Chapter 11

I had been out shopping the next morning and I arrived back at the hotel rather later than I had meant. I found Ellie sitting in the central lounge and opposite her was a tall blonde young woman. In fact Greta. Both of them were talking nineteen to the dozen.

I’m never any hand at describing people but I’ll have a shot at describing Greta. To begin with one couldn’t deny that she was, as Ellie had said, very beautiful and also, as Mr Lippincott had reluctantly admitted, very handsome. The two things are not exactly the same. If you say a woman is handsome it does not mean that actually you yourself admire her. Mr Lippincott, I gathered, had not admired Greta. All the same when Greta walked across the lounge into a hotel or in a restaurant, men’s heads turned to look at her. She was a Nordic type of blonde with pure gold-corn-coloured hair. She wore it piled high on her head in the fashion of the time, not falling straight down on each side of her face in the Chelsea tradition. She looked what she was, Swedish or north German. In fact, pin on a pair of wings and she could have gone to a fancy dress ball as a Valkyrie. Her eyes were a bright clear blue and her contours were admirable. Let’s admit it. She was something!

I came along to where they were sitting and joined them, greeting them both in what I hope was a natural, friendly manner, though I couldn’t help feeling a bit awkward. I’m not always very good at acting a part. Ellie said immediately:

‘At last, Mike, this is Greta.’

I said I guessed it might be, in a rather facetious, not very happy manner. I said:

‘I’m very glad to meet you at last, Greta.’

Ellie said:

‘As you know very well, if it hadn’t been for Greta we would never have been able to get married.’

‘All the same we’d have managed it somehow,’ I said.

‘Not if the family had come down on us like a ton of coals. They’d have broken it up somehow. Tell me, Greta, have they been very awful?’ Ellie asked. ‘You haven’t written or said anything to me about that.’

‘I know better,’ said Greta, ‘than to write to a happy couple when they’re on their honeymoon.’

‘But were they very angry with you?’

‘Of course! What do you imagine? But I was prepared for that, I can assure you.’

‘What have they said or done?’

‘Everything they could,’ said Greta cheerfully. ‘Starting with the sack naturally.’

‘Yes, I suppose that was inevitable. But – but what have you done? After all they can’t refuse to give you references.’

‘Of course they can. And after all, from their point of view I was placed in a position of trust and abused it shamefully.’ She added, ‘Enjoyed abusing it too.’

‘But what are you going to do now?’

‘Oh I’ve got a job ready to walk into.’

‘In New York?’

‘No. Here in London. Secretarial.’

‘But are you all right?’

‘Darling Ellie,’ said Greta, ‘how can I not be all right with that lovely cheque you sent me in anticipation of what was going to happen when the balloon went up?’

Her English was very good with hardly any trace of accent though she used a lot of colloquial terms which sometimes didn’t run quite right.

‘I’ve seen a bit of the world, fixed myself up in London and bought a good many things as well.’

‘Mike and I have bought a lot of things too,’ said Ellie, smiling at the recollection.

It was true. We’d done ourselves pretty well with our continental shopping. It was really wonderful that we had dollars to spend, no niggling Treasury restrictions. Brocades and fabrics in Italy for the house. And we’d bought pictures too, both in Italy and in Paris, paying what seemed fabulous sums for them. А whole world had opened up to me that I’d never dreamt would have come my way.

‘You both look remarkably happy,’ said Greta.

‘You haven’t seen our house yet,’ said Ellie. ‘It’s going to be wonderful. It’s going to be just like we dreamed it would be, isn’t it, Mike?’

‘I have seen it,’ said Greta. ‘The first day I got back to England I hired a car and drove down there.’

‘Well?’ said Ellie.

I said Well? too.

‘Well,’ said Greta consideringly. She shifted her head from side to side.

Ellie looked grief-stricken, horribly taken aback. But I wasn’t taken in. I saw at once that Greta was having a bit of fun with us. If the thought of fun wasn’t very kind, it hardly had time to take root. Greta burst out laughing, a high musical laugh that made people turn their heads and look at us.

‘You should have seen your faces,’ she said, ‘especially yours, Ellie. I have to tease you just a little. It’s a wonderful house, lovely. That man’s a genius.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘he’s something out of the ordinary. Wait till you meet him.’

‘I have met him,’ said Greta. ‘He was down there the day I went. Yes, he’s an extraordinary person. Rather frightening, don’t you think?’

‘Frightening?’ I said, surprised. ‘In what way?’

‘Oh I don’t know. It’s as though he looks through you and – well, sees right through to the other side. That’s always disconcerting.’ Then she added, ‘He looks rather ill.’

‘He is ill. Very ill,’ I said.

‘What a shame. What’s the matter with him, tuberculosis, something like that?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think it’s tuberculosis. I think it’s something to do with – oh with blood.’

‘Oh I see. Doctors can do almost anything nowadays, can’t they, unless they kill you first while they’re trying to cure you. But don’t let’s think of that. Let’s think of the house. When will it be finished?’

