John Fowles - The Magus

Lightning sheeted closer, making the landscape, sleeping school, olive groves, cottages, chapels, sea, stems, branches, flash luridly into presence. I looked at my watch. It was just midnight, and I felt full of a sort of joy, an amused excitement, the intoxication of danger, deceit, the unknown, the girl beside me. We came to a path that led down between cottages, and made our way through the back alleys of the village. A few isolated drops of rain began to fall. Somewhere a shutter slammed; a man standing in a lit doorway wished us good night. At last we came to the narrow high-walled lane that led behind the hotel, and through a gateway into the back yard. A light came from the rear door, which was half-glazed. I made June wait beside it while I looked in across the stone tiles to the front part of the lobby. A few scattered chairs and a sofa; the double glass doors of the main entrance. In one of the armchairs by the reception desk sat a man in a white shirt. The clerk. He was slumped, evidently asleep. I tried the half-glazed door. It was open.

I turned to her against the wall, and whispered.

“You’ll be all right now. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You must come in.” Her face looked startled.

“I don’t think I’d better.”

“Nicholas. Please. You must.” For the first time her voice sounded genuinely alarmed.

“I don’t want to compromise you.”

She didn’t say anything, but she began to smile like a girl who recognizes that she is being teased, and deserves it; and makes churlishness very difficult.

“I’ve got the key.” She produced it from her skirt pocket; it had a brass tag with 13 stamped out.

“Appropriate number.”

“Please.”

She bent, slipped off her shoes, then took the initiative and my hand. We tiptoed into the hotel lobby, halfway down which the stairs led off to the left. The man in the white shirt was snoring slightly. A clock was ticking. Rapid rain began to drum on the tatty blue and white marquise outside. Like ghosts we padded up the stone staircase, around a half-landing, and then we were out of sight. She led me along a corridor on the first floor; stopped outside the end back room. I took the key and fitted it in the lock. I didn’t know what to expect; but I was as tense as a thief. The door gave. I let June go first. She fficked on the light, and we both stood in the doorway.

It was a large square room. There was a double bed with a pink bedspread, a table with a green cloth, two wooden chairs and an armchair, a cupboard, two or three skimpy carpets. Pale gray walls in need of painting, a photo of King Paul, an oleograph ikon over the bed. Another door led into a bathroom.

I closed the door and relocked it. Then I went and looked in the bathroom. A huge bath, nowhere to hide. I opened the wardrobe. A dress, a pair of girl’s slacks on a hanger, a black cotton dressing gown. Under the bed: a dusty chamber pot. There was no trap.

June had been watching and smiling. She twisted off the headscarf and the cardigan and threw them on the end of the bed; stood in a dark blue skirt and a black sleeveless shirt.

“What now?”

“I’d love a cigarette.”

I gave her one and lit it, and then she went to the mirror door of the wardrobe, unpinned her hair, shaking it out, slim-backed, barearmed. I went behind her and watched her face in the mirror. Gray-amethyst eyes. She had a little smile.

I said, “Your cue.”

“Is it?”

She turned then, the smile widening; and much too mischievous to be consonant with an abducted sister.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was just thinking of the first time we met.” The invitation was so absurd that I laughed. “Seriously.”

“I don’t think anything’s very serious with you.”

I went and stood by the window, the now torrential rain. “Where is she, June?”

She walked to the wardrobe and took out a cotton dressing gown. “I don’t know. Really.”

“Come on.”

But she went into the bathroom. Thunder crashed. She left the door ajar, and a few moments later she came back with the dressing gown on, and hung the skirt and shirt she had been wearing up in the wardrobe. Rain came in a great squall of wind; gusts of coolness through the shutters. Suddenly she switched the light off, so that there was only the light from the open bathroom door. She came across the room to where I was standing. It was a short dressing gown; a deep neckline. She sat on the arm of the armchair beside me.

“My sister’s with Maurice, Nicholas. I really don’t know where. I expect on his yacht.” She paused, then added, “She’s completely under his influence.”

“Rubbish.”

She looked up at me. “Didn’t you realize?” Lightning flickered through the shutters. She jumped, too obviously. I counted three; then thunder boomed.

“I see. And you’ve come to console me?”

The rain pelted outside. Somewhere down the corridor a key went into a lock, a door opened and closed. Then a secondary clap of thunder. June stood up and came very close beside me. She had put on scent in the bathroom. I put my cigarette in my mouth and left it there.

“Why not?”

I leant back against the sill. She was tracing patterns on it; as she had on the back of the seat by the Poseidon statue.

“Come on. Where is she?”

“Oh, how I hate thunder.” But I knew she didn’t mind it at all. She waited, staring down through the shutters, in profile. She murmured, “I’m cold.”

I crossed the room to the light, which I switched on; then leant against the door.

“Why don’t you just take all your clothes off and hop into bed?”

“I’m shy.”

“I never noticed that before.”

“But I will if you like.”

“I do like.”

“I’ll just finish my cigarette.”

“Please.”

There was a silence. She clasped one elbow, and moved nervously round a little, the shortening cigarette cocked in the air. She sat on the edge of the bed. Thunder pealed again, overhead, and she shivered. Silence; the drumming rain.

“I think it’s much more exciting when one doesn’t really know the other person, don’t you?”

“I’m sure you speak from a wealth of experience.”

“Do I look so innocent?” For a moment her sideways look up at me seemed sincere; and innocent.

I shook my head. “Completely worldworn.”

“Some appearances are deceptive.”

I said, “Cigarette ends don’t lie.” It was getting very short.

“Oh. Yes. I forgot.” She took a last puff, then stubbed it out on the abalone shell beside the bed.

She stood, and touched the ends of the belt of her dressing gown.

“Would you mind turning the light off?”

“I see you better with it on.”

She looked down. “It seems so coldblooded.”

“Poker is a coldblooded game.”

“Poker?”

Thunder interrupted us again.

“I thought that was what we were playing.”

She fiddled with the ends of her belt.

“At least you could kiss me.”

“I shall. Later.”

Silence; she took a breath. I thought for one moment… but she gave me a quick look and said, “I’m afraid I must go along to the loo first.”

I immediately unlocked the door and opened it. She checked for a moment as she passed me; an oblique look.

“I shan’t be a moment.”

I grinned, to tell her I could see the trick a mile off, but she had gone. I took the key out of the lock and went back to the window. There was the strange smell in summer Greece of wet stone, almost a London smell. Steady rain; I imagined it running down the walls of hundreds of thirsty cisterns. The excited eels. A minute passed.

There was a sound. I flicked a look round, and although I allowed myself only a glimpse of the girl in the black dressing gown in the doorway, I knew I had been right from the beginning.