by John Fowles
‘What happens if she tries a repeat of last year – tries to make me help her escape?’
He gave me a briskly warning look. ‘You must tell me at once. But I do not think it is likely. She learnt her lesson with Mitford. And remember, however much she may appear to trust you, she does not. You will of course maintain that you never told me a word of what happened on your last visit.’
I smiled. ‘Of course.’
‘I am sure you see where I am driving. I wish to bring the poor child to a realization of her own true problem by forcing her to recognize the nature of the artificial situation we are creating together here. She will make her first valid step back towards normality when one day she stops and says, This is not the real world. These are not real relationships.’
‘What are her chances?’
‘Small. But they exist. Especially if you play your part well. She may not trust you. But she is attracted to you.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Thank you. I have great confidence in you, Nicholas.’ He held out his hand. ‘I am delighted to have you back.’
We parted, but I looked back after a few steps to see which way he had taken. It was apparently down towards Moutsa. I did not believe he was going for a constitutional. He walked far too much like a man with someone else to meet, something to arrange. Once again I was shaken. I had come to Bourani determined, after so many useless hours of speculation, to be equally doubting of both him and Julie. But I knew I would have to watch her like a hawk now. The old man had been involved in psychiatry, he could hypnotize-those were proven facts; and nothing she had said about herself had been backed by any hard evidence. There was also the increasingly strong possibility that they were acting in league to gull me; in which case Julie Holmes was no more her real self than Lily Montgomery had been.
No one was visible as I approached the house, as I crossed the gravel. I leapt up the steps and walked quietly round the corner on to the wide tiling under the front of the colonnade.
She was standing in one of the arches facing the sea, half in sun, half in shadow; and – it was a shock, though I might have guessed -in contemporary clothes. A navy blue shortsleeved shirt, a pair of white beach trousers with a red belt – she was barefooted, her long hair down, a girl who might have adorned the terrace of any smart Mediterranean hotel. One thing was decided at once: she was as desirable in modern dress as in costume, an arrestingly beautiful young woman; in no way less attractive for being less artificial now.
She turned as I appeared, and there was a strange silence, a doubt in both our looks across the space between us. She seemed faintly surprised, as if she had half decided I would not come; was relieved, yet almost at once distancing. There was a tiny air about her of having been caught out of costume, and not being sure of my reaction to this new appearance – like a woman showing a new dress for the first time to the man who has to pay for it. She looked down from my eyes. On my side I knew the ghost of Alison, of what had happened on Parnassus; a flicker of adultery, a moment’s guilt. We remained like that for several seconds. Then she looked up again to where I stood twenty feet away, with the duffel-bag in my hand. I noticed something else new about her; the beginning of a tan, a honeyed skin now. I tried to read her psychologically, psychiatrically; and gave up.
I said, ‘They suit you. Modern clothes.’
Still she seemed at a loss, as if the days apart had given her countless second thoughts.
‘Did you meet him?’
‘Meet who?’ But that was a mistake, there was something impatient in her stare. ‘The old man? Yes. He was just going for a walk.’
Her suspicion was not assuaged, and she stared at me a moment more. Then she said, with a perceptible indifference, ‘Do you want some tea?’
‘That’d be nice.’
She moved in barefooted silence across the tiles to the table. I saw a pair of red espadrilles by the music-room doors. I watched her strike a inatch and light the spirit-lamp, then set the kettle on its stand. She avoided my eyes, fiddling with the muslin covers over the food; the scar on her wrist. There was almost a sullenness about her. I dropped my bag by the wall and went closer.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I haven’t betrayed you in any way. Whatever he may have said.’ She gave me the briefest glance, but then stared down at the table again. I tried small talk. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘On the yacht.’
‘Where?’
‘Cruising. In the Cyclades.’
‘I’ve missed you.’
She said nothing. She would not look at me. I had anticipated various kinds of reception, but not this apparent wishing that I hadn’t come at all. There stole through me a little chill of fear – something fraught about her, lost; and with a girl as pretty as this, only the reason I did not want to believe could account for the apparent lack of other men in her life.
‘I gather Lily’s dead.’
She spoke to the table. ‘You don’t seem very surprised.’
‘Nothing surprises me here. Any more.’ She drew a breath; I had made another wrong answer. ‘So what are you officially playing now?’
She sat down. The kettle must have been boiled once already, because it began to hiss. Suddenly she looked up at me. The question was transparently accusing.
‘Did you enjoy Athens?’
‘No. And I didn’t meet my friend.’
‘Maurice told us you had.’
I silently cursed him, and had a touch of liar’s nightmare. ‘That’s odd. He didn’t know five minutes ago. Since he asked me himself if I’d met her.’
She looked down. ‘Why didn’t you?’
‘For the reasons I told you. It’s all over.’
She tipped a little hot water into the tea-pot, then crossed the colonnade to empty it over the edge. As she came back, I said, ‘And because I knew I was going to see you again.’
She sat, and spooned some tea from a caddy into the pot. ‘Start eating. If you’re hungry.’
