John Fowles - The Magus

The more I thought about it, the more I suspected the authenticity of that Belgian count—or at any rate of Conchis’s account of him. He was no more than a stalking-horse for Conchis himself. De Deukans had a symbolic truth, perhaps, but far less than a literal one.

Meanwhile, the masque was letting me down. Silence still reigned. I looked at my watch. Nearly half an hour had passed. I could not sleep. After some hesitation, I crept downstairs and out through the music room under the colonnade. There I made my way round the gravel along the route that Lily must have taken. I walked a little way into the trees in the direction the two had disappeared; then turned back and went down to the beach. The sea lapped slowly, dragging down a few small pebbles now and again, making them rattle drily, though there was no wind, no air. The cliffs and trees and the little boat lay drenched in starlight, in a million indecipherable thoughts from other worlds. The mysterious southern sea, luminous, waited; alive yet empty. I smoked a cigarette, and then climbed back to the fraught house and my bedroom.

I had my breakfast alone again. It was a day of wind, the sky as blue as ever, but the breeze tore boisterously off the sea, typhooning the fronds of the two palms that stood like sentinels in front of the house. Further south, off Cape Matapan, the meltemi , the tough summer gale from the Ionian islands, was blowing.

I went down to the beach. The boat was not there. It confirmed my half-formed theory about the “visitors"—that they were on a yacht in one of the many deserted coves round the west and south sides of the island, or anchored among the group of deserted islets some five miles to the east. I swam out some way to see if Conchis was visible on the terrace. But it was empty. I lay on my back and floated for a while, feeling the cool chop of the waves over my sunwarmed face, thinking of Lily.

Then I looked toward the beach.

She was standing on it, a brilliant figure on the salt-gray shingle, with the ochre of the cliff and the green plants behind her. I began to swim towards the shore, as fast as I could. She moved a few steps along the stones and then stopped and watched me. At last I stood up, dripping, panting, and looked at her. She was about ten yards away, in an exquisitely pretty First World War summer dress. It was striped mussel-blue, white and pink, and she carried a fringed sunshade of the same cloth. She wore the sea wind like a jewel. It caught her dress, moulded it against her body. Every so often she had a little struggle with the sunshade. And all the time fingers of wind teased and skeined her long, silky-blond hair around her neck or across her mouth.

She showed a little moue , half mocking herself, half mocking me as I stood knee-deep in the water. I don’t know why silence descended on us, why we were locked for a strange few moments in a more serious look. It must have been transparently excited on my side. She looked so young, so timidly naughty. She gave an embarrassed yet mischievous smile, as if she should not have been there, had risked impropriety.

“Has Neptune cut your tongue off?”

“You look so ravishing. Like a Renoir.”

She moved a little further away, and twirled her ombrelle . I slipped into my beachshoes and, toweling my back, caught her up.

“I prefer you without the silver bow.”

She raised a finger to her lips, banning the subject, then smiled with a sort of innocent sideways slyness; she had a remarkable gift for creating and diminishing distance by an intonation, a look. She sat down on a low projecting piece of rock that was overshaded by a pine tree, where the precipitous gulley ran down to the shingle; then closed her sunshade and pointed with it to a stone beside her, a little away from her, in the sun, where I was to sit. But I spread my towel on the rock and sat beside her in the shade. I thought how ridiculous it really was to pretend that she was in some way “psychic"; the moist mouth, the down on her bare forearms, a scar above her left wrist, her slim neck, her loose hair, an animated glance she turned to give me.

“You’re the most deliciously pretty girl I’ve ever seen.”

“Am I?”

I had meant it; and I had also meant to embarrass her, But she simply widened her smile and stared back at me, and I was the one who eventually looked down.

“Do we still have to… keep to the rules?”

“If you want me to sit with you.”

“Who’s the other girl?”

“What other girl?”

Her innocence was charming; no natural and so false; an irresistible invitation to take nothing seriously.

“When am I going to meet your brother?”

Her prettily lashed eyes flickered modestly down and sideways. I hope you did not venture to think he was really my brother?”

“I ventured to think all sorts of things.”

She sought my meaning, for a moment held my eyes, then bit her lips. For no reason at all I began to feel less jealous.

“Wouldn’t you like to bathe?”

“No. I cannot swim.”

“I could teach you. It’s very easy.”

“Thank you. I do not like sea water.”

Silence. She shifted a pebble with her shoe. It was a pretty buttoned shoe of gray kid over a white silk stocking, but very old-fashioned. The hem of her dress came within three of four inches of her ankles. Her hair blew forward, clouding her face a little. I wanted to brush it back.

“You speak like a Scandinavian sometimes.”

“Yes?”

“'I cannot swim.' 'I do not like.'”

“What should I say?”

“I can’t swim. I don’t like.”

She made a little pout, then put on a very creditable foreign accent. “Does it mattair eef I am not Eenglish?”

Then she smiled like the Cheshire Cat; disappearing behind her humor.

“Does it matter if you tell me who you really are?”

“Give me your hand. I will read your fortune. You may sit a little closer, but you must not wet my dress.”

I gave her my hand. She held it tightly by the wrist and traced the palmistry lines with the forefinger of her free hand. I was able to see the shape of her breasts at the bottom of the opening in her dress, very pale skin, the highly caressable beginning of soft curves. It was strange; she managed to suggest that this hackneyed sexgambit—one I had used myself on occasion—was rather daring, mama-defying. Her fingertip ran innocently yet suggestively over my palm. She began to “read.”

“You will have a long life. You will have three children. At about forty years old you will nearly die. You are quite sensitive, but you are also very treacherous. There are… there are many treacheries in your life. Sometimes you betray yourself. Sometimes you betray those who love you.”

“Why do I betray?”

She looked seriously up at me. “The palm says what is. Not why it is.”

“Can I read yours?”

“I have not finished. You will never be rich. Beware of horses, strong drink and old women. You will make love to many girls, but you will love only one, and you will marry her and be very happy.”

“In spite of nearly dying at forty.”

“Because you nearly die at forty. Here is where you nearly die. The happiness line is very, very strong after that.”

She let go of my hand.

“Now can I read yours?”

She hesitated a moment, then put her small hand in mine, and I pretended to read it. I tried to read it quite seriously in one way—the Sherlock Holmes way. But even that great master at detecting in a second Irish maidservants from Brixton with a mania for boating and bullseyes would have been baffled. However, Lily’s hands were very white, very smooth, very unblemished; whatever else she was she was not a maidservant from anywhere.