by John Fowles
It was not just jealousy. It was that someone like G.P. could be so close to someone like her—someone so real and someone so shallow, so phoney, so loose. But why should he have considered me at all? There’s not a single reason.
He’s twenty-one years older than I am. Nine years younger than D.
For days afterwards it wasn’t G.P. I was disgusted with, but myself. At my narrow-mindedness. I forced myself to meet, to listen to Toinette. She didn’t crow at all. I think that must have been G.P.’s doing. He ordered her not to.
She went back the next day. She said it was to say she was sorry. And (her words), “It just happened.”
I was so jealous. They made me feel older than they were. They were like naughty children. Happy-with-a-secret. Then that I was frigid. I couldn’t bear to see G.P. In the end, it must have been a week later, he rang me up again one evening at Caroline’s. He didn’t sound guilty. I said I was too busy to see him. I wouldn’t go round that evening, no. If he had pressed, I would have refused. But he seemed to be about to ring off, and I said I’d go round the next day. I so wanted him to know I was hurt. You can’t be hurt over a telephone.
Caroline said, I think you’re seeing too much of him.
I said, he’s having an affaire with that Swedish girl.
We even had a talk about it. I was very fair. I defended him. But in bed I lay and accused him to myself. For hours.
The first thing he said the next day was (no pretending) — has she been a bitch to you?
I said, no. Not at all. Then, as if I didn’t care, why should she?
He smiled. I know what you’re feeling, he seemed to say. It made me want to slap his face. I couldn’t look as if I didn’t care, which made it worse.
He said, men are vile.
I said, the vilest thing about them is that they can say that with a smile on their faces.
That is true, he said. And there was silence. I wished I hadn’t come, I wished I’d cut him out of my life. I looked at the bedroom door. It was ajar, I could see the end of the bed.
I said, I’m not able to put life in compartments yet. That’s all.
Look, Miranda, he said, those twenty long years that lie between you and me. I’ve more knowledge of life than you, I’ve lived more and betrayed more and seen more betrayed. At your age one is bursting with ideals. You think that because I can sometimes see what’s trivial and what’s important in art that I ought to be more virtuous. But I don’t want to be virtuous. My charm (if there is any) for you is simply frankness. And experience. Not goodness. I’m not a good man. Perhaps morally I’m younger even than you are. Can you understand that?
He was only saying what I felt. I was stiff and he was supple, and it ought to be the other way round. The fault all mine. But I kept on thinking, he took me to the concert, and he came back here to her. I remembered times when I rang the bell and there had been no answer. I see now it was all sexual jealousy, but then it seemed a betrayal of principles. (I still don’t know—it’s all muddled in my mind. I can’t judge.)
I said, I’d like to hear Ravi Shankar. I couldn’t say, I forgive you.
So we listened to that. Then played chess. And he beat me. No reference to Toinette, except at the very end, on the stairs, when he said, it’s all over now.
I didn’t say anything.
She only did it for fun, he said.
But it was never the same. It was a sort of truce. I saw him a few times more, but never alone, I wrote him two letters when I was in Spain, and he sent a postcard back. I saw him once at the beginning of this month. But I’ll write about that another time. And I’ll write about the strange talk I had with the Nielsen woman.
Something Toinette said. She said, he talked about his boys and I felt so sorry for him. How they used to ask him not to go to their posh prep school, but to meet them in the town. Ashamed to have him seen. How Robert (at Marlborough) patronizes him now.
He never talked to me about them. Perhaps he secretly thinks I belong to the same world.
A little middle-class boarding-school prig.
(Evening.) I tried to draw G.P. from memory again today. Hopeless.
C sat reading The Catcher in the Rye after supper. Several times I saw him look to see how many pages more he had to read.
He reads it only to show me how hard he is trying.
