by John Fowles
‘You’re to vamp someone else?’
‘That was the first thing I said. That I’d had enough of making eyes at strange men. Especially now.’
‘You told him about us?’
She pressed my hand. ‘Yes.’ She let out a little breath. ‘Actually he said he’d feared the worst as soon as he set eyes on you.’
‘What worst?’
‘That the cheese on his trap might fall for the mouse.’
‘And he accepts
‘He swore blind.’
‘Did you believe him?’
She hesitated. ‘As much as one can ever believe him. I’ve even been given a carrot to dangle in front of your nose.’
‘Apart from the one whose hand I’m holding.’
She touched the side of her head against my shoulder. ‘He wouldn’t expect you to do it for nothing … you’d be paid. Whatever it is, it wouldn’t start before your term ended. And he’d want us three to live, sleep anyway, at the house in the village. Initially as if we’d never met Maurice.’
‘Are you tempted?’
She left a pause. ‘There’s one other tiny snag. He’d like you and me to pretend we’re man and wife before whoever it is who’s coming.’
‘I couldn’t possibly pretend. I don’t have your acting ability.’
‘Be serious.’
‘I am. More than you think.’
Again her head turned against my shoulder. ‘Tell me what you feel.’
‘It all depends on next weekend. When we know what’s really at stake.’
‘That’s what we think.’
‘He must have given some clue.’
‘He did say we can definitely think of it as psychiatric. Then in his usual helpful way added that it was really about something there’s no word for. He said … a science yet to be discovered and named. He was terribly curious to know why I finally came to trust you.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘That certain feelings between people can’t be faked.’
‘How’s he been otherwise?’
‘Actually rather sweet. Much more as he was in the beginning. Full of compliments about how brave, intelligent, all the rest, we’ve been.’
‘Fear the Greeks
‘I know. But we’ve made it absolutely clear. One more trick from him – and that’s it.’
I looked out towards the silent yacht. ‘Where did you go?’
‘Down to Kythera. We came back yesterday.’
I thought of my own three days: catching up with the eternal backlog of marking, two prep duties, the smell of chalk, of boys … and then of term being ended, the secluded village house, the constant presence of the two girls.
‘I got hold of a copy of Three Hearts.’
‘Could you read it?’
‘Enough to believe that part of it.’
She left a little silence.
‘Someone said something about trusting one’s instincts. Only three days ago.’
‘It’s just that over there … I sit in class and wonder whether this side of the island even exists. If it isn’t all a dream.’
‘You haven’t heard from the man before you?’
‘Not a word.’
Again she left a silence.
‘Nicholas, I’ll do whatever you say.’ She stopped me, took my other hand, looked me in the eyes. ‘We’ll go straight back now and tell him. Seriously.’
I hesitated, then smiled. ‘Can I hold you to that if I don’t like the sound of his next chapter?’
‘You know you can.’
A moment, and her arms came round me. Mouth confirmed eyes. Then we strolled on, very close. We came to the far end of the bay. It was tropically airless.
She said, ‘I love the nights here. More than the day.’
‘Me too.’
‘Shall we paddle?’
We went down over the shingle to the water. She kicked off her shoes, I got free of mine. Then we stood in the tepid sea, and she let me kiss her again; her mouth, her throat. I held her lightly, protectively; then murmured in her ear.
‘Beastly female physiology.’
She moved a little against me in sympathy.
‘I know. I’m so sorry.’
‘I’ve kept remembering how you were in the chapel.’
‘I felt undone.’
‘That’s strictly for maidens.’
‘It’s how you made me feel.’
‘Haven’t other men?’
‘One or two.’
‘This one particular other man?’ She said nothing. ‘I wish you’d tell me about him.’
‘There’s nothing much to tell.’
‘Let’s go and sit down.’
We went back into the trees, a little way up the slope where the spine of the western headland rose. One or two large boulders had fallen in the past, and we installed ourselves where one had lodged. I sat with my back to it, and Julie leant against me. I reached up and undid the bow in the ribbon round her long hair, loosed it.
He had been a young don at Cambridge, a mathematician, nearly ten years older than she: very intelligent, sensitive, well-read, ‘not at all a monomaniac’. They had met in her second year, but it had stayed ‘demi-platonic’ until well into her last.
‘I don’t know what it was, perhaps realizing I had only two terms to go, but Andrew started getting very hurt if I went out with anyone else. He hated the university drama set June and I were involved with. He seemed to sort of make up his mind that he ought to be in love with me. He was always very gentle – even funny about it, in a way – how I’d corrupted a born bachelor. I did like being with him, we used to go out in the country a lot, he was very generous, always flowers, books … you know. He wasn’t a born bachelor at all in that way. But even then, it was never really a physical thing for me. You know how it is, you like someone in every other way, you feel flattered, even a tiny bit embarrassed to have a tame don as your escort everywhere. You admire them intellectually and … ‘
‘Acquire a blind spot?’
