Has he, d’you know?’
Fleur turned her eyes towards the face behind her shoulder. No, it had its native look – frank, irresponsible, slightly faunlike, with its pointed ears, quick lips, and nostrils.
She said slowly,
‘If you don’t know, nobody does.’
A snuffle interrupted Michael’s answer. Ting-a-ling, long, low, slightly higher at both ends, was standing between them, with black muzzle upturned. ‘My pedigree is long,’ he seemed to say: ‘but my legs are short – what about it?’
Chapter Three
MUSICAL
ACCORDING to a great and guiding principle, Fleur and Michael Mont attended the Hugo Solstis concert, not because they anticipated pleasure, but because they knew Hugo. They felt, besides, that Solstis, an Englishman of Russo-Dutch extraction, was one of those who were restoring English music, giving to it a wide and spacious freedom from melody and rhythm, while investing it with literary and mathematical charms. And one never could go to a concert given by any of this school without using the word ‘interesting’ as one was coming away. To sleep to this restored English music, too, was impossible. Fleur, a sound sleeper, had never even tried. Michael had, and complained afterwards that it had been like a nap in Liège railway station. On this occasion they occupied those gangway seats in the front row of the dress circle of which Fleur had a sort of natural monopoly. There Hugo and the rest could see her taking her place in the English restoration movement. It was easy, too, to escape into the corridor and exchange the word ‘interesting’ with side-whiskered cognoscenti; or, slipping out a cigarette from the little gold case, wedding present of Cousin Imogen Cardigan, get a whiff or two’s repose. To speak quite honestly, Fleur had a natural sense of rhythm which caused her discomfort during those long and ‘interesting’ passages which evidenced, as it were, the composer’s rise and fall from his bed of thorns. She secretly loved a tune, and the impossibility of ever confessing this without losing hold of Solstis, Baff, Birdigal, MacLewis, Clorane, and other English restoration composers, sometimes taxed to its limits a nature which had its Spartan side. Even to Michael she would not ‘confess’; and it was additionally trying when, with his native disrespect of persons, accentuated by life in the trenches and a publisher’s office, he would mutter: ‘Gad! Get on with it!’ or: ‘Cripes! Ain’t he took bad!’ especially as she knew that Michael was really putting up with it better than herself, having a more literary disposition, and a less dancing itch in his toes.
The first movement of the new Solstis composition – ‘Phantasmagoria Piémontesque’ – to which they had come especially to listen, began with some drawn-out chords.
‘What oh!’ said Michael’s voice in her ear: ‘Three pieces of furniture moved simultaneously on a parquet floor!’
In Fleur’s involuntary smile was the whole secret of why her marriage had not been intolerable. After all, Michael was a dear! Devotion and mercury – jesting and loyalty – combined, they piqued and touched even a heart given away before it was bestowed on him. ‘Touch’ without ‘pique’ would have bored; ‘pique’ without ‘touch’ would have irritated. At this moment he was at peculiar advantage! Holding on to his knees, with his ears standing up, eyes glassy from loyalty to Hugo, and tongue in cheek, he was listening to that opening in a way which evoked Fleur’s admiration. The piece would be ‘interesting’ – she fell into the state of outer observation and inner calculation very usual with her nowadays. Over there was L.S.D., the greater dramatist; she didn’t know him – yet. He looked rather frightening, his hair stood up so straight. And her eye began picturing him on her copper floor against a Chinese picture. And there – yes! Gurdon Minho! Imagine his coming to anything so modern! His profile was rather Roman – of the Aurelian period! Passing on from that antique, with the pleased thought that by this time tomorrow she might have collected it, she quartered the assembly face by face – she did not want to miss anyone important.
‘The furniture’ had come to a sudden standstill.
‘Interesting!’ said a voice over her shoulder. Aubrey Greene! Illusive, rather moonlit, with his silky fair hair brushed straight back, and his greenish eyes – his smile always made her feel that he was ‘getting’ at her. But, after all, he was a cartoonist!
‘Yes, isn’t it?’
He curled away. He might have stayed a little longer – there wouldn’t be time for anyone else before those songs of Birdigal’s! Here came the singer Charles Powls! How stout and efficient he looked, dragging little Birdigal to the piano.
Charming accompaniment – rippling, melodious!
The stout, efficient man began to sing. How different from the accompaniment! The song hit every note just off the solar plexus, it mathematically prevented her from feeling pleasure. Birdigal must have written it in horror of someone calling it ‘vocal’. Vocal! Fleur knew how catching the word was; it would run like a measle round the ring, and Birdigal would be no more! Poor Birdigal! But this was ‘interesting’. Only, as Michael was saying: ‘O, my Gawd!’
Three songs! Powls was wonderful – so loyal! Never one note hit so that it rang out like music! Her mind fluttered off to Wilfrid.
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