I was passing the front door tonight (bath) and I said, well, thank you for a lovely evening, goodbye now. And I made as if to open the door. It was locked, of course. It seems stuck, I said. And he didn’t smile, he just stood watching me. I said, It’s only a joke. I know, he said. It’s very peculiar—he made me feel a fool. Just by not smiling.
Of course G.P. was always trying to get me into bed. I don’t know why but I see that more clearly now than I ever did at the time. He shocked me, bullied me, taunted me—never in nasty ways. Obliquely. He didn’t ever force me in any way. Touch me. I mean, he’s respected me in a queer way. I don’t think he really knew himself. He wanted to shock me—to him or away from him, he didn’t know. Left it to chance.
More photos today. Not many. I said it hurt my eyes too much. And I don’t like him always ordering me about. He’s terribly obsequious, would I do this, would I oblige by … no he doesn’t say “oblige.” But it’s a wonder he doesn’t.
You ought to go in for beauty comps, he said when he was winding up his film.
Thank you, I said. (The way we talk is mad, I don’t see it till I write it down. He talks as if I’m free to go at any minute, and I’m the same.)
I bet you’d look smashing in a wotchermercallit, he said.
I looked puzzled. One of those French swimming things, he said.
A bikini? I asked.
I can’t allow talk like that, so I stared coldly at him. Is that what you mean?
To photograph like, he said, going red.
And the weird thing is, I know he means exactly that. He didn’t mean to be nasty, he wasn’t hinting at anything, he was just being clumsy. As usual. He meant literally what he said. I would be interesting to photograph in a bikini.
I used to think, it must be there. It’s very deeply suppressed, but it must be there.
But I don’t any more. I don’t think he’s suppressing anything. There’s nothing to suppress.
A lovely night-walk. There were great reaches of clear sky, no moon, sprinkles of warm white stars everywhere, like milky diamonds, and a beautiful wind. From the west. I made him take me round and round, ten or twelve times. The branches rustling, an owl hooting in the woods. And the sky all wild, all free, all wind and air and space and stars.
Wind full of smells and far-away places. Hopes. The sea. I am sure I could smell the sea. I said (later, of course I was gagged outside), are we near the sea? And he said, ten miles. I said, near Lewes. He said, I can’t say. As if someone else had strictly forbidden him to speak. (I often feel that with him—a horrid little cringing good nature dominated by a mean bad one.)
Indoors it couldn’t have been more different. We talked about his family again. I’d been drinking scrumpy. I do it (a little) to see if I can get him drunk and careless, but so far he won’t touch it. He’s not a teetotaller, he says. So it’s all part of his warderishness. Won’t be corrupted.
M. Tell me some more about your family.
C. Nothing more to tell. That’d interest you.
M. That’s not an answer.
C. It’s like I said.
M. As I said.
C. I used to be told I was good at English. That was before I knew you.
M. It doesn’t matter.
C. I suppose you got the A level and all that.
M. Yes, I did.
C. I got O level in Maths and Biology.
M. (_I was counting stitches—jumper—expensive French wool_) Good, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen …
C. I won a prize for hobbies.
M. Clever you. Tell me more about your father.
>
C. I told you. He was a representative. Stationery and fancy goods.
M. A commercial traveller.
C. They call them representatives now.
M. He got killed in a car-crash before the war. Your mother went off with another man.
C. She was no good. Like me. (_I gave him an icy look. Thank goodness his humour so rarely seeps out_.)
M. So your aunt took you over.
C. Yes.
M. Like Mrs. Joe and Pip.
C. Who?
M. Never mind.
C. She’s all right. She kept me out of the orphanage.
M. And your cousin Mabel. You’ve never said anything about her.
C. She’s older than me. Thirty. There’s her older brother, he went out to Australia after the war to my Uncle Steve. He’s a real Australian. Been out there years. I never seen him.
