‘Is that possible? I say, Dartie, I didn’t mean to bother you again, but if you could let me have a “pony”, it would be a great boon.’
‘Sorry, but I don’t keep “ponies” about me down here.’
‘A cheque –’
Cheque – not if he knew it!
‘No,’ said Val firmly. ‘Have a drink?’
‘Thanks very much!’
Pouring out the drink at the sideboard in the dining-room, with one eye on the stilly figure of his guest, Val took a resolution.
‘Look here, Stainford –’ he began, then his heart failed him. ‘How did you get here?’
‘By car, from Horsham. And that reminds me. I haven’t a sou with me to pay for it.’
Val winced. There was something ineffably wretched about the whole thing.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘here’s a fiver, if that’s any use to you; but really I’m not game for any more.’ And, with a sudden outburst, he added: ‘I’ve never forgotten, you know, that I once lent you all I had at Oxford when I was deuced hard-pressed myself, and you never paid it back, though you came into shekels that very term.’
The well-shaped hand closed on the fiver; a bitter smile opened the thin lips.
‘Oxford! Another life! Well, good-bye, Dartie – I’ll get on; and thanks I Hope you’ll have a good season.’
He did not hold out his hand. Val watched his back, languid and slim, till it was out of sight.…
Yes! That memory explained it! Stainford must have picked up some gossip in the village – not likely that they would let a ‘Sleeping Dove’ lie! It didn’t much matter; since Holly would hardly let him bet at all. But Greenwater must look sharp after the colt. Plenty of straight men racing; but a lot of blackguards hanging about the sport. Queer how horses collected blackguards – most beautiful creatures God ever made! But beauty was like that – look at the blackguards hanging round pretty women! Well, he must let Holly know. They could stay, as usual, at old Warmson’s Inn, on the river; from there it was only a fifteen-mile drive to the course.…
The ‘Pouter Pigeon’ stood back a little from the river Thames, on the Berkshire side, above an old-fashioned garden of roses, stocks, gillyflowers, poppies, phlox drummondi, sweet-williams. In the warm June weather the scents from that garden and from sweet-briar round the windows drifted into an old brick house painted cream-colour. Late Victorian service in Park Lane under James Forsyte, confirmed by a later marriage with Emily’s maid Fifine, had induced in Warmson, indeed, such complete knowledge of what was what, that no river inn had greater attractions for those whose taste had survived modernity. Spotless linen, double beds warmed with copper pans, even in summer; cider, home-made from a large orchard, and matured in rum casks – the inn was a veritable feather-bed to all the senses. Prints of ‘Mariage à la Mode’, ‘Rake’s Progress’, ‘The Nightshirt Steeplechase’, ‘Run with the Quorn’, and large functional groupings of Victorian celebrities with their names attached to blank faces on a key chart, decorated the walls. Its sanitation and its port were excellent. Pot-pourri lay in every bedroom, old pewter round the coffee-room, clean napkins at every meal. And a poor welcome was assured to earwigs, spiders, and the wrong sort of guest… Warmson, one of those self-contained men who spread when they take inns, pervaded the house, with a red face set in small, grey whiskers, like a sun of just sufficient warmth.
To young Anne Forsyte all was ‘just too lovely’. Never in her short life, confined to a large country, had she come across such defiant cosiness – the lush peace of the river, the songs of birds, the scents of flowers, the rustic arbour, the drifting lazy sky, now blue, now white, the friendly fat spaniel, and the feeling that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow would for ever be the same as yesterday.
‘It’s a poem, Jon.’
‘Slightly comic. When everything’s slightly comic, you don’t tire.’
‘I’d certainly never tire of this.’
‘We don’t grow tragedy in England, Anne.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, tragedy’s extreme; and we don’t like extremes. Tragedy’s dry and England’s damp.’
She was leaning her elbows on the wall at the bottom of the garden, and, turning her chin a little in her hand, she looked round and up at him.
‘Fleur Mont’s father lives on the river, doesn’t he? Is that far from here?’
‘Mapledurham? I should think about ten miles.’
‘I wonder if we shall see her at Ascot. I think she’s lovely.’
