The Ebony Tower-Short Stories - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  'Legs?'

  She lies absolutely still.

  Below, out of sight, a child's scream, like a stab, of mixed rage and complaint; it sounds like Emma. A fainter wail, imminent tears. Then a screamed 'I hate you!'

  It is Emma.

  There is a calming voice. Then silence.

  Peter's hand has stopped in the hollow of Catherine's back; now it continues, touching slowly up and down, the fingers creeping further and further down the sides, in some pretence of indifferent thoroughness; when all is erect, cocked, wild, in all senses wild; the bloody nerve, the savage tamed; the knowing one will; and somehow outrageously funny as well as erotic. He lets his fingers caress along her hidden left side and smooth on the brink of the armpit. She moves the left arm from under her face, reaches a hand back to her hip and pushes down on the side of the briefs. Then replaces her hand beneath her cheek. Peter hesitates, then throws his cigarette away; reaches and takes the fabric where she touched it. She pivots her body to one side, then to the other, so that he can bare her. He presses more cream out and begins to smoothe it over the cheeks, over the curve of the waist, then up and back. He leans and kisses her right shoulder, bites it gently; sweet-scented grease. She makes no response at all. He leans on his elbow alongside her and his left hand caresses, caresses, a little lower, the soft skin at the top of the thighs, the cheeks, the line of the crack.

  He strips off his shirt. Then he kneels up, a quick look round. He bends over her and pulls at the twisted strand of purple. When it comes to her knees, she raises the bottom of her legs for it to be freed. But that is all. She lies naked, head averted, waiting. He kneels up and looks round again; then sits, balances back and pushes off his shorts. He comes on all fours across her back, his hands by her armpits. She moves her head so that it is pressed straight down on the backs of her hands and to the ground. He pulls gently on the left shoulder, to make her turn. She lies inert. He pulls with more strength, she gives a little, her body half turns, though her face stays twisted, hidden, down to the ground. He forces her round, more roughly, on her back. Now the exposed face twists away to the left. Profile. The bare throat, the mouth. He reaches and takes the dark glasses away. The eyes are closed. He moves a strand of dark hair from the cheek. Then he crawls and crouches back, kisses the pubic hair, then the navel, then each breast. She is excited, whatever she pretends. He lowers himself on her, searching for the averted mouth. But as if the weight of him is a trigger, she twists her face further away. He insists, and she jerks the head wildly to the other side; a sudden wilfulness, her nails in his shoulders, frantic pushing him away, writhing, struggling, shaking her head violently from left to right. He kneels up again, on all fours. Her hands drop. She lies still, head twisted away.

  'Kay-ate! Pee-ter!'

  The children's, Paul's, perhaps Sally's and Bel's as well; voices in chorus, concerted, as if conducted. There is a faint echo from the cliff. Then inevitably, Candida's alone.

  'We're going!'

  Going.

  Catherine turns her head and opens her eyes and stares up into Peter's face. It is strange, as if she can't really see him, as if she is looking through his knowing, faintly mocking smile. He has, will always have, the idea that it was something beyond him; not Peter. It is a pose, of course; just the sick game of a screwed-up little neurotic on heat. Very sick; and very sexy. To have it like this, just once; to have those pale and splintered eyes.

  'Ka-ate! Pee-ter!'

  She stares up at him for three or four seconds more, then she twists round quietly and submissively, as if it is his will, between his straddled legs and arms; on her stomach again, face buried in the ground, and waits.

  Sally had dressed and Bel was standing and talking to her about children's clothes by the three repacked picnic baskets under the beech. Paul and the three children were still in the water, trying to find more crayfish while they waited. It was Bel, who happened to be facing that way, who first saw Peter, his wave, as he reappeared along the path from downstream. She raised an indolent hand in reply, and Sally turned. He came smiling.

  'Sorry. Rough country in them thar hills.'

  'We've been shouting our heads off.'

  'It's stiff with adders. I was scared the kids would try and meet me.'

  Sally flinches. 'Adders!'

  'Damn near put my foot on one.'

  'Oh Peter!'

  Bel says, 'I should have warned you. There are a few.'

  'It's okay. It beat a swift retreat.'

  'Ugh.' Sally turns away.

  Bel smiles. 'You didn't see Kate by any chance?'

  He looks past her, searching. 'No. Isn't she...?'

  'Never mind. She may have started home.' She turns and calls down to the others. 'Come on. Peter's back.'

  'Oh mummy! We haven't got nearly enough yet.'

  Bel walks down towards the water. Sally eyes Peter.

  'Where did you go?'

  'Just up there.' He waves vaguely towards the cliffs.

  'I wish you wouldn't go off like that. I was frightened.'

  He looks round at the grass. 'I got bored. Old Paul and his reading. How's Tom been?'

  'All right.'

  'Seen my ciggies?'

  She bends over one of the baskets, rummages, hands them to him. Candida comes up, accusing.

  'We shouted and shouted!'

  He tells her about the adders. They are safely plural now.

  Down by the water, Bel stands facing Paul, staring past him up towards the gorge.

  'It really is too bad. I just don't know what to do about her.'

  'She may have gone on.'

  'Then at least she could have told us.' She speaks to Emma, still dabbling with little Tom around the dam they have built. 'Darling, we're going now. Take Tom and put your clothes on.' Emma takes no notice. Bel looks at Paul. 'I decided this afternoon. We worry too much. It plays into her hands.'

  'Do you want me to look?'

  'No.' She speaks more sharply. 'Emma!'

  Then to Paul: 'I thought you wanted to work with Peter, anyway.'

  'That was the general idea.'

  'I don't know what she's trying to prove.'

  'I doubt if she does herself.' He turns towards Emma. 'Emma, you're quite sure Auntie Kate didn't say she was going home when you left her?'

  'Is she lost again?'

  Bel holds her hand out. 'No, darling. It doesn't matter. Do come on. And Tom.'

  Paul says, 'I don't mind.'

  Bel gives him a sideways look. 'No.'

  She takes Emma's hand, then little Tom's, and starts back to the beech-tree. Sally comes to meet them, and relieves her of Tom. Paul follows, rubbing his beard.

  Under the tree, Candida says they can't go home without Kate. Bel says she's probably gone home to make tea. Peter asks which way she went. Sally kneels, drying Tom's legs and feet on a dark green towel. Candida suggests Kate has been bitten by an adder. Bel smiles.

  'They don't kill you, darling. We'd have heard her. She's probably just wandered on.'

  Playing Hamlet to an asp.

  Sally passes the towel to Bel.

  'It's all wet,' complains Emma, squirming away.

  'Baby,' says Candida.

  Paul turns away, smiles wrily at Peter.

  'What the good picnic really needs is an old-fashioned regimental sergeant-major.'

  Peter grins. 'Super day. Smashing place. Be nice to use it somehow.'

  'Sorry about Kate. She's being very difficult.'

  'Hope it isn't us.'

  'Good God no. Just... Bel worries.'

  Bel's firm voice. 'Emma, if you don't shut up, I shall smack you.'

  The two men turn, Emma stands with tight-pressed lips, on the brink, as her mother briskly rubs her legs. Candida does a cartwheel, to show that she isn't tired at all, and quite grown-up. Bel pulls up Emma's brick-pink trousers, then hooks them and kisses her head.

  'Well,' says Paul. 'Onward, Christian soldiers?'

  He leads the way,
with Candida beside him, back along the path. Peter follows, holding his son's hand.

  'Smashing day, Tom, wasn't it?'

  Then Bel and Sally with Emma between them, asking about the crayfish.

  A minute, the voices fade, the picnic place is empty; the old beech, the grass, the lengthening shadows, the boulders, the murmuring water. A hoopoe, cinnamon, black and white, swoops down across the water and lands on one of the lower boughs of the beech. After a pause, it flits down on to the grass where they sat; stands, flicks up the fan of its crest. Then it darts down with its curved bill, and an ant dies.

  One of Emma's sandals has become undone, and Bel kneels. Sally walks on to catch up with Peter and Tom. Behind, as they move on again, Emma begins to tell her mother, if she swears she won't tell Candy, not forgiven for treading on a lovely twig house beside the dam, Princess Emma's forest-house that the animals helped her build, Aunt Kate's fairy story; or her already revised version of it, which will end without ambiguity. Ahead, Sally comes beside Peter, who still holds his son's hand. He reaches an absent-minded arm around her back. She sniffs at his shoulder.

  'Whose sun-tan have you been using?'

  He sniffs as well. 'God knows. It was just lying around.' He winks and grimaces. 'Tom wants to live here now.'

  She cranes forward. 'Do you, Tom? Do you like it?'

  The little boy nods. They have to walk in single file where the path narrows between the lush growth of the underwood. Peter pushes Tom ahead. Sally comes last, staring at Peter's back. The path broadens out again. Tom asks if they will have another picnic tomorrow.

  'Probably, old man. I don't know. We'll have fun, anyway.'

  Sally walks a little behind Peter's shoulder, untouching, watching the side of his face.

  'Are you sure you didn't see her?'

  He gives her a sharp look. She stares at the path.

  She says, 'You smell like she did this morning.'

  He is amused and incredulous. 'Darling. For God's sake.' Then: 'Don't be a twit. It was probably hers. I just picked it up after lunch.'

  Still she stares at the path. 'I didn't notice it when we packed up.'

  'Then she must have taken it when she went off. And for God's sake stop being such a...'

  He looks away.

  'Thanks very much.'

  'Well you are.'

  'At least I know I'm a bore.'

  He jerks on his son's arm.

  'Come on, Tom. Let's have a race. To that tree. Ready? Go!'

  He races ahead for a few steps, but lets the four-year-old catch up and pass him.

  'You won!' He takes his son's hand again and they face Sally as she walks slowly on to where they are. 'Tom won.'

  She gives the child a thin, token smile. Peter reaches and takes the basket she is carrying, pulls her briefly to him with his other arm, whispers in her ear. 'Actually I fancy her like mad. But I'm saving necrophilia for my old age.'

  She pulls away, only partly mollified.

  'You make me feel insecure.'

  'Come on, Tom. Take Sally's hand.'

  They walk on, the little boy between them. He murmurs across the child's head.

  'You'll have to find a better reason than that.'

  'You've just said one.'

  'Match drawn.'

  'You don't make any allowances.'

  'Look who's talking.'

  'You'd just like to leave me with your pyjamas. During the day. Forget I exist.'

  He takes a breath; and is saved from answering. Ahead, where the trees give way to the first meadow, they see Paul and Candida standing in the open, turned, looking back into the sky. Candida sees them coming, and points excitedly. The foliage prevents them from realizing what she means. But once they are themselves out in the meadow, they see.

  A cloud, but a mysterious cloud, the kind of cloud one will always remember because it is so anomalous, so uncorresponding with the weather knowledge that even the most unobservant acquire. It comes from the south, from behind the cliffs where Peter climbed, and whose closeness, at the picnic place, must have hidden what on a plain would have been obvious long before; so that it seems to have crept up; feral and ominous, a great whiteedged grey billow beginning to tower over the rocky wall, unmistakable bearer of heavy storm. Always predicated by the day's stillness and heat... yet still it shocks. And the still peaceful and windless afternoon sunshine about them seems suddenly eery, false, sardonic, the claws of a brilliantly disguised trap.

  Peter says, 'Christ. Where did that come from?'

  Paul stands with folded arms, watching the cloud. 'Happens sometimes. Too much heat too suddenly. Then cold air off the Pyrenees.'

  Candy looks at Sally. 'It'll thunder-and-lightning all night.' Then, 'We're worried about Kate.'

  Paul smiles and ruffles her head.

  'She'll see it. Anyway, she may be home already. Worrying about us.'

  'I bet she isn't.' Candy, not to be condescended to, looks up at her father. 'I bet you two francs, daddy.'

  He ignores her and picks up his basket, then moves back beside Peter and Sally. 'Look, why don't you go on. I'll just wait for Bel.' He feels in his pocket. 'Here's the key, Peter.' He turns; 'Candy, you take them home, will you, and--, Candida points. 'There they are. Dawdling as usual.'

  They all turn. Be! and Emma come slowly through the trees. Emma talking, in front, walking backwards, so that she can watch her mother's face. But when she sees the face look up beyond her, she turns, then runs on to join the group in the meadow. Paul walks back towards Be!.