M. And haven’t you any other family?
C. There’s relations of Uncle Dick. But they and Aunt Annie never got on.
M. You haven’t said what Mabel’s like.
C. She’s deformed. Spastic. Real sharp. Always wants to know everything you’ve done.
M. She can’t walk?
C. About the house. We had to take her out in a chair.
M. Perhaps I’ve seen her.
C. You haven’t missed much.
M. Aren’t you sorry for her?
C. It’s like you have to be sorry for her all the time. It’s Aunt Annie’s fault.
M. Go on.
C. She like makes everything round her deformed too. I can’t explain. Like nobody else had any right to be normal. I mean she doesn’t complain outright. It’s just looks she gives, and you have to be dead careful. Suppose, well, I say not thinking one evening, I nearly missed the bus this morning, I had to run like billy-o, sure as fate Aunt Annie would say, think yourself lucky you can run. Mabel wouldn’t say anything. She’d just look.
M. How vile!
C. You had to think very careful about what you said.
M. Carefully.
C. I mean carefully.
M. Why didn’t you run away? Live in digs?
C. I used to think about it.
M. Because they were two women on their own. You were being a gent.
C. Being a charley, more like it. (_Pathetic, his attempts at being a cynic_.)
M. And now they’re in Australia making your other relations miserable.
C. I suppose so.
M. Do they write letters?
C. Yes. Not Mabel.
M. Would you read one to me one day?
C. What for?
M. I’d be interested.
C. (_great inner struggle_) I got one this morning. I’ve got it on me. (_A lot of argy-bargy, but in the end he took the letter from out of his pocket_.) They’re stupid.
M. Never mind. Read it out. All of it.
He sat by the door, and I knitted, knitted, knitted—I can’t remember the letter word for word, but it was something like this: Dear Fred (that’s the name she calls me by, he said, she doesn’t like Ferdinand—red with embarrassment). Very pleased to have yours and as I said in my last it’s your money, God has been very kind to you and you mustn’t fly up in the face of his kindness and I wish you had not taken this step, your Uncle Steve says property’s more trouble than it’s worth. I notice you don’t answer my question about the woman to clean. I know what men are and just remember what they say cleanliness is next to godliness. I have no right and you have been very generous, Fred, Uncle Steve and the boys and Gertie can’t understand why you didn’t come here with us, Gert only said this morning that you ought to be here, your place is with us, but don’t think I am not grateful. I hope the Lord will forgive me but this has been a great experience and you wouldn’t know Mabel, she is brown in the sun here, it is very nice, but I don’t like the dust. Everything gets dirty and they live in a different way to what we do at home, they speak English more like Americans (even Uncle Steve) than us. I shan’t be sorry to get home to Blackstone Rd, it worries me to think of the damp and the dirt, I hope you did what I said and aired all the rooms and linen like I said and got a good cleaning woman in like I said the same as with you, I hope.
Fred I am worried with all that money you won’t lose your head, there are a lot of clever dishonest people (she means women, he said) about these days, I brought you up as well as I could and if you do wrong it’s the same as if I did. I shan’t show this to Mabel she says you don’t like it. I know you are over age (over 21, she means, he said) but I worry about you because of all that happened (she means me being an orphan, he said).
We liked Melbourne, it is a big town. Next week we are going to Brisbane to stay with Bob again and his wife. She wrote a nice letter. They will meet us at the station. Uncle Steve, Gert and the children send their love. So does Mabel and your everloving.
Then she says I needn’t worry about money, it’s lasting very well. Then she hopes I got a woman who will work, she says the young ones don’t clean proper nowadays.
(_There was a long silence then_.)
