Chapter 12

They did come over. None of them stayed very long. Not that time, not on a first visit. They came over to have a look at me. I found them difficult to understand because of course they were all Americans. They were types with which I was not well acquainted. Some of them were pleasant enough. Uncle Frank, for instance. I agreed with Greta about him. I wouldn’t have trusted him a yard. I had come across the same type in England. He was a big man with a bit of a paunch and pouches under his eyes that gave him a dissipated look which was not far from the truth, I imagine. He had an eye for women, I thought, and even more of an eye for the main chance. He borrowed money from me once or twice, quite small amounts, just, as it were, something to tide him over for a day or two. I thought it was not so much that he needed the money but he wanted to test me out, to see if I lent money easily. It was rather worrying because I wasn’t sure which was the best way to take it. Would it have been better to refuse point blank and let him know I was a skinflint or was it better to assume an appearance of careless generosity, which I was very far from feeling? To hell with Uncle Frank, I thought.

Cora, Ellie’s stepmother, was the one that interested me most. She was a woman of about forty, well turned out with tinted hair and a rather gushing manner. She was all sweetness to Ellie.

‘You mustn’t mind those letters I wrote you, Ellie,’ she said. ‘You must admit that it came as a terrible shock, your marrying like that. So secretly. But of course I know it was Greta who put you up to it, doing it that way.’

‘You mustn’t blame Greta,’ said Ellie. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you all so much. I just thought that – well, the less fuss —’

‘Well, of course, Ellie dear, you have something there. All the men of business were simply livid. Stanford Lloyd and Andrew Lippincott. I suppose they thought everyone would blame them for not looking after you better. And of course they’d no idea what Mike would be like. They didn’t realize how charming he was going to be. I didn’t myself.’

She smiled across at me, a very sweet smile and one of the falsest ones I’d ever seen! I thought to myself that if ever a woman hated a man, it was Cora who hated me. I thought her sweetness to Ellie was understandable enough. Andrew Lippincott had gone back to America and had, no doubt, given her a few words of caution. Ellie was selling some of her property in America, since she herself had definitely decided to live in England, but she was going to make a large allowance to Cora so that the latter could live where she chose. Nobody mentioned Cora’s husband much. I gathered he’d already taken himself off to some other part of the world, and had not gone there alone. In all probability, I gathered, another divorce was pending. There wouldn’t be much alimony out of this one. Cora’s last marriage had been to a man a good many years younger than herself with more attractions of a physical kind than cash.

Cora wanted that allowance. She was a woman of extravagant tastes. No doubt old Andrew Lippincott had hinted clearly enough that it could be discontinued any time if Ellie chose, or if Cora so far forgot herself as to criticize Ellie’s new husband too virulently.

Cousin Reuben, or Uncle Reuben, did not make the journey. He wrote instead to Ellie a pleasant, non-committal letter hoping she’d be very happy, but doubted if she would like living in England. ‘If you don’t, Ellie, you come right back to the States. Don’t think you won’t get a welcome here because you will. Certainly you will from your Uncle Reuben.’

‘He sounds rather nice,’ I said to Ellie.

‘Yes,’ said Ellie meditatively. She wasn’t, it seemed, quite so sure about it.

‘Are you fond of any of them, Ellie?’ I asked, ‘or oughtn’t I to ask that?’

‘Of course you can ask me anything.’ But she didn’t answer for a moment or two all the same. Then she said, with a sort of finality and decision, ‘No, I don’t think I am. It seems odd, but I suppose it’s because they don’t really belong to me. Only by environment, not by relationship. They none of them are my flesh and blood relations. I loved my father, what I remembered of him. I think he was rather a weak man and I think my grandfather was disappointed in him because he hadn’t got much head for business. He didn’t want to go into the business life. He liked going to Florida and fishing, that sort of thing. And then later he married Cora and I never cared for Cora much – or Cora for me, for that matter. My own mother, of course, I don’t remember. I liked Uncle Henry and Uncle Joe. They were fun. In some ways more fun than my father was. He, I think, was in some ways a quiet and rather sad man. But the uncles enjoyed themselves. Uncle Joe was, I think, a bit wild, the kind that is wild just because they’ve got lots of money. Anyway, he was the one who got smashed up in the car, and the other one was killed fighting in the war. My grandfather was a sick man by that time and it was a terrible blow to him that all his three sons were dead. He didn’t like Cora and he didn’t care much for any of his more distant relatives. Uncle Reuben for instance. He said you could never tell what Reuben was up to. That’s why he made arrangements to put his money in trust. А lot of it went to museums and hospitals. He left Cora well provided for, and his daughter’s husband Uncle Frank.’

