by John Fowles
"That's not true. I wasn't bored."
"Thinking about this bit on Phraxos."
"I missed you too. Hellishly, those first months."
Suddenly she switched the lights on.
"Turn round and look at me."
I did. She was standing by the door, still in her blue jeans and the dark blue shirt; her face a gray and white mask.
"I've saved some money. And you can't be exactly broke. If you say the word, I'll walk out of my job tomorrow. I'll come on your island and live with you. I said a cottage in Ireland. But I'll take a cottage on Phraxos. You can have that. The dreadful responsibility of having to live with someone who loves you."
"Or?"
"You can say no."
"An ultimatum."
"No sliding. Yes or no."
"Alison, if —"
"Yes or no."
"You can't decide these things . .
Her voice sharpened a pitch. "Yes or no."
"It's moral blackmail."
She came and stood on the other side of the bed; gave me a look of iron. There was nothing gentle in her voice except its volume.
"Yes or no."
I stared at her. She gave a tiny humorless twist of her lips and answered for me.
"No."
"Only because . . ."
She ran straight to the door and opened it. I felt angry, trapped into this ridiculous either-or choice, when the reality was so much more complex. I went round the bed towards her, yanked the door away from her grip and slammed it shut again; then caught her and tried to kiss her, reaching past her at the same time to flick off the light. The room was plunged into darkness again, but she struggled wildly, jerking her head from side to side. I pulled her back towards the bed and fell with her across it, making it roll and knock both lamp and ashtray off the bedside table. I thought she would give in, she must give in, but suddenly she screamed, so loud that it must have pierced all through the hotel and echoed over on the other side of the port.
"LET ME GO!"
I sat back a little and she hit at me with her clubbed fists. I caught her wrists.
"For God's sake."
"I HATE YOU!"
"Keep quiet!"
I forced her on her side. There was banging on the wall. Another nerve-splitting scream.
"I HATE YOU."
I slapped the side of her face. She began to sob violently, twisted sideways against the bed end, fragments of words howled at me between gasps for air and tears.
"Leave me alone . . . leave me alone . . . you shit . . . you fucking selfish. . ." explosion of sobs, her shoulders racked. I got up and went to the window.
She began to bang the bedrail with her fists, as if she was beyond words. I hated her then: her lack of control, her hysteria. I remembered that there was a bottle of Scotch downstairs in my room — she had brought it for me as a present, the first day.
"Look, I'm going to get you a drink. Now stop wailing."
I hovered over her. She took no notice, went on beating the bedrail. I got to the door, hesitated, looked back, then went out. Three Greeks, a man and woman and an elder man, were standing two open doors away, staring at the door of Alison's room. They looked at me as if I were a murderer. I went downstairs, opened the bottle, swallowed a stiff shot straight out of it, then went back.
The door was locked. The three spectators continued to stare; watched me try it, knock, try it again, knock, then call her name.
The older man came up to me.
Was anything wrong?
I grimaced and muttered, "The heat."
He repeated it unnecessarily back to the other two. Ah, the heat, said the woman, as if that explained everything. They did not move.
I tried once more; called her name through the wooden panels. I could hear nothing. I shrugged for the benefit of the Greeks, and went back downstairs. Ten minutes later I returned; I returned four or five times more during the next hour; and always the door, to my secret relief, was shut.
I had asked to be and was woken at eight, and I dressed at once and went to her room. I knocked; no answer. When I tried the handle, the door opened. The bed had been slept in, but Alison and all her belongings were gone. I ran straight down to the reception desk. A rabbity old man with spectacles, the father of the proprietor, sat behind it. He'd been in America, and spoke English quite well.
"You know that girl I was with last night — has she gone out this morning?"
"Oh yeah. She wen' out."
"When?"
He looked up at the clock. "About one hour since. She lef' this. She said give it you when you came down."
An envelope. My scrawled name: N. Urfe.
"She didn't say where she was going?"
"Just paid her check and went." I knew by the way he was watching me that he had heard, or heard about, the screaming the evening before.
"But I said I'd pay."
"I said. I told her."
"Damn."
As I turned to go he said, "Hey, you know what they say in the States? Always plenny more fish in the sea. Know that one? Plenny more fish in the sea."
I went back to my room and opened her letter. It was a scrawl, a last-moment decision not to go in silence.
Think what it would be like if you got back to your island and there was no old man, no girl any more. No mysterious fun and games. The whole placed locked up forever.
It's finished finished finished.
About ten I rang up the airport. Alison had not returned, and was not due to return until her flight to London at five that afternoon. I tried again at eleven thirty, just before the boat sailed; the same answer. As the ship, which was filled with returning boys, drew out from the quay I scanned the crowds of parents and relations and idlers. I had some idea that she was there among them, watching; but if she was, she was invisible.
The ugly industrial seafront of the Piraeus receded and the boat headed south for the svelte blue peak of Aegina. I went to the bar and ordered a large ouzo; it was the only place the boys were not allowed. I drank a mouthful neat, and made a sort of bitter inner toast. I had chosen my own way; the difficult, hazardous, poetic way; all on one number.
