Sunflower (29 page)

But there could be no reason at all why he should have to ask those beastly people, Billie Murphy and Lord Canterton! It made one sick to watch Billie Murphy running about the tennis-court with the movements of a stocky little pony, wearing an expression of bluffness and healthy commonsense, calling out shrewd technicalities about the new court to Francis in a quiet, jolly, schoolboy voice, being no end of a good fellow till something happened, her foot slipped or the sun overpassed the great cedar and dazzled her. Then there would show, printed greyly on the stubborn golden moon of her face, a second face, the peaked, vacillating, lonely face of the drunkard, who does not think lovingly of anything in the world but the next drink, who does not feel anything for the surrounding scene but headachy peevishness. It made one sick to watch Lord Canterton go out on the court, carrying his racket in one large oblong red hand and tossing up three balls in the air with the other, in a manner that would have been just excusable if he had been the only man since the beginning of time who had been able to perform that feat; wearing the pompous and meaningless expression that is affected by the statelier and less efficient sort of manicurist when she carries her dish of soap and water across the room, the eyebrows raised, the chin dropped but the mouth closed, the whole advertising a state of bored superiority over somebody who was not here in an issue which was purely imaginary; carrying himself with such slow swaggering vulgarity of movement that his white flannel trousers looked as loud as loud checks and his sleek black hair seemed a facetious and ungentlemanly way of treating the head like a billycock worn on one side. One could not blame poor little Billie, for she was so young that someone must have worked hard to make her what she was. But certainly both of them, whoever was to blame for it, were coarse and greedy and futile people. There was not an ugly thing in the world they would not do. There was not one fine end that they served. They could not fulfil any real need in Francis Pitt. There could not even, considering that Francis Pitt was a Liberal and that both Canterton and Sir John Murphy belonged to what Essington called the hiccuping wing of the Conservative Party, be any worldly reason why he should ask them to his house. He must have them there simply because he preferred having them there to being alone with her. Once she had forced herself to admit that, she tore up the argument she had been weaving for days and, staring at its loose threads, admitted further that it was utterly amazing that any at all of his guests should be in his house just now. It was against nature. Bryce Atkin and Mr Macbride and the princes and ministers might satisfy his ambition and his sense of fun and his humility, Teddy Drayton and Lord Orisser and the schoolboys and schoolgirls his touching wish that he had been born better-looking than he was, Cornelliss his desire to be loyal to his friends and kind to those who were good to his friends, but those were not real needs compared to their desperate common needs to be alone together. Nothing could happen, of course, because she was still with Essington, but they ought to be alone together just once.

