‘There is not a lot of world here now,’ the manager says, it seems with an apologetic intention. ‘It is not so gay.’
‘I prefer that.’ I think shudderingly of the pool in seasons other than this dead one, pullulating with bodies like fry or spawn.
Mr Senemoǧlu inclines his head, as if deferring to this preference. He withdraws at a dignified pace. I think of Miranda and Farnaby together, getting better acquainted among the hills. I take the pictures out of the envelope, conscious that the photographer is scanning my features.
There are eight altogether, postcard-size. All of them showing in close-up a face I recognize as the girl Pamela’s, in a series of expressions, sullen, grimacing, contorted. After some moments I seem to discern a pattern, a development, and as if in a dream I arrange them on the table before me, the face in the first one vaguely troubled as if by something teasing the memory or making some claim on the understanding, eyes wide open, staring straight ahead, lips compressed. The mouth opens a little as if in dawning wonder, an intimation that the truth is about to be perceived, the distant experience recalled. Then pain, the face grapples with pain as if that truth or experience is too harsh to be managed, as if the girl is fighting to control or contain it, fighting with closed eyes and clenched jaw not to let herself be flooded, overborne; then the fifth picture, the face smoothed again, sorrowing, then again violently contorted, raised blindly in an agony of supplication, straining for the release to be found in a cry or scream, and indeed the penultimate picture shows Pamela with mouth stretched open in a silent scream. Last of all I place a Pamela restored to blankness, sullenness.
Thus I arrange the pictures on the table. Then looking up meet the shiny eager gaze of the photographer.
‘Ah,’ he says. ‘So you arrange them in that order?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Interesting, that you should place the expressionless face, the face blank and stupid, right at the very end. It is as if you are saying, life returns to this, this is the phase we are aspiring to, blankness, insensibility, the vegetal life. I myself would place that particular one here, at the beginning. It is the unawakened face.’
‘You may be right.’ I look at the pictures again. ‘All the same, I prefer it at the end.’
‘My own vision is more dramatic, she utters right at the end the scream.’
Plopl nods his head in self-approval. Despite myself I am drawn into this discussion: ‘The photographs depict a crisis of some sort, do they not, Mr Plopl? A conflict. She appears to be struggling to retain control. I prefer to think of conflict as followed by resolution. If the resolution has a bestial oblivion in it, I cannot help that. No, I prefer it at the end.’
I grow impatient with myself, my slow, pedantic voice. ‘They are marvellous photographs, Mr Plopl,’ I say. ‘I don’t know how you managed to extract these expressions from your model. She must be an actress of considerable ability.’
‘She can’t act for toffees. No, she is just the plastic, malleable human material. I see that you have put the grieving face’ – he points with grubby forefinger across the table – ‘this one, you have put it between faces of conflict and stress. Now why have you done that, sir?’
‘It seemed the natural place for it.’ Again I am obliged to defend my choice. ‘She seems to be seeking for some outside help. Her attitude in short is somewhat prayerful. Now it seems natural to me to place this in the midst of agony. The sudden perception of a possible refuge.’ I look down again at the blind, brutal face of Pamela.
‘Interesting, jolly interesting,’ the photographer now says, after some preliminary movements of the features. ‘There are many possible variations, permutations in the order of these pictures, which I can let you have for just seven hundred and fifty new pence. I have known people to put that particular one second from last, just before the spasms, yes, the way a person arranges these pictures indicates his world view, we can say …’ His round face, rather heavily jowled for one still comparatively young, glistens with sweat, glows with interest and enthusiasm. In the warmth of my admiration for the pictures, his nature is blossoming into confidences. ‘After all,’ he says, ‘if we did not know the story in advance, how would we arrange the Stations of the Cross?’
‘How indeed?’ A telling point. ‘What do the pictures actually depict?’ I ask him.
‘What do you think?’ He looks almost coy.
