Twenty-three
I
Yes, that was what I was doing. It was all over now. The last of the fight, the last of the struggle. The last phase of the journey.
It seemed so long ago to the time of my restless youth. The days of “I want, I want.” But it wasn’t long. Less than a year….
I went over it all—lying there in my bunk, and thinking.
Meeting Ellie—our times in Regent’s Park—our marriage in the Registrar’s Office. The house—Santonix building it—the house completed. Mine, all mine. I was me—me—me as I wanted to be. As I’d always wanted to be. I’d got everything I’d wanted and I was going home to it.
Before I left New York I’d written one letter and sent it off by air mail to get there ahead of me. I’d written to Phillpot. Somehow I felt that Phillpot would understand, though others mightn’t.
It was easier to write than to tell him. Anyway, he’d got to know. Everyone had got to know. Some people probably wouldn’t understand, but I thought he would. He’d seen for himself how close Ellie and Greta had been, how Ellie had depended on Greta. I thought he’d realize how I’d come to depend upon her also, how it would be impossible for me to live alone in the house where I’d lived with Ellie unless there was someone there to help me. I don’t know if I put it very well. I did my best.
“I’d like you,” I wrote, “to be the first to know. You’ve been so kind to us, and I think you’ll be the only person to understand. I can’t face living alone at Gipsy’s Acre. I’ve been thinking all the time I’ve been in America and I’ve decided that as soon as I get home I’m going to ask Greta to marry me. She’s the only person I can really talk to about Ellie, you see. She’ll understand. Perhaps she won’t marry me, but I think she will…It will make everything as though there were the three of us together still.”
I wrote the letter three times before I could get it to express just what I wanted to say. Phillpot ought to get it two days before my return.
I came up on deck as we were approaching England. I looked out as the land came nearer. I thought, “I wish Santonix was with me.” I did wish it. I wished he could know how everything was all coming true. Everything I’d planned—everything I’d thought—everything I’d wanted.
I’d shaken off America, I’d shaken off the crooks and the sycophants and all the whole lot of them whom I hated and whom I was pretty sure hated me and looked down on me for being so low class! I was back in triumph. I was coming back to the pine trees and the curling dangerous road that made its way up through Gipsy’s Acre to the house on the hilltop. My house! I was coming back to the two things I wanted. My house—the house that I’d dreamed of, that I’d planned, that I’d wanted above everything. That and a wonderful woman…I’d known always that I’d meet one day a wonderful woman. I had met her. I’d seen her and she’d seen me. We’d come together. A wonderful woman. I’d known the moment I saw her that I belonged to her, belonged to her absolutely and for always. I was hers. And now—at last—I was going to her.
Nobody saw me arrive at Kingston Bishop. It was almost dark and I came by train and I walked from the station, taking a roundabout side road. I didn’t want to meet any of the people in the village. Not that night….
The sun had set when I came up the road to Gipsy’s Acre. I’d told Greta the time I’d arrive. She was up there in the house waiting for me. At last! We’d done with subterfuges now and all the pretences—the pretence of disliking her—I thought now, laughing to myself, of the part I’d played, a part I’d played carefully right from the beginning. Disliking Greta, not wanting her to come and stay with Ellie. Yes, I’d been very careful. Everyone must have been taken in by the pretence. I remembered the quarrel we’d faked up so that Ellie should overhear it.
Greta had known me for what I was the first moment we met. We’d never had any silly illusions about each other. She had the same kind of mind, the same kind of desires as I had. We wanted the World, nothing less! We wanted to be on top of the World. We wanted to fulfil every ambition. We wanted to have everything, deny ourselves nothing. I remembered how I’d poured out my heart to her when I first met her in Hamburg, telling her my frenzied desire for things. I hadn’t got to conceal my inordinate greed for life from Greta, she had the same greed herself. She said:
“For all you want out of life you’ve got to have money.”
“Yes,” I said, “and I don’t see how I’m going to get it.”
