Sunflower (35 page)

He burst out laughing. Then checked himself, and said in his usual, gruff, genial voice, ‘Tell her I’ll be with her in a minute.’ When the footman left the room he got up and walked with a deliberate conscious strut to the window, and remained staring out for a little while. Then he turned round and went to the mantelpiece, and picked up her bag and held it out to her, saying, ‘Pretty bag. Dear Sunflower, who has everything pretty about her.’ He looked her clearly in the eyes. It was not possible that there had ever been the scene between them which had just happened.

She drew on her gloves.

‘This is a pity,’ he said lightly. ‘I had forgotten that I had told poor Georgy to come here and tell me her troubles.’

‘Has she troubles?’ she said, as lightly. ‘One thinks of her as such a lucky person.’

‘Ah, clever women get into the same jams as stupid ones,’ he said with cool amusement. He strolled about the room with his hands in his pockets, his spirits quite restored. Suddenly his head slewed round, he looked over his shoulder at the chair where he had lately been sitting. Her eyes followed his. That scene had happened. It was true that he had sat crying out for help against some terror, that she had lain at his feet, weeping and beating the floor with her fists, because he would not let her help him. There seemed to be an invisible yet material record of it remaining in the room. It was as if the air had not been able to rush into the space that had been filled by their bodies during that scene, because it was stuffed out with the violent emotions they had generated. Abashed, Sunflower and Francis Pitt turned away from each other.

Thickly he said, ‘Sunflower, who sometimes blurts out the truth so that it makes one tell the truth oneself.’

She murmured, ‘I wouldn’t ever tell.’

‘Well, would it be easy to describe?’ he asked sardonically, in mockery of himself and all he had done, spreading his hands across his chest. Then he seemed to see that she meant something less profound than he at first had thought, and said hastily, ‘Oh … about Jack Murphy. I know you will not give me away.’ He repeated this, the second time making it seem as if he were paying himself and not her a compliment. ‘I know you will not give me away.’ Strutting, he took another turn about the room. She heard him mutter between his teeth, ‘Georgy …’

He swung round on her. ‘The play! Tell me about the play!’

‘The play?’

‘Yes. How long is it going to run, do you think?’

‘Oh, a year, it might. Mr Trentham is so sure about it that he wants to put Joyce Marbury into my part and send me to America with it in the autumn. You see, he’s never had a success there, and he thinks I might make it go there.’

‘Would you go to America, Sunflower?’

‘No!’ Then to explain away her fervour, to make sure that he would not guess she was staying in England because she wanted to be with him, she added, ‘Somehow I’ve never wanted to go to America.’

‘Now, how would a change of cast like that be managed? I mean, what would make an English manager fall in with Trentham’s desire to have an American success?’

‘Well, it’s like this.’ She explained the business arrangements involved, and he followed that up with other questions, which she found it delightful to answer. He would see that she was not really so stupid, that there were some things she understood. And it was wonderful to see that he was not embarrassed by what had happened, he would ask her back again, and next time she would be more quiet and cunning, and would find out what was worrying him, and then everything would go right. She stopped in the middle of a sentence and compressed her lips obstinately. Then, trying to grope for the rest of the sentence and reckoning where the argument had brought them, she realised that they must have been talking for about ten minutes and exclaimed, ‘I must go, you’re keeping Miss Allardyce waiting!’

‘Oh Georgy will wait, Georgy will wait,’ he said, smiling. ‘But tell me, is this arrangement common?’

It was lovely to think that he should be making excuses to keep her there. She answered that and some other questions, and moved to the door.

‘Oh, don’t go!’ he begged.

Primly she murmured, ‘I’ve got to do all those things I told you about.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘The Times Book Club,’ and laughed.

With an entrancing slowness, he paced beside her across the hall. Quite certainly he loved being with her.

‘Georgy,’ he said with a chuckle, and jerked his head towards the open door of the library. They could see her standing at the other end of the room, looking out of the window with her back to them. The contrast between her fine head, so well held, and her stocky body and thick legs was so great that she reminded one of a bust on a tall cylindrical pedestal.

‘I like her,’ said Sunflower, ‘and that’s a lovely dress. It’s one of Vionnet’s best this year. Did you say she has only just started dressing up?’

‘Yes, just recently.’

