by John Fowles
He felt a traitor, then; but in a good cause. She lifted the portfolio and slipped it down beside the table, then shifted a wooden chair back to its centre. But she remained with her hands on its back, turned away.
'It wouldn't be vain, David. But where do I find him?'
'You know the answer to that.'
'I rather doubt if the College would take me back.'
'I could very easily find out. When I return.'
She moved and came behind the sofa, looking down across it at him.
'Can I get in touch? If I...?'
'Henry has my address. Any time. Very seriously.'
She dropped her eyes. He knew he ought to stand, the tyingup of the portfolio had been a hint that the evening was at an end, it was late, she hadn't sat down again. Yet he was aware that she did not want him to go and that he did not want to go himself; that more than ever now, behind all the honesty and the advice, tutor and student, a truth remained unsaid. A pretence, the undeclared knowledge of a shared imagination, hung in the air; in her half-hidden figure against the light on the floor behind, in the silence, the bed in the corner, the thousand ghosts of old rooms. One was stunned, perhaps; that knowledge could come so quickly... as if it was in the place, not oneself. How impatient it was of barriers and obstacles, how it melted truth and desire of all their conventional coats; one desired truth, one truthed desire, one read minds, jumped bridges, wanted so sharply, both physically and psychologically. And the closeness of tomorrow, the end of this, was intolerable. One had to cling to it, even though one felt embarrassed, that some obscure loss of face was involved, the Dutch uncle being swiftly proved the emperor with no clothes.
He murmured, 'It's time I went.'
She smiled up at him; much more normally, as if he had been supposing things.
'I've taken to walking in the garden. Like Maud. Before I go to sleep.'
'Is that an invitation?'
'I promise not to talk about myself any more.'
The secret tension broke. She went across the room to a painted tallboy and took out a cardigan, then returned, pulling on the sleeves, freeing a strand of hair from the back; smiling, almost brisk.
'Are your shoes all right? The dew's so heavy now.'
'Not to worry.'
They went silently downstairs and to the garden door. They couldn't go out the front, Macmillan made such a racket. He waited while she slipped on some wellingtons, then they left the house. There was a rising moon above the long roof, slightly gibbous in the haze, faint stars, one bright planet. One lighted window, the lamp in the corridor outside Henry's room. They strolled over the grass and then through the courtyard past the studio. A gate on its far side led to another small orchard. There was a kind of central walk between the trees, kept mown; in the background, the black wall of the forest. The dew was heavy and pearled. But it was warm, very still, a last summer night. The ghostly apple trees, drained of colour; a cheeping of crickets. David glanced secretly at the girl beside him; the way she watched the ground as she walked, was so silent now, strict to her promise. But he had not imagined. It was here, now, the unsaid. He knew it in every nerve and premonitory fibre. His move: he drew back into speech.
'I feel as if I've been here for a month.'
'Part of the spell.'
'You think?'
'All those legends. I don't laugh at them any more.'
They spoke almost in whispers; like thieves; the ears of the invisible dog. He wanted to reach out and take her hand.
The last effort to distance. 'He will turn up. The knight errant.'
'For two days. Then leave.'
It was said. And they walked on, as if it had not been said, for at least another five seconds.
'Diana, I daren't answer that.'
'I didn't expect you to.'
He had his hands in his coat pockets, forced forward.
'If one only had two existences.'
She murmured, 'Glimpses.' Then, 'It's just Coët.'
'Where everything is not possible.' He added, 'Alas.'
'I imagined so much about you. When I knew you were coming. Everything except not wanting you to leave.'
'It's the same for me.'
'If only you hadn't come alone.'
'Yes.'
Once more he had that uncanny sense of melted time and normal process; of an impulsion that was indeed spell-like and legendary. One kept finding oneself ahead of where one was; where one should have been.
And he thought of Beth, probably in bed by now in Blackheath, in another world, asleep; of his absolute certainty that there could not be another man beside her. His real fear was of losing that certainty. Childish: if he was unfaithful, then she could be. No logic. They didn't deny themselves the sole enjoyment of any other pleasure: a good meal, buying clothes, a visit to an exhibition. They were not even against sexual liberation in other people, in their friends; if they were against anything, it was having a general opinion on such matters, judging them morally. Fidelity was a matter of taste and theirs happened simply to conform to it; like certain habits over eating or shared views on curtain fabrics. What one happened to like to live on and with. So why make an exception of this? Why deny experience, his artistic soul's sake, why ignore the burden of the old man's entire life? Take what you can. And so little: a warmth, a clinging, a brief entry into another body. One small releasing act. And the terror of it, the enormity of destroying what one had so carefully built.
They stopped before another gate at the far end of the orchard. Beyond there was a dim ride through the forest.
She said, 'It's my fault. I--'
'You?'
'Fairy-tales. About sleeping princesses.'
'They could live together. Afterwards.'
But he thought: would any decent prince have refused, just because they couldn't? When she waited, she said nothing or everything. No strings now. If you want.
