The Magus (31 page)

It was a help to teach hard, conscientiously for once, to get through the suspense. On Wednesday evening, when I returned from the last lesson of the day to my room, I found a note on my desk. My heart leapt. I recognized the handwriting at once. The note said: ‘We look forward to seeing you on Saturday. If I do not hear to the contrary I shall know that you are coming. Maurice Conchis.’ It was dated above ‘Wednesday morning’. I felt an enormous relief, a surge of renewed excitement; and suddenly everything during that last weekend seemed, if not justified, necessary.

I had marking to do, but I couldn’t stay in. I walked up to the main ridge, to my natural gazebo. I had to see the roof of Bourani, the south of the island, the sea, the mountains, all the reality of the unreality. There was none of the burning need to go down and spy that had possessed me the previous week, but a balancing mixture of expectation and reassurance, a certainty of the health of the symbiosis. I was their still; they were mine.

For some extraordinary reason, on the way back to the school, my own happiness made me think of Alison again; almost to pity her her ignorance of her real rival. On impulse, before I started on the marking, I scribbled her a note.

Allie darling, you
cant
say to someone ‘I’ve decided I ought to love you’. I can see a million
reasons
why I ought to love you, because (as I tried to explain) in my fashion, my perfect-bastard fashion, I do love you. Parnassus was beautiful, please don’t think it was nothing to me, only the body, or could ever be anything but unforgettable, always, for me. Let’s for God’s sake keep that. I know it’s over. But a moment or two, beside that pool, however many other lovers we both have, will never be over.

It relieved my conscience a little, and I posted it the next morning. The only conscious exaggeration was in the last sentence.

At ten to four on Saturday I was at the gate of Bourani; and there, walking along the track towards me, was Conchis. He had on a black shirt, long khaki shorts; dark brown shoes and faded green stockings. He was walking purposefully, almost in a hurry, as if he had wanted to be out of the way before I arrived. But he raised his arm as soon as he saw me. We stopped in mid-track, six feet apart.

‘Nicholas.’

‘Hallo.’

He gave his little headshake.

‘A pleasant half-term?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘You went to Athens?’

I had already decided on my story there. He might know, through Hermes or Patarescu, that I had been away.

‘My friend couldn’t make it. Her airline have put her on another route.’

‘Ah. I am sorry. A shame.’

I shrugged, then eyed him. ‘I spent most of it wondering whether I should come here again. I haven’t been hypnotized before.’

He smiled, he knew what I was really asking.

‘It is for you to reject or accept what was suggested.’

I remembered, as I smiled thinly in return, that I was back in a polysemantic world. ‘I’m grateful for that part of it.’

‘There was no other part.’ He did not take kindly to my sceptical look, and went on with some asperity. ‘I am a doctor, therefore under the Hippocratic oath. If I ever wished to ask you questions under hypnosis, I should most certainly ask your permission first. Apart from anything else, it is a very unsatisfactory method. It has been demonstrated again and again that patients are quite capable of lying under hypnosis.’

‘All those stories about sinister mesmerists forcing – ’

‘A hypnotist can force you to do foolish and incongruous things. But he is powerless against the super-ego. I can assure you of that.’

I let a few moments pass.

‘You’re going out?’

‘I have been writing all day. I must walk. But I hoped to meet you first. Someone is waiting to serve you tea.’

‘How do you want me to behave?’

He glanced back towards the invisible house, then took my arm and made me stroll back beside him towards the gate.

‘Our patient is in mixed spirits. She cannot quite hide her excitement at your return. Nor her disappointment that I am in the little secret between you.’

‘What little secret is that?’

He gave me a look under his eyebrows. ‘Investigative hypnosis is a regular part of my treatment
other,
Nicholas.’

‘With her permission?’

‘In this case, her parents’.’

‘I see.’

‘I know she is pretending to be an actress now. And I know why. She wishes to please you.’

‘Please me?’

‘You accused her of acting, or so I understand. And she has gratefully embraced the accusation.’ He squeezed my elbow. ‘But I have set her a problem. I have told her I know her new disguise. Not through hypnosis. But because you have told me.’

