The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(229)

‘Very well,’ he said slowly, ‘anything so long as I can see you. I’ll wait till it means something more than physiology to you.’

Clare sat examining the glacé toe of her slowly wiggling shoe; suddenly she looked straight into his brooding eyes.

‘If,’ she said, ‘I had not been married, you would wait cheerfully and it wouldn’t hurt you. Think of me like that.’

‘Unfortunately I can’t. Who could?’

‘I see, I am fruit, not blossom – tainted by physiology.’

‘Don’t! Oh! Clare, I will be anything you want to you. And if I’m not always as cheery as a bird, forgive me.’

She looked at him through her eyelashes and said: ‘Good!’

Then came silence, during which she was conscious that he was fixing her in his mind from her shingled dark head to her glacé kid toe. She had not lived with Jerry Corven without having been made conscious of every detail of her body. She could not help its grace or its provocation. She did not want to torture him, but she could not find it unpleasant that she did. Queer how one could be sorry and yet pleased, and, withal, sceptical and a little bitter. Give yourself, and after a few months how much would he want you! She said abruptly:

‘Well, I’ve found rooms – a quaint little hole – used to be an antique shop, in a disused mews.’

He said eagerly: ‘Sounds jolly. When are you going in?’

‘Next week.’

‘Can I help?’

‘If you can distemper walls.’

‘Rather! I did all my bungalow in Ceylon, two or three times over.’

‘We should have to work in the evenings, because of my job.’

‘What about your boss? Is he decent?’

‘Very, and in love with my sister. At least, I think so.’

‘Oh!’ said young Croom dubiously.

Clare smiled. He was so obviously thinking: ‘Could a man be that when he sees you every day?’

‘When can I come first?’

‘Tomorrow evening, if you like. It’s 2, Melton Mews, off Malmesbury Square. I’ll get the stuff in the morning, and we’ll begin upstairs. Say six-thirty.’

‘Splendid!’

‘Only, Tony – no importunities. “Life is real, life is earnest”.’

Grinning ruefully, he put his hand on his heart.

‘And you must go now. I’ll take you down and see if my Uncle’s come in.’

Young Croom stood up.

‘What is happening about Ceylon?’ he said, abruptly. ‘Are you being worried?’

Clare shrugged. ‘Nothing is happening so far.’

‘That can’t possibly last. Have you thought things out?’

‘Thinking won’t help me. It’s quite likely he’ll do nothing.’

‘I can’t bear your being –’ he stopped.

‘Come along,’ said Clare, and led the way downstairs.

‘I don’t think I’ll try to see your Uncle,’ said young Croom. ‘Tomorrow at half-past six, then.’ He raised her hand to his lips, and marched to the door. There he turned. She was standing with her head a little on one side, smiling. He went out, distracted.

A young man, suddenly awakened amid the doves of Cytherea, conscious for the first time of the mysterious magnetism which radiates from what the vulgar call ‘a grass widow’, and withheld from her by scruples or convention, is to be pitied. He has not sought his fate. It comes on him by stealth, bereaving him ruthlessly of all other interest in life. It is an obsession replacing normal tastes with a rapturous aching. Maxims such as ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife’, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart’, become singularly academic. Young Croom had been brought up to the tinkling of the school bell: ‘Play the game!’ He now perceived its strange inadequacy. What was the game? Here was she, young and lovely, fleeing from a partner seventeen years older than herself, because he was a brute; she hadn’t said so, but of course he must be! Here was himself, desperately in love with her, and liked by her – not in the same way, but still as much as could be expected! And nothing to come of it but tea together! There was a kind of sacrilege in such waste.

Thus preoccupied he passed a man of middle height and alert bearing, whose rather cat-like eyes and thin lips were set into a brown face with the claws of many little wrinkles, and who turned to look after him with a slight contraction of the mouth which might have been a smile.





Chapter Seven




AFTER young Croom had gone Clare stood for a moment in the hall recollecting the last time she had gone out of that front door, in a fawn-coloured suit and a little brown hat, between rows of people saying: ‘Good luck!’ and ‘Good-bye, darling!’ and ‘Give my love to Paris!’ Eighteen months ago, and so much in between! Her lip curled, and she went into her Uncle’s study.