Well, that’s how my first meeting with Ellie went. I was in Market Chadwell the next day waiting in the Blue Dog and she came. We had tea together and we talked. We still didn’t say much about ourselves, not about our lives, I mean. We talked mostly about things we thought, and felt; and then Ellie glanced at her wristwatch and said she must be going because her train to London left at 5:30—
“I thought you had a car down here,” I said.
She looked slightly embarrassed then and she said no, no, that hadn’t been her car yesterday. She didn’t say whose it had been. That shadow of embarrassment came over us again. I raised a finger to the waitress and paid the bill, then I said straight out to Ellie:
“Am I—am I ever going to see you again?”
She didn’t look at me, she looked down at the table. She said:
“I shall be in London for another fortnight.”
I said:
“Where? How?”
We made a date to meet in Regent’s Park in three days’ time. It was a fine day. We had some food in the open-air restaurant and we walked in Queen Mary’s Gardens and we sat there in two deck chairs and we talked. From that time on, we began to talk about ourselves. I’d had some good schooling, I told her, but otherwise I didn’t amount to much. I told her about the jobs I’d had, some of them at any rate, and how I’d never stuck to things and how I’d been restless and wandered about trying this and that. Funnily enough, she was entranced to hear all this.
“So different,” she said, “so wonderfully different.”
“Different from what?”
“From me.”
“You’re a rich girl?” I said teasingly—“A poor little rich girl.”
“Yes,” she said, “I’m a poor little rich girl.”
She talked then in a fragmentary way about her background of riches, of stifling comfort, of boredom, of not really choosing your own friends, of never doing what you wanted. Sometimes looking at people who seemed to be enjoying themselves, when she wasn’t. Her mother had died when she was a baby and her father had married again. And then, not many years after, he had died, she said. I gathered she didn’t care much for her stepmother. She’d lived mostly in America but also travelling abroad a fair amount.
It seemed fantastic to me listening to her that any girl in this age and time could live this sheltered, confined existence. True, she went to parties and entertainments, but it might have been fifty years ago it seemed to me from the way she talked. There didn’t seem to be any intimacy, any fun! Her life was as different from mine as chalk from cheese. In a way it was fascinating to hear about it but it sounded stultifying to me.
“You haven’t really got any friends of your own then?” I said, incredulously. “What about boyfriends?”
“They’re chosen for me,” she said rather bitterly. “They’re deadly dull.”
“It’s like being in prison,” I said.
“That’s what it seems like.”
“And really no friends of your own?”
“I have now. I’ve got Greta.”
“Who’s Greta?” I said.
“She came first as an au pair—no, not quite that, perhaps. But anyway I’d had a French girl who lived with us for a year, for French, and then Greta came from Germany, for German. Greta was different. Everything was different once Greta came.”
“You’re very fond of her?” I asked.
“She helps me,” said Ellie. “She’s on my side. She arranges so that I can do things and go places. She’ll tell lies for me. I couldn’t have got away to come down to Gipsy’s Acre if it hadn’t been for Greta. She’s keeping me company and looking after me in London while my stepmother’s in Paris. I write two or three letters and if I go off anywhere Greta posts them every three or four days so that they have a London postmark.”
“Why did you want to go down to Gipsy’s Acre though?” I asked. “What for?”
She didn’t answer at once.
“Greta and I arranged it,” she said. “She’s rather wonderful,” she went on. “She thinks of things, you know. She suggests ideas.”
“What’s this Greta like?” I asked.
“Oh, Greta’s beautiful,” she said. “Tall and blonde. She can do anything.”
“I don’t think I’d like her,” I said.
Ellie laughed.
“Oh yes you would. I’m sure you would. She’s very clever, too.”
“I don’t like clever girls,” I said. “And I don’t like tall blonde girls. I like small girls with hair like autumn leaves.”
“I believe you’re jealous of Greta,” said Ellie.
“Perhaps I am. You’re very fond of her, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am very fond of her. She’s made all the difference in my life.”
“And it was she who suggested you went down there. Why, I wonder? There’s not much to see or do in that part of the world. I find it rather mysterious.”
“It’s our secret,” said Ellie and looked embarrassed.
“Yours and Greta’s? Tell me.”
She shook her head. “I must have some secrets of my own,” she said.
“Does your Greta know you’re meeting me?”
“She knows I’m meeting someone. That’s all. She doesn’t ask questions. She knows I’m happy.”
After that there was a week when I didn’t see Ellie. Her stepmother had come back from Paris, also someone whom she called Uncle Frank, and she explained almost casually that she was having a birthday, and that they were giving a big party for her in London.
“I shan’t be able to get away,” she said. “Not for the next week. But after that—after that, it’ll be different.”
“Why will it be different after that?”
“I shall be able to do what I like then.”
“With Greta’s help as usual?” I said.
It used to make Ellie laugh the way I talked about Greta. She’d say, “You’re so silly to be jealous of her. One day you must meet her. You’ll like her.”
