by Rebecca West
Overhead, the telephone stopped ringing. Because his back was turned she pressed her hands to her breast and dropped them as he turned and looked at her.
He got the door to open, stepped outside and weakly drew it to after him. For a long time he held it just two or three inches ajar. She could see his face, again still as a china figure’s and scarred by lifelong failure as by old cuts, looking at her through the crack. Their pulses beat on the empty house, the silent night, as on a drum.
Overhead, the telephone began to ring again. Instantly he flung the door wide open and stood on the threshold with his arms stretched out, as if he were going to rush in and do violence to the house, to her. She walked backwards up another stair, putting out her hand in front of her to defend herself. But suddenly he banged the door. One moment she was facing his sour and vehement stare, the next she was confronted with blank black wood.
She heard his footsteps scuffle down the steps into the street, and turned and ran upstairs. She reached her bedroom, she flung herself down on her knees by the telephone.
‘Hello … Hello.’
‘Hello. My God, Sunflower, I thought I was never going to get you. Am I too late? Were you asleep?’
‘No. Oh, no.’ She began to weep.
‘Here, what’s this? Sunflower, is that you crying?’
‘Yes. Oh, Francis. Essington has just … gone away.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s gone. We’ve parted. And, oh, it’s dreadful when you think how we used to care for each other. And he’s so sweet and good.’
Her sobs stilled. But she heard nothing. She cried into the darkness. ‘Can’t you hear me? Essington and I have parted!’
‘Yes, I hear you. But something went wrong with this telephone. Sunflower, is all this definite and final?’
‘Yes. Yes. It’s all over.’
‘Sunflower, are you quite sure? Essington loves you very dearly.’
‘Yes, but it’s over. I can’t tell you how it happened. You see, there was something dreadful … Oh, Francis, Francis, have you read something awful in a horrid paper about me?’
‘I have not. I would not. And if it were forced on me I should forget it.’
‘Oh, you are kind, you are … right. But oh, he was queer, and it was all horrid. Yet he is so sweet. And ten years, ten years! Oh, Francis, what am I to do?’ She began to sob again. There appeared before her mind’s eye, very clear and bright, a picture of her latchkey lying on the staircarpet. She must go down later and pick it up.
‘Sunflower, I want to see you.’ She bent down to the telephone as if its black mouth were the trumpet of a flower, and there were honey there. ‘But …’
Nothing came out of the darkness for a minute.
‘… the devil of it is that I can’t. Something’s happened. I won’t be free all day tomorrow.’
She stopped sobbing. She arranged her long, shaking breaths. ‘Oh, very well,’ she said. ‘Good-night.’
‘No, hold on. Sunflower. Hold on. Hold on.’
‘I’m holding on.’
‘Hold on. Hold on. There’s something … I tell you there is something wrong with this telephone …’
Suddenly she heard his chuckle. His voice sounded gruff and strong as if he were standing in the room beside her. His charm scented the world, warmed her flesh, nourished her. ‘This is the devil! I have business with relatives of Hurrell. They will be with me all day. Seeing him and talking over his affairs with me. And I can’t even come to you after the theatre, for I’ve been let in to giving a party. As a matter of fact I consented to give it because I thought you and Essington might come and that it would cheer us all up. Will you come to that party by yourself? Sunflower?’
‘I might.’
‘Do come to my party. I would be grateful. I am sad enough when I do not see you, Sunflower. And maybe we’ll be able to slip away from the others and talk this thing over. Will you come?’
‘I think … I might … I’ll come …’
‘And Sunflower …’ He brought her name down like a hammer.
‘Yes?’
‘I am glad you have left Essington. I am damned glad you have left Essington.’
She murmured, ‘Oh, but he was so dear and wonderful, you don’t know …’
He cut in inexorably, ‘Goodnight to you.’
She breathed, feeling passive, feeling faint with pleasure, ‘Goodnight.’
