The Magus

by John Fowles

  I turned to the end. The letter was signed Mummy. I looked up and she pulled a face. ‘Sorry.’

  She handed me three other letters. One was evidently from a former fellow-teacher – news about people, school activities. Another from a friend who signed herself Claire. One from a bank in London, to June, advising her that ‘a remittance of £100’ had been received on May 31st. I memorized the address: Barclay’s Bank, EnglandsLane, London NW3. The manager’s name was P.J. Fearn.

  ‘And this.’

  It was her passport. Miss J. N. Holmes.

  ‘N?’

  ‘Neilson. My mother’s family name.’

  I read the signalement opposite her photograph. Profession: teacher. Date of birth: 16.1.1929. Place of birth: Winchester.

  ‘Is Winchester where your father taught?’

  ‘He was the senior classics master there.’

  Country of residence: England. Height: 5 ft. 8 in. Colour of eyes: grey. Hair: fair. Special peculiarities: scar on left wrist (twin sister). At the bottom she had signed her name, a neat italic hand. I flicked through the visa pages. Two journeys to France, one to Italy the summer before. An entry visa to Greece made out in April; an entry stamp, May 2nd, Athens. There was none for the year before. I thought back to May 2nd – that all this had been preparing, even then.

  ‘Which college were you at?’

  ‘Girton.’

  ‘You must know old Miss Wainwright. Doctor Wainwright.’

  ‘At Girton?’

  ‘Chaucer expert. Langland.’ She stared at me, then looked down, then up again with a little smile: she wasn’t falling for that. ‘Sorry. Okay. You were at Girton. Then a teacher?’

  She mentioned the name of a famous girls’ grammar school in North London.

  ‘That’s not very plausible.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Not enough cachet.’

  ‘I didn’t want cachet. I wanted to be in London.’ She picked at her skirt. ‘You mustn’t think I was born to this sort of life.’

  ‘Why did you want to be in London?’

  ‘June and I did act quite a lot at Cambridge. We both had careers, but –’

  ‘What was hers?’

  ‘She was in advertising. Copy-writing. Not a world I liked very much. Or its men, anyway.’

  ‘I interrupted.’

  ‘I’m just saying that neither of us was mad about what we were doing. We got involved with a London amateur company called the Tavistock Rep. They have a little theatre in Canonbury?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it.’

  I leant back on an elbow, she sat propped on an arm. Beyond her the deep blue sea merged into the sky’s azure. A breeze blew through the pine-branches above us, caressed the skin like a current of warm water. I found her new, her real self, a simplicity and seriousness in her expression, even more delectable than the previous ones. I realized that it was what had been lacking: a sense of her ordinariness, that she was attainable.

  ‘Well, last November they put on Lysistrata.’

  ‘Tell me first why you weren’t happy teaching.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No. Or not until I met you.’

  ‘Just… not feeling my heart was in it. The rather prim facade one has to wear?’

  I smiled, and nodded. ‘Lysistrata.’

  ‘I thought you might have read about it. No? Anyway, a rather clever producer there called Tony Hill put us both, June and I, in the main part. I stood in front of the stage and spoke the lines, some in Greek, and June did all the acting in mime. It was … in some of the papers, quite a lot of real theatre people came to see it. The production. Not us.’

  She reached in her basket and found a packet of cigarettes. I lit them both and she went straight on.

  ‘One day near the end of the run a man came backstage and told us he was a theatrical agent and he had someone who wanted to meet us. A film producer.’ She smiled at my raised eyebrows. ‘Of course. And he was so secretive about who it was that it seemed too clumsy and obvious for words. But then two days later we both got enormous bouquets and an invitation to have lunch at Claridge’s from someone who signed himself- ‘

  ‘Don’t bother. I can guess.’

  She bowed her head drily. ‘We talked it over, then – really just for fun-went along.’ She paused. ‘I suppose he dazzled us. We were so sure it was going to be some dreadful pseudo-Hollywood type. Instead there was this… he seemed perfectly open. Obviously very rich, he told us he had business interests all over Europe. He gave us a card, some Swiss address, but he said he lived mainly in France and Greece. He even described Bourani and the island. Everything here. Exactly as it is … as a place.’

  ‘Nothing about his past?’

  ‘We did ask about his English. He said he’d wanted to be a doctor as a young man and had studied medicine in London.’ She shrugged. ‘I know countless things he told us then were so much eyewash, but putting together all the bits of jigsaw we’ve been handed since – I think he must have spent a lot of his youth in England. Perhaps he even went to boarding-school at home – he was very sarcastic about the English public-school system the other day. It did rather sound from the heart.’ She put out her cigarette. ‘I’m sure that at some time in his life he rebelled against money. And his father.’

  ‘You’ve not discovered … ?’

  ‘That very first time. We did politely ask. I remember exactly what he said. “My father was the dullest of human beings. A millionaire with the mind of a shopkeeper.” End of subject. We’ve never really got any closer than that. Except that he did once say he was born in Alexandria – Maurice himself. There is a rich Greek colony there.’

