Sunflower (12 page)

But Essington laughed, so loudly that they all turned to him.

‘I must explain to you exactly what has happened,’ he said to Etta and Francis Pitt. ‘Sunflower has a rival called Maxine Tempest—’

‘A rival!’ exclaimed Sunflower. ‘Why, she’s my best friend.’

‘Exactly. As actresses have greatest friends,’ said Essington.

‘But—’ began Sunflower, and was quelled by a patient lift of his eyebrows which conveyed that she was committing the unforgivable offence and spoiling one of his stories, which everybody knows is a dreadful thing for a stupid woman to do to a clever man. She folded her hands, looked down on them, and waited.

‘They were in the chorus of “Farandole” together. Sweet children of eighteen. It was then that I met Sunflower.’ He laid a slight humorous emphasis on the ‘then’ which made it more than a mere statement of time. It was as if he had said, you know how attractive girls of eighteen are, to men of our sort; well, that’s how I got involved. And then came a little good-natured laugh, as if to add, and really you know, I’m not sorry; she’s a good creature, and, you know, I do get extraordinarily fond of people. ‘Well, Sunflower is the more comely of the two, but Maxine is decorative enough in her way. And she has perhaps a leetle more understanding of the essentials of her art than dear Sunflower has ever acquired.’ He looked at her sideways, with that playfulness. ‘Well, ever since “Farandole” there has been a continuous rivalry between the two. Not on the stage, which in their lives, as in the lives of so many young actresses, has never been allowed to assume a disproportionate importance. But in the photographer’s studio. In the
Sketch
and the
Tatler.
Once, but not so much recently, on picture postcards. There is a kind of war of pictorial accessories between them that has gone on for years. Maxine has rather the more inventive photographer. He it was who first put Maxine with tulle round her shoulders looking up at a branch of apple blossom. Immediately dear Sunflower put some tulle round her shoulders and looked competitively up at another bigger and better bunch of apple-blossom. And she won, bless her, at a canter. Those were your very best days, my dear. Then Maxine bought a dog. A horrid little dog. A kind of angry powder-puff. This she held up against her face, thus making an agreeable contrast. Then Sunflower went out and bought another little dog, a worse little dog, a more awful little dog. And she held it up beside her lovelier face, thus making an even more agreeable contrast. So Maxine had to find another line, and this time it led her into the kitchen. She was photographed there baking a cake. But Sunflower, though an undomesticated creature, was not to be beaten. Immediately she was photographed making a pie—probably out of the discarded dog—’

The others laughed. She did not, for she knew what this rising tide of geniality usually meant. She sat with her shoulders lifted, as if she expected a lash to fall on them.

‘I forget the next stage. Ah, there was gardening. You should have seen Sunflower standing on the edge of a pond with a watering-can, watering—watering—watering—’ his falsetto laughter climbed higher and higher, it seemed as if the tears would roll down his puckered cheeks, ‘watering a water-lily …’

Sunflower protested, ‘But we knew that was funny. It was only to use up the last plate. The print was published by mistake.’ But no one seemed to hear her.

He went on, his face turned away from her. ‘But at last the time came when Maxine got Sunflower beaten. Such a shame! A year or two ago Maxine took to herself a husband. Some sort of actor thing. And the consequence is that now Maxine is photographed with an infant daughter. A preposterous child with a photographic face, the sort of
ad hoc
baby an actress would have. And that, you see, Sunflower can’t match. And poor Sunflower’s so cross.’ At last he looked at her directly, with a smile that would have been easy and rallying if it had not been taut and twitching. ‘Poor Sunflower, she’s always complaining about it …’ His voice cracked.

She lifted her chin and smiled vaguely at something above Etta’s head. Perhaps now that he had said this in front of people, whatever it was that made things happen would let her off that other moment, which she had dreaded for so long, when he would strike her. Only, if she had been permitted to choose, she would have chosen the other. It would not have been quite so awful.