V
THIS was the best awakening of all her life. Yesterday had been a dreadful morning, though she had remembered as soon as her eyes were open that she had had her last quarrel with Essington, that he had gone away forever, that she was free. But she had not wanted to be free. What good was that? It had made her feel lonely and unreal. If nobody was fond of you, you wouldn’t quite exist. With tears she remembered something that Essington had once told her, of how wise men debated whether a storm out at sea where there was no human being to behold it could truly be said to exist, since thunder was thunder only because an ear heard its roll, and lightning was lightning only because an eye was dazzled by it, and waves immense only because a mind measured them. She had rolled over and buried her face in the pillow, feeling as if she was already beginning to exist less definitely, as if presently she would fall through the bed because she was not solid enough to be borne by its solidity, and seep through it like a mist. She could not be sure, she could not be sure …
But this morning, when she awoke, she felt more real than she had ever done before. For one thing, she had not at any time known a feeling as strong as this happiness. Why, it was like clear music bubbling on and on, it was like bright sunshine, surely anyone coming into the room would hear it and see it! It was as amazing to find that she could be so immensely happy with so little previous training as it would have been to find that she had a magnificent singing voice; for this happiness was not just a judgment her mind was passing on what had happened to her, it was an achievement, it was something produced, it jetted out of her. But this was only one of the new things that were going on in her because she was now sure. Because she knew he set a high value upon her, she felt infinitely precious. She passed her hands over her face and under the bedclothes down her body, over her round breasts, down the strong hoops of her ribs, down her flanks, admitting their beauty as honestly as if they were in marble and no concern of hers, feeling such joy as one might feel who being seized by the madness of giving finds in that same moment a treasure in his lap. Yet she cried out aloud and most despairingly, ‘Oh, dear, I wish my nose was really straight!’ She felt about herself that mixture of severe vanity and carping self-dislike which she had noticed in great actors and great actresses, that was written all over Dusa, with her rounded shoulders and her cherishing arms holding motherwise nothing but her own self, as if to say, ‘I find myself dear to myself as other women find their children,’ and her face scared with disgust, as if to say, ‘Oh, God, when can I die so that I may lose this I?’ Ah, but Francis Pitt had made her as great as Dusa! When you came down to it all that made Dusa great was that she knew what she wanted to do. That she thought her parts completely into existence so that she knew what they would do in every conceivable circumstance, and no moment of the play found her at a loss for a perfect characteristic gesture. Now Francis Pitt had thought her completely into existence. When she had gone to his house after the theatre the night before, he had come out into the hall to meet her, and had given the footman a grave nod which made him go and warned him as he went that he must take no liberty of smiles and suspicions. They had stood in the shadows for a moment, while through the door that he had left ajar behind him sounded music and gay yet temperate laughter as of those who had not spoiled the pleasures of dancing and laughing by practising them too much. Then he had taken her right hand in both of his and said, ‘At last my Sunflower has come,’ and from the way he spoke she had learned that he had thought of her long and passionately, especially in those hours of trance, just before one sleeps, or after
one wakes, or during the visit of a bore, when the image of a beloved person is not merely held in the mind but comes to motion, performing acts a little more fantastical than those of common life but illuminating them and explaining them. He had a complete conception of her. She knew that if anyone had come to him and said, ‘A thousand miles away, Sunflower is coming out of a church into sunlight,’ he would continue, his voice shaking deeply with delight, ‘Yes, and as she crossed the threshold she looked up at the sun and her brows frowned but her mouth smiled, and as she went down the steps she turned aside once to give a coin to a beggar.’ Because she loved him she would always do according to his imagination. Surely a man who loved one like that was God to one, for he made one. He gave one life. For how could one live unless somebody one cared about wanted one to live in a certain way? Otherwise one just flopped about. And a man who loved like that did not only make one, he made one after a beautiful image. He gave one not only life but salvation. Therefore one would worship him with one’s body and soul until one died.