She was pale now, not only because she was going to meet Francis Pitt in a few seconds, but also because of the way of their meeting. Yet, though that was agonising, she felt not depressed but exalted by it. There was a quality of importance about Francis which was not of her imagining. She had verified its existence by watching Bryce Atkin and Mr Macbride when they were watching him, and noting how there came quite often into the amused brightness of Bryce Atkin’s eye a hard, computing, and ultimately respectful sparkle, and into the unamused dullness of Mr Macbride’s eye a grudging gleam. Both of them were almost contemptuously entertained by Francis Pitt’s charlatan ways, but they both felt it not impossible that some day he might produce from his coat-sleeve neither a rabbit nor a guinea pig but a sceptre, which he would nurse for a while in his short, folded arms and chuckle over with narrowed eyes and then suddenly lift in a gesture of rulership which the world would not disobey. This quality of importance gave the strange circumstances of their close and remote companionship, their intimate separateness, the dignity of a historical mystery. She felt as if she were some girl with a high white coif on her head riding on a led palfrey through the forest into a clearing wholly ringed by armed men leaning on their spears, where she would find him between two tall guards, his hands tied behind him, his hair wilder and worn longer, his face more kingly and more wolfish, while the one who had for the time being gained the upper hand of him sat on a stool amongst his counsellors and watched their meeting. Well, if that were the only way that one could go to him, it was the best thing in the world. And it was glorious to know that if the armed men and the enemies were not there and there was only the short grass, and the wild rose briars, and the dark sweet-smelling arcades of the forest, he would fall so gladly at her feet and bury his face against her body, kissing the stuff of her gown with his great mouth. But what could not be borne was that the armed men were there because he wished them there, that he himself had tied his hands behind him, that he himself was the enemy who mocked their love by making them meet publicly. What could it mean? Why was he torturing both of them like this? Was it just that he knew she wanted to stay with Essington—which she did, of course she did—and he was helping her? Or was it that there was another woman? There did not seem to be. Surely he had not time. She knew fairly well what he did with his days and he seemed to be always in the open, either up here in the house and gardens, or at political parties and dinners. Yet she could not be quite sure. She knew from something Etta had said that he had been out on Thursday night, but she did not know where. Of course there were lots of interstices in his time, hours here and there when he might have been with someone he loved. But he was in love with her, why should he go to any other woman? That was a silly question. He might have tied himself up to somebody in a way that could not be broken. Perhaps he had made love to a married woman who had wanted to be good and had gone against her conscience because she loved him so, and now of course he could not leave her. At that some force much fiercer than herself leaped up inside her body and ran like mercury through her flesh, arguing that though this was the sort of scruple she had respected all her life it must go down before the work that she and it had in hand. Instantly she deserted to its side; and had once more that feeling which she had had so often since she knew Francis Pitt of being called to some tremendous battle and having an inexhaustible store of power with which to fight it. She straightened herself, feeling in her shoulders, her back, her loins, the strength of a great tower.

But a thought weakened her. Maybe the case was simpler than this. Maybe he did not love her and she had only thought he did because she wished he did. It was something one could not disregard, that he never wanted to see her alone. Maybe he loved some girl for her beauty. The force that was running through her flesh ran with less spirit now. There were some lovely girls about nowadays, and far more of them than there used to be. And they wanted so little. They did not care if the man loved them. She would be dark, probably, this girl; men did not seem to care for fair women the way they used to. And without any figure. And young. As young, most likely, as she herself had been when she first went with Essington. If Francis Pitt would tell her she would not mind so much. She might be able to help the girl, tell her the best places to get clothes. Girls often made mistakes when they began to dress.

Feeling a little sick because of this thought, she got out of the car and found Francis Pitt and one of the sleek-headed young secretaries from the City office standing at the foot of the steps. Rehearsing serenity, she smiled first at the young man; but found his face scarlet, his eyes bright and blind with anger.

She turned to Francis Pitt, and saw that he was hideous with rage.

In a voice that climbed shakily down from shrillness to his usual register he greeted her, ‘Ah, Sunflower, that’s a lovely frock you’ve got on. Beautiful, beautiful!’ and gripped her hand. Still holding it, in a curiously familiar, fondling gesture, he wheeled round on the secretary and said in a tone of dismissal, ‘Well, goodbye, Harrop, and don’t ask every girl you meet to marry you.’

The young man mumbled something. From his trembling, jerking hands slipped a notebook. A fan of loose leaves scattered on the gravel. Francis Pitt stooped and recovered them with one swift movement that was an insulting comment on the other’s clumsiness. He held them out to him without looking at him, smiled into her eyes, and said slowly and deeply and happily, ‘We are going to be alone together today, Sunflower.’

She said timidly as they went into the hall, ‘Whatever has upset you so?’