‘Yes,’ said Jon.
‘I wonder you didn’t fall in love with her, Jon.’
‘We were kids when I knew her.’
‘I think she fell in love with you.’
‘Why?’
‘By the way she looks at you…. She isn’t in love with Mr Mont; she just likes him.’
‘Oh!’ said Jon.
Since in the coppice at Robin Hill Fleur had said ‘Jon!’ in so strange a voice, he had known queer moments. There was that in him which could have caught her, balanced there on the log with her hands on his shoulders, and gone straight back into the past with her. There was that in him which abhorred the notion. There was that in him which sat apart and made a song about them both, and that in him which said: ‘Get to work and drop all these silly feelings!’ He was, in fact, confused. The past, it seemed, did not die, as he had thought, but lived on beside the present, and sometimes, perhaps, became the future. Did one live for what one had not got? There was wrinkling in his soul, and feverish draughts crept about within him. The whole thing was on his conscience – for if Jon had anything, he had a conscience.
‘When we get our place,’ he said, ‘we’ll have all these old-fashioned flowers. They’re much the sweetest!’
‘Ah! Yes, do let’s get a home, Jon. Only are you sure you want one? Wouldn’t you like to travel and write poetry?’
‘It’s not a job. Besides, my verse isn’t good enough. You want the mood of Hatteras J. Hopkins:
Now, severed from my kind by my contempt,
I live apart and beat my lonely drum.’
‘I wish you weren’t modest, Jon.’
‘It’s not modesty, Anne; it’s a sense of the comic.’
‘Couldn’t we get a swim before dinner? It would be fine.’
‘I don’t know what the regulations are here.’
‘Let’s bathe first and find out afterwards.’
‘All right. You go and change. I’ll get this gate open.’
A fish splashed, a long white cloud brushed the poplar tops beyond the water. Just such an evening, six years ago, he had walked the towing-path with Fleur, had separated from her, waited to see her look back and wave her hand. He could see her still – that special grace, which gave her movements a lingering solidity within the memory. And now – it was Anne! And Anne in water was a dream!…
Above the ‘Pouter Pigeon’ the sky was darkening; cars in their garages were still; no boats passed, only the water moved, and the river wind talked vaguely in the rushes and among the leaves. All within was cosy. On their backs lay Warmson and his Fifine, singing a little through their noses. By a bedside light Holly read The Worst Journey in the World, and beside her Val dreamed that he was trying to stroke a horse’s nose, shortening under his hand to the size of a leopard’s. And Anne slept with her eyes hidden against Jon’s shoulder, and Jon lay staring at the crannies through which the moonlight eddied.
And in his stable at Ascot the son of Sleeping Dove, from home for the first time, pondered on the mutability of equine affairs, closing and opening his eyes and breathing without sound in the strawy dark above the black cat he had brought to bear him company.
Chapter Two
SOAMES GOES RACING
To Winifred Dartie the début of her son’s Sleeping Dove colt on Ascot Cup Day seemed an occasion for the gathering of such members of her family as were permitted to go racing by the primary cauton in their blood; but it was almost a shock to her when Fleur telephoned: ‘Father’s comin
g; he’s never been to Ascot, and doesn’t know that he wants to go.’
‘Oh!’ she said, ‘it’s too late to get any more Enclosure tickets. But Jack can see to him. What about Michael?’
‘Michael can’t come; he’s deep in slums – got a new slogan: “Broader gutters!”’
‘He’s so good,’ said Winifred. ‘Let’s go down early enough to lunch before racing, dear. I think we’d better drive.’
‘Father’s car is up – we’ll call for you.’
‘Delightful!’ said Winifred. ‘Has your father got a grey top hat? No? Oh! But he simply must wear one; they’re all the go this year. Don’t say anything, just get him one. He wears seven-and–a-quarter; and, dear, tell them to heat the hat and squash it in at the sides – otherwise they’re always too round for him. And he needn’t bring any money to speak of; Jack will do all our betting for us.’
Fleur thought that it was not likely father would have a bet; he had said he just wanted to see what the thing was like.
