The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(17)

hereditary perch on the foremost hump – a somewhat dull position from which there was very little view, because of the camel’s head – and Diana was often invited to great houses where the chief works were hunting, shooting, hospitals, Court functions, and giving débutantes a chance. As Adrian well knew, she seldom went. She was far more constantly seated on the second hump, with its wide and stimulating view over the camel’s tail. Ah! They were a queer collection on that back hump! Many, like Diana herself, crossed from the first hump by the bridge, others came up the camel’s tail, a few were dropped from Heaven, or – as people sometimes called it – America. To qualify for that back hump Adrian, who had never qualified, knew that you needed a certain liveliness on several fronts; either a first-rate memory so that anything you read or listened to could be retailed with ready accuracy; or a natural spring of wit. If you had neither of these you might appear on the hump once, but never again. Personality, of course, you must have, though without real eccentricity; but it must not be personality which hid its light under a bushel. Eminence in some branch of activity was desirable, but not a sine qua non. Breeding again was welcome, but not if it made you dull. Beauty was a passport, but it had to be allied with animation. Money was desirable, but money alone wouldn’t get you a seat. Adrian had noted that knowledge of Art, if vocal, was of greater value than the power to produce it; and directive ability acceptable if it were not too silent or too dry. Then, again, some people seemed to get there out of an aptitude for the ‘coulisses’, and for having a finger in every pie. But first and last the great thing was to be able to talk. Innumerable strings were pulled from this back hump, but whether they guided the camel’s progress at all he was never sure, however much those who pulled them thought so. Diana, he knew, had so safe a seat among this heterogeneous group, given to constant meals, that she might have fed without expense from Christmas to Christmas, nor need ever have passed a weekend in Oakley Street. And he was the more grateful in that she so constantly sacrificed all that to be with her children and himself. The war had broken out just after her marriage with Ronald Ferse, and

Sheila and Ronald had not been born till after his return from it. They were now seven and six, and, as Adrian was always careful to tell her, ‘regular little Montjoys’. They certainly had her looks and animation. But he alone knew that the shadow on her face in repose was due more to the fear that she ought not to have had them than to anything else in her situation. He, too, alone knew that the strain of living with one unbalanced as Ferse had become had so killed sex impulse in her that she had lived these four years of practical widowhood without any urge towards love. He believed she had for himself a real affection, but he knew that so far it stopped short of passion.

He arrived half an hour before dinner time, and went up to the schoolroom at the top of the house, to see the children. They were receiving bed-time rusks and milk from their French governess, welcomed him with acclamation and clamoured for him to go on with the story he was telling them. The French governess, who knew what to expect, withdrew. Adrian sat down opposite the two small sparkling faces, and began where he had left off: ‘So the man who had charge of the canoes was a tremendous fellow, brown all over, who had been selected for his strength, because of the white unicorns which infested that coast.’

‘Boo! Uncle Adrian – unicorns are imaginative.’

‘Not in those days, Sheila.’

‘Then what’s become of them?’

‘There is only about one left, and he lives where white men cannot go, because of the “Bu-bu” fly.’

‘What is the “Bu-bu” fly?’

‘The “Bu-bu” fly, Ronald, is remarkable for settling in the calf of the leg and founding a family there.’

‘Oh!’

‘Unicorns – as I said before I was interrupted – which infested that coast. His name was Mattagor, and this was his way with unicorns. After luring them down to the beach with crinibobs – ’

‘What are crinibobs?’

‘They look like strawberries and taste like carrots – crinibobs – he would steal up behind them – ’

‘If he was in front of them with the crinibobs, how could he steal up behind them?’

‘He used to thread the crinibobs through a string made out of fibre, and hang them in a row between two charm trees. As soon as the unicorns were nibbling, he would emerge from the bush where he would be hiding, and, making no noise with his bare feet, tie their tails together two by two.’