He had meant it to be very brief. But once he found her mouth and felt her body, her arms come round him, it had no hope of being brief. It very soon lost all hope of being anything but erotic. He was wanted physically, as well as emotionally; and he wanted desperately in both ways himself. They leant back against the gate, her body was crushed against his. He felt the pressure of her hips, her tongue and all it offered in imitation, and did not resist. She was the one who brought it to an end, pulling her mouth abruptly away and turning her head against his neck. Their bodies stayed clung together. He kissed the top of her head. They stood there like that, in silence, for perhaps a minute. Once or twice he patted her back gently; and stared into the night and the trees; saw himself standing there, someone else, in another life. In the end she pulled gently away and turned against the gate, her back to him, with bowed head. He put an arm round her shoulders and moved her a little towards him, then kissed her hair again.
'I'm sorry.'
'I wanted you to.'
'Not just that. Everything.'
She said, 'It's all a lie, isn't it? It does exist.'
'Yes.'
There was a silence.
'All the time we were talking I was thinking, if he wants to go to bed with me I'll say yes and it'll solve everything. I'll know. It was all going to be so simple.'
'If only it could be.'
'So many if only's.' He contracted his arm, held her a little closer. 'It's so ironic. You read about Tristan and Yseult. Lying in the forest with a sword between them. Those dotty old medieval people. All that nonsense about chastity. And then...'
She pulled away and stood by the gatepost, four or five feet from him.
'Please don't cry.'
'It's all right, David. Just let me be a second.' She said, 'And please don't say anything. I understand.'
He searched for words, but found none; or none that explained him. Once again he felt hurtled forward--beyond the sex, the fancying, to where--her word--one glimpsed... and against that there rose a confrontation he had once analysed, the focus of that same Pisanello mast
erpiece, not the greatest but perhaps the most haunting and mysterious in all European art, that had come casually up with the old man earlier that evening: the extraordinary averted and lost eyes of the patron saint of chivalry, the implacably resentful stare of the sacrificial and tobe-saved princess of Trebizond. She had Beth's face now. He read meanings he had never seen before.
The slight figure of the girl cast as dragon turned, a small smile on her face. She held out a hand.
'Shall we pretend this never happened?'
He took the hand and they began to walk back towards the house.
He murmured, 'I could say so much.'
'I know.'
She pressed his hand: but please don't. After a step or two their fingers interlaced and squeezed; and did not relax, as if they were being pulled apart, must not be severed; and also as if hands knew what fools these mortals, or at least mortal intentions and mortal words, were. He saw her naked again, all the angles and curves of her body on the grass; he felt her mouth, the surrender in it. The trap of marriage, when the physical has turned to affection, familiar postures, familiar games, a safe mutual art and science; one had forgotten the desperate ignorance, the wild desire to know. To give. To be given to.
He had to let go of her hand to open and close the gate from the orchard into the courtyard. The catch made a little metallic sound, and Macmillan began to bark from somewhere in front of the house. He took her hand again. They silently passed the studio, he saw through the north window the long black shadow of the incomplete Kermesse canvas sleeping on its stand. The garden, the neurotically suspicious dog still barking. They came to the house, still without having said a word, and went in. She let go of his hand, bent and took off her wellingtons. A faint light reached back to them from the lamp in the corridor upstairs. She straightened and he sought her eyes in the shadows.
He said, 'It can't solve anything. But please let me take you to bed.'
She stared at him a long moment, then--looked down and shook her head.
'Why not?'
'Knight errants mustn't lose their armour.'
'With all its phony shine?'
'I didn't say that.'
'As exorcism.'
'I don't want it exorcized.'
He had only made explicit what had seemed implicit outside, on the way back; that tense interlacing of the fingers, that silence. Bodies mean more than words; now, more than all tomorrows.
He said, 'You know it's not just--'
'That's also why.'
Still he sought for loopholes; reasons.
'Because I hung back?'
She shook her head, then looked into his eyes. 'I shan't ever forget you. These two days.'
She took a sudden step and caught his arms to prevent them reaching up towards her. He felt the quick press of her mouth against his, then she was walking towards the stairs. She turned to climb them, hesitated a fraction as she saw he was following, went on up. Past the door to Henry's room, then along the corridor. She did not look round, but she must have heard him close behind. She stopped with her back to him, outside his bedroom door.
'Just let me hold you for a little.'
'It would only make it worse.'
'But if an hour ago you 'That was with someone else. And I was someone else.'
'Perhaps they were right.'
She looked down the corridor at her own door.
'Where will you be this time tomorrow, David?'
'I still want to go to bed with you.'
'Out of charity.'
'Wanting you.'
'Fuck and forget?'
He left a hurt silence. 'Why the brutality?'
'Because we're not brutes.'
'Then it wouldn't be like that.'
'But worse. We wouldn't forget.'
He moved behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.
'Look, the crossed wires are mainly words. I just want to undress you and...
For one fleeting moment he thought he had found the answer. Something in her was still undecided. The maddening closeness, the silent complicity of everything around them--a few steps, a frantic tearing-off of clothes in the darkness, a sinking, knowing, possessing, release.
