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want, keeping you from doing anything you do want. Oh I am so sick of my life and the people who are round me and everything! ”
    That’s the way it began, Ellie and I together. Me with my dreams and she with her revolt against her life. We stopped talking and looked at each other.
    “What’s your name?” she said.
    “Mike Rogers,” I said. “Michael Rogers,” I amended. “What’s yours?”
    “Fenella.” She hesitated and then said, “Fenella Goodman,” looking at me with a rather troubled expression.
    This didn’t seem to take us much further but we went on looking at each other. We both wanted to see each other again—but just for the moment we didn’t know how to set about it.

Five
     
    W ell, that’s how it began between Ellie and myself. It didn’t really go along so very quickly, because we both had our secrets. Both had things we wanted to keep from the other and so we couldn’t tell each other as much about ourselves as we might have done, and that kept bringing us up sharp, as it were, against a kind of barrier. We couldn’t bring things into the open and say, “When shall we meet again? Where can I find you? Where do you live?” Because, you see, if you ask the other person that, they’d expect you to tell the same.
    Fenella looked apprehensive when she gave me her name. So much so that I thought for a moment that it mightn’t be her real name. I almost thought that she might have made it up! But of course I knew that that was impossible. I’d given her my real name.
    We didn’t know quite how to take leave of each other that day. It was awkward. It had become cold and we wanted to wander down from The Towers—but what then? Rather awkwardly, I said tentatively:
    “Are you staying round here?”
    She said she was staying in Market Chadwell. That was a market town not very far away. It had, I knew, a large hotel, three-starred. She’d be staying there, I guessed. She said, with something of the same awkwardness, to me:
    “Do you live here?”
    “No,” I said, “I don’t live here. I’m only here for the day.”
    Then a rather awkward silence fell. She gave a faint shiver. A cold little wind had come up.
    “We’d better walk,” I said, “and keep ourselves warm. Are you—have you got a car or are you going by bus or train?”
    She said she’d left the car in the village.
    “But I’ll be quite all right,” she said.
    She seemed a little nervous. I thought perhaps she wanted to get rid of me but didn’t quite know how to manage it. I said:
    “We’ll walk down, shall we, just as far as the village?”
    She gave me a quick grateful look then. We walked slowly down the winding road on which so many car accidents had happened. As we came round a corner, a figure stepped suddenly from beneath the shelter of the fir tree. It appeared so suddenly that Ellie gave a start and said, “Oh!” It was the old woman I had seen the other day in her cottage garden. Mrs Lee. She looked a great deal wilder today with a tangle of black hair blowing in the wind and a scarlet cloak round her shoulders; the commanding stance she took up made her look taller.
    “And what would you be doing, my dears?” she said. “What brings you to Gipsy’s Acre?”
    “Oh,” Ellie said, “we aren’t trespassing, are we?”
    “That’s as may be. Gipsies’ land this used to be. Gipsies’ land and they drove us off it. You’ll do no good here, and no good will come to you prowling about Gipsy’s Acre.”
    There was no fight in Ellie, she wasn’t that kind. She said gently and politely:
    “I’m very sorry if we shouldn’t have come here. I thought this place was being sold today.”
    “And bad luck it will be to anyone who buys it!” said the old woman. “You listen, my pretty, for you’re pretty enough, bad luck will come to whoever buys it. There’s a curse on this land, a curse put on it long ago, many years ago. You keep clear of it. Don’t have nought to do with Gipsy’s Acre. Death