Sunflower (43 page)

She had been quite right. It was one of the sleek-headed young secretaries saying, ‘Mr Francis Pitt would like to speak to Miss Fassendyll.’ Her voice went husky as she answered, ‘It’s me, speaking.’

She had to sit down while she waited, her heart was beating so. She smiled to see how the whole of her life was subordinated to her love. Henceforward she would think of the telephone in a specialised sense, just as something that Francis Pitt rang her up on.

‘At last,’ he spoke gruffly, softly. ‘Is that you, Sunflower?’

She knew just how it was with him. He too was shaking so that speech was difficult. She murmured, ‘Good morning, dear.’

There was a long silence. Then he said, ‘About that little party of ours tonight …’

She realised there was someone sitting at his elbow. She laughed shyly at the way he had had to put it.

‘Do you mind coming late? I find I cannot get away as early as I thought.’

Caressingly she asked, ‘How late, my dear? Half past eight?’

‘Yes. No, later than that. A quarter to nine.’

She had to smile at him. He was being so discreet, yet the sound of his voice which was rolling and echoing with emotion must have given away his secret to the stranger sitting by him. ‘Very well, I’ll come at a quarter to nine. Goodbye. And, Francis, I love you.’

She hung up the receiver and went to the window. They were all still there, the sun had cleared the trees on its way up to noon, the unshadowed snapdragons glowed like jewels. Parkyns’s skirts gleamed like an angel’s robes. She would have liked to go out and see what they were doing with the hedgehog, but she was afraid she looked too happy. To make sure she went over to the mirror, and had to cry out, ‘Oh, it isn’t decent!’ There was the letter to Lily still lying on the writing desk, but she thought it would be better to leave it till tomorrow. Then she could tell her everything. But she felt too restless to sit down and do nothing. She would go upstairs and choose her dress for tonight.

They had drawn down the blinds in her bedroom and uncovered the two jars of potpourri, so it was nice in there. She went to the big cupboard where her evening dresses were kept, and looked at them hanging in their black silk bags, feeling very fortunate because there were such a lot of them and they were all so beautiful. She sat down on the floor of the cupboard and with her back to the dresses and her chin cupped in her hands, thought them over one by one. ‘Nothing too fancy,’ she told herself solemnly. And she must not wear the green and gold, though she looked better in that than anything, because it made her look very tall, and he was much shorter than her anyway. The pale green chiffon from Chanel, the Molyneux gold lace, the flesh-coloured satin from Nicole Groult. They would be all right. She turned to find them, to try them on to make a choice. But her hand dropped from the silk it grasped, her lip began to tremble. It had occurred to her that these and all her other dresses had the grave fault that she had worn them before.

This thing had not come to her quite perfectly. That it had come at all was a blessed miracle. But all the same it had not come quite perfectly. It had been bad last night when he had repeated, ‘I do not mind at all, Sunflower, I swear I do not mind,’ and her hands, travelling up to hold his face so that she could kiss it gratefully, stiffened and slid down to his sides, because they found that even as he was saying he was not jealous, the sweat of jealousy was drenching his brow. Of course he had been sweet when she had whispered, ‘I knew that you would mind, I knew you could not help it,’ and had taken her to him; and surely she had put it all right when at last he had stuttered, ‘But it is true I do not mind, it is only that sometimes I thought I would go mad when you and he went home together and I was left here …’ For then she had wound her arms tightly round his neck and pressed her mouth close to his ear, because it was an awful thing to talk about, and told him he need not feel bad about that, since lately Essington had been very good to her in that way. Even on those weekends he had not seemed to want anything of her except to lie in her arms. Sometimes she had thought this was not just because she was very tired but because he was very kind, for he had a way just now of lying in bed as still as if he were asleep but with his eyes staring in front of him and his mouth a little open, as he used to when he was in the Cabinet and there was something difficult to be thought out. She had to tell this to Francis Pitt, so that he would realise what an exceptionally fine nature Essington had, and that was dreadful because he kept on not being able to hear and making her repeat it. At last he said, ‘I will not mind at all when nobody has been more to you than I have …’ And that would be tonight. She would not have to worry about this at all after tonight. But all the same, this thing had not come to her quite perfectly.

She rose and shut the cupboard door on all the dresses and stood for a time in the dusk, pressing her forehead against the cool wood. She would go down into the garden and see what they were doing for the hedgehog. And after lunch she would go out and buy a new white dress.

