by John Fowles
So Conchis would know I was invited to Athens – and would guess that this was the girl I had spoken about, the girl I must ‘swim towards’. Perhaps that was why he had had to go away. There might be arrangements to cancel for the next weekend. I had assumed that he would invite me again, give me the whole four days of half-term; that Alison would not take my lukewarm offer.
I came to a decision. A physical confrontation, even the proximity that Alison’s coming to the island might represent, was unthinkable. Whatever happened, if I met her, it must be in Athens. If he invited me, I could easily make some excuse and not go. But if he didn’t, then after all I would have Alison to fall back on. I won either way.
The bell rang again for me. It was lunch-time. I collected my things and, drunk with the sun, walked heavily up the path. But I was covertly trying to watch in every direction, preternaturally on the alert for events in the masque. As I walked through the windswept trees to the house, I expected some strange new sight to emerge, to see both twins together – I didn’t know. I was wrong. There was nothing. My lunch was laid; one place. Maria did not appear. Under the muslin lay taramasalata, boiled eggs, and a plate of loquats.
By the end of the meal under the windy colonnade I had banned Alison from my mind and was ready for anything that Conchis might now offer. To make things easier, I went through the pine trees to where I had lain and read of Robert Foulkes the Sunday before. I took no book, but lay on my back and shut my eyes.
33
I was given no time to doze off. I had not been there five minutes before I heard a rustle and, simultaneously, smelt the sandalwood perfume. I pretended to be asleep. The rustle came closer. I heard the tiny crepitation of pine-needles. Her feet were just behind my head. There was a louder rustle; she had sat down, and very close behind me. I thought she would drop a cone, tickle my nose. But in a very low voice she began to recite Shakespeare.
‘Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak’d,
I cried to dream again.’
All the time I was silent, and kept my eyes closed. She teased the words, giving them double meanings. Her dry-sweet voice, the wind in the pines above. She ended, but I kept my eyes closed.
I murmured, ‘Go on.’
‘A spirit of his comes to torment you.’
I opened my eyes. A fiendish green-and-black face, with protuberant fire-red eyes, glared down at me. I twisted up. She was holding a Chinese carnival mask on a stick, in her left hand. I saw the scar. She had changed into a long-sleeved white blouse and a long grey skirt and her hair was tied back by a black velvet bow. I pushed the mask aside.
‘You make a rotten Caliban.’
‘Then perhaps you shall take the part.’
‘I was rather hoping for Ferdinand.’
She half-raised the mask again and quizzed me over the top of it with a decided dryness. We were evidently still playing games, but in a different, rather franker key.
‘Are you sure you have the skill for it?’
‘What I lack in skill I’ll try to make up for in feeling.’
A tiny mocking glint stayed in her eyes. ‘Forbidden.’
‘By Prospero?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘That’s how it began in Shakespeare. By being forbidden.’ She looked down. ‘Although of course his Miranda was a lot more innocent.’
‘And his Ferdinand.’
‘Except I tell you the truth. And you tell me nothing but lies.’
Her eyes were still downcast, but she bit her lips. ‘I have told you some truths.’
‘Such as that black dog you so kindly warned me about?’ I added quickly, ‘And for God’s sake don’t ask me which black dog.’
She put her hands round her enskirted knees and leant back and stared into the trees behind me. She was wearing absurd black lace-up boots. The echo now was of some antiquated village schoolroom, or perhaps of Mrs Pankhurst, a first timid attempt at female emancipation. She left a long pause.
‘Which black dog?’
‘The one your twin sister was out with this morning.’
‘I have no sister.’
‘Balls.’ I reclined back on an elbow, smiling at her. ‘Where did you hide?’
‘I went home.’
It was no good; she wouldn’t lay down the other mask. I examined her guarded face and then reached for my cigarettes. She watched me strike the match and inhale a couple of times, then unexpectedly reached out her hand. I passed her the cigarette. She pecked out her lips at it in the characteristic way of first smokers; took a little puff, then a bigger one, which made her cough. She buried her head in her knees, holding the cigarette out for me to take back; coughed again. I looked at the nape of her neck, her slim shoulders; and remembered that naked nymph of the night before, who had also been slim, small-breasted, the same height.
I said, ‘Where did you train?’
‘Train?’
‘Which drama school? RADA?’ That received no answer. I tried another line of attack. ‘You’re trying – very successfully – to captivate me. Why?’
She made no attempt this time to be offended. One realized progress more by omissions than anything else; by pretences dropped. She raised her head, and sat back propped on one arm, slightly turned away. Then she picked up the mask and held it like a yashmak again.
‘I am Astarte, mother of mystery.’
The piquant grey-violet eyes dilated, and I smiled, but thinly. I wanted her to know that she was getting very near the bottom of the locker in her improvisings.
‘Sorry, I’m an atheist.’