‘He’s so funny about betting,’ said Winifred, ‘like your grandfather.’
Not that it had been altogether funny in the case of James, who had been called on to pay the racing debts of Montague Dartie three times over.
With Soames and Winifred on the back seats, Fleur and Imogen on the front seats, and Jack Cardigan alongside Riggs, they took a circuitous road by way of Harrow to avoid the traffic, and emerged into it just at the point where for the first time it became thick. Soames, who had placed his grey top hat on his knee, put it on, and said:
‘Just like Riggs!’
‘Oh no, Uncle!’ said Imogen. ‘It’s Jack’s doing. When he’s got to go through Eton, he always likes to go through Harrow first.’
‘Oh! Ah!’ said Soames. ‘He was there. I should like Kit’s name put down.’
‘How nice!’ said Imogen. ‘Our boys will have left when he goes. You look so well in that hat, Uncle.’
Soames took it off again.
‘White elephant,’ he said. ‘Can’t think what made Fleur get me the thing!’
‘My dear,’ said Winifred, ‘it’ll last you for years. Jack’s had his ever since the war. The great thing is to prevent the moth getting into it, between seasons. What a lot of cars! I do think it’s wonderful that so many people should have the money in these days.’
The sight of so much money flowing down from town would have been more exhilarating to Soames if he, had not been wondering where on earth they all got it. With the coal trade at a standstill and factories closing down all over the place, this display of wealth and fashion, however reassuring, seemed to him almost indecent.
Jack Cardigan, from his front seat, had been explaining a thing he called the ‘tote’. It seemed to be a machine that did your betting for you. Jack Cardigan was a funny fellow; he made a life’s business of sport; there wasn’t another country that could have produced him! And, leaning forward, Soames said to Fleur:
‘You’re not got a draught there?’
She had been very silent all the way, and he knew why. Ten to one if young Jon Forsyte wouldn’t be at Ascot! Twice over at Mapledurham he had noticed letters addressed by her to:
‘Mrs Val Dartie,
Wansdon,
Sussex.’
She had seemed to him very fidgety or very listless all that fortnight. Once, when he had been talking to her about Kit’s future, she had said: ‘I don’t think it matters, Dad, whatever one proposes – he’ll dispose; parents don’t count now: look at me!’
And he had looked at her, and left it at that.
He was still contemplating the back of her head when they drew into an enclosure and he was forced to expose his hat to the public gaze. What a crowd! Here, on the far side of the course, were rows of people all jammed together, who, so far as he could tell, would see nothing, and be damp one way or another throughout the afternoon. If that was pleasure! He followed the others across the course, in front of the grandstand. So those were ‘the bookies’! Funny lot, with their names ‘painted clearly on each’, so that people could tell them apart, just as well, for they all seemed to him the same, with large necks and red faces, or scraggy necks and lean faces, one of each kind in every firm, like a couple of music-hall comedians. And, every now and then, in the pre-racing hush, one of them gave a sort of circular howl and looked hungrily at space. Funny fellows! They passed alongside the Royal Enclosure where bookmakers did not seem to be admitted. Numbers of grey top hats there! This was the place – he had heard – to see pretty women. He was looking for them when Winifred pressed his arm.
‘Look, Soames – the Royal Procession!’
Thus required to gape at those horse-drawn carriages at which everybody else would be gaping, Soames averted his eyes, and became conscious that Winifred and he were alone!
‘What’s become of the others?’ he said.
‘Gone to the paddock, I expect.’
‘What for?’
‘To look at the horses, dear.’
Soames had forgotten the horses.
‘Fancy driving up like that, at this time of day!’ he muttered.
‘I think it’s so amusing!’ said Winifred. ‘Shall we go to the paddock, too?’
Soames, who had not intended to lose sight of his daughter, followed her towards whatever the paddock might be.
It was one of those days when nobody could tell whether it was going to rain, so that he was disappointed by the dresses and the women’s looks. He saw nothing to equal his daughter and was about to make a disparaging remark when a voice behind him said:
‘Look, Jon! There’s Fleur Mont!’
