Sunflower

by Rebecca West

  ‘Oh, it must be.’

  ‘And you know there is something queer about the whole business. Really there is. Don’t you think it’s extraordinary that a baby shouldn’t look like its father, even though its father is its father, which George certainly was? Will you tell me how science can explain that? I tell you it’s all very mysterious. But, oh Christ, it does tear you to pieces. Sunflower, you haven’t any idea of the things that happen to babies, the things that are let happen to them. You couldn’t believe it. Just take this business of whooping cough that baby’s just had. Do you know that poor child used to get black in the face? And it’s really dangerous. Baby might have died. I tell you that he might have died. And the whole thing’s so badly managed. Did you know that a boy baby can rupture himself as easy as anything just crying? And then they let them have things like whooping cough that make them cry. Is that sensible? And it’s like that all the time. People talk as if having babies were dull and settling down. It isn’t a bit like that. You have to stand between them and the bloody silly universe all the time.’

  ‘It must be lovely. I mean, you must feel you are doing something.’

  ‘Oh, yes. And the pain isn’t really so frightful. And if they’re nice they’re awfully good to you while it’s coming. George was a dear all the time. Home every night as early as could be. And when I was silly and thought I might die he didn’t scold me and say I wouldn’t, but just held me tight and then I felt that anyway I’d been so happy with him these eighteen months that if I did die it would all have been worthwhile. Oh, Sunflower, George is a white man. He really is a white man.’

  ‘I know he is. I didn’t worry a bit about you after I saw him at the Registry Office. I said to myself, “Well, Maxi’s all right for the rest of her life”. Use my powder, dear.’

  ‘Thank you, darling. I am a silly to go on this way. But you know what it is. I didn’t think I’d ever be happy again. This is a lovely powder. It’s a mixture isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Bayard’s Naturelle and Favot’s Blanche. They go well together because the one’s too sticky and the other’s too light. But it’s too white for you. You’re so lovely and creamy.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, who wouldn’t rather be you!’

  ‘Get on with you. And kiss me, Maxi, dear.’

  ‘Mm. You sweet thing. And there’s the call for beginners. We have had a show. Give me another kiss. Oh, my God, how you’re shaking! Why, your heart’s killing you!’

  ‘I’m like that all the time.’

  ‘You … you’re quite sure he’s nice?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘You do hear of him picking people up and dropping them.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t noticed anything of the sort. I shouldn’t think it was true. He’s awfully kind. Fatherly. But I can understand how it might get about he is like that. You see, there aren’t many people who’d understand him. They’d fail him. He does take a lot of understanding. And then he’d get through most people very soon, because he’s so clever. Not many people could keep up with him. I quite see how the story might get about.’

  ‘Well, you ought to know. You’re used to clever people. I never got on with them. Well, goodbye, dear. I hope to God you’re going to be happy. Send me a telegram if anything happens. And thank you so much for all you sent baby. He loved them.’

  ‘I’ll be along to see him some time this week, I expect.’

  ‘You don’t want to go tying yourself up with engagements just now, my dear. Leave yourself free. We’ll expect you when we see you. Well, here’s goodbye again. It’s funny … Somehow I wish you didn’t care for him quite so much. But it’ll be all right. You’re so lovely, you’d get any man you wanted. And you wouldn’t lose him, either, which is more. Oh, it’ll be all right. Or the man’s mad …’