Someone slipped onto the stool beside me. It was Demetriades. He clapped his hands for the barman.
"Buy me a drink, you perverted Englishman. And I will tell you how I spent a most amusing weekend."
43
Think what it would be like if you got back to your island and . . . I had all Tuesday to think nothing but that; to see myself as Alison saw me. I took the envelope out, and looked at the thread, and waited. It was a relief to teach hard, conscientiously, to get through the suspense. On Wednesday evening, when I gut back from post-siesta school to my room, I found a note on my desk. I recognized Conchis's almost copperplate writing; and I recognized something else in the elaborate star the note had been folded into. I couldn't imagine Conchis wasting time on such a business; but I could see Lily doing so. I thought, as I was no doubt meant to, of idle convoluted women in Edwardian country houses.
The note said: We look forward to seeing you on Saturday. I hope you had a most enjoyable reconciliation with your friend. If I do not hear I shall know you are coming. Maurice Conchis. It was dated above Wednesday morning. My heart leapt. Everything during that last weekend seemed, if not justified, necessary.
I had a lot of marking to do, but I couldn't stay in. I walked up to the main ridge, to the inland cliff. I had to see the roof of Bourani, the south of the island, the sea, the mountains, all the reality of the unreality. There was none of the burning need to go down and spy that had possessed me the week before, but a balancing mixture of excitement and reassurance, a certainty
of the health of the symbiosis. I was theirs still; they were mine.
I wrote a note to Alison as soon as I got back.
Allie darling, you can't say to someone "I've decided I ought to love you." I can see a million reasons why I ought to love you, because (as I tried to explain
) in my fashion, my perfect-bastard fashion, I do love you. Parnassus was beautiful, please don't think it was nothing to me, only the body, or could ever be anything but unforgettable, always, for me. I know you're angry, of course you're angry, but please write back. It's so likely that one day I shall need you terribly, I shall come crawling to you, and you can have all the revenge you want then.
I thought it a good letter; the only conscious exaggeration was in the last sentence.
* * *
At ten to four on Saturday I was at the gate of Bourani; and there, walking along the track towards me, was Conchis. FIe had on a black shirt, long khaki shorts; dark brown shoes and faded yellow-green stockings. He was walking purposefully, almost in a hurry, as if he had wanted to be out of the way before I came. But he raised his arm as soon as he saw me and appeared not put out.
"Nicholas."
"Hello."
He stood in front of me and gave his little headshake.
"A pleasant half-term?"
"Yes, thanks."
He seemed to have expected more, but I was determined to say nothing; and showed so.
He murmured, "Good."
"That was an extraordinary experience. Last time. I had no idea I was so suggestible."
He tapped his head. "Never think of your mind as a castle. It is an engine room."
"Then you must be a very skilled engineer." He bowed. "Am I to believe all those sensations came from other worlds?"
"It is not for me to tell you what to believe."
I remembered, as I smiled thinly at his own thin smile, that I was back in a polysemantic world. He reached out, as if he felt sorry for me, and gripped my shoulder for a second. It was clear that he wanted to get on.
"You're going out?"
"I have been writing letters all day. I must walk."
"Can't I come with you?"
"You could." He smiled. "But I think Lily would be disappointed."
I smiled back. "In that case."
"Precisely. You will remember what we said?"
"Of course."
"Thank you. I have great confidence in you. Sto kalo."
He raised his hand, and we parted.
I walked on, but looked back after a moment to see which way he had gone. It was apparently to Moutsa or beyond it to the totally deserted western end of the island. I did not believe for a moment that he was going for a constitutional. He walked far too much like a man with something to arrange, someone to see.
No one was visible as I approached the house, as I crossed the gravel. I leapt up the steps and walked quietly round the corner onto the wide tiling under the front colonnade. Lily was standing there, her feet and the bottom of her dress in sunlight, the rest of her in shadow. I saw at once that the pretense was still on. She had her back to me, as if she had been looking out to sea, but her face was turned expectantly over her shoulder. As soon as I appeared she swayed lightly round. She was wearing another beautiful dress, in a charcoal-amber-indigo art nouveau fabric, with an almost ground-length pale yellow stole. As arresting as a brilliant stage costume, and yet she contrived to wear it both naturally and dramatically.
She held out her left hand with a smile, back up, for me to check her identity. We didn't say anything. She sat down in her willowy manner and gestured to the chair opposite. And it became a sort of game inside a game inside a game: silence, to see which one of us could go longest without speaking. As she poured water from the silver kettle into the teapot I saw her slide a look at me, and then bite her lips to stop from smiling. I couldn't take my eyes off her. All through the week there had been recurrent memories, images of Alison, doubts that involved comparing her with Lily . . . and now I knew I was right. It wasn't only the stunning physical elegance of this girl, it was the intelligence, the quickness, the ability to be several things at the same time; to make every look and every remark ambiguous; to look cool and yet never cold.
She turned down the pale blue flame of the spirit-stove; with a moue surrendered.
"Maurice had to go out."
"Oh. why?"
She poured two cups and handed one towards me, then looked me in the eyes.
