The Ebony Tower-Short Stories - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  He had stood up and put on his clothes. He would tell Beth, because sooner or later he told her everything; but not till they had made love again.

  Then the slow walk home through the forest, a sudden mania in the girls--they had taken a slightly different route, to show him a picturesquely ruined farm in an overgrown clearing--for blackberries, a good old-fashioned English blackberryandapple pie. The old man claimed to despise 'the damn' things', but played an amiably grumbling part, even pulling down some of the high sprays with the crook of his walking-stick. For fifteen minutes or so they were all childishly absorbed in it. Another moment of prospective nostalgia for David--he would not be there to enjoy the eating; which was wrong, that was why they'd been in the kitchen. The Mouse had made the pastry, Anne done the fruit. Specially for him, they said, as if to atone for something emasculating in the situation, something unfair. He was touched.

  For part of the way home after the blackberrying he had walked beside the Mouse, ahead of the other girl and the old man. Rather unexpectedly she had been a little shy, as if she knew that the Freak had said something--she both wanted to talk, he felt, and was on her guard against revealing too much. They had discussed the Royal College, why she had left it, but in a rather neutral, general sort of way. Apparently she had felt a kind of claustrophobia, too many elite talents cooped up in too small a space, she had become too self-conscious, too aware of what other people were doing, it had all been her fault. He glimpsed a different girl beneath the present one: rather highly strung, fiercely self-critical, over-conscientious as the one piece of work of hers that he had seen suggested. She was also anxious not to make too much of it, her artistic future; or at any rate to bore him with it. They slid away to art education in general. He was warned she was a different person on her own, much more difficult to dissolve without the catalyst of the Freak. She had even stopped and turned, and waited to let the others catch up. He was fairly sure it hadn't been merely to give Henry no cause for jealousy. In a way the conversation was a failure. But it did not make her less attractive to him.

  Perhaps nothing had better summed up his mood as they returned than the matter of the telegram from Beth that might or might not be waiting back at the house. It was no good pretending. He had unreservedly hoped, not of course that Sandy was seriously ill, but that something else delayed Beth's journey to Paris. They had even foreseen that, that she might have to put it off for a day or two more. That was all he wanted, just a one day more. The wish had not been granted: there was no telegram.

  As some compensation, he did have one last very useful tete-ˆ-tete with Breasley. Most of his remaining questions of a biographical kind were answered--in the old man's fashion, but David sensed that he was not being seriously misled. At times there was even a convincing honesty. David had asked about the apparent paradox of the old man's pacifism in 1916 and his serving as medical orderly with the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

  'White feather, dear boy. Quite literal, you know. Had a collection of the damn' things. Didn't care, all a joke. Russell, he converted me. Hearing him talk, public lecture he gave. Best brain, best heart. Unique. Never met it again.' They were up at the window table in his bedroom, with the two beds behind them. David had asked to be shown the Braque--and heard the story of the other Breasley once owned but had had to sell to pay for Coët and its conversion. The old man smiled at him. 'Years go by. Keep thinking, don't you know. Whether it wasn't all just yellow-belly. Have to find out in the end. Get it out of your system. Know what I mean?'

  'I can imagine.'

  The old man stared out of the window; the setting sun on the trees.

  'Scared stiff. The whole time. Hated it. Had to draw. Only way I got through.' He smiled. 'Not death. You prayed for death. Still hear the pain. Relive it. Wanted to pin it. Kill it. Couldn't draw it well enough.'

  'Perhaps not for yourself. You did for the rest of us.'

  The old man shook his head.

  'Salt on the sparrow's tail. Mug's game.'

  David had led him into less traumatic areas of his life; and even risked, towards the end, giving the old man some of his own medicine. If he pretended ignorance of the parallels David had drawn in his article, how was it that the girls so admired his memory for paintings? Breasley cast him a wry look and pulled his nose.

  'Little bitches gave the game away, did they?'

  'I twisted their arms when you were asleep.

  The old man looked down and smoothed the edge of the table.

  'Never forgot a good picture in my life, David.' He looked out over the garden again. 'The names, yes. But what's a name. Bit of fiddle in a corner. That's all.' He cocked a cryptic thumb back at the Braque and winked. The image survives; is all that matters.

  'So I won't have to leave myself out of the bibliography?'

  'Hanged man. Not the Verona thing. Fox. I think. Can't remember now.'

  He was talking about a detail in the background of the Pisanello St George and the Princess and an echo in one of the most sombre of the Coëtminais series, untitled, but Desolation would have done; a wood of hanged figures and of living ones who seemed as if they wished they were hanged.

  'Fox escapes me.'

  'Book of Martyrs. Woodcuts. Old copy at home. Terrified me. Aged six, seven. Far worse than the real thing. Spain.'

  David risked a further step.

  'Why are you so reluctant to reveal sources?'

  The question visibly pleased the old man; as if David had fallen into a trap.