‘They could be many things,’ I say slowly. ‘Hysteria. The stress of some ordeal. A person attempting to endure pain without total loss of dignity. Perhaps, having taken some drug she is fighting for reasons of her own the onset of the symptoms.’
‘Pain being the dominant note,’ he says.
‘Oh, certainly. What is it actually?’
He leans back in his chair. He utters a sort of triumphant titter. ‘It is the process of a clitoral orgasm,’ he says. ‘Self-induced, of course.’
I shuffle the pictures together and place them beside his elbow on the table in a neat stack.
‘Yours,’ he says, ‘for seven pounds. Try it on your guests. Reveal your character, justify your choice. Cheap at the price. A unique series of photographs.’
‘Seven pounds seems rather a lot.’
‘Six and a half then, that is my final offer.’
I hesitate. There is no doubt that the pictures have a certain quality. On the other hand … Suddenly the absolute pointlessness of haggling comes home to me. Strange that a reluctance to be overcharged should accompany me in what may be my last hours. They may not be, of course. Then I shall have need of money tomorrow …
It is at this moment, while the photographer is still regarding me with eager expectancy, that the two of them, Miranda and Farnaby, emerge on to the terrace from the entrance area and begin to walk towards me. ‘Later,’ I say swiftly to the photographer. ‘We’ll discuss it later.’ The photographs disappear into his jacket pocket. We stand up to greet the approaching couple, both of whom are smiling slightly. Some words are exchanged of greeting and salutation. It is my impression that Miranda is rather flushed, Farnaby rather pale. In the momentary confusion of my thoughts I do not make out more than this. The photographer retires from the scene. I suggest that the three of us sit down and have some tea. Miranda says that would be lovely. The ready acceptance of offers of food and drink was always one of her most endearing traits. Farnaby, after a distinct and no doubt painful hesitation, says, no, he has one or two things to do, he will see us later. He still hesitates, hovers, but at last, with a smile for Miranda, takes himself off along the terrace, with that odd, slightly lunging walk of his – he has summoned, albeit with a struggle, the tact to leave us alone.
Wasted of course, for what can I say to her? I know why she left me. Know too from the small wary signs she makes that she is conscious of needing to be careful in what she says, what she admits, and this can only mean she feels obligation elsewhere. This being so, she will seek a pretext for anger with me …
‘Why did you come chasing after me?’ she says now, and there is anger in her voice. ‘As if I were a schoolgirl running away from home.’
I look at her face. There is a tightness in my chest and throat. All my assurances and protestations are used up, I have squandered them over the years, besides it was not love for Miranda that brought me here, not the simple desire to have her back again …
‘I came because I had to.’
She looks at me steadily, with an expression I do not remember seeing on her face before, troubled, perhaps affectionate, but clear and appraising.
‘You should not have come,’ she says. I see that she is still, very naturally of course, regarding herself as central to the matter.
5
At the door of his cabin Farnaby hesitated a long moment, resisting the temptation to turn round and go back to them again. He stared in misery at the white-painted number on his door, thinking of persuasive Mooncranker, intimacy and habit also pleading for him, Miranda’s listening face, her terribl
e malleability. Again there came over him in a sickening wave the sense of those two conspiring against him, as they had done to such effect that distant summer … With a great effort of resolution he opened the door and went in. Once inside unhappiness swept through him like a physical pain. He stood still for some moments, then lay down on his bed, and pulled the top blanket over him as if in fact seeking relief from physical suffering. He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, in whose intricate pattern of cracks he seemed to discern heraldic birds and beasts. He did not fully understand the nature of his pain, the feeling of loss and dereliction that had made him creep into bed like a sick creature. It was somehow antecedent to the present situation, as though he had behaved with tragic recklessness long before, in the clouded past …
Gradually, as warmth spread through his body, this feeling lessened. By slight adjustments, he made of the heron on the ceiling a kneeling noseless child, then a peninsula, then a lagoon with spidery vegetation, knuckled promontories, skeletal floating creatures, all lost for ever as he pressed back his head, reassembled into a web or net, a mesh of great complexity with jagged holes where creatures formerly imprisoned had found egress … His eyes closed on this interpretation and after some time he slept.
