Sunflower (14 page)

Meeting her eyes he looked away from her, said ‘Mm’ into his silver feelers, and admitted, ‘Well, perhaps you’ve never said it in so many words. Still the feeling—’ again he waved his long hands, ‘is about. Perhaps,’ he suggested in a stronger tone, ‘you said it without meaning to, as you did tonight.’

The shame of what she had done came over her again. ‘Oh, I am stupid,’ she said. ‘I do say silly things.’ She began to cry.

‘Oh God, now you’re crying!’ exclaimed Essington, as if in surprise and despair. ‘Haven’t you any consideration? Now, Sunflower, dear, try and hold yourself up. I’m always holding you up, and I … I can’t go on with it. I’m tired. And I’m old. Some people might think it was time I had a little peace. Now do pull yourself together …’

But she had already stopped crying. She was looking at him with a deep furrow between her brows. He wailed, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t look so silly,’ but she continued to gaze at him thoughtfully. ‘I don’t understand what you feel about me,’ she said. ‘You say you love me. But you don’t. If you loved me you’d want always to be kind to me and look after me. When I was silly and stupid you’d do something to stop me from going on. You wouldn’t do what you did tonight, and stand by while I blundered into it, and then push me further in. And it’s all like that. I believe you hate me. If things are bad with me you always make me worse. You know perfectly well I loathe being an actress and that I have to be one and there’s no getting out of it now, and all the time you go telling me how bad I am as if I didn’t know it. I’ve never told you of trouble I’ve had at rehearsals without your looking pained and saying I must have made a fool of myself. I’ve never had bad notices after a first night without you coming and sitting on my bed and picking out the worst ones in a thoughtful kind of way and saying what a pity it all was. Not that that’s what I mind, for most of it is true, though any fool feels nowadays that when he hasn’t got anything else to be funny about there’s always my acting. What I mind is that you sort of say to me all the time, “Yes, you are a bad actress, and maybe if you keep on like this maybe I’ll get rid of you.” It is as if when you come here tired out I was to taunt you for having been bested by that nasty little Bryce Atkin at Versailles and say that maybe I wouldn’t have you here any more because of it. Which I wouldn’t ever do. Now if you loved me you’d say that however I failed on the stage you’d always love me. But you don’t because you hate me. It’s meat and drink to you to see me miserable. About this marriage business, you’ve set me thinking. You know I haven’t ever talked about it like you said I did, but now I’m wondering. You say you live like this with me because you don’t believe in marriage, but you do. You really think it’s good of another woman to come and see you because I’m living with you without being married. If you think that then it’s wrong of you to live with me. But I’m not at all sure if you don’t live with me like this just because it puts me all the time into positions I hate. Staying with me at hotels where people look at me. Like Madeira. While you were in politics you couldn’t afford to do that, you just made me cry here, but the minute you were free you rushed at this public thing. And yet it isn’t as if I bored you and you wanted to get rid of me. You never leave me alone. I haven’t had six weeks on end away from you in twelve years. You just like being with me to hurt me. And yet … and yet … it’s me you like making love to. Oh,’ she gasped, shaking her head in horror. ‘That—that’s what’s so awful. It’s dreadful. It isn’t natural.’

She stared at him earnestly until, beneath his silver feelers, his lips pursed, and she put out a defensive hand. ‘Ah,’ she interrupted, ‘You’ve thought of something clever that’ll make me feel like cat’s meat. Well, what’s the good of that? I am cat’s meat, I suppose. But I’m not going to listen to this one. I know it all.’

As she laid her hand on the door-knob she looked over her shoulder, fearful at her own rebellion. He was wearing the utterly amazed and shocked expression that a bowler in a county match might wear if a batsman suddenly walked off the pitch in the middle of play. ‘Ah, it’s a game to him,’ she thought. ‘But, oh, he is looking like a cat. A great, fine handsome cat. It was when he looked like that we used to make up that fairy story about him being King of the Cats and me the Blue Persian Princess. That was a jolly story. Such funny things he thought of …’ But something in her that was feeling old and desperate cried out, ‘You can’t give up what’s left of your life for a fairy story.’ She slammed the door between them.