‘But most of it to you?’

‘Yes. And I think that worried him a little bit. He did his best to get it looked after for me.’

‘By Uncle Andrew and by Mr Stanford Lloyd. А lawyer and a banker.’

‘Yes. I suppose he didn’t think I could look after it very well by myself. The odd thing is that he let me come into it at the age of twenty-one. He didn’t keep it in trust till I was twenty-five, as lots of people do. I expect that was because I was a girl.’

‘That’s odd,’ I said, ‘it would seem to me that it ought to be the other way round?’

Ellie shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I think my grandfather thought that young males were always wild and hit things up and that blondes with evil designs got hold of them. I think he thought it would be a good thing if they had plenty of time to sow their wild oats. That’s your English saying, isn’t it? But he said once to me, “If a girl is going to have any sense at all, she’ll have it at twenty-one. It won’t make any difference making her wait four years longer. If she’s going to be a fool she’ll be a fool by then just as much.” He said, too,’ Ellie looked at me and smiled, ‘that he didn’t think I was a fool. He said, “You mayn’t know very much about life, but you’ve got good sense, Ellie. Especially about people. I think you always will have.”’

‘I don’t suppose he would have liked me,’ I said thoughtfully.

Ellie has a lot of honesty. She didn’t try and reassure me by saying anything but what was undoubtedly the truth.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I think he’d have been rather horrified. To begin with, that is. He’d have had to get used to you.’

‘Poor Ellie,’ I said suddenly.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I said it to you once before, do you remember?’

‘Yes. You said poor little rich girl. You were quite right too.’

‘I didn’t mean it the same way this time,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean that you were poor because you were rich. I think I meant —’ I hesitated. ‘You’ve too many people,’ I said, ‘at you. All round you. Too many people who want things from you but who don’t really care about you. That’s true, isn’t it?’

‘I think Uncle Andrew really cares about me,’ said Ellie, a little doubtfully. ‘He’s always been nice to me, sympathetic. The others – no, you’re quite right. They only want things’.

‘They come and cadge off you, don’t they? Borrow money off you, want favours. Want you to get them out of jams, that sort of thing. They’re at you, at you, at you!’

‘I suppose it’s quite natural,’ said Ellie calmly, ‘but I’ve done with them all now. I’m coming to live here in England. I shan’t see much of them.’

She was wrong there, of course, but she hadn’t grasped that fact yet. Stanford Lloyd came over later by himself. He brought a great many documents and papers and things for Ellie to sign and wanted her agreement on investments. He talked to her about investments and shares and property that she owned, and the disposal of trust funds. It was all Double Dutch to me. I couldn’t have helped her or advised her. I couldn’t have stopped Stanford Lloyd from cheating her, either. I hoped he wasn’t, but how could anyone ignorant like myself be sure?

There was something about Stanford Lloyd that was almost too good to be true. He was a banker, and he looked like a banker. He was rather a handsome man though not young. He was very polite to me and thought dirt of me though he tried not to show it.

‘Well,’ I said when he had finally taken his departure, ‘that’s the last of the bunch.’

‘You didn’t think much of any of them, did you?’

‘I think your stepmother, Cora, is a double-faced bitch if I ever knew one. Sorry, Ellie, perhaps I oughtn’t to say that.’

‘Why not, if that’s what you think? I expect you’re not far wrong.’

‘You must have been lonely, Ellie,’ I said.

‘Yes, I was lonely. I knew girls of my own age. I went to a fashionable school but I was never really free. If I made friends with people, somehow or other they’d get me separated, push another girl at me instead. You know? Everything was governed by the social register. If I’d cared enough about anybody to make a fuss – but I never got far enough. There was never anybody I really cared for. Not until Greta came, and then everything was different. For the first time someone was really fond of me. It was wonderful.’ Her face softened.

‘I wish,’ I said, as I turned away towards the window.

‘What do you wish?’

‘Oh I don’t know… I wish perhaps that you weren’t – weren’t quite so dependent on Greta. It’s a bad thing to be as dependent as that on anyone.’

‘You don’t like her, Mike,’ said Ellie.

‘I do,’ I protested hurriedly. ‘Indeed I do. But you must realize, Ellie, that she is – well, she’s quite a stranger to me. I suppose, let’s face it, I’m a bit jealous of her. Jealous because she and you – well, I didn’t understand before – how linked together you were.’

‘Don’t be jealous. She’s the only person who was good to me, who cared about me – till I met you.’

‘But you have met me,’ I said, ‘and you’ve married me.’ Then I said again what I’d said before. ‘And we’re going to live happily ever afterwards.’