The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(201)
‘Do many people try to palm things off on you?’
‘Some succeed, Dinny. I regret that “pup”, though; it was a lovely skull. There aren’t many as good nowadays.’
‘We English certainly are getting uglier.’
‘Don’t you believe it. Put the people we meet in drawing-rooms and shops into cassocks and cowls, armour and jerkins, and you’ll have just the faces of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.’
‘But we do despise beauty, Uncle. We connect it with softness and immorality.’
‘Well, it makes people happy to despise what they haven’t got. We’re only about the third – no, the fourth – plainest people in Europe. But take away the Celtic infusions, and I admit we’d be the first.’
Dinny looked round the café. Her survey added nothing to her conclusions, partly because she took but little in, and partly because the lunchers were nearly all Jews or Americans.
Adrian watched her with an ache. She looked so bone-listless.
‘Hubert’s gone, then?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘And what are you going to do, my dear?’
Dinny sat looking at her plate. Suddenly she raised her head and said:
‘I think I shall go abroad, Uncle.’
Adrian’s hand went to his goatee.
‘I see,’ he said, at last. ‘Money?’
‘I have enough.’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere.’
‘By yourself?’
Dinny nodded.
‘The drawback to going away,’ murmured Adrian, ‘is the having to come back.’
‘There doesn’t seem to be anything much for me to do just now. So I think I’ll cheer people up by not seeing them for a bit.’
Adrian debated within himself.
‘Well, my dear, only you can decide what’s best for you. But if you felt like a long travel, it strikes me that Clare might be glad to see you in Ceylon.’
Seeing by the surprised movement of her hands that the idea was new to her, he went on:
‘I have a feeling that she may not be finding life very easy.’
Her eyes met his.
‘That’s what I thought at the wedding, Uncle; I didn’t like his face.’
‘You have a special gift for helping others, Dinny; and whatever’s wrong about Christianity, it’s not the saying “To give is more blessed than to receive”.’
‘Even the Son of Man liked His little joke, Uncle.’
Adrian looked at her hard, and said:
‘Well if you do go to Ceylon, mind you eat your mangoes over a basin.’
He parted from her a little later and, too much out of mood to go back to work, went to the Horse Show instead.
Chapter Thirty-two
AT South Square The Daily Phase was among those journals which politicians take lest they should miss reading correctly the temperature of Fleet Street. Michael pushed it over to Fleur at breakfast.
During the six days since Dinny’s arrival neither of them had said a word to her on the subject of Wilfrid; and it was Dinny who now said: ‘May I see that?’
Fleur handed her the paper. She read, gave a little shudder, and went on with her breakfast. Kit broke the ensuing hush by stating Hobbs’s average. Did Aunt Dinny think he was as great as W. G. Grace?
‘I never saw either of them, Kit.’
‘Didn’t you see W. G.?’
‘I think he died before I was born.’
Kit scrutinized her doubtfully.
‘Oh!’
‘He died in 1915,’ said Michael: ‘You’d have been eleven.’
‘But haven’t you really seen Hobbs, Auntie?’
‘No.’
‘I’ve seen him three times. I’m practising his hook to leg. The Daily Phase says Bradman is the best batsman in the world now. Do you think he’s better than Hobbs?’
‘Better news than Hobbs.’
Kit stared.
‘What is “news”?’
‘What newspapers are for.’
‘Do they make it up?’
‘Not always.’
‘What news were you reading just now?’
‘Nothing that would interest you.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Kit, don’t worry!’ said Fleur.
‘May I have an egg?’
‘Yes.’
The hush began again, till Kit stopped his eggspoon in midair and isolated a finger:
‘Look! The nail’s blacker than it was yesterday. Will it come off, Auntie?’
‘How did you do that?’
‘Pinched it in a drawer. I didn’t cry.’
‘Don’t boast, Kit.’
Kit gave his mother a clear upward look and resumed his egg.
Half an hour later, when Michael was just settling down to his correspondence, Dinny came into his study.
‘Busy, Michael?’