I felt so alone, so horribly alone. I'd escaped from enemies now, I'd got to a friend. My only friend, really. He was the only person who knew anything about me, except Mum but I didn't want to think of Mum.
Once or twice I spoke to a nurse, asked her if there wasn't anything they could do, but she shook her head and said noncommittally,
'He might recover consciousness or might not.'
I sat there. And then at last he stirred and sighed. The nurse raised him up very gently. He looked at me but I didn't know whether he recognised me or not. He was just looking at me as though he looked past me and beyond me.
Then suddenly a difference came into his eyes. I thought 'He does know me, he does see me.' He said something very faintly and I bent over the bed so as to catch it. But they didn't seem words that had any meaning. Then his body had a sudden spasm and twitch, and he threw his head back and shouted out:
'You damned fool Why didn't you go the other way?'
Then he just collapsed and died.
I don't know what he meant – or even if he knew himself what he was saying.
So that was the last I saw of Santonix. I wonder if he'd have heard me if I had said anything to him? I'd like to have told him once more that the house he'd built me was the best thing I had in the world. The thing that mattered most to me. Funny that a house could mean that. I suppose it was a sort of symbolism about it. Something you want. Something you want so much that you don't quite know what it is. But he'd known what it was and he'd given it to me. And I'd got it. And I was going home to it.
Going home. That's all I could think about when I got on the boat. That and a deadly tiredness at first… And then a rising tide of happiness oozing up as it were from the depths… I was going home. I was going home…
Home is the sailor, home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill…
Chapter 23
Yes, that was what I was doing. It was all over now. The last of the fight, the last of the struggle. The last phase of the journey.
It seemed so long ago to the time of my restless youth. The days of 'I want, I want'. But it wasn't long. Less than a year…
I went over it all – lying there in my bunk, and thinking. Meeting Ellie – our times in Regent's Park – our marriage in the Registrar's office. The house – Santonix building it – the house completed. Mine, all mine. I was me – me – me as I wanted to be. As I'd always wanted to be. I'd got everything I'd wanted and I was going home to it.
Before I left New York I'd written one letter and sent it off by air mail to get there ahead of me. I'd written to Phillpot. Somehow I felt that Phillpot would understand, though others mightn't.
It was easier to write than to tell him. Anyway, he'd got to know. Everyone had got to know. Some people probably wouldn't understand, but I thought he would. He'd seen for himself how close Ellie and Greta had been, how Ellie had depended on Greta. I thought he'd realise how I'd come to depend upon her also, how it would be impossible for me to live alone in the house where I'd lived with Ellie unless there was someone there to help me. I don't know if I put it very well. I did my best.
'I'd like you,' I wrote, 'to be the first one to know. You've been so kind to us, and I think you'll be the only person to understand. I can't face living all alone at Gipsy's Acre. I've been thinking all the time I've been in America and I've decided that as soon as I get home I'm going to ask Greta to marry me. She's the only person I can really talk to about Ellie, you see. She'll understand. Perhaps she won't marry me, but I think she will… It will make everything as though there were the three of us together still.'
I wrote the letter three times before I could get it to express just what I wanted to say. Phillpot ought to get it two days before my return.
I came up on deck as we were approaching England. I looked out as the land came nearer. I thought 'I wish Santonix was with me'. I did wish it. I wished he could know how everything was all coming true. Everything I'd planned – everything I'd thought – everything I'd wanted.
I'd shaken off America, I'd shaken off the crooks and the sycophants and all the whole lot of them whom I hated and whom I was pretty sure hated me and looked down on me for being so low class! I was coming back in triumph. I was coming back to the pine trees and the curling dangerous road that made its way up through Gipsy's Acre to the house on the hilltop. My house! I was coming back to the two things I wanted. My house – the house that I'd dreamed of, that I'd planned, that I'd wanted above everything. That and a wonderful woman… I'd known always that I'd meet one day a wonderful woman. I had met her. I'd seen her and she'd seen me. We'd come together, A wonderful woman. I'd known the moment I saw her that I belonged to her, belonged to her absolutely and for always. I was hers. And now, at last – I was going to her.
Nobody saw me arrive at Kingston Bishop. It was almost dark and I came by train and I walked from the station, taking a roundabout side road. I didn't want to meet any of the people in the village. Not that night…
The sun had set when I came up the road to Gipsy's Acre. I'd told Greta the time I'd arrive. She was up there in the house waiting for me. At last! We'd done with subterfuges now and all the pretences – the pretence of disliking her – I thought now, laughing to myself, of the part I'd played, a part I'd played carefully right from the beginning.
Disliking Greta, not wanting her to come and stay with Ellie. Yes, I'd been very careful. Everyone must have been taken in by that pretence. I remembered the quarrel we'd faked up so that Ellie should overhear it.
Greta had known me for what I was the first moment we met. We'd never had any silly illusions about each other. She had the same kind of mind, the same kind of desires as I had. We wanted the world, nothing less! We wanted to be on top of the world. We wanted to fulfil every ambition. We wanted to have everything, deny ourselves nothing. I remembered how I'd poured out my heart to her when I first met her in Hamburg, telling my frenzied desire for things. I hadn't got to conceal my inordinate greed for life from Greta, she had the same greed herself. She said:
'For all you want out of life you've got to have money.'
'Yes,' I said, 'and I don't see how I'm going to get it.'
'No,' said Greta, 'you won't get it by hard work. You're not the kind.'
'Work!' I said, 'I'd have to work for years! I don't want to wait. I don't want to be middle-aged.' I said 'You know the story about that chap Schliemann how he worked, toiled, and made a fortune so that he could have his life's dream come true and go to Troy and dig it up and find the graves of Troy. He got his dream but he had to wait till he was forty. But I don't want to wait till I'm a middle-aged man. Old. One foot in the grave. I want it now when I'm young and strong. You do too, don't you?' I said.
'Yes. And I know the way you can do it. It's easy. I wonder you haven't thought of it already. You can get girls easily enough, can't you? I can see that. I can feel it.'
'Do you think I care about girls – or ever have really? There's only one girl I want,' I said. 'You. And you know that. I belong to you. I knew it the moment I saw you. I knew always that I'd meet someone like you. And I have. I belong to you.'
'Yes,' said Greta, 'I think you do.'
'We both want the same things out of life,' I said.
'I tell you it's easy,' said Greta. 'Easy. All you've got to do is to marry a rich girl, one of the richest girls in the world. I can put you in the way of doing that.'
'Don't be fantastic,' I said.
'It's not fantastic, it'll be easy.'
'No,' I said, 'that's no good to me. I don't want to be the husband of a rich wife. She'll buy me things and we'll do things and she'll keep me in a golden cage, but that's not what I want. I don't want to be a fed up slave.'
'You needn't be. It's the sort of thing that needn't last for long. Just long enough. Wives do die, you