  When she got home the house seemed to be dreaming a dream about itself, to be giving an invisible party, as London houses often do by night. The black cat, Sambo, lay curled up like a soft dark ammonite on the bottom step of the staircase, instead of being in his basket down in the kitchen, which never should have happened to such a godfearing tom had there not been strange comings and goings to disturb his habits. The chest and table in the hall had more than usually that air which all old furniture usually has, of being taciturn as a good servant is, never speaking in the presence of its masters, never saying as much as it knows at any time; the dull highlights on the lacquer seemed like respectful and vigilant eyes. She sank down on the step by Sambo, and lifted him into her lap. He snapped open one eye and with the flip of an ear thanked her for nothing; for though she might be the talk of the town she was not Cook, who is the arbiter of cream. She murmured to herself, smiling because she was pervaded by a pleasure, aloud because she was light-hearted with fatigue, ‘My cat, my funny cat, my house, my funny house.’ Though for years she had poured nearly all her private energies into the business of making this a beautiful place, she suddenly felt, quite without pain, almost flippantly, a sense of detachment from it. She looked at the letters which lay waiting for her on the table and didn’t want to open any of them, since it seemed impossible that anything in this house could really be relevant to her, though there was one packet, which looked like a cheap weekly paper, which she would have liked to take away and tear up, because it was such an ugly acid violet-pink. But that could wait, that would wait. Sitting and stroking Sambo, she fell half-asleep, she had silly thoughts. It seemed to her that if she went upstairs and opened any of the doors, she would find people sitting in the room, not speaking, not moving, not able to do anything when she came in save arch long waxen necks and turn rose-and-lily waxen faces with a condoning expression, because they were but waxen people such as dwell in shop windows and could not become flesh and blood till she had given up this fantastic practice, which condemned the whole world to unreality, of living in this house which was a stranger to her. But she must not doze like this, she must keep awake, she must keep awake at any cost. She set down Sambo and wandered upstairs, partly because she feared she would sleep if she were still, partly because she had that impulse to range round the house that one has when all the furniture is packed up and the vans are coming in an hour.

  But she felt ashamed of her callousness about the house when she went into her Chinese room. It was hers, it was perfect. There were the Ming figures on the mantelpiece, the two old men with staves who had been on a journey, there was the princess who had not needed to go on a journey because she was royal and had been born with peace in her heart, as she had been born with fine bones in her body. There was the vase that was grey, nothing but grey; but surely the thought of far-off hills, which are blue, had crossed the mind of the potter who made it. There was the wallpaper where the little old mandarin drank his tea for his private pleasure in the house among the willows, and only a few inches away looked out of his sedan chair in the procession which he had joined for the public good, and a few inches further on than that walked up the temple steps to worship the gods whose will it is that in private and public things alike there should be decorum; being, as a sage must be, everywhere in the whole range of life in the same moment of time. This room was a miracle. The wallpaper had been made four hundred years later than the figures, and the vase had come into being somewhere in between them. She had bid for the Ming figures at Christie’s, she had found the vase in the must of a shop in Pimlico, she had unrolled the wallpaper and seen its pattern through tears when she had strayed into the lumber room in the villa at Settignano as a refuge from the sandstorm of Essington’s irritation, for that was one of the many places which he had disliked at sight, but lingered on at interminably, because of his mysterious preference for disliking things. Yet because of an inclination towards harmony which had been built in them by their makers, these things, made far apart in time and gathered together on no principle but that they had struck her as pretty, made a room which was a whole as a gem is a whole, as a flawless emerald is a whole. It had an enduring beauty, it had gone on bein
g a calm and beautiful place; no matter how cross Essington was, no matter how badly she acted, it would go on being beautiful for her so that she could enjoy it when she was quite old. She should not so bitterly miscall her life up to the present. There had been this room in it, there had been moments of a beauty like the beauty of this room, moments when Essington was kind, or was not there. The time had not all been wasted.