  Avoiding Peter's eyes, Sally says, 'Hadn't you better go and look for her too?'

  He pulls a face. 'I think they'd rather deal with it themselves.' He looks down at his son. 'Want a piggy-back, Tom?'

  Sally stares at him as he hoists the child up astride his neck, then runs a little circle in the grass, jolting the small and nervous face up and down. Tom clutches fast, too frightened to speak.

  'I'd better come with you,' says Candida to Sally. 'You'll probably get lost if I don't.'

  Emma reaches them.

  'Peter, can I have a piggy-back? Please!'

  Candida holds out an authoritarian arm to. bar her way. 'No you can't. We're going home.'

  'I want a piggy-back.'

  Peter begins trotting on across the meadow, bouncing Tom up and down. Sally looks back to where Paul and Bel are now standing and talking; Paul with his hands on his hips, facing upstream.

  Candida stares at her sister. 'Just you try.'

  Then suddenly she makes a dash and catches Emma as she turns to run back towards her parents. Emma screams. Paul turns and bellows.

  'Candy! Stop that!'

  'Emma's being naughty!'

  'I'm not!'

  'Leave her alone. Go on home with Peter and Sally.'

  Sally says, 'Come on, Candy.'

  Candida hesitates, then pinches her sister's arm; but lets go immediately and walks away. Another scream.

  'You beast!'

  Candida looks up at Sally, a shrug. 'She's such a baby.'

  Emma dashes behind her, thumps her wildly on the back as she passes, then races on towards where Peter and Tom are jogging away across the meadow. Candida chases after her. Emma starts screaming. Then she falls. Her sister pounces on her. The screams are continuous, but not of real pain. Don't, don't, don't. Sally looks back to the wood. They seem to have given up with the children, now both backs are turned, as if they are waiting for Kate to appear on the path beyond them. Sally picks up the basket Peter has left on the grass and begins to walk to where Candida kneels over Emma, who is quieter, it seems after all it is a game now, more tickling than pinching. I promise, says Emma. I promise. Beyond them Peter and Tom disappear into the poplars on the far side of the meadow. Sally looks round at the cloud.

  These people she did not know till yesterday; this strange country and countryside; this role she has to play, this no one female close she can turn to, this being vaguely exploited, despised, suspicious, unwante
d, tired, sunburnt, so far from home; pre-period, but it can't be; this wanting to cry, but not daring to. She walks on past the two children, ignoring them, though they look up, triumphant and mischievous, to be looked at. She begins to riffle, as she walks, through the children's spare clothes and the picnic-cloth and scatter of things in the bottom of the basket she is carrying; as if she has lost something.

  It happened? It happens?

  It happened. She stopped searching when Candida ran up and started to walk beside her. The child said nothing, but kept glancing back. In the end Sally did the same: Emma in midfield, sprawled on her back, only her pink knees visible, shamming dead.

  'She's only pretending,' said Candida dismissively.

  It happens.

  After a few steps she says, 'Why aren't you married to Peter?' From across the river, if one had been a watching bird in the leaves, one would have seen them disappear; then Paul and Bel appear on the other side of the meadow, walking more quickly, towards where Emma now sits up, waiting for them. Paul points back towards the cloud and Bel glances round, no more, as she walks. They come to the little girl, who holds up her arms. They take one each and hoist her to her feet. Then on: after a little while she begins to skip and jump, supporting herself momentarily in mid-air between them, lifted by their hands. Each time she jumps her long fair hair tosses and flows back a second with the movement. They make little whooing cries as she rides between them, in which she joins. But then they stop a moment. Paul picks his daughter up and she sets a small arm round his neck. The three walk on, less quickly, yet not idly; as if there is something to be caught up or, perhaps, to escape from.

  They disappear among the poplars. The meadow is empty. The river, the meadow, the cliff and cloud.

  The princess calls, but there is no one, now, to hear her.

  The End

  Cover blurb

  John Fowles's prodigious reputation as a master story-teller is still further advarucd by this collection of novellas, which is an intriguing and compelling as anything he has yet written. Characteristically varied in narrative style and subject, they also echo themes from his earlier books.