by John Fowles
‘That no longer worries me. It’s about bloody time he did.’
June called. ‘Is something wrong?’
Julie raised a finger to her mouth. Her sister turned, sat up, put her bikini top on, then came to meet us.
‘Joe’s in there. Hidden.’
June looked past us at the white walls of the chapel, then at our faces – no longer teasing, but concerned.
Julie said, ‘I’m going to have it out with Maurice. Either Joe goes, or we do.’
‘I suggested that weeks ago.’
‘I know.’
‘Were you talking? Did he hear anything?’
Julie looked down. ‘It’s not that.’ Her cheeks were flushed. June gave me a sympathetic little smile, but had the grace to look down as well.
I said, ‘I’m only too happy to go in there and
But they were firmly against that. We walked back to our things and talked it over for a few minutes, covertly watching the chapel door. It stayed as it was, but somehow the place was spoilt now. That invisible black presence in the little building seeped into the landscape, the sunlight, the whole afternoon. I also felt a violent sexual frustration … but there was nothing now to be done about that. We decided to go back to the house.
There we found Maria sitting impassively outside her cottage, talking to the donkeyman, Hermes. She said tea was waiting for us, on the table. The two peasants stared at us from their wooden chairs, as if we were so remote from their simple world, so foreign, that all communication was impossible. But then Maria pointed mysteriously out to sea and said two or three words in Greek that I didn’t understand. We looked, but saw nothing.
Julie said, ‘She says a fleet of warships.’
We went to the edge of the gravel to the south of the house; and there, almost hull down, a line of grey ships steamed east across the Aegean between Malea and Skyli: a carrier, a cruiser, four destroyers, another ship, intent on some new Troy. The harsh irruption of the fighter plane into our peace was explained.
June said, ‘Perhaps it’s Maurice’s last trick. To bombard us to death.’
We laughed, but were held by those cloud-grey shapes on the world’s blue rim. Death machines holding thousands of gum-chewing, contraceptive-carrying men, for some reason more thirty years away than thirty miles; as if we were looking into the future, not the south; into a world where there were no more Prosperos, no private domaines, no poetries, fantasies, tender sexual promises … I stood between the two girls and felt acutely the fragility not only of the old man’s extraordinary enterprise, but of time itself. I knew I would never have another adventure like this. I would have sacrificed all the rest of my days to have this one afternoon endless, endlessly repeated, a closed circle, instead of what it was: a brief and tiny step that could never be retraced.
My previous euphoria waned further over the tea. The girls had gone indoors, then reappeared in their dresses of that morning. The yacht was due so soon, and there was a hurried confusion over all we said. They were in two minds over what they should do; there was even a moment when we talked of their coming back with me to the other side of the island – they could put up at the hotel. But in the end we decided to give Conchis one more chance, one last weekend to declare himself. We were still discussing that when something else out to sea caught my eye. It came round the headland from the direction of Nauplia.
They had told me about the yacht, how luxurious it was, how much proof, if any more were needed, that one thing the old man must be was rich. It still took my breath away a little. We all went again to the edge of the gravel, where we could see better. A two-master, it was moving very slowly, under engine power, its sails furled; a long white hull, cabins rising out of the deck both fore and aft. The Greek flag hung lazily at a small mast at the stern. I saw half a dozen blue and white figures, presumably the crew. It was too far out, nearly half a mile, to distinguish a face. I said, ‘Well. As prisons go … ‘
June said, ‘You should see below decks. There are eight brands of French scent on our cabin table.’
The yacht almost ceased to move. Three men were at a davit, getting ready to lower a small boat. A siren moaned, to be sure we knew of the arrival. I felt, in characteristic Engish fashion, both a stab of envy and a contempt. The yacht itself was not vulgar, but I smelt something vulgar about owning it. I also saw myself aboard it one day. Nothing in my life before had taken me into the world of the very rich – I had had one or two rich acquaintances at Oxford, people like Billie Whyte, but had never experienced their home backgrounds. I did envy the two girls then; it was easier for them, good looks were the only passports they needed to enter that world. Money-getting was a male thing, sublimated virility. Perhaps Julie sensed all this. At any rate, when we went back to the colonnade for them to collect their things, she suddenly caught my hand and drew me indoors out of June’s sight and hearing. ‘It’s only a few days.’ ‘Which are going to seem like a few years.’
‘And for me.’
I said, ‘I’ve been waiting to meet you all my life.’
She looked down, we were standing very close. ‘I know.’
‘Do you feel the same?’
‘I don’t know what I feel, Nicholas. Except that I want you to feel like that.’
‘If you come back, could you get away one evening during the week?’
She glanced round through the open doors, then into my eyes. ‘It’s not that I wouldn’t love to, but –’
‘I could make Wednesday. We could meet down by the chapel.’ I added, ‘Not in it.’
She appealed for understanding. ‘We may not even be here.’
‘I’ll come anyway. After dark. I’ll wait till midnight. It’ll be better than biting my fingernails in that damned school.’