“No,” said Greta, “you won’t get it by hard work. You’re not the kind.”
“Work!” I said. “I’d have to work for years! I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to be middle-aged.” I said, “You know the story about that chap Schliemann how he worked, toiled, and made a fortune so that he could have his life’s dream come true and go to Troy and dig it up and find the graves of Troy. He got his dream but he had to wait till he was forty. But I don’t want to wait till I’m a middle-aged man. Old. One foot in the grave. I want it now when I’m young and strong. You do too, don’t you?”
“Yes. And I know the way you can do it. It’s easy. I wonder you haven’t thought of it already. You can get girls easily enough, can’t you? I can see that. I can feel it.”
“Do you think I care about girls—or ever have really? There’s only one girl I want,” I said. “You. And you know that. I belong to you. I knew it the moment I saw you. I knew always that I’d meet someone like you. And I have. I belong to you.”
“Yes,” said Greta, “I think you do.”
“We both want the same things out of life,” I said.
“I tell you it’s easy,” said Greta. “Easy. All you’ve got to do is to marry a rich girl, one of the richest girls in the world. I can put you in the way of doing that.”
“Don’t be fantastic,” I said.
“It’s not fantastic, it’ll be easy.”
“No,” I said, “that’s no good to me. I don’t want to be the husband of a rich wife. She’ll buy me things and we’ll do things and she’ll keep me in a golden cage, but that’s not what I want. I don’t want to be a tied-up slave.”
“You needn’t be. It’s the sort of thing that needn’t last for long. Just long enough. Wives do die, you know.”
I stared at her.
“Now you’re shocked,” she said.
“No,” I said, “I’m not shocked.”
“I thought you wouldn’t be. I thought perhaps already?” She looked at me inquiringly, but I wasn’t going to answer that. I still had some self-preservation left. There are some secrets one doesn’t want anyone to know. Not that they were much in the way of secrets, but I didn’t like to think of them. I didn’t like to think of the first one. Silly though. Puerile. Nothing that mattered. I had had a boy’s passion for a classy wristwatch that a boy…a friend of mine at school—had been given. I wanted it. I wanted it badly. It had cost a lot of money. A rich godfather had given it to him. Yes, I wanted that, but I didn’t think I’d ever have a chance of getting it. Then there was the day we went skating together. The ice wasn’t strong enough to bear. Not that we thought of it beforehand. It just happened. The ice cracked. I skated across to him. He was hanging on. He had gone through a hole and he was hanging on to the ice which was cutting his hands. I went across to pull him out, of course, but just as I got there I saw the glint of the wristwatch. I thought “Supposing he goes under and drowns.” I thought how easy it would be….
It seemed almost unconsciously, I think, that I unfastened the strap, grabbed the watch and pushed his head under instead of trying to pull him out…Just held his head under. He couldn’t struggle much, he was under the ice. People saw and came towards us. They thought I was trying to pull him out! They got him out in due course, with some difficulty. They tried artificial respiration on him but it was too late. I hid my treasure away in a special place where I kept things now and then. Things I didn’t want Mum to see because she’d ask me where I got them. She came across that watch one day when she was fooling about with my socks. Asked m
e if that wasn’t Pete’s watch? I said of course it wasn’t—it was one I’d swopped with a boy at school.
I was always nervous with Mum—I always felt she knew too much about me. I was nervous with her when she found the watch. She suspected, I think. She couldn’t know, of course. Nobody knew. But she used to look at me. In a funny way. Everybody thought I’d tried to rescue Pete. I don’t think she ever thought so. I think she knew. She didn’t want to know, but her trouble was that she knew too much about me. I felt a bit guilty sometimes, but it wore off, fairly soon.
