The Ebony Tower-Short Stories - John Fowles

by John Fowles

There was a little silence.

  'You should have worn a uniform. Then I'd have remembered who you were.'

  He hesitated, then held out his hand. 'Take care. And I'll buy that novel when it comes out.'

  She took his hand briefly, then folded her arms.

  'Which one?'

  'The one you were talking about.'

  'There's another. A murder story.' She looked past his shoulder down the street. 'Just the germ of an idea. When I can find someone to help me over the technical details.'

  'Like police procedure?'

  'Things like that. Police psychology, really.'

  'That shouldn't be too difficult.'

  'You think someone...?'

  'I know someone.'

  She cocked her left sandal a little forward; contemplated it against the pavement, her arms still folded.

  'I don't suppose he could manage tomorrow evening?'

  'How do you like to eat?'

  'Actually I rather enjoy cooking myself.' She looked up. 'When I'm not at work.'

  'Dry white? About eight?'

  She nodded and bit her lips, with a touch of wryness, perhaps a tinge of doubt.

  'All this telepathy.'

  'I wanted to. But...

  'Noted. And approved.'

  She held his eyes a moment more, then raised her hand and turned towards the front door; the dark hair, the slim walk, the white dress. At the door, after feeling in her purse and putting the key in the lock, she turned a moment and again raised her hand briefly. Then she disappeared inside.

  The sergeant made, the next morning, an informal and unsuccessful application to have the pond at Tetbury Hall dragged. He then tried, with equal unsuccess, to have himself taken off the case, indeed to have it tacitly closed. His highly circumstantial new theory as to what might have happened received no credence. He was told to go away and get on with the job of digging up some hard evidence instead of wasting his time on half-baked psychology; and heavily reminded that it was just possible the House of Commons might want to hear why one of their number was still untraced when they returned to Westminster. Though the sergeant did not then know it, historical relief lay close at hand--the London letter-bomb epidemic of later that August was to succeed where his own request for new work had failed.

  However, he was not, by the time that first tomorrow had closed, the meal been eaten, the Sauvignon drunk, the kissing come, the barefooted cook finally and gently persuaded to stand and be deprived of a different but equally pleasing long dress (and proven, as suspected, quite defenceless underneath, though hardly an innocent victim in what followed), inclined to blame John Marcus Fielding for anything at all.

  The tender pragmatisms of flesh have poetries no enigma, human or divine, can diminish or demean--indeed, it can only cause them, and then walk out.

  The Cloud

  O, you must wear your rue with a difference.

  Already a noble day, young summer soaring, vivid with promise, drenched blue and green, had divided them, on the terrace beside the mill, into sun and shadow. Sally and Catherine lay stretched, as if biered, on flattened wooden beach-chairs with orange mattresses, of the kind one sees at Cannes; in dark glasses and bikinis, silent, outside the scope of other activity. Peter sat at the breakfast-table in shorts, bare-footed and bare-chested, opposite Paul and Annabel Rogers in the parasol shade. The three children were down on the lawn beneath the terrace, trying to catch whirligigs at the water's edge; knelt snatching at the surface, little cries, murmurs among themselves. Inky-blue dragonflies fluttered past; then a butterfly of a pale sulphuryellow. From across the river, one saw a quietly opulent bourgeois glade of light, bright figures, red and aquamarine parasol blazoned on top (amusing trouvaille at some local sale) with the word Martini; the white cast-iron furniture, sun on stone, the jade-green river, the dense and towering lighter green walls of willows and poplars. Downstream, the dim rush of the weir, and a hidden warbler; a rich, erratic, un-English song.

  The scene possessed a strange sense of enclosure, almost that of a painting, a Courbet perhaps--or would have if the modern clothes of the eight personages and their colours had not clashed, in a way a totally urban and synthetic age cannot be expected to notice, with the setting. It was so leafy, so liquid--and at that very moment a hidden oriole called from the trees behind the mill and gave this particular combination of heat, water and foliage a voice, defined exactly its foreignness, its faint subtropicality--so leafy, so liquid, so richly of its place and season, Central France and late May. And the Anglo-Saxon voices. So many things clashed, or were not what one might have expected. If one had been there, of course.