Of course Dusa had done all this by herself, separate, alone. She had been the thinker and that which was thought into being real. Sunflower supposed that was really more wonderful. But who wants to do anything by themselves? Who wants to be separate? Who wants to be alone? Luxuriously she rolled from side to side in her bed, laughing at the dissolving terror of loneliness, who would never be alone again! The bright spaces of her room, which were lit by the morning sunshine and her happiness as by a lamp with a double wick, pleased her as being just right for what she felt. It was because she had hoped that she would wake up one day feeling like this that she made them do the walls like that, pale green, and faintly streaked in the lower half with very fine gold lines, fine as the lines on the petal of a crocus, and pointed upwards so that they had an air of growing. They looked very fresh and clean, as well they might, for they were washed all over every Monday, and she saw that it was done properly too. Oh, she was sorry for Dusa, for anyone whose greatness bound them to theatre! She had always loathed the theatre itself, the actual place where she had to act. That was partly because she disliked all buildings which were not made for people to live in: churches, railway stations, factories, offices, warehouses, seemed to her like the money she had to pay over in income tax, necessary, no doubt, for the community, but somehow also wasted. She liked farms, blacksmiths’ forges, shops in the villages and little country towns and the browner parts of London, where people could work alongside of their lives, where their children could come in and tell them that their meals were ready. But her loathing came even more from the feeling one had in every one of them that since the day it was built nobody had swept in all the corners, that those bare boards behind the stage weren’t ever scrubbed by anybody who had a nice enough home to realise what being clean is, and that however nice one’s dressing-room there were certain to be other ones on the floor above or the floor below where cracked hand basins were supported on awful pipes that looked like the bones of people who had not washed when they were alive. Oh, it was lovely to have one’s happiness coming to one here, in one’s own place, which one had taken trouble to keep right! And it was lovely to have it strong in the morning, when one always felt at one’s best and wanted to do things but if they weren’t important didn’t dare to because one had to save up one’s strength for the evening, as one had to work then, though of course one would have liked just to have dinner and dance or talk a bit and go to bed! But now her life was going to be lived in the right places, at the right hours! But in the very moment when she knew the joy of extrication from the theatre she felt an emotion which she had believed peculiar to the theatre, the feeling one had on first nights of an impatient desire for the curtain to go up and the performance to begin. She wished to proceed at once with her new and magnificent destiny. She threw out her hand and struck the bell that would bring her breakfast, that would start her splendid day. Then shy because it seemed to her that anybody who had seen her make the movement must have known that she was extravagantly loved and loved her lover back again as extravagantly and without shame, she rolled over in bed and drew the sheets tight over her like the wrappings of a mummy and pretended to be half-asleep.
Martyn set down the breakfast tray just as it ought to be set down: not quite silently, for if she had done that you might have gone to sleep again and let the tea get cold, but not so noisily that you woke up feeling cross, and she said, ‘Good morning’ just right, so that you knew there was someone human about, but not so that you felt you had to do anything about it. She hadn’t been much when she came. It was all a matter of training them, of pretending that you weren’t frightened of them and sort of suggesting to them what you wanted over and over again. Cook knew how to set a breakfast tray very nicely now. The stone-coloured linen tray-cloth, the Lowestoft china, its flowers painted a little brighter than nature but not out of contempt, rather as if the painter expected to go out into the country the next day and was looking forward to it so much that he was nourishing the absurdest hopes regarding everything that happens in the fields; the brown egg cosy in its cup; the three curled shavings of toast, the shells of butter on a wet leaf, the handful of raspberries on another; the single rose in the candy-striped Nailsea glass jar; it was all prettily done. In Sunflower’s house all things were done prettily. In any house she might own she would be able to contrive that they were done prettily. She saw all sorts of houses in her mind’s eye … Big houses in London, big enough to hold a great man’s importance, which must have the guilt of their bigness lifted from them by careful plans to make them warm as a little house. One would have to face the problem that arose all the time if one was rich, of how to make the difference on the nights when one had people in, which, if one were poor, one would make quite easily by having chicken. But it could be done. You’d have lovely things to eat and the place pretty and make everybody feel at home, and the women would go home feeling as if their automobiles were velvet-lined caskets and themselves jewels, the