Sunflower

by Rebecca West

  He jumped out when he saw her coming. ‘Did you find the place all right, Miss?’

  ‘Oh, Harrowby, I didn’t go! But I saw something much more wonderful! I went to see the people being tried in that place with a clock, because that nice old gentleman at Clussingford was the judge, and I saw the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Just think there was an old woman of seventy tried for committing bigamy last March …’ She had to stop and gasp for breath.

  ‘Dear, dear, Miss!’ commented Harrowby mildly, folding up the Star. ‘An old woman of seventy committing bigamy! That’s what I call carrying coals to Newcastle.’

  ‘Oh, but it was wonderful of her! She was the most wonderful person I’ve ever seen. Alice Hester her name was, and somehow it suited her. I don’t think she’d ever been beautiful. You felt she’d never had to bother about all that. But, oh, she looked so nice …’ She paused again for breath.

  ‘They often do,’ said Harrowby, who had evidently not yet found his equilibrium in the story.

  ‘She looked so good, and you felt she’d always been nice to everybody. And she’d had lots of children ever so long ago, and her husband turned them all out of doors, and a ploughman came and took them to a barn, and then they came here and pretended they were married, and they were awfully happy for forty years, though they weren’t married—’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Harrowby, with a certain fierceness, ‘don’t matter any more nowadays. If people are straight, they are, and that’s that.’

  ‘Well, then he got ill, and he knew he was going to die, and he wanted to be married to her. And though there was a horrid sort of boy in the house, and she knew that he would tell, she did go and get married, though she knew that she’d get put in prison, and he was awfully happy, and he did die. Wasn’t it wonderful of her? Wasn’t it wonderful?’

  ‘Yes, indeed it was,’ said Harrowby. But it struck her that she had not told the story quite as well as she might have done, though on thinking it over she did not see that she had left out anything. So to clench matters she declared earnestly, ‘Really, Harrowby, she was the most wonderful person I’ve ever, ever seen!’ Then she saw she had impressed him, for he stared at her with large eyes and said, ‘It does you all the good in the world to take a day off, Miss,’ which was so irrelevant that he could only have said it to disguise his emotions. So that was all right.

  She drew a deep breath of contentment and looked round her. ‘Isn’t it a lovely evening?’ she murmured. Her gaze ranged lovingly over everything, and came to the sash-windows in the proprietor’s house, with their shining panes and neat curtains of Nottingham lace. She smiled happily, for now she had seen Alice Hester she could be unreservedly happy about those people. It was quite likely that the little man would go on loving the ugly girl until he died. She said, ‘I’d like to say good-bye to that little man who was there.’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t say there was much chance of seeing him this evening. There’s been a lot of coming and going since you went out. A domestic event, I should say. That’s the doctor’s car over there.’

  They gazed up at the little house, which looked stern and knowing there in the shadow.

  ‘She’s very young,’ said Sunflower.

  But Alice Hester must have been as young when she began, and it had turned out glorious for her.

  ‘I wish I knew if it were a boy or a girl,’ she speculated with a new shamelessness. ‘I’d like to send it something.’

  They continued to gaze up at the grave little house.

  ‘We’d best be making a move,’ said Harrowby at length. ‘You’ll be getting tired, Miss. I’ve got to take you down to rehearsal tomorrow at eleven, I know.’

  ‘It’s funny. I am a little tired. But I’ve had a lovely, lovely day.’ She got into the car, and he settled the rugs round her. She would have her dinner in bed; a boiled egg, and some bread and honey.

  II

  WHEN Parkyns opened the door she said very quickly: ‘My lord is here. He came at six o’clock.’

