Sunflower

by Rebecca West

  She lifted her chin and smiled vaguely at something above Etta’s head. Perhaps now that he had said this in front of people, whatever it was that made things happen would let her off that other moment, which she had dreaded for so long, when he would strike her. Only, if she had been permitted to choose, she would have chosen the other. It would not have been quite so awful.

  But her smile gave out. It crinkled to something else on her face. She looked round for help, at first to Essington, which was silly, considering it was against him she needed help, but one has those funny instincts, when one has been living with a man for ten years; and then to Francis Pitt. He made no sign of seeing. His heavy, greyish lids were drooped, and if it had not been for the pursing of his great mouth she might have thought he had fallen into a bearish gloom and had not heard Essington’s last words. But suddenly and stealthily he laid down his cigar, set his hands on the arms of his chair, and pressed it backwards for a fraction of an inch. Why, of course, she could get up and go. But she always had a queer, obedient feeling that whatever Essington was doing to her she ought to stay until he had quite finished.

  She met Etta’s eyes, and rose. Essington’s hand, trembling, closed the door a little too quickly after them.

  The drawing room upstairs really did look rather pretty. She need not be ashamed to take anybody into it. It was always good to come back to the three Ming figures up there on the mantelpiece, the two calm old men with staves who had been on a long journey and brought back peace, the princess whose face looked bland and royal because of her smooth flesh, her little bones. In the grey bowls between the figures the servants had put red roses past their prime; as she had taught them; for she fancied it went well with the agelessness of the old men and the lady, who were seven hundred years old, who were younger than any day past its morning, to hear the wordless lisp of a dropping petal now and then, like the beat of a clock that was truer than an ordinary clock, since it was irregular, and time goes by sometimes fast and sometimes slowly. Between the pale green curtains of the three long windows showed the blossomy branches of the pear tree in the garden below, thrusting through the interstices of the balcony railing, like the muzzles of white furry animals trying to climb out of the London night, where there was only the temporal beauty of the spring, into this quiet Chinese room, where lovely things were continuing for ever. It seemed a shame when one had a nice place like this not to be able to sit down and enjoy it.

  ‘What a lovely room,’ said Etta. ‘I do like your wallpaper.’

  ‘It is nice, isn’t it. It’s eighteenth-century Chinese. We found rolls and rolls of it in an Italian villa we once had, never been put up on anything, so we bought the lot.’

  ‘That was a piece of luck. Did you like Italy?’

  ‘I did. Awfully. But he got tired of it in a week or two. He always does get tired of places quite soon.’ It was best, she supposed, to talk of him quite naturally.

  ‘So does Francis. Every year he thinks he’s going to like Deauville, and he never does after the first two or three days. Then I have to find a new place after we’ve taken a villa for the whole season.’

  ‘That is tiresome, isn’t it.’ She would have liked to draw Miss Pitt’s attention to the three figures, but she did not feel she could venture on long sentences yet. So she continued to look at the wallpaper through a changing lens of tears. ‘I always like that little man coming down the steps of the temple. And look. It’s the same little man looking out of the sort of sedan chair. In the procession. And there he is again having his tea in the garden.’

  ‘So he is.’

  ‘I like the grey willows going down all wooshy into the water. It all looks so nice and quiet, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, nice and quiet.’

  They continued to look at the wallpaper until Sunflower cried out. ‘Oh, I feel so cold. Aren’t you awfully cold? Would you like a fire?’

  Then, seeing the open window, she felt a fool. Of course it was nearly summer. It was only because she was in a state that she was shivering.

  But Etta said, as if she had not noticed anything odd, ‘Well, yes, I should, if it’s only a matter of turning a switch. The evening has turned a little chilly, hasn’t it?’

  They settled down on each side of the fireplace, stretching out their fingers to the warmth.

  ‘Fancy having a fire in May!’ said Sunflower. Her voice would shake about, ‘Look, my hands are quite blue. I must have caught cold in the car.’

  ‘Yes, I remember thinking you looked cold when you came in.’

