The Magus (23 page)

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, fiddling 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.’

‘Don’t you like Lily?’

‘Splendid. For a Victorian barmaid.’

She smiled, but in a very token way. ‘I don’t like my real name much better.’ Then she said, ‘I was christened Julia, but it’s been Julie ever since.’

‘Julie what?’

‘Holmes.’ She murmured, ‘But I’ve never lived in Baker Street.’

‘And your sister?’

She hesitated. ‘You seem very convinced about her.’

‘Shouldn’t I be?’

Again she hesitated, then came to a decision. ‘We were summer born. My parents didn’t show great imagination.’ She shrugged, as if it was silly. ‘Her name’s June.’

‘June and Julie.’

‘You mustn’t tell Maurice.’

‘Have you known him long?’

She shook her head. ‘But it seems long.’

‘How long?’

She looked down. ‘I feel a kind of traitor.’

‘The last thing I’ll do is sneak on you.’

And again she gave me that look, searching and uncertain, almost reproaching me for being so insistent; but she must have seen I was not going to be put off again. She leant forward a little, looking down at the ground.

‘We were brought here under completely false pretences. A few weeks ago. In a way it’s absurd that we haven’t walked out.’

I hesitated, because my mind had leapt at once to Leverrier and Mitford. But I decided to save that card.

‘You’ve never been here before?’

Her quick look of surprise seemed very genuine. ‘Why … ?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘But why do you ask?’

‘I thought this might have gone on last year.’

Her eyes searched mine, full of some suspicion.

‘Have you heard … ?’

‘No, no.’ I smiled. ‘Just guessing. Speculating. What were the false pretences?’

It was a little like goading a recalcitrant mule – a very charming mule, but one that seemed scared of every step it took forward. She stared at the ground, searching for words. ‘I’m trying to say that in spite of everything we are here of our own free will. Even though we’re not at all sure what’s behind … everything that’s happening, we do feel a sort of gratitude – a kind of trust, really.’ She paused, and I opened my mouth, but she flashed me a glance of appeal. ‘Please let me finish.’ She put her hands to her cheeks for a moment. ‘It’s so difficult to explain. But we both feel we owe him a lot. And the point is, if I answer all the questions I fully understand you must be burning to ask, it … it would be like telling you the story of a mystery film just before you went to see it.’

‘But surely you can tell me how you got into the film.’

‘Not really. Because that’s part of the plot.’

Once again I was losing her. A huge bronze maybug boomed round the upper branches of the almond. The statue below stood in the sun and eternally commanded the wind and the sea. I watched her face in the shadow, hanging a little, almost timid now.

‘You’re, I don’t know, being paid to do this?’

She hesitated. ‘Yes, but

‘But what?’

‘It’s not that. The money.’

‘Just now, down there, you didn’t seem at all sure you liked what he’s making you do.’

‘It’s because we never know how much of what he tells us can be believed. You mustn’t think we know everything where you know nothing. “We’ve been told a lot more about what he’s trying to do. But it may only be more lies.’ She shrugged. ‘If you like we’re a few steps further into the maze. That doesn’t mean we’re any nearer the centre than you.’

I left a silence. ‘You have acted at home?’

‘Yes. Not really professionally.’

‘At university?’

She had a wry smile. ‘There’s something else. There is a sense in which he perhaps can hear everything we say. I can’t tell you how, but I think you’ll understand by the end of today.’ She quickly forestalled my scepticism. ‘Nothing to do with telepathy. That’s just a blind. A metaphor.’

‘Then what?’

‘If I tell you … it would spoil it. I will tell you one thing. It’s a unique experience. Quite out of this world. Literally out of this world.’

‘You’ve had it?’

‘Yes. It’s one reason June and I have decided to trust him. It’s not something that could be created by an evil mind.’

‘I still don’t understand how he can hear what we say.’

She contemplated the empty miles of sea. ‘If I’m not explaining, it’s also because I’m not sure that he won’t hear because you tell him.’

‘For God’s sr.ke, I’ve just said – I wouldn’t dream of giving you away.’

She looked briefly at me, then out to sea again. Her voice dropped. ‘We’re not sure if you’re what you say you are – what Maurice has told us you are.’

‘But that’s mad!’

‘I’m only trying to explain that you aren’t the only person who doesn’t know what to believe. You could be hiding from us. In spite of appearances.’

‘You only have to cross the island. The school’s there. Ask anyone.’ I said, ‘And what about all the others here?’

‘They’re not English. And absolutely under Maurice’s thumb. We hardly see them, anyway. They’ve only been here very briefly.’

‘You mean I’ve been hired to fool you?’

‘It is possible.’

‘Jesus.’ I looked at her, trying to force her to admit it was ridiculous; but she remained obstinately serious. ‘Come on. Nobody could act that well.’

That did extract a faint smile. ‘I have rather felt that.’

‘Surely you can get away – I can take you round the school.’

‘He’s made it very clear that I mustn’t do that.’

‘It would only be paying him back in kind.’

‘The irony is, I…’ but she shook her head.

‘Julie, you
can
trust me.’

She took a breath. ‘The irony is that I’m not even sure that I’m not meant to break the rules. He is the most fantastic person. Hide-and-seek … it’s really much more like blind man’s buff. Being spun so much that you lose all sense of direction. You begin to see double, triple meanings in everything he says and does.’

‘Then break the rules. And see what happens.’

Again she hesitated, then gave me a rather more sincere smile. It seemed to suggest both that she wanted to trust me and that I must be patient with her.

‘Would you like it if this whole thing was called off? Ended tomorrow?’

‘No.’

