The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(140)
‘I see; use the information out of Court, but not in.’
Soames nodded. ‘I shall tell them that we shall justify. Give me the young man’s address.’
‘Macbeth Chambers, Bloomsbury. It’s close to the British Museum. But do remember, sir, that to air Miss Ferrar’s linen in Court will be as bad for us as for her.’
Again Soames nodded.
When Fleur and her father had gone up, Michael lit a cigarette, and passed back into the ‘parlour’. He sat down at the clavichord. The instrument made very little noise – so he could strum on it without fear of waking the eleventh baronet. From a Spanish tune picked up three years ago on his honeymoon, whose savagery always soothed him, his fingers wandered on: ‘I got a crown, you got a crown – all God’s childern got a crown! Eb’ryone dat talk ’bout ’Eaben ain’t goin’ dere. All God’s childern got a crown.’
Glass lustres on the wall gleamed out at him. As a child he had loved the colours of his aunt Pamela’s glass chandeliers in the panelled rooms at Brook Street; but when he knew what was what, he and everyone had laughed at them. And now lustres had come in again; and Aunt Pamela had gone out! ‘She had a crown – he had a crown –’ Confound that tune! ‘Auprès de ma blonde – il fait bon – fait bon – fait bon; Auprès de ma blonde, il fait bon dormir.’
His ‘blonde’ – not so very blonde, either – would be in bed by now. Time to go up! But still he strummed on, and his mind wandered in and out – of poultry and politics, Old Forsyte, Fleur, Foggartism, and the Ferrar girl – like a man in a maelstrom whirling round with his head just above water. Who was it said the landing-place for modernity was a change of heart; the rebirth of a belief that life was worth while, and better life attainable? ‘Better life?’ Prerogative of priests? Not now. Humanity had got to save itself! To save itself – what was that, after all, but expression of ‘the will to live’? But did humanity will to live as much as it used? That was the point. Michael stopped strumming and listened to the silence. Not even a clock ticking – time was inhospitable in ‘parlours’; and England asleep outside. Was the English ‘will to live’ as strong as ever; or had they all become so spoiled, so sensitive to life, that they had weakened on it? Had they sucked their silver spoon so long that, threatened with a spoon of bone, they preferred to get down from table? ‘I don’t believe it,’ thought Michael, ‘I won’t believe it. Only where are we going? Where am I going? Where are all God’s children going? To bed, it seemed!
And Big Ben struck: One.
PART TWO
Chapter One
MICHAEL MAKES HIS SPEECH
WHEN in the new Parliament Michael rose to deliver his maiden effort towards the close of the debate on the King’s Speech, he had some notes in his hand and not an idea in his head. His heart was beating and his knees felt weak. The policy he was charged to express, if not precisely new in concept, was in reach and method so much beyond current opinion that he awaited nothing but laughter. His would be a stray wind carrying the seed of a new herb into a garden, so serried and so full that no corner would welcome its growth. There was a plant called Chinese weed which having got hold never let go, and spread till it covered everything. Michael desired for Foggartism the career of chinese weed; but all he expected was the like of what he had seen at Monterey on his tour round the world after the war. Chance had once brought to that Californian shore the seeds of the Japanese yew. In thick formation the little dark trees had fought their way inland to a distance of some miles. That battalion would never get farther now that native vegetation had been consciously roused against it; but its thicket stood – a curious and strong invader.
His first period had been so rehearsed that neither vacant mind nor dry mouth could quite prevent delivery. Straightening his waistcoat and jerking his head back, he regretted that the speech from the throne foreshadowed no coherent and substantial policy such as might hope to free the country from its present plague of under-employment and over-population. Economically speaking, any foreseeing interpretation of the course of affairs must now place Britain definitely in the orbit of the overseas world… . (‘Oh! oh!’) Ironical laughter so soon and sudden cleared Michael’s mind and relaxed his lips; and, with the grin that gave his face a certain charm, he resumed:
Speakers on all sides of the House, dwelling on the grave nature of the Unemployment problem, had pinned their faith to the full recapture of European trade, some in one way, some in another. August as they were, he wished very humbly to remark that they could not eat cake and have it. (Laughter.) Did they contend that wages in Britain must come down and working hours be lengthened; or did they assert that European wages must go up, and European working hours be shortened? No, they had not had the temerity. Britain, which was to rid itself of unemployment in the ways suggested, was the only important country in the world which had to buy about seven-tenths of its food, and of whose population well-nigh six-sevenths lived in towns. It employed those six-sevenths in producing articles in some cases too dearly for European countries to buy, and yet it had to sell a sufficient surplus above the normal exchanges of trade to pay for seven-tenths of the wherewithal to keep its producers alive. (A laugh.) If this was a joke, it was a grim one. (A voice: ‘You have forgotten the carrying trade.’) He accepted the honourable Member’s correction, and hoped that he felt happy about the future of that trade. It was, he feared, a somewhat shrinking asset.