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‘It won’t happen,’ I said, ‘I know that. It couldn’t happen. But think. Think into it just like I’m thinking into it. There we’d cut the trees and there we’d open up, and we’d plant things, rhododendrons and azaleas, and my friend Santonix would come. He’d cough a good deal because I think he’s dying of consumption or something but he could do it. He could do it before he died. He could build the most wonderful house. You don’t know what his houses are like. He builds them for very rich people and they have to be people who want the right thing. I don’t mean the right thing in the conventional sense. Things people who want a dream come true want. Something wonderful.’
‘I’d want a house like that,’ said Ellie. ‘You make me see it, feel it… Yes, this would be a lovely place to live. Everything one has dreamed of come true. One could live here and be free, not hampered, not tied round by people pushing you into doing everything you don’t want, keeping you from doing anything you do want. Oh I am so sick of my life and the people who are round me and everything!’
That’s the way it began, Ellie and I together. Me with my dreams and she with her revolt against her life. We stopped talking and looked at each other.
‘What’s your name?’ she said.
‘Mike Rogers,’ I said. ‘Michael Rogers,’ I amended. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Fenella.’ She hesitated and then said, ‘Fenella Goodman,’ looking at me with a rather troubled expression.
This didn’t seem to take us much further but we went on looking at each other. We both wanted to see each other again – but just for the moment we didn’t know how to set about it.
Chapter 5
Well, that’s how it began between Ellie and myself. It didn’t really go along so very quickly, because we both had our secrets. Both had things we wanted to keep from the other and so we couldn’t tell each other as much about ourselves as we might have done, and that kept bringing us up sharp, as it were, against a kind of barrier. We couldn’t bring things into the open[21 - We couldn’t bring things into the open – Мы не могли в открытую заявить] and say, ‘When shall we meet again? Where can I find you? Where do you live?’ Because, you see, if you ask the other person that, they’d expect you to tell the same.
Fenella looked apprehensive when she gave me her name. So much so that I thought for a moment that it mightn’t be her real name. I almost thought that she might have made it up! But of course I knew that that was impossible. I’d given her my real name.
We didn’t know quite how to take leave of each other that day. It was awkward. It had become cold and we wanted to wander down from The Towers – but what then? Rather awkwardly, I said tentatively:
‘Are you staying round here?[22 - Are you staying round here? – Вы недалеко живете?]’
She said she was staying in Market Chadwell. That was a market town not very far away. It had, I knew, a large hotel, three-starred. She’d be staying there, I guessed. She said, with something of the same awkwardness, to me:
‘Do you live here?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t live here. I’m only here for the day.’
Then a rather awkward silence fell. She gave a faint shiver. А cold little wind had come up.
‘We’d better walk,’ I said, ‘and keep ourselves warm. Are you – have you got a car or are you going by bus or train?’
She said she’d left the car in the village.
‘But I’ll be quite all right,’ she said.
She seemed a little nervous. I thought perhaps she wanted to get rid of me but didn’t quite know how to manage it. I said:
‘We’ll walk down, shall we, just as far as the village?’
She gave me a quick grateful look then. We walked slowly down the winding road on which so many car accidents had happened. As we came round a corner, a figure stepped suddenly from beneath the shelter of the fir tree. It appeared so suddenly that Ellie gave a start and said, ‘Oh!’ It was the old woman I had seen the other day in her cottage garden. Mrs Lee. She looked a great deal wilder today with a tangle of black hair blowing in the wind and a scarlet cloak round her shoulders; the commanding stance she took up made her look taller.
‘And what would you be doing, my dears?’ she said. ‘What brings you to Gipsy’s Acre?’
‘Oh,’ Ellie said, ‘we aren’t trespassing, are we?’
‘That’s as may be. Gipsies’ land this used to be. Gipsies’ land and they drove us off it. You’ll do no good here, and no good will come to you prowling about Gipsy’s Acre.’ There was no fight in Ellie, she wasn’t that kind. She said gently and politely:
‘I’m very sorry if we shouldn’t have come here. I thought this place was being sold today.’
‘And bad luck it will be to anyone who buys it!’ said the old woman. ‘You listen, my pretty, for you’re pretty enough, bad luck will come to whoever buys it. There’s a curse on this land, a curse put on it long ago, many years ago. You keep clear of it.[23 - You keep clear of it – Не подходи близко к этому месту] Don’t have nought to do with Gipsy’s Acre. Death it will bring you and danger. Go away home across the sea and don’t come back to Gipsy’s Acre. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
‘We’re doing no harm.’
‘Come now, Mrs Lee,’ I said, ‘don’t frighten this young lady.’
I turned in an explanatory way to Ellie.
‘Mrs Lee lives in the village. She’s got a cottage there. She tells fortunes and prophesies the future. All that, don’t you, Mrs Lee?’ I spoke to her in a jocular way.