‘He insisted we got informally engaged. This was at the beginning of the summer term. I was working like mad. We hadn’t been to bed, and I thought he was being very considerate … the understanding was that we were going to have a holiday in Italy, then get married in the autumn.’
She was silent. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s so embarrassing.’
I stroked her hair. ‘Better than keeping it bottled up.’
She hesitated, then spoke in an even lower voice.
‘I’d always realized there was something, I can’t really describe it, not quite natural about him when we … always a little bit of an air of going through the motions. Kissing me because he knew girls expected to be kissed. I never felt any real desire in him. On that side.’ She smoothed her skirt over her knees. ‘Quite simply in Italy it turned out that he did have … rather serious problems. He’d never told me before, but he’d had homosexual experiences at school. Even when he was a student himself at Cambridge before the war.’ She paused. ‘I must sound appallingly innocent.’
‘No. Just innocent.’
‘He honestly didn’t have any of the outward signs. He wanted so desperately to be absolutely normal. Perhaps too desperately.’
‘I understand.’
‘I kept saying it didn’t matter, to myself as well. It only needed patience. And there were … times. And out of bed he was still a terribly nice man to be with.’ She was silent a long moment. ‘I did something terrible, Nicholas. I walked out of the pension in Sienna where we were staying and caught a train back to England. Just like that, without warning him. Something in me snapped. I somehow knew there would always be that problem between us. We used to go out after … it hadn’t worked, and I used to look at the Italian boys and think – ‘ she broke off, as if she were still ashamed at what she had thought. She said, ‘What you made me feel in the chapel. How simple it can be.’
‘You haven’t seen him since?’
‘Tell me.’
‘I fled home to Dorset. I couldn’t tell my mother what had really happened. Andrew came back, insisted we met in London.’ She shook her head in memory. ‘He was in such distress, nearly suicidal, I … I gave in in the end. I won’t go into all the grisly details. I wouldn’t go through with the marriage, I took the London teaching job really so that I could be away from Cambridge. But … well, we tried again on the physical side and … oh, it dragged on for several months. Two supposedly intelligent human beings slowly destroying each other. He’d ring and say he couldn’t get down to London the next weekend and all I’d feel was relief She stopped once more, then took courage in the darkness and her averted face. ‘It really worked best if I played boy to him … and I hated that. He hated it himself, really.’ I felt her take a breath against me. ‘In the end June made me do what I ought to have done months before. He writes to me occasionally. But that’s all now.’ There was a silence. ‘End of sad little story.’
‘It is sad.’
‘I’m honestly not a prude. It’s just that
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘It became a masochistic thing with me in the end. The more awful it got, the nobler I was being.’
‘There’s been no one since?’
‘I was going out with someone at the Tavistock earlier this year. But he was already deciding I was a bad job.’
I kept running skeins of her hair through my fingers.
‘Why?’
‘Because I wouldn’t go to bed with him.’
‘As a matter of general policy?’
‘There was someone else at Cambridge. In my first year.’
‘What happened to that?’
‘It was the reverse, absurdly enough. He was much nicer in bed than out of it.’ She added drily, ‘Unfortunately he knew it. I discovered one day I wasn’t the only string to his bow.’
‘He must have been a fool.’
‘I know it’s different for men. Or for men like that. I just felt so humiliated. One more stuffed head on the wall.’
I kissed her hair. ‘At least I approve his taste in stuffed heads.’
There was a little silence. Her voice dropped, was shy, almost naive.
‘Have you slept with many girls?’
‘None like you. And I’ve never two-timed.’
She must have belatedly realized the question had been gauche. ‘I didn’t mean … you know.’ It was not a subject I wanted to linger over, but it obviously held a certain fascination for her, now it was broached. ‘It’s just that I can’t be as clinical about it as June is.’
‘Is she clinical about me?’
‘You have her approval. For what it’s worth.’
‘You might sound as if you put more value on it.’
‘I hated her on Sunday.’ An elbow nudged back. ‘And you for not hating her as well.’
‘Only because it helped me imagine you like that.’
‘She’s been teasing me about it ever since. How she’s really much more your type.’
I held her a little closer. ‘I know which mind I prefer. By a long chalk.’
There was a silence. She took my hand and traced its fingers.
‘We came down here last night.’
‘Why?’
‘It was so hot. We couldn’t sleep. To swim. She was hoping some lovely Greek shepherd would spring from the trees.’
‘And you?’
‘I thought about my English one.’
‘What a pity we haven’t got costumes.’
Still she traced the backs of my fingers.
‘We didn’t last night.’
