‘Not really,’ Farnaby said. ‘In Greek and Roman times the baths seem to have been an adjunct to–’
‘No, of course,’ Mooncranker said. ‘Your subject is Ottoman fiscal policy, as I remember.’ He was finding it increasingly difficult to sustain this conversation. A strong desire for alcohol came over him but he resisted it, knowing that drink would plunge him into life again. ‘All truly sensuous peoples have discovered the usefulness of warm water,’ he began, then saw that Farnaby and Miranda were involved in conversation with each other, exchanging remarks about the chocolate caramel that Miranda was just beginning to eat. He fell silent. I should have stayed in the hospital. Then I should have been safe. She eats her caramel in small deft spoonfuls. The sultans were flattering their imperial persons in alabaster bathtubs while our great Elizabeth sat stinking in her jewels. She is ignoring me, deliberately ignoring my presence. I did not think her capable of such cruelty. No, not true, I always knew she was capable of anything.
‘Which are you then?’ Farnaby turns towards me and smiles. Treacherous oaf.
‘What do you mean, dear boy?’
‘Which are you, hypochondriac or sybarite?’
‘As one gets older the two merge into one.’
At this moment I become aware of a figure hovering just behind my right shoulder. ‘Can you spare me a minute of your valuable time?’ Scottish tones, voice uneven in texture as if this person could not hear himself very well. Farnaby looks up, smiles, says ‘Good evening’– someone he knows then, someone he has already met. Suddenly the overhead lights are switched on, and a radio too, somewhere, a palm-court orchestra from some sad European tea-time. Turning slightly in my chair I see a thin rather untrustworthy face peppered with little bursts of blood vessels under the skin. Farnaby is effecting introductions. ‘Of course,’ I say cordially. ‘Of course, Mr McSpavine, won’t you join us? We have met already, as a matter of fact.’
‘No,’ he says, ‘I’ll not do that.’ He is holding something, some object, wrapped in what looks like part of a brown corduroy trouserleg. He begins to unwrap it. ‘I want your advice on this wee head,’ he says. For a horrific moment I think Mr McSpavine is about to uncover a human head, hacked as a trophy from some person he has encountered on the hillside. But the object that emerges is no bigger that a fist and made of marble. A woman’s head. He turns it in his hands, holds it up for my inspection. A level-browed, matronly face, conventional enough in feature, but smiling. Eyes vague to the point of blindness, beneath the brows of a patrician lady, and finely sculpted lips curving upward in a smile full of life, full of joy, as at something perceived or apprehended.
‘Did ye ever see a smile like that on the face of a lassie?’ McSpavine inquires.
‘No,’ I am compelled to admit, ‘no, I don’t think I ever did. It is a marvellous head. Where did you get it?’
‘Up there.’ He jerks his head to indicate the hills, in a way that reminds me for a moment of the wounded American. He narrows his blue, bloodshot eyes and advances his face. There is an odour about him of stale hashish. ‘I thought I recognized your voice,’ he says. ‘You are the one I heard talking in the hospital, the night my Flora passed away.’
‘What do you mean?’ I am again beginning to think he is demented.
‘Never mind, never mind, ’tis of no significance now. Tell, me, d’ye think it is genuine?’
I take the head and look at it closely. The marble is cold, smooth to the touch. The eyes are blind, being unprovided with iris or pupil, mere rounded stones under the lids, and this adds to the ecstasy of the smile. It is not what she sees, the smile is somehow antecedent to her existence and the reason for it, as though the carver started with the smile as a premise.
‘I see no reason to doubt its authenticity. You’ll have to get expert advice on it, of course.’
‘No, but your own opinion,’ he says. ‘’Tis that I’m asking ye for.’
‘I think it’s genuine enough. It’s extremely unlikely to be a fake if you bought it from some local person here.’
‘Aye, I bought it from a gypsy lassie up there in the hills.’
‘Hellenistic probably. No, the only thing that troubles me is the smile.’
‘The smile,’ he repeats. ‘Now why should the smile trouble you?’
‘Well,’ I begin, ‘you realize no doubt why the city up there was so large and important?’