  ‘Oh I am glad!’ exclaimed Sunflower. Now she would be able to tell him about Alice Hester at once. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He is at dinner, Madam, and—’

  But Sunflower threw down her gloves and bag on the hall-table, and ran right into the dining-room, which was silted up with late twilight. As she came from behind the draught-screen at the door Essington rose out of the tall chair at the head of the table, which was where she sat as a rule. She could not see his face; on the settee behind him burned the three candles that were as yet the only light in the room. She went to him, holding out her arms and crying, ‘Oh, darling! I’ve seen something so wonderful today! I went to the Assize Court in Packbury, and there was an old woman of seventy who had committed bigamy—’

  But he kept silence, lowering his head a little, in the way which always meant that she had done something stupid and that he was not going to help her out of it. There was the sound of another chair being pushed backward. Why, there were two other people in the room. A broad-browed, middle-aged woman with straight black hair and an earthy skin looked up at her over the edge of a wineglass with a curious expression into which Sunflower stared for a moment; it was like the expression that might be exchanged between two servants waiting at table on a troublesome master. And at the foot of the table stood a little man with fox-coloured hair and a very big mouth, and queer eyes the colour of bad weather.

  She put out her hand and exclaimed foolishly, ‘Oh, it’s you!’

  He answered in a kind voice, very deep for such a little man, ‘Yes, it’s me.’ His hand was tiny, but very broad and strong.

  She forgot her moment’s misgiving at Essington’s silence in happy wonder that after all these years she should meet this man again, this day of all days. It was odd that she had been thinking of him this very afternoon. It did seem as if life was suddenly revealing its own pattern. She would have liked to say, ‘Well, this is a small world, isn’t it!’ but Essington had impressed on her that, for some reason which she could not fully understand, the use of this and some other equally harmless phrases was far less permissible than the use of really bad language.

  But Essington said: ‘You don’t know this gentleman. This is Mr Francis Pitt.’

  Laughingly she protested, ‘But I do know Mr Pitt. We—sort of met years ago.’

  A tremor ran through Essington. He seemed about to be angry in a different way. ‘What’s this?’ he spoke to Francis Pitt. ‘I thought you said you had never met?’

  The little man gave a low chuckle. ‘Hardly met. We passed each other on the stairs when I was going down and Miss Fassendyll was coming up to the office of a War Charity, of which I was a Grand Panjandrum, a God knows what, and for which she did some real work.’ The chuckle ran right through his gruff speech, making it seem the very voice of kindly strength. She thought of the policeman who had found her crying in Hammersmith Broadway when silly old Grandaunt Annie had taken her out and lost her; he had bought her some pear drops and carried her all the way home. ‘I remember my eyes nearly fell out of my head, and evidently Miss Fassendyll remembers that too.’

  She began to say, ‘Oh, no, it wasn’t that!’ but Essington had gone back to being angry in his first manner. ‘Dear Sunflower is as vague about the nature of an introduction as she is about everything else,’ he said; and then, suddenly remembering the sallow woman, waved his hand at her, ‘Miss Pitt, this is Miss Fassendyll.’ The sallow woman smiled and held out a hand so big and broad that it seemed odd that it should be smooth and white, in a manner at once genial and perfunctory, as if she wanted to be nice but was holding herself in readiness to climb a tree if hostilities became more acute. And then Essington went on: ‘I’ve been here since five. I told you I would be back here at tea-time on Monday. It’s half past eight now.’ His voice cracked. ‘I wrote a note from Evescote to say that I’d asked Miss Pitt and her brother to dine tonight. Of course you haven’t got it. We’re eating a scratch dinner that isn’
t fit for a pig.’

  His words failed him. His hand danced over the comminated table like something stung.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she breathed.

  ‘Well, what does it mean? Where have you been? Who have you been with?’

  She wet her lips. ‘I’ve been … at Packbury. Harrowby had to do something to the car. I went and listened to some cases. The time passed.’

  ‘It did,’ said Essington, ‘It did.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. But really you didn’t say you were coming today. You said you were staying down at Evescote till Tuesday.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘But you wrote it.’ She tried to laugh. ‘Truly you did.’ She knew the way of dignity was to be silent; she knew that to defend herself was to crawl in the dust in the way of these strangers. But she was afraid that if she did not speak he would strike her. For she knew, as certainly as she knew that she would eventually die, that he would some day strike her. ‘Look, the letter’s up there on the mantelshelf, slipped into the mirror.’ Recollection of how gay she had been when she put it there, of how she had been moved to do so by her pride in one of his dear minor gifts, made her choke with a sense of trampled happiness. ‘I put it up there because your writing was so pretty.’

