by Rebecca West
‘Quite comfortable, thank you …’
‘You were moving as if you wanted to get up. Well, we had seven years of it. Seven years. Then the crash came. We were caught. She was speaking to me on the telephone and her husband happened to pick up an extension and heard what we were saying. Then, by God, the fat was in the fire. Her husband was a very decent fellow, but he would not have it. Small blame to him, he wouldn’t have been a man if he had. I wanted her to face the music with me. To be divorced and marry me. But there I lost her by the very thing that held me. She was a good woman, and she would not give up her children. She had three lovely children. So we had to part. That was an awful business. Her husband let us meet for the last time in the park of their country seat. I had to wait for her in a clearing at the end of a long grass avenue. I had to give my word not to go up that avenue, to stay right there in that clearing. I saw my poor darling coming down that avenue, dressed all in white, because she knew I loved to see her so, running to meet me, running desperately like a hurt thing that wants to get home and show its hurt and be comforted. And I could not go to meet her. I had to sit there and wait. When she got to me she was all dabbled in tears. I cleaned them up with my handkerchief. We had just an hour together. I had given my word to keep her no more than an hour. Then I had to sit and watch the white figure stumbling all the way back up the avenue. Back to her home. Away from romance and passion and all the delights we’d had for seven years. Once she fell on her knees. I couldn’t bear it. I swung round and hid my face against the trunk of a tree, but when I turned back again she was still there, a white heap on the grass. And I could not go to her. I was howling like a kid when at last she picked herself up and staggered to the end of the avenue. God help all of us who live outside the law …’
Unctuously he rambled on, ‘Then after that I went to pieces. Nature is very brutal. A man’s heart may be broken, but his body doesn’t cease making certain demands. And women have always been kind to me, too kind to me …’
Why would he go on talking about things that do not matter? She cried out from the bottom of a deep pit, ‘Those three children, were any of them yours?’
He did not answer.
She cried out a little louder, ‘Were any of them yours?’
A long while afterwards he answered, ‘No.’
Because his voice sounded muffled and did not come from the direction she had expected, she took her hands down from her eyes. Now why, when a minute before he had been sitting up in his chair as pleased as punch and smacking his lips over this story of this woman who had made her think him so wonderful, paunchy and sleek with self-satisfaction, should he have slipped down sideways in his chair and be lying in a huddled heap, his face buried in one arm, the other one hanging limp between his knees as if he had had a stroke? She rose and stood looking down on him in terror.
He spoke again. ‘None of her children were mine.’
And then again he grumbled out of his collapse, ‘I have never had any children.’
She snapped her teeth together so that it could be heard, and drew her hand across her flat hard stomach and the strong hoops of her ribs. But she was alarmed at him. She took a step towards him.
‘Sunflower,’ he querulously muttered.
Prowling, cautious, like a dog that is afraid it is being manoeuvred into a position where it can be whipped, she crossed the room and stood over him. She was not quite sure that he would not look up at her and jeer. But from his heavy breathing she knew that his distress was real. She sank on her knees beside him, not touching him, because he would not say anything that gave her the right to do that, but coming very close to him. ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’ she asked tenderly, crooningly, fiercely.
Without lifting the arm which shielded his face he muttered, ‘What can I do to be saved?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What can I do to be saved?’ Mockingly he said it, as if he were quoting from some sermon that would strike every sophisticated person as preposterous. ‘That’s how my old father would have put it in the pulpit. What can I do to be saved? How am I to live so that God will not send me to Hell?’ Then awe and terror flooded his tone and he asked in deadly earnest and despair, ‘How am I to live so that people will think me a great man? How am I to live so that it will last, so that there is some sense to it all?’ He lifted his head from his arm and looked at her with something like hatred. ‘It is easy for you! You are a woman. You know what you want.’
‘Why,’ she said, in wonder, ‘what do I want?’
He closed his eyes, which made his face look very ghastly and smiled. In a whisper, he said, ‘You are so terrible as an army with banners, Sunflower,’ and turned his head away from her.
She did not know what to do. If only she had the right to touch him, she might be able to comfort him, but she could not find any words, she did not understand what was the matter with him, why he could not go ahead and be happy. All she could do was to bring her face closer to his and murmur kind, inaudible things, while he muttered brokenly, ‘What am I to do? What am I to do? What’s the way to live? Essington and Hurrell, I thought they had it, I thought they’d got the trick. Hard thinking and public service … Hard thinking and public service …’ He repeated it owlishly, making a faint charlatanish movement of his brows and hands. ‘But Essington and Hurrell … Look at them. Look at them. Hurrell is dying. And it all means nothing. He’s missed something and he knows it. Every minute of the day I can see he knows it. And Essington …’ He gave a hard, dry snigger that in the midst of her pity for him struck her as unusually disagreeable. ‘Essington is a great man. But he is old. He is losing the things one loses when one is old. And it all means nothing. He has missed something too. Hurrell mourns over it, Essington bickers over it. And they are fine men. If there had been anything there they would have got it. By God, it is better to be like Canterton and Jack Murphy. At least they have their drink and their fun.’