  Reconciled to her house, she went downstairs, gathered up her letters from the hall table and went into the little library, where they left her supper for her on a tray. It didn’t look very good tonight. This was the third time they had given her cold chicken that week, and she didn’t think she ever really liked it. It was too much like an ingénue part. Suddenly she felt jealous of her servants, moving about in her kitchen as if they owned it, and giving her what they chose of her own food, and she made up her mind to go downstairs and find something she did like to eat. In the hall she paused and called Sambo, who put his three-cornered head between the two lowest banisters, and narrowed his green eyes at her and plainly said to himself, ‘Well, I think but little of her, but all the same I suppose that if you’re about the other ones will go, and I can get back to my bed.’ He accepted a lift in her arms down the stairs to the basement, but was careful to jump down at the first possible moment, so that she should not use this condescension as a pretext for familiarities. ‘Very well, you silly old thing,’ she said, and went to the ice-box and found a hard-boiled egg and some cold potatoes and some celery, and put them on a plate and took it to the kitchen table. It was nice, eating them in her fingers, and anyway she loved being in her kitchen. It was the only part of her house which made her feel that she was any richer than she had been when she left her home in Chiswick. She would never have been surprised to find out that she enjoyed all the possessions in her other rooms temporarily and conditionally, like the dresses she wore during the run of a play. But when she looked at the plates on the dresser, and the sewing machine on the side table, and above all at the rows of red canisters on the mantelpiece with ‘Flour’ and ‘Tea’ and ‘Rice’ written in gold on them, she felt that these were real things that one really owned, that one could keep always because one had paid real money for them, that would always be useful. Finishing her meal, she put her elbows on the table and rested her head on her hands, looking drowsily round her, pleased with the kitchen that was hers, that was full of nice things, that was clean as a new pin. The scrubbed wood of the table was clear as a slice of cheese … She became full of a sense of joyful departure, she was in a ship that was swinging on the tide and with the turn of the tide they would set sail on the fortunate journey … What was swinging? Her sleepy head, held on her hands. Why was she joyful?

  Because Francis Pitt was going to ring her up that night. There was not any harm in being rung up. Oh, but if she went to sleep down here, she would never hear the telephone bell, for the servants would have disconnected the one downstairs and it would be ringing by her bedside. She must go upstairs, she would read her letters to keep her awake, she must not run the risk of losing that …

  On the threshold of the library she drew back, and screamed, because there was a strange man sitting there.

  He stood up. It was not possible that she should not have known him, for it was Essington.

  He said, ‘You seem startled. Who were you expecting to find instead of me?’

  She answered, ‘I wasn’t expecting anybody. Only somehow I didn’t recognise you. I suppose it’s because I’m tired.’

  He repeated, ‘Who were you expecting to find instead of me?’

  Plainly he was in tune for one of his long, slow, persistent, cross-examining scenes. There was no way of quieting him down in one of these except by standing still and letting him do it until one cried, when he melted and was benevolent and appeased. But suddenly she knew she could not do that any more and that some change had taken place in her which would have made it impossible for her to do that even if she had wanted, and she exclaimed in exasperation, ‘Do you mean that I’m expecting some man here to make love to me? Don’t be stupid! You still have your latchkey to this house, haven’t you? That’s how you got in, isn’t it? Then how could I have any man here?’

  ‘Sunflower. You are getting very clever. Very hard and clever. And I think I know what’s making you so hard and clever. There is a certain instinct so strong that it puts bones into those who are naturally spineless as jelly-fish, intelligence into those who might otherwise be classified with the amoebas. Sunflower, I saw you play tonight.’

  ‘Well, that was nice for you. We gave a good performance.’

  ‘Sunflower, I saw you play your love scenes with that new young man. That Jew-boy with the wave in his black greasy hair and the little hands and feet. By God. I have never seen such doings on the stage.’

  She stared at him in horror. ‘But you are going mad,’ she said gravely, ‘You are going mad.’

  ‘Sunflower, I saw you. I saw you in his arms. I saw you kiss him. Real kisses. I saw you—linked with him …’ His words seemed to bring the sharp point of his tongue out with them through his teeth.

  He had to stand quivering while he bit it back. ‘You’ve never acted like that before. You’ve always acted like a decent woman. Not like …’ His intellectual conscience, which was important to control his malice but would never be quite gagged by it, refused to let him say the words because they were not true; but the other passionate part of him had what relief it could by making his mouth shape them silently.