She put down the mask.
‘Then I shall have to teach you faith.’
‘In mystification?’
‘Among other things.’
I heard the sound of a boat-engine out at sea. She must have heard it as well, but her eyes revealed nothing.
‘I wish I could meet you away from here.’
She looked up from the ground and through the trees to the south. There was suddenly a much more contemporary tone in her voice.
‘Next weekend perhaps?’
I guessed at once that she had been told about Alison; but two could play at false ignorance.
‘Why not?’
‘Maurice would never allow it.’
‘You’re past the age of consent.’
‘I understood you were to be in Athens.’
I left a pause. ‘I don’t find one aspect of your antics here quite so amusing as the others.’
Now she too lay on an elbow, with her back to me. When at last she spoke it was in a lower voice.
‘Your sentiments are not altogether unshared.’
I felt a jab of excitement – this really was progress. I sat up, so that I could at least observe the side of her face. It was closed, reluctant, but it seemed to be acting no longer.
‘Then you admit it is a game?’
‘Part of it.’
‘If you really feel the same, the remedy’s simple – tell me what’s going on. Why my private life has to be spied on like this.’
She shook her head. ‘Not spied on. It was mentioned. That was all’
‘I’m not going to Athens. It’s all over between us.’ She said nothing. ‘It’s partly why I came here. To Greece. To get away from what was becoming messy.’ I said, ‘She’s Australian. An air hostess.’
‘And you no longer … ?’
‘No longer what?’
‘Love her?’
‘It wasn’t that kind of relationship.’ Again she said nothing. She had picked up a cone, and was looking down at it, f
iddling with it, as if she found all this embarrassing. But there seemed to be something truly shy about her now, not just to do with her role; and suspicious, as if she did not know whether to believe me. I said, ‘I don’t know what the old man’s told you.’
‘Only that she wishes to meet you again.’
‘We’re just friends now. We both knew it couldn’t last. We write from time to time.’ I added, ‘You know what Australians are like.’ She shook her head. ‘They’re terribly half-baked culturally. They don’t really know who they are, where they belong. Part of her was very … gauche. Anti-British. Another side … I suppose I felt sorry for her, basically.’
‘You … lived together as man and wife?’
‘If you must put it in that absurd way. For a few weeks.’ She nodded gravely, as if in gratitude for this intimate information. ‘And I’d very much like to know why you’re so interested.’
All she did was to move her head sideways, in the way people do when they acknowledge that they can’t really answer your question; but such simplicity seemed a more natural response than words. She did not know why she was interested. So I went on.
‘I haven’t been very happy on Phraxos. Not until I came here, as a matter of fact. I’ve been, well, pretty lonely. I know I don’t love … this other girl. It’s just that she’s been the only person. That’s all.’
‘Perhaps to her you seem the only person.’
I gave a little sniff of amusement. ‘There are dozens of other men in her life. Honestly. At least three since I left England.’ A runner ant zigzagged neurotically up the white back of her blouse and I reached and flicked it off. She must have felt me do it, but she did not turn. ‘And I wish you’d stop play-acting. There must have been affaires like that in your own real life.’
‘No.’ Once more she shook her head.
‘But you admit you have a real life. Pretending to be shocked is absurd.’
‘I did not mean to pry.’
‘You also know I’ve seen through your role. This is getting moronic’
She was silent a moment, then she sat and faced me. She gave two glances to either side, then one straight into my eyes; it was searching and uncertain, but at least it partly conceded what I had just said. Meanwhile the invisible boat had been coming closer. It was definitely heading for the cove.
I said, ‘We’re being watched?’
She made the ghost of a shrug. ‘Everything is watched here.’
I looked round, but I could see nothing. I stared at her again. ‘Maybe. But I’m not going to believe that everything is heard.’
She put her elbows on her knees, and cupped her chin in her hands, stared beyond me.
‘It is like hide-and-seek, Nicholas. One has to be sure the seeker wants to play. One also has to stay in hiding. Or there is no game.’
‘There’s also no game when you won’t concede you’ve been found. When you have.’ I said, ‘You are not Lily Montgomery. If she ever existed in the first place.’
She gave me a little look. ‘She did exist.’
‘But even the old man admits it wasn’t you. And how are you so sure?’
‘Because I exist myself.’
‘You’re her daughter now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Along with your twin sister.’
‘I was an only child.’
It was too much. Before she could move, I had knelt up and forced her on her back, gripping her shoulders, so that she had to look me in the eyes. I saw a distinct tinge of fear in hers, and I worked on it.
