Sunflower (13 page)

Forgetting her, he wheeled round. ‘Go over to the Party that hasn’t made up its mind whether it stands for free trade or protection? No…!’

For a moment after Francis Pitt had gone he dragged their thoughts with him.

‘What nice people,’ said Sunflower; and Essington purred, ‘Yes, the little creature has real charm. But a wicked little creature. They say his financial record in California is shady beyond description. I remember we had qualms of letting him have a seat. And he came here tonight with guile, with guile. He and Hurrell are thinking of trying to pull the Liberal Party together by dropping Bryce Atkin overboard. They want me to come in. But also the little devil has thought of ratting to the Labour Party.’ He chuckled. ‘An evil little bottle-imp.’

Then their eyes met.

He fixed her with the menacing, justice-invested stare of the outraged schoolmaster; but she lifted her chin as she had never done before when he had been angry with her. For a second he looked astonished and then seemed to doubt whether he really wanted a quarrel, after all. He turned away and began going round the bookshelves, whistling and putting back into place the books he had disarranged; and at length remarked nonchalantly, ‘Quite a good little evening. We must ask them again.’

She cleared her throat and said unsteadily: ‘No.’

He swung round with an affectation of surprise. ‘But I thought you said you liked them?’

‘Oh, yes. I liked them all right,’ she said. ‘But there isn’t going to be any more we. It’s over. It’s finished. I don’t want to live with you any more. I don’t want ever to see you again.’

He put his long fine hand to his forehead and sighed before speaking patiently. ‘Ah, Sunflower. I could wish that you wouldn’t always start this sort of thing late at night, when I’m tired out. You have a marvellous instinct for choosing the worst possible moments for making a scene.’

‘But I’m not making a scene. I’m just telling you I want you to go away.’ She thought of her pretty bed upstairs, with its flat, round, lavender-scented pillow that it was nice to rub your face into, and the embroidered handkerchief linen sheets she had brought back from Switzerland, looking so nice against the apple-green quilt; and tears of vexation came into her eyes. It was absurd to have a lovely Chinese room and not be able to sit in it, to have a comfortable bedroom and not be able to go to bed in it. ‘He’s like having a pipe-burst in every room,’ she thought, and told him wearily: ‘I want you to go away. And never come back again. I’m finished.’

For a minute he did not answer but stood raising himself on the balls of his feet and lifting his head, as if to try the air with his silver feelers. ‘Very well, Sunflower,’ he agreed at length. ‘I think the time has come when this is the best thing for us to do.’ He rose, he fell, he rose again, on those neat, narrow, long feet. ‘For me, I haven’t been happy for the last—oh, the last four years.’

She said, ‘Right,’ and to herself she said, ‘It’s three years since I nursed him through that breakdown, and had that awful time with him at Madeira. Seems funny that that doesn’t mean anything to him. But he’s always kind of taken a pride in not saying thank you. I wonder if anywhere inside him he knows what’s been done for him. Somehow it would be nice if he did even though we’re not going on. But what’s the odds. It’s finished.’

He breathed, ‘Aha! so that’s settled!’ and crossed the room to the table just behind her, where there were syphons and whisky. There was a fizzing, and his voice passed over her head, purring and benedictory: ‘Yes, I think we are very wise to look things in the face and get clear. Without any bitterness. Without any recriminations. In good temper.’

‘That’s all right,’ she assented, through a yawn. ‘Is it really going to be as easy as this?’

For a while he drank in silence, and then remarked casually, ‘I’ll stay here tonight all the same, if you don’t mind. Of course I shan’t bother you. But I told Brooks I shouldn’t want him any more. And … mm … you know how I hate taxis.’

She could have laughed, it was so exactly like him. He would not go away that night, because she had asked him to go then; but he would go away in the morning, and not come back, and persuade himself that this had altered the situation in some way that gave him the advantage over her. After a little it would seem to him that it was he who had ended it, not her. She smiled drowsily, and asked herself, ‘Do I really want it to be as easy as this?’ and was horrified, as if she had put out a hand to touch some burning substance and found it cold in death, to find that she did want it to be as easy as this.

There was more fizzing. Then his voice soared again. ‘We must remain friends, of course, Sunflower. We’ve had a very pleasant time together in some ways, and there are all sorts of memories that will link us together.’

‘Yes, all sorts.’

‘You must always look on me as a friend, you know, Sunflower. Always come to me for anything you want.’

