Endless Night (17 page)

“You said he was with someone who looked like Claudia so it probably was him. Perhaps he called to see
her
and Reuben came to see Cora—what a mix-up!”

“I don't like it—all of them milling round that day.”

Greta said things often happened that way—as usual she was quite cheerful and reasonable about it.

I

T
here was nothing more for me to do at Gipsy's Acre. I left Greta in charge of the house while I sailed to New York to wind up things there and to take part in what I felt with some dread were going to be the most ghastly gold-plated obsequies for Ellie.

“You're going into the jungle,” Greta warned me. “Look after yourself. Don't let them skin you alive.”

She was right about that. It
was
the jungle. I felt it when I got there. I didn't know about jungles—not that kind of jungle. I was out of my depth and I knew it. I wasn't the hunter, I was the hunted. There were people all round me in the undergrowth, gunning for me. Sometimes, I expect, I imagined things. Sometimes my suspicions were justified. I remember going to the lawyer supplied for me by Mr. Lippincott (a most urbane man who treated me rather as a general practitioner might have done in the medical profession). I had been advised to get rid of certain mining properties to which the title deeds were not too clear.

He asked me who had told me so and I said it was Stanford Lloyd.

“Well, we must look into it,” he said. “A man like Mr. Lloyd ought to know.”

He said to me afterwards:

“There's nothing wrong with your title deeds, and there is certainly no point in your selling the land in a hurry, as he seems to have advised you. Hang on to it.”

I had the feeling then that I'd been right, everybody
was
gunning for me. They all knew I was a simpleton when it came to finance.

The funeral was splendid and, I thought, quite horrible. Gold-plated, as I had surmised. At the cemetery, masses of flowers, the cemetery itself like a public park and all the trimmings of wealthy mourning expressed in monumental marble. Ellie would have hated it, I was sure of that. But I suppose her family had a certain right to her.

Four days after my arrival in New York I had news from Kingston Bishop.

The body of old Mrs. Lee had been found in the disused quarry on the far side of the hill. She had been dead some days. There had been accidents there before, and it had been said that the place ought to be fenced in—but nothing had been done. A verdict of Accidental Death had been brought in and a further recommendation to the Council to fence the place off. In Mrs. Lee's cottage a sum of three hundred pounds had been found hidden under the floorboards, all in one-pound notes.

Major Phillpot had added in a postscript, “I'm sure you will be
sorry to hear that Claudia Hardcastle was thrown from her horse and killed out hunting yesterday.”

Claudia—killed? I couldn't believe it! It gave me a very nasty jolt. Two people—within a fortnight, killed in a riding accident. It seemed like an almost impossible coincidence.

II

I don't want to dwell on that time I spent in New York. I was a stranger in an alien atmosphere. I felt all the time that I had to be wary of what I said and what I did. The Ellie that I had known, the Ellie that had belonged peculiarly to me was not there. I saw her now only as an American girl, heiress to a great fortune, surrounded by friends and connections and distant relatives, one of a family that had lived there for five generations. She had come from there as a comet might have come, visiting my territory.

Now she had gone back to be buried with her own folk, to where her own home was. I was glad to have it that way. I shouldn't have been easy feeling her there in the prim little cemetery at the foot of the pine woods just outside the village. No, I shouldn't have been easy.

“Go back where you belong, Ellie,” I said to myself.

Now and again that haunting little tune of the song she used to sing to her guitar came into my mind. I remembered her fingers twanging the strings.

and I thought “That was true of you. You were born to Sweet Delight. You had Sweet Delight there at Gipsy's Acre. Only it didn't last very long. Now it's over. You've come back to where perhaps there wasn't much delight, where you weren't happy. But you're
at home
here anyway. You're among your own folk.”

I wondered suddenly where
I
should be when the time came for me to die. Gipsy's Acre? It could be. My mother would come and see me laid in my grave—if she wasn't dead already. But I couldn't think of my mother being dead. I could think more easily of death for myself. Yes, she'd come and see me buried. Perhaps the sternness of her face would relax. I took my thoughts away from her. I didn't want to think of her. I didn't want to go near her or see her.

That last isn't quite true. It wasn't a question of seeing
her.
It was always with my mother a question of
her
seeing
me,
of her eyes looking through me, of an anxiety that swept out like a miasma embracing me. I thought: “Mothers are the devil! Why have they got to brood over their children? Why do they feel they know all about their children? They don't. They
don't!
She ought to be proud of me, happy for me, happy for the wonderful life that I've achieved. She ought—” Then I wrenched thoughts away from her again.

How long was I over in the States? I can't even remember. It seemed an age of walking warily, of being watched by people with false smiles and enmity in their eyes. I said to myself every day, “I've got to get
through
this. I've got to get
through
this—and then.” Those were the two words I used. Used in my own mind, I mean. Used them every day several times.
And then
—They were the two words of the future. I used them in the same way that I had once used those other two words.
I want….

Everyone went out of their way to be nice to me because I was
rich! Under the terms of Ellie's will I was an extremely rich man. I felt very odd. I had investments I didn't understand, shares, stocks, property. And I didn't know in the least what to do with them all.

The day before I went back to England I had a long conversation with Mr. Lippincott. I always thought of him like that in my mind—as Mr. Lippincott. He'd never become Uncle Andrew to me. I told him that I thought of withdrawing the charge of my investments from Stanford Lloyd.

