'I'd like to meet him sometime, though I don't suppose I'd know what to say to him. I'm not artistic.'
Then he asked us to settle a day to come and have lunch with him and his wife.
'You can see how you like my house,' he said.
'It's an old house, I suppose?' I said.
'Built 1720. Nice period. The original house was Elizabethan. That was burnt down about 1700 and a new one built on the same spot.'
'You've always lived here then?' I said. I didn't mean him personally, of course, but he understood.
'Yes. We've been here since Elizabethan times. Sometimes prosperous, sometimes down and out, selling land when things have gone badly, buying it back when things went well. I'll be glad to show it to you both,' he said, and looking at Ellie he said with a smile, 'Americans like old houses, I know. You're the one who probably won't think much of it,' he said to me.
'I won't pretend I know much about old things,' I said.
He stumped off then. In his car there was a spaniel waiting for him. It was a battered old car with the paint rubbed off, but I was getting my values by now. I knew that in this part of the world he was still God all right, and he'd set the seal of his approval on us. I could see that. He liked Ellie. I was inclined to think that he'd liked me, too, although I'd noticed the appraising glances which he shot over me from time to time, as though he was making a quick snap judgment on something he hadn't come across before.
Ellie was putting splinters of glass carefully in the wastepaper basket when I came back into the drawing- room.
'I'm sorry it's broken,' she said regretfully. 'I liked it.'
'We can get another like it,' I said. 'It's modern.'
'I know! What startled you, Mike?'
I considered for a moment.
'Something Phillpot said. It reminded me of something that happened when I was a kid. A pal of mine at school and I played truant and went out skating on a local pond. Ice wouldn't bear us, silly little asses that we were. He went through and was drowned before anyone could get him out.'
'How horrible.'
'Yes. I'd forgotten all about it until Phillpot mentioned that about his own brother.'
'I like him, Mike, don't you?'
'Yes, very much. I wonder what his wife is like?'
We went to lunch with the Phillpots early the following week. It was a white Georgian house, rather beautiful in its lines, though not particularly exciting. Inside, it was shabby but comfortable. There were pictures of what I took to be ancestors on the walls of the long dining-room. Most of them were pretty bad, I thought, though they might have looked better if they had been cleaned. There was one of a fair-haired girl in pink satin that I rather took to. Major Phillpot smiled and said:
'You've picked one of our best. It's a Gainsborough, and a good one, though the subject of it caused a bit of trouble in her time. Strongly suspected of having poisoned her husband. May have been prejudice, because she was a foreigner. Gervase Phillpot picked her up abroad somewhere.'
A few other neighbours had been invited to meet us. Dr. Shaw, an elderly man with a kindly but tired manner. He had to rush away before we had finished our meal. There was the Vicar who was young and earnest, and a middle-aged woman with a bullying voice who bred corgis. And there was a tall handsome dark girl called Claudia Hardcastle who seemed to live for horses, though hampered by having an allergy which gave her violent hay fever.
She and Ellie got on together rather well. Ellie adored riding and she too was troubled by an allergy.
'In the States it's mostly ragwort gives it to me,' she said – 'but horses too, sometimes. It doesn't trouble me much nowadays because they have such wonderful things that doctors can give you for different kinds of allergies. I'll give you some of my capsules. They're bright orange. And if you remember to take one before you start out you don't as much as sneeze once.'
Claudia Hardcastle said that would be wonderful.
'Camels do it to me worse than horses,' she said. 'I was in Egypt last year – and the tears just streamed down my face all the way round the Pyramids.'
Ellie said some people got it with cats.
'And pillows.' They went on talking about allergies. I sat next to Mrs. Phillpot who was tall and willowy and talked exclusively about her health in the intervals of eating a hearty meal. She gave me a full account of all her various ailments and of how puzzled many eminent members of the medical profession had been by her case. Occasionally she made a social diversion and asked me what I did. I parried that one, and she made half-hearted efforts to find out whom I knew. I could have answered truthfully 'Nobody', but I thought it would be well to refrain – especially as she wasn't a real snob and didn't really want to know.
Mrs. Corgi, whose proper name I hadn't caught, was much more thorough in her queries but I diverted her to the general iniquity and ignorance of vets! It was all quite pleasant and peaceful, if rather dull.
Later, as we were making a rather desultory tour of the garden, Claudia Hardcastle joined me.
She said, rather abruptly, 'I've heard about you – from my brother.'
I looked surprised. I couldn't imagine it to be possible that I knew a brother of Claudia Hardcastle's.
'Are you sure?' I said.
She seemed amused.
'As a matter of fact, he built your house.'
'Do you mean Santonix is your brother?'
'Half brother. I don't know him very well. We rarely meet.'
'He's wonderful,' I said.
'Some people think so, I know.'
'Don't you?'
'I'm never sure. There are two sides to him. At one time he was going right down the hill… People wouldn't have anything to do with him. And then – he seemed to change. He began to succeed in his profession in the most extraordinary way. It was as though he was -' she paused for a word – 'dedicated.'
'I think he is – just that.'
Then I asked her if she had seen our house.
'No – not since it was finished.'
I told her she must come and see it.
'I shan't like it, I warn you. I don't like modern houses. Queen Anne is my favourite period.'
She said she was going to put Ellie up for the golf club. And they were going to ride together. Ellie was going to buy a horse, perhaps more than one. She and Ellie seemed to have made friends.
When Phillpot was showing me his stables he said a word or two about Claudia.
'Good rider to hounds,' he said. 'Pity she's mucked up her life.'
'Has she?'
'Married a rich man, years older than herself. An American. Name of Lloyd. It didn't take. Came apart almost at once. She went back to her own name. Don't think she'll ever marry again. She's anti man. Pity.'
When we were driving home, Ellie said: 'Dull – but nice. Nice people. We're going to be very happy here, aren't we, Mike?'
I said: 'Yes, we are.' And took my hand from the steering wheel and laid it over hers.
When we got back, I dropped Ellie at the house, and put away the car in the garage.
As I walked back to the house, I heard the faint twanging of Ellie's guitar. She had a rather beautiful old Spanish guitar that must have been worth a lot of money. She used to sing to it in a soft low crooning voice. Very pleasant to hear. I didn't know what most of the songs were. American spirituals partly, I think, and some old Irish and Scottish ballads – sweet and rather sad. They weren't Pop music or anything of that kind. Perhaps they were folk songs. I went round by the terrace and paused by the window before going in.
Ellie was singing one of my favourites. I don't know what it was called. She was crooning the words softly to herself, bending her head down over the guitar and gently plucking the strings. It had a sweet-sad haunting little tune.
