The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(2)

‘Le roi est mort. Labour can start lying, Michael – election next month.’

‘Bart was brought up, Wilfrid, in days that knew not Demos.’

‘Well, Mr Desert, do you find reality in politics now?’

‘Do you find reality in anything, sir?’

‘In income tax, perhaps.’

Michael grinned.

‘Above knighthood,’ he said, ‘there’s no such thing as simple faith.’

‘Suppose your friends came into power, Michael – in some ways not a bad thing, help ’em to grow up – what could they do, eh? Could they raise national taste? Abolish the cinema? Teach English people to cook? Prevent other countries from threatening war? Make us grow our own food? Stop the increase of town life? Would they hang dabblers in poison gas? Could they prevent flying in war-time? Could they weaken the possessive instinct – anywhere? Or do anything, in fact, but alter the incidence of possession a little? All party politics are top dressing. We’re ruled by the inventors, and human nature; and we live in Queer Street, Mr Desert.’

‘Much my sentiments, sir.’

Michael flourished his cigar.

‘Bad old men, you two!’

And removing their hats, they passed the Cenotaph.

‘Curiously symptomatic – that thing,’ said Sir Lawrence; ‘monument to the dread of swank – most characteristic. And the dread of swank –’

‘Go on, Bart,’ said Michael.

‘The fine, the large, the florid – all off! No far-sighted views, no big schemes, no great principles, no great religion, or great art – aestheticism in cliques and backwaters, small men in small hats.’

‘As panteth the heart after Byron, Wilberforce, and the Nelson Monument. My poor old Bart! What about it, Wilfrid?’

‘Yes, Mr Desert – what about it?’

Desert’s dark face contracted.

‘It’s an age of paradox,’ he said. ‘We all kick up for freedom, and the only institutions gaining strength are Socialism and the Roman Catholic Church. We’re frightfully self-conscious about art – and the only art development is the cinema. We’re nuts on peace – and all we’re doing about it is to perfect poison gas.’

Sir Lawrence glanced sideways at a young man so bitter.

‘And how’s publishing, Michael?’

‘Well, Copper Coin is selling like hot cakes; and there’s quite a movement in A Duet. What about this for a new ad.: “A Duet, by Sir Lawrence Mont, Bart. The most distinguished Conversation ever held between the Dead.” That ought to get the psychic. Wilfrid suggested “G.O.M. and Dizzy – broadcasted from Hell.” Which do you like best?’

They had come, however, to a policeman holding up his hand against the nose of a van horse, so that everything marked time. The engines of the cars whirred idly, their drivers’ faces set towards the space withheld from them; a girl on a bicycle looked vacantly about her, grasping the back of the van, where a youth sat sideways with his legs stretched out towards her. Sir Lawrence glanced again at young Desert. A thin, pale-dark face, good-looking, but a hitch in it, as if not properly timed; nothing outré in dress or manner, and yet socially at large; less vivacious than that lively rascal, his own son, but as anchorless, and more sceptical – might feel things pretty deeply, though! The policeman lowered his arm.

‘You were in the war, Mr Desert?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Air service?’

‘And line. Bit of both.’

‘Hard on a poet.’

‘Not at all. Poetry’s only possible when you may be blown up at any moment, or when you live in Putney.’

Sir Lawrence’s eyebrow rose. ‘Yes?’

‘Tennyson, Browning, Wordsworth, Swinburne – they could turn it out; ils vivaient, mais si peu.’

‘Is there not a third condition favourable?’

‘And that, sir?’

‘How shall I express it – a certain cerebral agitation in connexion with women?’

Desert’s face twitched, and seemed to darken.

Michael put his latchkey into the lock of his front door.





Chapter Two



HOME



THE house in South Square, Westminster, to which the young Monts had come after their Spanish honeymoon two years before, might have been called ‘emancipated’. It was the work of an architect whose dream was a new house perfectly old, and an old house perfectly new. It followed therefore, no recognized style or tradition, and was devoid of structural prejudice; but it soaked up the smuts of the metropolis with such special rapidity that its stone already respectably resembled that of Wren. Its windows and doors had gently rounded tops. The high-sloping roof, of a fine sooty pink, was almost Danish, and two ‘ducky little windows’ looked out of it, giving an impression that very tall servants lived up there. There were rooms on each side of the front door, which was wide and set off by bay trees in black and gold bindings. The house was thick through, and the staircase, of a broad chastity, began at the far end of a hall which had room for quite a number of hats and coats and cards. There were four bathrooms; and not even a cellar underneath. The Forsyte instinct for a house had co-operated in its acquisition. Soames had picked it up for his daughter, undecorated, at that psychological moment when the bubble of inflation was pricked, and the air escaping from the balloon of the world’s trade. Fleur, however, had established immediate contact with the architect – an element which Soames himself had never quite got over – and decided not to have more than three styles in her house: Chinese, Spanish, and her own. The room to the left of the front door, running the breadth of the house, was Chinese, with ivory panels, a copper floor, central heating, and cut-glass lustres. It contained four pictures – all Chinese – the only school in which her father had not yet dabbled. The fireplace, wide and open, had Chinese dogs with Chinese tiles for them to stand on. The silk was chiefly of jade green. There were two wonderful old black tea-chests, picked up with Soames’s money at Jobson’s – not a bargain. There was no piano, partly because pianos were too uncompromisingly occidental, and partly because it would have taken up much room. Fleur aimed at space – collecting people rather than furniture or bibelots. The light, admitted by windows at both ends, was unfortunately not Chinese. She would stand sometimes in the centre of this room, thinking – how to ‘bunch’ her guests, how to make her room more Chinese without making it uncomfortable; how to seem to know all about literature and politics; how to accept everything her father gave her, without making him aware that his taste had no sense of the future; how to keep hold of Sibley Swan, the new literary star, and to get hold of Gurdon Minho, the old; or how Wilfrid Desert was getting too fond of her; of what was really her style in dress; of why Michael had such funny ears; and sometimes she stood not thinking at all – just aching a little.