‘Now listen. All this is very amusing. But you’ve got a twin sister, and you know it. You do these disappearing tricks, and you have this fancy line in period dialogue and mythology and all the rest. But there are a couple of things you can’t hide. You’re intelligent. And you’re as physically real as I am.’ I gripped her shoulders harder through the thin blouse, and she winced. ‘I don’t know whether you’re doing this because you love the old man. Because he pays you. Because it amuses you. I don’t know where you and your sister and your other friends hang out. I don’t really care, because I think the whole idea’s fantastic, I like you, I like Maurice, in front of him I’m prepared to play along every bit as much as you want … but don’t let’s take it all so bloody seriously. Play your charade. But for Christ’s sake stop flogging a dead horse. Right?’
I remained staring down into her eyes, and I knew I had won. The fear had given way to a surrender.
She said, ‘You’re killing my back. There’s a stone or something.’
Victory was confirmed; I noted those two verbal contractions.
‘That’s better.’
I knelt away, then stood and lit a cigarette. She sat up, straightened a little and rubbed her back, I saw there had indeed been a cone where I had pressed her to the ground; then she drew up her knees and buried her face in them. I stared down at her, thinking that I ought to have realized earlier that a little force would do the trick. She buried her face deeper in her knees, her arms enlacing her legs. There was a silence, the pose went on too long. I belatedly realized she was pretending to cry.
‘That won’t wash either.’
She took no notice for a few seconds, but then she raised her head and looked ruefully up at me. The tears were real, I could see them on her eyelashes. She looked away, as if she were being foolish, then brushed the eyes with the back of her wrist.
I squatted beside her; offered her my cigarette, which she took.
‘Thanks.’
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
She drew on the cigarette, normally, not as a tyro.
‘I did try.’
‘You’re wonderful … you’ve no idea how strange this experience has been. Beautifully strange. Only, you know, it’s one’s sense of reality. It’s like gravity. One can resist it only so long.’
She gave me a shy, and oddly glum, little grimace. ‘If you only realized how well I know exactly what you mean.’
I was shown a new vista: the possibility that she had been playing her part under some form of duress.
‘I’m all ears.’
Once more she looked beyond me.
‘What you said this morning … there is a kind of script. I’m meant to take and show you something. Just a statue.’
‘Fine. Lead me to it.’ I stood up. She turned and screwed the end of the cigarette carefully into the ground, then gave me a distinctly submissive glance.
‘Would you let me just… recover ? Not bully me for five minutes ?’
I looked at my watch. ‘I’ll even give you six. But not a second more.’ She reached a hand and I helped her to her feet, but kept the hand. ‘And I don’t call wanting to know better someone I find quite extraordinarily attractive bullying.’
She lowered her eyes. ‘She doesn’t have to act being … rather less experienced than you.’
‘That doesn’t make her any less attractive.’
She said, ‘It’s not far. Just up the hill.’
We began to walk hand-in-hand up the slope. After a while I squeezed hers, and there was a small pressure back. It was more a promise of friendship than anything sexual, but I found her last remark about herself credible. It was partly her looks, since she had that exceptional delicacy of feature that often goes with a blend of timidity and fastidiousness about physical contact. I sensed, behind the outward daring, the duplicities of the past she had been playing, a delicious ghost of innocence, perhaps even of virginity; a ghost I felt peculiarly well equipped to exorcize, just as soon as time allowed. I had also a return of that headlong, fabulous and ancient sense of having entered a legendary maze; of being infinitely privileged. There was no one in the world I wanted to change places with, now that I had found my Ariadne, and held her by the hand. I knew already that all my past relationships with girls, my selfishnesses, caddishnesses, even that belittling dismissal of Alison to my past that I had just perpetrated, could now be justified. It was always to be this, and something in me
had always known it.
34
She led me through the pines to a point higher than where I had forced my way over the gulley the week before. There was a path across, with some rough-hewn steps. On the other side, over a further little rise, we came on a small hollow, like a minute natural amphitheatre facing the sea. In the centre of its floor, on a pedestal of unshaped rock, stood the statue. I recognized it at once. It was a copy of the famous Poseidon fished out of the sea near Euboea at the beginning of the century. I had a postcard of it in my room. The superb man stood, his legs astride, his majestic forearm pointed south to the sea, as inscrutably royal, as mercilessly divine as any artefact in the history of humanity; a thing as modern as a Henry Moore and as old as the rock it stood on. Even then I was still surprised that Conchis had not shown it to me before; I knew a replica like that must have cost a small fortune; and to keep it so casually, so in a corner, unspoken of… again I was reminded of de Deukans – and of that great dramatic skill, the art of timing one’s surprises.
We stood and looked at it. She smiled at my impressed face, then wandered on up to a wooden seat under the shade of an almond tree at the top of the slope behind the statue. One could see the distant sea over the trees, but the statue itself was invisible to anyone close to the shore. She sat naturally, without elegance, tacitly turning her clothes into a costume. It was a kind of undressing. I sat three feet away, and she must have known I was looking at her. The ‘breathing-space’ was over. But she avoided my eyes, and said nothing.
‘Tell me your real name.’