Sunflower

by Rebecca West

  Sunflower nearly slept; and passed into that fantasy which had come upon her often when she first met Francis Pitt, when it was as if she stood in a high place among the hills, by a lake, where there were woods bright with the young fire of spring, and there were children round her, crying out because he brought food for them across the water. With interest but without distress she noted that though she was lying still and half-asleep her heart was beating fast, as if she had run a race. She laid her hand on it and smiled to feel the hard hoops of her ribs. They reminded her of a half-finished boat she had seen on the stocks in a shipyard at some fishing-port she had once visited. It was a ship the man who showed her round had been proud of making, a ship that they said would stand all storms, it had sturdy hoops of ribs like hers. ‘I am strong,’ she murmured, ‘I am strong!’ Now everything pleased her, even the little room. Its darkness seemed like the snug darkness of one’s bed, and good to lie in. That the blue and white day could be seen only high above the green bank which pressed its dampness close to the French windows struck her as an amusing architectural feature, as a fantastic chimney-piece might be. She passed into a state of pleasure no more inscribed by thought than the petals of an unfolding flower are inscribed with words. Once she said aloud to herself, placidly, comfortably, ‘It is a pity that nothing can happen, that I am with Essington …’

  He was back sooner than she expected, in something less than half an hour. He looked very pale and drawn, which did not surprise her, since for some time she had seen that he was finding his care of Hurrell purely tedious. The inspiration of his grief had failed him. Evidently he had found that he did not care for Hurrell as much as he had thought he did. Well, she was sorry it had happened, but perhaps it was as well that he should have found out how little use a man can ever be to a man really.

  Stretching herself she murmured, ‘I nearly went to sleep.’

  Taking no notice of that he said, ‘Will Harrowby be here or shall I send a car with you to town?’

  In alarm she asked, ‘Is Mr Hurrell bad?’

  ‘No. He is quite all right. Cornelliss has gone.’

  She rose slowly, saying icily, ‘Oh, Harrowby will be there.’ She put on her hat and found her gloves and bag, taking care to move without haste.

  He made it much worse by showing that he knew what he had done, muttering awkwardly, ‘You said you had some things to do in town this afternoon.’

  Calmly she answered, ‘Yes. The Times Book Club. My hairdresser. A fitting at the dressmaker’s. The things one has to do.’

  ‘Mm, busy life we all lead, busy life,’ he mumbled, and went towards the door to open it for her; but it was opened in his face by Frederick, who held out a tray with a letter on it, saying, ‘Come by hand.’ Francis Pitt picked it up disagreeably as if it were something Frederick had invented to annoy him, looked at the handwriting, started, and turned to Sunflower, exclaiming piteously, ‘Excuse me, excuse me!’

  She waited stiffly.

  There was the sound of tearing paper. He said to Frederick, ‘No answer,’ and crossed to the fireplace and scattered the pieces in the empty grate behind the screen, exclaiming petulantly, ‘I wish there were a fire, I would like to burn this damned thing.’ Then, keeping his back to her, he told her with hurt nonchalance, like a little boy reporting that they hadn’t picked him for the second eleven after all, ‘It appears that young Mr Harrop and Miss Wycherley have already left my employment. At least so they tell me.’

  It was nice of him to be so much concerned about these young people. ‘Oh, they’ll marry and be happy in some little house,’ she told him, ready to be nice.

  He was shaken by a convulsion of rage, he brought his clenched fist down on the mantelpiece, he began to snarl and choked it, he sunk his chin on his chest and became a huddled heap of sullenness. Well, if he chose to be so queer and would not let her know about him as somehow she had a right to know, he could do it alone. She wanted to go home and cry. She moved to the door.

  At the sound of the turning handle he wheeled round and in quite a high voice cried out as if astonished that she could be so unkind, ‘Oh, but you’re not going! You mustn’t go!’

  ‘I must,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Oh, but you mustn’t! You needn’t! Sunflower, please stay and talk to me!’

  In a strangled, throbbing voice she asked, ‘Do you really want me to?’

  ‘Oh merciful God, I do, I do.’

  Tears were forming behind her eyes. ‘But … I thought you didn’t …’

  There were tears in his eyes, too. ‘Of course I did, of course I wanted you to stay.’

  ‘Then, why—’

  ‘I thought you had to go, you said you had to go, oh, for the love of Christ, stay and talk to me. Sit down! Sit down!’

  She sat down. ‘Just for a minute,’ she sniffed into her handkerchief.

