John Fowles - The Magus

There was silence. After a time, she went on.

“You are really the luckiest and the blindest young man. Lucky because you are born with some charm for women, even though you seem determined not to show it to me. Blind because you have had a little piece of pure womankind in your hands. Do you not realize that Alison possesses the one great quality our sex has to contribute to life? Beside which things like education, class, background, are nothing? And you’ve let it slip.”

“Helped by your charming daughters.”

“My daughters were nothing but a personification of your own selfishness.”

A dull, deep rage brewing in me.

“I happened—stupidly, I grant you—to fall in love with one of them.”

“As an unscrupulous collector falls in love with a painting he wants. And will do anything to get.”

“Except that this wasn’t a painting. It was a girl with as much morality as a worn-out whore from the Place Pigalle.”

She let a little silence pass, the elegant drawing-room reprove, then said quietly, though with a feminine irony, “Strong words.”

I turned on her. “Look, I begin to wonder how much you know, First of all, your not so virgin daughter—”

“I know precisely what she did.” She sat calmly facing me; but a little more erect. “And I know precisely the reasons behind what she did. But if I told you them, I would tell you everything.”

“Shall I call those two down there? Tell your son how his sister performs—I think that’s the euphemism—with a Negro?”

She let silence pass again, as if to isolate what I said; as people leave a question unanswered in order to snub the questioner.

“Does a Negro make it so much worse?”

“It doesn’t make it any better.”

“He is a very intelligent and charming man. They have been sleeping together for some time.”

“And you approve?”

“My approval is unasked for and ungiven. Lily is of age.”

I grinned sourly at her, then looked out at the garden. “Now I understand why you grow so many flowers.” She shifted her head, not understanding. I said, “To cover the stink of sulphur.”

She got up and stood with one hand on the mantelpiece, watching me as I walked about the room; still calm, alert, playing me as if I was a kite. I might plunge and flare; but she held the string.

“Are you prepared to listen without interrupting?”

I looked at her; then shrugged assent.

“Very well. Now let us get this business of what is and what is not sexually proper out of the way.” Her voice was cold; a fierceness. “Because I live in a Queen Anne house do not think I live, like most of the rest of our country, by a Queen Anne morality.”

“Nothing was further from my mind.”

“Will you listen?” I went and stood by the window, my back to her. I lit a cigarette; I felt that at last I ought to have her in a corner; I must have her in a corner.

“How shall I explain to you? If Maurice were here he would tell you that sex is perhaps a greater, but in no way a different, pleasure from any other. He would tell you that it is only one part—and not the essential part—in the relationship we call love. He would tell you that the essential part is truth, the trust two people build between their minds. Their souls. What you will. That the real infidelity is the one that hides the sexual infidelity. Because the one thing that must never come between two people who have offered each other love is a lie.”

I stared out over the lawn. I knew it was prepared, all she was saying; perhaps learnt by heart, a key speech.

“Are you daring to preach to me, Mrs. de Seitas?”

“Are you daring to pretend that you do not need the sermon?”

“Look—”

“Listen to me.” If her voice had held the least sharpness or arrogance, I should not have done so. But it was unexpectedly gentle; almost beseeching. “I am trying to explain what we are. Maurice convinced us—over twenty years ago—that we should banish the normal taboos of sexual behavior from our lives. Not because we were more immoral than other people. But because we were more moral. We attempted to do that in our own lives. I have attempted to do it in the way I have brought up our children. And I must make you understand that sex is for us, for all of us who help Maurice, not an important thing. Or not the thing it is in most people’s lives. We have more important things to do.”

I would not turn and look at her.

“Before the war I twice played roles somewhat similar to Lily’s with you. She is prepared to do things that I was not. I had far more inhibitions to shed. I also had a husband whom I loved sexually as well as in the other more important ways. But since we have penetrated so deep into your life, I owe it to you to say that even when my husband was living I sometimes gave myself, with his full knowledge and consent, to Maurice. And in the war he in his turn had an Indian mistress, with my full knowledge and consent. Yet I believe ours was a very complete marriage, a very happy one, because we kept to two essential rules. We never told each other lies. And the other one… I will not tell you until I know you better.”

I looked around then, contemptuously. I found her calm vehemence uncomfortable; the madness erupting out of calm. She sat down again, on her throne.

“Of course, if you wish to live in the world of received ideas and received manners, what we did, and what my daughter did, is disgusting. Very well. But remember that there is another possible explanation. She may have been being very brave. Neither I nor my children pretend to be ordinary people. They were not brought up to be ordinary. We are rich and we are intelligent and we mean to live rich, intelligent lives.”

I said without turning. “Lucky you.”

“Of course. Lucky us. And we accept the responsibility that our good luck in the lottery of existence puts upon us.”

“Responsibility!” I wheeled round on her again.

“Do you really think we do this just for you? Do you really believe we are not… charting the voyage?” I stared back at her, then turned away. She went on in a milder yoice. “All that we did was to us a necessity.” She meant, not self-indulgence.

“With all the necessity of gratuitous obscenity.”

“With all the necessity of a very complex experiment.”

“I like my experiments simple.”

“The days of simple experiments are over.”

A long silence fell between us. I was still full of spleen; and in some obscure way frightened to think of Alison in this woman’s hands. As one hears of a countryside one has loved being sold to building developers. And I also felt left behind, abandoned again. I did not belong to this other-planet world. She came behind me and put her hand on my shoulder and made me turn.

“Do I look an evil woman? Did my daughters?”

“Actions. Not looks.” My voice sounded raw; I wanted to slap her arm down, to get out.

“Are you absolutely sure our actions have been nothing but evil?”

I looked down. I wouldn’t answer. She took her hand away, but stayed close in front of me.

“Will you trust me a little—just for a little while?” I shook my head, but she went on. “You can always telephone me. If you want to watch the house, please do. But I warn you that you will see no one you want to see. Only Benjie and Gunnel and my two middle children when they come home from France next week. Only one person is making you wait at the moment.”

“She should tell me so herself.”

She looked out of the window, then sideways at me.

“I should so like to help you.”

“I want Alison. Not help.”

“May I call you Nicholas now?” I turned away from her; went to the sofa table, stared down at the photos there. “Very well. I will not ask again.”