The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(13)

‘How is Mother?’

‘Looks well. I see nothing of her – she’s got her own mother down – they go gadding about.’

He never alluded to Madame Lamotte as Fleur’s grandmother – the less his daughter had to do with her French side, the better.

‘Oh!’ said Fleur. ‘There’s Ting and a cat!’ Ting-a-ling, out for a breath of air, and tethered by a lead in the hands of a maid, was snuffling horribly and trying to climb a railing whereon was perched a black cat, all hunch and eyes.

‘Give him to me, Ellen. Come with Mother, darling!’

Ting-a-ling came, indeed, but only because he couldn’t go, bristling and snuffling and turning his head back.

‘I like to see him natural,’ said Fleur.

‘Waste of money, a dog like that,’ Soames commented. ‘You should have had a bull-dog and let him sleep in the hall. No end of burglaries. Your aunt had her knocker stolen.’

‘I wouldn’t part with Ting for a hundred knockers.’

‘One of these days you’ll be having him stolen – fashionable breed.’

Fleur opened her front door. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘Bart’s here, already!’

A shiny hat was reposing on a marble coffer, present from Soames, intended to hold coats and discourage moth. Placing his hat alongside the other, Soames looked at them. They were too similar for words, tall, high, shiny, and with the same name inside. He had resumed the ‘tall hat’ habit after the failure of the general and coal strikes in 1921, his instinct having told him that revolution would be at a discount for some considerable period.

‘About this thing,’ he said, taking out the pink parcel, ‘I don’t know what you’ll do with it, but here it is.’

It was a curiously carved and coloured bit of opal in a ring of tiny brilliants.

‘Oh!’ Fleur cried: ‘What a delicious thing!’

‘Venus floating on the waves or something,’ murmured Soames. ‘Uncommon. You want a strong light on it.’

‘But it’s lovely. I shall put it on at once.’

Venus! If Dad had known! She put her arms round his neck to disguise her sense of à propos. Soames received the rub of her cheek against his own well-shaved face with his usual stillness. Why demonstrate when they were both aware that his affection was double hers?

‘Put it on then,’ he said, ‘and let’s see.’

Fleur pinned it at her neck before an old lacquered mirror. ‘It’s a jewel. Thank you, darling! Yes, your tie is straight. I like that white piping. You ought always to wear it with black. Now, come along!’ And she drew him into her Chinese room. It was empty.

‘Bart must be up with Michael, talking about his new book.’

‘Writing at his age?’ said Soames.

‘Well, ducky, he’s a year younger than you.’

‘I don’t write. Not such a fool. Got any more new-fangled friends?’

‘Just one – Gurdon Minho, the novelist.’

‘Another of the new school?’

‘Oh, no, dear! Surely you’ve heard of Gurdon Minho; he’s older than the hills.’

‘They’re all alike to me,’ muttered Soames. ‘Is he well thought of?’

‘I should think his income is larger than yours. He’s almost a classic – only waiting to die.’

‘I’ll get one of his books and read it. What name did you say?’

‘Get Big and Little Fishes, by Gurdon Minho. You can remember that, can’t you? Oh! here they are! Michael, look at what Father’s given me.’

Taking his hand, she put it up to the opal at her neck. ‘Let them both see,’ she thought, ‘what good terms we’re on.’ Though her father had not seen her with Wilfrid in the gallery, her conscience still said: ‘Strengthen your respectability, you don’t quite know how much support you’ll need for it in future.’

And out of the corner of her eye she watched those two. The meetings between ‘Old Mont’ and ‘Old Forsyte’ – as she knew Bart called her father when speaking of him to Michael – always made her want to laugh, but she never quite knew why. Bart knew everything, but his knowledge was beautifully bound, strictly edited by a mind tethered to the ‘eighteenth century’. Her father only knew what was of advantage to him, but the knowledge was unbound, and subject to no editorship. If he was late Victorian, he was not above profiting if necessary by even later periods. ‘Old Mont’ had faith in tradition; ‘Old Forsyte’ none. Fleur’s acuteness had long perceived a difference which favoured her father. Yet ‘Old Mont’s’ talk was so much more up-to-date, rapid, glancing, garrulous, redolent of precise information; and ‘Old Forsyte’s’ was constricted, matter-of-fact. Really impossible to tell which of the two was the better museum specimen; and both so well-preserved!