Placing his foot on Winifred’s, Soames stood still. There, and wearing a grey top hat, too, was that young chap between his wife and his sister. A memory of tea at Robin Hill with his cousin Jolyon, that boy’s father, twenty-seven years ago, assailed Soames – and of how Holly and Val had come in and sat looking at him as if he were a new kind of bird. There they went, those three, into a ring of people who were staring at nothing so far as he could see. And there, close to them, were those other three, Jack Cardigan, Fleur and Imogen.
‘My dear,’ said Winifred, ‘you did tread on my toe.’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ muttered Soames. ‘Come over to the other side – there’s more room.’
It seemed horses were being led around; but it was at his daughter that Soames wanted to gaze from behind Winifred’s shoulder. She had not yet seen the young man, but was evidently looking for him – her eyes were hardly ever on the horses – no great wonder in that, perhaps, for they all seemed alike to Soames, shining and snakey, quiet as sheep, with boys holding on to their heads. Ah! A stab went through his chest, for Fleur had suddenly come to life; and, as suddenly, seemed to hide her resurrection even from herself! How still she stood – ever so still – gazing at that young fellow talking to his wife.
‘That’s the favourite, Soames. At least, Jack said he would be. What do you think of him?’
‘Much like the others – got four legs.’
Winifred laughed. Soames was so amusing!
‘Jack’s moving; if we’re going to have a bet, I think we’d better go back, dear. I know what I fancy.’
‘I don’t fancy anything,’ said Soames. ‘Weak-minded, I call it; as if they could tell one horse from another!’
‘Oh! but you’d be surprised,’ said Winifred; ‘you must get Jack to –’
‘No, thank you.’
He had seen Fleur move and join those three. But faithful to his resolve to show no sign, he walked glumly back into the grandstand. What a monstrous noise they were making now in the ring down there! And what a pack of people in this great stand! Up there, on the top of it, he could see what looked like half a dozen lunatics frantically gesticulating – some kind of signalling, he supposed. Suddenly, beyond the railings at the bottom of the lawn, a flash of colour passed. Horses – one, two, three; a dozen or more – all labelled wtih numbers, and with little bright men sitting
on their necks like monkeys. Down they went – and soon they’d come back, he supposed; and a lot of money would change hands. And then they’d do it again, and the money would change back. And what satisfaction they all got out of it, he didn’t know! There were men who went on like that all their lives, he believed – thousands of them: must be lots of time and money to waste in the country! What was it Timothy had said: ‘Consols are going up!’ They hadn’t; on the contrary, they were down a point, at least, and would go lower before the Coal Strike was over. Jack Cardigan’s voice said in his ear:
‘What are you going to back, Uncle Soames?’
‘How should I know?’
‘You must back something, to give you an interest.’
‘Put something on for Fleur, and leave me alone,’ said Soames; ‘I’m too old to begin.’
And, opening the handle of his racing-stick, he sat down on it. ‘Going to rain,’ he added gloomily. He sat there alone; Winifred and Imogen had joined Fleur down by the rails with Holly and her party – Fleur and that young man side by side. And he remembered how, when Bosinney had been hanging round Irene, he, as now, had made no sign, hoping against hope that by ignoring the depths beneath him he could walk upon the waters. Treacherously they had given way then and engulfed him; would they again – would they again? His lip twitched; and he put out his hand. A little drizzle fell on the back of it.
‘They’re off!’
Thank goodness – the racket had ceased! Funny change from din to hush. The whole thing funny – a lot of grown-up children! Somebody called out shrilly at the top of his voice – there was a laugh – then noise began swelling from the stand; heads were craning round him. ‘The favourite wins!’ ‘Not he!’ More noise; a thudding – a flashing past of colour! And Soames thought: ‘Well, that’s over!’ Perhaps everything was like that really. A hush – a din – a flashing past – a hush! All life a race, a spectacle – only you couldn’t see it! A venture and a paying-up! And beneath his new hat he passed his hand down over one flat cheek, and then the other. A paying-up! He didn’t care who paid up, so long as it wasn’t Fleur! But there it was – some debts could not be paid by proxy! What on earth was Nature about when she made the human heart!
The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2 Page 67