There we'd looked at each other first and I'd come up and spoken to her, played the part of the young man who's fallen suddenly in love. Played it jolly well too! Oh, I tell you I'm a fine actor!
But I hadn't expected to see her now... I mean, I couldn't see her now, could I? But I was seeing her... She was looking - looking straight at me. Only - there was something that frightened me - something that frightened 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. He'd known all along that I already knew Greta. Somebody must have sent him this cutting some time, probably with no nefarious intention. Just amused perhaps to recognise Miss Greta Andersen walking along the streets of Hamburg. He had known I knew Greta and I remembered how particularly he had asked me whether I had met or not met Greta Andersen. I had denied it, of course, but he'd known I was lying. It must have begun his suspicion of me.
I was suddenly afraid of Lippincott. He couldn't suspect, of course, that I'd killed Ellie. He suspected something, though. Perhaps he suspected even that.
"Look," I said to Greta, "he knew we knew each other. He's known it all along. I've always hated that old fox and he's always hated you," I said. "When he knows that we're going to marry, he'll suspect." But then I knew that Lippincott had certainly suspected that Greta and I were going to marry, he suspected that we knew each other, he suspected perhaps that we were lovers.
"Mike, will you stop being a panic-stricken rabbit. Yes, that's what I said. A panic-stricken rabbit. I admired you. I've always admired you. But now you're falling to pieces. You're afraid of everyone."
"Don't say that to me."
"Well, it's true."
"Endless night."
I couldn't think of anything else to say. I was still wondering just what it meant. Endless night. It meant blackness. It meant that I wasn't there to be seen. I could see the dead but the dead couldn't see me although I was living. They couldn't see me because I wasn't really there The man who loved Ellie wasn't really there. He'd entered of his own accord into endless night.
I bent my head lower towards the ground.
"Endless night," I said again.
"Stop saying that," Greta screamed. "Stand up! Be a man, Mike. Don't give in to this absurd superstitious fancy."
"How can I help it?" I said. "I've sold my soul to Gipsy's Acre, haven't I? Gipsy's Acre's never been safe. It's never been safe for anyone. It wasn't safe for Ellie and it isn't safe for me. Perhaps it isn't safe for you."
"What do you mean?"
I got up. I went towards her. I loved her. Yes, I loved her still with a last tense sexual desire. But love, hate, desire - aren't they all the same? Three in one and one in three. I could never have hated Ellie, but I hated Greta. I enjoyed hating her. I hated her with all my heart and with a leaping joyous wish - I couldn't wait for the safe ways, I didn't want to wait for them, I came nearer to her.
"You filthy bitch!" I said. "You hateful, glorious, golden-haired bitch. You're not safe, Greta. You're not safe from me. Do you understand? I've learnt to enjoy - to enjoy killing people. I was excited the day that I knew Ellie had gone out with that horse to her death. I enjoyed myself all the morning because of killing, but I've never got near enough to killing until now. This is different. I want more than just knowing that someone's going to die because of a capsule they swallowed at breakfast time. I want more than pushing an old woman over a quarry. I want to use my hands."
Greta was afraid now. She, whom I'd belonged to ever since I met her that day in Hamburg, met her and gone on to pretend illness, to throw up my job, to stay there with her. Yes, I'd belonged to her then, body and soul. I didn't belong to her now. I was myself. I was coming into another kind of kingdom to the one I'd dreamed of.
She was afraid. I loved seeing her afraid and I fastened my hands round her neck. Yes, even now when I am sitting here writing down all about myself (which, mind you, is a very happy thing to do) - to write all about yourself and what you've been through and what you felt and thought and how you deceived everyone - yes, it's wonderful to do, yes, I was wonderfully happy when I killed Greta...
Chapter 24
There isn't really very much to say after that. I mean, things came to a climax there. One forgets, I suppose, that there can't be anything better to follow - that you've had it all. I just sat there for a long time. I don't know when They came. I don't know whether They all came at once... They couldn't have been there all along because they wouldn't have let me kill Greta. I noticed that God was there first. I don't mean God, I'm confused, I mean Major Phillpot. I'd liked him always, he'd been very nice to me. He was rather like God in some ways, I think. I mean if God had been a human being and not something super-natural - up in the sky somewhere. He was a very fair man, very fair and kind. He looked after things and people. Tried to do his best for people.
I don't know how much he'd know about me. I remember the curious way he looked at me that morning in the sale room when he said that I was "fey". I wonder why he thought I happened to be fey that day.
Then when we were there with that little crumpled heap on the ground that was Ellie in her riding habit... I wonder if he knew then or had some idea that I'd had something to do with it.
After Greta's death, as I say I just sat there in my chair, staring down at my champagne glass. It was empty.
Everything was very empty, very empty indeed. There was just one light that we'd switched on, Greta and I, but it was in the corner. It didn't give much light and the sun - I think the sun must have set a long time ago. I just sat there and wondered what was going to happen next with a sort of dull wonder.
Then, I suppose, the people began coming. Perhaps a lot of people came at once. They came very quietly, if so, or else I wasn't hearing or noticing anybody.
