‘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].
‘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