She ran upstairs, and went into her bedroom, locked the door, sat down in front of her dressing-table, shook her head at the disordered image in the mirror, and said, ‘He’s mad, he’s mad.’ Well, it was all over now. The funny thing was that she felt lonely. She would have liked to go and ring someone up and tell them all about it, but there was nobody she knew well enough except Maxine, and most likely she and her husband would be in bed by this time; and she always felt that George was a bit jealous of Maxine being so fond of her. Of course, if Marty Lomax had been alive, she would have gone straight to the telephone and said, ‘Mayfair 287169,’ and then, ‘Is that you, Marty? Well, it’s happened like you wanted it to. I’m free,’ and he would have answered something slow, something that would have caused her to feel unruffled and full of consequence, and made arrangements to come and see her at some hour on the next day, after which she would never have needed to bother about anything. Marty had been a dear. Alice Hester’s ploughman must have been just like him. She put her hand into the back of the drawer under her mirror and took out the little box in which she kept her most private things: the wreath of violets she had worn in ‘Farandole’, which for some years afterwards she had believed had brought her luck; a photograph of her brother Maurice as a baby; a photograph of herself and Maxine at the first theatrical garden party at which they had been asked to take a stall; and Marty’s letter, the only one he had ever written to her.

Hotel Splendide,
Cannes.

Darling Sunflower,

     I wish you were here.

Measles has broken out in the hotel. I am awfully sorry for the girl who got them first. I danced with her the day before she got ill.

There is all the usual crowd here. I went up to the Carlton yesterday and saw Fitz playing. He asked after you. He is a good sort.

How old is Irene Temple? I have a bet on it.

I wish you were here. Do remember that any time you cut off I am ready for you. If you wired I would come right back. Or if you think there would be a fuss in London we could meet and get married in Paris. There is a way of doing it that is as simple as it is in London. Metcalfe and Doris did it. I wish you would.

The ponies are all right. I think I shall sell Trefoil to Garside after all. I don’t really like her. Never did. So Garside might as well have her.

Roger Westcott is coming tomorrow. His brother is here, and his sister, who married Brixham. I like them all.

I wish you were here.

Much love,

Yours ever,

   Marty.

Well, Marty was dead. She kissed the letter, put it back in the little box and shut the drawer. There was nobody now who would care whether she left Essington or not. Since he had come out of politics he had made her live such a secluded life that she knew hardly anybody except the people in the theatre. Or it might be that she was getting old and fat, and people were not bothering about her as much as they used to do. After all there were lots of women under thirty.

She looked hard at her reflection in the mirror. Her thoughts rambled on. ‘How big I am. I would make two of Perdita Godly. Perhaps it’s because I’m so big that I do clumsy things like that tonight. Oh, how silly I am. As if being big in your body could make you clumsy in your mind.’ But for all that she felt at the back of her mind a sense that she was unhappy because of something to do with her body; something that, if it was not grossness, had a like contrast with the standards of the world, something that at any rate was in the nature of excess. Puzzled, she continued to gaze at herself. The two lights on each side of the mirror made her bare arms gleam, and she found herself saying aloud, in accents unaccountably tinged with bitterness, ‘I could have scrubbed floors pretty well.’ Surely she could not really be regretting that life had not sent her an opportunity of scrubbing floors. It was dreadful to be so stupid that you did not know even what you were thinking. The word ‘bankruptcy’ which came into her head whenever she thought of her relationship with Essington came once again, and she rose and went quickly into her bathroom and turned on her bath. She stripped off her clothes and sat on the edge of the bath, brushing her hair, for she did not want to ring for Luttrell. After all, there were still all sorts of things that people could not spoil by making scenes. She had made this a lovely bathroom; she looked round at its walls that were marbled blue and green like a breaking wave, at the empire dressing-table with the gold legs fine as a high-bred animal, the mirror borne by eagles who seemed to be taking an ecstatic respite from lectern work (but that was Essington’s joke); at the array on the broad shelves of bubble-tinted Venetian glass jars and bowls holding the lotions and powders and salts which she hardly ever used, but kept as an assurance to some unformulated power that she was humble, that she knew time was passing. Whatever happened, this was pretty. And through the open door she could look back at her bedroom, at the curtains of rich stuff drawn in solemn folds, and the waiting bed, with the dim lamp beside it. That would always be a good place to sleep. Indeed, she was clever about choosing things. There was perfection everywhere, in the gold hairbrush in her hand, in the Molyneux dress which lay across the chair, in the chemise and knickers beside it, which were of very thick white crpe-de-chine bound with apple-green, almost as good as any she had got. She looked at them benignly until she was surprised to find herself throwing the brush at them and crying out, ‘Well, what’s the good of them! I can’t eat ’em, can I?’ Suddenly the room seemed flimsy as a Chinese lantern. She stood up, waiting for the feeling of solidity to come back to her. The fact was she was so tired she was light-headed. That was it.

