Chapter 6

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 frontdoor bell. My mother opened the door and stood there looking at me. She looked just the same as usual, too. Tall and, grey hair parted in the middle, mouth like a rat-trap, and eyes that were eternally suspicious. She looked hard as nails angular. 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^[26] and go sick, dumping your clients in some heathen town.’^[27]

‘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 re-employ 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 night-club 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.

Chapter 7

When I got home there was a telegram waiting for me – it had been sent from Antibes.

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 shyly 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^[28]. 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.’