But her smile gave out. It crinkled to something else on her face. She looked round for help, at first to Essington, which was silly, considering it was against him she needed help, but one has those funny instincts, when one has been living with a man for ten years; and then to Francis Pitt. He made no sign of seeing. His heavy, greyish lids were drooped, and if it had not been for the pursing of his great mouth she might have thought he had fallen into a bearish gloom and had not heard Essington’s last words. But suddenly and stealthily he laid down his cigar, set his hands on the arms of his chair, and pressed it backwards for a fraction of an inch. Why, of course, she could get up and go. But she always had a queer, obedient feeling that whatever Essington was doing to her she ought to stay until he had quite finished.

She met Etta’s eyes, and rose. Essington’s hand, trembling, closed the door a little too quickly after them.

The drawing room upstairs really did look rather pretty. She need not be ashamed to take anybody into it. It was always good to come back to the three Ming figures up there on the mantelpiece, the two calm old men with staves who had been on a long journey and brought back peace, the princess whose face looked bland and royal because of her smooth flesh, her little bones. In the grey bowls between the figures the servants had put red roses past their prime; as she had taught them; for she fancied it went well with the agelessness of the old men and the lady, who were seven hundred years old, who were younger than any day past its morning, to hear the wordless lisp of a dropping petal now and then, like the beat of a clock that was truer than an ordinary clock, since it was irregular, and time goes by sometimes fast and sometimes slowly. Between the pale green curtains of the three long windows showed the blossomy branches of the pear tree in the garden below, thrusting through the interstices of the balcony railing, like the muzzles of white furry animals trying to climb out of the London night, where there was only the temporal beauty of the spring, into this quiet Chinese room, where lovely things were continuing for ever. It seemed a shame when one had a nice place like this not to be able to sit down and enjoy it.

‘What a lovely room,’ said Etta. ‘I do like your wallpaper.’

‘It is nice, isn’t it. It’s eighteenth-century Chinese. We found rolls and rolls of it in an Italian villa we once had, never been put up on anything, so we bought the lot.’

‘That was a piece of luck. Did you like Italy?’

‘I did. Awfully. But he got tired of it in a week or two. He always does get tired of places quite soon.’ It was best, she supposed, to talk of him quite naturally.

‘So does Francis. Every year he thinks he’s going to like Deauville, and he never does after the first two or three days. Then I have to find a new place after we’ve taken a villa for the whole season.’

‘That is tiresome, isn’t it.’ She would have liked to draw Miss Pitt’s attention to the three figures, but she did not feel she could venture on long sentences yet. So she continued to look at the wallpaper through a changing lens of tears. ‘I always like that little man coming down the steps of the temple. And look. It’s the same little man looking out of the sort of sedan chair. In the procession. And there he is again having his tea in the garden.’

‘So he is.’

‘I like the grey willows going down all wooshy into the water. It all looks so nice and quiet, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, nice and quiet.’

They continued to look at the wallpaper until Sunflower cried out. ‘Oh, I feel so cold. Aren’t you awfully cold? Would you like a fire?’

Then, seeing the open window, she felt a fool. Of course it was nearly summer. It was only because she was in a state that she was shivering.

But Etta said, as if she had not noticed anything odd, ‘Well, yes, I should, if it’s only a matter of turning a switch. The evening has turned a little chilly, hasn’t it?’

They settled down on each side of the fireplace, stretching out their fingers to the warmth.

‘Fancy having a fire in May!’ said Sunflower. Her voice would shake about, ‘Look, my hands are quite blue. I must have caught cold in the car.’

‘Yes, I remember thinking you looked cold when you came in.’

‘It was an open car,’ Sunflower went on, calculating that one could not see out of the window from the dining room table. ‘And there was a wind. Quite a cold wind. I do think the summers are colder than they used to be.’

‘Oh, there’s no doubt that the climate is worse than it was when we were children.’

‘Oh, yes, it must be. Why, Mother never would have a fire lit in the house after the thirty-first of March and before the first of October. Except when some of us children were ill, of course.’

‘That was a rule my mother made too.’

‘Funny all the rules they had. Changing one’s woollies on the first of May.’ She sighed. ‘Woollies were comfortable, though, weren’t they, when it was cold. It’s funny to think how one couldn’t wear them now. It would seem worse than wrong, somehow, wouldn’t it?’

‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t if you want to,’ said Etta encouragingly.

