelves, all round the walls, not glassed in, a huge, square ugly desk in light wood, a wooden armchair, and a desk chair. There was a typewriter on the desk, and a jug of flowers, arranged by Caroline, on one of the book-cases. There was a large fireplace, and a sage green carpet, slightly silky, and nothing else remarkable but space – clear, uninhabited, sunlit space. The study was the centre of the house, and round what went on in it everything else was ordered – by Caroline, because she had decided that this was how her life should be, by the children because they had never supposed that it could be otherwise, by friends and visitors because they were almost always in awe of the idea of Henry Severell, and assumed that his needs must be different from and more pressing than those of others, a feeling which Caroline did her best to encourage. Whether Henry himself was aware of all the protecting and arranging that went on, whether he expected it or took it for granted or never noticed it at all, it was difficult to tell: he spent most of his time, most of the year, closed in the study, and what he did there was his own business. He was not a communicative man.

  Caroline looked automatically for him where he always was, at his desk under the window, and felt a tiny flicker of apprehension when she located him, standing in the opposite corner, doing nothing, and looking as though he had been doing nothing for some time. He looked down on her, and blinked, but did not offer to say anything. Caroline looked back at the desk again, and saw that it was unusually littered – with books, with great piles of frayed manuscript, with boxfiles dusty and bulging with notes. She went across, and turned over one or two of the books. Bishop Berkeley’s Siris, Boehme, Coleridge’s Notebooks, Aids to Reflection, Henry More’s Conjectura Cabbalistica, Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal. Then she turned back to Henry, and could not keep back the reproach, although she knew it would do no good.

  ‘Did you have to start on all this again just now? Just when Oliver will be here?’

  ‘Oliver?’ Henry asked flatly, without showing any real interest, and without answering Caroline’s question. He came back to the desk, rearranged the books Caroline had disturbed, and began to turn his pages of manuscript, smiling intently over them, but standing restlessly, Caroline noticed uneasily, as though at any moment he might plunge into the garden and disappear. She said with patience, ‘You knew they had been asked for this week. I told you. You agreed that Margaret didn’t look well. You promised to fetch them from the station this afternoon.’

  ‘Did I?’ said Henry, still turning papers, and smiling.

  ‘They will be here in half an hour. You will have to hurry to be at the station in time.’

  ‘Can’t Anna go?’

  ‘They won’t want to see Anna,’ Caroline explained as though this was self-evident. She was finding it difficult to concentrate on getting Henry to the station – she could not help being preoccupied by the unexpected recurrence of Coleridge and Wordsworth, and all that this entailed, just when it was most awkward. She examined her husband for any further signs of over-excitement, or wildness – he was now leaning over the desk and pencilling rapid notes on one of the odd pieces of scrap paper which were scattered there – and thought, as she always thought, how splendid he was, and then that she must try to keep it to Coleridge in the study, whatever happened, whilst the Cannings were there, and that Henry must be made to come to meals, and that this would all be very difficult. Henry became aware of her scrutiny at last, and swung away to the window, where he stood, looking out, his back to her. This was worse. She said miserably, ‘Did something go wrong with the novel, then? It seemed to be going so well. I mean, you were working so hard. I thought it was nearly finished. I told Oliver –’

  ‘I wish,’ said Henry, surprisingly fiercely, ‘that you – that people – wouldn’t tell Oliver anything. He pries, he nibbles, he draws conclusions, he defines, on scraps of information no one with any real tact would try to make anything out of. He will ask questions all the time. I have to make an effort to ignore him. I can’t think what he was invited for.’

  ‘He has been very useful to you.’

  ‘I could do without him.’

  ‘And he is really quite devoted to you. You must admit that. He would do anything for you. You said once that he saw what you were getting at better than anyone. Didn’t you? And then, Margaret looked so ill, and I’m sure bringing them here is the only way to make him give her a holiday this summer – he drives himself so hard, he doesn’t notice what she needs.’ Caroline, a sacrificially devoted wife herself, explained this perfectly practically without any hint of censure. Margaret must look after herself; men’s work came first, but if it was possible to help her, she would. Henry looked put out. He said vaguely, ‘I forgot, that’s all. I’m very busy. And I do wish that man would learn not to ask questions.’

  ‘It’s only because he’s so interested.’