‘Ah, that’s why she’s standing up. I used to do that when I first had good clothes.’

‘What do you mean? Why is she standing up?’

‘To keep the pleats in.’

He guffawed. ‘To keep the pleats in! Women are funny things.’ They moved on towards the front door. On the top step he checked her by laying his hand on her arm. ‘Well, God bless you, Sunflower, for bearing with me this afternoon. I suppose you think I’m a crazy fellow.’

‘No, I don’t,’ she said stoutly.

‘Then come back and bear with me some more. I do not know what I would do without you.’

‘It’s lovely of you to say that.’ Harrowby had driven the car up to the steps and was now looking up at them. She exclaimed, ‘Oh, doesn’t Harrowby look ill?’

‘He certainly does. I’ve never seen a man’s face so white. What’s the matter with him?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t find out. He’s been like this for the last two weeks. It’s terrible.’

‘Ah, he’s in love with you and jealous of me.’

She smiled at his joke and said, ‘Now you must go back to Miss Allardyce.’

He kept hold of her arm as they walked down the steps, almost fondling it. After he had put her in the car, he called through the window, ‘I will telephone you tonight … When you get in from the theatre, just to say goodnight.’

That was wonderful. He had never done that before. ‘Very well.’

‘And now,’ he said, ‘I must get back to Georgy, poor Georgy. Goodbye dear.’

She had done him a world of good. He ran up the steps like a schoolboy.

She felt ever so embarrassed when the dresser said, ‘Why, here’s Miss Tempest! She’s quite a stranger here nowadays!’ She had quite forgotten that dear old Maxi had written to say that she hadn’t seen the show yet because she’d had to take the baby down to Herne Bay to convalesce after whooping cough and had come back for a couple of days and was going to be in front with George that very evening. It was lovely to see her again, fatter than she used to be but still well, and hear her burst out not listening to one word of what you were asking about baby, though usually you weren’t allowed to talk about anything else, ‘Well, Sunflower, who’s the clever little actress now? Oh, I’m so pleased, I can’t tell you how pleased I am!’ and break into those funny laughs that used to make the other girls say, ‘Hello, old Maxi’s laid another egg!’ Only it was funny how men did get in the way of a girl’s friends. Sunflower couldn’t help remembering how Essington had previously described the greeting of any two actresses as a violent outburst of affection unaccompanied by cerebration, not unanalogous to a sneeze, and she felt miserable about remembering it, because though Maxi was noisy she really meant everything she said, and you ought to quarrel with a person who says things like that about your friends, but you can’t do that if the person is somebody that you have to be loyaller to than your friends. Also she had to dodge when Maxi hugged her and not hug back for fear of spoiling her make-up and her hair over which she had worked so carefully that several times she’d made a complete mess of it all and had to start from the beginning all over again. For if Francis Pitt had been to see her several times without telling her, he might be there that night. But she did love old Maxi, she was so warm and understanding.

‘Sunflower, I can’t tell you how wonderful you are! Of course you look too gorgeous. You’re the one woman in the world who looks well with long hair. But it’s your acting, darling, it’s your acting!’

‘Oh, Maxi, do you really think I pull it off? There’s one thing I wish you’d tell me about. I’m never sure I got that scene with the wineglass quite right. Doesn’t it look all wrong from the front?’

‘My dear, you’re marvellous, there and everywhere else, marvellous. Well, you know what George is. Born in the theatre, my dear, and you can’t get a rise out of him in the ordinary way. I give you my word, he’s been sitting all the evening saying, “Well, where’s Brenda Burton now?” Though speaking for myself, I always knew where that Shakespearean Art gets off. My dear, you’re right there, up at the top.’

‘Oh, Maxi, you can’t think how funny it is to have your acting spoken freely about in front of your face instead of having it glossed over. The times I’ve nearly burst out crying because people kept on saying, “Charming, charming”, in that kind way. But of course it’s rather difficult now. I never know what to say. You can’t contradict people when they say you’re acting well, and yet you can’t agree with them, it seems so conceited.’

‘Well, my dear, that’s a very good line you had just now.’

‘Which?’

‘The one you just said to me. “I’m never sure if I get that scene with the wineglass quite right.” You keep on saying that.’

‘But I might get the scene right any time. I feel it’s something quite small that’s wrong. You could probably tell me what it was.’