‘I will try. If I possibly can. If we’re here.’
We kissed, but there was something torn, already too late, about it.
We went outside. June waited by the tea-table and immediately nodded across the gravel. There, standing on the path that led down to the private beach, was the Negro. He was in black trousers and a polo-necked jumper, and he wore dark glasses; waiting. The yacht’s siren moaned again. I could hear the sound of a small outboard engine coming fast ashore.
June reached out a hand, and I wished them both good luck. Then I stood watching them walk across the gravel, in their pink dresses and blue stockings, baskets in hand. The Negro turned long before they reached him and started to walk down the path, as if he was too sure they would follow him to bother any more. When their heads had disappeared, I went to the top of the path. The power dinghy entered the little cove and came alongside the jetty. A minute later, the black figure, with the two pale pink ones of the girls just behind, walked down it. There was a sailor in the boat, white shorts, a dark blue shortsleeved singlet with a name in red across the breast. I couldn’t read it at that range, but it was obviously Arethusa. The sailor helped the two girls into the boat, then the Negro got in. I noticed he sat in the bows, behind their backs. They started out to sea. After a few yards, they must have seen me standing up above, the girls waved; then again, when they left the cove and began to head faster towards the waiting yacht.
The afternoon sea stretched down to Crete, ninety miles away. The fleet had almost disappeared. The black shadow of a cypress halfway down the cliff stabbed across a patch of parched red-grey earth, already lengthening. The day died. I felt both sexually and socially deprived, I did not expect we should be able to meet during the week; but yet a deep excitement buoyed me on, a knowledge like that of the poker-player who needs only one more card to have an unbeatable hand.
I turned back to the house, where Maria was now waiting to lock up. I didn’t try to pump her, I knew it was useless, but went up to my bedroom and packed my things in the duffel-bag. When I came down again, the small boat was already being hauled inboard and the huge yacht was under way. It began a long turn, then held course towards the southern end of the Peloponnesus. I was tempted t
o watch it out of sight; but then, knowing I was probably being watched as well from out there, decided that I did not want to play the wistful marooned man.
A few moments later I set off back to my dull, daily penal colony on the far side of the dream; as Adam left the Garden of Eden, perhaps … except that I knew there were no gods, and nothing was going to bar my return.
48
During the long climb back I suffered, perhaps inevitably, a reaction from the day’s events. I couldn’t doubt the physical proof Julie had given me that she was to be emotionally trusted, but I kept on thinking of additional questions I ought to have asked her – and I also kept remembering how near I had been, on more than one occasion, to swallowing the story about schizophrenia. But that had been impossible to check on; this circumstantial new account was not. It was just conceivable that the sisters were in some way still running with the hare and hunting with the hounds – that is, Julie might find me physically attractive and yet still be prepared to mislead me about her real background. There was also my next meeting with Conchis: a little hard evidence that not only did I now know the truth about the sisters, but had had it confirmed away from the island, might prove very useful.
That same Sunday evening, back in my room, I composed letters to Mrs Holmes at Cerne Abbas, to Mr P.J. Fearn of Barclay’s Bank, and to the headmistress of the grammar school where Julie had taught. To the first I explained that I had met her two daughters in connection with their film; that the local village schoolmaster had asked me to find a rural school in England that would provide ‘pen pals’; and that the two girls had suggested that I should write to their mother and ask her to put me in touch with the primary school at Cerne Abbas – and as soon as possible, as our term was ending shortly. In the second I said that I wanted to open an account and that I had been recommended by two customers at the branch. In the third I gave myself the principalship of a language school opening in the autumn in Athens; a Miss Julia Holmes had applied for a post.
On Monday I read the drafts through, altered a word or two, then wrote the first two in longhand and laboriously typed the last in the bursar’s office, where there was an ancient English-character machine. I knew the third letter was a bit farfetched; film stars do not normally become down-and-out teachers abroad. But any sort of reply would serve.
And then, deciding I might as well be hung for a suspicious sheep as for a suspicious lamb, I wrote two more letters, one to the Tavistock Rep., and another to Girton, at Cambridge.
I posted those five letters; and with them one to Leverrier. I had half hoped that there might be a letter waiting for me from Mitford. But I knew mine to him had probably to be forwarded; and even then he might well not answer it. I made the letter to Leverrier, very brief, merely explaining who I was and then saying:
My real reason for writing is that I have got into a rather complicated situation at Bourani. I understand that you used to visit Mr Conchis over there – he told me this himself. I really need the benefit of someone else’s advice and experience at the moment. I’d better add that this is not only for myself. Others are involved. We should be very grateful for any sort of reply from you, for reasons that I have a feeling you will appreciate.
Even as I sealed that letter I knew that Mitford’s and Leverrier’s silence was the best possible augury of what would happen to me. If in previous years something truly unpleasant had happened at Bourani, they would surely have talked; and if they were silent, then it must be with the silence of gratitude. I had not forgotten Mitford’s story of his row with Conchis; or his warning. But I began to doubt his motives.
