The first morning I didn’t see her, but the next day at last I did. She came out with a lot of other students, mostly young men. My heart beat very fast and I felt sick. I had the camera all ready, but I couldn’t dare use it. She was just the same; she had a light way of walking and she always wore flat heels so she didn’t have that mince like most girls. She didn’t think at all about the men when she moved. Like a bird. All the time she was talking to a young man with black hair, cut very short with a little fringe, very artistic-looking. There were six of them, but then she and the young man crossed the street. I got out of the van and followed them. They didn’t go far, into a coffee-bar.
I went into that coffee-bar, suddenly, I don’t know why, like I was drawn in by something else, against my will almost. It was full of people, students and artists and such-like; they mostly had that beatnik look. I remember there were weird faces and things on the walls. It was supposed to be African, I think.
There were so many people and the noise and I felt so nervous I didn’t see her at first. She was sitting in a second loom at the back. I sat on a stool at the counter where I could watch. I didn’t dare look very often and the light in the other room wasn’t very good.
Then she was standing right next me. I was pretending to read a newspaper so I didn’t see her get up. I felt my face was red, I stared at the words but I couldn’t read, I daren’t look the smallest look—she was there almost touching me. She was in a check dress, dark blue and white it was, her arms brown and bare, her hair all loose down her back.
She said, “Jenny, we’re absolutely broke, be an angel and let us have two cigarettes.” The girl behind the counter said, “Not again,” or something, and she said, “Tomorrow, I swear,” and then, “Bless you,” when the girl gave her two. It was all over in five seconds, she was back with the young man, but hearing her voice turned her from a sort of dream person to a real one. I can’t say what was special in her voice. Of course it was very educated, but it wasn’t la-di-da, it wasn’t slimy, she didn’t beg the cigarettes or like demand them, she just asked for them in an easy way and you didn’t have any class feeling. She spoke like she walked, as you might say.
I paid as quick as possible and went back to the van and the Cremorne and my room. I was really upset. It was partly that she had to borrow cigarettes because she had no money and I had sixty thousand pounds (I gave Aunt Annie ten) ready to lay at her feet—because that is how I felt. I felt I would do anything to know her, to please her, to be her friend, to be able to watch her openly, not spy on her. To show how I was, I put five five-pound notes I had on me in an envelope and addressed it to Miss Miranda Grey, the Slade School of Art… only of course I didn’t post it. I would have if I could have seen her face when she opened it.
That was the day I first gave myself the dream that came true. It began where she was being attacked by a man and I ran up and rescued her. Then somehow I was the man that attacked her, only I didn’t hurt her; I captured her and drove her off in the van to a remote house and there I kept her captive in a nice way. Gradually she came to know me and like me and the dream grew into the one about our living in a nice modern house, married, with kids and everything.
It haunted me. It kept me awake at nights, it made me forget what I was doing during the day. I stayed on and on at the Cremorne. It stopped being a dream, it began to be what I pretended was really going to happen (of course, I thought it was only pretending) so I thought of ways and means—all the things I would have to arrange and think about and how I’d do it and all. I thought, I can’t ever get to know her in the ordinary way, but if she’s with me, she’ll see my good points, she’ll understand. There was always the idea she would understand.
Another thing I began to do was read the classy newspapers, for the same reason I went to the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery. I didn’t enjoy them much, it was like the cabinets of foreign species in the Entomology Room at the Natural History Museum, you could see they were beautiful but you didn’t know them, I mean I didn’t know them like I knew the British. But I went so as I could talk to her, so I wouldn’t seem ignorant.
In one of the Sunday papers I saw an advert in capitals in a page of houses for sale. I wasn’t looking for them, this just seemed to catch my eye as I was turning the page. “FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD?” it said. Just like that. Then it went on:
Old cottage, charming secluded situation, large garden, 1 hr. by car London, two miles from nearest village…
—and so on. The next morning I was driving down to see it. I phoned the estate agent in Lewes and arranged to meet someone at the cottage. I bought a map of Sussex. That’s the thing about money. There are no obstacles.
I expected something broken-down. It looked old all right, black beams and white outside and old stone tiles. It stood right on its own. The estate agent came out when I drove up. I thought he would be older, he was my age, but the public schoolboy type, full of silly remarks that are meant to be funny, as if it was below him to sell anything and there was some difference between selling houses and something in a shop. He put me off straight away because he was inquisitive. Still, I thought I better look round, having come all that way. The rooms were not much, but it was well fitted out with all mod cons, electricity, telephone and all. Some retired navy admiral or somebody had had it and died, and then the next buyer died unexpectedly as well and so it was on the market.
I still say I didn’t go down there with the intention of seeing whether there was anywhere to have a secret guest. I can’t really say what intention I had.
I just don’t know. What you do blurs over what you did before.
The chap wanted to know if it was just for myself. I said it was for an aunt. I told the truth, I said I wanted it to be a surprise for her, when she came back from Australia and so on.
How about their figure, he wanted to know.
I’ve just come into a lot of money, I said, to squash him. We were just coming downstairs when he said that, having seen everything, I thought. I was even going on to say it wasn’t what I wanted, not big enough, to squash him more, when he said, well, that’s the lot, bar the cellars.
You had to go out through the back where there was a door beside the back door. He took the key from under a flowerpot. Of course the electricity was off, but he had a torch. It was cold out of the sun, damp, nasty. There were stone steps down. At the bottom he shone his torch round. Someone had whitewashed the walls, but it was a long time ago, and pieces had come off so that the walls looked mottled.