Sunflower

by Rebecca West

  She must see to it that he met Hurrell; but she must not give away that he wanted to, for he was ashamed of these ordinary emotions, as one would have thought he would have been ashamed of his bad temper and injustice, and as he was not. So she looked at Etta and Francis Pitt, as if she thought them very interesting and charming people, though at that moment she was not thinking about them at all; she seemed as if she were going to say something, but bit it back, and then could not help herself, and said naïvely, as if begging him to let her go to this nice party, ‘We could go, couldn’t we?’ It was queer how she could act better off the stage than on it; she supposed it was because the motive was stronger. She couldn’t be expected to want to please an audience of people she didn’t know as much as she would want to please Essington.

  ‘There you see,’ said Francis Pitt, ‘Miss Fassendyll wants you to do it. That settles it. You’re coming to meet Hurrell.’

  ‘These women,’ protested Essington, ‘these women know nothing of the stern moral passion of our sex. I quarrelled with Hurrell on a matter of high moral principle, my dear.’ He looked happier already.

  ‘And you’ll make it up with him on my Mumm 1901, which is a darn sight better,’ said Francis Pitt, with that strange, deep, over-acted chuckle. ‘I’m all with the women on this and many other matters. Nix on moral passion for me. Now, when will you come up? Etta, when are we free? Well, we needn’t bother about that. It’s for you to say.’

  ‘Next week, you said, didn’t you? Monday … Tuesday …’ He seemed to reflect deeply, though nowadays he had not so very many engagements; and finally suggested, in a burst, ‘Look here, what about this Friday? As a matter of fact it would suit me better than next week, just as it happens.’

  ‘This Friday? That’s fine. At half past eight. I count on you for that.’

  Etta murmured, ‘What about the Dartreys?’

  Pitt made a sweeping, advertising gesture. ‘Put them off! I know now what I want to do on Friday evening!’ He drank deeply, and brought down the glass smartly on the table. ‘Ah, this’ll help Hurrell to throw off his cold.’

  ‘Has he a cold?’ asked Essington. She could see that now he was letting himself be eager for news of Hurrell.

  ‘If you asked him tonight he’d tell you he was dying of one. He’s an old woman about himself, God bless him. He’s gone off to bed this evening with a face as long as a fiddle because he’s got an ordinary cold on his chest.’ Again he chuckled, and twirled the stem of his glass between his thick fingers. For a moment he seemed to Sunflower like a tired actor who is getting through the evening on his technique; but that was absurd, for vitality was plainly the thing that he had got. He was the most self-possessed and male person she had ever met.

  ‘Well, I think he really is ill,’ said Etta obstinately, re-starting a discussion.

  ‘Fiddlesticks! I’m often as ill as that,’ her brother interrupted, rather suddenly. A greyness passed over his face. His features seemed to fall, so that he looked much older, and his eyelids flickered. It seemed to Sunflower that he might have had quite a lot to think about during dinner. But he said, ‘Essington, I’m going to ask for some more of your very good port. We must drink to the success of your meeting with Hurrell. May you make it up and—’ he wagged his head portentously, ‘may great things come of your meeting.’

  Essington filled his own glass too, though ordinarily he drank no more than a sip of port. They raised their glasses solemnly. It was funny the way that men have special ways of being ridiculous that they agree not to consider ridiculous, like the silly clothes they wear at Eton, and going to cricket matches as if they mattered.

  ‘Here, the women are standing out of this!’ cried Francis Pitt. ‘They must drink this health too!’

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed they must!’ echoed Essington, and poured port into Miss Etta’s glass with something of the other man’s swaggering breadth of gesture, which came so unnaturally to him that for an instant the wine shone above the rim like a bevelled jewel, threw down a tawny veil that draped its calm self, safely contained within the bowl, and clung to the flutings of the stem and became a bright blister on the walnut wood; while the wine left behind shivered, and was again a flawless bevelled jewel above the rim. That pleased Sunflower because it was a pretty thing in itself, and because of the funny little rivalry between the two men that had made it happen. She felt like a mother who, sitting on a beach, watches her son follow some stronger, more conventionally boyish boy over the rocks in some game; she does not mind that hers seems the weaker and comparatively spiritless because she is sure he knows a trick worth two of that; this man was all very well but he was not her Essington, with his honesty, his courage, his wonderful cleverness, and his dear way of looking like a great big lovely cat. She felt very warmly, closely, married to him tonight and plotted how she might move her chair closer to Essington and slip her hand into his under the corner of the table. She smiled at Francis Pitt, as he poured out her port, with the unveiled candour which one can show to a stranger who has no power over one, who will not be able to use it to one’s hurt.