“I don’t like bossy girls,” I said obstinately.
“Why do you think she’s bossy?”
“By the way you talk about her. She’s always busy arranging something.”
“She’s very efficient,” said Ellie. “She arranges things very well. That’s why my stepmother relies on her so much.”
I asked what her Uncle Frank was like.
She said, “I don’t know him really so very well. He was my father’s sister’s husband, not a real relation. I think he’s always been rather a rolling stone and got into trouble once or twice. You know the way people talk about someone and sort of hint things.”
“Not socially acceptable?” I asked. “Bad lot?”
“Oh, nothing really bad I think, but he used to get into scrapes, I believe. Financial ones. And trustees and lawyers and people used to have to get him out of them. Pay up for things.”
“That’s it,” I said. “He’s the bad hat of the family. I expect I’d get on better with him than I would with the paragon Greta.”
“He can make himself very agreeable when he likes,” said Ellie. “He’s good company.”
“But you don’t really like him?” I asked sharply.
“I think I do…It’s just that sometimes, oh I can’t explain it. I just feel I don’t know what he’s thinking or planning.”
“One of our planners, is he?”
“I don’t know what he’s really like,” said Ellie again.
She didn’t ever suggest that I should meet any of her family. I wondered sometimes if I ought to say something about it myself. I didn’t know how she felt about the subject. I asked her straight out at last.
“Look here, Ellie,” I said, “do you think I ought to—meet your family or would you rather I didn’t?”
“I don’t want you to meet them,” she said at once.
“I know I’m not much—” I said.
“I don’t mean it that way, not a bit! I mean they’d make a fuss
. I can’t stand a fuss.”
“I sometimes feel,” I said, “that this is rather a hole and corner business. It puts me in a rather bad light, don’t you think?”
“I’m old enough to have my own friends,” said Ellie. “I’m nearly twenty-one. When I am twenty-one I can have my own friends and nobody can stop me. But now you see—well, as I say there’d be a terrible fuss and they’d cart me off somewhere so that I couldn’t meet you. There’d be—oh do, do let’s go on as we are now.”
“Suits me if it suits you,” I said. “I just didn’t want to be, well, too underhand about everything.”
“It’s not being underhand. It’s just having a friend one can talk to and say things to. It’s someone one can—” she smiled suddenly, “one can make-believe with. You don’t know how wonderful that is.”
Yes, there was a lot of that—make-believe! More and more our times together were to turn out that way. Sometimes it was me. More often it was Ellie who’d say, “Let’s suppose that we’ve bought Gipsy’s Acre and that we’re building a house there.”
I had told her a lot about Santonix and about the houses he’d built. I tried to describe to her the kind of houses they were and the way he thought about things. I don’t think I described it very well because I’m not good at describing things. Ellie no doubt had her own picture of the house—our house. We didn’t say “our house” but we knew that’s what we meant….
So for over a week I wasn’t to see Ellie. I had taken out what savings I had (there weren’t many), and I’d bought her a little green shamrock ring made of some Irish bog stone. I’d given it to her for a birthday present and she’d loved it and looked very happy.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
She didn’t wear much jewellery and when she did I had no doubt it was real diamonds and emeralds and things like that but she liked my Irish ring.
“It will be the birthday present I like best,” she said.
Then I got a hurried note from her. She was going abroad with her family to the South of France immediately after her birthday.
“But don’t worry,” she wrote, “we shall be back again in two or three weeks” time, on our way to America this time. But anyway we’ll meet again then. I’ve got something special I want to talk to you about.”
I felt restless and ill at ease not seeing Ellie and knowing she’d gone abroad to France. I had a bit of news about the Gipsy’s Acre property too. Apparently it had been sold by private treaty but there wasn’t much information about who’d bought it. Some firm of London solicitors apparently were named as the purchasers. I tried to get more information about it, but I couldn’t. The firm in question were very cagey. Naturally I didn’t approach the principals. I palled up to one of their clerks and so got a little vague information. It had been bought for a very rich client who was going to hold it as a good investment capable of appreciation when the land in that part of the country was becoming more developed.
It’s very hard to find out about things when you’re dealing with really exclusive firms. Everything is as much of a deadly secret as though they were M.I.5 or something! Everyone is always acting on behalf of someone else who can’t be named or spoken of! Takeover bids aren’t in it!
I got into a terrible state of restlessness. I stopped thinking about it all and I went and saw my mother.
I hadn’t been to see her for a good long time.
Six
My mother lived in the same street she had lived in for the last twenty years, a street of drab houses all highly respectable and devoid of any kind of beauty or interest. The front doorstep was nicely whitened and it looked just the same as usual. It was No. 46. I pressed the front doorbell. My mother opened the door and stood there looking at me. She looked just the same as usual, too. Tall and angular, grey hair parted in the middle, mouth like a rattrap, and eyes that were eternally suspicious. She looked hard as nails. But where I was concerned there was a core of softness somewhere in her. She never showed it, not if she could help it, but I’d found out that it was there. She’d never stopped for a moment wanting me to be different but her wishes were never going to come true. There was a perpetual state of stalemate between us.
