John Fowles - The Magus

And once again, did it matter?

As I swam out there, with the dark slope of Bourani across the quiet water to the east, I could feel in me a complex and compound excitement, in which Lily was the strongest but not the only element. I thought, I am Theseus in the maze; let it all come, even the black minotaur, so long as it comes; so long as I may reach the center.

I came ashore and dried myself with my shirt. Then I pulled on the rest of my clothes and walked back to the house.

I woke feeling even more slugged, more beaten-steak—the heat does it in Greece—than usual. It was ten o'clock. I soaked my head in cold water, dragged on my clothes, and went downstairs. There was a note waiting for me on top of the muslin-mounded breakfast table under the colonnade.

DEAR NICHOLAS,

Alas, very urgent financial business connected with the “scare” of a fortnight ago obliges me to go at once to Geneva. I look forward to seeing you next Saturday, if you can dispose of your academic duties. Maria is leaving with me. She is taking advantage of my absence to visit relatives in Santorini. Hermes is returning to lock up the house this afternoon. Please enjoy your lunch, and accept my apologies for this unpardonable breach of hospitality.

MAURICE CONCHIS

I looked under the muslin. There was my breakfast. The spirit stove to heat up the coffee. A carafe of water, another of retsina ; and under a second muslin an ample cold lunch. My first thought was that he had funked meeting me after the incident with his Negro thug; my second, that at least I could make some detective use of the occasion.

I carried the breakfast things round to Maria’s cottage, as if to put them out of harm’s way on her table, but the door was locked. First failure. I went upstairs, knocked on Conchis’s door, then tried it. It was also locked. Second failure. Then I went round all the groundfloor rooms in the house, and pulled up all the carpets to see if there were trapdoors to mysterious cellars. There were not. Ten minutes later I gave up; I knew I was not going to find any clue to the girls’ true identity, and that was all that interested me.

I went down to the private beach—the boat was gone—and swam out of the little cove and round its eastern headland. There some of the tallest cliffs on the island, a hundred feet or more high, fell into the sea among a litter of boulders and broken rocks. The cliffs curved in a very flat concave arc half a mile eastwards, not really making a bay, but jutting out from the coast just enough to hide the beach where the three cottages were. I examined every yard of the cliffs. No way down, no place where even a small boat could land. Yet this was the area Lily and Rose supposedly headed for when they went “home.” There was dense low scrub on the abrupt-sloping clifftops before the pines started, just enough to hide in, but manifestly impossible to live in. That left only one solution. They made their way along the top of the cliffs, then circled inland and down past the cottages.

A vein of colder water made me twist on my front again, and as I turned I saw. A girl in a pale pink dress was standing under the seawardest pines on top of the cliff, some hundred yards to the east of where I was; in shadow, but brilliantly, exuberantly conspicuous. She waved down and I waved back. She walked a few yards along the edge of the trees, the sunlight between the pines dappling the pink dress, and then, with an inner leap of exultation, I saw another flash of pink, a second girl. They stood, each replica of each, some twenty yards apart, and the closer waved again. Then both disappeared back together into the trees.

Five minutes later I arrived, very out of breath, at the deserted Poseidon statue. I suffered a moment’s angry suspicion that I was being teased again—shown them only to lose them. But I went down the far side of the ravine, past the carob; and soon I could see their two pink figures. They were sitting on a shaded hummock of rock and earth, wearing identical summer dresses, loose-topped and longskirted, of some cottony material with thin pink and white, rose and lily, stripes. A glimpse of pale blue stockings. Rose stood as soon as she saw me coming and came idly and Edwardianly down the hummock and a little way towards me. She had her hair up, two curved wings that framed her face and ended in a chignon. I glanced at her wrist, though I was sure. It had no scar. And I glanced beyond her at the girl whose hair was down her back, as loose as on the Sunday morning a fortnight before; who looked so much younger, yet sat and unsmilingly watched us meet. Rose made a face; a modern face that denied her costume.

“ Elle est fdchée .” She looked round. Lily had presented her back to us, as if in a pique. “I told her you said you didn’t care which of us you met this morning.”

“That was kind of you.”

She grinned. “Bored of me.”

“And what have you decided?”

She hesitated, then took my hand and led me to the foot of the hummock. Lily must have heard us, hut she would not turn. So Rose led me round the foot of the little knoll until we came into her line of vision.

“Here’s your knight in shining armor.”

Lily looked coolly down at me and said, even more coolly, “Hello.” Rose, who still held my hand, forced it down. I found myself bowing beside her curtsey.

Lily smiled faintly, and said, “Oh June. Stop it.”

I looked quickly at the girl beside me.

“June?”

She gave a dip of acknowledgment. I glanced back at Lily. RoseJune said, “That’s my twin sister Julie.”

A jolt of shock: Conchis had already told me this name. I quickly suppressed any sign of surprise. But I was on guard; all prickles erect.

Lily-Julie got to her feet. She stood on a ledge of rock a foot or so above us, and looked down at me with a wary unforgivingness.

“Who you did not meet last night.”

Her skin was milky, but her cheeks were red.

“I believed it was you.”

“June, go away.”

But Rose-June hopped up beside her and put her arm round her and whispered something in her ear. Once again, as always when I looked at Lily, I had to dismiss the idea of schizophrenia. Giving me her real name was another Conchis “cod"; a mine for me to one day tread on. The two of them stood a moment, Rose-June’s arm round her sister’s shoulders. Whatever she had said had brought a modified forgiveness. They smiled down at me in their different ways, one mischievous, the other shy, presenting their charming twinness to me, perhaps laughing a little at my naïvely fascinated look. The sunwind touched their clothes, stroked the ends of Julie’s hair; and then the tableau disintegrated, Rose-June’s arm fell.

Lily-Julie said, “We have to keep to a kind of script. And we’re being watched.” Like them I did not look round; but colluded.

“Script?”

Rose-June said, “She’ll explain.”

She jumped down and held out her hand.

“Goodbye, Nicholas.”

“And where on earth are you going?”

She looked again at Lily-Julie, who shook her head; Rose-June raised her eyebrows near-mutinously. “I’m not allowed to say.” She stared at her sister. “You are going to tell him everything?” Her voice was suddenly adult, without humor.

“Everything except…”

“But everything else.”

“You must go. They’ll suspect.” She turned her back and Rose-June leant forward and squeezed my arm.

“Make her tell you everything.” Her eyes looked levelly, no longer playing, into mine. “We count on you. More than you can imagine.”

Then with one last glance at her sister she was walking back towards the Poseidon statue. I smiled to myself; my plan of action was clear—to follow where Lily-Julie led… until I could pin her down. She had moved away towards the sea cliff. I went up behind her.