  ‘To the meeting with Hurrell,’ said Francis Pitt heavily; and they all drank, all of them, even Essington, laughing a little. As they set down their glasses Francis Pitt, assuming the character of a strong man exasperated to distraction and humbly anxious for help from those whom he knew to be cleverer, grumbled, ‘And truly I do hope to God you two get talking to some purpose. Something must happen to lift us all out of this mess and if you two can’t do it no one can …’ He was obviously trying to flatter Essington. But it struck her that the obviousness of it was intentional; he knew that though Essington would be pleased to hear someone expressing sincere admiration for him he would be still more pleased that an important man thought it worth while to flatter him. That was clever, but it was male, it was superficial. It was true, of course, but it was beside the point. Essington was going to do as he wished, and meet Hurrell and forgive him, but not for anything that had to do with importance or recognition or getting back into power; simply because he wanted to make it up with an old friend. She looked at him adoringly and wished that she might rub her cheek against his and nuzzle up to him. She would as soon as these people had gone. Sometimes it had seemed to her as if she stayed with him only out of habit, as if the pang she felt whenever she determined to leave him were only such as she might feel if she were obliged to move out of a house after a long tenancy. But now she knew she thought such things only because she was tired. She stayed with him because he was full of sweetness, she did not leave him because that would be to abandon the whole of life that was good. And it would get better and better, there would be more and more evenings like this, as he grew older and less vehement. Then floated before her, and seemed to make a pattern, images of herself, of Essington, this contentment not transitory on his face, of the garage proprietor and his hideous beloved wife; of Alice Hester. She breathed a long, hopeful sigh.

  It made Essington turn to her as if he had not really noticed her before. ‘Well, Sunflower,’ he said kindly, ‘What was it that kept you in Packbury, you time-wasting, appointment-shattering young woman? Whatever it was, it’s done you good. You look splendid.’

  ‘She does indeed,’ affirmed Francis Pitt, settling his grey eyes on her; and Etta made a little enthusiastic murmur. Essington continued to look at her, and shifted the flowers from the centre of the table, so that no spray should veil their picture of her. They were all smiling tenderly, as if she were a child sent into the dining room to show off a new party-frock. She smiled back mistily, uncertain how to take their admiration without seeming either vain or ungrateful; it was a problem she had had to face a million times in her life and there was no solution to it. She never felt right. But this time she did not really mind. She was glad that she was thought beautiful by this man who had set in motion everything that Essington wanted to happen, and his sister who seemed so fond of him. To speed on the still faintly embarrassing moment she said shyl
y, ‘Well, I went down to Clussingford for the weekend.’

  ‘Old Lady Lambert and Sunflower have a curious friendship,’ Essington told the others. ‘She suspects the poor child of some interesting vice. Someday Sunflower will accidentally reveal the purity of her nature and a car will be ordered to take her to the station.’ It wasn’t as funny as he could be, but he had only said it because he was enormously proud that famous old Lady Lambert had taken her up, and wanted them to know about it. He really was ridiculously fond of her, and after ten years too.

  ‘And on Sunday afternoon Mr Justice Sandbury took me to look at those white cows—’

  ‘Haven’t I heard of somebody else doing that before?’

  ‘I dare say. He’s the tenth old man who’s shown me those white cows.’

  ‘And the plainer women are allowed to stay at home and go to sleep on the terrace. It’s a hard world, Sunflower.’

