hardly had time to take root. Greta burst out laughing, a high whimsical 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 home, 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. A whack of money coming 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. 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 memorise 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. A 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, became 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 good-bye 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