  His eyes found the blue-grey envelope, beautiful as a Chinese print with the exquisite web of his serene and delicate handwriting. His head ducked. It was apparent that he remembered. But in a moment he recovered himself. ‘My God! How you love leaving letters about!’ he said.

  ‘There’s nothing in it but “Evescote” and your initials,’ she mumbled. She was shivering, partly because of her humiliation, partly because she was afraid that he had gone mad. There was a magical and ventriloquous quality about his rage. It was as if the voice that seemed to come out of his mouth came really from some lonely, bewitched and baying beast, far out in a desert. There was a silence, so she murmured, ‘I’ll go and tidy.’

  ‘You will not,’ said Essington. ‘You will sit down. Then Mr Pitt can sit down. Then I can sit down. Where’s Parkyns? She ought to be here. My God, your wayward, woodland charm shows nowhere more strongly than in your domestic arrangements.’ He stamped on the electric bell till Parkyns came in; she too was shivering. She had, Sunflower now realised, been shivering when she opened the door. ‘Take your mistress’s coat and hat. And bring in the soup.’

  ‘I don’t want any,’ said Sunflower. ‘I’ll start where you are.’

  ‘Oh, no. Oh, no. You’re going to see the kind of dinner we had. We’ll wait.’

  ‘Ah, now,’ objected Francis Pitt, ‘the dinner’s been grand,’ and his sallow sister broke into a corroborating murmur.

  They all sat down. Sunflower felt half-asleep. The misery that filled her mind was not Essington’s behaviour, which was so awful that it was raised to a kind of remoteness, like some calamity read of in the newspapers, but the way she looked. She had cried a little in the car, thinking of Alice Hester, and had not troubled to powder; and her hat had been a close one. It was horrid, because Francis Pitt was the sort of man who cared about people being well-groomed. Though his sister was plainly indifferent to those things, since her thick eyebrows were not plucked, she had been drilled into quite a good black dress of the Handley-Seymour sort. And he himself, though his red-brown hair straggled over his ears in bearish disorder, was dressed even more carefully than Essington. He had pretty studs.

  She put up her hand to see what she could do with her hair, but Essington said, ‘Don’t fuss! Don’t fuss!’ and added, ‘Parkyns, turn on all the lights.’

  But Parkyns was very nice. She brought Sunflower only a very little soup and hardly any fish. And meanwhile, Francis Pitt leaned forward, chuckling again, and said, ‘You’ll not be able to guess what I’ve been doing today.’ Sunflower liked the way he laughed on no particular cue, but just on general principles. Essington never laughed except at the exact point of something that was certifiably funny. The little man’s way took her back to contacts of her youth: when one went on a visit to Cousin Gladys who was married to the stationmaster at Redhill. She opened the front door, and there was laughter. Then she kissed Mummie and you, and there was laughter. Then one went upstairs. ‘This is your room’; more laughter. ‘Oh, it’s ever so nice’; more laughter. ‘Well, I’ll be downstairs getting the tea, and you’ll come down when you’re ready’; more laughter, senseless and kindly. Those were easy days.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Essington. She was amazed at his interest. He must really respect the little man.

  He chuckled again. ‘I went down to my old school in South London and gave the little boys some good advice. I hope to God they don’t follow it, or I shall have a grave responsibility on my soul. For I didn’t dare tell them the truth about the way I made my money, and maybe what I told them they won’t find quite so useful.’

  ‘What school was that?’

  ‘Oh, a rotten private school down at Dulwich. I have no pleasant memories of it, God knows, but the old man who runs it came up to my office. At first I nearly had him thrown out, but he spun a hard luck yarn, and said it would help the school pick up if I came down, and so in the end I said I would.’ She thought what a kind man he was; but there flashed across her mind a suspicion that the up-and-down lilt of his voice conveyed so perfectly the ruminations of a stern but good-natured man because it was meant to do so. Deliberately she put the thought away. There was something about his voice, something rich and appetising like the smell of good food cooking, that made her want to like him.

  ‘Lord, those suburban dumps,’ said Essington. ‘Silly old men and bitter young ones in dusty gowns, an art room with a plaster-cast of the Discobolos, a laboratory with half a dozen test-tubes and miserable little boarders who are mostly the children of licensed victuallers who’ve sent them away from home because of the pub atmosphere, and more miserable little day-boys who are sent there because their parents are snobs and won’t send them to the elementary school though they can’t afford a better one.’