  ‘It was an open car,’ Sunflower went on, calculating that one could not see out of the window from the dining room table. ‘And there was a wind. Quite a cold wind. I do think the summers are colder than they used to be.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no doubt that the climate is worse than it was when we were children.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it must be. Why, Mother never would have a fire lit in the house after the thirty-first of March and before the first of October. Except when some of us children were ill, of course.’

  ‘That was a rule my mother made too.’

  ‘Funny all the rules they had. Changing one’s woollies on the first of May.’ She sighed. ‘Woollies were comfortable, though, weren’t they, when it was cold. It’s funny to think how one couldn’t wear them now. It would seem worse than wrong, somehow, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t if you want to,’ said Etta encouragingly.

  ‘Oh, no. I couldn’t. You see, I can’t exactly act, I’m just what they call a box-office draw, and it would spoil it. People wouldn’t know, of course, but it’s what really artistic producers call atmosphere, which means what you can’t see. Oh, I’m still so cold. I’m still so cold …’ She leaned forward to the heater. It seemed as if she would have to press her hands down on the red bar itself before she could get rid of that numbness, that feeling of blueness close to the bone. Perhaps, after all, it would make things better if she did say something about him.

  ‘He’s very tired, you know.’

  Etta nodded understandingly. ‘Oh, I know. Francis has what he calls reactions, sometimes.’

  ‘I suppose it’s all the work they do. He works terribly hard, you know.’

  ‘Yes, so does Francis. And they are different from us.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course they’re different.’

  They lowered their voices, like nurses talking of their patients at the door of a ward.

  ‘Does Lord Essington sleep badly?’

  ‘N-no … I can’t say I’ve much to worry about so far as his sleeping goes. Only after he’s eaten duck. I’m always telling him he oughtn’t to eat duck. But he always says it’s something else.’

  ‘I know. Francis is like that over white port. But he doesn’t sleep at the best of times. He really is a very, very bad sleeper.’

  ‘Oh, that is dreadful. It upsets them so, and they can’t stand it. They haven’t got patience like us …’ Her jaw dropped. She brought back her hands to her lap. It struck her that from force of habit she was speaking as if she had forgiven him; and this time she had not forgiven him. At last the thing was finished. She wished that she did not have to face him again; not because she was afraid of what he would do or say, but just because she did not want ever to see him or think of him again. It would be difficult to keep her attention on him. She would have to face the other man again, too. She remembered what she must look like.

  ‘Would you like to go upstairs?’ she asked. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to tidy. I must look a sight.’

  ‘Yes. I think we’ll have time,’ murmured Etta.

  ‘We’ve got to have time,’ said Sunflower.

  But when they went out on the landing Essington’s voice called up plaintively from the bottom of the stairs, ‘Sunflower! Sunflower! You know I like sitting in the library after dinner.’

  From force of habit Sunflower went down three steps. Then it seemed silly not to go on. Etta did not seem to have
expected her to do anything else.

  When they went into the library Essington was searching for something among the bookshelves, and Francis Pitt was standing on the hearthrug. He laid a heavy look on her, pushed a chair towards her, and as she settled in it leaned over her and said, ‘Are you comfortable?’ in a way that would have been suitable only if he had made the chair for her birthday with his own hands. But it was wicked to laugh at him, for spreading it on thick, because he was doing it just to show her he liked her. After he had seen to his sister’s comfort, not so portentously, he moved to the other side of the fireplace and came to a standstill, smoking his cigar and watching Essington at his hunt among the books. That was convenient, for now she could take a good look at him. It was funny, how like a lion standing on its hind legs he was. He was lion-colour, with his earthy skin and his tawny hair, and the deep lines running from his nose to his chin were like the folds in an animal’s hide. His broad but tiny hands and feet, which she perceived with amazement and delight to be smaller than her own, bore the same proportion to his thick, bulky-shouldered body that a lion’s paws do to its carcase. Though he was so short one could imagine him wrestling with wild beasts, rolling about in the dust with them, till the growling stopped …

