The Forsyte Saga(335)

Ever your devoted father

Jolyon Forsyte.

Having finished his confession, Jolyon sat with a thin cheek on his hand, re-reading. There were things in it which hurt him so much, when he thought of Jon reading them, that he nearly tore the letter up. To speak of such things at all to a boy – his own boy – to speak to them in relation to his own wife and the boy’s own mother, seemed dreadful to the reticence of his Forsyte soul. And yet without speaking of them how make Jon understand the reality, the deep cleavage, the ineffaceable scar? Without them, how justify this stifling of the boy’s love? He might just as well not write at all!

He folded the confession, and put it in his pocket. It was – thank Heaven! – Saturday; he had till Sunday evening to think it over; for even if posted now it could not reach Jon till Monday. He felt a curious relief at this delay, and at the fact that, whether sent or not, it was written.

In the rose garden, which had taken the place of the old fernery, he could see Iren snipping and pruninge, with a little basket on her arm. She was never idle, it seemed to him, and he envied her now that he himself was idle nearly all his time. He went down to her. She held up a stained glove and smiled. A piece of lace tied under her chin concealed her hair, and her oval face with its still dark brows looked very young.

‘The green fly are awful this year, and yet it’s cold. You look tired, Jolyon.’

Jolyon took the confession from his pocket. ‘I’ve been writing this. I think you ought to see it.’

‘To Jon?’ Her whole facead changed in that instant, becomin hg almost haggard.

‘Yes; the murder’s out.’

He gave it to her, and walked away among the roses. Presently, seeing that she had finished reading and was standing quite still with the sheets of the letter against her skirt, he came back to her.

‘Well?’

‘It’s wonderfully put. I don’t see how it could be put better. Thank you, dear.’

‘Is there anything you would like left out?’

She shook her head.

‘No! he must know all, if he’s to understand.’

‘That’s what I thought, but – I hate it!’

He had the feeling that he hated it more than she – to him sex was so much easier to mention between man and woman than between man and man; and she had always been more natural and frank, not deeply secretive like his Forsyte self.

‘I wonder if he will understand, even now, Jolyon? He’s so young; and he shrinks from the physical.’

‘He gets that shrinking from my father, he was a fastidious as a girl in all such matters. Would it be better to rewrite the whole thing, and just say you hated Soames?’

Irene shook her head.

‘Hate’s only a word. It conveys nothing. No, better as it is.’

‘Very well. It shall go tomorrow.’

She raised her face to his, and in sight of the big house’s many creepered windows, he kissed her.





Chapter Two



CONFESSION





LATE that same afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair. Face down on his knee was La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque, and just before he fell asleep he had been thinking: ‘As a people shall we ever really like the French? Will they ever really like us!’ He himself had always liked the French, feeling at home with their wit, their taste, their cooking. Irene and he had paid many visits to France before the War, when Jon had been at his private school. His romance with her had begun in Paris – his last and most enduring romance. But the French – no Englishman could like them who could not see them in some sort with the detached aesthetic eye! And with that melancholy conclusion he had nodded off.

When he woke he saw Jon standing between him and the window. The boy had evidently come in from the garden and was waiting for him to wake. Jolyon smiled, still half asleep. How nice the chap looked – sensitive, affectionate, straight! Then his heart gave a nasty jump; and a quaking sensation overcame him. Jon! That confession! He controlled himself with an effort. ‘Why, Jon, where did you spring from?’

Jon bent over and kissed his forehead.

Only then he noticed the look on the boy’s face.

‘I came home to tell you something, Dad.’

With all his might Jolyon tried to get the better of the jumping, gurgling sensations within his chest.

‘Well, sit down, old man. Have you seen your mother?’

‘No.’ The boy’s flushed look gave place to pallor; he sat down on the arm of the old chair, as, in old days, Jolyon himself used to sit beside his own father, installed in its recesses. Right up to the time of the rupture in their relations he had been wont to perch there – had he now reached such a moment with his own son? All his life he had hated scenes like poison, avoided rows, gone on his own way quietly and let others go on theirs. But now–it seemed – at the very end of things, he had a scene before him more painful than any he had avoided. He drew a visor down over his emotion, and waited for his son to speak.