The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(240)

‘After all, Jon’s married. What’s his wife like?’

‘Looks charming – nice, I think.’

‘An American!’ said June deeply. ‘Well, Fleur’s half French. I’m glad you’ve got a boy.’

Never had Michael known anyone whose words conveyed so much unintended potency of discomfort! Why was she glad he had a boy? Because it was an insurance – against what?

‘Well,’ he mumbled, ‘I’m very glad to know at last what it was all about.’

‘You ought to have been told before; but you don’t know still. Nobody can know what family feuds and feelings are like, who hasn’t had them. Though I was angry about those children, I admit that. You see, I was the first to back Irene against Soames in the old days. I wanted her to leave him at the beginning of everything. She had a beastly time; he was such a – such a slug about his precious rights, and no proper pride either. Fancy forcing yourself on a woman who didn’t want you!’

‘Ah!’ Michael muttered. ‘Fancy!’

‘People in the ’eighties and ’nineties didn’t understand how disgusting it was. Thank goodness, they do now!’

‘Do they?’ murmured Michael. ‘I wonder!’

‘Of course they do.’

Michael sat corrected.

‘Things are much better in that way than they were – not nearly so stuffy and farmyardy. I wonder Fleur hasn’t told you all about it.’

‘She’s never said a word.’

‘Oh!’

That sound was as discomforting as any of her more elaborate remarks. Clearly she was thinking what he himself was thinking: that it had gone too deep with Fleur to be spoken of. He was not even sure that Fleur knew whether he had ever heard of her affair with Jon.

And, with a sudden shrinking from any more discomforting sounds, he rose.

‘Thanks awfully for telling me. I must buzz off now, I’m afraid.’

‘I shall come and see Fleur about sitting to Harold. It’s too good a chance for him to miss. He simply must get commissions.’

‘Of course!’ said Michael; he could trust Fleur’s powers of refusal better than his own.

‘Good-bye, then!’

But when he got to the door and looked back at her standing alone in that large room, he felt a pang – she seemed so light, so small, so fly-away, with her silver hair and her little intent face – still young from misjudged enthusiasm. He had got something out of her, too, left nothing with her; and he had stirred up some private feeling of her past, some feeling as strong, perhaps stronger, than his own.

She looked dashed lonely! He waved his hand to her.

Fleur had returned when he got home, and Michael realized suddenly that in calling on June Forsyte he had done a thing inexplicable, save in relation to her and Jon!

‘I must write and ask that little lady not to mention it,’ he thought. To let Fleur know that he had been fussing about her past would never do.

‘Had a good time?’ he said.

‘Very. Young Anne reminds me of Francis, except for her eyes.’

‘Yes; I liked the looks of those two when I saw them at Mount Vernon. That was a queer meeting, wasn’t it?’

‘The day father was unwell?’

He felt that she knew the meeting had been kept from her. If only he could talk to her freely; if only she would blurt out everything!

But all she said was: ‘I feel at a bad loose end, Michael, without the canteen.’





Chapter Thirteen



SOAMES IN WAITING



To say that Soames preferred his house by the river when his wife was not there, would be a crude way of expressing a far from simple equation. He was glad to be still married to a handsome woman and very good housekeeper, who really could not help being French and twenty - five years younger than himself. But the fact was, that when she was away from him, he could see her good points so much better than when she was not. Though fond of mocking him in her French way, she had, he knew, lived into a certain regard for his comfort, and her own position as his wife. Affection? No, he did not suppose she had affection for him, but she liked her home, her bridge, her importance in the neighbourhood, and doing things about the house and garden. She was like a cat. And with money she was admirable – making it go further and buy more than most people. She was getting older, too, all the time, so that he had lost serious fear that she would overdo some friendship or other, and let him know it. That Prosper Profond business of six years ago, which had been such a squeak, had taught her discretion.

It had been quite unnecessary really for him to go down a day before Fleur’s arrival; his household ran on wheels too well geared and greased. On his fifteen acres, with the new dairy and cows across the river, he grew everything now except flour, fish and meat of which he was but a sparing eater. Fifteen acres, if hardly ‘land’, represented a deal of produce. The establishment was, in fact, typical of countless residences of the un-landed well-to-do.