Pepita by Vita Sackville-West

Author:Vita Sackville-West
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473545045
Publisher: Random House

II

Pepita’s existence, in fact, seemed settled, permanent, and contented, if we except the two sorrows of the social and the religious ostracism, and as we shall presently see she took steps to minimise both these drawbacks as far as she was able. It seemed scarcely likely that Lionel Sackville-West would break now with a woman with whom he had had such intimate and continuous relations for eighteen years, and by whom he had already had six children, five of whom were living. There were bound to be complications, of course, inevitable in so anomalous a situation,—what would happen, for instance, when the children grew up, or when the Secretary rose in the service, becoming a Minister and even an Ambassador?—but on the whole it looked as though they would always be able to find some way of life, not wholly satisfactory perhaps, but tolerable. Money was no anxiety to them, and as for age they were both in the prime of life, he forty-three, she just forty. True, she was getting a little stout, but that was natural to her Spanish race, and in a photograph taken of her at about this time there is a certain mellow serenity about the beautiful brow which speaks of a heart at peace and a life roundly fulfilled. Her hair was as black as it had been in her youth. She often sang as she went about the house, and in the afternoons she would drive out to the sand-dunes with the children and laugh when they filled their drawers with the silvery sand, standing up to let it trickle out at their ankles, for of course according to the fashion of the second Empire they wore the frilly drawers which reached far below their short little skirts.

It is rather alarming to learn that on all these expeditions she carried a fat purse full of gold and notes. The proletarian in Pepita distrusted all banks and all investments, preferring to keep her money in ready cash. This little idiosyncrasy specially amuses me, for my mother inherited it and to the end of her life infinitely preferred to pay her bills by bank-note rather than by cheque. And, like Pepita, she always carried a bulging purse in a pocket let into her petticoat. So long as she could feel it knocking against her leg as she walked, she told me, she knew it was safe.

Pepita spared Max to go to a day school, but the little girls and the baby Henri were always with her, especially my mother, who even slept in her bed.

Nor did she lack for grown-up companionship. Defrauded of the society of those from whom the self-styled Countess West might have expected a welcome, she fell back upon such society as she could provide for herself. We have already seen that she took M. Desombres the builder driving in her carriage, showed him her collection of photographs, and invited him to dinner; but the way in which she acquired the friendship of Henri de Béon was far odder and completely characteristic.

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