The first movement of the new Solstis composition – ‘Phantasmagoria Piémontesque’ – to which they had come especially to listen, began with some drawn-out chords.
‘What oh!’ said Michael’s voice in her ear: ‘Three pieces of furniture moved simultaneously on a parquet floor!’
In Fleur’s involuntary smile was the whole secret of why her marriage had not been intolerable. After all, Michael was a dear! Devotion and mercury – jesting and loyalty – combined, they piqued and touched even a heart given away before it was bestowed on him. ‘Touch’ without ‘pique’ would have bored; ‘pique’ without ‘touch’ would have irritated. At this moment he was at peculiar advantage! Holding on to his knees, with his ears standing up, eyes glassy from loyalty to Hugo, and tongue in cheek, he was listening to that opening in a way which evoked Fleur’s admiration. The piece would be ‘interesting’ – she fell into the state of outer observation and inner calculation very usual with her nowadays. Over there was L.S.D., the greater dramatist; she didn’t know him – yet. He looked rather frightening, his hair stood up so straight. And her eye began picturing him on her copper floor against a Chinese picture. And there – yes! Gurdon Minho! Imagine his coming to anything so modern! His profile was rather Roman – of the Aurelian period! Passing on from that antique, with the pleased thought that by this time tomorrow she might have collected it, she quartered the assembly face by face – she did not want to miss anyone important.
‘The furniture’ had come to a sudden standstill.
‘Interesting!’ said a voice over her shoulder. Aubrey Greene! Illusive, rather moonlit, with his silky fair hair brushed straight back, and his greenish eyes – his smile always made her feel that he was ‘getting’ at her. But, after all, he was a cartoonist!
‘Yes, isn’t it?’
He curled away. He might have stayed a little longer – there wouldn’t be time for anyone else before those songs of Birdigal’s! Here came the singer Charles Powls! How stout and efficient he looked, dragging little Birdigal to the piano.
Charming accompaniment – rippling, melodious!
The stout, efficient man began to sing. How different from the accompaniment! The song hit every note just off the solar plexus, it mathematically prevented her from feeling pleasure. Birdigal must have written it in horror of someone calling it ‘vocal’. Vocal! Fleur knew how catching the word was; it would run like a measle round the ring, and Birdigal would be no more! Poor Birdigal! But this was ‘interesting’. Only, as Michael was saying: ‘O, my Gawd!’
Three songs! Powls was wonderful – so loyal! Never one note hit so that it rang out like music! Her mind fluttered off to Wilfrid. To him, of all the younger poets, people accorded the right to say something; it gave him such a position – made him seem to come out of life, instead of literature. Besides, he had done things in the war, was a son of Lord Mullyon, would get the Mercer Prize probably for Copper Coin. If Wilfrid abandoned her, a star would fall from the firmament above her copper floor. He had no right to leave her in the lurch. He must learn not to be violent – not to think physically. No! she couldn’t let Wilfrid slip away; nor could she have any more sob-stuff in her life, searing passions, cul de sacs, aftermaths. She had tasted of that; a dulled ache still warned her.
Birdigal was bowing, Michael saying: ‘Come out for a whiff! The next thing’s a dud!’ Oh! ah! Beethoven. Poor old Beethoven! So out of date – one did rather enjoy him!
The corridor, and refectory beyond, were swarming with the restoration movement. Young men and women with faces and heads of lively and distorted character, were exchanging the word ‘interesting’. Men of more massive type, resembling sedentary matadors, blocked all circulation. Fleur and Michael passed a little way along, stood against the wall, and lighted cigarettes. Fleur smoked hers delicately – a very little one in a tiny amber holder. She had the air of admiring blue smoke rather than of making it; there were spheres to consider beyond this sort of crowd – one never knew who might be about! – the sphere, for instance, in which Alison Charwell moved, politico-literary, catholic in taste, but, as Michael always put it: ‘Convinced, like a sanitary system, that it’s the only sphere in the world; look at the way they all write books of reminiscence about each other!’ They might, she always felt, disapprove of women smoking in public halls. Consorting delicately with iconoclasm, Fleur never forgot that her feet were in two worlds at least. Standing there, observant of all to left and right, she noted against the wall one whose face was screened by his programme. ‘Wilfrid!’ she thought, ‘and doesn’t mean to see me!’ Mortified, as a child from whom a sixpence is filched, she said: