Daniel Martin

by John Fowles

  Then there was Anthony’s prestige; the handsomely achieved first his rapid passage into senior philosophical circles, the assurance of a fellowship as soon as he showed he could teach and fit in. It didn’t alter him at all, if anything he played down his enhanced authority en famille, but it, and a happiness he couldn’t quite hide, did affect them also. It proved Jane’s wisdom, or at least made her decision easier to understand. For Dan it brought twinges of career, as well as the other, jealousies. He did not envy academic glory, but he wanted success. A play he had secretly submitted to a London agency in December had been turned down by every management who read it. He carried that failure with him for months afterwards.

  Then Nell had changed. Their relationship had never had or so it seemed to Dan the innate rightness and conviction of Jane and Anthony’s. They understood each other, they pleased each other in bed, they liked to be seen around together. But there was always in Nell a hint of shallowness, of fickleness, an impatience. She liked amusing parties, amusing people, flirting; what Jane had once called ogle-sprinkling. She had always used her good looks far more than her sister, to compensate for something she lacked. But Jane’s new sobriety began to affect her. She started working hard, and became serious in other unexpected ways: took to playing housewife in the Beaumont Street flat Dan had moved to. Marriage became inevitable. She grew, by comparison with her former self, whatever is the female equivalent of uxorious. Dan quite liked it; and when Jane was announced pregnant, whatever dim hankerings, or dissatisfactions, he still harboured disappeared. He finally accepted that Nell was his lot.

  But by then, the spring, Dan had written his fourth or fifth play, I forget now. This time he had had the sense to dramatize a world he knew as opposed to ones spun out of an inexperienced imagination; and the sense to seek advice. By good luck one of England’s more famous and more thinking actors turned up at the Playhouse. Dan braved him with his play; was made to rewrite several scenes, and drop one or two. But then the kind man instituted himself fairy godfather for the script in London. By May Dan knew he had taken the first essential step towards being a professional dramatist. He had signed his first contract. The Empty Church did wonders for his morale, if not his bank-balance; and demolished whatever remaining doubts Nell may have retained about him. He even thought he detected a faint wistfulness in Jane at the news, and he was man enough to crow inwardly at the thought of that. But in sum it was a good year for all of them, full of promise, at a time when what you are doing for yourself seems much more important than what you do to, or have done to you by, other people.

  None of us had ever been to Italy before; it was all new and amusing. We even loved the heat; adored the ramshackle but airy old tile floored flat; the endless siestas and sightseeings and picnics out in the Campagna. We couldn’t rush about, the heat and Jane’s pregnancy prevented that. Nell and I went off on our own occasionally, but we functioned well as a foursome, seemingly better than ever before. Between Jane and myself and of course in Rome we were from time to time obliged to be alone there was a total silence about the past. I thought we had become enormously mature, to be able to pretend so convincingly that it had never happened, to discuss a painting together or go round the corner shopping like two old friends. She was in awe a little of her own body, while Anthony had an acute crisis of first-child neurosis about her and its safety; but even that susceptibility to couvade seemed endearing and fallible. If we all laughed at his fussing there, he made us laugh in turn about the sillier Catholic side of Rome. They both wore their religion very lightly. Nell and I used to tease them about Sunday Mass: they would debate (putting it on for us) churches like a pair of gourmets over a Michelin guide. We used to celebrate our own mass while they were out, making love naked in the sun on the terrace. We decided they were incipiently square, but nice to know.

  The real bible that summer, for all four of us, was Sea and Sardinia.

  Imperial Rome, we agreed, was vulgar beyond belief. All good lay with Lawrence and the Etruscans. We pursued them wherever their sites lay in range. We were playing pagan, of course; and eternal Oxford aesthetes.

  The climax and epitome of those blue-and-ochre weeks took place at Tarquinia. The tombs were still locked away from the public at that time, but Anthony pulled the name of one of his new Senior Common-Room friends on the curator and we were allowed a tour. It was early evening when we finished. It had been a memorable experience: in my case some kind of avatar of so many things I had derived from the Devon countryside as a boy. I felt it spoke more deeply to me, even though Anthony knew far more about the Etruscans in scholarly terms. I think it was also the first time I had a clear sense of the futility of the notion of progress in art: nothing could be better or lovelier than this, till the end of time. It was sad, but in a noble, haunting, fertile way.

  We went back into the little town and sat about drinking wine holding forth, as one does at that age, about our feelings, how terribly moving it all was, how then suddenly decided that we would give ourselves the night there. We tried two or three hotels, but they were full of holidaying Italians.

  However, a waiter in one of them told us of an isolated pensione down by the sea three miles away, and the two girls and I overruled Anthony’s doubts. The place had only one free room left, but it contained two double beds, and we dismissed the ancient taxi that had brought us. We had a long meal and more wine under a vine-trellis outside. It was very airless and afterwards, a little drunk, we idled along the beach beside the silent, listless sea. Then Nell and Jane decided they wanted to swim. So we undressed, pairing off by sex, not marriage. I saw the two girls wade in, then both turn and call to us. They stood hand-in-hand, like a pair of sea-nymphs, in the starlight. For a moment I wasn’t sure which was which, though Jane was an inch or two taller than Nell. I was thinking, He’s never seen Nell’s breasts and pubic hair before.

  She said, ‘Oh they’re hopeless. They’re shy.’

  They turned and went on wading in. The beach ran out very shallowly, for a long way. Anthony and I followed. The girls ahead of us stood with the water round their waists, then plunged forward, one of them with a small scream. Then they were swimming. A few seconds later Anthony and I plunged as well and swam out to join them. They had stopped where they could just stand, having discovered the sea was phosphorescent. Glaucous trails glimmered behind each movement. We made a circle, talking about the phenomenon, swirling our arms through the mild water. Then Jane reached out her hands to Anthony and myself and we made a ring as Nell in turn took our free hands. It was ridiculous, childish, as if we were about to do a round-dance or play Ringa, ringaroses. I think it was Nell who made us begin to circle gently. The depth we were in made any but very slow movement impossible. Four heads without bodies; touches beneath the water. I felt Jane’s bare foot, but I knew it was by accident. I could see Anthony smiling at me opposite.

  Perhaps those beautiful tomb-walls somewhere inland behind the beach; perhaps the fact that the holiday was near its end; no, something deeper than that, a mysterious unison, and strangely un-carnal, in spite of our naked bodies. I have had very few religious moments in my life. The profound difference between Anthony and myself and our types of mankind is that I did for a few moments there feel unaccountably happy; yet I could see that for him, the supposedly religious man, this was no more than a faintly embarrassing midnight jape. Or I can put it like this: he saw me as the brother-in-law he liked, I saw him as the brother I loved. It was a moment that had both an infinity and an evanescence an intense closeness, yet no more durable than the tiny shimmering organisms in the water around us.

  I tried repeatedly in later years to put those few moments into my work and always had to cut them out. It took me time to discover that even atheists need a sense of blasphemy. And loss. Like the vanished Etruscans, we should never be together like that again. Perhaps I knew that then, also.

  Petard

  One of the hostesses woke me, we were coming into London. I went and had
a wash; set my watch forward once again. Barney was standing by my seat when I returned.

  ‘Dan, Margaret’s meeting me. Can we give you a lift into town?’

  I should have liked to refuse, but it seemed churlish. At that time of night I wouldn’t have to ask them in for a drink. We got off the plane and through passport control together; and waited for our luggage together. He went to fetch a trolley from the far end of the hall. I felt unreal, in a bad dream, still not properly awake. He was grinning when he came back.

  ‘Either you have a marvellous daughter or I have a telepathic secretary.’