It was after six when he awoke, to a sense of crisis which persisted, indeed grew stronger, while he washed and got ready to go out. Neither Mooncranker nor Miranda were anywhere to be seen on the terrace, and the only people in the pool were the two black men laughing together in the shallower water at the far end, and the Greek, who smiled and beckoned him into the water. Farnaby mimed politely that he would be coming in later. A very badly crippled man got up from a table opposite and began making his way along the terrace, puny body slung between crutches. Farnaby went to Miranda’s cabin and tapped on the door, but there was no answer. A terrible suspicion entered his mind, but he dismissed it almost at once, remembering the pact that Miranda had made – she would never have gone off without saying anything.
He walked back round the terrace, crossed over the bridge, and went into the dining-room, taking in rather confusedly the fact that several of the tables were occupied. He saw Mooncranker and Miranda almost at once, sitting together at a table in the far corner, and made his way towards them, noting as he drew near that there was none of that animated air of reunion between them that he had been dreading. They were sitting in staid silence, eating.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’ he said, diffidently, but already pulling out a chair. Miranda looked up and smiled at him, a smile of such transfixing radiance that it caused a check in his breathing. Mooncranker, who had observed this smile, made a gesture of welcome. ‘We thought we’d dine early,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind?’
‘Not at all.’
‘I can recommend the soup,’ Mooncranker said. ‘But the Imam Beyilde is not so good, unfortunately.’
‘The moussaka isn’t bad,’ Miranda said.
Farnaby, who still felt rather breathless, forbore looking at her face again so soon, anticipating already the slight shock of pleasure and awe he would experience when he did so. He felt faint surprise that she should be capable of such calm comment about the food, but this passed after a moment into a sense of her mystery, the opaqueness that her whole personality still possessed for him.
‘I don’t think they soaked the aubergines enough,’ Mooncranker said. ‘Or perhaps at all.’ With his great curving nose and statesmanlike sweep of hair he looked incongruous, out of place, in the primitively appointed dining-room. Farnaby noticed now for the first time how dark and elderly his lips were. I’m not hungry, really,’ he said. ‘An omelette will do for me.’
‘Oh come now,’ Mooncranker said.
‘No, really.’
‘Have some wine, while you’re thinking it over,’ Mooncranker said. He himself did not seem to be drinking anything. ‘Baska bir bardak,’ he said to Mr Senemoǧlu’s back as it was retreating towards the kitchen.
Farnaby and Miranda exchanged a glance, then he looked away, at the other people eating there. It was still too early to be very full. The Levantine, in a mauve shirt with a pattern of flowers on it, sat alone. Farnaby watched him spearing slices of tomato with accurate motions of his fork. The German couple had almost finished their meal, she held a bright red apple in one swollen hand – Farnaby noticed that the hand itself was small, small-boned, the distension of flesh on this delicate framework looking like a symptom of disease. The same was true of her features, on which the flesh had billowed, self-generating, protoplasmic. Her husband, whose neck was encased in a navy-blue cravat, looked abstracted and at the same time harassed, as though lost in a not very reassuring dream. One or two others were there, whom he did not remember having seen before.
Farnaby was suddenly possessed by a sort of childlike wonder at the existence in this place, at this moment of time, of such persons, with himself among them, himself and Miranda and Mooncranker seated here together at what was undoubtedly a crucial point in all their lives; and though he had resolved beforehand to be impersonal in his talk, to avoid all suggestion that their situation was abnormal, he now looked impulsively towards Mooncranker sitting straight and high-shouldered opposite him, and said. ‘What do you suppose we are doing here, all of us? Really, I mean.’