Mr McSpavine, who unnoticed by me has placed a pipe in his mouth, now removes it as if about to say something. At this moment, however, I hear Farnaby say to Miranda, ‘Very extraordinary the way we met. It was in Istanbul, at the French hospital, the same night …’ She is listening intently, leaning forward as if afraid of missing a single syllable. ‘His wife had just died …’
McSpavine nods his head repeatedly as if in agreement with what Farnaby is saying. ‘It is the same smile,’ he says now, addressing all of us. ‘The smile my Flora had on her face when she died and the smile of the other lassie sitting up in bed. One dead and the other living, the same smile. It seems simple enough now, but I had to come all this way to see it. There’s no contradiction, d’ye see?’
‘I don’t quite follow you,’ Farnaby says, glancing at Miranda.
‘This was a great necropolis,’ I observe, trying to finish my explanation. ‘That head will almost certainly have come from some sarcophagus or tomb, some funereal monument. That being so, it should express a noble resignation, it should not be smiling. That is what I cannot understand.’
McSpavine begins to wrap up the head again. ‘I’ll be going tomorrow,’ he says. ‘No point in staying here now.’
Glancing sideways, I see the blankness of night outside the windows: darkness has fallen while we have been discussing the Scotsman’s trouvaille. At once I feel a strong impulse to get out of this lighted room, into the obscurity of the pool.
‘No need,’ McSpavine says, ‘to bother about clocks, or defineetions of death, somatic, cellular, onset of putrefaction, laddie, flaccidity of the eyeballs, no need at all. There’s no distinction useful to make, between the living and the dead. I had to come here to find it out.’
He gathers up his bundle and moves off slowly.
‘I think he must be mad, a little dotty,’ Farnaby says, and ‘Yes,’ Miranda says, looking at him in agreement, ‘he certainly does seem very peculiar. He must have been devoted to his wife.’
‘Extraordinary thing, though,’ Farnaby says, ‘extraordinary coincidence, that he should have been passing your door at that very moment …’
Something here I do not fully understand. But I feel the presence of night outside like an urgent invitation. I am filled with impatience to be involved in it. I see Farnaby and Miranda smile once more, full upon each other.
‘You can tell me about it in the pool,’ I say. ‘Shall we go into the pool now?’
6
Farnaby had made whispered arrangements with Miranda to meet him in the pool, beyond the bridge. In this way he hoped to find her again without any loss of time, prevent any other predator in the pool from forestalling him. However, on emerging from his cabin, dressed only in swimming-trunks, he was delayed by Plopl the photographer, who was in a state of great agitation, so much so that for a while Farnaby could not make out what he was saying.
‘Who, what?’ Farnaby said, peering at the other’s face, which was in obscurity, as he was standing with his back to the poolside lights.
‘My model, have you seen my model?’ Plopl said in hasty trembling tones.
‘Not since this morning,’ Farnaby said, taking some steps along the terrace. ‘Why?’
‘She has gone,’ Plopl said, moving along beside him. ‘She has cleared out.’ He laid his hands on Farnaby’s arm. ‘While I was sleeping,’ he said, and choked a little on the word, as if this innocent sleep made Pamela’s perfidy the more monstrous. ‘She broke into my drawers,’ he said. ‘Now she will be miles away.’
‘Can you not follow her?’ Farnaby said, knowing thi
s would be difficult. He felt a distinct feeling of delight at this flight of Pamela’s.
‘How can I know where she has gone?’ Plopl demanded tearfully. ‘She will have taken the first dolmus out of the village.’
‘Well, I am sorry to hear it,’ Farnaby said. The chill air was striking on his unprotected body. He felt a renewal of his desire to be with Miranda again.
‘Bitch and cow,’ Plopl said. ‘Dieses gemeine Weibsbild. She has stolen her passport from me and money. She has taken also an electric toothbrush.’
‘You have your camera still,’ Farnaby said. He paused and then with deliberate malice said, ‘The artist is never at a loss so long as he has his means of expression. You will be able to go on snatching the moment from the flux.’
‘True, true,’ Plopl said. ‘But I cannot pay my bill here, unless I receive help. You are a man of the world – ’
‘Yes,’ Farnaby said, ‘but I’d better be getting into the water now, it is rather cold out here.’ He moved away, began to descend the steps into the pool, leaving Plopl muttering incoherently in the dimness.
