Meet me tomorrow four-thirty usual place.
Ellie was different. I saw it at once. We met as always in Regent’s Park and at first we were a bit strange and awkward with each other. I had something I was going to say to her and I was in a bit of a state as to how to put it. I suppose any man is when he comes to the point of proposing marriage.
And she was strange about something too. Perhaps she was considering the nicest and kindest way of saying No to me. But somehow I didn’t think that. My whole belief in life was based on the fact that Ellie loved me. But there was a new independence about her, a new confidence in herself which I could hardly feel was simply because she was a year older. One more birthday can’t make that difference to a girl. She and her family had been in the South of France and she told me a little about it. And then rather awkwardly she said:
“I—I saw that house there, the one you told me about. The one that architect friend of yours had built.”
“What—Santonix?”
“Yes. We went there to lunch one day.”
“How did you do that? Does your stepmother know the man who lives there?”
“Dmitri Constantine? Well—not exactly but she met him and—well—Greta fixed it up for us to go there as a matter of fact.”
“Greta again,” I said, allowing the usual exasperation to come into my voice.
“I told you,” she said, “Greta is very good at arranging things.”
“Oh all right. So she arranged that you and your stepmother—”
“And Uncle Frank,” said Ellie.
“Quite a family party,” I said, “and Greta too, I suppose.”
“Well, no, Greta didn’t come because, well—” Ellie hesitated, “—Cora, my stepmother, doesn’t treat Greta exactly like that.”
“She’s not one of the family, she’s a poor relation, is she?” I said. “Just the au pair girl, in fact. Greta must resent being treated that way sometimes.”
“She’s not an au pair girl, she’s a kind of companion to me.”
“A chaperone,” I said, “a cicerone, a duenna, a governess. There are lots of words.”
“Oh do be quiet,” said Ellie, “I want to tell you. I know now what you mean about your friend Santonix. It’s a wonderful house. It’s—it’s quite different. I can see that if he built a house for us it would be a wonderful house.”
She had used the word quite unconsciously. Us, she had said. She had gone to the Riviera and had made Greta arrange things so as to see the house I had described, because she wanted to visualize more clearly the house that we would, in the dream world we’d built ourselves, have built for us by Rudolf Santonix.
“I’m glad you felt like that about it,” I said.
She said: “What have you been doing?”
“Just my dull job,” I said, “and I’ve been to a race meeting and I put some money on an outsider. Thirty to one. I put every penny I had on it and it won by a length. Who says my luck isn’t in?”
“I’m glad you won,” said Ellie, but she said it without excitement, because putting all you had in the world on an outsider and the outsider winning didn’t mean anything to Ellie’s world. Not the kind of thing it meant in mine.
“And I went to see my mother,” I added.
“You’ve never spoken much of your mother.”
“Why should I?” I said.
“Aren’t you fond of her?”
I considered. “I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes I don’t think I am. After all, one grows up and—outgrows parents. Mothers and fathers.”
“I think you do care about her,” said Ellie. “You wouldn’t be so uncertain when you talk about her otherwise.”
“I’m afraid of her in a way,” I said. “She knows me too well. She knows the worst of me, I mean.”
“Somebody has to,” said Ellie.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a saying by some great writer or other that no man is a hero to his valet. Perhaps everyone ought to have a valet. It must be so hard otherwise, always living up to people’s good opinion of one.”
“Well, you certainly have ideas, Ellie,” I said. I took her hand. “Do you know all about me?” I said.
“I think so,” said Ellie. She said it quite calmly and simply.
“I never told you much.”
“You mean you never told me anything at all, you always clammed up. That’s different. But I know quite well what you are like, you yourself.”
“I wonder if you do,” I said. I went on, “It sounds rather silly saying I love you. It seems too late for that, doesn’t it? I mean, you’ve known about it a long time, practically from the beginning, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” said Ellie, “and you knew, too, didn’t you, about me?”
“The thing is,” I said, “what are we going to do about it? It’s not going to be easy, Ellie. You know pretty well what I am, what I’ve done, the sort of life I’ve led. I went back to see my mother and the grim, respectable little street she lives in. It’s not the same world as yours, Ellie. I don’t know that we can ever make them meet.”
“You could take me to see your mother.”
“Yes, I could,” I said, “but I’d rather not. I expect that sounds very harsh to you, perhaps cruel, but you see we’ve got to lead a queer life together, you and I. It’s not going to be the life that you’ve led and it’s not going to be the life that I’ve led either. It’s got to be a new life where we have a sort of meeting ground between my poverty and ignorance and your money and culture and social knowledge. My friends will think you’re stuck up and your friends will think I’m socially unpresentable. So what are we going to do?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Ellie, “exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to live on Gipsy’s Acre in a house—a dream house—that your friend Santonix will build for us. That’s what we’re going to do.” She added, “We’ll get married first. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s what I mean. If you’re sure it’s all right with you.”