He was trying to be nice. ‘Thank you, dear,’ she said.

Slowly he sauntered to the other armchair and pushed it forward till it faced her; and settled in it with his glass of whisky. ‘Yes, little Sunflower,’ he went on, between the sips. ‘I’ll always be glad to help you. For, though I welcome this break in a way—not that there hasn’t been a great deal, oh, a very great deal indeed, that’s been very delightful between us, but I’m old, I find myself growing more and more incapable of adapting myself to a different type of mind—’ he stopped and gazed thoughtfully into the distance.

‘He’s thinking of replacing me with one of those political widows with pearl dog-collars who get both volumes of the dull books out of the Times Book Club at once,’ reflected Sunflower. ‘Well, I don’t care. But I wish he’d get on with it. It makes me all shaky to sit and talk like this after I’ve turned him down, even though he is taking it so well. And I would like to go to my own bed.’

‘Still, there’s a very real friendship and liking between us, and I’d like to be all the use to you I can. And you know, Sunflower, you may need me, for I’m not sure you’ll find life on your own so easy as you think you will … Mm …’ Again he gazed into the distance, until he took another sip, to hearten him after the disquieting vision he had seen. ‘I wish I were surer about you in certain ways. There’s your work …’

‘That’ll go on for a few years, I dare say,’ she said.

He set down his glass, sat back in his chair, again looked into space at some lugubrious foreboding. At length he agreed, ‘Yes, I suppose it will,’ and, as if to encourage himself, took another drink.

‘It’s a pity I had to act,’ said Sunflower, miserably. ‘I’ve never really fancied it.’

‘Yes,’ he mused, ‘it’s a pity, Sunflower. Yet I don’t quite know where you would have fitted in better, what your real métier can have been …’ He dismissed the unprofitable speculation, mournfully drank again, set down his glass, and said, with the air of one putting a good face on a sad situation, ‘Well, as you say, that’ll probably last for a few years. These new people are pretty good, of course. Perdita Godly and all these youngsters. But you’ve got your footing. I think Phillips is genuinely grateful to you for the luck you’ve brought him. He’ll probably be loyal to you for quite a long time. Oh yes, you’re all right, Sunflower.’ He sipped again, his eyes set kindly and pensively on her over the rim of his glass. ‘But, mind you, you’ve got to start being careful. You’re a little fatter than you were when we first met, my dear. You eat a good deal, you know.’

‘I didn’t eat much tonight.’

‘No. But it isn’t dinner that matters, in point of fact. It’s tea that does it. Crumpets, cakes, sweet biscuits, all these little things. That’s what gives the slight thickness round the jaw that just takes away the … But you’re all right, dear, at present.’

‘Well, I ought to be,’ said Sunflower, shortly, ‘for I don’t have any tea. And I’m fit to drop.’ She raised her finger and ran it round her jaw. Surely it was not so bad. Perhaps, it was a bit heavy. Of course she did weigh a lot compared to all this new lot who were as thin as paper-knives. Still theirs was the type that seemed to be liked nowadays, so maybe being perfect in her type was as bad as being fat. Oh, now that he had started her worrying she probably wouldn’t sleep for hours, and she was aching with tiredness. ‘Now I’m going to bed.’

He apparently had not heard her, for he went on thoughtfully. ‘But anyway that doesn’t matter. It isn’t in physical type that they’ve beaten you. It’s in intelligence. You’re—’ he made a sad grimace into his glass, and gulped the last of his drink, ‘slow, Sunflower, slow!’ It was extraordinary how she had never quite got the hang of his moods. Of course he had all the time, from the moment she had told him to go away, been frenzied with rage against her. ‘My God, the way you kept on coming back and back to it tonight! The way you kept on making a fool of yourself—and me again and again!’

As soon as she had seen that he was angry she had resolved not to answer him back, no matter what he said; but when he reminded her of what had happened at dinner she began to blush again, and the pain of the blunt pricking where the blood swept over her breasts made her cry out, ‘Oh! Oh! I never did! It was you made a fool of me!’

He looked at her with eyes narrowed by hate. She cried, ‘I don’t know what you mean! It was you! I didn’t say a thing!’

Softly he said, ‘Are you so densely, so cretinously stupid that you didn’t see that you were giving away the most intimate details of our private life to Pitt and his sister?’

This was something more than mere blind malignity. He was showing that mixture of hatred of her folly and gloating delight in the fresh evidence he had collected concerning it which usually meant that she had done something really silly. Shivering she said, ‘Whatever do you mean? I wish you’d tell me right out.’