He went directly to the place where he had arranged to meet Miranda. She was not there however. He stationed himself with his back against the wall to wait. Almost immediately he heard a voice, a soft, leisurely male voice that he recognized after a moment as that of the negro whom he had heard speaking in the pool the evening before. It was strange, but he was still talking about his friend Smithy, the one who, out of a reluctance to draw attention to himself, had almost drowned. ‘Yeah, Smithy,’ the voice said. ‘Can’t figure him out. Gets himself treated after the seventh, did you know that? They have seven children.’
‘Seven children!’ A female voice this. Farnaby tried to remember the faces of any of the negro party, but could not.
‘Gets himself treated, now he can’t have no more. You never see such a change in a guy, he stopped smoking, he stopped drinking. He only drinks Seven-Up now.’
‘He used to drink a lot.’
‘He never stops eating now. Don’t never go with him to the movies, I am warning you, he is rustling with paper-bags the whole time, bags of candy, bags of nuts, Jesus. Popcorn. He can’t stop.’
Farnaby peered through the gloom. It was very dark here, the poolside lights did not penetrate much beyond the bridge, which cast a deep shadow over the area immediately adjoining the wall, though the central part, immediately out from where he was standing, was more brightly lit. The water was quite deep here, rising to his shoulders. He could see nothing of the negroes, whose voices seemed to be coming from somewhere over on his right. Suddenly he saw Mooncranker’s tall, high-shouldered figure walking along the terrace, presumably on his way to enter the pool. Instinctively, though he knew he could not be visible to the other, Farnaby shrank back against the wall. After another moment he heard someone moving through the water, then he saw Miranda silhouetted with the lights behind her a little way out from the side. ‘Over here,’ he whispered, and at once she moved towards him. ‘I thought you had got lost,’ he said softly, when she was standing beside him against the wall.
‘I had to get back out again,’ she said, in the same low tone. ‘To throw Mrs Pritchett off the scent. She saw me get in and came up and started talking to me, so I said I was just getting out for a minute. Then I got in at a different place.’
‘Do you think she saw you?’ Farnaby felt a rush of exhilaration and triumph at the thought of Mrs Pritchett circumvented for his sake.
‘I don’t think so. Anyway I don’t think it matters, because I saw that man, you know, the one who follows her around, I saw him, just now, going towards where I left her … I expect he will have found her by now.’
‘Mooncranker is in the pool, somewhere,’ Farnaby said. ‘I expect he will be looking for us.’
‘Yes, I expect so.’
‘Speak quietly,’ Farnaby said. ‘Sounds carry in this pool.’ He paused and then, against all his sense of seemliness – for it was, after all, her business, and for her to volunteer information about it – he asked her the question that had been causing him anguish all this time: ‘Did he try to persuade you to go back with him?’
He could make out in the dimness only the pale oval of her face, framed by the darker hair. The water, which rose to the tops of his shoulders, covered everything of her but this.
‘No, he didn’t,’ she said slowly. ‘He didn’t say any of the things I was expecting him to say. He seems to have changed, somehow.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, I don’t feel it’s because of me that he came here, not basically.’
‘Not because of you? He comes rushing down here, when he should still be in hospital – ’
‘We are just a pretext, somehow. He worries me.’
‘I shouldn’t worry about him.’ Farnaby wished he could take up some marvellous eraser and wipe Mooncranker clean away from her thoughts. ‘Mooncranker is a survivor,’ he said.
‘You don’t know him at all,’ she said. ‘You can’t think of anything but the injury he did you.’
He fell silent, warned by the reproof in her voice. Mooncranker was not to be dislodged so easily. In the silence that fell between them, the negro’s voice was again clearly audible:
‘… church on Sundays, we both Baptists, Smithy goes with all the seven of them, not her though, not Rachel …
‘She gets a rest.’
‘Yeah. Well, when the preacher says about the pure in heart staying for communion and them who wishes to leave may do so, ole Smithy gathers up his flock and zooms for the door, he don’t never stay for communion since he got himself treated …’
‘He don’t smoke, he don’t drink, he don’t chase after women, what’s a guy like that doing, running for the exit when they hollers communion?’