‘No, no! You don’t want to be like them, the nasty beasts! Why do you have them about? It isn’t wise, when you’re feeling low like this, you might get into their ways. It doesn’t do you any good to have that man Murphy round.’
He sat up in his chair and grasped her wrist. ‘Murphy?’
‘Yes, he’s a horrid man, and it isn’t as if he were fond of you, he isn’t fond of anybody, the old crocodile. Look what he’s done with his own daughter and Canterton. There isn’t hardly anybody would do a thing like that …’
He pointed a shaking finger over her shoulder. ‘Is that door shut?’
‘Yes, dear, you shut it.’
In quite a tiny whisper he said, ‘Sunflower, I want to tell you why I have Jack Murphy in my house. It’s something I’ve never told anyone else in the whole world.’
‘Oh, don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’ She was whispering too.
‘I want to tell you. I must tell somebody. Not even Etta knows. I can’t tell her.’
‘Oh, you poor dear, you poor dear, tell me whatever it is.’
‘I know. I know. I could tell you whatever it is. You would forgive me. Sunflower, it is good to have you here. Well, I was out there in California when I first went out as a boy, and everything was going wrong. Nothing fails like failure in the States, and I was a failure all right. They laughed at me, because I was so short and such a funny-looking little devil. I had a job as a clerk in a store for eight dollars a week, and I was damn lucky to have that. And I wanted money, and I wanted drink, and I wanted women. I wanted all the things that other men seemed to get for the asking.’
Oh, if she had the right to touch him. She writhed where she knelt and pressed her knotted hands against her face. ‘Oh, you poor little thing …’
‘I was nineteen,’ he almost whispered, and his great head rolled on one side, while he wallowed in her pity. She gave a little cry, and he stiffened up in his chair and exclaimed with consternation, ‘No, I am lying, I was twenty-one, I was twenty-one. Do you hear, Sunfl
ower?’
Fiercely defending him from himself, she said, ‘That was young. Terribly young to be there all alone, far away from his people.’
‘But listen to what I did. Sunflower, a man from Vancouver left me his fur coat to look after, while he went down to do a job in Panama. Sunflower, I sold that coat. I sold it, and I got a good bit of money for it, for it was a good coat. I spent that money giving a grand dinner at the Poodle Dog and having two of the best women in the best whorehouse in the town. I was a fine fellow for that night. The men clapped me on the back and called me a good guy. And the women said that I was a wonder and that they liked little men. God, those trollops. But I thought I’d never have any woman but a bought one, I thought I’d never be able to buy any but these. Then in a month or so the man came back and wanted his coat. And when he found what I’d done he got mad. He’d been kind to me, because he was a big chap and had felt sorry for me. Do you hear, Sunflower? I’d stolen from a friend.’
She moved miserably. ‘You were so young, you were all alone, oh, don’t fret about it.’ She was sitting on the floor, resting her weight on her two hands, rocking herself from side to side, her head hanging down.
‘He had me arrested for it. I was taken through the streets to a police station. I was locked up in a cell. I was tried in a courtroom. Oh, Christ, I was so frightened of the jail. I cannot bear the feeling of being shut up. Do you know that to this day I cannot bear the law courts. However much interested I am in a case, I can’t go up and see it tried. Last autumn my firm was sued for a quarter of a million. We won of course. I had taken care to be well on the right side from start to finish. But I could not bear to go near the court. It would have brought me right back to the day I had to stand up before a judge while they told the kind of cur I was. I had to stand there and listen to it with a sore head, because I’d been sick with fright out in the passage and a policeman had hit me on the head with his club for being such a dirty little beast.’
‘Oh, my dear, my poor dear …’
‘And that’s how Jack Murphy gets into my house. At the last moment he came forward and defended me. I’d helped him to figure out something in a saloon one night and he’d seen I was worth backing. He was an attorney then and in with the police. I walked out of that court a free man—or a slave to Jack Murphy, put it whatever way you like. I hate and loathe him, the dirty devil with his gab about friendship. And he’s always there, making me toe the line. If I were to go back on him for one moment, he’d be at my throat, he’d be spilling the story all round London and I should be done.’
‘How dare he! The nasty beast!’ she cried savagely. ‘But don’t you know anything against him so that you can fight back?’ As she spoke these words she realised how far she had travelled out of Essington’s country. Defiantly she gave herself up to the proud, growling, outlawed loyalty of the poacher’s dog.
‘I do. By God, I’ll say I do! But that’s no good to me. He doesn’t need to care about his reputation. It’s all out about him in the City. Nobody who is worth anything there will give him a bean. He makes his money out-swindling other rogues or getting hold of fools that will disregard the family lawyer and the broker because of this good kind man, God damn him, with his shark smile. But I’m different! If I’m to get on in politics I must be respected.’ His voice squealed high and querulous. ‘I’ve got to make people like Essington think I’m all right!’
‘He likes you awfully,’ she murmured.
‘Does he?’ He seemed pleased, yet muttered derisively under his breath, ‘Essington!’ Panic came down on him again. ‘But my God, supposing I pull that off what is the good? Essington and Hurrell! What ought I to do? Sunflower, what am I to do? How am I to live?’
