Daniel Martin

by John Fowles

  ‘Have you opened it?’

  ‘I thought I’d better.’ The further pause gave the game away. ‘From Jenny?’

  ‘Do you want me to read it out?’

  ‘Please.’ She must have had it in front of her. ‘It says, “Tibou China” is that right? “misses you but has me now stop please call your tonight Jenny”.’ Caro added, ‘if that makes sense.’

  ‘Yes, that’s fine.’

  ‘Who’s Tibou China?’

  ‘One word. Tibouchina. It’s a shrub that grows outside the Cabin. Jenny’s moved in. That’s all.’

  ‘I thought it must be a Pekinese or something.’

  ‘A Brazilian. I’ll take you to Kew one day and show it to you.’ She murmured. ‘All these plants and women in your life.’

  ‘Only one for real. Her name begins with C.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘Will you be in this evening?’

  ‘If you want me to.’

  ‘Not if…’

  ‘You have priority.’

  ‘I’ll catch a train this afternoon. Let’s go out to dinner somewhere.’ Another hesitation. ‘Would you come and see the flat?’

  ‘Of course. Let’s do that. Don’t be horrid to mummy. She can’t help it.’

  ‘Ill try.’

  ‘And what you promised. Not telling her yet. Please.’

  Now I hesitated. ‘But you have told Jane?’

  ‘I had to have someone.’

  ‘I’m not getting at you, Caro. Just she’ll be hurt if…’

  ‘I can’t handle you both together.’

  It wasn’t the time to argue. ‘Okay. Don’t worry.’

  ‘And all I didn’t say to Aunt Jane.’

  ‘She understands.’

  A moment, then there was a kiss down the line; then disconnection.

  Fifteen minutes later I was shaved and dressed and down in the kitchen. It was still misty outside, but clearing, already a hint of blue sky on its way. The weather, it seemed, rejected mourning. Another large room, a dead forest of varnished pine, all the equipment at the garden end, a round table at the front: Jane sitting at it, the girl busy making coffee. There were some opened letters, the Times and the Guardian; but not the Morning Star, so far as I could see.

  ‘Caro feels she was inarticulate.’

  ‘Not at all. She was sweet. Do you want bacon and eggs, Dan?’

  ‘Just coffee.’

  Apparently she had already rung her daughter in Florence; and spoken to the school, then to Paul himself, in Devon. Anne was flying home as soon as she could. Paul, who hadn’t been told the manner of his father’s death, had seemed to take it reasonably well. And now she was preparing a list of other people to ring. Her hair was loose, she looked less tense, almost as if she had slept well. Perhaps it was the girl, having to act a little in front of her. The kitchen was agreeably domestic after the theatrical hall and living-room upstairs: cottagy, rural in comparison.

  ‘I like the house. I didn’t have time to say that last night.’

  ‘You should see Gisèle’s home in Aix.’

  She had retreated again into the mundane; into being English, talking about anything except what must have been uppermost in her mind; denying, it occurred to me, all the psychological laws of art… or at any rate, my art (‘Her ravaged face shows the horror of the previous night’). Gisèle’s family lived in a lovely eighteenth-Century hotel, her father taught at the university in Aix. She was musical, it seemed; of near-professional standard at the violin. But reality soon returned, in dark grey trousers all I glimpsed as I followed Jane’s sudden look up to the front garden outside.

  ‘Oh God. Here are the crows.’

  ‘His priest?’ She closed her eyes and nodded. ‘Shall I see him?’

  Would you mind? I simply…’

  ‘Of course. I’ll say you’re not dressed yet.’

  I stood up. The front doorbell rang.

  ‘If you could just ask if he gets a Christian burial. Or a stake through his heart at the nearest crossroads.’

  I smiled and turned to go upstairs, but she stood and came after me, lowering her voice, as if Gisèle must be spared such obscenity. ‘Dan, one detail from last night. They said he had a crucifix in his hand when they found him. You’d better feed that to his holiness.’

  I stared at her a moment, trying to discover why I hadn’t been told this before. But the bell rang again. I touched her arm and went to answer it.