‘Oh, no. I couldn’t. You see, I can’t exactly act, I’m just what they call a box-office draw, and it would spoil it. People wouldn’t know, of course, but it’s what really artistic producers call atmosphere, which means what you can’t see. Oh, I’m still so cold. I’m still so cold …’ She leaned forward to the heater. It seemed as if she would have to press her hands down on the red bar itself before she could get rid of that numbness, that feeling of blueness close to the bone. Perhaps, after all, it would make things better if she did say something about him.

‘He’s very tired, you know.’

Etta nodded understandingly. ‘Oh, I know. Francis has what he calls reactions, sometimes.’

‘I suppose it’s all the work they do. He works terribly hard, you know.’

‘Yes, so does Francis. And they are different from us.’

‘Oh, yes, of course they’re different.’

They lowered their voices, like nurses talking of their patients at the door of a ward.

‘Does Lord Essington sleep badly?’

‘N-no … I can’t say I’ve much to worry about so far as his sleeping goes. Only after he’s eaten duck. I’m always telling him he oughtn’t to eat duck. But he always says it’s something else.’

‘I know. Francis is like that over white port. But he doesn’t sleep at the best of times. He really is a very, very bad sleeper.’

‘Oh, that is dreadful. It upsets them so, and they can’t stand it. They haven’t got patience like us …’ Her jaw dropped. She brought back her hands to her lap. It struck her that from force of habit she was speaking as if she had forgiven him; and this time she had not forgiven him. At last the thing was finished. She wished that she did not have to face him again; not because she was afraid of what he would do or say, but just because she did not want ever to see him or think of him again. It would be difficult to keep her attention on him. She would have to face the other man again, too. She remembered what she must look like.

‘Would you like to go upstairs?’ she asked. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to tidy. I must look a sight.’

‘Yes. I think we’ll have time,’ murmured Etta.

‘We’ve got to have time,’ said Sunflower.

But when they went out on the landing Essington’s voice called up plaintively from the bottom of the stairs, ‘Sunflower! Sunflower! You know I like sitting in the library after dinner.’

From force of habit Sunflower went down three steps. Then it seemed silly not to go on. Etta did not seem to have expected her to do anything else.

When they went into the library Essington was searching for something among the bookshelves, and Francis Pitt was standing on the hearthrug. He laid a heavy look on her, pushed a chair towards her, and as she settled in it leaned over her and said, ‘Are you comfortable?’ in a way that would have been suitable only if he had made the chair for her birthday with his own hands. But it was wicked to laugh at him, for spreading it on thick, because he was doing it just to show her he liked her. After he had seen to his sister’s comfort, not so portentously, he moved to the other side of the fireplace and came to a standstill, smoking his cigar and watching Essington at his hunt among the books. That was convenient, for now she could take a good look at him. It was funny, how like a lion standing on its hind legs he was. He was lion-colour, with his earthy skin and his tawny hair, and the deep lines running from his nose to his chin were like the folds in an animal’s hide. His broad but tiny hands and feet, which she perceived with amazement and delight to be smaller than her own, bore the same proportion to his thick, bulky-shouldered body that a lion’s paws do to its carcase. Though he was so short one could imagine him wrestling with wild beasts, rolling about in the dust with them, till the growling stopped …

That was what had been in the prow of the canoe he had driven over the waters to her with a round-mouthed, wordless cry: a conquered beast; a slaughtered deer. As the boat came nearer she could see the little head propped up against the birch-bark side, its silken, leaf-shaped ears limp as in docility, its melting eyes set in the saying of that mild, last word that all the dead say, be they beast or human. She would have felt compunction that so lovely a thing should have died before its time had she not felt pride that he had killed it; and had not someone standing by her side, whose voice she loved to hear, sent up a round-mouthed cry that meant that they rejoiced to see food. She wished that she could stay longer in her day-dream, so that the canoe could come to the shore, so that she could learn who the other one was, so that she could understand that feeling of crackling, heatless fire which was in the green forest-boughs, which was around her, which was within her. But she was called back by Essington’s fretting voice: ‘I never can find anything in this house …’ Absentmindedly she asked, ‘What are you looking for?’ ‘Oh, don’t fuss me, don’t fuss me,’ he wailed, and Francis Pitt, with a quickness that showed he had been waiting for a chance to protect her, cut in: ‘Have you never thought of going over to the Labour Party, Essington?’