The Ebony Tower-Short Stories - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  The key thing, he was saying, was an angle, a hook to hang the programme on. An explanation, really--why so many came to buy houses in the area, was it just economic, for example? Some kind of escape? Merely a trend, the snowball effect? He fired out ideas, hardly listening to Paul's answers; already one sensed the futility of the exercise, the unnecessary fuss of it all, the endless planning and discussing of what would have been just as good with no planning, without all the talk; as a news story has to be done, fast and by luck and improvised. A kind of essay, he was saying; in depth; not just fancy photography, how-lucky-somepeople-are. All that jazz.

  Candida screamed as a kingfisher, a flash of azure, skimmed away ahead of them.

  'I saw it first! Didn't I, Mummy?'

  Like unnecessary italics, always underlining the obvious.

  'I absolutely don't want fifty minutes of pretty pictures,' said Peter, as if pretty pictures might seriously harm his career.

  What one lost, afterwards, was what one had never had strongly at the best of times: a sense of continuity. Such as, I must do this, B, even though it has no apparent purpose, beauty or meaning, because it comes between A and C. So now everything became little islands, without communication, without further islands to which this that one was on was a steppingstone, a point with point, a necessary stage. Little islands set in their own limitless sea, one crossed them in a minute, in five at most, then it was a different island but the same: the same voices, the same masks, the same emptiness behind the words. Only the moods and settings changed a little; but nothing else. And the fear was both of being left behind and of going on: of the islands past and the islands ahead. One is given to theories of language, of fiction, of illusion; and also to silly fancies. Like dreaming one is a book without its last chapters, suddenly: one is left forever on that last incomplete page, a loved face kneeling over wild orchids, a voice breaking the silence, a stupid crack--transfixed, for ever and ever, like a bad photograph. And the only one who understood... Bel is a subtle cow, and Paul, impervious oxlike Paul--one really doesn't know why one's here.

  But nor one why one should be anywhere else, unless to discover a wish that one was here after all. Perhaps continuity is simply having wishes, little safe bright chains of street-lights ahead. The most frightening is not wanting love from anyone, or ever again. Even if he returned.., each is the condition. To forgive nothing and give nothing and want nothing was what it all really meant; to settle for being taken like a parcel from one little island to the next, observing and judging and hating--or was it challenging? Surprise me, prove I'm wrong, string the islands together again?

  One must hide the impression of that. It would never do to have one's misery taken advantage of They stop where the hillsides come steep to the river, announcing the gorge ahead; the river faster, rocks and runnels; the land unfarmable, even by French peasants. Just upstream of where they stop lumbers and sprawls a picturesque agglomeration of huge grey boulders, like a herd of stone elephants come to water at the river's edge. Bel selects a place, a little plateau above the wate under a beech-tree, where there is shade and sun; kneels and begins, helped by Sally and Catherine, to unpack the baskets. Paul picks up the two bottles of wine and the Coca-Cola tins and takes them down to the river to cool. The two little girls go with him, then slip out of their shoes, dip cautious feet where a tributary runs shallowly over the stones; scream; while Peter wanders on a little way with his son, free it seems to play father for a minute or two now that he has had his say, his business, his morning's justification for existing.

  Paul takes off his shoes and stockings, rolls up his trousers, methodical and comical, like an elderly tripper at the seaside; Paul with his prematurely ageing hair and beard streaked black and white, almost cropped, obscurely nautical rather than literary, a dense shade too would-be intellectual and distingué; now paddling and poking after Candida and Emma, turning over stones for crayfish. The three women under the beech-tree stand. Sally unzips the side of her pants, peels and stands out of them, takes off her brown top. She still wears the bikini she had on at the mill; indigo and white flowers, a brass ring at each hip, another joining the straps of the upper part behind; svelte little pods, lissom legs. The skin does not match the fabric of the bikini, which requires a deep tan. One notes again. She swans off towards Peter and the boy, standing on a boulder some fifty yards away. Bel and Catherine walk down into the sun towards Paul and the little girls. The sparkling water, the splashing feet; the dragonflies and butterflies; the buttercups and oxeyes and little blue flowers like splashes of sky. The voices, movements; kaleidoscope, one shake and all will disappear. Bel's freckledmilky skin as she smiles, her vacant Juno smile, beneath the wide brim of her rush hat; it has fenestrations, an open lattice round the crown. Nuclei, electrons. Seurat, the atom is all. The first truly acceptable island of the day. En famille; where children reign. For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy. Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes.