Without turning she reached up and caught his right hand on her shoulder in the briefest grip. Then she was walking away. He whispered her name in a kind of incredulous despair. But she did not stop; and he felt frozen, fatally unable to move. He watched her go into her room, the door close; and he was left with all the agonized and agonizing deflation of a man who has come to a momentous decision, only to have it cursorily dismissed. He turned into his room and stood in its blackness in a rage of lost chance; made out his faint shape there in the old giltframed mirror. A ghost, a no-man. The horror was that he was still being plunged forward, still melting, still realizing; as there are rare psychic phenomena read of, imagined, yet missed when they finally happen. To one part of him--already desperate to diminish, to devalue--it was merely a perverse refusal; and to another, an acute and overwhelming sense of loss, of being cleft, struck down, endlessly deprived... and deceived. He wanted with all his being--now it was too late; was seared unendurably by something that did not exist, racked by an emotion as extinct as the dodo. Even as he stood there he knew it was a far more than sexual experience, but a fragment of one that reversed all logic, process, that struck new suns, new evolutions, new universes out of nothingness. It was metaphysical; something far beyond the girl; an anguish, a being bereft of a freedom whose true nature he had only just seen.
For the first time in his life he knew more than the fact of being: but the passion to exist.
Meanwhile, in the here and now, he felt a violent desire to punish--himself, the girl so close, Beth far away in the London night. That word she had used... he saw her sitting on the sofa, her bowed head by the gate, her almost still present face in the shadows downstairs... intolerable, intolerable, intolerable.
He went back out in the corridor and looked down towards Henry's room; then walked to the door at the other end. He did not knock. But neither did the door open. He tried the handle again, stood a few seconds. Then he did tap. There was no reply.
He was woken by his own and unlocked door opening. It was a quarter past eight. The Freak came across to his bed with a glass of orange juice and handed it to him as he sat up. For a moment he had forgotten; and then he remembered.
'Your early call. Monsewer.'
'Thanks.'
He took a mouthful of the orange-juice. She was wearing a polo-neck jumper, a knee-length skirt, which gave her an unwonted practical look. She stared down at him a moment, then without warning turned and sat on the end of his bed. She read from a sheet of message-pad paper in her hand.
'"Tell Henry I've gone shopping. Back after lunch."'
She looked up at the wall by the door, studiously avoiding David's eyes; and studiously waiting for his explanation.
'She's gone out?'
'Well it looks like it, doesn't it?' He said nothing, she waited. 'So what happened?'
He hesitated. 'We had a sort of misunderstanding.'
'Okay. So what about?'
'I'd rather she told you.'
She was apparently not to be put off by a mere curt tone of voice. She took a breath.
'You talked?' He said nothing. 'I'd just like to know why she's gone off like this.'
'Obviously. She doesn't want to see me.'
'Well, why, for Christ's sake?' She threw him a sharp little stare of accusation. 'All yesterday. I'm not blind.' She looked away. 'Di doesn't talk with strangers. Has to be something fantastic to break that block.'
'I haven't not realized that.'
'But you just talked.' She gave him another stab of a look. 'Honest to God, I think you're so mean. You know it's not the sex. Just she needs a nice bloke. Just one. To tell her she's okay, she's normal, she turns men on.'
'I think she knows that.'
'Then why's she gone out?'
'Because there'
s nothing more to say.'
'And you couldn't forget your bloody principles for just one night.'
He spoke to the glass in his hand. 'You've got it all rather wrong.'
She stared at him, then struck her forehead. 'Oh Christ. No. She didn't...?'
He murmured, 'Wouldn't.'
She leant forward, holding her mop of red hair.
'I give up.'
'Well you mustn't. She needs you. More than ever at the moment.'
After a second she leant back and glanced at him with a wry grin, then touched his foot under the bedclothes.
'Sorry. I ought to have guessed.'
She got off the bed and went to the window; opened the shutters, then remained there staring down at something outside. She spoke without turning.
'Old Henry?'
'Just the way we are.'
'I didn't imagine it, then?'
He was leaning on an elbow, staring down at the bedclothes. He felt embarrassed, in all senses undressed; and at the same time knew a need to be more naked still.
'I didn't think things like this could happen.'
'It's this place. You think, fantastic. When--you first come. Then you realize it's the original bad trip.'
There was a silence. She said, 'Christ, it's such a bloody mess, isn't it?' She looked up into the blue morning sky outside. 'That sadistic old shit up there. You know, you sort of seemed to fit. Really need each other.' She gave him a glance of reproach across the room. 'You should have made it, David. Just once. Just to spite the old bastard. Just for me.'
'We lack your guts, Anne. That's all, really.'
'Oh sure. My one-track mind.'
He said gently, 'Balls.'
She returned beside the foot of the bed, watching him.
'Didn't like me when you came, did you?'
'That's just a fading memory now.'
She examined the smile and his eyes for authenticity; then abruptly bit her lips and twitched up a side of her jumper. There was a flash of bare brown waist above the skirt.
'How about me instead? Time for a quickie?'
He grinned. 'You're impossible.'
She cocked a knee on to the end of the bed, crossed her arms as if to tear off her jumper, leant towards him; only the eyes teased.