So we went in and there was Major Phillpot. He was just a pleasant, nondescript man of close on sixty. He was wearing country clothes, rather shabby, he had grey hair going a little thin on top and a short bristly moustache. He apologized for his wife not being able to come and call on us. She was something of an invalid, he said. He sat down and chatted with us. Nothing he said was remarkable or particularly interesting. He had the knack of making people feel at their ease. He touched quite lightly on a variety of subjects. He didnt ask any direct questions, but he soon got it into his head where our particular interests lay. He talked to me about racing and to Ellie about making a garden and what things did well in this particular soil. He had been to the States once or twice. He found out that though Ellie didnt care much for race meetings, she was fond of riding. He told her that if she was going to keep horses she could go up a particular track through the pine woods and she would come out on a good stretch of moor where she could have a gallop. Then we came to the subject of our house and the stories about Gipsys Acre.
I see you know the local name, he said, and all the local superstitions, too, I expect.
Gipsies warnings in profusion, I said. Far too many of them. Mostly old Mrs Lee.
Oh dear, said Phillpot. Poor old Esther: shes been a nuisance, has she?
Is she a bit dotty? I asked.
Not so much as she likes to make out. I feel more or less responsible for her. I settled her in that cottage, he said, not that shes grateful for it. Im fond of the old thing though she can be a nuisance sometimes.
Fortune-telling?
No, not particularly. Why, has she told your fortune?
I dont know if you can call it a fortune, said Ellie. It was more a warning to us against coming here.
That seems rather odd to me. Major Phillpots rather bristly eyebrows rose. Shes usually got a honeyed tongue in fortunes[53]. Handsome stranger, marriage bells, six children and a heap of good fortune and money in your hand, pretty lady. He imitated rather unexpectedly the gipsy whine of her voice. The gipsies used to camp here a lot when I was a boy, he said. I suppose I got fond of them then, though they were a thieving lot[54], of course. But Ive always been attracted to them. As long as you dont expect them to be law-abiding, theyre all right. Many a tin mug of gipsy stew Ive had as a schoolboy. We felt the family owed Mrs Lee something, she saved the life of a brother of mine when he was a child. Fished him out of a pond when hed gone through the ice.
I made a clumsy gesture and knocked a glass ashtray off a table. It smashed into fragments.
I picked up the pieces and Major Phillpot helped me.
I expect Mrs Lees quite harmless really, said Ellie. I was very foolish to have been so scared.
Scared, were you? His eyebrows rose again. It was as bad as that, was it?
I dont wonder she was afraid, I said quickly. It was almost more like a threat than a warning.
A threat! He sounded incredulous.
Well, it sounded that way to me. And then the first night we moved in here something else happened.
I told him about the stone crashing through the window.
Im afraid there are a good many young hooligans about nowadays, he said, though we havent got many of them round here not nearly as bad as some places. Still, it happens, Im sorry to say. He looked at Ellie. Im very sorry you were frightened. It was a beastly thing to happen, your first night moving in.
Oh, Ive got over it now, said Ellie. It wasnt only that, it was it was something else that happened not long afterwards.
I told him about that too. We had come down one morning and we had found a dead bird skewered through with a knife and a small piece of paper with it which said in an illiterate scrawl[55], Get out of here if you know whats good for you.
Phillpot looked really angry then. He said, You should have reported that to the police.
We didnt want to, I said. After all, that would only have put whoever it is even more against us.
Well, that kind of thing has got to be stopped, said Phillpot. Suddenly he became the magistrate. Otherwise, you know, people will go on with the thing. Think its funny, I suppose. Only only this sounds a bit more than fun. Nasty malicious Its not, he said, rather as though he was talking to himself, its not as though anyone round here could have a grudge against you, a grudge against either of you personally, I mean.
No, I said, it couldnt be that because were both strangers here.
Ill look into it, Phillpot said.
He got up to go, looking round him as he did.
You know, he said, I like this house of yours. I didnt think I should. Im a bit of an old square, you know, what used to be called an old fogey. I like old houses and old buildings. I dont like all these matchbox factories that are going up all over the country. Big boxes. Like beehives. I like buildings with some ornament on them, some grace. But I like this house. Its plain and very modern, I suppose, but its got shape and light. And when you look out from it you see things well, in a different way from the way youve seen them before. Its interesting. Very interesting. Who designed it? An English architect or a foreigner?
I told him about Santonix.
Mm, he said, I think I read about him somewhere. Would it have been in House and Garden?
I said he was fairly well known.
Id like to meet him sometime, though I dont suppose Id know what to say to him. Im 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.
Its 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.
Youve always lived here then? I said. I didnt mean him personally, of course, but he understood.
Yes. Weve 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. Ill 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. Youre the one who probably wont think much of it, he said to me.
I wont 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 hed set the seal of his approval on us. I could see that. He liked Ellie. I was inclined to think that hed liked me, too, although Id 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 hadnt come across before.
Ellie was putting splinters of glass carefully in the waste-paper basket when I came back into the drawing-room.
Im sorry its broken, she said regretfully. I liked it.
We can get another like it, I said. Its modern.
I know! What startled you, Mike?
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. А pal of mine at school and I played truant and went out skating on a local pond. Ice wouldnt bear us, silly little asses that we were. He went through and was drowned before anyone could get him out.
How horrible.
Yes. Id forgotten all about it until Phillpot mentioned about his own brother.
I like him, Mike, dont 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:
Youve picked one of our best. Its 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 its mostly ragwort gives it to me, she said but horses too, sometimes. It doesnt trouble me much nowadays because they have such wonderful things that doctors can give you for different kinds of allergies. Ill give you some of my capsules. Theyre bright orange. And if you remember to take one before you start out you dont 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 wasnt a real snob and didnt really want to know. Mrs Corgi, whose proper name I hadnt 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, Ive heard about you from my brother.
I looked surprised. I couldnt imagine it to be possible that I knew a brother of Claudia Hardcastles.
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 dont know him very well. We rarely meet.
Hes wonderful, I said.
Some people think so, I know.
Dont you?
Im never sure. There are two sides to him. At one time he was going right down the hill People wouldnt 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 shant like it, I warn you. I dont 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. Pitys shes mucked up her life.
Has she?
Married a rich man, years older than herself. An American. Name of Lloyd. It didnt take. Came apart almost at once. She went back to her own name. Dont think shell ever marry again. Shes anti man. Pity.
When we were driving home, Ellie said: Dull but nice. Nice people. Were going to be very happy here, arent 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 a faint twanging of Ellies 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 didnt know what most of the songs were. American spirituals partly, I think, and some old Irish and Scottish ballads sweet and rather sad. They werent 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 dont 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.
Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night
She looked up and saw me.
Why are you looking at me like that, Mike?
Like what?
Youre looking at me as though you loved me
Of course I love you. How else should I be looking at you?
But what were you thinking just then?
I answered slowly and truthfully: I was thinking of you as I saw you first standing by a dark fir tree. Yes, Id been remembering that first moment of seeing Ellie, the surprise of it and the excitement
Ellie smiled at me and sang softly:
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night
One doesnt recognize in ones life the really important moments not until its too late.