And then later on, when I was in camp. It was during our military training time. Chap called Ed and I had been to a sort of gambling place. I’d had no luck at all, lost everything I had, but Ed had won a packet. He changed his chips and he and I were coming home and he was stuffed up with notes. His pockets were bulging with them. Then a couple of toughs came round the corner and went for us. They were pretty handy with the flick knives they’d got. I got cut in the arm but Ed got a proper sort of stab. He went down under it. Then there was a noise of people coming. The toughs hooked it. I could see that if I was quick…I was quick! My reflexes are pretty good—I wrapped a handkerchief round my hand and I pulled out the knife from Ed’s wound and I stuck the knife in again a couple of times in better places. He gave a gasp and passed out. I was scared, of course, scared for a second or two and then I knew it was going to be all right. So I felt—well—naturally I felt proud of myself for thinking and acting quick! I thought “Poor old Ed, he always was a fool.” It took me no time at all to transfer those notes to my own pocket! Nothing like having quick reflexes, seizing your opportunity. The trouble is the opportunities don’t come very often. Some people, I suppose, get scared when they know they’ve killed someone. But I wasn’t scared. Not this time.
Mind you, it’s not a thing you want to do too often. Not unless it might be really worth your while. I don’t know how Greta sensed that about me. But she’d known. I don’t mean that she’d known that I’d actually killed a couple of people. But I think she knew the idea of killing wouldn’t shock or upset me. I said:
“What’s all this fantastic story, Greta?”
She said, “I am in a position to help you. I can bring you in touch with one of the richest girls in America. I more or less look after her. I live with her. I have a lot of influence over her.”
“Do you think she’d look at someone like me?” I said. I didn’t believe it for a moment. Why should a rich girl who could have her pick of any attractive, sexy man she liked go for me?
“You’ve got a lot of sex appeal,” said Greta. “Girls go for you, don’t they?”
I grinned and said I didn’t do too badly.
“She’s never had that kind of thing. She’s been looked after too well. The only young men she’s been allowed to meet are conventional kids, bankers’ sons, tycoons’ sons. She’s groomed to make a good marriage in the moneyed class. They’re terrified of her meeting handsome foreigners who might be after her money. But naturally she’s keener on people like that. They’d be new to her, something she’s never seen before. You’ve got to make a big play for her. You’ve got to fall in love with her at first sight and sweep her off her feet! It’ll be easy enough. She’s never had anyone to make a real sexy approach to her. You could do it.”
“I could try,” I said doubtfully.
“We could set it up,” said Greta.
“Her family would step in and stop it.”
“No they wouldn’t,” said Greta, “they wouldn’t know anything about it. Not until it was too late. Not until you’d got married secretly.”
“So that’s your idea.”
So we talked about it. We planned. Not in detail, mind you. Greta went back to America, but she kept in touch with me. I went on with various jobs. I’d told her about Gipsy’s Acre and that I wanted it, and she said that was just fine for setting up a romantic story. We laid our plans so that my meeting with Ellie would take place there. Greta would work Ellie up about having a house in England and getting away from the family as soon as she came of age.
Oh yes, we set it up. Greta was a great planner. I don’t think I could have planned it, but I knew I could play my part all right. I’d always enjoyed playing a part. And so that’s how it happened. That’s how I met Ellie.
It was fun, all of it. Mad fun because of course there was always a risk, there was always a danger that it wouldn’t come off. The thing that made me really nervous were the times that I had to meet Greta. I had to be sure, you see, that I never gave myself away, by looking at Greta. I tried not to look at her. We agreed it was best that I should take a dislike to her, pretend jealousy of her. I carried that out all right. I remember the day she came down to stay. We staged a quarrel, a quarrel that Ellie could hear. I don’t know whether we overdid it a bit. I don’t think so. Sometimes I was nervous that Ellie might guess or something, but I don’t think she did. I don’t know. I don’t know really. I never did know about Ellie.
It was very easy to make love to Ellie. She was very sweet. Yes, she was really sweet. Just sometimes I was afraid of her because she did things sometimes without telling me. And she knew things that I never dreamt she knew. But she loved me. Yes, she loved me. Sometimes—I think I loved her too….