  'It's lovely,' bawls Candida back at them, with her usual ineffably judicious authority. 'Come on. We don't want to eat yet.'

  'I wish I believed in hitting children,' murmurs Bel.

  Catherine smiles and kicks off her espadrilles.

  The next island, five, or is it ten, minutes later. Paul has caught a crayfish, a very small one; the lovely incoherence, the brief construct, disintegrates. They all circle him as he lifts each stone. Candy and Emma scream in anticipation as each stone rises, crayfish or not; then scream for Peter and Sally and Tom to come back. Hunting, serious. Paul snatches, a larger little lobster shape between his fingers, just in time to show his guests. Good God. Fantastic. Candida rushes back with a hastily emptied plastic box from the picnic place beneath the beech. Peter wades in beside Paul. Lovely. Competition. A game. Sally takes Tom's hand and leads him to the plastic box to show what Daddy is looking for. The little boy stares, then flinches back when one of the crayfish tries to jump out. Sally kneels, her bare arm round the child's shoulders. Like a transfer scene on Regency tea-cup; posed Faith, Hope and Charity; for those to whom tea is not enough.

  A figure appears, from the trees, from the way they came: a fisherman, a peasant come fishing, in rubber boots and faded blues, ruddy-skinned, an old straw hat with a black band; a man of fifty or so, solid, indifferent to them. He carries a long bamboo rod parallel with the ground over one shoulder; a canvas haversack, a bleached pale green, over the other. They stop looking for crayfish a second; stand, the men looking rather foolish, boyishly guilt, trespassing in the water; the children too, as if sensing that this intruder brings some obscure danger. But he walks quietly on out past the picnic place into the sunlight and down over the grass towards them, heading upstream. They see he has a squint. As he comes to them and passes, he tips a finger towards the brim of his hat.

  'sieurs--'dames.'

  'Bonjour,' says Paul. Then, 'Bonne peche.'

  'Merci.'

  And he goes stolidly on towards the boulders and the choked trees of the gorge beyond; disappears; yet leaves a wake, some reminder that this is a foreign land with its own life and customs. One hears what? ca ira. The murmur of mobs, nocturnal feet. The scytheblade set straight to the handle. Perhaps simply because he is a serious fisherman, he has a function in the day. The frivolous ones turn back to their pursuit. Only Catherine watches the blue back till it finally disappears.

  Alt, ça ira, ça ira. Les aristocrats, on les pendra.

  And leaves the water, as if he draws her after him. She slips her wet feet into her espadrilles, and begins to wander away, pretending to look at flowers, her back to the voices, the shouts and damns and buggers. Oh that's a beauty. Bags him tonight. Hurry up please it's time. Goonight Bill. . Goonight Lou. Goonight. Goonight. There is a little path round the back of the first huge boulder that lies barring, half in the water, half on the bank, the way. At the top Catherine looks back at the others. The two men work in tandem now, Peter lifting the stones, Paul pouncing. Bel turns idly away out of the water and
wanders back towards the picnic tree. She takes off her hat and smoothes her hair, as if exhausted, as she comes to the shade.

  Catherine goes on, down beyond the boulder, out of sight. The path goes on winding through the stone herd, evens out a little, then climbs steeply up into the trees again, above the river. It becomes noisy, tumultuous. The locals call this place the Premier Saut, the first leap; almost a fall, a rush of narrowed water, a famous place for trout. Catherine clambers down to the long pool that lies above it: the cool, the depths, the moss and ferns. A wagtail, a squirt of canary yellow, flies in little bounces to the far end of the pool. The girl sits on a stone at the water's edge, beneath the steep bank; stares at the placid dark green water upstream, the dapples and flecks of sunlight, the dancing fly-motes, the bird with its neurotic tail. She picks up a twig and tosses it into the pool, watches it drift, then gather speed and be sucked down out of sight over the choked tumble of the Saut. He is gone, he is gone.