  'Decisions, decisions,' murmured Paul amicably.

  Whereat Apostle Peter smiled, putting his hands behind his neck, arching his hairy chest--guess what, beneath my shorts to the sun.

  'Your fault. That dinner. One needs twenty-four hours to recover.'

  'We did actually promise the children,' said Annabel.

  'Honestly, Tom won't care. He'll be happy messing down there all day.'

  Annabel looked down there. 'Ours will. I'm afraid.'

  Paul suggests that Peter and Sally need not come.

  'No, no, of course we will.' Peter descends his arms, grins sideways at them across the table. 'Just the ratrace. Set us dumb helots free, we collapse into total inertia.' Then: 'You need training for this.' Then: 'You've forgotten how us poor working sods live.'

  Annabel smiles: she hears rumours.

  'Go on. Rub it in.' He waves a pink and white arm at the river, the all of it. 'Honestly. Some people.'

  'You'd be bored to death.'

  'Oh yeah. Just try me. I mean, seriously, what would you take now, Paul?'

  'Forty? If! was pushed.'

  'Christ.'

  But suddenly Peter clicks his fingers, straightens, sits to face them. He is small, moustached, grey-eyed; assured, one knows; and suspects, dynamic. He knows he is known as dynamic. Smart little rhesus, his cage is time. He grins, finger out.

  'To hell with the bloody programme. Much better idea. I get Granny to buy the place as a rest-home for exhausted producers. Yes?'

  'You can have it for ten bob if you swing that one.'

  Peter extends a flattened hand, reads an imaginary letter.

  'Dear Mr Hamilton, we await your explanation of an item on your last expense account, to wit one superbly converted and altogether divine French water-mill for which you have charged the inexplicably high sum of fifty new pence. As you know, for your grade the disbursement ceiling under this heading is fortynine pence per annum and in no circumstances--, Screams. Mercifully.

  'Daddy! Daddy! There's a snake!'

  The two men stand, the sun-bathing girls look up. Annabel calls quietly, 'Keep away from it.'

  Sally, cocked kerchiefed head, says, 'Aren't they dangerous?'

  Annabel smiles in the parasol shadow.

  'They're only grass-snakes.'

  Sally stands and joins Peter and Paul at the corner of the terrace, by the parapet with the spaced pots of geraniums and agaves over the water. Catherine sinks back, her head turned away.

  'There it is! There!'

  'Tom, keep back!' shouts Peter.

  The elder little girl, Candida, pulls him officiously away. They see the snake swimming sinuously along beside the stone bank, its head making a ripple. It is small, not two feet long.

  'My God, it really is a snake.'

  'They're quite harmless.'

  The girl Sally clasps her elbows and turns away. 'I don't like them.'

  'And we all know what that means.'

  She looks round and puts out her tongue at Peter. 'And I still don't like them.'

  Peter smiles and kisses the air between; then leans back beside Paul and stares down.

  'Oh well. Proves it's paradise, I suppose.'

  The snake disappears among some yellow flags in the shallow water at the foot of the terrace wall. With Peter everything is always about to disappear. Now he t
urns and sits on the edge of the parapet.

  'When we going to have our session, Paul?'

  'This evening?'

  'Fine.'

  The three children come trailing up the steps to the terrace. Candida looks reproachfully across at Annabel.

  'Mummy, you said you wouldn't just sit around all morning.'

  Annabel stands, holds out her hand. 'Then come and help me pack up.'

  Sally, kneeling to lie on her beach-chair again, says, 'Annabel, can l...?'

  'No, please. It's just getting things out of the fridge.'

  Catherine lies silent behind her dark glasses, like a lizard; sun-ridden, storing, self-absorbed; much more like the day than its people.

  They straggle across a meadow on the far bank of the river, the bearded Paul ahead, carrying the drinks basket, with his daughters and the little boy; Annabel and her sister Catherine a little way behind, carrying the other two baskets; and thirty yards again behind them, the television producer Peter and his girl-friend Sally. Knee-deep in the May grass, the long-stemmed buttercups and the marguerites; beyond, above, the approaching steep stone hills, rock-faces in the scrub, the different world they make for. Swifts scream, high in the azure sky. There is no wind. Paul and the children enter a wood, disappear in the leaves and shadow, then Annabel and her sister follow. The last pair idle in the flowery sunlight. Peter has his arm round the girl's shoulders, she is speaking.