She lay in the bath for a little while, thinking of Alice Hester, and sometimes whimpering Essington’s name. Then the wedge of vibrant, light-blue summer night that thrust downwards at the top of the two green taffeta window curtains began to torment her. She felt that she ought to go out into the night and do something that would bring her peace. There must be something somewhere that would bring her peace; and she must find it all at once because time was going so fast. This was all nonsense, of course, but she was quite light-headed. Still it made her so restless that she had to get out and dry herself. She was glad she had such nice fleecy bath towels. She did love good linen. If Marty and she had married they would have taken one of those houses that are advertised at the beginning of
Country Life,
and she would have had to buy heaps and heaps of linen for it. She would have liked that. Marty would have left it all to her, he wasn’t fussy about that sort of thing. Now, Francis Pitt wouldn’t be a bit like that. He’d be most particular, and he’d want everything to be marked with a rather heavy monogram, probably black on white.

She suddenly dropped her towel and stared at the picture of her nakedness held by the eagles. It occurred to her for the first time that now she had quarrelled with Essington she would not be going with him to see Francis Pitt on Friday. With tears in her eyes, with water in her mouth, she remembered the pungent promise of satisfaction there had been about him, which had reminded her before of the smell of food when one was hungry. It was as if a curtain had dropped between her and a conjuror when he was in the very middle of his tricks. She could see him standing there behind the dropped curtain, his vast mouth open on some unfinished turn of his patter, one curious little paw-hand arrested in the middle of a charlatanish gesture, prevented from making for her again that materialisation of spring more actual than the real spring, from concentrating within the trick top-hat he held in his other hand a tiny vision of those lakeside woods crackling with the green fire which crackled too within her body when she thought of it. It could not be borne that this should be the last time she ever saw him. But though he had given her assurances all through the evening that he felt the extremes of kindliness, admiration, and protectiveness for her, he had given her none that he wished to see her again. Though he had spoken of their coming visit to his house with pleasure, it was obvious that it was Essington who was the important guest in his view, though he might be the less liked. He would never think of asking her by herself. Well, she must ring up Etta, and get near him that way. But that would not do, for he would see through it. And as they were sure to have thought her coarse and awful because of the way she had talked at dinner she must be careful not to frighten them. There was nothing to do but let the matter rest. Very probably she would never see him again. She went back to her bedroom and pulled out the little drawer under the mirror again, and sat for a long time looking down with hurt eyes at the box which held Marty’s letter, as if this disappointment were a violation of some promise written in that large, round hand.

There was no use worrying about people. That side of life always seemed to go wrong. The thing was to think of one’s work. She must try to be more like Brenda Burton, who, when she talked of her life, talked not of her husband and children but of the hundred and fifty Shakespearean parts she had played, investing the achievement with a sort of athletic pride, so that one imagined her being covered with grease by her trainers before she started, and followed by a tug throughout, and fed with Oxo through a tube. It was high time she really began to work hard at acting. Which reminded her, there was a book on the table by her bed she had got out of the London Library specially because it was about acting and it was by that man A. B. Walkley whose notice of her Rosalind had made Essington laugh so much; and she hadn’t looked at it yet. She climbed in between the sheets and lay for a minute with closed eyes; and saw the wheeling faces of Alice Hester, of the hideous and beloved girl, of Essington, of Harrowby, of Marty Lomax, of Francis Pitt, whom she would not see again. They would not make a pattern, yet she felt they should. She sat bolt upright, and took up the book. The tip of her tongue began to protrude, as it always did when she read very earnestly.