‘But what do you mean?’ she cried in desperation. ‘One just lives.’
‘Yes, but how? But how?’
‘One lives, one lives, one just lives the ordinary life! Things go on!’
They were facing each other with bared teeth, as if they were enraged with each other.
‘But how? I’m asking you how?’
‘I tell you, one just lives! Oh, why do you fret, why do you worry?’ She began to cry and stretched out her arms to him. He did not take them so she drew them back and beat her clenched fists on the ground sobbing, ‘Why won’t you be happy? Don’t you want to be happy?’
He screamed out furiously in a very high-pitched voice, as if she were asking a question idiotically disregardful of some torture he was undergoing, ‘Yes, why can’t I be happy? Why can’t I? Why can’t I?’
She crawled right up to his feet, put her hands on his knees and shook him. ‘What is the matter?’ she shrieked. ‘Why don’t you tell me what the matter is? How can I help you if you don’t? And you are torturing me, you are killing me!’
His face grew sullen and obstinate and hostile, it grew vacant as a skull. His mouth was a round hole, his eyes were round grey holes. He sat in a heap in his chair, looking straight in front of him, letting his head and body wobble as she shook him. ‘Have mercy on me!’ she sobbed. ‘Have mercy on me!’
Suddenly his face lit up. He gripped her wrist. ‘Frederick.’
Though he had pulled her up from the floor before the footman came in he forgot to take his hand away from her wrist.
‘Miss Allardyce is in the library, sir.’
He burst out laughing. Then checked himself, and said in his usual, gruff, genial voice, ‘Tell her I’ll be with her in a minute.’ When the footman left the room he got up and walked with a deliberate conscious strut to the window, and remained staring out for a little while. Then he turned round and went to the mantelpiece, and picked up her bag and held it out to her, saying, ‘Pretty bag. Dear Sunflower, who has everything pretty about her.’ He looked her clearly in the eyes. It was not possible that there had ever been the scene between them which had just happened.
She drew on her gloves.
‘This is a pity,’ he said lightly. ‘I had forgotten that I had told poor Georgy to come here and tell me her troubles.’
‘Has she troubles?’ she said, as lightly. ‘One thinks of her as such a lucky person.’
‘Ah, clever women get into the same jams as stupid ones,’ he said with cool amusement. He strolled about the room with his hands in his pockets, his spirits quite restored. Suddenly his head slewed round, he looked over his shoulder at the chair where he had lately been sitting. Her eyes followed his. That scene had happened. It was true that he had sat crying out for help against some terror, that she had lain at his feet, weeping and beating the floor with her fists, because he would not let her help him. There seemed to be an invisible yet material record of it remaining in the room. It was as if the air had not been able to rush into the space that had been filled by their bodies during that scene, because it was stuffed out with the violent emotions they had generated. Abashed, Sunflower and Francis Pitt turned away from each other.
Thickly he said, ‘Sunflower, who sometimes blurts out the truth so that it makes one tell the truth oneself.’
She murmured, ‘I wouldn’t ever tell.’
‘Well, would it be easy to describe?’ he asked sardonically, in mockery of himself and all he had done, spreading his hands across his chest. Then he seemed to see that she meant something less profound than he at first had thought, and said hastily, ‘Oh … about Jack Murphy. I know you will not give me away.’ He repeated this, the second time making it seem as if he were paying himself and not her a compliment. ‘I know you will not give me away.’ Strutting, he took another turn about the room. She heard him mutter between his teeth, ‘Georgy …’
He swung round on her. ‘The play! Tell me about the play!’
‘The play?’
‘Yes. How long is it going to run, do you think?’
‘Oh, a year, it might. Mr Trentham is so sure about it that he wants to put Joyce Marbury into my part and send me to America with it in the autumn. You see, he’s never had a success there, and he thinks I might make it go t
here.’
‘Would you go to America, Sunflower?’
‘No!’ Then to explain away her fervour, to make sure that he would not guess she was staying in England because she wanted to be with him, she added, ‘Somehow I’ve never wanted to go to America.’
‘Now, how would a change of cast like that be managed? I mean, what would make an English manager fall in with Trentham’s desire to have an American success?’
‘Well, it’s like this.’ She explained the business arrangements involved, and he followed that up with other questions, which she found it delightful to answer. He would see that she was not really so stupid, that there were some things she understood. And it was wonderful to see that he was not embarrassed by what had happened, he would ask her back again, and next time she would be more quiet and cunning, and would find out what was worrying him, and then everything would go right. She stopped in the middle of a sentence and compressed her lips obstinately. Then, trying to grope for the rest of the sentence and reckoning where the argument had brought them, she realised that they must have been talking for about ten minutes and exclaimed, ‘I must go, you’re keeping Miss Allardyce waiting!’
‘Oh Georgy will wait, Georgy will wait,’ he said, smiling. ‘But tell me, is this arrangement common?’
It was lovely to think that he should be making excuses to keep her there. She answered that and some other questions, and moved to the door.
‘Oh, don’t go!’ he begged.
Primly she murmured, ‘I’ve got to do all those things I told you about.’