“It’s quite easy,” said Ellie, “we can get married next week. I’m of age, you see. I can do what I like now. That makes all the difference. I think perhaps you’re right about relations. I shan’t tell my people and you won’t tell your mother, not until it’s all over and then they can throw fits and it won’t matter.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said, “wonderful, Ellie. But there’s one thing. I hate telling you about it. We can’t live at Gipsy’s Acre, Ellie. Wherever we build our house it can’t be there because it’s sold.”
“I know it’s sold,” said Ellie. She was laughing. “You don’t understand, Mike. I’m the person who’s bought it.”
Eight
I sat there, on the grass by the stream among the water flowers with the little paths and the stepping stones all round us. A good many other people were sitting round about us, but we didn’t notice them or even see they were there, because we were like all the others. Young couples, talking about their future. I stared at her and stared at her. I just couldn’t speak.
“Mike,” she said. “There’s something, something I’ve got to tell you. Something about me, I mean.”
“You don’t need to,” I said, “no need to tell me anything.”
“Yes, but I must. I ought to have told you long ago but I didn’t want to because—because I thought it might drive you away. But it explains in a way, about Gipsy’s Acre.”
“You bought it?” I said. “But how did you buy it?”
“Through lawyers,” she said, “the usual way. It’s a perfectly good investment, you know. The land will appreciate. My lawyers were quite happy about it.”
It was odd suddenly to hear Ellie, the gentle and timid Ellie, speaking with such knowledge and confidence of the business world of buying and selling.
“You bought it for us?”
“Yes. I went to a lawyer of my own, not the family one. I told him what I wanted to do, I got him to look into it,
I got everything set up and in train. There were two other people after it but they were not really desperate and they wouldn’t go very high. The important thing was that the whole thing had to be set up and arranged ready for me to sign as soon as I came of age. It’s signed and finished.”
“But you must have made some deposit or something beforehand. Had you enough money to do that?”
“No,” said Ellie, “no, I hadn’t control of much money beforehand, but of course there are people who will advance you money. And if you go to a new firm of legal advisers, they will want you to go on employing them for business deals once you’ve come into what money you’re going to have so they’re willing to take the risk that you might drop down dead before your birthday comes.”
“You sound so businesslike,” I said, “you take my breath away!”
“Never mind business,” said Ellie, “I’ve got to get back to what I’m telling you. In a way I’ve told it you already, but I don’t suppose really you realize it.”
“I don’t want to know,” I said. My voice rose, I was almost shouting. “Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know anything about what you’ve done or who you’ve been fond of or what has happened to you.”
“It’s nothing of that kind,” she said. “I didn’t realize that that was what you were fearing it might be. No, there’s nothing of that kind. No sex secrets. There’s nobody but you. The thing is that I’m—well—I’m rich.”
“I know that,” I said, “you’ve told me already.”
“Yes,” said Ellie with a faint smile, “and you said to me, ‘poor little rich girl.’ But in a way it’s more than that. My grandfather, you see, was enormously rich. Oil. Mostly oil. And other things. The wives he paid alimony to are dead, there was only my father and myself left because his two other sons were killed. One in Korea and one in a car accident. And so it was all left in a great big huge trust and when my father died suddenly, it all came to me. My father had made provision for my stepmother before, so she didn’t get anything more. It was all mine. I’m—actually one of the richest women in America, Mike.”
“Good Lord,” I said. “I didn’t know…Yes, you’re right, I didn’t know it was like that.”
“I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want to tell you. That was why I was afraid when I said my name—Fenella Goodman. We spell it G-u-t-e-m-a-n, and I thought you might know the name of Guteman so I slurred over it and made it into Goodman.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’ve seen the name Guteman vaguely. But I don’t think I’d have recognized it even then. Lots of people are called names rather like that.”
“That’s why,” she said, “I’ve been so hedged around all the time and fenced in, and imprisoned. I’ve had detectives guarding me and young men being vetted before they’re allowed even to speak to me. Whenever I’ve made a friend they’ve had to be quite sure it wasn’t an unsuitable one. You don’t know what a terrible, terrible prisoner’s life it is! But now that’s all over, and if you don’t mind—”
“Of course I don’t mind,” I said, “we shall have lots of fun. In fact,” I said, “you couldn’t be too rich a girl for me!”
We both laughed. She said: “What I like about you is that you can be natural about things.”
“Besides,” I said, “I expect you pay a lot of tax on it, don’t you? That’s one of the few nice things about being like me. Any money I make goes into my pocket and nobody can take it away from me.”
“We’ll have our house,” said Ellie, “our house on Gipsy’s Acre.” Just for a moment she gave a sudden little shiver.
“You’re not cold, darling,” I said. I looked up at the sunshine.
“No,” she said.
It was really very hot. We’d been basking. It might almost have been the South of France.
“No,” said Ellie, “it was just that—that woman, that gipsy that day.”
“Oh, don’t think of her,” I said, “she was crazy anyway.”
“Do you think she really thinks there’s a curse on the land?”
“I think gipsies are like that. You know—always wanting to make a song and dance about some curse or something.”