  Now she sits slightly shrugged forward, as if she is cold, her elbows clasped, staring at the water. She begins to weep. It seems without emotion. Tears well slowly from her eyes and creep down her cheeks beneath the sunglasses. She makes no attempt to brush them away.

  Bel calls from under the tree, beside the pink check cloth and its spread-out array of charcuterie, long loaves, cheeses, knives, the picnic tumblers; the apples and oranges, the three little pots of chocolate mousse for the children.

  Candida calls back. 'Oh mummy! We're not ready yet!'

  But Paul murmurs to her, Sally turns, whitebodies her willowy way back towards Bel; a w-girl now; then Emma, the younger daughter, running, passes her, and little Tom starts running too, as if the food will all be gone. Then the two men and Candida bearing the plastic box with the seven crayfish now caught, the latter complaining that one more and there would be one each for supper, they must catch more after lunch. Yes, yes, of course they will. But everyone's hungry. Paul remembers the wine, goes to where it has been cooling; the bottle of Muscadet sur lie; the other of Gros-Plant can wait.

  'Hands up for Cokes!'

  They sit and sprawl, the adults and children, round the cloth. Only Paul stands, busy with the corkscrew. Peter smacks Sally's bottom as she kneels forward to pour the Cokes for the children.

  'This is the life!'

  'Do you mind!'

  He kisses the bare side of her back and winks across it at Tom. Annabel calls. 'Kate? Eating!'

  Then Candida and Emma. 'Kate! Kate!'

  'That's enough. She'll come when she wants.'

  Emma says, 'It might all be gone.'

  'Because you're a pig.'

  'I'm not!'

  'Yes you are!'

  'Candy!'

  'Well she is.' And she pounces, as her sister's hand moves. 'Guests first.'

  Be! says, 'Darling, hold the wine-glasses for Daddy.'

  Sally smiles across the cloth at Emma; a prettier child, shyer and quieter; or perhaps it is just by contrast with her little pseudo-adult of a sister. If only Tom... she spreads pdté on bread for him, and he watches suspiciously.

  'Mm. This looks heavenly.'

  Emma asks if the crayfish can have some. Peter laughs, and she looks hurt. Candida tells her she is silly. Bel makes Emma move and sit by her. Now Candida looks hurt. Paul glances out from the shade upstream towards the boulders, then looks down at Bel. She gives a little nod.

  'Daddy, where are you going?'

  'Just to look for Auntie Kate. She may have fallen asleep.'

  Candida throws a little glance at her mother. 'I bet she's crying again.'

  'Darling, eat your lunch. Please.'

  'She's always crying.'

  'Yes. Peter and Sally understand. We all understand. And we're not going to talk about it.' She makes a little moue towards Sally, who smiles. Peter pours the wine.

  'Mummy, can I have some?'

  'Only if you stop talking so much.'

  Paul stands on the first boulder, watching up into the gorge. Then he disappears. They eat.

  Peter: 'I say, this stuff's marvellous. What is it?'

  'The rillettes?'

  Candida says, 'Haven't you ever eaten it before?'

  'Them,' says Bel.

  'We eat them every day. Almost.'

  Peter smacks his head.

  'Caught out again. Just about to close his greatest deal. Then they found out he'd never eaten rillettes.' He puts his sandwich down, turns away, covers his face in his hands. A sob. 'I'm sorry, Mrs Rogers. I'm not fit to be seen at your table. I ought never to have presumed.'

  They hear Paul calling for Kate up the gorge. Peter gives another stage sob.

  Bel says, 'Now see what you've done.'

  'He's being silly.'

  'Peter's very, very sensitive.'

  Sally winks across at Candida. 'Like a rhinoceros.'

  'Can I have some more?' asks little Tom.

  'More, please.'

  'Please.'

  Peter peers back round through his fingers at Candida. Suddenly she is a child again, and giggles; then chokes. Emma watches bright-eyed, then begins to giggle too. Little Tom watches gravely.

  Paul saw the pink of her shirt some time before he reached the point on the path from which she had clambered down to the pool. He did not speak until he was standing there above her.

  'Do you want to eat, Kate?'