‘Is that a suggestion?’
She left a little pause. ‘June bet me I wouldn’t dare.’
‘We can’t let her get away with that.’
‘Just to swim.’
‘But only because … ?’
She said nothing for a moment, yet I could sense that she was smiling. Then she leant up and whispered in my ear.
‘Why do men always want to know in words?’
The next second she was on her feet and pulling me to mine. We went back to the beach. The red light floated on the side of the ghostly white yacht, shimmering a little in the water. There was a glint of light through the highest trees opposite us, from the house.
Someone there was still awake. I took the sides of her singlet and she raised her arms for me to peel it off; then turned her back for me to unhook her bra, while she fiddled at the side of her skirt. I slipped my hands to the front. The skirt fell. For a moment she rested back against me, and her hands covered mine, to still them, on the bare breasts. I kissed the curve of her neck. Then she was gone down towards the water, long-haired, a slim pale figure with a narrow white band around her waist; a nocturnal echo of her sister on the same beach, in the sun, three days before. I stripped off my clothes. Without looking back she waded in to her waist, then plunged forward with a small splash and began to swim, a breast-stroke, out towards the yacht. Haifa minute later I was beside her and we swam out together a little further. She stopped first, trod water, grinned at me -it was suddenly a jape, a little piece of daring achieved.
She began to speak in Greek, but not the Greek I knew; something much more archaic, less lisping, unelided.
‘What was that?’
‘Sophocles.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Just the sound.’ She said, ‘When I first arrived, I couldn’t believe it. Thousands and thousands of little black squiggles suddenly alive. Not past, but present.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Like someone who’s always lived in exile. But never realized it.’
‘I’ve felt that.’
‘Do you miss England at all?’
‘No.’
I saw her smile. ‘There must be something we don’t agree on.’
‘In some other life. Not this.’
‘I’m going to float. I’ve only just learnt how to do it.’
She extended her arms and floated on her back, like a child showing off. I swam a stroke or two closer. She lay with her eyes closed, a small smile on her lips, and her wet hair made her look younger. The sea was absolutely calm, like black glass.
‘You look like Ophelia.’
‘Shall I get me to a nunnery?’
‘I never felt less like Hamlet.’
‘Perhaps you’re the fool he advised me to marry.’
I smiled in the darkness. ‘Have you played her?’
‘At school. Just those scenes. Against a ghastly repressed lesbian girl who revelled in every minute of being in male drag.’
‘Right down to the codpiece?’
Her voice sank in reproach. ‘Mr Urfe! I thought you were above such vulgarity.’
I pushed myself a little closer still and kissed the side of her body, then attempted to peck up it; but was pushed away as she twisted and sank beneath the water again. There was a little struggle, a flurry of water, a splashing, as I tried to embrace her. I was allowed one fleeting pressure of her mouth, but then she had twisted away again and was doing her old-fashioned breast-stroke back towards the beach.
However, she slowed, as if the effort had exhausted her, when we came near the shore, and stood with the water up to her armpits. I stood beside her, our hands met again under the water, this time she let herself be drawn towards me, then my hands were on her waist. She raised her arms and put them round my neck, and then lowered her eyes as I gently explored under the water – the curves, the breasts, the armpits. I coaxed her closer still and felt the soles of her feet inch over the top of mine. Our bodies pressed, her face came up, the eyes closed, to meet mine. I eased a hand behind beneath the wet band of cloth round her hips, cupped the other round the side of a breast. It was cool, liquid, restrained in comparison to the fever of our nakedness in the chapel.
I had guessed, as she had talked, what was missing from her account of her aborti
ve love affaire: the delicate balance in her of physical timidity and sensual imagination … the first must have made the man attractive to her initially, the second had condemned him when it came to the point – all of which gave her a genuinely nymphlike quality; one her sister, despite her playing of the part that night, lacked. This girl did quite literally flee the satyr and invite him on. There was a wild animal in her, but a true wild animal, intensely suspicious of wrong moves, of too obvious attempts to tame. She set little boundaries, almost like snares, to see if one understood – behaved, advanced, withdrew, as she wanted. Yet behind it all I foresaw an eventual place without boundaries, where she would one day allow me anything … and one day soon, for she clung to me now, succumbed, her femaleness against my maleness, and our tongues interlaced, aped what out loins wanted.
The silence, the dark water, the brilliant canopy of stars; and my sexual excitement, which she must have felt. Suddenly she turned her head away, almost with violence, though she still clung to me. After a moment I heard her whisper.
‘You poor thing. It’s not fair.’
‘I can’t help it. You excite me so much.’
‘I don’t want you to help it.’
She pulled away a little and a hand slipped down through the water between us. She brought me gently up, curled her fingers round me; timidly, with a return of that naivety she had shown earlier.