John Fowles - The Magus

The Tavistock Repertory: a total blank. No productions of Lysistrata . The agent’s name: unknown.

I tried RADA; with similar unsuccess.

One cunning device in the “Julie Holmes” invention: we tend to believe people who have had the same experiences as ourselves; who mirror us. So her naval commander father equaled my brigadier father; her Cambridge, my Oxford; her unhappy love affaire, mine; her year’s teaching, mine.

Her being “interfered with” was an irony, obviously; or perhaps an echo of Artemis’s mythical fear of the pains of childbirth. But perhaps she told me this to make it easier for me to confess in return. Looks she gave me: as if she was waiting for something. And if I had spoken… ?

Othello, Act I, Scene III.

She is abus’d, stol'n from me, and corrupted

By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;

For nature so preposterously to err,

Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,

Sans witchcraft could not.

And:

A maiden never bold;

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion

Blush’d at herself; and she, in spite of nature,

Of years, of country, credit, every thing,

To fall in love with what she fear’d to look on!

Polymus Films . I didn’t see the obvious, that one misplaced letter, until painfully late.

The famous whore Io . Lemprière: “In the ancient Gothic Io and Gio signified earth, as Isi or Isa signified 'ice' or water in its primordial state; and both were equally titles of the goddess, who represented the productive and nutritive power of the earth.” Indian Kali, Syrian Astarte (Ashtaroth), Egyptian Isis and Greek Io were considered one and the same goddess. She had three colors (on the walls in the trial): white, red, and black, the phases of the moon, and also the phases of woman: virgin, mother, and crone. Lily was evidently the goddess in her white, virgin phase; and perhaps in the black, as well. Rose would have stood for the red phase; but then Alison was given that role.

Tartarus . The more I read, the more I began to reidentify the whole situation at Bourani—or at any rate the final situation—with Tartarus. Tartarus was ruled by a king, Hades (or Conchis); a Queen, Persephone, bringer of destruction (Lily)—who remained “six months with Hades in the infernal regions and spent the rest of the year with her mother Demeter on earth.” There was also a supreme judge in Tartarus—Minos (the presiding “doctor” with a beard?); and of course there was Anubis-Cerberus, the black dog with three heads (three roles?). And Tartarus was where Eurydice went when Orpheus lost her.

I was aware that in all this I was acting the role I had decided not to act: that of detective, of hunter, and several times I abandoned the chase.

But then one, and one of the apparently least promising, of my hits of research bore spectacular results.

It began, one Monday, with a very long shot, the assumption that Conchis had lived in St. John’s Wood as a boy and that there had indeed been an original Lily Montgomery. I went to Marylebone Central Library and asked to look at the street directories for 1912 to 1914. Of course the name Conchis would not appear; I looked for Montgomery. Acacia Road, Prince Albert Road, Henstridge Place, Queen’s Grove… with an A to Z of London by my side I worked through all the likely streets on the east of Wellington Road. Suddenly, with a shock of excitement, my eyes jumped a page. Montgomery, Fredk, 20 Allitsen Road .

The neighbors’ names were given as Smith and Manningham, although by 1914 the latter had moved and the name Huckstepp appeared. I wrote down the address, and then went on searching. Almost at once, on the other side of the main artery, I came across another Montgomery; this time in Elm Tree Road. But I no sooner caught sight of it than I was disappointed, because the full name was given as Sir Charles Penn Montgomery; an eminent surgeon, by the look of the trail of initials after his name; and obviously not the man Conchis described. The neighbors’ names there were HamiltonDukes and Charlesworth. There was another title among the Elm Tree Road residents; a “desirable” address.

I searched on, double-checking everything, but without finding any other Montgomery.

I then followed up in later directories the two I had found. The Allitsen Road Montgomery disappeared in 1920. Annoyingly the Elm Tree Road Montgomery went on much longer, though Sir Charles must have died in 1922; after that the owner’s name appeared as Lady Florence Montgomery, and continued so right up to 1938.

After lunch I drove up to Allitsen Road. As I swung into it, I knew it was no good. The houses were small terrace houses, nothing like the “mansions” Conchis had described.

Five minutes later I was in Elm Tree Road. At least it looked more the part: a pretty circumflex of mixed largish houses and early Victorian mews and cottages. It also looked encouragingly unaltered. No. 46 turned out to be one of the largest houses in the road. I parked my car and walked up a drive between banks of dead hydrangeas to a neo-Georgian front door; rang a bell.

But it sounded in an empty house, and sounded so all through August. Whoever lived there was on holiday. I found out his name in that year’s directory—a Mr. Simon Marks. I also found out from an old Who’s Who that the illustrious Sir Charles Penn Montgomery had had three daughters. I could probably have found out their names, but I had by then become anxious to drag my investigations out, as a child his last few sweets. It was almost a disappointment when, one day early in September, I saw a car parked in the driveway, and knew that another faint hope was about to be extinguished.

The bell was answered by an Italian in a white housecoat.

“I wonder if I could speak to the owner? Or his wife.”

“You have appointment?”

“No.”

“You sell something?”

I was rescued by a sharp voice.

“Who is it, Ercole?”

She appeared, a woman of sixty, a Jewess, expensively dressed, intelligent-looking.

“Oh, I’m engaged on some research and I’m trying to trace a family called Montgomery.”

“Sir Charles Penn? The surgeon?”

“I believed he lived here.”

“Yes, he lived here.” The houseboy waited, and she waved him away in a grande-dame manner; part of the wave came my way.

“In fact… this is rather difficult to explain… I’m really looking for a Miss Lily Montgomery.”

“Yes. I know her.” She was evidently not amused by the astonished smile that broke over my face. “You wish to see her?”

“I’m writing a monograph on a famous Greek writer—famous in Greece, that is, and I believe Miss Montgomery knew him well many years ago when he lived in England.”

“What is his name?”

“Maurice Conchis.” She had clearly never heard of him.

The lure of the search overcame a little of her distrust, and she said, “I will find you the address. Come in.”

I waited in the splendid hall. An ostentation of marble and ormolu; pier glasses; what looked like a Fragonard. Petrified opulence, tense excitement. In a minute she reappeared with a card. On it I read: Mrs. Lily de Seitas, Dinsford House, Much Hadham, Herts.

“I haven’t seen her for several years,” said the lady.

“Thank you very much.” I began backing towards the door.

“Would you like tea? A drink?”

There was something glistening, obscurely rapacious, about her eyes, as if while she had been away she’d decided that there might be a pleasure to suck from me. A mantis woman; starved in her luxury. I was glad to escape.