The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(258)
Good-bye, Fleur; with all sympathy,
Your affectionate friend,
JON
She kept it – as she had kept his old letters – but not like them, about her; there had come to be a dim, round mark on the ‘affectionate friend’ which looked as if it might have dropped from an eye; besides, Michael was liable to see her in any stage of costume. So she kept it in her jewel-box, whereof she alone had the key.
She read a good deal to Kit in those days, but still more to herself, conscious that of late she had fallen behind the forward march of literature, and seeking for distraction in an attempt to be up-to–date, rather than in the lives of characters too lively to be alive. They had so much soul, and that so contortionate that she could not even keep her attention on than long enough to discover why they were not alive. Michael brought her book after book, with the words: ‘This is supposed to be clever,’ or ‘Here’s the last Nazing,’ or ‘Our old friend Calvin again – not quite so near the ham-bone this time, but as near as makes no matter.’ And she would sit with them on her lap and feel gradually that she knew enough to be able to say: ‘Oh! yes, I’ve read The Gorgons – it’s marvellously Proustian.’ Or ‘Love – the Chamelon? – well, it’s better than her Green Cave, but not up to Souls in the Nude.’ Or, ‘You must read The Whirligig, my dear – it gets quite marvellously nowhere.’
She held some converse with Annette, but of the guarded character, suitable between mothers and daughters after a certain age; directed, in fact, towards elucidating problems not unconnected with garb. The future – according to Annette – was dark. Were skirts to be longer or shorter by the autumn? If shorter, she herself would pay no attention; it might be all very well for Fleur, but she had reached the limit – at her age she would not go above the knee. As to the size of hats – again there was no definite indication. The most distinguished cocotte in Paris was said to be in favour of larger hats, but forces were working in the dark against her – motoring and Madame de Michel-Ange ‘qui est toute pour la vieille cloche’. Fleur wanted to know whether she had heard anything fresh about shingling. Annette, who was not yet shingled, but whose neck for a long time had trembled on the block, confessed herself ‘désespérée’. Everything now depended on the Basque cap. If woman took to them, shingling would stay; if not, hair might come in again. In any case, the new tint would be pure gold; ‘Et cela sera impossible. Ton père aurait une apoplexie.’ In any case, Annette feared that she was condemned to long hair till the day of judgement. Perhaps, the good God would give her a good mark for it.
‘If you want to shingle, Mother, I should. It’s just father’s conservatism – he doesn’t really know what he likes. It would be a new sensation for him.’
Annette grimaced. ‘Ma chère; je n’en sais rien. Your father is capable of anything.’
The man ‘capable of anything’ came every afternoon for half an hour, and would remain seated before the Fragonard, catechising Michael or Annette, and then say, rather suddenly:
‘Well, give my love to Fleur; I’m glad the little chap’s better!’ Or: ‘That pain he’s got will be wind, I expect. But I should have what’s-his–name see to it. Give my love to Fleur.’ And in the hall he would stand a moment by the coat-sarcophagus, listening. Then, adjusting his hat, he would murmur what sounded like: ‘Well, there it is!’ or: ‘She doesn’t get enough air,’ and go out.
And from the nursery window Fleur would see him, departing at his glum and measured gait, with a compunctious relief. Poor old Dad! Not his fault that he symbolized for her just now the glum and measured paces of domestic virtue. Soames’s hope, indeed, that enforced domesticity might cure her, was not being borne out. After the first two or three anxious days, while Kit’s temperature was still high, it worked to opposite ends. Her feeling for Jon, in which now was an element of sexual passion, lacking before her marriage, grew, as all such feelings grow, without air and exercise for the body and interest for the mind. It flourished like a plant transferred into a hot-house. The sense of having been defrauded fermented in her soul. Were they never to eat of the golden apple – she and Jon? Was it to hang there, always out of reach – amid dark, lustrous leaves, quite unlike an apple tree’s? She took out her old water-colour box – long now since it had seen the light – and coloured a fantastic tree with large golden fruits.