  'I can't work her out. It's almost like she's a mute.'

  'They did warn me.'

  She throws him a little look. 'Fancy?'

  'Oh come on.'

  'You kept looking at her last night.'

  'Just to show nice. And you can't be jealous about last night.'

  'I'm not. Just curious.'

  He pulls her closer. 'Thanks all the same.'

  'I thought men liked still waters.'

  'You're joking. She's hamming it up.'

  She looks at him under her eyebrows. He shrugs; then his bitten smile, like a sniff. She looks away. 'I'd be the same. If it had been you.' He kisses the side of her head. 'Pig.'

  'Such a goddam thing of it.'

  'You mean you wouldn't. If it was me.'

  'Sweetie, one doesn't have to--'

  'You'd be in bed with some new bird.'

  'Wearing black pyjamas.'

  She pushes him away, but she smiles. She wears a dark brown sleeveless top over cotton trousers striped pale mauve, white and black; bell-bottomed and pert-arsed. She has long blonde hair, which she tosses too often. Her face has a vaguely babyish defencelessness and softness. She invites regiments and rape; Laclos immortalized her. Even Paul, one has eyes too, eyes her; much cast as the trendy girl-friend, a plaything in plastic playlets. P is her letter of the alphabet. Peter takes her hand. She stares ahead.

  She says, 'Tom's loving it, anyway.' Then: 'I wish he still wouldn't look at me as if he doesn't know who I am.' He squeezes her hand. 'I feel Annabel's done better with him in a few hours than I've done in three days.'

  'She's had training, that's all. Tom's age, they're all selfish little bastards. You know. We're all just substitute boys. That's how he marks people.'

  'I have tried, Peter.'

  He kisses the side of her hair again; then runs a hand down her back and caresses her bottom.

  'Do we really have to wait till tonight?'

  'Cheeky bugger.'

  But she flirts the pert bottom and smiles.

  Ahead, Annabel breaks a silence with Catherine, who has put on a pair of white Levis, a pink shirt; a striped red woollen bag, Greek, over one shoulder.

  'You didn't have to come, Kate. '

  'It's all right. '

  'Well try and talk a little more. Please?'

  'I've got nothing to say. I can't think of anything. ' Annabel shifts the basket she is carrying to the other hand; a surreptitious glance at her sister. 'I can't help it about them. '

  'I know. '

  'You needn't make it quite so obvious. '

  'I'm sorry. '

  'Paul being--, 'Bel, I realize. '

  'And at least she tries. '

  'I can't shut off behind a smiling face. The way you do. ' They walk a few steps in silence. Catherine says, 'It's not just. . . ' Then, 'Other people's happiness. Feeling you're the odd woman out. For the rest of time. '

  'It will pass. ' She adds, 'If you try. '

  'Now you sound like Mama. ' Annabel smiles. 'That's what Paul's always saying. '

  'Clever Paul. '

  'Mean. '

  'Invited. '

  'That's not fair. ' Catherine answers the quick look with a smile. 'Stupid old Bel? With her horrid husband and her horrid house and her horrid children? Who could possibly envy her?' Annabel stops; one of her little performances. 'Kate, I don't sound like that!'

  'Yes you do. And I'd much rather have to envy you than not. ' She says back over her shoulder, 'At least you're real. ' Annabel walks behind her. 'Anyway, Candy is horrid. I simply must do something about her. ' Then, 'It's his lordship's fault. He keeps saying "passing phase". I. e., don't for God's sake bother me with my children.'

  Catherine smiles. Annabel says, 'It's not funny.' Then 'And I don't know why you've taken against them so much.'

  'Because they devalue everything.'

  'Not half as much as you undervalue.'

  That sets Catherine silent a moment.

  'Ten-a-penny human beings.'

  'You don't even know them.' Be! adds, 'I think she's rather sweet.'

  'Like saccharine?'

  'Kate.'

  'I can't stand actresses. Especially bad ones.'