‘Why, that imbecile story you’d dragged home from the Assize Court—’ his gaze suddenly grew wild and hard with a different, madder accusation. ‘Sunflower!’

‘Yes!’

‘How did you come to be at that court? Had you fixed up the whole thing beforehand? Had you arranged with Sandbury to be down at Clussingford when he was there?’

She gaped. ‘Why, I never saw the old man before!’

He clapped his hands over his ears. ‘My God, that Cockney whine! I thought I’d cured you of … And I wonder, I wonder. Sunflower. I’m not sure about you. You can manage that pure, hurt look wonderfully. But I’m not sure about you. I was looking at your letters before you came in. There are two bills from dressmakers. Big bills. What do you want with all those clothes if it isn’t to attract other men?’

‘I’ve told you a hundred times I have to dress because I’m on the stage. You wouldn’t think it had anything to do with acting but it has. And you know I’m all right! Tell me what I did tonight. Why shouldn’t I have told that story about Alice Hester? You don’t mean that either of them had been in trouble for bigamy—or anything—’

‘Oh, God above! You fool! You unspeakable fool! Didn’t you realise the way you told it gave away that you wanted children, that you were perpetually worrying me to give you a child! You went on and on at it, you wouldn’t leave it alone. When one thought the thing was safely thrown out of doors you reappeared at the window with the thing in your mouth.’

She had risen and was standing quite still, with her clenched hands covering her mouth and her round eyes on him.

‘Don’t you understand even now? You kept on saying, “She wasn’t happy though she had lots of children.” “I suppose if you’ve got lots of children nothing can hurt you.” “She couldn’t have borne not to have a child.” If you had told them in a crude sentence exactly what you wanted you couldn’t have been more indecent. And the Pitts are nice people. They were out to be nice to you. When I asked Francis Pitt to dine here tonight he suggested himself that he should bring his sister. Said she admired you very much and that they quite understood this wasn’t the same as any other irregular mnage. I should think they went away regretting it. I’ve never had such a ghastly time in my life. And now, to round off the evening you start this nonsense about leaving me. I would have thought you’d done enough, after this appalling exhibition. Oh, my God, can’t you say something? Need you stand there looking half-witted?’

She drew a shuddering breath. ‘I don’t see there’s anything I can say. I suppose that must have been it. There certainly was something that made them look at me. I’m sorry.’

‘This isn’t a thing sorrow can wipe out. It was the last straw, to have the thing dragged up in public, when I’m sick of being pestered about it in private.’

‘Oh, Ess,’ she said, ‘I haven’t pestered you. I’ve hardly ever spoken of it … except … except when I’ve liked you very much. And you’ve spoken of it then as much as me. You know I’ve never asked you for that … by daylight. Oh, I didn’t think you’d ever bring that up against me. It doesn’t seem the sort of thing that ought to come back to me like this …’ She bit her knuckles.

He pointed a finger at her and waggled it from side to side. ‘That’s it,’ he said.

She stared. ‘What?’

‘That thing you’re doing to your hands. A silly false movement. No effect. That’s how you let down the big scene in “Leonora". No, Sunflower, you shouldn’t have been an actress.’ He moved towards the table, where the whisky and syphons were, making her feel as he passed her by an exasperated flutter of his fine hands, that it was a piece of intolerable clumsiness for her to be standing where she was. He poured out a glass of soda-water only. Even at this moment he was not forgetful of his austere rule never to drink more than one glass of weak whisky-and-soda after dinner. Having refreshed himself, he went on. ‘Yes, I’m inclined to think that if I took you seriously and got out it would be the best thing. I’m sick of this constant suggestion that I’ve wasted your life, that I’m an old man who’s eaten up your youth, that as soon as I got out of politics I should have deserted my poor loyal little Ethel and married you and given you children. I’m bored to death with that story, Sunflower.’

Amazed she asked, ‘But whenever did I say all that? You know I never did. Let’s not quarrel, let’s be friends, like you said we ought to be. I’ve never said such things. I’ve never thought them. I’ve always seen it as I did at the beginning. You’re the cleverest man in the world, and I was of no use to you, and I didn’t believe it made any difference whether a clergyman said things over you or not, so of course I didn’t hold back. I knew it wouldn’t be all jam, and it hasn’t been, but I haven’t ever brought it up against you. Oh, you know I haven’t.’