‘I’m much more hungry to know why we’re behaving like total strangers.’
‘Because that’s precisely what we are.’
‘Why won’t you answer my question about your new role?’
‘Because you already know the answer.’
Her grey-hyacinth eyes were on me, and they were very direct. The kettle boiled, and she lifted it and filled the pot. As she put it back on its stand and turned out the flame beneath, she said, ‘I wouldn’t really blame you for thinking I was mad. I begin to wonder increasingly myself if I’m not.’ Her voice grew drier still. ‘Sorry if I’ve spoilt a prepared scene.’ Then she smiled up without humour. ‘Do you want this foul goat’s milk or lemon?’
‘Lemon.’
I felt a great relief then. She had just done the one thing she would never do, if the old man had been telling me the truth – unless she was so insanely cunning, or cunningly insane, that she was beating him at his own game. I remembered Occam’s razor: always believe the simplest of several explanations. But I played safe.
‘Why should I think you’re mad?’
‘Why should I think you’re not what you say you are?’
‘Why indeed?’
‘Because the question you’ve just asked proves you aren’t.’ She pushed a cup towards me. ‘Your tea.’
I stared at it, then up at her. ‘Okay. I don’t believe you’re a famous case of schizophrenia.’
She eyed me, still unwon. ‘Will you not partake of a sandwich … Mr Urfe?’
I did not smile, and I left a silence.
‘Julie, this is absurd. We’re falling into every trap he sets. I thought we agreed last time. We don’t have to lie to each other out of his hearing.’
Without warning she stood and walked slowly to the far end of the colonnade, where steps led down to the vegetable terrace to the west. She leant against the wall of the house, her back to me, staring out towards the distant mountains of the Pe
loponnesus. After a moment I stood and went behind her. She did not turn to look at me.
‘I’m not blaming you. If he’s told you as many lies about me as he has me about you … ‘ I reached and touched her shoulder. ‘Come on. We did establish some sort of trust last time.’ There was no response to my hand, and I let it drop.
‘I suppose you want to kiss me again.’
The naive abruptness of that took me by surprise.
‘Is that a crime?’
Suddenly she folded her arms, turned her back to the wall, faced me with an intense look.
‘And get me into bed?’
‘Only if you wanted.’
She explored my eyes, then looked down.
‘And if I don’t?’
‘Then obviously.’
‘So perhaps it’s not worth your going on.’
‘That’s bloody insulting.’
I said it with enough force to check her. She bowed her head, her arms still folded.
I spoke in a gentler voice. ‘Look, what the hell’s he been telling you?’
There was a long silence, then she murmured, ‘If only I knew what to believe.’
‘Try your instincts.’
‘I seem to have mislaid them since I came here.’ There was another silence, then she made a little sideways movement of her bent head.
Her voice was a shade less accusing. ‘He said something foul, after last time. That you … that you went to brothels and that Greek brothels weren’t safe and that I mustn’t let you kiss me again.’
‘Is that where you think I’ve been?’
‘I don’t know where you’ve just been.’
‘So you believe him?’ She said nothing. I felt furious with Conchis; the damned gall he had, talking about the Hippocratic oath. I stared at the bent head, then spoke. ‘I’ve had enough of this. I’m clearing out.’
I didn’t really mean it, but I turned back towards the table as if I did. She said quickly, ‘Please.’ A tiny pause. ‘I didn’t say I believed it.’
I stopped and looked back at her. At last there was something less hostile in her eyes.
‘But you’re behaving as if you did.’
‘I’m behaving as I am because I don’t understand why he keeps telling me things he knows I can’t believe.’
‘If it was true, he ought to have warned you at the beginning.’
‘That did occur to us.’
‘Didn’t you ask him why not?’
‘He said he’d only just found out.’ Then she said, in her gentlest voice yet, ‘Please don’t go away.’
Though she looked down in the end, she held my eyes long enough for me to believe the request was sincere. I went back in front of her.
‘Are we still so convinced of his essential goodness?’
‘In a kind of way, yes.’ She added, ‘In spite of everything.’
‘I had the universal telepathy experience.’
‘Yes, he told us.’
‘He has hypnotized you?’
‘Yes, several times.’
‘He claims that’s how he knows everything that’s going on in your mind.’
That shocked her momentarily, she looked up, but then she gave a little puff of protest. ‘It’s ridiculous. I’d never let him do it. June’s always been there, he insists on that himself. It’s just a technique, actually rather a marvellous one, for helping you get into a part. She says he just talks and talks … and somehow I absorb it all.’
‘Is Julie just another part?’
‘I’ll show you my passport. I haven’t got it with me, but … next time. I promise.’
‘That last time … you might have warned me the schizophrenia thing was coming.’
‘I did warn you something was coming. As much as I dared.’
I could feel our doubts and suspicions mounting once more, and I had to concede that yes, she had warned me in her fashion. There was something much more submissive about her now, on the defensive.
‘All right … but whatever he isn’t, he is a psychiatrist?’
‘We’ve known that for some time.’
‘So the whole thing here is along those lines?’
