me very much. It was, you see, just as though she didn't see me – I mean I knew she couldn't really be there, I knew she was dead – but I saw her. She was dead and her body was buried in the cemetery in the U.S.A. But all the same she was standing under the fir tree and she was looking at me. No, not at me. She was looking as though she expected to see me and there was love in her face. The same love that I had seen one day, one day when she'd been plucking the strings of her guitar. That day when she'd said to me, 'What were you thinking of?' And I said 'Why do you ask me?' and she said 'You were looking at me as though you loved me.' I'd said something silly like 'Of course I love you.'
I stopped dead. I stopped dead there in the road. I was shaking. I said out loud,
'Ellie.'
She didn't move, she just stayed there, looking…
Looking straight through me. That's what frightened me, because I knew if I thought for a minute I'd know why she didn't see me, and I didn't want to know. No, I didn't want to know that. I was quite sure that I didn't want to know that. Looking straight at the place where I was – not seeing me. I ran then. I ran like a coward, up the rest of the road to where the lights were shining in my house, until I pulled myself out of the silly panic that I was in. This was my triumph. I'd got home. I was the hunter home from the hills, back to my house, back to the other thing that I'd wanted more than anything in the world, to the wonderful woman whom I belonged to body and soul.
And now we'd get married and we'd live in the house. We'd get all we'd played for! We'd won – won hands down!
The door wasn't latched. I went in, stamping my feet, and through the open door of the library. And there was Greta standing by the window waiting for me. She was glorious. She was the most glorious and the most lovely thing I'd ever seen. She was like a Brunhilde, a super Valkyrie with shining golden hair. She smelt and looked and tasted of sex. We'd denied ourselves so long except for occasional brief meetings up in the Folly.
I came straight into her arms, a sailor home from the sea to where he belonged. Yes, it was one of the most wonderful moments of my life.
Presently we came down to earth. I sat down and she shoved a small pile of letters towards me. I picked out almost automatically one with an American stamp. It was the air mail letter from Lippincott. I wondered what he'd put in it, why he'd had to write me a letter.
'Well,' said Greta with a deep satisfied sigh, 'we've made it.'
'V-Day all right,' I said.
We both laughed, laughed wildly. There was champagne on the table. I opened it and we drank to each other.
'This place is wonderful,' I said, looking round. 'It's more beautiful than I remember it. Santonix – But I haven't told you. Santonix is dead.'
'Oh dear,' said Greta, 'what a pity. So he really was ill?'
'Of course he was ill. I never wanted to think so. I went and saw him when he was dying.'
Greta gave a little shiver.
'I shouldn't like to do that. Did he say anything?'
'Not really. He said I was a damned fool – I ought to have gone the other way.'
'What did he mean – what way?'
'I don't know what he meant,' I said. 'I suppose he was delirious. Didn't know what he was talking about.'
'Well, this house is a fine monument to his memory,' said Greta. 'I think we'll stick to it, don't you?'
I stared at her. 'Of course. Do you think I'm going to live anywhere else?'
'We can't live here all the time,' said Greta. 'Not all the year round. Buried in a hole like this village?'
'But it's where I want to live – it's where I always meant to live.'
'Yes of course. But after all, Mike, we've got all the money in the world. We can go anywhere! We can go all over the Continent – we'll go on Safari in Africa. We'll have adventures. We'll go and look for things – exciting pictures. We'll go to the Angkor Vat. Don't you want to have an adventurous life?'
'Well, I suppose so. But we'll always come back here, won't we?'
I had a queer feeling, a queer feeling that something had gone wrong somewhere. That's all I'd ever thought of.
My House and Greta. I hadn't wanted anything else. But she did. I saw that. She was just beginning. Beginning to want things. Beginning to know she could have them. I had a sudden cruel foreboding. I began to shiver.
'What's the matter with you, Mike – you're shivering. Have you caught a cold or something?'
'It's not that,' I said.
'What's happened, Mike?'
'I saw Ellie,' I said.
'What do you mean, you saw Ellie?'
'As I was walking up the road I turned the corner and there she was, standing under a fir tree, looking at – I mean looking towards me.'
Greta stared.
'Don't be ridiculous. You – you imagined things.'
'Perhaps one does imagine things. This is Gipsy's Acre after all. Ellie was there all right, looking – looking quite happy. Just like herself as though she'd – she'd always been there and was always going to be there.'
'Mike!' Greta took hold of my shoulder. She shook me. 'Mike, don't say things like that. Had you been drinking before you got here?'
'No, I waited till I got here to you. I knew you'd have champagne waiting for us.'
'Well, let's forget Ellie and drink to ourselves.'
'It was Ellie,' I said obstinately.
'Of course it wasn't Ellie! It was just a trick of the light – something like that.'
'It was Ellie, and she was standing there. She was looking for me and at me. But she couldn't see me. Greta, she couldn't see me.' My voice rose. 'And I know why. I know why she couldn't see me.'
'What do you mean?'
It was then that I whispered for the first time under my breath:
'Because that wasn't me. I wasn't there. There was nothing for her to see but Endless Night.' Then I shouted out in a panic-stricken voice 'Some are born to Sweet Delight, and some are born to Endless Night. Me, Greta, me.
'Do you remember, Greta,' I said, 'how she sat on that sofa? She used to play that song on her guitar, singing it in her gentle voice. You must remember.
''Every night and every morn,'' I sang it under my breath, ''Some to misery are born. Every morn and every night some are born to sweet delight.' That's Ellie, Greta. She was born to sweet delight. 'Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night.' That's what Mum knew about me. She knew I was born to endless night. I hadn't got there yet. But she knew. And Santonix knew. He knew I was heading that way. But it mightn't have happened. There was just a moment, just one moment, the time Ellie sang that song. I could have been quite happy, couldn't I, really, married to Ellie? I could have gone on being married to Ellie.'
'No, you couldn't,' said Greta. 'I never thought you were the type of person who lost your nerve, Mike.' She shook me roughly by the shoulder again. 'Wake up.'
I stared at her.
'I'm sorry, Greta. What have I been saying?'
'I suppose they got you down over there in the States. But you did all right, didn't you? I mean, all the investments are all right?'
'Everything's fixed,' I said. 'Everything's fixed for our future. Our glorious, glorious future.'
'You speak very queerly. I'd like to know what Lippincott says in his letter.'
I pulled his letter towards me and opened it. There was nothing inside except a cutting from a paper. Not a new cutting, it was old and rather rubbed. I stared down at it. It was a picture of a street. I recognised the street, with rather a grand building in the background. It was a street in Hamburg with some people coming towards the photographer. Two people in the forefront walking arm in arm. They were Greta and myself. So Lippincott knew.