  ‘I should get on better if he kept quiet. He should have the sense to see that. And just at the moment –’ His gaze wandered back to the papers on his desk. ‘Just at the moment I want to get this in order.’ He always said that, too. ‘I might finish it this time – it’s surprising how exhilarating it is to do a little purely intellectual work, when one’s been writing for some time – lots of fresh air and sunshine. And I’m really getting somewhere.’

  Caroline was genuinely distressed now. She said unwisely, ‘But you never do get anywhere. You just make more and more notes. And then – oh well, you know as well as I do what happens then. It’s been years, now –’

  ‘It needs years –’

  ‘And just at the moment it really will be difficult if you go off into one of these – moods – you must see that. With Oliver here – who only comes to see you. Can’t you manage to finish the novel first?’

  ‘I’ll finish that,’ Henry said, obviously retreating from the conversation entirely, and no longer ready to explain himself or his intentions. ‘That’s all right. That can wait, it’ll do it good.’ He repeated, distantly, patiently, ‘I’ve just seen the way to get this in order,’ and sat down at the desk, sifting what looked like the most recent set of notes, and dismissing the whole issue entirely. Caroline considered him with exasperation – when he was writing the novels she would guard him from any disturbance, would alter meals, would entertain and placate people like Oliver Canning, who were useful, as well as deserving, Caroline thought, a real gratitude for their devotion to Henry. But she had been dubious some years ago when he had begun on his Analysis of the English Romantic Movement and was now entirely sceptical: it was not his kind of work, it never seemed to be any nearer completion, he was unsettled and difficult when occupied with it – less distant and more aggressive than when he was writing novels – and it was, moreover, almost always only a prelude to fits of really strange behaviour which she feared because they were quite out of her range. And Henry, normally a mild man, was surprisingly touchy about the Analysis – any criticism of it made him angry to the point of rudeness. And Oliver Canning – in Caroline’s opinion, rightly – would be bound to criticize. She looked at her watch again, and then at Henry, and the lapse of time over the argument made her momentarily panic-stricken about her ability to deal with any of this.

  ‘Please, Henry, at least don’t miss the train. They rely on being met: I told them you were coming: it’s important to them, whatever you think.’

  Surprisingly, he gave in. He stood up, smiled with a sudden huge gentleness, and looked about for his jacket, which she found hastily, and helped him into, handing him the car-keys from the desk.

  ‘There’s just time, if you hurry. Besides, it’s almost certain to be late. It’s very good of you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Henry, still warmly. He added, ‘If that man treats me again with the proprietary air of a don with a good undergraduate who’s produced a first-class paper entirely through his help and advice, I shall tip him out on the side of the road and leave him there. No, don’t worry, I’ll get there. I’ll be back before you’ve had time to worry. And then you can take over and make them feel at home and I’ll get back to work. That’s fair.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Caroline, more hopefully. He seemed at least willing now, and thoroughly aware of what was going on. Perhaps it would be all right, after all. Perhaps they could last the fortnight. Perhaps Coleridge, and whatever he did to Henry could be kept at bay. She felt confident enough to begin to plan, tentatively, how it could be done, considering Henry as though he was a chess piece, and so intent on her problem that she did not catch the amusement with which he noticed her look. It was not easy, in any case, to catch his precise expressions. The first impression of him was overwhelming – he was an enormous man, well over six feet tall, broad shouldered, with strong, wide hands, and a huge head, covered with a very thick, springing crop of prematurely white hair, which merged into an equally live, almost patriarchal beard. This had been grown originally to cover scars left by the war, but had the effect now of a deliberate flamboyance, of a pose, aesthetically entirely satisfactory, it had to be admitted, as the successful literary giant – if the idea of posing had not entailed the idea of fraud, which few people would have accused him of. He was successful, and he was generally considered to be one of the few living giants. He looked like a cross between God, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Blake’s Job, respectable, odd, and powerful all at once. But if all the hair made an immediate impact, it made it difficult to tell more about him. The mobile features seemed to retreat; his eyes, under the exuberant silver eyebrows, were pale and shy, retiring until they seemed almost empty; his mouth, hidden amongst fronds of hair, suggested gentleness, and very little else. He could smile with tremendous kindness from time to time, but there was a curious reticence about him, a lack of presence, a lack of openness, which caused people meeting him to feel obscurely cheated – an impression which they usually had strongly on a first meeting, and later dismissed as unreasonable, remembering it only intermittently.