  That was what had been in the prow of the canoe he had driven over the waters to her with a round-mouthed, wordless cry: a conquered beast; a slaughtered deer. As the boat came nearer she could see the little head propped up against the birch-bark side, its silken, leaf-shaped ears limp as in docility, its melting eyes set in the saying of that mild, last word that all the dead say, be they beast or human. She would have felt compunction that so lovely a thing should have died before its time had she not felt pride that he had killed it; and had not someone standing by her side, whose voice she loved to hear, sent up a round-mouthed cry that meant that they rejoiced to see food. She wished that she could stay longer in her day-dream, so that the canoe could come to the shore, so that she could learn who the other one was, so that she could understand that feeling of crackling, heatless fire which was in the green forest-boughs, which was around her, which was within her. But she was called back by Essington’s fretting voice: ‘I never can find anything in this house …’ Absentmindedly she asked, ‘What are you looking for?’ ‘Oh, don’t fuss me, don’t fuss me,’ he wailed, and Francis Pitt, with a quickness that showed he had been waiting for a chance to protect her, cut in: ‘Have you never thought of going over to the Labour Party, Essington?’

  Forgetting her, he wheeled round. ‘Go over to the Party that hasn’t made up its mind whether it stands for free trade or protection? No…!’

  For a moment after Francis Pitt had gone he dragged their thoughts with him.

  ‘What nice people,’ said Sunflower; and Essington purred, ‘Yes, the little creature has real charm. But a wicked little creature. They say his financial record in California is shady beyond description. I remember we had qualms of letting him have a seat. And he came here tonight with guile, with guile. He and Hurrell are thinking of trying to pull the Liberal Party together by dropping Bryce Atkin overboard. They want me to come in. But also the little devil has thought of ratting to the Labour Party.’ He chuckled. ‘An evil little bottle-imp.’

  Then their eyes met.

  He fixed her with the menacing, justice-invested stare of the outraged schoolmaster; but she lifted her chin as she had never done before when he had been angry with her. For a second he looked astonished and then seemed to doubt whether he really wanted a quarrel, after all. He turned away and began going round the bookshelves, whistling and putting back into place the books he had disarranged; and at length remarked nonchalantly, ‘Quite a good little evening. We must ask them again.’

  She cleared her throat and said unsteadily: ‘No.’

  He swung round with an affectation of surprise. ‘But I thought you said you liked them?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I liked them all right,’ she said. ‘But there isn’t going to be any more we. It’s over. It’s finished. I don’t want to live with you any more. I don’t want ever to see you again.’

  He put his long fine hand to his forehead and sighed before speaking patiently. ‘Ah, Sunflower. I could wish that you wouldn’t always start this sort of thing late at night, when I’m tired out. You have a marvellous instinct for choosing the worst possible moments for making a scene.’

  ‘But I’m not making a scene. I’m just telling you I want you to go away.’ She thought of her pretty bed upstairs, with its flat, round, lavender-scented pillow that it was nice to rub your face into, and the embroidered handkerchief linen sheets she had brought back from Switzerland, looking so nice against the apple-green quilt; and tears of vexation came into her eyes. It was absurd to have a lovely Chinese room and not be able to sit in it, to have a comfortable bedroom and not be able to go to bed in it. ‘He’s like having a pipe-burst in every room,’ she thought, and told him wearily: ‘I want you to go away. And never come back again. I’m finished.’

  For a minute he did not answer but stood raising himself on the balls of his feet and lifting his head, as if to try the air with his silver feelers. ‘Very well, Sunflower,’ he agreed at length. ‘I think the time has come when this is the best thing for us to do.’ He rose, he fell, he rose again, on those neat, narrow, long feet. ‘For me, I haven’t been happy for the last—oh, the last four years.’

  She said, ‘Right,’ and to herself she said, ‘It’s three years since I nursed him through that breakdown, and had that awful time with him at Madeira. Seems funny that that doesn’t mean anything to him. But he’s always kind of taken a pride in not saying thank you. I wonder if anywhere inside him he knows what’s been done for him. Somehow it would be nice if he did even though we’re not going on. But what’s the odds. It’s finished.’