‘Yes, dear, but in any case go on saying that, it sounds well. People’ll say you’re modest, and that you’re beginning to work so hard. Don’t you dare not say it. You couldn’t have a better line.’

‘Well, I don’t want to be a fraud.’

‘That isn’t being a fraud. You asked me that question when you came into the room, didn’t you? Well, you weren’t being a fraud, then, were you? Then there isn’t any harm in asking it again, is there? You silly girl. You always did waste things … And you’re a silly girl too about that scene with the wineglass. It does go wrong, but it isn’t your fault.’

‘But it is my fault. It must be, because it’s wrong when I play it with Cosmo Davis and it’s wrong now this other boy’s playing it. It isn’t likely that they’d both go wrong in the same place, is it?’

‘But that’s just what happens. The scene does break, you’re quite right, but it isn’t your fault. Don’t you see what happens? You work the scene up and up till you pass him the wineglass in that lovely soft, floppy sort of way, as if you were just ready to keel over, and he ought to grab it in a he-man sort of way, as if he were a bull at a gate. Well, he can’t do that, being a nancy-boy, as anyone can see, and neither could Cosmo, who’s a lamb, but we all know what he is.’

‘Well, it isn’t Cosmo’s fault, poor dear. They all seem to be that way nowadays.’

‘My dear, don’t I know it. For years before I left the stage I never played a love-scene that wasn’t just a romp with the girls. Well, you can’t make bricks without straw so the scene drops. But you’re all right. Oh, my dear, you’re going to be a fine actress. And the funny thing is I don’t mind. I’m just glad. I’ve minded all sorts of things about you before. I used to mind dreadfully because when we went out together, everybody looked at you first. Of course you never guessed that, because if it had been the other way round you wouldn’t have minded. You’re much nicer than I am, Sunflower.’

‘Oh, don’t be so silly. There isn’t anybody who isn’t nicer than me, and especially you, Maxi. And just to show it, I did mind dreadfully the way that however much people looked at me, they were always readier to laugh and joke with you. When a man danced with me, he used to just stand about and stare at me afterwards, as if I were something in a museum, and the men were always jolly and friendly with you. Why, don’t you remember how nobody but the principals ever spoke to me in “Farandole” and you had the loveliest time larking about with everybody.’

‘Well, you were so beautiful that they felt as if you were set apart and only the most important people had the right to speak to you.’

‘It’s not much fun being set apart.’

‘Anyway I envied you that, and the way you could slip into anything and look lovely. With my bust I had always to be so careful. It’s haunted me for years that I once told you a dress didn’t suit you when it did. It was a lime-green silk with three flounces like how we used to wear them in a little shop in Brompton Road. It was before you had money, so that a cheap dress was something you ought to have laid hold of. I told you it didn’t suit you, because I just couldn’t bear the way it did. I’ve often worried about that.’

‘You silly.’

‘But the funny thing is that now you’ve come out as a great actress.’

‘Oh, go on, not a great actress, just a good actress.’

‘Well, my dear, there was a time when the one thing seemed just as unlikely as the other. And now you’ve got there, I’m just glad, I don’t feel any envy.’

‘Well, who would?’ Sunflower asked languidly. ‘Acting doesn’t really matter very much, does it, when you come to think of it!’

‘Well, no. I see what you mean. No, of course it doesn’t matter, not really, it doesn’t make you happy. But still, there’s a sort of working agreement that it does, and after all, we all draw our money from it, don’t we? Even George!’

‘How is old George?’

‘He’s fine and he sends his love and he’s been saying all that I’ve been saying. I left him down in front because I wanted to have a talk with you. How are you, old thing? Apart from all this, I mean? How’s old Essington?’

‘Very well.’

‘Still the gentleman who hangs his hat up in your hall?’

‘Yes. And always will be.’

‘Oh, go on. You’ll wake up some day and turn that silly old pope out of doors.’

‘Maxi, dear, I wish you wouldn’t. You don’t understand him.’

‘You bet I do. Better than you do, a lot. I hate the way he thinks he’s a good man and isn’t. Prides himself on not drinking and made just as much a pig of himself swilling down your youth as other men do when they swill down champagne. He’s never hidden what he thinks of me, so I don’t see why I should hide what I think of him. George saw you at the Embassy the other night.’