  He was a young man, with a trace of a Scottish accent and much more than a trace of knowing what the invisible mistress of the house thought of him. He expressed his formal condolences, he quite understood; of course, of course, Mrs Mallory would not feel up to seeing anyone. I would have got rid of him on the doorstep, if it hadn’t seemed not quite the place for the question I had to ask or perhaps it was just that no one born into a vicarage and its divine simplicities can ever see a priest without seeing an adult child as well.

  We sat in the living-room and I explained about Anthony and the crucifix: how there may have been a loss of faith in his own courage, but not in his church. The priest lowered his head and murmured, ‘The poor man.’

  ‘This won’t prevent his being buried according to the…?’

  ‘Oh no. We’re… long past that stage.’ He gave me a nervous smile. ‘I don’t even have to obtain a dispensation. I can assure you there will be no difficulty at all. In this case.’ He made a little explanation of the new doctrine on culpability. But then he said, ‘I take it you think a verdict of suicide will be returned?’

  ‘It was hardly a balcony one could have fallen from by mistake.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I see. Most distressing.’ I told him that I had spent that last hour with Anthony; went on a bit, how he had seemed reconciled to his fate, what a surprise it had been, but (using what was apparently my interlocutor’s favourite adverbial phrase) of course in the circumstances… it was a touch absurd, justifying Anthony to this rather humourless young Scotsman. He seemed so ill-at-ease, so anxious not to offend, so unconsciously bunkered by his calling; a very long way, in sect as in character, from John Knox, and finally almost more in need of comforting than the widow downstairs.

  He went at last, in another cloud of condolence. If Mrs Mallory would care to ring him about the Funeral Mass, if he could help in any other way… ritual; in a world already stifled with it.

  I found Jane peeling potatoes when I returned downstairs. I told her what Father Buchanan had said, and she shrugged, as if she were disappointed at his tameness, although I was thanked for coping with him. She went away to dress and I glanced through the newspapers in the living-room, not really reading anything, for very soon I heard her voice outside on the telephone. It was light, brisk, forthright. Oh John, I thought I’d better ring to tell you that Anthony’s died… Susan, I’m afraid Anthony took his life last night and so on. It seemed to me she was overdoing the detachment. These bald announcements were evidently provoking the usual offers of help and sympathy—which gave her a chance to rebuff them: firmly, if politely. I began to wonder if our rapprochement of the night would hold, whether she regretted it now. In the little shelved alcove of classical antiquities near where I sat I saw two small Etruscan bronzes. Tarquinia, that moment there… it seemed as remote symbolically as it was historically.

  A few minutes later we left for the hospital. Beneath her outdoor coat she was wearing a dark red shirt and a tweed skirt; no mourning for Electra, as for the sky. The mist had made way for a cloudless blue.

  It was very discreet and English. Anthony’s doctor was there, he had already dealt with the identification formalities and some hospital bigwig and the staff sister concerned; agreement that no negligence was involved, no sign had been given… I was politely questioned as to Anthony’s apparent state of mind, and professed myself as shocked and mystified as everyone else. Then there was talk about the inquest, a suitable undertaker’s firm. A cardboard box with his belongings, a radio, the Mantegna reproduction,
were handed over.

  Jane showed no sign of strain until we were outside and in her car again.

  ‘I think if there was an airport here I’d ask you to drive me to it and put me on a plane for the far side of the world.’

  She spoke quietly, drily, out of the windscreen at the hospital courtyard. But it was the kind of statement I had looked for in vain on our way to the hospital: an admission that the distances of the previous evening could not be restored. A uniformed man beside an ambulance chatted up a West Indian nurse in the sunlight. She kept grinning, splendid white teeth.

  ‘It’ll all be over very soon.’

  ‘Yes.’ She switched on, and we moved off. ‘I suppose they took our word for it.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘I don’t see why you have to be at the inquest.’

  ‘It must be part of the rules. And anyway. Now I have a friend in Oxford.’

  ‘Some friend.’

  ‘I’m so glad we talked last night.’

  ‘As long as I didn’t shatter too many illusions.’

  ‘You didn’t shatter anything. Or only frosted glass.’

