The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2 (18 page)

‘Oh! Yes.'

‘Well, try that.'

Victorine tried that, but she could only see Tony selling his balloons.

‘That won't do,' said the gentleman. ‘Don't think of him! Did you ever see
L'après-midi d' un Faune
?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Well, I've got an idea.
L'après-midi d'une Dryade.'
About the nude you really needn't mind. It's quite impersonal. Think of art, and fifteen bob a day. Shades of Nijinsky, I see the whole thing!'

All the time that he was talking his eyes were sliding off and on to her, and his pencil off and on to the paper. A sort of infection began to ferment within Victorine. Fifteen shillings a day! Blue butterflies!

There was a profound silence. His eyes and hand slid off and on. A faint smile had come on Victorine's face – she was adding up the money she might earn.

At last his eyes and hand ceased moving, and he stood looking at the paper.

‘That's all for today, Miss Collins. I've got to think it out. Will you give me your address?'

Victorine thought rapidly.

‘Please, sir, will you write to me at the post office. I don't want my husband to know that I'm – I'm –'

‘Affiliated to art? Well! Name of post office?'

Victorine gave it and resumed her hat.

‘An hour and a half, five shillings, thank you. And tomorrow, at half-past two, Miss Collins – not “sir”.'

‘Yes, s–, thank you.'

Waiting for her bus in the cold January air, the altogether appeared to Victorine improbable. To sit in front of a strange gentleman in her skin! If Tony knew! The slow flush again burned up the sallow in her cheeks. She climbed into the bus. But fifteen shillings! Six days a week – why, it would be four pound ten! In four months she could earn their passage out. Judging by the pictures in there, lots must be doing it. Tony must know nothing, not even that she was sitting for her face.
He was all nerves, and that fond of her! He would imagine things; she had heard him say those artists were just like cats. But that gentleman had been very nice, though he did seem as if he were laughing at everything. She wished he had shown her the drawing. Perhaps she would see herself in an exhibition some day. But without – oh! And suddenly she thought: ‘If I ate a bit more, I'd look nice like that, too!' And as if to escape from the daring of that thought, she stared up into the face opposite. It had two chins, was calm and smooth and pink, with light eyes staring back at her. People had thoughts, but you couldn't tell what they were! And the smile which Aubrey Greene desired crept out on his model's face.

MICHAEL WALKS AND TALKS

T
HE
face Michael drew began by being Victorine's, and ended by being Fleur's. If physically Fleur stood up straight, was she morally as erect? This was the speculation for which he continually called himself a cad. He saw no change in her movements, and loyalty refrained from inquiring into the movements he could not see. But his aroused attention made him more and more aware of a certain cynicism, as if she were continually registering the belief that all values were equal and none of much value.

Wilfrid, though still in London, was neither visible nor spoken of. ‘Out of sight and hearing, out of mind,' seemed to be the motto. It did not work with Michael – Wilfrid was constantly in his mind. If Wilfrid were not seeing Fleur, how could he bear to stay within such tantalizing reach of her? If Fleur did not want Wilfrid to stay, why had she not sent him away? He was finding it difficult, too, to conceal from others the fact that Desert and he were no longer pals. Often the impetus to go and
have it out with him surged up and was beaten back. Either there was nothing beyond what he already knew, or there was something – and Wilfrid would say there wasn't. Michael accepted that without cavil; one did not give a woman away! But he wanted to hear no lies from a war comrade. Between Fleur and himself no word had passed; for words, he felt, would add no knowledge, merely imperil a hold weak enough already. Christmas at the ancestral manor of the Monts had been passed in covert-shooting. Fleur had come and stood with him at the last drive on the second day, holding Ting-a-ling on a lead. The Chinese dog had been extraordinarily excited, climbing the air every time a bird fell, and quite unaffected by the noise of guns. Michael, waiting to miss his birds – he was a poor shot – had watched her eager face emerging from grey fur, her form braced back against Ting-a-ling. Shooting was new to her; and under the stimulus of novelty she was always at her best. He had loved even her ‘Oh, Michaels!' when he missed. She had been the success of the gathering, which meant seeing almost nothing of her except a sleepy head on a pillow; but, at least, down there he had not suffered from lurking uneasiness.