‘Quite soon, I should think, by the look of it. I’d never imagined a house could go up so quickly,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ said Greta carelessly, ‘that’s money. Double shifts and bonuses – all the rest of it. You don’t really know yourself, Ellie, how wonderful it is to have all the money you have.’

But I did know. I had been learning, learning a great deal in the last few weeks. I’d stepped as a result of marriage into an entirely different world and it wasn’t the sort of world I’d imagined it to be from the outside. So far in my life, a lucky double had been my highest knowledge of affluence. А whack of moneycoming in, and spending it as fast as I could on the biggest blow-out I could find. Crude, of course. The crudeness of my class. But Ellie’s world was a different world. It wasn’t what I should have thought it to be. Just more and more super luxury. It wasn’t bigger bathrooms and larger houses and more electric light fittings and bigger meals and faster cars. It wasn’t just spending for spending’s sake and showing off to everyone in sight. Instead, it was curiously simple. The sort of simplicity that comes when you get beyond the point of splashing for splashing’s sake. You don’t want three yachts or four cars and you can’t eat more than three meals a day and if you buy a really top-price picture you don’t want more than perhaps one of them in a room. It’s as simple as that. Whatever you have is just the best of its kind, not so much because it is the best, but because there is no reason if you like or want any particular thing, why you shouldn’t have it. There is no moment when you say, ‘I’m afraid I can’t afford that one.’ So in a strange way it makes sometimes for such a curious simplicity that I couldn’t understand it. We were considering a French Impressionist picture, a Cezanne, I think it was. I had to learn that name carefully. I always mixed it up with a tzigane which I gather is a gipsy orchestra. And then as we walked along the streets of Venice, Ellie stopped to look at some pavement artists. On the whole they were doing some terrible pictures for tourists which all looked the same. Portraits with great rows of shining teeth and usually blonde hair falling down their necks.

And then she bought quite a tiny picture, just a picture of a little glimpse through to a canal. The man who had painted it appraised the look of us and she bought it for £6 by English exchange. The funny thing was that I knew quite well that Ellie had just the same longing for that £6 picture that she had for the Cezanne.

It was the same way one day in Paris. She’d said to me suddenly:

‘What fun it would be – let’s get a really nice crisp French loaf of bread and have that with butter and one of those cheeses wrapped up in leaves.’

So we did and Ellie I think enjoyed it more than the meal we’d had the night before which had come to about £20 English. At first I couldn’t understand it, then I began to see. The awkward thing was that I could see now that being married to Ellie wasn’t just fun and games. You have to do your homework, you have to learn how to go into a restaurant and the sort of things to order and the right tips, and when for some reason you gave more than usual. You have to memorize what you drink with certain foods. I had to do most of it by observation. I couldn’t ask Ellie because that was one of the things she wouldn’t have understood. She’d have said ‘But, darling Mike, you can have anything you like. What does it matter if waiters think you ought to have one particular wine with one particular thing?’ It wouldn’t have mattered to her because she was born to it but it mattered to me because I couldn’t do just as I liked. I wasn’t simple enough. Clothes too. Ellie was more helpful there, for she could understand better. She just guided me to the right places and told me to let them have their head.

Of course I didn’t look right and sound right yet. But that didn’t matter much. I’d got the hang of it, enough so that I could pass muster with people like old Lippincott, and shortly, presumably, when Ellie’s stepmother and uncles were around, but actually it wasn’t going to matter in the future at all. When the house was finished and when we’d moved in, we were going to be far away from everybody. It could be our kingdom. I looked at Greta sitting opposite me. I wondered what she’d really thought of our house. Anyway, it was what I wanted. It satisfied me utterly. I wanted to drive down and go through a private path through the trees which led down to a small cove which would be our own beach which nobody could come to on the land side. It would be a thousand times better, I thought, plunging into the sea there. А thousand times better than a lido spread along a beach with hundreds of bodies lying there. I didn’t want all the senseless rich things. I wanted – there were the words again, my own particular words – I want, I want… I could feel all the feeling surging up in me. I wanted a wonderful woman and a wonderful house like nobody else’s house and I wanted my wonderful house to be full of wonderful things. Things that belonged to me. Everything would belong to me.

‘He’s thinking of our house,’ said Ellie.

It seemed that she had twice suggested to me that we should go now into the dining-room. I looked at her affectionately.

Later in the day – it was that evening – when we were dressing to go out to dinner, Ellie said a little tentatively: ‘Mike, you do – you do like Greta, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do,’ I said.

‘I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t like her.’

‘But I do,’ I protested. ‘What makes you think I don’t?’

‘I’m not quite sure. I think it’s the way you hardly look at her even when you’re talking to her.’

‘Well, I suppose that’s because – well, because I feel nervous.’

‘Nervous of Greta?’

‘Yes, she’s a bit awe-inspiring, you know.’

And I told Ellie how I thought Greta looked rather like a Valkyrie.