‘Shall we move along a bit?’ Farnaby said. They edged a little along the wall, but found they could not go very far because the water got steadily deeper.
‘Shall we cross to the other side?’ Miranda said.
‘No, let’s not do that. Somebody might see us. No, we’re all right here.’ Their slight change in position had put the negroes out of earshot. They stood together for some moments in silence. Then Farnaby said, ‘It is strange to think that I owe all this to Uncle George.’
‘All what?’
‘Well, being here with you. If he hadn’t written to tell me that Mooncranker was in Istanbul, I should probably never have found you again. I never liked him, you know, but I am grateful to him for that.’ Farnaby was beginning to experience the slight breathlessness attendant upon immersion in the pool. He thought for a moment of Uncle George’s gasping mouth, sucking and expelling air, his lips collapsing with each exhalation, breathing in and out rankly sweet breaths of cow-parsley and elder flower and of how his own breath had failed and he had swooned and lain unnoticed, afterwards rising cold and changed … ‘We did not correspond regularly,’ he said.
‘You did not see him much, did you, after that summer? He changed you know, as he got older. Particularly after she died. One rather awful thing happened. Well, it was funny too, in a way. I don’t know if I should tell you, since he is your uncle – ’
‘That’s all right,’ Farnaby said.
‘Well, I went to see him once. With another girl. It was her idea. She was very religious. She believed in practical Christianity, going and talking to people, especially the elderly, and people on their own. Your uncle was quite alone at this time, both the boys had married and left home. So she persuaded me to go with her and just sort of sit with him for a bit, that was the idea, she wanted him to feel that people cared …’
Confused by the glaze and shift of light along the vaporous surface and by the sense of myriad furtive life in the pool, the prolonged and somehow stealthy rustling of the water, Mooncranker stood still near the steps by which he had entered, up to his waist only, his upper half tense in resistance to the cold. He had lost the sense of urgency which had possessed him ear
lier, the desire for immersion in the warm water and darkness, feeling now merely rather sick, and frightened.
Find them. Find Farnaby and Miranda. He held to this idea, constituting as it did a sort of plan. He began to move outwards across the pool, looking as he did so to left and right. He saw no sign of them but caught glimpses of other faces, other forms, some of whom he thought he recognized. Reaching the other side, he paused again, peering about him. He began to move along the side of the pool into deeper water. After a few steps he saw before him two figures, one short and stocky, the other taller, with a kind of mob-cap on its head, such as girls wear in the bath.
‘I have a mission,’ this person said suddenly to his companion, in a lisping voice. ‘It is to bring painting back to its former virile state by restoring the supremacy of the male nude.’
Mooncranker made a detour round this couple, returning to the wall some yards beyond them. The water now was chest high. He felt a faint heat from the surface strike against his face. Across the pool he saw the windows of the dining-room still lit up. Light from this source fell across a section of terrace and water. Mrs Pritchett and the Levantine were standing close together in this brightly lit area. While Mooncranker watched the Levantine raised a hand and placed it on the nape of Mrs Pritchett’s neck. She did not move, remained gazing blankly across the pool.
‘Oh come now, Mr Henry,’ a voice said behind him. Suddenly he saw Plopl the photographer standing at one of the cabin doors. Looking at the number on the door he saw with a disagreeable shock of surprise that it was his own, number three. Plopl appeared to be listening, had presumably just knocked. He wants to sell me those pictures.
A strong desire to remain undetected by Plopl came to Mooncranker. He began to move cautiously away from the light towards the bridge. He passed under the bridge, not stopping until he was in the deep shadow beyond it. A small group of people who had been talking here, now turned to regard him, he saw only the whites of their eyes and the vague shapes of their faces, realized after a moment that they were black. He moved again, outwards now towards the centre of the pool. He stumbled a little, fell forward, his face was for a second immersed in the water. He straightened himself, compressing his lips with a sort of prudery against the faintest taste of it. Water on his eyelids and lashes beaded his vision with a fringe of bright drops. He advanced one pace then stopped dead, hearing Miranda’s voice, very low but quite distinct, saying, ‘He didn’t seem to know why we had come.’
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