Gravely he shook his head. She need not have been afraid. The lines on his face were those of grieved fatherhood. Of course he was not doing what Essington did, and making himself feel better by making other people feel worse. ‘That young fool has made the mistake of his life. I’ll tell you later. Just now I feel too badly about it.’ He checked himself on the threshold of the library with a curious hunching movement of his shoulders, like a butting beast that sees barbed wire in front of it, and growled over his shoulder to the footman, ‘There are not enough flowers today!’ She hated that footman. A great strong young fellow like that ought to get something better to do than carry round two cocktails on a tray. Every time she saw him she felt as she had done that first time she came to the house and found him sniggering over Canterton, which hardened into an angry recognition that he and she were of the same class and that in some way he had failed her. Now she could have smacked his face, as he moved his full lips in silent acknowledgement of his master’s complaint and looked past him into the library with a gaze which was certainly insolent, since it dwelt gogglingly on the froth of flowers that dripped from the vases set nearly rim to rim along the bookshelves and on the tables, but which meanly protected itself from rebuke by its blankness. Well, if he felt like that he shouldn’t be his servant. There was plenty of other work in the world for a big hulk of a man.

When he left the room she drew off her gloves, looking round her. Certainly they seemed to be alone. There was no other guest. She turned to Francis Pitt and found that he had taken up one of the cocktail glasses and was holding it out to her. His eyes were running over her with less disguise of their interest in her beauty than usual; and there was a certain grossness in that interest, which he was making no effort to hide, but was rather parading, that was not what one liked. But if it was part of his troubled state, one took it from him, of course.

‘Drink, Sunflower!’ he said.

She told him gently, ‘I don’t, you know,’ but took the glass because his trembling fingers had so nearly dropped it. He gave a heavy, disgusted look at his hand and did not turn back to the tray. She perceived that he wanted a drink very badly, but would not take the other cocktail in case he could not manage to hold it. So she lifted her glass towards his mouth. But he drew back his head as an animal does, when it is offered food by a stranger. He was ashamed that a woman had observed his weakness and was helping him. To get round that she smiled in a silly sort of way, as if she were doing it out of flirtatious-ness. Then his brows looked lighter, he flung back his head and laughed into her eyes, lowered his lips to the glass, looking wisely and lewdly over the brim at her. She smiled back, saying serenely to herself, ‘This is not where I want to be with him, but I can withdraw from this minute when I have given him his drink, I have the strength to climb out of it.’ It struck her that this was the sort of thing that people who were lovers did quite a lot, particularly at the beginning of their time together. She regarded it with a sense of achievement, yet coldly, almost contemptuously, as an ambitious boy who meant to be a millionaire might think of the first weekly wage he earned as an office boy. She felt a pang of compunction at her own inexorable intentions towards him.

He raised his head and looked at her with his huge lips pursed with the act of drinking, with the thought of an enjoyment. ‘Ah, that’s the way to take a drink,’ he said jocularly, and with a steadier hand took the glass back from her.

There was a pause while he set it down. The fact that they were alone, that for the first time they were alone, seemed to make a loud humming noise in the silence. He did not do anything to help her, even when he turned round. He did not say anything, and she could not make out what he was feeling, for his face and body were twitching with movements that were nothing except records of excitement.

Of course it might be an accident that they were alone. He might not have wished for it at all. She bit her knuckles at that thought and asked, ‘Did—did Etta have to go out?’

He must have happened to think of something funny at that moment, for he had to suppress a gust of laughter before he answered gravely, ‘I sent poor Etta out. I thought it would do her no harm to have a day’s shopping and lunch with a friend. It is hard on her having to go through this Hurrell business with me. And anyway I wanted …’ his voice died away with an air of embarrassment. He took the other cocktail, looking down as he drank. Again there fell a silence.

Just for the sake of doing something to break the strain, she pointed through the window at the sunlit gardens and murmured, in a voice that shook like her pulse, ‘It’s summer now, the spring’s gone, another spring’s gone …’

He was just in the middle of turning up his glass for the last drop with a gesture that in its mechanical avidity made her think uneasily of how she had seen Sir John Murphy do the same thing in too nearly the same way, but he brought it down abruptly and stood staring at her, his mouth a little open. She realised that she had uttered those words which were of no importance, which she had chosen at random, with an absurd tragical emphasis. But she could not dispel the impression with laughter, for whatever he thought her words had meant had reminded him of something sad and something important to him, and he was saying with a shame-faced earnestness which she could not possibly interrupt, ‘Sunflower … Sunflower …’