  I looked back through the Customs counters. I couldn’t distinguish Caro’s among the scatter of distant faces, but Barney said, ‘She’s with Margaret. I think you have your own transport.’ A hand waved, and I waved back. I’d told her in the cable not to wait up for me, let alone fag out to Heathrow. The luggage began its slow-motion spill. None of it fell well for me; and I don’t mean the luggage.

  Barney’s wife was still an unimpressive little woman, tired and faded under the set smile and the makeup. She had not aged well; but then she had always seemed to me anomalous, suburban to Barney’s urban. I vaguely remembered their house, in never-swinging Muswell Hill. Caro looked oddly apprehensive, no doubt at not having told me herself about the new job. She flashed one look at Barney, then I was hugging her. I held her severely away by the shoulders.

  ‘I thought I gave orders.’

  ‘My own boss now.’

  I embraced her again; and heard Barney’s voice. ‘Not to worry, Caroline. I’ve given you a marvellous reference.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Dillon.’

  I took the little edge in her answer to be mocking: knowing he was sneaking home ahead of plan.

  ‘Dan, you remember Margaret?’

  ‘Of course.’

  We shook hands, there was a brief four-way conversation about Barney’s coming home early, small worlds… nothings. We moved outside, I led the way with Margaret. I heard Caro ask Barney how some interview had gone, but didn’t catch his answer. When they came up beside us, he was asking her not to ring him the next day unless it was ‘desperate’.

  ‘And for God’s sake don’t tell anyone I’m back.’

  ‘Right.’

  Renewed insistence from Barney that we had lunch one day soon: we saw them into their car, then I wheeled the trolley on down to where Caro had parked her Mini. I stood watching her while she unlocked it: she was wearing a long coat I hadn’t seen before. And a face. She held the door open while I manoeuvred the suitcases into the back.

  ‘I know why you’ve come. Mummy told me yesterday.’

  ‘Is she in Oxford?’

  ‘The Runt’s got mumps rather badly. She’s gone back to Compton for a couple of days.’ The Runt was her ten-year-old half-brother, Andrew’s son and heir: they went in for a sort of Mitfordian family slang. I straightened and looked at her.

  ‘Surprised?’ She nodded, and looked down.

  ‘I feel very sorry for him, Caro. In spite of family history.’

  ‘I know, Daddy.’

  Her daddy’s often had faint inverted commas around them; but these were stamped hard. She went round to the driving-door and unlocked that. I bent myself in beside her.

  ‘I was very close to him once.’

  She looked through the windscreen. The Dillons’ car, ahead of us, moved off.

  ‘It just seems rather sad that something like this has to happen to bring you together again.’

  ‘Darling, if you came to tell me that your generation of the family thinks mine have behaved like cretins… I came because I love you. Right?’

  I leant and kissed her cheek, and she switched on the engine.

  ‘I rang Aunt Jane this evening. When I got your cable.’

  ‘How did she sound?’

  We moved off. She made a bad gear-change and grimaced.

  ‘In control. As always. We talked about me mostly.’

  ‘I’ll try and catch up with some sleep. Then I’ll go.’

  ‘Yes, I said I thought you would.’ She hesitated. ‘She’s very grateful.’

  ‘I was looking for an excuse. I’ve missed you out there.’

  She said nothing for a moment, though she had a small smile.

  ‘Is she nice?’

  It had to come, and I was glad she had brought it so quickly into the open.

  ‘Yes. And I still missed you.’

  ‘They say she’s very bright.’

  I left a pause. ‘Did it shock you?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I used to rather fancy you myself.’

  ‘Now I’m the one who’s shocked.’

  ‘I used to tell my best friends at school. How devastating you were.’

  ‘Like the H-bomb?’ She grinned. ‘Yes?’

  ‘When I was little and you took me on that grand ancestral tour in Devon. That was the first time I’d really thought about you and Mummy. I couldn’t think why she’d ever left such a nice man.’ She added, ‘Of course, that was before I really knew you.’