  'My dear boy. Painted to paint. All my life. Not to give clever young buggers like you a chance to show off. Like shitting, yes? You ask why you do it. How you do it. You die of blocked arsehole. Don't care a fart in hell where my ideas come from. Never have. Let it happen. That's all. Couldn't even tell you how it starts. What half it means. Don't want to know.' He nodded back at the Braque. 'Old George had a phrase. Trop de racine. Yes? Too much root. Origin. Past. Not the flower. The now. Thing on the wall. Faut couper la racine. Cut the root off. He used to say that.'

  'Painters shouldn't be intellectuals?'

  The old man smiled.

  'Bastards. Never knew a good one who wasn't. Old Pick-bum. Appalling fellow. Flashing his gnashers at you. Sooner trust a man-eating shark.'

  'But he was reasonably articulate about what he was doing?'

  The old man puffed in violent disagreement. 'Eyewash. My dear boy. Fumisterje. All the way.' He added, 'Very fast worker. Overproduced all his life. Had to cod people.'

  'Guernjca?'

  'Good gravestone. Lets all the scum who didn't care a damn at the time show off their fine feelings.'

  There was a flash of bitterness; a tiny red light suddenly; something still raw. David knew they were back with abstraction and realism and the old man's own record of Spain. The grudge against Picasso was explained. But Breasley himself drew back from that brink.

  'Si jeunesse savait... know that?'

  'Of course.'

  'That's all. Just paint. That's my advice. Leave the clever talk to the poor sods who can't.'

  David had smiled and looked down. Some time later he had stood to go, but the old man stopped him before he could move away.

  'Glad you've hit it off with the gels, David. Wanted to say. Gives 'em a break.'

  'They're a nice pair of kids.'

  'Seem happy, do they?'

  'I've had no complaints.'

  'Not much to offer now. Bit of pocket-money.' He sought confirmation on something. 'Never much good at wages. That sort of thing.'

  'I'm quite sure they're not here for that.'

  'Something regular. Might be better, don't you think?'

  'Why don't you ask the Mouse?'

  The old man was staring out of the window. 'Very sensitive gel. Money.'

  'Would you like me to sound them out?'

  Breasley raised a hand. 'No, no, my dear fellow. Just your advice. Man to man, don't you know.' Then he suddenly looked up at David. 'Know
why I call her the Mouse?'

  'I did rather wonder.'

  'Not the animal.'

  The old man hesitated, then reached and took a sheet of notepaper from a drawer beside him. Standing at his shoulder, David watched him address himself to the paper as if to some formal document; but all he did was to print in pencil the letter M and then, after a space, the letters U, S, E. In the space between the M and the U the wrinkled hand drew, in five or six quick strokes, an 0-shaped vulva. Then Breasley glanced drily back up at David; a wink, the tip of his tongue slipped out like a lizard's. Almost before David had grasped the double meaning the piece of paper was crumpled up.

  'Mustn't tell her.'

  'Of course not.'

  'Dread losing her. Try to hide it.'

  'I think she understands that.'

  The old man nodded, then gave a little shrug, as if age and fate must win in the end; and there was no more to be said.

  All of which David had meditated on, as he lay in his bath soon afterwards: how the relationship worked because of its distances, its incomprehensions, the reticences behind its façade of frankness... as a contemporary arrangement, a ménage a trois of beautiful young uninhibited people, it would very probably fail. There would be jealousies, preferences, rifts in the lute and its being so locked away, islanded, out of David's own real and daily world, Blackheath and the rush-hour traffic, parties, friends, exhibitions, the kids, Saturday shopping, parents... London, getting and spending. How desperately one could long for.., for this, suitably translated. Beth and he must definitely attempt it; perhaps Wales, or the West Country, which couldn't be all St Ives, a cloud of postures round two or three serious names..

  The poor sods who can't. Yes.

  What he would finally remember about the old man was his wildness, in the natural history sense. The surface wildness, in language and behaviour, was ultimately misleading--like the aggressive display of some animals, its deeper motive was really peace and space, territory, not a gratuitous show of virility. The grotesque faces the old fellow displayed were simply to allow his real self to run free. He did not really live at the manoir; but in the forest outside. All his life he must have had this craving for a place to hide; a profound shyness, a timidity; and forced himself to behave in an exactly contrary fashion. It would have driven him out of England in the beginning; but once in France he would have used his Englishness--for it was remarkable, when one thought, how much of a native persona he had retained through his long exile--to hide from whatever in French culture threatened to encroach. The fundamental Englishness of the Coëtminais series was already argued in a paragraph of the draft introduction, but David made a mental resolution to expand and strengthen it. It began to seem almost the essential clue; the wily old outlaw, hiding behind the flamboyant screen of his outrageous behaviour and his cosmopolitan influences, was perhaps as simply and inalienably native as Robin Hood.