  He muttered as indistinctly, ‘That’s good of you …’

  They were both near crying. He turned aside and busied himself in taking a cigar from a box on the desk. For a minute he sat there smoking and muttering to himself, till a twitch shook him, uncrossing his legs and bringing his feet down on the ground heels first, while his clenched hands struck his knees and his head jerked backwards. He wheeled round in his chair and called out to her, loudly as if he could not see her because of some mist, ‘Well, you’re there, Sunflower.’ Lightly but with a core of obstinacy, she answered, ‘Yes, I am here.’ He got up and strolled about the room, holding his cigar in a shaking hand but strutting more with every puff. ‘Ha!’ he breathed presently. ‘I feel better. I am a fool to take these young people so seriously.’ He put his hands on the back of the other armchair and pushed it along till it faced hers, looking very comical as he waddled behind it. Genially he grumbled, ‘But I am a fool about these things. I make friends of my subordinates.’ He plumped himself down on it. The chairs were so close that his knees were close to hers. ‘And I am loyal to my friends.’

  ‘I’m sure you are,’ she said fervently. His nostrils dilated as if her assent were something good to smell. ‘So when my friends are not loyal to me I feel it.’ He sighed. ‘Yes, I feel it.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘But perhaps I ought not to blame those poor young people. They are up against sex.’ He spoke the words with a demure gluttony, looking obliquely downwards. For a short time he sat puffing at his cigar, then took it out of his mouth, and said very clearly, keeping his eyes on hers, ‘Sex causes a great deal of trouble in this world, Sunflower.’

  She flinched. She did so hate that word sex.

  He seemed to become lost in thought, frowning at the book-case behind her head. She tried to work her chair away a little, so that she need not be quite so near him.

  His eyes flashed back to hers again. Kindly and concerned, he leaned forward. ‘Are you not comfortable, Sunflower?’

  ‘Oh, quite, quite …’

  He seemed satisfied. His gaze swung away from her again. ‘It has caused a lot of trouble in my life, Sunflower. That is why I very often feel envious of you and Essington, of the steady, continuous union of you two. Though I suppose it is my own fault that I have nothing of the sort to make other people envy me … the fault of my unfortunate temperament …’ He shook his head and chuckled reminiscently. She wished she was not so very near him. ‘I have not been all that I should have been in the past, Sunflower …’

  But why need he tell her all these things? It could not be of any use to him to tell that horrid story of how he had met a woman who he had thought very beautiful (though probably she was not, probably he was as apt as Essington to mistake good clothes for good looks) at a luncheon-party during the war and had … been taken with her (he need not have put it into that hatefully coarse way) so that he had risen as soon as the meal was over and made the excuse that he must go back to his ministry and had muttered over her hand as he said goodbye, ‘I will call on you at three o’clock,’ and had gone to her house at that hour and found her waiting
(what sort of a woman could she be to do a thing like that?) and had then and there … Why did it hurt her so to hear that? She had known well enough that he was like that. She had been told all those women’s names, and though from time to time she had fooled herself that those stories were a pack of lies she had known that the chances were that they were true. There was something round his mouth that showed that he had often done that kind of thing just as when he was a little boy a smear round it must often have shown that he had been eating jam out of the jar. But one was made so funnily … A thousand times she had talked this over with herself and been tortured by pictures of him making love to other people which she had deliberately held in front of her mind’s eye so that familiarity should make them hurt less. Yet when she heard about it from his own lips she felt as great a shock as if she had suddenly been thrown into icy waters. Her surprised lungs had to battle to force her breath back into her body. But at least he did not notice what he was doing to her, for if he had he would not have gone on to tell that other story about the American girl that a friend had brought over to London after an unfortunate attempt to start in business in New York … ‘It was so like him to come back with no money and a girl … Helen … now what was her name? Helen … Helen … By God, I have forgotten her name … that’s too bad, that’s too bad!’ He was humorously scandalised at his forgetfulness of one whom, it appeared, he had such abundant reason to remember gratefully. That story and all the others made her want to cry out, partly because he was making himself so ugly. He looked old-womanish while he told them; it was as if his grossness were the turned-up collar of a dirty old dressing-gown he had huddled round him because he felt a cold coming on, and the stuffy warmth of his stories might have been steam rising from a basin of mustard and water in which he was soaking his feet. And the stories themselves made her see ridiculous pictures of him, running after women taller than himself through immense rooms furnished like hotels so that his little legs looked comically short. She shut her eyes tight and shook her head when in those pictures she saw him catching up the woman he pursued, she was so sure that his love making would be slobbering and silly. Amazed she asked herself, ‘Why do I bother about this man? There are many others. I am beautiful, I am not so old. This man is horrid. He is common.’ For a moment she felt as if she had only to pull down a latch and walk out into such peace and freedom as she had not dreamt of for weeks. But the force that rode her after him, as a huntsman rides a horse to hounds after the fox, dug its spurs into her and said, ‘You fool, he has something that you need.’ That was true. His strength, his power, she must have that. The lake among the hills swam before her eyes, not as a place where it would be delightful to be but as a place that she must go to if she had to crawl there on bleeding knees. Besides, this was not all of him, he was a million other things as well, he was kind, he was warm, he had charm like the smell of spice, he was a king among men and made them serve him; and the part of him that was these things was utterly hers. Indeed, though it might not look like it, though nothing had been said about it, there was a way in which he was utterly hers. She could not think in words about it, but images formed before her mind that told her the truth as well as words could. In that magic world which once or twice since she had known Francis Pitt she had perceived to be superimposed on the real world, where there were the caverns that echoed the barking of the borzois, the grapes on whose shadows they had trodden at her door, the white arch of the love that proceeded from her when she touched his hand, and this lake to which she had to go, she enjoyed among many other forms the likeness of a sphinx, crouching in a vast desert and thick darkness, unappalled because her head reared high into the night and was changed to something more suited to her fierce intentions than her present loveliness, because her breasts were not flesh that would die but rock that would endure and were great enough to suckle the earth, and because her hands were now huge claws between which he lay in the likeness of a swaddled child with a sceptre beside him. Yet also she felt degraded and ashamed and contaminated. It was shameful, it was disgusting, but she would rather have been any of the women Francis Pitt had done that thing with than be herself. From his stories she knew that they had been so easy that their love-making can have been no better beauty than the iridescence grease makes on water and that they had seen him silly and vulgar, but for all that they had kept that tryst with his body that she had to keep or go down alive into her grave. The only thing was that at least he wasn’t saying that he had really loved any of them.

