Sensible Life Read Online Free Page A

benefit of the General than his wife, he thought talk of revolution was alarmist. He did not add that he wished to God that Vita was coming with him, that he loved her jealously and passionately, that the prospect of leaving her made him feel ill, that he thought it unnecessary for her to stay with Flora until the autumn. In India she could go to the hills for the hot weather, as she usually did, where he would know what she was up to. He thought the child could have been deposited in the school they had picked at once, instead of at the start of the school year. Pressing his wife’s arm against his ribs and his lips into a tight line, he wished that when Vita nearly miscarried, five months pregnant, she had lost the child. Children and the Indian Civil Service did not mix. It was not, he thought bitterly, as though Vita liked children. Flora was the result of a passing and regrettable fancy. The child was an expense, an inconvenience, a wedge between himself, his wife and his career. He was an uxorious man; he flinched from sharing any part of her. Spending the summer with Flora, Vita was bowing to the convention that this was what parents did. She had been happy to leave her with the governess all the weeks they had spent in London, he thought grimly. He knew Vita, alone with Flora, would get bored. And what then? At least when she was in a hill station, and he not too far away, there was some control. Most wives could be counted on not to do more than flirt with bachelor subalterns. Vita was welcome to that, but alone in France—
    Beside him, Vita was telling the General that they had a daughter and the idea was that she should learn to speak French before she went to school; that she already spoke good Italian after a year in Siena with an Italian governess. “Denys is keen on languages,” she said. “She is also learning Russian.”
    “Ah, hum, yes, a good thing, I suppose. Are you yourself a linguist?” Angus included Denys in the conversation.
    “Native languages.” Denys did not specify how many. “In my job, you have to.” He despised Vita for her falsity, and perversely loved her for it. Flora’s year in Italy and her present sojourn in France were nothing to do with the acquisition of languages, everything to do with the rate of the lira and franc to the pound. He had no independent means (the sight of General Leigh’s rather splendid luggage annoyed him). Standing up in the vedette, looking towards the quay, he decided Vita could manage without Mademoiselle until Flora went to school. While despising his wife’s manipulation of the truth, Denys felt a sharp lust for her. She may be silly, he thought, but I desire her.
    “Is your daughter meeting us?” he asked, disassociating himself from parenthood. Then, noticing Angus Leigh’s quick glance, he laughed. “Our daughter is so unlike either of us, I make a joke of it, but since discovering a portrait of my great-grandmother I have put aside doubts of her provenance.”
    Angus Leigh said, “Oh,” on a polite note.
    Vita said, “Oh, Denys, you are the limit,” and to Angus, “We are both fair, you see, and Flora is dark.” Then to Denys she said, “No, darling, I don’t think she will meet us. It seemed better not to tell her we were coming today; the sailings might have been delayed by the strike.”
    “The strike has not happened yet,” said Denys, aware that they would have stayed on in London if they had been able to get tickets for a particular show. “I want to get you into bed,” he muttered in his wife’s ear.
    “And I you,” she said. “Here we are, we have arrived.” The boat bumped against the quay. “See you at the hotel later on,” she said to Angus.
    “Yes, yes, of course,” said Angus, not sure that he wanted to. He handed his bags to Gaston and set off at a brisk clip towards the Marjolaine, leaving the Trevelyans to find their own way. As he walked he thought Vita Trevelyan pretty but tiresome, foreseeing that