‘Well, there are as many reasons as there are people, I suppose,’ Mooncranker said, with an immediacy of response, even a glibness, that was slightly surprising – it was quite as if this question had been put to him before, or as if at any rate he had had reason to ponder it in the past. He paused now, however, as though considering. ‘In one sense,’ he said, after a moment or two, ‘the pool is a place that people come to because people must congregate somewhere. Mustn’t they? It is like asking why starlings foregather on one roof rather than another.’
‘Surely not,’ Farnaby said, embarrassed now at having spoken thus boldly. ‘Roofs are all pretty much the same, aren’t they?’
‘They are to us,’Mooncranker said, more sharply. This contradiction had annoyed him. Regarding Farnaby’s long, good-looking, though rather equine face, he was assailed suddenly by that ancient venom felt first when he had seen them together on the tennis-court and though there was no way now open to him of harming Farnaby, moreover he too wished to speak mildly, avoid any note of stridency or drama, anything that might provoke them into declaring themselves, despite all this, there was a harsh, sarcastic note in his voice when he spoke again.
‘I suppose you want to pronounce for starlings too,’ he said.
‘It was you that brought starlings into it,’ Farnaby said. The two men looked each other in the face for several moments without speaking and Mooncranker all at once perceived that a great change had taken place in the other since their conversations in hotel and hospital. Farnaby was no longer tractable, he had shed completely that former deference, was capable now, if pressed, of pugnacity, and all this because of Miranda, there could be no other explanation, these were attributes of courtship. Mooncranker thought of the smiles and glances that the two of them had exchanged since the young man’s arrival, foundations of the edifice they were building. His malignancy towards Farnaby flickered out and all warmth went with it.
‘There is the presence of water, of course,’ he said slowly. ‘You will have noticed how people flock to water, lakes, pools, streams. They will get into it, if that is practicable, if not they will sit around it. Water that is contained, I mean, bounded by the land. At holiday times they litter all available banks and shores.’
‘Yes, I suppose that is true,’ Farnaby said. It was not what he had meant, of course. He could not find again the sense of wonder that had led him to the question in the first place. Besides, Mooncranker’s manner, this slow, rhetorical mode of address, had begun to trouble him rather, reminding him of that first evening at the hotel. ‘And then of course,’ Mooncranker said, ‘think of the attraction of a pool like this, up here among the hills.’ He smiled a little and looked around him, feeling a
return of that languor and that helpless closeness of observation that descended on him when he thought of his death and that it might be imminent.
Lights in the dining-room had not been put on yet, though it would soon be necessary. The room faced on to the pool itself, light entered through the long, plate-glass windows, a curiously shifting, fluid light, that seemed to exercise its own selectivity, dwelling with intensity on some things, leaving much indistinct. This effect must be due to the reflected light from the pool, Mooncranker thought, this incessant faint flexing of light, moving in ripples or spirals over white walls, white table-cloths. Because of it nothing seemed entirely static in the room, everything was in gentle, diffused flux, and this suggestion of impermanence extended to the people in the room, and the implements they were using. He wondered if there were people bathing in the pool at this moment. Perhaps they were swimming, disturbing the surface, sending out rings of ripples that would conflict with others, each seeking to preserve its own doomed concentric system – his mind lost itself among the complexities of such an activity, the endlessly competing ripples, none lasting more than a matter of seconds …
‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, under the impression that Farnaby had spoken to him. ‘Yes, very attractive, you know, this little pool, enclosed by the cabins, terraced, managed – it is irresistible. And if it can be considered therapeutic in any way, so much the better.’
‘Do you think it is?’ Farnaby asked.
‘People think it is,’ Miranda said suddenly, ‘and that comes to the same thing, doesn’t it?’
Miranda and Farnaby smiled at each other, a lingering smile.
‘Therapeutic?’ Mooncranker said. ‘Oh, yes, I think so. For some people. Sexually stimulating too, of course – the possibilities for erotic encounters must be greater by far than … I don’t know what the figures are. Yes, licence has always flourished, has it not, in baths and so on – there is a distinct connection. Are you up in that aspect of history at all?’ he said to Farnaby.
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