“Do you know much about gipsies?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I said truthfully. “If you don’t want Gipsy’s Acre, Ellie, we’ll buy a house somewhere else. On the top of a mountain in Wales, on the coast of Spain or an Italian hillside, and Santonix can build us a house there just as well.”
“No,” said Ellie, “that’s how I want it to be. It’s where I first saw you walking up the road, coming round the corner very suddenly, and then you saw me and stopped and stared at me. I’ll never forget that.”
“Nor will I,” I said.
“So that’s where it’s going to be. And your friend Santonix will build it.”
“I hope he’s still alive,” I said with an uneasy pang. “He was a sick man.”
“Oh yes,” said Ellie, “he’s alive. I went to see him.”
“You went to see him?”
“Yes. When I was in the South of France. He was in a sanitorium there.”
“Every minute, Ellie, you seem to be more and more amazing. The things you do and manage.”
“He’s rather a wonderful person I think,” said Ellie, “but rather frightening.”
“Did he frighten you?”
“Yes, he frightened me very much for some reason.”
“Did you talk to him about us?”
“Yes. Oh yes, I told him all about us and about Gipsy’s Acre and about the house. He told me then that we’d have to take a chance with him. He’s a very ill man. He said he thought he still had the life left in him to go and see the site, to draw the plans, to visualize it and get it all sketched out. He said he wouldn’t mind really if he died before the house was finished, but I told him,” added Ellie, “that he mustn’t die before the house was finished because I wanted him to see us live in it.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He asked me if I knew what I was doing marrying you, and I said of course I did.”
“And then?”
“He said he wondered if you knew what you were doing.”
“I know all right,” I said.
“He said ‘You will always know where you’re going, Miss Guteman.’ He said ‘You’ll be going always where you want to go and because it’s your chosen way.’
“‘But Mike,’ he said, ‘might take the wrong road. He hasn’t grown up enough yet to know where he’s going.’
“I said,” said Ellie, “‘He’ll be quite safe with me.’”
She had superb self-confidence. I was angry though at what Santonix had said. He was like my mother. She always seemed to know more about me than I knew myself.
“I know where I’m going,” I said. “I’m going the way I want to go and we’re going it together.”
“They’ve started pulling down the ruins of The Towers already,” said Ellie.
She began to talk practically.
“It’s to be a rush job as soon as the plans are finished. We must hurry. Santonix said so. Shall we be married next Tuesday?” said Ellie. “It’s a nice day of the week.”
“With nobody else there,” I said.
“Except Greta,” said Ellie.
“To hell with Greta,” I said, “she’s not coming to our wedding. You and I and nobody else. We can pull the necessary witnesses out of the street.”
I really think, looking back, that that was the happiest day of my life….
BOOK TWO
Nine
So that was that, and Ellie and I got married. It sounds abrupt just putting it like that, but you see it was really just the way things happened. We decided to be married and we got married.
It was part of the whole thing—not just an end to a romantic novel or a fairy story. “And so they got married and lived happily ever afterwards.” You can’t, after all, make a big drama out of living happily ever afterwards. We were married an
d we were both happy and it was really quite a time before anyone got on to us and began to make the usual difficulties and commotions and we’d made up our minds to those.
The whole thing was really extraordinarily simple. In her desire for freedom Ellie had covered her tracks very cleverly up to now. The useful Greta had taken all the necessary steps, and was always on guard behind her. And I had realized fairly soon on that there was nobody really whose business it was to care terribly about Ellie and what she was doing. She had a stepmother who was engrossed in her own social life and love affairs. If Ellie didn’t wish to accompany her to any particular spot on the globe there was no need for Ellie to do so. She’d had all the proper governesses and ladies’ maids and scholastic advantages and if she wanted to go to Europe, why not? If she chose to have her twenty-first birthday in London, again why not? Now that she had come into her vast fortune she had the whip hand of her family in so far as spending her money went. If she’d wanted a villa on the Riviera or a castle on the Costa Brava or a yacht or any of those things, she had only to mention the fact and someone among the retinues that surrounded millionaires would put everything in hand immediately.
Greta, I gather, was regarded by her family as an admirable stooge. Competent, able to make all arrangements with the utmost efficiency, subservient no doubt and charming to the stepmother, the uncle and a few odd cousins who seemed to be knocking about. Ellie had no fewer than three lawyers at her command, from what she let fall every now and then. She was surrounded by a vast financial network of bankers and lawyers and the administrators of trust funds. It was a world that I just got glimpses of every now and then, mostly from things that Ellie let fall carelessly in the course of conversation. It didn’t occur to her, naturally, that I wouldn’t know about all those things. She had been brought up in the midst of them and she naturally concluded that the whole world knew what they were and how they worked and all the rest of it.
In fact, getting glimpses of the special peculiarities of each other’s lives were unexpectedly what we enjoyed most in our early married life. To put it quite crudely—and I did put things crudely to myself, for that was the only way to get to terms with my new life—the poor don’t really know how the rich live and the rich don’t know how the poor live, and to find out is really enchanting to both of them. Once I said uneasily:
Endless Night Page 5