Агата Кристи - Endless Night / Бесконечная ночь. Книга для чтения на английском языке

‘I’ve no time to waste being ill,’ said my mother. Then she said abruptly, ‘What have you come for?’

‘Should I have come for anything in particular?’

‘You usually do.’

‘I don’t see why you should disapprove so strongly of my seeing the world,’ I said.

‘Driving luxurious cars all over the Continent! Is that your idea of seeing the world?’

‘Certainly.’

‘You won’t make much of a success in that. Not if you throw up the job at a day’s notice [26] day’s notice – предупреждение за день and go sick, dumping your clients in some heathen town.’ [27] heathen town – языческий город, (зд.) богом забытый город

‘How did you know about that?’

‘Your firm rang up. They wanted to know if I knew your address.’

‘What did they want me for?’

‘They wanted to re-employ you I suppose,’ said my mother. ‘I can’t think why.’

‘Because I’m a good driver and the clients like me. Anyway, I couldn’t help it if I went sick, could I?’

‘I don’t know,’ said my mother.

Her view clearly was that I could have helped it.

‘Why didn’t you report to them when you got back to England?’

‘Because I had other fish to fry,’ I said.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘More notions in your head? More wild ideas? What jobs have you been doing since?’

‘Petrol pump. Mechanic in a garage. Temporary clerk, washer-up in a sleazy night-club restaurant.’

‘Going down the hill in fact,’ said my mother with a kind of grim satisfaction.

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘It’s all part of the plan. My plan!’

She sighed. ‘What would you like, tea or coffee? I’ve got both.’

I plumped for coffee. I’ve grown out of the tea-drinking habit. We sat there with our cups in front of us and she took a home-made cake out of a tin and cut us each a slice.

‘You’re different,’ she said, suddenly.

‘Me, how?’

‘I don’t know, but you’re different. What’s happened?’

‘Nothing’s happened. What should have happened?’

‘You’re excited,’ she said.

‘I’m going to rob a bank,’ I said.

She was not in the mood to be amused. She merely said:

‘No, I’m not afraid of your doing that.’

‘Why not? Seems a very easy way of getting rich quickly nowadays.’

‘It would need too much work,’ she said. ‘And a lot of planning. More brainwork than you’d like to have to do. Not safe enough, either.’

‘You think you know all about me,’ I said.

‘No, I don’t. I don’t really know anything about you, because you and I are as different as chalk and cheese. But I know when you’re up to something. You’re up to something now. What is it, Micky? Is it a girl?’

‘Why should you think it’s a girl?’

‘I’ve always known it would happen some day.’

‘What do you mean by “some day”? I’ve had lots of girls.’

‘Not the way I mean. It’s only been the way of a young man with nothing to do. You’ve kept your hand in with girls but you’ve never been really serious till now.’

‘But you think I’m serious now?’

‘Is it a girl, Micky?’

I didn’t meet her eyes. I looked away and said, ‘In a way.’

‘What kind of a girl is she?’

‘The right kind for me,’ I said.

‘Are you going to bring her to see me?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘It’s like that, is it?’

‘No, it isn’t. I don’t want to hurt your feelings but —’

‘You’re not hurting my feelings. You don’t want me to see her in case I should say to you “Don’t”. Is that it?’

‘I wouldn’t pay any attention if you did.’

‘Maybe not, but it would shake you. It would shake you somewhere inside because you take notice of what I say and think. There are things I’ve guessed about you – and maybe I’ve guessed right and you know it. I’m the only person in the world who can shake your confidence in yourself. Is this girl a bad lot who’s got hold of you?’

‘Bad lot?’ I said and laughed. ‘If you only saw her! You make me laugh.’

‘What do you want from me? You want something. You always do.’

‘I want some money,’ I said.

‘You won’t get it from me. What do you want it for – to spend on this girl?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I want to buy a first-class suit to get married in.’

‘You’re going to marry her?’

‘If she’ll have me.’

That shook her.

‘If you’d only tell me something!’ she said. ‘You’ve got it badly, I can see that. It’s the thing I always feared, that you’d choose the wrong girl.’

‘Wrong girl! Hell!’ I shouted. I was angry.

I went out of the house and I banged the door.

When I got home there was a telegram waiting for me – it had been sent from Antibes.

Meet me tomorrow four-thirty usual place.

Ellie was different. I saw it at once. We met as always in Regent’s Park and at first we were a bit strange and awkward with each other. I had something I was going to say to her and I was in a bit of a state as to how to put it. I suppose any man is when he comes to the point of proposing marriage.

And she was strange about something too. Perhaps she was considering the nicest and kindest way of saying No to me. But somehow I didn’t think that. My whole belief in life was based on the fact that Ellie loved me. But there was a new independence about her, a new confidence in herself which I could hardly feel was simply because she was a year older. One more birthday can’t make that difference to a girl. She and her family had been in the South of France and she told me a little about it. And then rather shyly she said:

‘I – I saw that house there, the one you told me about. The one that architect friend of yours had built.’

‘What – Santonix?’

‘Yes. We went there to lunch one day.’

‘How did you do that? Does your stepmother know the man who lives there?’

‘Dmitri Constantine? Well – not exactly but she met him and – well – Greta fixed it up for us to go there as a matter of fact.’

‘Greta again,’ I said, allowing the usual exasperation to come into my voice.

‘I told you,’ she said, ‘Greta is very good at arranging things.’

‘Oh all right. So she arranged that you and your stepmother —’

‘And Uncle Frank,’ said Ellie.

‘Quite a family party,’ I said, ‘and Greta too, I suppose.’

‘Well, no, Greta didn’t come because, well —’ Ellie hesitated, ‘– Cora, my stepmother, doesn’t treat Greta exactly like that.’

‘She’s not one of the family, she’s a poor relation, is she?’ I said. ‘Just the au pair girl, in fact. Greta must resent being treated that way sometimes.’

‘She’s not an au pair girl, she’s a kind of companion to me.’

‘A chaperone,’ I said, ‘a cicerone, a duenna, a governess. There are lots of words.’

‘Oh do be quiet,’ said Ellie, ‘I want to tell you. I know now what you mean about your friend Santonix. It’s a wonderful house. It’s – it’s quite different. I can see that if he built a house for us it would be a wonderful house.’

She had used the word quite unconsciously. Us, she had said. She had gone to the Riviera and had made Greta arrange things so as to see the house I had described, because she wanted to visualize more clearly the house that we would, in the dream world we’d built ourselves, have built for us by Rudolf Santonix.

‘I’m glad you felt like that about it,’ I said.