‘I’ve got the gift,’ she said simply, drawing her gipsy-like figure up straighter still. ‘I’ve got the gift. It’s born in me. We all have it. I’ll tell your fortune, young lady. Cross my palm with silver and I’ll tell your fortune for you.’
‘I don’t think I want my fortune told.’
‘It’d be a wise thing to do. Know something about the future. Know what to avoid, know what’s coming to you if you don’t take care. Come now, there’s plenty of money in your pocket. Plenty of money. I know things it would be wise for you to know.’
I believe the urge to have one’s fortune told is almost invariable in women. I’ve noticed it before with girls I knew. I nearly always had to pay for them to go into the fortune-tellers’ booths if I took them to a fair. Ellie opened her bag and laid two half-crowns in the old woman’s hand.
‘Ah, my pretty, that’s right now. You hear what old Mother Lee will tell you.’
Ellie drew off her glove and laid her small delicate palm in the old woman’s hand. She looked down at it, muttering to herself. ‘What do I see now? What do I see?’
Suddenly she dropped Ellie’s hand abruptly.
‘I’d go away from here if I were you. Go – and don’t come back! That’s what I told you just now and it’s true. I’ve seen it again in your palm. Forget Gipsy’s Acre, forget you ever saw it. And it’s not just the ruined house up there, it’s the land itself that’s cursed.’
‘You’ve got a mania about that,’ I said roughly. ‘Anyway the young lady has nothing to do with the land here. She’s only here for a walk today, she’s nothing to do with the neighbourhood.’
The old woman paid no attention to me. She said dourly:
‘I’m telling you, my pretty. I’m warning you. You can have a happy life – but you must avoid danger. Don’t come to a place where there’s danger or where there’s a curse. Go away where you’re loved and taken care of and looked after. You’ve got to keep yourself safe. Remember that. Otherwise – otherwise —’ she gave a short shiver. ‘I don’t like to see it, I don’t like to see what’s in your hand.’
Suddenly with a queer brisk gesture she pushed back the two half-crowns into Ellie’s palm, mumbling something we could hardly hear. It sounded like ‘It’s cruel. It’s cruel, what’s going to happen.’ Turning, she stalked away at a rapid pace.
‘What a – what a frightening woman,’ said Ellie.
‘Pay no attention to her,’ I said gruffly. ‘I think she’s half off her head anyway. She just wants to frighten you off. They’ve got a sort of feeling, I think, about this particular piece of land.’
‘Have there been accidents here? Have bad things happened?’
‘Bound to be accidents. Look at the curve and the narrowness of the road. The Town Council ought to be shot for not doing something about it. Of course there’ll be accidents here. There aren’t enough signs warning you.’
‘Only accidents – or other things?’
‘Look here,’ I said, ‘people like to collect disasters. There are plenty of disasters always to collect. That’s the way stories build themselves up about a place.’
‘Is that one of the reasons why they say this property which is being sold will go cheap?’
‘Well, it may be, I suppose. Locally, that is. But I don’t suppose it’ll be sold locally. I expect it’ll be bought for developing. You’re shivering,’ I said. ‘Don’t shiver. Come on, we’ll walk fast.’ I added, ‘Would you rather I left you before you got back into the town?’
‘No. Of course not. Why should I?’
I made a desperate plunge[24 - desperate plunge – (зд.) отчаянный шаг].
‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I shall be in Market Chadwell tomorrow. I – I suppose – I don’t know whether you’ll still be there… I mean, would there be any chance of – seeing you?’ I shuffled my feet and turned my head away. I got rather red, I think. But if I didn’t say something now, how was I going to go on with this?
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I shan’t be going back to London until the evening.’
‘Then perhaps – would you – I mean, I suppose it’s rather cheek —’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Well, perhaps you’d come and have tea at a cafe – the Blue Dog I think it’s called. It’s quite nice,’ I said. ‘It’s – I mean, it’s —’ I couldn’t get hold of the word I wanted and I used the word that I’d heard my mother use once or twice —‘it’s quite ladylike,’ I said anxiously.
Then Ellie laughed. I suppose it sounded rather peculiar nowadays.
‘I’m sure it’ll be very nice,’ she said. ‘Yes. I’ll come. About half past four, will that be right?’
‘I’ll be waiting for you,’ I said. ‘I – I’m glad.’ I didn’t say what I was glad about.
We had come to the last turn of the road where the houses began.
‘Goodbye, then,’ I said, ‘till tomorrow. And – don’t think again about what that old hag said. She just likes scaring people, I think. She’s not all there,’ I added.
‘Do you feel it’s a frightening place?’ Ellie asked.
‘Gipsy’s Acre? No, I don’t,’ I said. I said it perhaps a trifle too decidedly, but I didn’t think it was frightening. I thought as I’d thought before, that it was a beautiful place, a beautiful setting for a beautiful house…
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 wrist-watch 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.