  They all laughed teasingly at her, mocking her tenderly for her beauty. It was nice. They knew she was stupid, but did not mind. This was a lovely hour. Everything was going well. She had no troubles, really.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ she went on, when she had stopped giggling, ‘he asked me to stop at Packbury on my way back on Monday. So when I did get there, and the car chose that very place to break down—’

  Essington made a petulant noise. ‘Harrowby is no good.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t his fault.’ She put back her head and laughed silently at the dear, silly old thing, for he was scowling and knocking the ash off his cigar and did not see her. It was part of his passion for her, one aspect of his desire to be not only all she loved in the world but all she knew of the world, that he always took a dislike to any of her servants, men or women, as soon as they had been with her long enough to mean anything to her. Actually he would not have let her discharge them except for some misbehaviour, for his sense of justice knew absolutely no exception, save sometimes herself; but he grumbled all the time as if he wanted her to do it. Funny cross old thing that loved her so. When they were alone again she would ruffle up his thick eyebrows and his silver feelers. ‘Well, anyway it seemed a way of passing the time, so I went. And it was interesting.’

  ‘Was it? How?’

  She grew self-conscious all of a sudden. ‘Oh, it just was,’ she said weakly, and drooped her head, and bit a salted almond and stared downwards at her empty coffee-cup.

  ‘I loathed going on circuit when I was at the Bar,’ said Essington. ‘You see then what this earth breeds. But then I don’t love humanity. Sunflower does. She would not press the button that meant annihilation for us all, the foolish creature. But tell us, what was it that interested you?’

  ‘Oh, just the people.’ She tried to leave it at that, but they worried her for details. Essington wanted her to show off, to let the others see that she was his possession, the most beautiful woman in England but a nice human being as well. And Francis Pitt also wanted her to show off, so that he could flatter Essington by conceding these points. Men were funny! She could not help laughing, and that made them more insistent, which was awkward. And Francis Pitt suddenly made it more awkward by asking, ‘Didn’t I hear you say something as you came into the room about an old woman who was tried for bigamy?’

  She blushed. ‘Oh—that was nothing.’

  ‘What was the story?’ Essington pursued.

  ‘Oh nothing, nothing …’

  ‘Tell me, Sunflower!’ He was half-angry. He really wanted to know, because he had seen her blush, and he wanted to know what had made her blush. It hurt him because she was keeping something that had moved her a secret from him. His face was catspawed with growing suspicion and discontent. If she did not tell him he would in a moment or two become capable of something outrageous that would not only express his irritation but would bring the whole occasion to an end, like an angry child twitching a tablecloth by the corner and bringing down the meal it had looked forward to, the favourite food on the favourite plate, crashing to the floor. He might offend them so that the invitation to see Hurrell would fall through. Well, she would have to do as he wished, though she could not tell the story as she had wanted to in front of these two people. But she would say those things after they had gone; she knew that as soon as the door had closed on them he would take her in his arms. And these were such very nice people that she could say nearly all she felt in front of them. In any case she must stop him getting cross, so she began: ‘Well, that was rather interesting, I thought. She was an old woman of seventy, called—’ she looked down and parted hesitatingly with the name for told secrets lose a little of their virtue, ‘Alice Hester.’

  ‘That is a very beautiful name,’ commented Francis Pitt in his heavy way that was like spoken leaded type.

  She had wanted someone to say that. ‘Isn’t it?’ she said, and their eyes met. He was such an understanding person that she wished she might take him aside and tell him the story by himself.

  ‘Well, go on,’ said Essington.

  ‘Oh, it isn’t anything really. But anyway she was married years and years ago, fifty years ago, I suppose, to a man she didn’t like, a farm labourer down in Essex, and she wasn’t happy, though she had lots of children. And one night her husband turned her out of doors, and the children too. And then a ploughman came, and took them all to a barn where they slept. And in the morning he brought them two loaves and some water.’ Her voice became weak and ashamed, as if she were a child who had been made to repeat a story out of the Gospel to strangers. She turned to Francis Pitt and said, tittering: ‘That last bit sounds like something out of the Bible, doesn’t it?’

  The look on his face struck her dumb. She would have liked to run from the table. It was an odd inquisitive look, as if she had given herself away in some phrase and he was thirsty to follow it up. Ordinarily she would not have minded that at all, for of course she liked people to know all about her. But this was an expression that no one ought to wear when they were thinking of another human being. So might a burglar look, when his fingers had found the right combination and the safe was swinging open, and all that remained to do was to lift out the swag. Defensively she put up her hand to cover her mouth.