  She smiled. ‘You give me a nostalgia for America.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I remember when I first came back here after the war. How closed everything seemed. As if everyone spoke in cipher.’ She took a breath. ‘And I was the only one en clair.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’ I slipped her a look. ‘And talking of America?’

  ‘I sent him a cable. First thing.’

  ‘He’ll come back?’

  ‘I asked him not to. Just yet.’ She added, ‘He’s got his research work. The fare. It would be silly.’

  She stopped at a little row of shops, to pick up something she had forgotten to ask Gisèle to buy. I saw a small coffee-bar opposite, suggested we had a cup. I had a reason to have her to myself for a few minutes and so, it finally emerged, did she. I put mine point-blank, as soon as we had sat and ordered.

  ‘Will you come and stay at Thorncombe, Jane? It’s very near Dartington.’

  She gave me a slightly embarrassed smile, then glanced down. ‘As a matter of fact I drove past it last spring with Paul. Caro had shown him where it was on a map.’ She murmured, ‘Unforgivable curiosity. It did look very sweet.’

  ‘Then you have no excuse. Seriously, whether I’m there or not. The old couple I’ve taken on are always happy to do the honours.’

  ‘Ben and Phoebe?’

  ‘Caro’s told you?’

  ‘They sound like Philemon and Baucis.’

  ‘If Ben didn’t drink himself blind every Saturday night. But that and his wife’s ways with green vegetables are the only real hazards.’

  ‘It would be nice.’

  ‘You must bring Paul over.’

  ‘He’d love that. Though I couldn’t promise it would be very apparent.’

  ‘I’ve had abundant training. When she was Paul’s age. Before she tumbled to Nell.’

  ‘I know she loves it now.’

  ‘She hardly ever goes there.’

  Our coffees were brought. Jane stirred hers, then looked me in the eyes.

  ‘I have a tiny special relationship with Caro, Dan.’

  ‘I know you do. And I’m very grateful.’

  ‘I feel it would have been more tactful if I’d pretended I hadn’t known about Barney Dillon.’

  ‘That’s silly.’

  ‘I felt you were offended.’

  ‘Only that you aren’t more against it.’

  She looked away, searching for the right words. ‘I think she has to escape from Nell. From Compton, all of that. And she can’t do it through you… without hurting her mother.’

  ‘I do realize that.’

  ‘I’m trying to say children like her don’t have many roads from what they are to what they’d rather be. I know what you must feel about him, but that’s really not the point. I think it’s a kind of lesson she has to learn. I’m sorry, I should have said all this at dinner last night.’ She hesitated, then went on in a lighter voice. ‘And her real love-affaire of these last two years has been with you. That’s not a guess.’

  ‘Which makes me feel even more to blame.’

  ‘It’s a small break for freedom.’

  ‘Out of the frying-pan.’

  ‘But she has so little room to manoeuvre. She’s surrounded by adults she has to get in perspective. And whom she’s terrified of offending. And you really mustn’t discount Andrew. That bond. The reverse of the traditional situation has happened there. The more she’s reacted against Nell, the more he’s become the mediator. Her ally.’

  ‘I’ve guessed that. I am grateful.’

  ‘As long as you realize it’s created another conflict. She put it very naïvely but touchingly to me the last time we met. She said, If only you all believed in the same things.’

  ‘Poor kid.’

  ‘You don’t mind me saying this?’

  ‘Of course not. I wish I knew if she was fed up over what’s happened in California.’

  ‘We didn’t really talk about that. But I don’t see why she should be.’

  I stared down at the table. ‘I’ve been very naughty, Jane. Over Jenny. She’s rather too close to what I’d have liked Caro to have been. She’s literate, she reads, she thinks… ‘ I shrugged.

  ‘And also found you more interesting than men her own age?’

  ‘I know I haven’t a foot to stand on. I suppose it’s just Caro’s particular choice of guru.’

  ‘Can you blame her for taking him at the general valuation? He’s quite well seen nowadays. In all senses.’ She tilted her head at my sceptical look. ‘Yes, of course. A servant of the system. But that may be a part of the lesson she needs.’