  'She tried very hard last night.' Catherine gives a little shrug. 'Paul thinks he's terribly clever.'

  'Usable.'

  'You really are the most frightful intellectual snob.'

  'I'm not blaming Paul.'

  'But they are friends of ours. Peter is.'

  Catherine turns towards Bel, lowers her glasses, for a moment looks her in the eyes: you know perfectly well what I mean. Another silence, the sound of the children's voices through the trees ahead. Annabel lets Catherine lead the way again where the path narrows, speaks at her back.

  'You read such horrors into people. It's not necessary.'

  'Not people. What makes them what they are.'

  'Except you blame them. You seem to blame them.'

  Catherine makes no answer.

  'Well you do.'

  From behind, she sees Catherine give a little nod, and knows it to be sarcastic, not agreeing. The path widens and Be! comes beside her again. She reaches out a hand and touches the sleeve of Catherine's pink shirt.

  'I like that colour. I'm glad you bought it.'

  'Now you're being transparent.'

  Ridiculous, terrible: one cannot hide the smile.

  '"Catherine! I will not have you speaking to your mother like that!"

  Wicked Bel, mimicking to pierce, to remind; when one wept with rage, and there was only one sane and understanding being in the world. Towards whom one now reaches a hand, and feels it pressed... and then, how typical, that wicked oblique egocentricity, how cheaply feminine, oh how one hated her sometimes (what had he once said, the obsidian beneath the milk), having one so near bared, and glancing off, as if it was all a joke, just pretending 'Oh Kate, look! There are my butterfly orchids.'

  And Annabel leads the way up a little sunlit clearing in the trees beside the path, to where five or six slender white columns of the delicate flower stand from the grass--and kneels, oblivious to all but them. By the two tallest. Catherine stands beside her.

  'Why are they yours?'

  'Because I found them last year. Aren't they beautiful?'

  Bel is thirty-one, four years older than her sister, a prettier woman, plumper and rounder-faced, pale face and fox-red hair, more Irish, dry grey-green Irish eyes, though the blood is only from a grandmother's side and they have never lived there, lack the accent. In her old straw-hat and her loose-sleeved cream
dress she looks a little of the matron, the eccentric, the latterday lady of letters; always in shadow, her freckled skin is allergic to the sun. That calculated insouciance in her clothes, yet always a sort of haphazard elegance, a difference that every woman who comes to know her well ends by envying... even loathing; not fair, to be so often more rememberable than the fashionconscious. And now, from across the river, a nightingale suddenly bursts into song. Annabel stares at her orchids, touches one, bends to sniff the flowers. Catherine stares down at her kneeling sister. They both turn at Peter's voice.

  'They're wild orchids,' says Annabel. 'Butterfly orchids.'

  The man and the slightly taller long-haired girl come beside Catherine, who moves aside. They seem disappointed, a little at a loss when they see how small and insignificant the plants are.

  'Where's the cellophane and pink ribbon?'

  Sally laughs, Annabel waves a reproachful hand back at him; Catherine stares a moment at his face, then looks down.

  'I say, do let me take your basket,' says Peter.

  'It doesn't matter.'

  But he takes it. 'Male liberation.'

  She smiles faintly.

  Annabel stands up. They hear Candida's voice calling them on through the trees; the lush French trees; the young and peremptory, high-pitched English voice.

  A lovely lizard. All green.

  They came together, the five adults and the three children, and strolled on together through the shadow and sunlight, the three women and the children now a little in the lead, the two men talking behind; through sunlight and shadow, always the water to their left; shadows of conversation, sunlights of silence. Voices are the enemy of thought; not thought; thinking. One (blessed sanctuary) could see Catherine trying to make an effort, smiling at Sally across her sister, even asking one or two questions, like someone playing pingpong against her will foolish game, but if you insist, if Bel insists, if the day insists. All three women half-tried to hear through their own voices what the two men were saying behind them. The 'session' had informally begun, it seemed. That would be Peter, always eager to set things going, to bring things together, to get organized; before the main chance disappeared, like a snake into a clump of yellow iris. As a secret miser gets tense when he sees his money being spent; smiles and suffers; then breaks.