‘Then now she won’t trust me.’

‘She never trusted you. She also revealed under hypnosis that from the first she suspected you to be a doctor – someone working with me.’

I recalled what she had said about being spun round in blind-man’s-buff.

‘But rightly suspicious – now that you’ve told me the … truth?’

He raised a delighted finger. ‘Precisely.’ It was as if he were congratulating an especially bright pupil; and was blind, as nonsensically blind as one of Lewis Carroll’s queens before Alice, to my obvious bewilderment. ‘Therefore your task is now to gain her confidence. By all means share any suspicion she shows of my motives. Give them credence. But be careful. She may set traps. You must make objections if she becomes too farfetched. Always remember that one side of her split mentality is quite capable of rational assessment – and has a great deal of experience in making fools of doctors whose technique is to humour
ad absurdum.
I am sure some story of persecution will come. She will try to gain you to her side. Against me.’

Metaphorically, if not literally, I bit my lips.

‘But surely if we all know now that she can’t be Lily … ?’

‘That is dropped. I am become an eccentric millionaire. She and her sister are a pair of young actresses I have brought here – she will no doubt invent some outlandish reason – for what she will perhaps lead you to believe are very wicked purposes. They may well be of some suspect sexual nature. You will demand evidence, proof… ‘he waved his hand, as if my part in all this was too manifest now to need specifying in detail.

‘What happens if she tries a repeat of last year – tries to make me help her escape?’

He gave me a briskly warning look. ‘You must tell me at once. But I do not think it is likely. She learnt her lesson with Mitford. And remember, however much she may appear to trust you, she does not. You will of course maintain that you never told me a word of what happened on your last visit.’

I smiled. ‘Of course.’

‘I am sure you see where I am driving. I wish to bring the poor child to a realization of her own true problem by forcing her to recognize the nature of the artificial situation we are creating together here. She will make her first valid step back towards normality when one day she stops and says, This is not the real world. These are not real relationships.’

‘What are her chances?’

‘Small. But they exist. Especially if you play your part well. She may not trust you. But she is attracted to you.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Thank you. I have great confidence in you, Nicholas.’ He held out his hand. ‘I am delighted to have you back.’

We parted, but I looked back after a few steps to see which way he had taken. It was apparently down towards Moutsa. I did not believe he was going for a constitutional. He walked far too much like a man with someone else to meet, something to arrange. Once again I was shaken. I had come to Bourani determined, after so many useless hours of speculation, to be equally doubting of both him and Julie. But I knew I would have to watch her like a hawk now. The old man had been involved in psychiatry, he could hypnotize-those were proven facts; and nothing she had said about herself had been backed by any hard evidence. There was also the increasingly strong possibility that they were acting in league to gull me; in which case Julie Holmes was no more her real self than Lily Montgomery had been.

No one was visible as I approached the house, as I crossed the gravel. I leapt up the steps and walked quietly round the corner on to the wide tiling under the front of the colonnade.

She was standing in one of the arches facing the sea, half in sun, half in shadow; and – it was a shock, though I might have guessed -in contemporary clothes. A navy blue shortsleeved shirt, a pair of white beach trousers with a red belt – she was barefooted, her long hair down, a girl who might have adorned the terrace of any smart Mediterranean hotel. One thing was decided at once: she was as desirable in modern dress as in costume, an arrestingly beautiful young woman; in no way less attractive for being less artificial now.

She turned as I appeared, and there was a strange silence, a doubt in both our looks across the space between us. She seemed faintly surprised, as if she had half decided I would not come; was relieved, yet almost at once distancing. There was a tiny air about her of having been caught out of costume, and not being sure of my reaction to this new appearance – like a woman showing a new dress for the first time to the man who has to pay for it. She looked down from my eyes. On my side I knew the ghost of Alison, of what had happened on Parnassus; a flicker of adultery, a moment’s guilt. We remained like that for several seconds. Then she looked up again to where I stood twenty feet away, with the duffel-bag in my hand. I noticed something else new about her; the beginning of a tan, a honeyed skin now. I tried to read her psychologically, psychiatrically; and gave up.