  She shook her head without turning, then reached for her dark glasses, on a stone beside her, and put them on. He hesitated, then climbed down beside her. After a moment, he reached out and touched the pink shoulder.

  'If only we knew what to do.'

  She stared up the pool.

  'It's so stupid. Something suddenly seems to take over.'

  'We do understand.'

  I wish I did.

  He sat on the stone beside her, half turned away.

  'Have you got a cigarette, Paul?'

  'Only Gauloises.'

  She accepted a cigarette from the packet he took out of his shirt pocket; bent to the match, inhaled smoke, then breathed out.

  'Nothing has happened yet. Now is still before it happened. I know it will happen as it did happen. And I can't do anything about it.'

  He leant forward with his elbows on his knees; a nod, as if such fantasies were quite rational, he shared them himself. Such a nice man; and trying, precisely because he was always trying. Be like me, be mild, be male, settle for what you have: sales if not name. Even after all these years the close beard, the fine mouth, made one expect asceticism, subtlety, stringent intelligence; not just decency, mediocrity, muddling through.

  'Kate, you're not the kind of person one can inflict clichés on. Which leaves us poor mortals rather tongue-tied.' She bowed her head a moment. 'Why do you smile?'

  She stared down at her hands. 'You and Bel are the gods. I'm the poor mortal.'

  'Because we believe in clichés?'

  She smiled faintly again; was silent, then spoke to humour him.

  'Bel upset me. It wasn't her fault. I'm being such an arrogant bitch with those two.'

  'What did she say?'

  'That.'

  'You're in great pain. We understand how difficult it is.'

  She breathed out smoke again.

  'I've lost all sense of the past. Everything is present.' But she shakes her head, as if putting it like that is so vague that it is pointless. 'The past helps you make allowances. It's when you can't escape the 'Shouldn't the future help as well?'

  'It's not attainable. You're chained to now. To what you are.'

  He picked up a pebble and tossed it a few feet out into the water. The trap, the rack; when you read people like books and know their signs better than they do themselves.

  'Isn't the best way to break chains like that to force yourself to behave... ' he doesn't finish the sentence.

  'Normally?'

  'At least the motions.'

  'Like Mr Micawber? Something will turn up?'

  'My dear, bread is also a cliché.
'

  'And needs a hunger.'

  He smiles. 'Well there is a kind of hunger, isn't there? At least for frustrating all of us who want to help you.'

  'Paul, I swear that every morning I... ' she breaks off. They sit side by side, staring at the water.

  He says gently, 'It's not us, Kate. But the children. One gets too protective. But they really don't understand.'

  'I do try. Especially with them.'

  'I know.'

  'It's this having totally lost the power of volition. Feeling at the mercy of the tiniest remark. Happening. Everything being in question again. Trying to find out why. Why him. Why me. Why it. Why anything.'

  'I wish you'd try and write it all down.'

  'I can't. You can't write what you're living.' She throws her cigarette-end into the water; then asks abruptly: 'Are you and Bel frightened I shall try to kill myself as well?'

  He says nothing, then, 'Should we be?'

  'No. But have you thought what it means that I haven't?'

  For once he gives a question thought.

  'We've hoped what it means.'

  'I think what it must really mean is that I like what I am. What I've become.' She glances at him, the Roman head staring into the water; wise senator; wishing he hadn't come to find her. 'I need hitting, really. Blowing up. Not sweet talk.'

  He leaves a pause. 'I wish we weren't such very different people.'

  'I don't despise you, Paul.'

  'Just my books.'

  'You have thousands and thousands of happy readers to put against that.' She says, 'And I wouldn't envy Be! so much if I despised you.'

  He looks down. 'Well...'

  'That's false modesty. You know you work.'

  'In our fashion.'

  'I know what a despot Bel is. Underneath.'

  'Sometimes.'

  'We're not really sisters. Just two styles of intransigence.'

  He grins. 'Of torture. Keeping a hungry man from his food.'

  And just as one couldn't help smiling at Bel's deliberate naivety, pretty pink shirts indeed, one smiles now to hide the same offence: at the same glancing off, leaving one stranded, the impatience. One talks transubstantiation; and all the man thinks of is bread and wine.