Putting a last touch to the bobbed hair on the blotting-paper, he got up. St Paul's, that girl had said. He might stroll up and have a squint at Bicket. Something might occur to him. Tightening the belt of his blue overcoat round his waist, he sallied forth, thin and sprightly, with a little ache in his heart.

Walking east, on that bright, cheerful day, nothing struck him so much as the fact that he was alive, well, and in work. So very many were dead, ill, or out of a job. He entered Covent Garden. Amazing place! A human nature which, decade after decade, could put up with Covent Garden was not in danger of extinction from its many ills. A comforting place – one needn't take anything too seriously after walking through it. On this square island were the vegetables of the earth and the fruits of the world, bounded on the west by publishing, on the east by opera, on the north and south by rivers of mankind. Among discharging carts and litter of paper, straw and men out of drawing, Michael walked and sniffed. Smell of its own, Covent Garden,
earthy and just not rotten! He had never seen – even in the war – any place that so utterly lacked form. Extraordinarily English! Nobody looked as if they had anything to do with the soil – drivers, hangers-on, packers, and the salesmen inside the covered markets, seemed equally devoid of acquaintanceship with sun, wind, water, earth or air – town types all! And – Golly! – how their faces jutted, sloped, sagged and swelled, in every kind of featural disharmony. What was the English type amongst all this infinite variety of disproportion? There just wasn't one! He came on the fruits, glowing piles, still and bright – foreigners from the land of the sun – globes all the same size and colour. They made Michael's mouth water. ‘Something in the sun,' he thought; ‘there really is.' Look at Italy, at the Arabs, at Australia – the Australians came from England, and see the type now! Nevertheless – a Cockney for good temper! The more regular a person's form and features, the more selfish they were! Those grape-fruit looked horribly self-satisfied, compared with the potatoes!

He emerged still thinking about the English. Well! They were now one of the plainest and most distorted races of the world; and yet was there any race to compare with them for good temper and for ‘guts'? And they needed those in their smoky towns, and their climate – remarkable instance of adaptation to environment, the modern English character! ‘I could pick out an Englishman anywhere,' he thought, ‘and yet, physically, there's no general type now!' Astounding people! So ugly in the mass, yet growing such flowers of beauty, and such strange sprigs – like that little Mrs Bicket; so unimaginative in bulk, yet with such a blooming lot of poets! How would old Danby like it, by the way, when Wilfrid took his next volume to some other firm; or rather what should he – Wilfrid's particular friend! – say to old Danby? Aha! He knew what he should say:

‘Yes, sir, but you should have let that poor blighter off who snooped the
Copper Coins
. Desert hasn't forgotten your refusal.' One for old Danby and his eternal in-the-rightness!
Copper Coin
had done uncommonly well. Its successor would probably
do uncommonly better. The book was a proof of what he – Michael – was always saying: The ‘cockyolly-bird period' was passing. People wanted life again. Sibley, Walter Nazing, Linda – all those who had nothing to say except that they were superior to such as had – were already measured for their coffins. Not that they would know when they were in them; not blooming likely! They would continue to wave their noses and look down them!

‘
I'm
fed-up with them,' thought Michael. ‘If only Fleur would see that looking down your nose is a sure sign of inferiority!' And, suddenly, it came to him that she probably did. Wilfrid was the only one of the whole lot she had ever been thick with; the others were there because – well, because she was Fleur, and had the latest things about her. When, very soon, they were no longer the latest things, she would drop them. But Wilfrid she would not drop. No, he felt sure that she had not dropped, and would not drop Wilfrid.