  The corresponding point in her seemed to hear what they were, and she made a sweeping gesture which she immediately checked, feeling that sick terror she always felt when an argument between them slipped towards a primitive plane. It had something to do with her fear, which was beyond all reason, which was greater than her fear of death, that he would some day strike her. Their eyes met nervously, and they consented to disregard this moment of dumb show and its significance. She said, as if she believed that an intellectually convincing explanation convinced people, ‘You know you’re talking nonsense. I play that scene like I’ve always played love scenes, the way old Sir Charles Mordant taught me when he was pushing me through my first lead and I couldn’t act at all. “If you want to play a love-scene that gets across the footlights,” he said to me, “get your feet mixed up.” And that’s what I’ve always done. That’s all I do in this play. You’ve seen me do it a hundred times before. What are you being silly about all of a sudden? And as for this man, of all men. Why, you know he’s a nancy-boy.’

  He shuddered. ‘Your hideous slang. About things you might have found too hideous to know.’

  He had shifted his ground. She had him beaten. But she liked him none the better for that, for it showed that he had made this accusation against her without having a case, without really believing he had one. ‘Well, as to that,’ she said coldly, ‘they’re all round us. They act with us, they write our plays, they make our dresses, they decorate our houses. Sometimes there seem more of them than of the other kind. We can’t help knowing of them.’ There passed through her mind a picture of Cosmo’s birthday party at the Ladrone restaurant a few weeks before. She had not been playing then, so she had gone early, and had sat at the host’s table opposite the door and watched all the guests coming in; the lovely little girls in their teens and early twenties, who had rid themselves of all the traditional signs of womanhood, who had cut off their hair, who were so slim that their frocks rose over their breasts only as they might have over two flower-petals worn that way for a charm, yet who remained utterly women, with soft young faces that glowed in expectation of adventures the cause of which would be submission; and with them these dapper boys, their heads sleek as men’s are, their bodies straight and lithe and dressed in black and white as men’s are, yet who had become utterly not men, whose faces were sparkling with enjoyment of adventures in which women had no part. She had felt very sorry for the girls then. Now, perhaps because she was goose-fleshed with that
sense of danger which always came on her when her relationship with Essington took this turn towards unreason, she felt ashamed about herself. At the moment she seemed to hold plenty of cards: but if they were struck out of her hand it would not be so easy to get others. She said aloud, ‘Yes, I don’t know what the world’s coming to!’ She felt perturbed, flimsy, hollow, ephemeral, something that would disappear if people stopped thinking about her. The sight of her letters, which she had left lying on a table, encouraged her. They would be all about her work, they would prove to her that she had a career, that she solidly existed, she would feel much better if she read them.

  Essington called out loudly, as if instead of sitting close in the room she had gone out of the door and he had to bring her back at any cost, ‘I am hungry! I want something to eat! Go and make me some coffee!’

  This was a habit of his when he had risen to a certain pitch of rage against her. He would wait till there were no servants about and would order her loudly to cook something for him. It was not such a bad thing as it seemed, for it was not a mere explosion of tyranny, it was more like a little mechanical adjustment which made it possible for their relationship to run smoothly for a little while. For after she had obeyed, and gone down to the kitchen and made him coffee and scrambled eggs or a welsh rarebit, and brought it up to him, he would explain that he really had needed the food, that for some reason he had had no dinner, that he was very grateful to her for giving him this; and after that he would be very kind and good for some time. She had often wondered what was in his mind when he did this. It was perhaps the attempt of somebody who was clever in general but not at handling human beings to make a relationship run right by forcing it into the groove along which such relationships traditionally ran; just as a clever person without a mechanical turn of mind who found himself faced with the problem of making a broken-down machine work again would try to make it look as much as possible as it did when it was first delivered by the manufacturer. If they had been mates in a primitive society she would have tended all his bodily needs and he would have been grateful to her for it; that was the way she had been delivered by the manufacturer. The imitation of it was so nearly right, was at any rate so allusive to rightness that it always felt sweet. But it was play-acting, it was pretence, and tonight she couldn’t go through the performance. For it was the extremest fatigue and tedium, like doing exercises when one is dropping with sleep, for her to take any notice of him at all. And it was all preposterous anyway; if he wanted to be kind to her why couldn’t he just be kind to her instead of staging over and over again these pointless dramas of the unjust accusations and repentance?