  ‘So something really the opposite of the de Deukans story?’

  ‘I suspect that may have been a temptation Maurice himself underwent at some point. A way he might have used the fortune he inherited.’

  ‘That’s how I read it. But you didn’t finish at Claridge’s.’

  ‘It did all rather bear this out. He was so anxious to put himself across as a cosmopolitan man of culture. Not a mere millionaire. He asked us what we’d read at Cambridge – which of course allowed him to demonstrate his own reading. Then the contemporary theatre, he obviously knows that very well. What’s going on in the rest of Europe. He said he was backing a small experimental theatre in Paris.’ She took a breath. ‘Anyway. Cultural credentials thoroughly established. More than thoroughly, we were beginning to wonder why we were there. In the end June, in her usual way, asked point-blank. Whereupon he announced that he was the major shareholder in a film company in the Lebanon.’ Her grey eyes opened wide at me. ‘Then. In the next breath. Absolutely out of the blue.’ She paused. ‘He wanted us to star in a film this summer.’

  ‘But you must have…’

  ‘Actually we nearly had the giggles. We knew he must really be suggesting something else – what we’d suspected in the first place.

  But then he said the terms.’ She showed me a still amazed face. ‘A thousand pounds each when we signed a contract. A thousand more when we finished the making. Plus a hundred pounds a month each for expenses. Of which, it’s turned out, we have virtually none.’

  ‘Christ. Have you seen any of it?’

  ‘The contract money. And the expenses… that letter.’ She looked down, as if I must think her mercenary, and smoothed the nap of the rug. ‘It’s one major reason we’ve stuck it here, Nicholas. It’s so absurd. We’ve done so little to earn it.’

  ‘What was the film supposed to be about?’

  ‘It was to be shot here in Greece. I’ll explain in a minute.’ She gave me an uncertain look. ‘You mustn’t think we were totally innocent. We didn’t at all say yes at once. Rather the opposite. And he played his cards so well. He was almost paternal. Of course we couldn’t decide at once, we’d want to make enquiries, consult our agent – not that we actually even had one at that point.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We were driven home – in a hired Ro
lls – to think it over. You know, to a pokey top-floor flat in Belsize Park. Like two Cinderellas. He was so clever, he never put any suspicious kind of pressure on us. We saw him, oh – twice, three times more. He took us out. Theatre. Opera. Never any attempt to get either of us on our own. I’m missing out so many things. But you know what he can be like when he wants to charm you. That feeling he can give of knowing what life’s about.’

  ‘What did everyone else think? Your friends – this producer man?’

  ‘They thought we ought to be very careful. We found ourselves an agent. He hadn’t heard of Maurice or the film company in Beirut. But he soon tracked it down. It makes bread-and-butter pictures for the Arab market. Iraq and Egypt. As Maurice had already told us. He’d explained that they wanted to get into the European market. Our film was only to be financed by the Lebanese company for some tax reason.’

  ‘What was it called?’

  ‘Polymus Films.’ She spelt it. ‘It’s in whatever they list film companies in. The trade directory. Perfectly respectable and rather successful, so far as our agent could tell. Like the contract, when we got to that – also absolutely normal.’

  ‘Could he have fixed the agent?’

  She let out a breath. ‘We’ve wondered. But I don’t think he had to. I suppose it was the money. There it was, in the bank. Money must be true. I mean, we realized it was a kind of risk. Perhaps if it had just been the one of us. But being two.’ She gave me a wry little interrogative glance under her eyebrows. ‘Are you believing any of this?’

  ‘Shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘I feel I’m not explaining it very well.’

  ‘You’re doing fine.’

  But she gave me another look, still doubtful about how I was reacting to such apparent gullibility; then lowered her eyes.

  ‘There’s something else. Greece. Having done classics. I’ve always had this longing to come here. That was part of the inducement. Maurice kept promising we’d have time to see everything. Which he hasn’t welshed on. I mean there’s this, but the rest of it has been like one long holiday.’ Again she seemed almost embarrassed at the knowledge that their rewards had been much greater than mine. ‘He’s got a fabulous yacht. We live like princesses on it.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘Oh Maurice saw to that. He insisted on meeting her one day when she’d come up to see us in London. Bowled her over with his gentle-manliness.’ She grinned ruefully. ‘And his money.’

  ‘She knows what’s happened?’

  ‘We’ve told her we’re still rehearsing. We don’t want to worry her.’ She pulled a face. ‘She’s an expert at the useless tizzy.’

  ‘This film?’

  ‘It was taken from a demotic Greek story by a writer called Theodoritis–have you ever heard of him? Three Hearts?’ I shook my head. ‘Apparently it’s never been translated. It was written in the early ‘twenties. It’s about two English girls, they’re supposed to be the British ambassador at Athens’s daughters, though not twins in the original, who go for a holiday on a Greek island during the First World War and–’

  ‘One doesn’t happen to be called Lily Montgomery, by any chance?’

  ‘No, but wait. This island. They meet a Greek writer there – a poet, he’s got tuberculosis, dying … and he falls in love with each sister in turn, and they fall in love with him and everyone’s terribly miserable and it all ends – you can guess. Actually it’s not quite as silly as that. It does have a certain period charm.’

