I hesitated and then I blurted out the words that came to my lips.
‘I’m pretending,’ I said. ‘I can’t buy it, of course, because I haven’t got any money, but I’m interested. I’d like to buy it. I want to buy it. Open your mouth and laugh at me if you like but that’s the way it is.’
‘But isn’t it rather too decrepit, too—’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean I want it like it is now. I want to pull this down, cart it all away. It’s an ugly house and I think it must have been a sad house. But this place isn’t sad or ugly. It’s beautiful. Look here. Come a little this way, through the trees. Look out at the view that way where it goes to the hills and the moors. D’you see? Clear away a vista here—and then you come this way—’
I took her by the arm and led her to a second point of the compass. If we were behaving unconventionally she did not notice it. Anyway, it wasn’t that kind of way I was holding her. I wanted to show her what I saw.
‘Here,’ I said, ‘here you see where it sweeps down to the sea and where the rocks show out there. There’s a town between us and that but we can’t see it because of the hills bulging out farther down the slope. And then you can look a third way, to a vague foresty valley. Do you see now if you cut down trees and make big vistas and clear this space round the house, do you see what a beautiful house you could have here? You wouldn’t site it where the old one is. You’d go about fifty—a hundred yards to the right, here. This is where you could have a house, a wonderful house. A house built by an architect who’s a genius.’
‘Do you know any architects who are geniuses?’ She sounded doubtful.
‘I know one,’ I said.
Then I started telling her about Santonix. We sat down side by side on a fallen tree and I talked. Yes, I talked to that slender woodland girl whom I’d never seen before and I put all I had into what I was telling her. I told her the dream that one could build up.
‘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.
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 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?’
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. A 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. 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