  The distance aspect of the relationship was in fact predominant during that dinner. Though he had had his whisky before, Henry drank only two glasses of wine with it, and even then cut heavily with water. He seemed tired, withdrawn, in a state of delayed hangover. Every year of his age showed, and David felt that the two girls and himself were in collusion, almost, to emphasize the abyss. The Freak was in a talkative mood, telling David about the agonies of her teacher training course in her own brand of slang and elliptic English. The old man watched her as if slightly puzzled by this sudden vivacity... and out of his depth. Half the time he was not very sure what she was getting at: micro-teaching, systems art, psychotherapy, they came from another planet. David could guess the enigma, to one who still lived the titanic battlefield of early twentieth century art, of all this reduction of passionate theory and revolutionary practice to a technique of mass education, an 'activity' you fitted in between English and maths. Les Demoiselles d'Av: non, and a billion tins of poster paint.

  They had coffee, and the old man was now very nearly silent. The Mouse urged him to bed.

  'Nonsense. Like to hear you young things talk.'

  She said gently, 'Stop pretending. You're very tired.'

  He grumbled on a bit, sought male support from David, and received none. In the end the Mouse took him upstairs. As soon as they had disappeared, the Freak moved into the old man's chair at the head of the table. She poured David more coffee.

  She was less exotically dressed that evening--a black Kate GreenaWaY dress sprigged with little pink and green flowers. Its cottage simplicity somehow suited her better; or better what David had begun to like in her.

  She said, 'We'll go upstairs when Di comes back. You ought to see her work.'

  'I'd like to.'

  'She's silly about it. Shy.'

  He stirred his coffee. 'What happened to her boy-friend?'

  'Tom?' She shrugged. 'Oh, the usual. He couldn't take it, really. When she got accepted by the Royal College. He was the one who was supposed to get in.'

  'That happens.'

  'He was one of those boys who thinks he knows it all. Public school and all that. I couldn't stand him, personally. He was always so bloody sure of himself. Only Di could never see it.'

  'She took it badly?'

  She nodded. 'What I was saying. She's so innocent. In some ways.' There was a little pause, then she stopped fiddling with her coffee-spoon and surveyed him in the lamplight: her frankest eyes.

  'Can I tell you a great secret, David?'

  He smiled. 'Of course.'

  'What I was trying to say this afternoon.' She looked down the room to the stairs, then back to him, and lowered her voice. 'He wants her to marry him.'

  'Oh God.'

  'It's so bloody daft, I...'

  'You don't mean she's She shook her head. 'But you don't know her. So many ways she's much brighter than I am, but honestly she makes some daft decisions. I mean this whole scene.' She grinned without humour. 'Two smashing girls like us. We must be out of our tiny minds.' She said, 'We don't even joke about it any more. Okay, with you this afternoon. But that's the first time in weeks.'

  'She's said no?'

  'She says. But she's still here, isn't she? I mean, it's like she's got a father fixation or something.' She sought his eyes again. 'She's such a smashing girl, David. Honestly, you've no idea. My mum and dad, they're Jehovah's Witnesses. Absolutely barmy. I've had such fucking awful problems at home. I mean, I haven't got a home. I couldn't have survived without Di. Even this last year. Being able to write to her.' She went on before he could speak. 'And she's so inconsistent.' She waved round the room. 'She even turns all this into a reason for not marrying him. Crazy. Screw your whole life. Just as long as you don't get anything out of it.'

  'She's not going to meet anyone of her own age here.'

  'What I mean.' She sprawled on an elbow, facing David across the table. They were still talking in low voices. 'She won't even look at what there is. F'rinstance last week we went into Rennes to do some shopping. A couple of French boys picked us up. In a café. Students. You know, it was all a gas. Fun. They were all right. So they chat us up. Di says we're staying on our vacances with a friend of her family's.' She grimaced. 'Then they want to drive out one day and see us.' The fingers combed up through her hair. 'Fantastic. You wouldn't believe it. Di's suddenly like a bloody security officer or something. The way she gave those boys the chop. Then straight back home and off with her clothes because old Henry's been lonely and wants a feel.' She said, 'And I mean that. You know, what... it's not the physical thing. He can hardly do it any more, it's just... you know, David, sex, honest to God, I've seen it all. Much sicker scenes than this. But it's not the same with Di. She's just had that one twit at Leeds. For serious. That's why I'm so bad for her. She thinks it's either like it is with Henry or the way I used to go on. She just doesn't know what it's about. What it can be about.'

  'Have you--, But he was not to learn whether she had thought of leaving on her own. A door closed quietly upstairs. The Freak sat back in her chair, and David tu
rned to see the subject of their conversation coming down the shadowed stairs. She waved towards them, the pool of light they sat in, then came down the room; slim and cool and composed, belying what had been said. She sat down again opposite David, with a little air of relief.

  'He's been good today.'

  'As you predicted.'

  She raised crossed fingers. 'And what have we been talking about?'

  'You.'

  David added, 'Whether you'd let me see your work.'

  She looked down. 'There's so little to see.'

  'What there is.'

  'It's mostly drawing. I've done hardly any painting.'

  The Freak stood. 'I'm going to show David. You can stay here if you like.'

  The two girls eyed each other a moment; a challenge and a reluctance, a ghost of some previous argument in private. But then the reluctant one smiled and stood.