“Oh,” she said, “so it’s you.”
“Yes,” I said, “it’s me.”
She drew back a little to let me pass and I came into the house and went on past the sitting room door and into the kitchen. She followed me and stood looking at me.
“It’s been quite a long time,” she said. “What have you been doing?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“This and that,” I said.
“Ah,” said my mother, “as usual, eh?”
“As usual,” I agreed.
“How many jobs have you had since I saw you last?”
I thought a minute. “Five,” I said.
“I wish you’d grow up.”
“I’m fully adult,” I said. “I have chosen my way of life. How have things been with you?” I added.
“Also as usual,” said my mother.
“Quite well and all that?”
“I’ve no time to waste being ill,” said my mother. Then she said abruptly, “What have you come for?”
“Should I have come for anything in particular?”
“You usually do.”
“I don’t see why you should disapprove so strongly of my seeing the world,” I said.
“Driving luxurious cars all over the Continent! Is that your idea of seeing the world?”
“Certainly.”
“You won’t make much of a success in that. Not if you throw up the job at a day’s notice and go sick, dumping your clients in some heathen town.”
“How did you know about that?”
“Your firm rang up. They wanted to know if I knew your address.”
“What did they want me for?”
“They wanted to reemploy you I suppose,” said my mother. “I can’t think why.”
“Because I’m a good driver and the clients like me. Anyway, I couldn’t help it if I went sick, could I?”
“I don’t know,” said my mother.
Her view clearly was that I could have helped it.
“Why didn’t you report to them when you got back to England?”
“Because I had other fish to fry,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows. “More notions in your head? More wild ideas? What jobs have you been doing since?”
“Petrol pump. Mechanic in a garage. Temporary clerk, washer-up in a sleazy nightclub restaurant.”
“Going down the hill in fact,” said my mother with a kind of grim satisfaction.
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s all part of the plan. My plan!”
She sighed. “What would you like, tea or coffee? I’ve got both.”
I plumped for coffee. I’ve grown out of the tea-drinking habit. We sat there with our cups in front of us and she took a home-made cake out of a tin and cut us each a slice.
“You’re different,” she said, suddenly.
“Me, how?”
“I don’t know, but you’re different. What’s happened?”
“Nothing’s happened. What should have happened?”
“You’re excited,” she said.
“I’m going to rob a bank,” I said.
She was not in the mood to be amused. She merely said:
“No, I’m not afraid of your doing that.”
“Why not? Seems a very easy way of getting rich quickly nowadays.”
“It would need too much work,” she said. “And a lot of planning. More brainwork than you’d like to have to do. Not safe enough, either.”
“You think you know all about me,” I said.
“No, I don’t. I don’t really know anything about you, because you and I are as different as chalk and cheese. But I know when you’re up to something. You’re up to something now. What is it, Micky? Is it a girl?”
“Why should you think it’s a girl?”
“I’ve always known it would happen some day.”
“What do you mean by ‘some day?’ I’ve had lots of girls.”
“Not the way I mean. It’s only been the way of a young man with nothing to do. You’ve kept your hand in with girls but you’ve never been really serious till now.”
“But you think I’m serious now?”
“Is it a girl, Micky?”
I didn’t meet her eyes. I looked away and said, “In a way.”
“What kind of a girl is she?”
“The right kind for me,” I said.
“Are you going to bring her to see me?”
“No,” I said.
“It’s like that, is it?”
“No, it isn’t. I don’t want to hurt your feelings but—”
“You’re not hurting my feelings. You don’t want me to see her in case I should say to you ‘Don’t.’ Is that it?”
“I wouldn’t pay any attention if you did.”
“Maybe not, but it would shake you. It would shake you somewhere inside because you take notice of what I say and think. There are things I’ve guessed about you—and maybe I’ve guessed right and you know it. I’m the only person in the world who can shake your confidence in yourself. Is this girl a bad lot who’s got hold of you?”
“Bad lot?” I said and laughed. “If you only saw her! You make me laugh.”
“What do you want from me? You want something. You always do.”
“I want some money,” I said.
“You won’t get it from me. What do you want it for—to spend on this girl?”
“No,” I said, “I want to buy a first-class suit to get married in.”
“You’re going to marry her?”
“If she’ll have me.”
That shook her.
“If you’d only tell me something!” she said. “You’ve got it badly, I can see that. It’s the thing I always feared, that you’d choose the wrong girl.”
“Wrong girl! Hell!” I shouted. I was angry.
I went out of the house and I banged the door.
Seven
When I got home there was a telegram waiting for me—it had been sent from Antibes.
Endless Night Page 4