“Indeed!” His grizzled eyebrows rose. He looked at me with his shrewd eyes and his poker face and I wondered what exactly his “indeed” meant.

“Do you think it's all right to do that?” I asked anxiously.

“You have reasons, I presume?”

“No,” I said, “I haven't got reasons. A feeling, that's all. I suppose I can say anything to you?”

“The communication will be privileged, naturally.”

“All right,” I said, “I just feel that he's a crook!”

“Ah.” Mr. Lippincott looked interested. “Yes, I should say your instinct was possibly sound.”

So I knew then that I was right. Stanford Lloyd had been playing hanky-panky with Ellie's bonds and investments and all the rest of it. I signed a power of attorney and gave it to Andrew Lippincott.

“You're willing,” I said, “to accept it?”

“As far as financial matters are concerned,” said Mr. Lippincott, “you can trust me absolutely. I will do my best for you in that respect. I don't think you will have any reason to complain of my stewardship.”

I wondered exactly what he meant by that. He meant something. I think he meant that he didn't like me, had never liked
me, but financially he would do his best for me because I had been Ellie's husband. I signed all necessary papers. He asked me how I was going back to England. Flying? I said no, I wasn't flying, I was going by sea. “I've got to have a little time to myself,” I said. “I think a sea voyage will do me good.”

“And you are going to take up your residence—where?”

“Gipsy's Acre,” I said.

“Ah. You propose to live there.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I thought perhaps you might have put it on the market for sale.”

“No,” I said, and the no came out rather stronger than I meant. I wasn't going to part with Gipsy's Acre. Gipsy's Acre had been part of my dream, the dream that I'd cherished since I'd been a callow boy.

“Is anybody looking after it while you have been away in the States?”

I said that I'd left Greta Andersen in charge.

“Ah,” said Mr. Lippincott, “yes. Greta.”

He meant something in the way he said “Greta” but I didn't take him up on it. If he disliked her, he disliked her. He always had. It left an awkward pause, then I changed my mind. I felt that I'd got to say
something.

“She was very good to Ellie,” I said. “She nursed her when she was ill, she came and lived with us and looked after Ellie. I—I can't be grateful enough to her. I'd like you to understand that. You don't know what she's been like. You don't know how she helped and did everything after Ellie was killed. I don't know what I'd have done without her.”

“Quite so, quite so,” said Mr. Lippincott. He sounded drier than you could possibly imagine.

“So you see I owe her a lot.”

“A very competent girl,” said Mr. Lippincott.

I got up and said good-bye and I thanked him.

“You have nothing for which to thank me,” said Mr. Lippincott, dry as ever.

He added, “I wrote you a short letter. I have sent it by air mail to Gipsy's Acre. If you are going by sea you will probably find it waiting there on arrival.” Then he said, “Have a good voyage.”

I asked him, rather hesitantly, if he'd known Stanford Lloyd's wife—a girl called Claudia Hardcastle.

“Ah, you mean his first wife. No I never met her. The marriage I believe broke up quite soon. After the divorce, he remarried. That too ended in divorce.”

So that was that.

When I got back to my hotel I found a cable. It asked me to come to a hospital in California. It said a friend of mine, Rudolf Santonix, had asked for me, he had not long to live and he wished to see me before he died.

I changed my passage to a later boat and flew to San Francisco. He wasn't dead yet, but he was sinking very fast. They doubted, they said, if he would recover consciousness before he died, but he had asked for me very urgently. I sat there in that hospital room watching him, watching what looked like a shell of the man I knew. He'd always looked ill, he'd always had a kind of queer transparency about him, a delicacy, a frailness. He lay now looking a deadly, waxen figure. I sat there thinking: “I wish he'd speak to me. I wish he'd say something. Just
something
before he dies.”

I felt so alone, so horribly alone. I'd escaped from enemies now, I'd got to a friend. My only friend, really. He was the only person who knew anything about me, except Mum, but I didn't want to think of Mum.

Once or twice I spoke to a nurse, asked her if there wasn't anything they could do, but she shook her head and said noncommittally:

“He might recover consciousness or might not.”

I sat there. And then at last he stirred and sighed. The nurse raised him up very gently. He looked at me but I didn't know whether he recognized me or not. He was just looking at me as though he looked past me and beyond me. Then suddenly a difference came into his eyes. I thought, “He
does
know me, he
does
see me.” He said something very faintly and I bent over the bed so as to catch it. But they didn't seem words that had any meaning. Then his body had a sudden spasm and twitch, and he threw his head back and shouted out:

“You damned fool…Why didn't you go the other way?”

Then he just collapsed and died.

I don't know what he meant—or even if he knew himself what he was saying.

So that was the last I saw of Santonix. I wonder if he'd have heard me if I had said anything to him? I'd like to have told him once more that the house he'd built me was the best thing I had in the world. The thing that mattered most to me. Funny that a house could mean that. I suppose it was a sort of symbolism about it. Something you want. Something you want so much that you don't quite know what it is. But he'd known what it was and he'd given it to me. And I'd got it. And I was going home to it.

Going home. That's all I could think about when I got on the boat. That and a deadly tiredness at first…And then a rising tide of happiness oozing up as it were from the depths…I was going home. I was going home….

I

Y
es, 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 me 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.