I said, ‘They suit you. Modern clothes.’

Still she seemed at a loss, as if the days apart had given her countless second thoughts.

‘Did you meet him?’

‘Meet who?’ But that was a mistake, there was something impatient in her stare. ‘The old man? Yes. He was just going for a walk.’

Her suspicion was not assuaged, and she stared at me a moment more. Then she said, with a perceptible indifference, ‘Do you want some tea?’

‘That’d be nice.’

She moved in barefooted silence across the tiles to the table. I saw a pair of red espadrilles by the music-room doors. I watched her strike a inatch and light the spirit-lamp, then set the kettle on its stand. She avoided my eyes, fiddling with the muslin covers over the food; the scar on her wrist. There was almost a sullenness about her. I dropped my bag by the wall and went closer.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I haven’t betrayed you in any way. Whatever he may have said.’ She gave me the briefest glance, but then stared down at the table again. I tried small talk. ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘On the yacht.’

‘Where?’

‘Cruising. In the Cyclades.’

‘I’ve missed you.’

She said nothing. She would not look at me. I had anticipated various kinds of reception, but not this apparent wishing that I hadn’t come at all. There stole through me a little chill of fear – something fraught about her, lost; and with a girl as pretty as this, only the reason I did not want to believe could account for the apparent lack of other men in her life.

‘I gather Lily’s dead.’

She spoke to the table. ‘You don’t seem very surprised.’

‘Nothing surprises me here. Any more.’ She drew a breath; I had made another wrong answer. ‘So what are you officially playing now?’

She sat down. The kettle must have been boiled once already, because it began to hiss. Suddenly she looked up at me. The question was transparently accusing.

‘Did you enjoy Athens?’

‘No. And I didn’t meet my friend.’

‘Maurice told us you had.’

I silently cursed him, and had a touch of liar’s nightmare. ‘That’s odd. He didn’t know five minutes ago. Since he asked me himself if I’d met her.’

She looked down. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘For the reasons I told you. It’s all over.’

She tipped a little hot water into the tea-pot, then crossed the colonnade to empty it over the edge. As she came back, I said, ‘And because I knew I was going to see you again.’

She sat, and spooned some tea from a caddy into the pot. ‘Start eating. If you’re hungry.’

‘I’m much more hungry to know why we’re behaving like total strangers.’

‘Because that’s precisely what we are.’

‘Why won’t you answer my question about your new role?’

‘Because you already know the answer.’

Her grey-hyacinth eyes were on me, and they were very direct. The kettle boiled, and she lifted it and filled the pot. As she put it back on its stand and turned out the flame beneath, she said, ‘I wouldn’t really blame you for thinking I was mad. I begin to wonder increasingly myself if I’m not.’ Her voice grew drier still. ‘Sorry if I’ve spoilt a prepared scene.’ Then she smiled up without humour. ‘Do you want this foul goat’s milk or lemon?’

‘Lemon.’

I felt a great relief then. She had just done the one thing she would never do, if the old man had been telling me the truth – unless she was so insanely cunning, or cunningly insane, that she was beating him at his own game. I remembered Occam’s razor: always believe the simplest of several explanations. But I played safe.

‘Why should I think you’re mad?’

‘Why should I think you’re not what you say you are?’

‘Why indeed?’

‘Because the question you’ve just asked proves you aren’t.’ She pushed a cup towards me. ‘Your tea.’

I stared at it, then up at her. ‘Okay. I don’t believe you’re a famous case of schizophrenia.’

She eyed me, still unwon. ‘Will you not partake of a sandwich … Mr Urfe?’

I did not smile, and I left a silence.

‘Julie, this is absurd. We’re falling into every trap he sets. I thought we agreed last time. We don’t have to lie to each other out of his hearing.’

Without warning she stood and walked slowly to the far end of the colonnade, where steps led down to the vegetable terrace to the west. She leant against the wall of the house, her back to me, staring out towards the distant mountains of the Peloponnesus. After a moment I stood and went behind her. She did not turn to look at me.