"So that we could have tea alone." She smiled.
"You look like a dream."
"Won't you have a sandwich?"
I grinned, gave up, took one. "Where've you been this last fortnight?"
"Here."
"No you haven't. I've been over several times. The house has been locked up." She nibbled a sandwich, risked a demure look at me. "Come on, be a sport. Athens?" She shook her head. Her hair was up and drawn back from her face. She sat sideways, in profile, long neck, beautifully poised Grecian head. "I saw Maurice just now. He said you were going to tell me the truth. Over tea. Who you really are, where you've been — everything."
She looked at me under severe eyebrows; reverting. "That is a fib."
"He might have done. You don't know."
"But I do."
I stared down at the ground. "Lily."
"Why do you say my name like that?"
"You know why." She shook her head. I let the silence come. She sipped her tea, watched it, sipped it again. Always that secret inner smile; I looked round into the trees, to see if I could see the "nurse"; and hoping that she might ask me what I was looking for.
"Was your friend glad to see you in Athens?"
"She didn't see me in Athens. We called it off. By letter."
"Oh."
"For good." She nursed the cup, refusing to look at me, to be interested. "Are you glad?"
"Why should I be glad?"
"I was asking whether. Not why." She gave a tiny shrug, as if I had no right to ask; raised one of her black shoes and contemplated it; waited for my next move. "You know I've been hypnotized since I saw you last?" She nodded. "Were you there?" She shook her head, quite vehemently. "He's hypnotized you?" She nodded again. "Often?"
She turned and put her elbows on the table and stared at me.
"Yes. Many times."
And I was caught; still not quite able to be sure that the schizophrenia was another invention; still not all clear to what extent she was playing to his cues.
"This is why you can't lie to him?"
She seemed to be more interested in looking at my face than in answering, but in the end she said, "It's good for me."
"He says. Or you?"
"Both of us. It is very relaxing."
"Last time you seemed to think it was frightening."
She smiled. "And frightening." I looked at her mouth, that long, mobile, smiling mouth; the ambiguous gray-hyacinth eyes. It was the way their corners cocked obliquely; it made it difficult to believe that she meant a word of what she was saying.
"He obviously still wants you to vamp me."
She looked down then, and the smile disappeared. After a moment she stood up and went to the far edge of the colonnade, by the house wall, where the steps led down to the vegetable terrace. I followed her, thinking she was going to stroll there. But she turned with her back against the wall. I stood in front of her; after a moment I put my hand on the wall behind her head, barring her in. There grew in me an intuition that she had, right from the beginning, found me physically more attractive than she wanted to admit. Narcissus-like I saw my own face reflected deep in her indecision, her restlessness. She was not smiling; and in the silence she let my eyes explore her own. I let my hand slip very lightly onto her shoulder. She did not move. I shifted it down onto her bare arm, to cool white skin. And suddenly I was sure that she wanted me, or would allow me, to kiss her.
I took her other arm and drew her towards me. Her eyes closed, our mouths met; and hers was warm, moved convulsively under mine for four or five seconds. I had just time to get my hand to the small of her back, to press her body against mine, know its weight, slenderness, the flesh reality. But then she pushed me away.
"We mustn't. Not here."
"Lily."
She gave me an almost frighteningly in
tense out-of-role look; as if I had forced her to do something she was ashamed of; and its sincerity was very nearly as exciting as the touch of her mouth. I tried to pull her back to me again.
"No. Because of Maurice."
She pressed my hand with sudden firmness, a kind of promise of the emotion she had to hide, and went back to the table. But she stood by it, as if she was at a loss to know what to do now. I went behind her.
"Why did you do that?" She stood staring down at the table, keeping her face half averted from me. "Because he told you to?"
She turned then, a swift, frank look of denial; and as quickly turned away again. She moved out into the sun at the front of the colonnade.
I went after her. "You must let me see you alone again. Tonight."
"No." She swayed round, flaring her stole, like a figure from Beardsley, so that we walked back to the terrace end of the colonnade.
"At midnight. By the statue."
"I daren't."
"Because of him?"
"Because of everything." She gave me a side look. As if she would like to say more. We walked another step or two. She came to a decision. "It's so complicated. I don't know what to do any more." She murmured, "If I think I can . . ."
She didn't finish the sentence. I put my arm round her shoulder and kissed the side of her head. She twisted lightly away. A small lizard scuttered along the bottom of the wall in front, and she leaned out to look at it.
"I may not . . . I can't promise." She said it casually; like a heroine in Chekhov, unpredictable, shifting, always prey to something beyond the words and moods of the apparent situation.
There were footsteps on the gravel, round the corner of the house; and then she looked at me, once again completely out of role, a practical, alert, very un-Chekhovian insistence in her low voice.
"You mustn't say a word."
"Of course."
"I think he'll take you away now. I'm supposed to disappear." She said very quickly, in a whisper, "I so wanted you to come back." Then she was smiling into distance, past my shoulder. I turned. Conchis had come silently round the corner. In his hands he held poised a four-foot axe. With a formal bow to me Lily moved quickly, almost too punctiliously on cue, across the tiles and into the house.