  He breathed, ‘Aha! so that’s settled!’ and crossed the room to the table just behind her, where there were syphons and whisky. There was a fizzing, and his voice passed over her head, purring and benedictory: ‘Yes, I think we are very wise to look things in the face and get clear. Without any bitterness. Without any recriminations. In good temper.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she assented, through a yawn. ‘Is it really going to be as easy as this?’

  For a while he drank in silence, and then remarked casually, ‘I’ll stay here tonight all the same, if you don’t mind. Of course I shan’t bother you. But I told Brooks I shouldn’t want him any more. And … mm … you know how I hate taxis.’

  She could have laughed, it was so exactly like him. He would not go away that night, because she had asked him to go then; but he would go away in the morning, and not come back, and persuade himself that this had altered the situation in some way that gave him the advantage over her. After a little it would seem to him that it was he who had ended it, not her. She smiled drowsily, and asked herself, ‘Do I really want it to be as easy as this?’ and was horrified, as if she had put out a hand to touch some burning substance and found it cold in death, to find that she did want it to be as easy as this.

  There was more fizzing. Then his voice soared again. ‘We must remain friends, of course, Sunflower. We’ve had a very pleasant time together in some ways, and there are all sorts of memories that will link us together.’

  ‘Yes, all sorts.’

  ‘You must always look on me as a friend, you know, Sunflower. Always come to me for anything you want.’

  He was trying to be nice. ‘Thank you, dear,’ she said.

  Slowly he sauntered to the other armchair and pushed it forward till it faced her; and settled in it with his glass of whisky. ‘Yes, little Sunflower,’ he went on, between the sips. ‘I’ll always be glad to help you. For, though I welcome this break in a way—not that there hasn’t been a great deal, oh, a very great deal indeed, that’s been very delightful between us, but I’m old, I find myself growing more and more incapable of adapting myself to a different type of mind—’ he stopped and gazed thoughtfully into the distance
.

  ‘He’s thinking of replacing me with one of those political widows with pearl dog-collars who get both volumes of the dull books out of the Times Book Club at once,’ reflected Sunflower. ‘Well, I don’t care. But I wish he’d get on with it. It makes me all shaky to sit and talk like this after I’ve turned him down, even though he is taking it so well. And I would like to go to my own bed.’

  ‘Still, there’s a very real friendship and liking between us, and I’d like to be all the use to you I can. And you know, Sunflower, you may need me, for I’m not sure you’ll find life on your own so easy as you think you will … Mm …’ Again he gazed into the distance, until he took another sip, to hearten him after the disquieting vision he had seen. ‘I wish I were surer about you in certain ways. There’s your work …’

  ‘That’ll go on for a few years, I dare say,’ she said.

  He set down his glass, sat back in his chair, again looked into space at some lugubrious foreboding. At length he agreed, ‘Yes, I suppose it will,’ and, as if to encourage himself, took another drink.

  ‘It’s a pity I had to act,’ said Sunflower, miserably. ‘I’ve never really fancied it.’

  ‘Yes,’ he mused, ‘it’s a pity, Sunflower. Yet I don’t quite know where you would have fitted in better, what your real métier can have been …’ He dismissed the unprofitable speculation, mournfully drank again, set down his glass, and said, with the air of one putting a good face on a sad situation, ‘Well, as you say, that’ll probably last for a few years. These new people are pretty good, of course. Perdita Godly and all these youngsters. But you’ve got your footing. I think Phillips is genuinely grateful to you for the luck you’ve brought him. He’ll probably be loyal to you for quite a long time. Oh yes, you’re all right, Sunflower.’ He sipped again, his eyes set kindly and pensively on her over the rim of his glass. ‘But, mind you, you’ve got to start being careful. You’re a little fatter than you were when we first met, my dear. You eat a good deal, you know.’