‘It’ll be uneatable,’ he thought, winding at his line.
Chapter Two
OCCUPYING THE MIND
COMEDY the real thing! Was it? Michael wondered. In saying to Soames that he could not wait and see, he had expressed a very natural abhorrence. Watch, spy, calculate – impossible! To go to Fleur and ask for a frank exposure of her feelings was what he would have liked to do; but he could not help knowing the depth of his father-in-law’s affection and concern, and the length of his head; and he had sufficient feeling to hesitate before imperilling what was as much ‘old Forsyte’s’ happiness as his own, the ‘old boy’ had behaved so decently in pulling up his roots and going round the world with Fleur, that every consideration was due to him. It remained, then, to wait without attempting to see – hardest of all courses because least active. ‘Keep her mind well occupied!’ So easy! Recollecting his own pre-nuptial feelings, he did not see how it was to be done. And Fleur’s was a particularly difficult mind to occupy with anything except that on which she had set her heart. The slums? No! She possessed one of those eminently sane natures which rejected social problems, as fruitless and incalculable. An immediate job, like the canteen, in which she could shine a little – she would perform beautifully; but she would never work for a remote object, without shining! He could see her clear eyes looking at the slums as they had looked at Foggartism, and his experiment with the out-of-works. He might take her to see Hilary and Aunt May, but it would be futile in the end.
Night brought the first acute trouble. What were to be his relations with her, if her feelings were really engaged elsewhere? To wait and not see meant continuation of the married state. He suspected Soames of having wished to counsel that. Whipped by longing, stung and half numbed by a jealousy he must not show, and unwishful to wound her, he waited for a sign, feeling as if she must know why he was waiting. He received it, and was glad, but it did not convince him. Still!
He woke much lighter in spirit.
At breakfast he asked her what she would like to do, now that she was back and the season over. Did this slum scheme amuse her at all, because if so, there was a lot to do in it; she would find Hilary and May great sports.
‘Rather! Anything really useful, Michael!’
He took her round to ‘The Meads’. The result was better than he had hoped.
For his uncle and aunt were human buildings the like of which Fleur had not yet encountered – positively fashioned, concreted in tradition, but freely exposed to sun and air, tiled with taste, and windowed with humour. Michael, with something of their ‘make-up’, had neither their poise, nor active certainty. Fleur recognized at once that those two dwelt in unity unlike any that she knew, as if, in their twenty odd years together, they had welded a single instrument to carry out a new discovery – the unselfconscious day. They were not fools, yet cleverness in their presence seemed jejune, and as if unrelated to reality. They knew – especially Hilary – a vast deal about flowers, printing, architecture, mountains, drains, electricity, the price of living, Italian cities; they knew how to treat the ailments of dogs, play musical instruments, administer first and even second aid, amuse children, and cause the aged to laugh. They could discuss anything from religion to morality with fluency, and the tolerance that came from experience of the trials of others and forgetfulness of their own. With her natural intelligence Fleur admired them. They were good, but they were not dull – very odd! Admiring them, she could not help making up to them. Their attitude in life – she recognized – was superior to her own, and she was prepared to pay at least lip-service. But lip-service ‘cut no ice’ in ‘The Meads’. Hand, foot, intellect and heart were the matter-of-course requirements. To occupy her mind, however, she took the jobs given her. Then trouble began. The jobs were not her own, and there was no career in them. Try as she would, she could not identify herself with Mrs Corrigan or the little Topmarshes. The girls, who served at Petter and Poplin’s and kept their clothes in paper bags, bored her when they talked and when they didn’t. Each new type amused her for a day, and then just seemed unlovely. She tried hard, however, for her own sake, and in order to deceive Michael. She had been at it more than a week before she had an idea.
‘You know, Michael, I feel I should be ever so much more interested if I ran a place of my own in the country – a sort of rest-house that I could make attractive for girls who wanted air and that.’
To Michael, remembering the canteen, it seemed ‘an idea’ indeed. To Fleur it seemed more – a ‘lease and release’, as her father might have put it. Her scheming mind had seen the possibilities. She would be able to go there without let or cavil, and none would know what she did with her time. A base of operations with a fool-proof title was essential for a relationship, however innocent, with Jon. She began at once to learn to drive the car; for the ‘rest-house’ must not be so near him as to excite suspicion. She approached her father on the finance of the matter. At first doubtfully, and then almost cordially, Soames approved. If he would pay the rent and rates of the house, she would manage the rest out of her own pocket. She could not have bettered such a policy by way of convincing him that her interest was genuine; for he emphatically distrusted the interest of people in anything that did not cost them money. A careful study of the map suggested to her the neighbourhood of Dorking. Box Hill had a reputation for air and beauty, and was within an hour’s fast drive of Wansdon. In the next three weeks she found and furnished a derelict house, rambling and cheap, close to the road on the London side of Box Hill, with a good garden and stables that could be converted easily. She completed her education with the car, and engaged a couple who could be left in charge with impunity. She consulted Michael and the Hilarys freely. In fact, like a mother cat, who carefully misleads the household as to where she is going to ‘lay’ her kittens, so Fleur, by the nature of her preparations, disguised her round-about design. ‘The Meads Rest House’, as it was called, was opened at the end of August.