He looked up. Ludgate Hill! ‘Near St Paul's – sells balloons?' And there – sure enough – the poor beggar was!

Bicket was deflating with a view to going off his stand for a cup of cocoa. Remembering that he had come on him by accident, Michael stood for a moment preparing the tones of surprise. Pity the poor chap couldn't blow himself into one of those coloured shapes and float over St Paul's to Peter. Mournful little cuss he looked, squeezing out the air! Memory tapped sharply on his mind. Balloon – in the square – November the first – joyful night! Special! Fleur! Perhaps they brought luck. He moved and said in an astounded voice: ‘
You
, Bicket? Is this your stunt now?'

The large eyes of Bicket regarded him over a puce-coloured sixpennyworth.

‘Mr Mont! Often thought I'd like to see you again, sir.'

‘Same here, Bicket. If you're not doing anything, come and have some lunch.'

Bicket completed the globe's collapse, and, closing his tray-lid, said: ‘Reelly, sir?'

‘Rather! I was just going into a fish place.'

Bicket detached his tray.

‘I'll leave this with the crossing-sweeper.' He did so, and followed at Michael's side.

‘Any money in it, Bicket?'

‘Bare livin', sir.'

‘How about this place? We'll have oysters.'

A little saliva at the corner of Bicket's mouth was removed by a pale tongue.

At a small table decorated with a white oilcloth and a cruet stand, Michael sat down.

‘Two dozen oysters, and all that; then two good soles, and a bottle of Chablis. Hurry up, please.'

When the white-aproned fellow had gone about it, Bicket said simply:

‘My Gawd!'

‘Yes, it's a funny world, Bicket.'

‘It
is
, and that's a fact. This lunch'll cost you a pound, I shouldn't wonder. If I take twenty-five bob a week, it's all I do.'

‘You touch it there, Bicket. I eat my conscience every day.'

Bicket shook his head.

‘No, sir, if you've got money, spend it. I would. Be ‘appy if you can – there yn't too many that are.'

The white-aproned fellow began blessing them with oysters. He brought them fresh-opened, three at a time. Michael bearded them; Bicket swallowed them whole. Presently above twelve empty shells, he said:

‘That's where the Socialists myke their mistyke, sir. Nothing keeps me going but the sight of other people spendin' money. It's what we might all come to with a bit of luck. Reduce the world to a level of a pound a dy – and it won't even run to that, they sy! It's not good enough, sir. I'd rather 'ave less with the 'ope of more. Take awy the gamble, and life's a frost. Here's luck!'

‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a capitalist, Bicket.'

A glow had come up in the thin and large-eyed face behind the greenish Chablis glass.

‘I wish to Gawd I had my wife here, sir. I told you about her
and the pneumonia. She's all right agyne now, only thin. She's the prize I drew. I don't want a world where you can't draw prizes. If it were all bloomin' conscientious an' accordin' to merit, I'd never have got her. See?'

‘Me, too,' thought Michael, mentally drawing that face again.

‘We've all got our dreams; mine's blue butterflies – Central Austrylia. The Socialists won't 'elp me to get there. Their ideas of 'eaven don't run beyond Europe.'

‘Cripes!' said Michael. ‘Melted butter, Bicket?'

‘Thank you, sir.'

Silence was not broken for some time, but the soles were.

‘What made you think of balloons, Bicket?'

‘You don't 'ave to advertise, they do it for you.'

‘Saw too much of advertising with us, eh?'

‘Well, sir, I did use to read the wrappers. Astonished me, I will sy – the number of gryte books.'

Michael ran his hands through his hair.

‘Wrappers! The same young woman being kissed by the same young man with the same clean-cut jaw. But what can you do, Bicket? They
will have it
. I tried to make a break only this morning – I shall see what comes of it.' ‘And I hope
you
won't!' he thought: ‘Fancy coming on Fleur outside a novel!'