It would not have surprised her if there had been angels hovering over Hanover Square, one at each corner, blowing trumpets, as they do on old maps, that show coronations and royal weddings winding their pomp round cities. Really, there was something strangely appropriate to her happiness about the place. It was square, you know, square. Her happiness was foursquare. Built foursquare to the elements. And the sparrows fluttering dust through their feathers as ill-bred little boys like to blow imaginary bubbles through protruded lips made one remember that not a sparrow falls. And the taxi-drivers lounging against the railings, not of the same species as the sparrows but of the same class, told as plainly that the harsher laws of life were only illusions and did not really operate. They lived by getting fares, you would think it would be terrible for them unless they got fares, and yet there they were without any fares and yet they didn’t look as if anything so terrible was happening, showing that their condition was not so hard-pressed as one had thought it, that possibly nothing was ever hard-pressed, if one only knew. Everything was all right, and the frame of everything matched it, for the afternoon was very hot and clear. The powers had pushed back awning after awning in the upper air, and had reached the topmost one of all which is faded to the palest blue because it is so near the sun. Wonderful strong stuff it must be, never for all the wear it has had to split and let through the dazzling white nothingness. Because of these things she smiled blindly at the taxi-driver as if he were Harrowby, left him skimmingly, and was inside Maribonne’s saying, as if it were a prayer, ‘Surely he will let me buy a model straight off the mannequin, he has before, he is so keen that I should stop going to Paris and get my things from him,’ before the commissionaire touched her on the arm and asked her if she wanted the taxi to wait.

Blushing and smiling, as if this were a grave mistake but it would all work out for the best, she fled upwards to the driver, ‘I thought it was my own car.’

Anyone would, wouldn’t they, miss!’ That fetched him out of his seat. He had the door open, he was patting the upholstery as if it were the hide of a pet he had raised by hand. It appeared that this was the first day he had had it out, that this was the first day in his whole life he had worked as his own master.

More than a fortunate coincidence, an omen.

‘Fresh flowers in the ‘older,’ he recited, prodding them.

‘I noticed that! I noticed that!’ she assured him. She wished someone would come along the pavement now, to sell her flowers, to be overpaid. Was there nothing she could do for this nice man? People wanted her to write testimonials to face-creams and powders, couldn’t she write a testimonial to a taxi-cab? But it would be difficult to find anything to say. About powders one said, ‘I find nothing gives the skin such a velvety surface,’ but one couldn’t do any good by saying a taxi ran in a velvety way, for that would give credit to the kind it was, not to that particular one. And this poor man wouldn’t be able to afford to put an advertisement in the papers, anyway. Really there wasn’t anything one could do for him. But she need not worry, because he would be sure to do well since they had met on this day. Beaming with confidence in both their futures, she disengaged herself from him, because there were stirring in her mind imperative commands about the dress she must buy for that night. It must be of white satin, because that is the one white stuff which does not seem poor when one thinks of real things. White velvet is like snow lying under a sober sky, but not so good, and all the white crêpes are like sunlit snow crisped by winds of different forces, but none of them so good, and the thinner weaves are not so white and fine as the filaments of frost. But white satin is a human idea, a human triumph. There is nothing like it in nature save the contented face of the cream in its broad bowl on the dairy shelf, and that is not so beautiful, for it looks not quite right, as it tastes not quite right, because of the greasiness which reminds you that the cow is a bit of a silly and does not answer as a horse does when you speak to it over the gate. Thick white satin is like light made solid for a woman’s wearing when she wants to think of nothing but pure light, when colours are all wrong because they are stains which refer to passing moods, and there is nothing now on hand but a feeling that is going on for the rest of one’s life. It should be simply made, for light takes simple forms, the path of the moon on the water is quite straight, the lightning through the cloud traces a pattern simpler than a branch. It was lovely that there were artists who attended to such things, who would make her a dress for tonight.

It held her body closely, brightly, borrowing from the greenness of her dressing-room, and its image in the triple mirror gave green reflections such as one sees in blocks of ice, with which it snarled in the hollow between her breasts, streaked the long tapering of her waist beneath them. Her body was nice enough, that was all right, but her face looked so queer. She had gone white, with the dead whiteness of a white flower in shadow, and her lips, which until now she had hardly ever needed to rouge off the stage, were very pale pink, like pink roses ruined by the rain. And there was something new about her expression.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1986 by the Estate of Rebecca West

cover design by Karen Horton

ISBN: 978-1-4532-0674-4

This edition published in 2010 by Open Road Integrated Media
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New York, NY 10014
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