  ‘And telling Nell?’

  ‘I suggested this morning that she left that to you.’

  ‘Well it wasn’t. I was once more ordered to keep my mouth shut.’

  She smiled. ‘Then you must let her do it in her own good time.’

  ‘I can see she picked a lousy father. But a perfect aunt.’

  She looked out of the window. ‘I nearly broke down two years ago, just after Roz started at the B. B. C. I ran away to London and did what decent mothers are never meant to do, threw myself sobbing into my daughter’s arms and told all. She was marvellous. So much more mature than I was at her age.’ She played with the handle of her cup, then gave me the moral. ‘I suspect one loses a lot if one hides too much behind one’s years.’

  ‘She knows about… you haven’t told me his name?’

  ‘Peter. Yes. She greeted that breathtaking confession by telling me that if I hadn’t been such an old square I’d have found a lover years ago.’

  I grinned, and saw in her eyes a spark of an old animation, a love of sending things up; but then she looked down, though she was still smiling. Through all of this I had been increasingly aware of a defect of imagination on my part. I knew what she had said of Andrew must apply to her as well. That however badly she had treated me, it had been repaid handsomely in her attitude to my daughter; that her ‘tiny special relationship’ was something much more important than that. I recalled a little incident from the beginning of Caro’s life. Rather inconsistently, since we had held their own first child at the font, Nell and I had refused to have Caro baptized; and though Anthony and Jane hadn’t argued over that, there had been some complaint about our depriving the baby of its natural godparents. It had all been got over lightly enough, but I could still remember Jane saying she intended to be her godmother whether we liked it or not. I began belatedly to realize that she had been it to a degree few fully titled godmothers felt necessary in practice. I deduced too that I was perhaps less strange to Jane than she had first led me to believe… often seen through Caro, at least. But just as I knew Caro’s understanding of Jane, at least as transmitted to me, was very partial, I wondered how accurate my own portrait had been. It seemed clear I was being told if gently, that I hadn�
��t thought hard enough about Caro’s problems. I felt tempted to justify myself. But I also knew Jane was on much sounder grounds there than with her views on politics and our past. My judgment shifted during that closer conversation over the coffees: we were back with that old touchstone of ‘feeling right’. She had felt very wrong to me through most of the evening before. But now I recognized something in her that had not, at least in this matter, changed. She might hide and hide, speak in cipher, betray her true self; but she was still capable of a tenacity of right-feeling, that strangest of all intransigences, both humanity’s trap and its ultimate freedom. It was not unlike as it was with Jenny when she was to put down her feelings about America; that is, I left the coffee-bar secretly chastened, or revised, concerning my too-easy first sentence upon Oxford and its modes and mores. In a way too it was a practical demonstration of Anthony’s last small contradiction of me. No true change except in ourselves, as we are. A rarefied idealism, perhaps; but I no longer felt so sure it was provincial.

  Jane told me more about Rosamund on the way back… and the girl herself, whom I hadn’t seen, except in the very occasional photograph, for so many years, came out as soon as we drove up to the house and parked behind her own small blue Renault. She was tall, taller than her mother, long-haired and long-limbed, a shade too lanky and strong-mouthed to be very attractive physically, but there was a frankness about her that I liked. She resembled her father, much more his face than Jane’s. The two women clung to each other a long moment, then Rosamund turned and took my hand. I made her lean forward and kissed her on the cheek. She said, ‘I’m so glad you were here’; with a good straight look, it meant the words.

  I very soon learnt that she was the practical member of the household; a brisk production-assistant efficiency was initiated. Paul must be put on the train, and she’d meet him herself at Reading. Phone-calls had started coming in, and Jane was set to answering some of those that needed it. I was given a drink down in the kitchen, while the two girls busied themselves with the lunch. The smell of food, we were to have the brace of pheasant I had rejected the night before. Rosamund talked about herself, not Anthony; her life in London working at the B. B. C. Then a grey Jaguar drew up outside, above us. I glimpsed the bottom halves of Nell and Andrew. Jane opened the door upstairs to them, and they didn’t appear for a few minutes.