‘Not as stout as an operatic one,’ said Ellie and laughed. We both laughed. I said:

‘It’s all very well for you because you’ve known her for years. But she is just a bit – well, I mean she’s very efficient and practical and sophisticated.’ I struggled with a lot of words which didn’t seem to be quite the right ones. I said suddenly, ‘I feel – I feel at a disadvantage with her.’

‘Oh Mike!’ Ellie was conscience-stricken. ‘I know we’ve got a lot of things to talk about. Old jokes and old things that happened and all that. I suppose – yes, I suppose it might make you feel rather shy. But you’ll soon get to be friends. She likes you. She likes you very much. She told me so.’

‘Listen, Ellie, she’d probably tell you that anyway.’

‘Oh no she wouldn’t. Greta’s very outspoken. You heard her. Some of the things she said today.’

It was true that Greta had not minced her words during luncheon. She had said, addressing me rather than Ellie:

‘You must have thought it queer sometimes, the way I was backing Ellie up when I’d not even seen you. But I got so mad – so mad with the life that they were making her lead. All tied up in a cocoon with their money, their traditional ideas. She never had a chance to enjoy herself, go anywhere really by herself and do what she wanted. She wanted to rebel but she didn’t know how. And so – yes, all right, I urged her on. I suggested she should look at properties in England. Then I said when she was twenty-one she could buy one of her own and say goodbye to all that New York lot.’

‘Greta always has wonderful ideas,’ said Ellie. ‘She thinks of things I’d probably never have thought of myself.’

What were those words Mr Lippincott had said to me? ‘She has too much influence over Ellie.’ I wondered if it was true. Queerly enough I didn’t really think so. I felt that there was a core somewhere in Ellie that Greta, for all that she knew her so well, had never quite appreciated. Ellie, I was sure, would always accept any ideas that matched with the ideas she wanted to have herself. Greta had preached rebellion to Ellie but Ellie herself wanted to rebel, only she was not sure how to do so. But I felt that Ellie, now that I was coming to know her better, was one of those very simple people who have unexpected reserves. I thought Ellie would be quite capable of taking a stand of her own if she wished to. The point was that she wouldn’t very often wish to and I thought then how difficult everyone was to understand. Even Ellie. Even Greta. Even perhaps my own mother… The way she looked at me with fear in her eyes.

I wondered about Mr Lippincott. I said, as we were peeling some outsize peaches:

‘Mr Lippincott seems to have taken our marriage very well really. I was surprised.’

‘Mr Lippincott,’ said Greta, ‘is an old fox.’

‘You always say so, Greta,’ said Ellie, ‘but I think he’s rather a dear. Very strict and proper and all that.’

‘Well, go on thinking so if you like,’ said Greta. ‘Myself, I wouldn’t trust him an inch.’

‘Not trust him!’ said Ellie.

Greta shook her head. ‘I know. He’s a pillar of respectability and trustworthiness. He’s everything a trustee and a lawyer should be.’

Ellie laughed and said, ‘Do you mean he’s embezzled my fortune? Don’t be silly, Greta. There are thousands of auditors and banks and check-ups and all that sort of thing.’

‘Oh, I expect he’s all right really,’ said Greta. ‘All the same, those are the people that do embezzle. The trustworthy ones. And then everyone says afterwards, “I’d never have believed it of Mr A. or Mr B. The last man in the world.” Yes, that’s what they say. “The last man in the world”.’

Ellie said thoughtfully that her Uncle Frank, she thought, was much more likely to go in for dishonest practices. She did not seem unduly worried or surprised by the idea.

‘Oh well he looks like a crook,’ said Greta. ‘That handicaps him to start with. All that geniality and bonhomie. But he’ll never be in a position to be a crook in a big way.’

‘Is he your mother’s brother?’ I asked. I always got confused over Ellie’s relations.

‘He’s my father’s sister’s husband,’ said Ellie. ‘She left him and married someone else and died about six or seven years ago. Uncle Frank has more or less stuck on with the family.’

‘There are three of them,’ said Greta kindly and helpfully. ‘Three leeches hanging round, as you might say. Ellie’s actual uncles were killed, one in Korea and one in a car accident, so what she’s got is a much-damaged stepmother, an Uncle Frank, an amiable hanger-on in the family home, and her cousin Reuben whom she calls Uncle but he’s only a cousin and Andrew Lippincott, and Stanford Lloyd.’

‘Who is Stanford Lloyd?’ I asked, bewildered.

‘Oh another sort of trustee, isn’t he, Ellie? At any rate he manages your investments and things like that. Which can’t really be very difficult because when you’ve got as much money as Ellie has, it sort of makes more money all the time without anyone having to do much about it. Those are the main surrounding group,’ Greta added, ‘and I have no doubt that you will be meeting them fairly soon. They’ll be over here to have a look at you.’

I groaned, and looked at Ellie. Ellie said very gently and sweetly:

‘Never mind, Mike, they’ll go away again.’