‘I think we’re here very much on his sufferance. I tried once or twice to suggest that to you.’

‘I got the message.’

‘It’s all so fragile. Like a spider’s web. Intellectually. Theatrically, if you like. There are ways we could behave that might destroy it all at once.’ She gave me another look. ‘Seriously. I’m not playing games now.’

‘Has he threatened to call it off?’

‘He doesn’t have to. If we didn’t feel we were going through the most extraordinary experience of our lives … I know he can seem absurd. Maddening. An old ham. But I think he’s discovered a clue to something … ‘ again she did not finish the sentence.

‘Which I’m not allowed to know.’

‘Something we might all kick ourselves for having spoilt.’ She said, ‘I’m only just beginning to glimpse what it may be about. It’s not that I could tell you coherently, even if…’

There was a silence.

‘Well, he obviously has powers of persuasion. I presume that was your sister last night.’

‘Were you shocked?’

‘Only now I know who she was.’

She said softly, ‘Even twin sisters don’t always have the same views on things.’ After a moment she said, ‘I can guess what you must be thinking. But there hasn’t been the slightest sign of … we shouldn’t still be here if there had been.’ Then she added, ‘June’s always been less of a prude about that sort of thing than me. Actually she was nearly sent –’

She broke off at once, but it was too late. I saw her make a little gesture of prayer, as if to crave forgiveness for the slip. I grinned at the grim little expression that appeared on her face.

‘I’d have known about you at Oxford. So why was she nearly sent down from the other place?’

‘Oh God, I am a fool.’ She gave me a look of dry entreaty. ‘You mustn’t tell him.’

‘I promise.’

‘It was nothing. She modelled in the nude once. For a joke. And it got out.’

‘What did you read?’

She smiled gently. ‘One day. Not yet.’

‘But you were at Cambridge.’ She gave a reluctant nod. ‘Lucky Cambridge.’

There was a little silence. She spoke in a lower voice. ‘He’s so shrewd, Nicholas. If I tell you more than you’re meant to know, he’ll cotton on at once.’

‘He surely can’t expect me to go on swallowing the Lily thing.’

‘No. He doesn’t. You needn’t pretend to.’ ‘So all this could be a part of the plot?’

‘Yes. In a way it is.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Very soon your credulity is going to be stretched even further.’

‘How soon?’

‘If I know him, within an hour from now you won’t know whether to believe a word of anything I’ve just been saying.’

‘That was him in the boat?’

She nodded. ‘He’s probably watching us at the moment. Waiting for his cue.’

I looked cautiously past her through the trees towards the direction of the house; felt like turning and looking behind me. I could see nothing.

‘How much longer have we got?’

‘It’s all right. It’s partly up to me.’

She bent and picked a sprig of origan from a bush beside the bench and smelt it. I stared into the trees below us, still searching for a glint of colour, a movement… trees, and a very elusive wood. She had of course neatly pre-empted the thousand questions I wanted to ask; but about her I was getting, if not many factual, at least some psychological and emotional answers … I imagined a girl who had perhaps been a little bit of a blue-stocking, despite her looks; certainly more an intellectual than an animal creature, but with a repeated and teasing hint of something dormant there, waiting to be awakened; for whom acting at university must have provided some sort of release. I knew she was still acting in a way, but I felt it was defensive now, a way of hiding what she felt about me.

‘It seems to me there’s one part of the plot that does call for a little collaboration.’ I added, ‘Rehearsal discussion.’

‘Which is that?’

‘You and me.’

She smoothed her skirt over a crossed knee. ‘You aren’t the only one who’s had a shock today. Two hours ago was the first time I heard about your Australian friend.’

‘I told you the perfect truth down there. That’s exactly how it is.’

‘I’m sorry I sounded so inquisitive. It was just

‘Just what?’

‘Suspicious. If you had meant to confuse me.’

‘If I’m asked here, nothing will take me to Athens.’ She said nothing. ‘Is that the general plan?’

‘As far as I know.’ She shrugged. ‘But it depends on Maurice.’ My eyes were sought. ‘We really are also flies in his web.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll be honest. He was going to ask you. But we were warned at lunch that it may be called off.’

‘I thought he was in Nauplia.’

‘No. He’s been on the island all day.’

She fingered her sprig of origan and I kept looking at her. ‘But my original point. This first act has apparently required you to attract me. Anyway, that’s been the effect. You may be another fly in the web, but you’ve also been doubling as the kind they tie on hooks.’

‘It was a very artificial fly.’

‘Sometimes they work the best.’ Her eyes were down, she said nothing. ‘You look as if I shouldn’t have brought this up.’

‘No, I… you’re quite right.’

‘If it was a reluctant performance, I think you ought to tell me.’

‘If I said yes, or no, to that, it wouldn’t be the complete truth. Either way.’

‘Then where do we go from here?’

‘I think as if we’d met quite naturally. Somewhere else.’

‘In which case?’

She hesitated, she was shredding the leaves from the little stem, preternaturally intent on that. ‘I think I’d have looked forward to knowing you better.’

I thought of her performance on the beach that morning, but I knew what she meant: her real self was not one that could be rushed. I also knew that I must show her I had understood that. I leant forward, elbows on knees.

‘That’s all I wanted to know.’

She said slowly, ‘Obviously. I am meant to be one reason you want to come back here.’

‘It’s working.’

She said diffidently, ‘This has been something else that’s worried me. Now it’s come to this, I don’t want to mislead you.’

She said no more, and I jumped to a wrong conclusion. ‘There’s someone else?’

‘Just that I’ve made it very clear to Maurice that I’ll play parts for him, I’ll do what I did this morning, but beyond that