  ‘You’ve read it?’

  ‘What I can. It’s quite short.’

  I spoke in Greek. ‘Xerete kala ta ma ellenika?

  She answered, in a much more fluent and better accented demotic than my own, that she was learning some modern Greek, though knowing the ancient language was less help than people imagined; and gave me a steady look. I touched my forehead in obeisance.

  ‘He also showed us a script in London.’

  ‘In English?’

  ‘He said he was hoping to distribute two versions. Greek and English. Dubbing voices both ways.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘It seemed playable. Though it was really just a cunning rehearsal.’

  ‘But how –’

  ‘Wait a minute. More evidence.’

  She delved in the bag, then swivelled round so that we were sitting facing in opposite directions. She came out with a wallet; produced two cuttings from it. One showed the two sisters standing in a London street, in overcoats and woollen hats, laughing. I knew the paper by the print but it was in any case gummed on to a grey cuttings-agency tag: Evening Standard, January 8th, 1953. The paragraph underneath ran:

  AND BRAINS AS WELL!

  Two lucky twins, June and Julie (on right) Holmes, who will star in a film this summer to be shot in Greece. The twins both have Cambridge degrees, acted a lot at varsity, speak eight languages between them. Unfair note for bachelors: neither wants to marry yet.

  ‘We didn’t write the caption.’

  ‘So I deduced.’

  The other cutting was from the Cinema Trade News. It repeated, in Americanese, what she had just told me.

  ‘Oh and while I’m at it. My mother.’ She showed me a snapshot from the wallet; a woman with fluffy hair in a deckchair in a garden, a clumber spaniel beside her. I could see another photograph, and made her show me that as well: a man in a sports shirt, a nervous and intelligent face. He seemed in his early thirties.

  ‘This is … ?’

  ‘Yes.’ She added, ‘Was.’

  She took the photo back. There was something closed in her face, and I did not press. She went quickly on.

  ‘Of course we realize now it was a perfect cover for Maurice. If we were to play well-brought-up young ambassador’s daughters in 1914 … we innocently trotted off for lessons in deportment. Had clothes fittings. All the Lily costumes were made in London. Then in May we came out. He met us in Athens and said the rest of the company wouldn’t assemble for a fortnight. He had warned us, so we weren’t surprised. He took us on a cruise with him. To Rhodes and Crete. On the Arethusa. His yacht.’

  ‘Which he never brings here?’

  ‘It’s usually at Nauplia.’

  ‘In Athens – you stayed in his house?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s got one there. He says he hasn’t. We stayed at the Grande Bretagne.’

  ‘No office?’

  ‘I know.’ She contracted her mouth self-accusingly. ‘But we’d been told only the location shooting would take place here. And the interiors in Beirut. He showed us set designs.’ She hesitated. ‘It was a new world for us, Nicholas. If we hadn’t been so green. And so excited. And he did introduce us to two people. The Greek actor he said was going to play the poet. And the director. Another Greek. We all had dinner … actually we rather liked them both. There was lots of talk about the film.’

  ‘You didn’t check on them?’

  ‘We were only there a couple of nights – then off in the yacht with Maurice. They were to come straight here.’

  ‘But never did?’

  ‘We’ve never seen them again.’ She picked a loose thread from the hem of her skirt. ‘As a matter of fact we did think it was odd there was no publicity, but they even had a reason for that. Apparently here if you say you’re going to make a film you get hundreds of extras turning up in hope of a job.’

  By chance I knew that was true. Some three months before a Greek film unit had been working on Hydra. Two of the school waiters had run away in the hope of being hired by them. It had been a minor scandal for a couple of days. I didn’t tell Julie, but smiled with the secret knowledge.

  ‘You came here.’

  ‘After a lovely cruise. But that’s when the madness began. Hardly forty-eight hours. Already we’d both realized there was something subtly different about Maurice. Because of the cruise, in so many ways we felt closer to him … I suppose we’ve both missed not having a father since 1943. He couldn’t be that, but it was a little like finding a kind of fairy uncle. Be
ing alone with him so much, knowing we could trust him. And we had fascinating evenings. Enormous arguments. About life, love, literature, the theatre … everything. Except when we tried to discover his past, then a sort of curtain came down. You know how it is. Things you really only see in retrospect. How shall I put it – it was all so civilized on the boat. Then suddenly here it was as if he owned us. We somehow weren’t his guests any more.’

  Again she sought my eyes, as if I must be blaming her for liking anything about the old man. She had lain back on an elbow, and her voice had dropped. Now and then she would touch her hair back from where the breeze carried it across her cheek.

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  ‘The first thing was… we wanted to go and see the village. But he said no, he wanted to make the film as quietly as possible. But it was too quiet. No one else here, no sign of generators, lights, kliegs, all the things they’d need. No production unit. And this feeling that Maurice was watching us. There was something in the way he began to smile. As if he knew something we didn’t. And didn’t have to hide it any more.’