  ‘That was me,’ said Francis Pitt. ‘My father was a Wesleyan minister.’

  ‘Ah, you’re like me, an example of what a pious home can do.’ They both laughed, that laughter by which men courteously give each other to understand that they are quite sure that they have the more picturesque irregularities in common. ‘My father was vicar of Brodip in Norfolk. Eight of us there were.’ The note that came into his voice when he spoke of his childhood always broke her heart. It was whining, ungracious, greedy, pathetic: the complaint of a child born with raw nerve-ends into a crowded nursery. Rage ceased to burn in her throat. She would have liked to slip her hand into his under the table, but of course she did not dare. Under her brows she looked at the others to see if they were liking him enough, for she was afraid they must have been prejudiced by his rudeness when she came in. Francis Pitt’s eyes slid away from her. Miss Pitt, eating salted almonds, gave her that curious fellow-servant look.

  ‘Six of us there were,’ said Francis Pitt. He sat curiously in his chair, his broad shoulders jutting forward, as a lion would sit if he were made to eat at table.

  ‘Lord, how they could! How they could!’

  ‘Well, we got through.’

  ‘We had to pay.’

  ‘Had you to pay much? I thought things had come easily with you.’

  ‘Easily! Oh, my God!’ He stirred irritably in his seat. ‘I got a Balliol scholarship from my grammar school and couldn’t take it because my people hadn’t any money. You know how badly one takes things when one is young. I don’t feel life’s made up to me for that. I had to go to London University, and eke out a scholarship by teaching in one of those private schools. Out at Sydenham it was. A mean little den. Then I got my degree, and I taught at Blagdon. There wasn’t anything very good going for me, because I was no good at games. Then I started doing journalism, and read law. I was called to the Middle Temple in ’91, and I went into Brandram’s chambers. When I was forty I stood for Burd
send. That was a by-election. In 1906. Then in 1910 Brandram died and left me all his money. He was a widower, you know, and his boy had died at Oxford. Strained his heart in that running tomfoolery. The money seemed a good thing at the time. It made it possible for me to give up the Bar and go in for politics as a career. Now I’m sorry the old man wasted his money on me.’

  ‘It’s been no waste,’ said Francis Pitt. With his deep voice and a gesture of his spatulate hands he made his deference to the older man seem a charming abnegation of his strength’s right to dominate.

  ‘It has. It’s been utter waste. The old man left me his money partly because he was fond of me, but more because he thought I’d do something for Liberalism. He was a great Liberal. God, if he could see how little I’ve been able to do for Liberalism; and what the Liberal Party is today.’

  ‘I suppose it would break the old-timer’s heart,’ said Francis Pitt. ‘Now what do you suppose has happened to us? What does it all mean? It seems to me sometimes when I sit in the House and look round at us that we’re not only a beaten party, we’re a guilty party, and we know it. We feel we’ve brought it on ourselves. What was it we did? Was it, do you think, that we stuck to Bryce Atkin after the war, when people’s minds were clearer and they could see the little villain’s quality, and we lost all our moral prestige through having such a leader?’

  Sunflower felt unaccountably disappointed at hearing that he too was in politics. But the evening was settling down into the kind of thing that Essington liked. She sat with her head down, doggedly thinking of Alice Hester.

  ‘Oh, no,’ answered Essington. ‘We all knew Bryce Atkin’s quality quite well long before the peace, and even long before the war, for that matter. In point of fact that gave him, and us, our chance in the war. Of course he’s obviously a cocotte, God bless him, with his obviously hireable charm and his taste for rich men and those queer perorations of his in which he shows off his Nonconformist quality in a way which isn’t decent, like a girl lifting up her skirt to show her ankles. But it’s one of the superstitions of the mob that there’s no sicknurse like Nell Gwynn if she turns her hand to it. Haven’t you read again and again in second-rate novels of the great-hearted cocotte who nurses the penniless stranger through typhoid or whatnot? That’s why England trusted herself to Bryce Atkin in the war. No, he’s never done us as much harm as Oppenshaw.’