Again I was assessed. Then she looked sideways down at the tiles. ‘He talks a lot about experimental situations. About the behaviour patterns of people faced with situations they don’t understand. A lot about schizophrenia.’ She shrugged. ‘How people split themselves … ethically, all sorts of ways, before the unknown. One day he said something about the unknown being the great motivating factor in all human existence. He meant not knowing why we’re here. Why we exist. Death. The after-life. All that.’
‘But what does he actually want us to prove for him?’
She still looked at the ground; now shook her head.
‘Honestly, we’ve tried and tried to pin him down, but he … he always comes up with the same argument – if we know the final purpose, what he expects, then obviously it will effect how we behave.’ She let out a reluctant breath. ‘It does have a sort of logic’
‘I’ve had that line. When I asked to know your supposed case-history.’
Her eyes met mine. ‘It does exist. I’ve had to learn it by heart. What he’s invented.’
‘One thing’s clear. For some reason he’s feeding us every lie under the sun. But we don’t have to be what he wants us to imagine. I’m no more a syphilitic than you’re a schizophrenic’
She bowed her head. ‘I really didn’t believe it.’
‘I mean, if it’s a part of his game, experiment, whatever it is, I don’t care a damn how many lies he tells you about me. But I do care if you start believing them.’
There was a silence. Her eyes, it seemed almost against her will, rose to meet mine again. They said something beyond the present situation, in a much older language than that of words. A doubt dissolved in them, a candour was restored; and they tacitly accepted my judgment. For a fleeting moment there was the tiniest conceding curl, a wry admission, at the comers of her mouth. She lowered her eyes again, and then her hands slipped behind her back. Silence, a hint of little girl’s penitence, a timid waiting to be forgiven.
This time it was a shared thing. The lips were warm and they moved under mine, and I was allowed to hold her body close, to know its curves, its slenderness… and also to know, with a delicious certainty, that all was much less complicated than it seemed. She wanted to be kissed. The tips of our tongues touched, for a few seconds the embrace became tight, passionate. But then she abruptly pulled her mouth away and turned her head against my shoulder, though she stayed close against my body. I kissed the crown of her hair.
‘I’ve nearly gone mad thinking about you.’
She whispered, ‘I’d have died if you hadn’t come today.’
‘This is real. Whatever else is unreal.’
‘That’s what frightens me.’
‘Why?’
‘Wanting to be sure. But not being sure.’
I tightened my arms a little round her. ‘Can’t we meet tonight? Alone somewhere?’ She was silent and I said quickly, ‘For God’s sake trust me. I’d never hurt you.’
She detached herself gently, took my hands, still looked down. ‘It’s not that. Just that there are more people about than you imagine.’
‘Where do you sleep here?’
‘There’s a … a sort of hiding-place.’ She said quickly, ‘I will show you. I promise.’
‘Is there something planned for tonight?’
‘He’s telling us another supposed episode from his life. I’m going to join you after dinner.’ She smiled up. ‘And I honestly don’t know what it is.’
‘Then we could meet after that?’
‘I’ll try. But I can’t…’
‘How about midnight? By the statue?’
‘If I possibly can.’ She glanced back towards the table, and pressed my hands. ‘Now your tea’s cold.’
We went back to the table and sat. I stopped her making any fresh tea, and we drank it t
epid. I ate a sandwich or two, she smoked, and we talked. Like myself neither she nor her sister could understand the old man’s paradoxical determination to lure us into his game, yet seeming preparedness to abandon it.
‘Every time we show qualms, he offers to fly us straight back to England. One evening on the cruise we went at him – what was he doing, couldn’t he please … all the rest. In the end he was as near being upset as I’ve seen. We almost had to plead with him the next morning. Ask his forgiveness for being so nosy.’
‘He’s obviously using the same technique on all of us.’
‘He keeps saying I must keep you at arm’s length. Runs you down.’ She flicked ash on the tiles, and smiled. ‘He even apologized for your being so slow-witted the other day. I thought that was rather rich, considering you’d seen through the Lily thing in the first five seconds.’
‘He hasn’t tried to sell you the idea that I’m some kind of assistant – a young psychiatrist?’
I could see that that both surprised and unsettled her. She hesitated. ‘No. But it had crossed our minds.’ Then she added, ‘Are you?’
I grinned. ‘He told me just now that he’d extracted it from you under hypnosis. That it’s what you suspect. We must watch it, Julie. He wants us on a quicksand.’
She put out her cigarette. ‘And also to realize we are?’
‘The last thing he can really want is to drive us apart.’
‘Yes, that’s what we feel.’
‘So the enigma is why?’ She gave a little nod of the head. ‘And also why you have any remaining doubts about me.’
‘No more than you must feel about me.’
‘But you said it last time. We ought to behave as if we’d met naturally away from here. The more we know about each other the safer we are. The surer.’ I gave her a small smile. ‘So far as I’m concerned, the most incredible thing about you is that you got away from Cambridge unmarried.’
She looked down. ‘I very nearly didn’t.’
‘But past now?’
‘Yes. Very past.’