  ‘If you weren’t being so sweet…’

  The grin lingered, but I sensed something troubled underneath, something that couldn’t be said, that had to be hidden under this teasing. She jockeyed to get past a late truck. We headed for the tunnel to the M4.

  ‘And how’s Richard?’

  ‘That’s all over, as a matter of fact.’

  I gave her a quick look. She was a shade too set on her driving; but then she twitched her mouth and shrugged. I had once watched her show-jumping at a gymkhana, in her horsy phase. Whatever she lacked elsewhere, she took her fences straight and brave.

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘About a month ago. Since I last wrote.’

  ‘Someone else?’

  ‘Just…’ and again she shrugged.

  ‘Poor old Richard. I rather liked him.’

  ‘No you didn’t. You thought he was an Old Etonian nit.’

  Contradicting me like that was not new. She had taken to it during the time I had set to work on her debutantisms; telling me she might be a fool, but she knew my true opinions from those I sometimes humoured her with.

  She said, ‘And you were right.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  We came out of the tunnel. I had that dislocation of long journeys, where nothing, even familiar landscape, has reality; where most or you is still where you came from. The awful winter dankness of England.

  ‘It all happened down at Compton, really. We went for the weekend. I suppose seeing him being given the future son-in-law treatment was the last straw.’

  ‘Hardly his fault?’

  ‘He’s so fantastically square. Under the surface. Honestly he was horrid, he was lapping it all up. Sucking up like mad to Andrew. Pretending he was interested in milk-yield and shooting and God knows what else. I suddenly realized what a phony he is. Not only about all that.’

  ‘Then you’re right to chuck him out.’

  The unfortunate Richard had been very much a male equivalent of Caro; not university material at all. His family owned a famous London publishing house, and he’d been learning the trade on the fine old English principle that since natural aptitude is clearly inherited, no practical demonstration of it need ever be required. He had picked up some vaguely leftwing views among the properly resentful underlings he would one day mismanage or perhaps he just needed to try out on me opinions that must have been unspeakable at home.

  ‘He was so beastly, you’ve no idea. He had the nerve to say Fleet Street was corrupting me. He told me one day I was getting sharp. “Rather vulgar, dear girl.” I threw a gin-bottle at him, I absolutely saw red. The bloody nerve of the man.’ She said, ‘And don’t grin.’

  ‘There is some of the flat left?’

  ‘This was at his place.’

  ‘Good. Never throw your own gin.’

  She bit her lips. We climbed up on to the M4.

  ‘You knew from the start.
You could have told me.’

  ‘With my track record in picking ideal partners ‘You must have learnt something.’

  ‘Too late.’

  She digested that. ‘Are you going to marry her?’

  ‘Her name’s Jenny. And no. I’m not.’

  ‘I didn’t mean ‘I know you didn’t.’

  Cross-purposes; they were always inherent between us. Something in her had changed. Perhaps it was no more than the normal effect of six months in a new world. I had an idea that she had had a bruising in Fleet Street; and bruising back had become her defence. The ‘rather vulgar’ I wouldn’t wear; but there did indeed seem a new sharpness, some sort of shift from innocence to aggression. The crack about fancying me would not have been possible six months previously; nor the implicit reprimand about older-generation stupidity.

  ‘And the job?’

  ‘Love it. Even the mad hours.’

  ‘And your new boss?’

  ‘It’s fun working for him. Lots of variety. I seem to spend half my life on the telephone.’

  ‘Why didn’t you write and tell me?’

  ‘I was a tiny bit afraid you’d be… I know he gave you a terrible review once.’

  ‘He’s given me good ones as well. And no excuse.’

  ‘My dreadful English.’

  I knew something was embarrassed in her, and tried to relieve it. ‘Never mind. Now I’m back.’

  But evidently her mind was still running on my being offended by Barney.