  But that was just what he was saying now.

  ‘Still, Sunflower, all this sin and wickedness is perhaps not so much my fault as it seems. I like to think I might have been like you and Essington if things had not gone badly with my one real love affair. This is a story I do not tell to everybody, Sunflower. It hit me hard, it hit me hard for a long time. It still … upsets me to think of her, though I have not seen her now for many years, except for a glimpse at Juliet’s wedding …’

  She asked fretfully, trying to divert the story from its channel, ‘Who’s Juliet?’

  He threw her a sharp and furtive look, as if he were surprised to see that she had evidently not heard of some story relevant to her question, and that it concerned him in such a way that he could not possibly tell her about it. With patent, over-acted quietness and discretion he answered, ‘Lady Juliet Lynn.’

  Remembering, she started and almost moaned, ‘Oh, yes!’

  He smoked until she thought she would not be able to bear it. He looked very well and chubby, as if it nourished him to tell this story.

  ‘It was this way, Sunflower. Two days after I landed in England on my return from California, I met a woman. A very beautiful woman. And I knew from the moment I set eyes on her that I loved her. I sat next to her at lunch, and before she had opened her mouth I said to myself, “That is the girl I am going to marry". And then I looked down and saw her hand. Her left hand. She was wearing a wedding ring. It was the last thing in the world I had expected. I had not heard her name when we were introduced and she was very young. I tell you, my heart dropped dead in me for a minute. Well, she was married right enough. She bore a very famous name. She had a great position. She had children. There was nothing to be done. Openly. There was something to be done secretly. And by God we did it. I may have to pay pretty heavily for that in the hereafter, for it was all my fault. She had the scruples that good women have and I had hard work to overcome them. But I did, and whatever I have to pay, it was worth it. Seven years of the wildest happiness. Seven years … I am very faithful, Sunflower.’

  Seven years was a long time. He must be saturated in her. No other woman would be able to wipe out the memories he must have of her. If only he were not sitting so very close to her …

  ‘That was a wonderful time. I have much to be grateful for, Sunflower. I have some intoxicating memories. I had a little flat in Cork Street. She used to come to me there. And sometimes with careful plotting and scheming we used to meet abroad and have a few days together at some place. Once we had three days at Fontainebleau. And we had nearly a week at that place outside Rome. What is it? Tivoli. But we were nearly caught that time. My God, she was a marvellous woman, a marvellous woman. In our room at night we could hear the sound of the waterfall, and there was a nightingale used to sing. Sunflower, are you quite comfortable in that chair?’