M. Do you think it’s a nice letter?
C. She always writes like that.
M. It makes me want to be sick.
C. She never had any real education.
M. It’s not the English. It’s her nasty mind.
C. She took me in.
M. She certainly did. She took you in, and she’s gone on taking you in. She’s made an absolute fool out of you.
C. Thank you very much.
M. Well, she has!
C. Oh, you’re right. As per usual.
M. Don’t say that! (_I put down my knitting and closed my eyes_.)
C. She never bossed me about half as much as you do.
M. I don’t boss you. I try to teach you.
C. You teach me to despise her and think like you, and soon you’ll leave me and I’ll have no one at all.
M. Now you’re pitying yourself.
C. It’s the one thing you don’t understand. You only got to walk into a room, people like you, and you can talk with anyone, you understand things, but when …
M. Do shut up. You’re ugly enough without starting to whine.
I picked up my knitting and put it away. When I looked round he was standing there with his mouth open, trying to say something. And I knew I’d hurt him, I know he deserves to be hurt, but there it is. I’ve hurt him. He looked so glum. And I remembered he’d let me go out in the garden. I felt mean.
I went to him and said I was sorry and held out my hand, but he wouldn’t take it. It was queer, he really had a sort of dignity, he was really hurt (perhaps that was it) and showing it. So I took his arm and made him sit down again, and I said, I’m going to tell you a fairy story.
Once upon a time (I said, and he stared bitterly bitterly at the floor) there was a very ugly monster who captured a princess and put her in a dungeon in his castle. Every evening he made her sit with him and ordered her to say to him, “You are very handsome, my lord,” And every evening she said, “You are very ugly, you monster.” And then the monster looked very hurt and sad and stared at the floor. So one evening the princess said, “If you do this thing and that thing you might be handsome,” but the monster said, “I can’t, I can’t.” The princess said, “Try, try.” But the monster said, “I can’t, I can’t.” Every evening it was the same. He asked her to lie, and she wouldn’t. So the princess began to think that he really enjoyed being a monster and very ugly. Then one day she saw he was crying when she’d told him, for the fiftieth time, that he was ugly. So she said, “You can become very handsome if you do just one thing. Will you do it?” Yes, he said, at last, he would try to do it. So she said, then set me free. And he set her free. And suddenly, he wasn’t ugly any more, he was a prince who had been bewitched. And he followed the princess out of the castle. And they both lived happily ever afterwards.
I knew it was silly as I was saying
it. Fey. He didn’t speak, he kept staring down.
I said, now it’s your turn to tell a fairy story.
He just said, I love you.
And yes, he had more dignity than I did then and I felt small, mean. Always sneering at him, jabbing him, hating him and showing it. It was funny, we sat in silence facing each other and I had a feeling I’ve had once or twice before, of the most peculiar closeness to him—not love or attraction or sympathy in any way. But linked destiny. Like being shipwrecked on an island—a raft—together. In every way not wanting to be together. But together.
I feel the sadness of his life, too, terribly. And of those of his miserable aunt and his cousin and their relatives in Australia. The great dull hopeless weight of it. Like those Henry Moore drawings of the people in the Tubes during the blitz. People who would never see, feel, dance, draw, cry at music, feel the world, the west wind. Never be in any real sense.
Just those three words, said and meant. I love you.
They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer.
His fairy story.
October 31st
Nothing. I psycho-analyzed him this evening.
He would sit so stiffly beside me.
We were looking at Goya’s etchings. Perhaps it was the etchings themselves, but he sat and I thought he wasn’t really looking at them. But thinking only of being so close to me.
His inhibition. It’s absurd. I talked at him as if he could easily be normal. As if he wasn’t a maniac keeping me prisoner here. But a nice young man who wanted a bit of chivvying from a jolly girl-friend.
It’s because I never see anyone else. He becomes the norm. I forget to compare.
Another time G.P. It was soon after the icy douche (what he said about my work). I was restless one evening. I went round to his flat. About ten. He had his dressing-gown on.
I was just going to bed, he said.
I wanted to hear some music, I said. I’ll go away. But I didn’t.
He said, it’s late.
I said I was depressed. It had been a beastly day and Caroline had been so silly at supper.
He let me go up and made me sit on the divan and he put on some music and turned out the lights and the moon came through the window. It fell on my legs and lap through the skylight, a lovely slow silver moon. Sailing. And he sat in the armchair on the other side of the room, in the shadows.