The more I thought about it the surer I was that Demetriades was the spy. The first rule of counter-espionage is to look fooled, so I was especially friendly with him after supper on Sunday .We strolled for ten minutes on the school jetty to find what breaths of air still moved in the oppressive night heat. Yes thank you, Méli, I said, I had a nice weekend at Bourani. Reading and swimming and listening to music. I even laughed at his obscene guesses – though I now suspected their obscenity had a purpose, he was checking for Conchis on my ability to keep my mouth shut – as to how I really passed my time there. I also thanked him for keeping so quiet about it all with the other masters.
As we walked idly up and down I looked across the dark water of the straits between the island and the Argolian mainland; and wondered what the sisters were doing at that moment, what other dark water they rode … the silent sea, with all its secrets and its endless patience; yet not hostile. I understood its mysteries now.
I understood them even better after morning break the next day. I found an opportunity to get the deputy headmaster, who was also the senior teacher of Modern Greek, on one side. Someone had told me I should read a story by a writer called Theodoritis … Three Hearts, had he ever heard of it? He had. He spoke no French or English, and I couldn’t follow all he said. Apparently Theodoritis had been some sort of Greek disciple of Maupassant. Of the story I gathered enought to guess that it did conform with what Julie had told me. Any last doubt was removed when I went into lunch. A boy came over from the deputy headmaster’s table to my own and laid a book by my side. Three Hearts was the long final story of a collection. It was written in katharevousa, the ‘literary’ and anti-demotic form of the modern language, and I found it a long way beyond my powers; and I could not go to Demetriades for help. But every passage I worked through with a dictionary at my side bore out the truth of Julie’s account.
Wednesday...Wednesday. I couldn’t even wait till then. After school on the Tuesday evening, I climbed to the central crest. I had convinced myself that it was a journey in vain. But I was wrong. There far below, anchored like a toy in the lavender sea of the Moutsa bay, I saw what made my heart leap: the unmistakable white shape of the Arethusa. I knew then. The old man had surrendered.
49
I came to the gate about half past nine, waited a few moments to listen, heard nothing, and went off the track through the trees to where I could observe the house. It lay in silence, black against the last light from the west. There was one lamp on, in the music room; a resinous smell of burning wood, from Maria’s cottage. The scops owl called from somewhere nearby. As I returned to the gate a small black shape slipped overhead and dipped towards the sea between the pines: Conchis perhaps, the wizard as owl.
I walked quickly down, outside the domaine, to the beach at Moutsa: the forest was dark, the water dim, the faintest night lap. Five hundred yards away, out to sea, I saw the red port light of the anchored yacht. There were no other lights visible, no sign of life aboard it. I walked quickly through the edge of the trees towards the chapel.
Julie was waiting under its east wall, a shadow against its whitewash, and moved forward as soon as she saw me coming. She had on one of the dark-blue shortsleeved singlets worn by the Arethusa crew, a pale skirt. Her hair was tied back with a ribbon, which gave her a faintly severe, schoolmarmish look. We halted a yard from each other, suddenly shy.
‘You got away?’
‘It’s all right. Maurice knows I’m here.’ She smiled. ‘And no more spying. We’ve had it all out.’
‘You mean … ?’
‘He knows about us. I told him. And that I might be a schizophrenic in his plot, but I wasn’t in reality.’
Still she smiled. I stepped forward and she came into my arms. But when, during the kiss, I tried to tighten the embrace, she pushed away a little, with her head down.
‘Julie?’
She lifted one of my hands and kissed it.
‘You must be kind. The wretched calendar. I didn’t know how to tell you on Sunday.’
I had come prepared for every eventuality but this most banal and frequent of all. I touched my mouth against her hair: a faint melony scent in it.
‘What a shame.’
‘I so wanted you to come.’
‘Let’s walk towards the far end.’
I took her hand and we began to stroll past the chapel and throu
gh the trees to the west. They had had it out with the old man almost as soon as they had gone aboard the previous Sunday afternoon. Apparently he had played the innocent a little, but then June had let fly at him about the Negro and the spying in the chapel. They had had enough, either he told them what he was doing or … Julie gave a little breath of still incredulous amusement, looked at me.
‘Do you know what he said? As coolly as if we’d told him a tap needed mending?’ I shook my head. ‘ “Good. Exactly as I hoped and expected.” Then before we could even get our breath back, he informed us that all that had happened so far was merely a rehearsal. Honestly, you should have seen his smile. It was so smug. Just as if we were two students who’d passed some preliminary examination.’
‘A rehearsal for what?’
‘Firstly, all is to be explained to us. To you as well, this coming weekend. From now on, we shall all work together under his direction. Someone else is coming here soon-he said “people”, so it must be more than one or two. And they are to have our roles up to now. The being spun round and round. But this time, by us.’
‘What people?’
‘He wouldn’t say. Nor what this all that’s to be explained is. He said he wanted you to be there as well.’