I don’t mean it was ever like Greta. Greta was the woman I belonged to. She was sex personified. I was made for her and I had to hold myself in. Ellie was something different. I enjoyed living with her, you know. Yes, that sounds very queer now I think back to it. I enjoyed living with her very much.
I’m putting this down now because this is what I was thinking that evening when I arrived back from America. When I arrived back on top of the world, having got all I’d longed for in spite of the risks, in spite of the dangers, in spite of having done a pretty good murder, though I say it myself!
Yes, it was tricky, I thought once or twice, but nobody could tell, not the way we’d done it. Now the risks were over, the dangers were over and here I was coming up to Gipsy’s Acre. Coming as I’d come up to it that day after I’d first seen the poster on the walls, and gone up to look at the ruins of the old house. Coming up and rounding the bend—
And then—it was then I saw her. I mean it was then I saw Ellie. Just as I came round the corner of the road in the dangerous place where the accidents happened. She was there in the same place just where she’d been before, standing in the shadow of the fir tree. Just as she’d stood, when she’d started a little as she saw me and I’d started, seeing her. There we’d looked at each other first and I’d come up and spoken to her, played the part of the young man who’s fallen suddenly in love. Played it jolly well too! Oh, I tell you I’m a fine actor!
But I hadn’t expected to see her now…I mean, I couldn’t see her now, could I? But I was seeing her…She was looking—looking straight at me. Only—there was something that frightened me—something that frightened me very much. It was, you see, just as though she didn’t see me—I mean I knew she couldn’t really be there. I knew she was dead—but I saw her. She was dead and her body was buried in the cemetery in the U.S.A. But all the same she was standing under the fir tree and she was looking at me. No, not at me. She was looking as though she expected to see me and there was love in her face. The same love that I had seen one day, one day when she’d been plucking the strings of her guitar. That day when she’d said to me, “What were you thinking of?” And I said, “Why do you ask me?” and she said, “You were looking at me as though you loved me.” I’d said something silly like “Of course I love you.”
I stopped dead. I stopped dead there in the road. I was shaking. I said out loud:
“Ellie.”
She didn’t move, she just stayed there, looking…Looking straight through me. That’s what frightened me because I knew if I thought for a minute I’d know why she didn’t see me, and I didn’t want to know. No, I didn’t want to know that. I was quite sure that I didn’t want to know that. Looking straight at the place whe
re I was—not seeing me. I ran then. I ran like a coward up the rest of the road to where the lights were shining in my house, until I pulled myself out of the silly panic that I was in. This was my triumph. I’d got home. I was the hunter home from the hills, back to my house, back to the things that I’d wanted more than anything in the world, to the wonderful woman whom I belonged to body and soul.
And now we’d get married and we’d live in the House. We’d get all we’d played for! We’d won—Won hands down!
The door wasn’t latched. I went in, stamping my feet, and through the open door of the library. And there was Greta standing by the window waiting for me. She was glorious. She was the most glorious and the most lovely thing I’d ever seen. She was like a Brünnhilde, a super Valkyrie with shining golden hair. She smelt and looked and tasted of sex. We’d denied ourselves so long except for occasional brief meetings up in the Folly.
I came straight into her arms, a sailor home from the sea to where he belonged. Yes, it was one of the most wonderful moments of my life.
II
Presently we came down to earth. I sat down and she shoved a small pile of letters towards me. I picked out almost automatically one with an American stamp. It was the air mail letter from Lippincott. I wondered what he’d put in it, why he’d had to write me a letter.
“Well,” said Greta with a deep satisfied sigh, “we’ve made it.”
“V-Day all right,” I said.
We both laughed, laughed wildly. There was champagne on the table. I opened it and we drank to each other.
“This place is wonderful,” I said, looking round. “It’s more beautiful than I remember it. Santonix—But I haven’t told you. Santonix is dead.”
“Oh dear,” said Greta, “what a pity. So he really was ill?”
“Of course he was ill. I never wanted to think so. I went and saw him when he was dying.”
Greta gave a little shiver.
“I shouldn’t like to do that. Did he say anything?”