John Fowles - The Magus

“You mustn’t think that you are the first young man who has stood before me bitter and angry with Maurice. With all of us who help him. Though you are the first to reject the offer of friendship I made just now.”

“I have some ugly questions to ask.”

“Ask.”

“Some others first. Why are you known in the village as an opera singer?”

She paused before answering, as if warning me not to interrogate too roughly. I sensed formidable powers of snubbing.

“I’ve sung once or twice in local concerts. I was trained.”

“'The harpsichord is the plonkety-plonic one'?”

“It is rather, isn’t it?”

I turned my back on her; on her gentleness; her weaponed ladyhood.

“My dear Mrs. de Seitas, no amount of charm, no amount of intelligence, no amount of playing with words can get you out of this one.”

She left a long pause. “It is you who make our situation. You must have been told that. You come here telling me lies. You come here for all the wrong reasons. I tell you lies back. I give you wrong reasons back.”

“Are your daughters here?”

“No.”

I turned to face her. “Alison?”

“Alison and I are very good friends.”

“Where is she?”

She shook her head; no answer.

“I demand to know where she is.”

“In my house no one ever demands.” Her face was bland, but as intent on mine as a chessplayer’s on the game.

“Very well. We’ll see what the police think about that.”

“I can tell you now. They will think you very foolish.”

I turned away again, to try to get her to say more. But she sat in the chair and I felt her eyes on my back. I knew she was sitting there, in her corn-gold chair, and that she was like Demeter, Ceres, a goddess on her throne; not simply a clever woman of nearly fifty, in 1953, in a room with a tractor droning somewhere nearby in the fields; but playing a role so deep-rooted in fidelity to concepts I did not understand, to people I did not like, that it had almost ceased to be a role.

She stood up and went to a bureau in the corner and came back with some photos, which she laid out on a table behind the sofa. Then she went back to her chair; invited me to look at them. There was one of her sitting on the swing-seat in front of the loggia. At the other end sat Conchis; between them was Benjie. Another photo showed Lily and Rose. Lily was smiling into the camera, and Rose, in profile, as if passing behind her, was laughing. Once again I could see the loggia in the background. The next photo was an old one. I recognized Bourani. There were five people standing on the steps in front of the house. Conchis was in the middle, a pretty woman beside him was obviously Lily de Seitas. Beside her, his arm round her, was a tall man. I looked on the back; Bourani, 1935 .

“Who are the other two?”

“One was a friend. And the other was a predecessor of yours.”

“Geoffrey Sugden?” She nodded, but with a touch of surprise. I put the photo down; decided to have a small revenge. “I traced one prewar master at the school. He told me quite a lot.”

“Oh?” A shadow of doubt in her calm voice.

“So do let’s stick to the truth.”

There was an awkward moment’s silence; her eyes on me. “Was he… still bitter?”

“Yes. Very.”

We stared at each other. Then she stood up again and went to the desk. She took a letter out and detached a bottom sheet; checked it, then came and handed it to me. It was a carbon copy of Nevinson’s letter to me. On the top he had scrawled: “ Hope this dust does not cause any permanent harm to the recipient’s eyes! ” She had turned away and was looking along some bookshelves beside the desk, but now she came back, with a wide-eyed look, half of warning, half of reproach, and silently handed me the books in exchange for the letter. I swallowed a sarcasm and looked at the top book—a school textbook, clothbound in blue. An Intermediate Greek Anthology for Schools, compiled and annotated by William Hughes, M.A. (Cantab.), 1932 .

“He did that as hackwork—for bread. The other two he did for love.”

One was a limited edition of a translation of Longus, dated 1936.

“1936. Still Hughes?”

“An author can use whatever name he likes.”

The other book was an edition of translations from the poems of Palamas, Solomos, and other modern Greek poets; even some by Seferis.

“Maurice Conchis, the famous poet.” I looked sourly up. “Brilliant choice on my part.”

She took the books and put them on the table. “I thought you did it very intelligently.”

“Even though I’m a very foolish young man.”

“Silliness and intelligence are not incompatible. Especially in your sex and at your age.”

She went and sat in her wingchair again, and smiled again at my unsmiling face; an insidiously warm, friendly smile from an intelligent, balanced woman. But how could she be balanced? I went to the window. Sunlight touched my hands. I could see Benjie and the Norwegian girl playing catch down by the loggia. Every so often their cries reached back to us.

“Supposing I’d believed your story about Mr. Rat?”

“I should have remembered something very interesting about him.”

“And?”

“You would have come out again to hear it.”

“Supposing I’d never traced you in the first place?”

“A Mrs. Hughes would in due course have asked you to lunch.”

“Just like that?”

“Of course not. She would have written a letter.” She sat back, closed her eyes. “My dear Mr. Urfe, I must explain that I have obtained your name from the British Council. My husband, who was the first English master at the Lord Byron School, died recently and among his private papers we have come across an account, hitherto unknown to me, of a remarkable experience that…"she opened her eyes and raised her eyebrows interrogatively.

“And when would this call have come? How much longer?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

“Won’t tell me.”

“No. It is not for me to decide.”

“Look, there’s just one person who has to do the deciding. If she—”

“Precisely.”

She reached up to the mantelpiece beside her and took a photo out from behind an ornament there; handed it to me.

“It’s not very good. Benjie took it with his Brownie.”

It was of three women on horseback. One was Lily de Seitas. The second was Gunnel. The third, in the middle, was Alison. She looked insecure, and was laughing down into the camera.

“Has she met… your daughters?”

Her blue-gray eyes stared up at me. “Please keep that. I had it made for you.”

I flung my will against hers.

“Where is she?”

“You may search the house.”

She watched me, chin on hand, in the yellow chair; unnettled; in possession. Of what, I didn’t know; but in possession. I felt like a green young dog in pursuit of a cunning old hare; every time I leapt, I bit brown air. I looked at the photo of Alison, then tore it in four and threw it into an ashtray on a console table by the window. Silence, which eventually she broke.

“My poor resentful young man, let me tell you something. Love may really be more a capacity for love in oneself than anything very lovable in the other person. I believe Alison has a very rare capacity for attachment and devotion. Far more than I have ever had. I think it is very precious. And all I have done is to persuade her that she must not underestimate, as I believe she has all her life till now, what she has to give.”

“How kind.”

She sighed. “Sarcasm again.”

“Well what do you expect? Tears of remorse?”

“Sarcasm is so ugly. And so revealing.”