younger men would walk back, halting on the bridge over the Serpentine if the house were in Portman Square, or on the Embankment if it were one of those funny eighteen-eightyish castles at the foot of Tite Street, watching lights that waver on water like exhorting forefingers and discussing weighty matters with flushed sententiousness. The party would not stop, and would in a sense go on forever, the women would always remember the night when they had been so beautiful and charming and take it as their standard. The men would have been so carefully picked and the talk so good that something would remain the next morning, there would be a trace of it in The Times a week later, in the speech in the House of Commons a month later. It would all redound to the greatness of Francis Pitt. It would all make a delightful world into which to introduce young people. (She compressed her lips and reflected that Canterton must go.) There would be furnished homes one would take just for the summer. Green lawns that the sea-air cropped as close as sheep, and wild-haired hedges of tamarisk, broken where the path led down the cliff between changing cornices of sand to a yellow shore; and in the house lots of very big chairs, which one would probably have to bring oneself, for there were never enough, and scones and strawberry jam for tea, which everyone likes when they are on a holiday, and great fireplaces where as soon as evening fell one would light a wood fire and throw handfuls of lavender on it. The East Coast would be good for that, if one could find a place where the bathing was safe. Oh God! One must be quite sure that the bathing was safe. And perhaps there would be a country house where one lived all the year round, where things would be pleasant and would not change. An old house, that had gone on and on. One would not alter the garden very much, one would have the same herbaceous borders year after year, so that they should be loved and remembered and expected. One would not change the servants; one could always keep them if one was sensible. There would be a paddock for the old ponies. One would go to church every Sunday, not that one gets much out of it, but it is good to get into the habit of doing anything every S
unday. If a person was brought up in a settled home like that, and could always come back to it, surely they wouldn’t get puzzled and upset about things as other people did. She would be able to arrange all these things. None of them would be beyond her powers. It was strange to think that she had sat here and cried because her house, being beautiful and smoothly run, was of no use to Essington, who simply did not notice whatever was agreeable and afforded no relief to his pricking need to complain; that when she was giving her morning orders to the servants she had sometimes shivered, feeling herself like a crazy ageing childless woman who perpetually sews baby clothes and lays them by in a drawer. She had thought her housewifeliness waste, whereas she had been learning her life like an art, practising against the time of the performance of her love.
Nothing in her life had been wasted. Someone must have been planning it and loving her all the time while they planned, for it could not be by accident that everything which had ever happened to her had worked towards rounding the perfection of this moment. It had seemed utter waste for her to be an actress, to spend her days being rehearsed in theatres that were dark when outside it was light by clever people who became mosquito-like with irritation, and her nights in doing the wrong thing before audiences which always included enough people who didn’t know she was wrong to commit her to being engaged but which also included just enough people who knew she was awful for it to get about the world and spoil her peace. Yet being an actress had given her Francis Pitt. He had first seen her on the stage, wearing a silver cloak and speaking other people’s words. She had been able to show him her beauty without her stupidity. And now he was hers. Smiling cunningly, she was even glad that she had played leads, although always before she had wished she could have played minor parts and had fewer great moments to fail in, for that way she had got him by another of his foolish forelocks, by the childish pride he felt in being able to keep company with famous people. To get him through his funny little weaknesses was not disgraceful to her love; there is comedy as well as tragedy. But she was distressed to find herself passing from this thought, which after all struck her as a little too aggressive for this time when blessing had been given gently into her hands and all her future life was to be gentleness, into another one more predatory still. Before she knew what she had done she had said to herself, her hands gripping the sheet over her like claws, that she did not even mind the scandal about herself since what it meant was that when people heard her name they thought of Essington and then of love, and if in following that common process Francis Pitt had thought of love in connection with her sooner or more vividly than he would otherwise have done, why, she was glad of it. That was detestable. By making Francis Pitt profit by the world’s mauling of her name it put him in the position of a man whose wife goes on the streets to earn his bread. But the force in her that was inexorable so far as he was concerned said harshly, ‘Well, would you not, if he had no bread?’
