The Magus - John Fowles [103]
the sound of the boat, or a boat. But there had been none. I hadn't forgotten that I was going to communicate with other worlds that evening; a really complicated episode in the masque was no doubt to be mounted. That was why I was being kept so occupied. And all the time, too, I had Alison's telegram in my hip-pocket; but the one thing I longed for was to hear from him that I was after all to be his guest over halfterm. I gave myself a break to have a cigarette. Conchis, in dark blue jumper and shorts, looked sardonically down at me, hand on hips. "Labour is man's crowning glory." "Not this man's." "I quote Marx." I raised my hands. The pickaxe handle had been rough. "I quote blisters." "Never mind. You have earned your passage." "Tonight?" "Tonight." He remained staring down at me, as if I amused him; as clowns amuse philosophers; but also a little as if he felt kinder towards me. "Your telegram was opened when it arrived. I read it. This is...?" I nodded curtly. "I shan't go." "Of course you will go." "I don't want to meet her any more. It was only loneliness before." He stared down at me. I was sitting against a pine trunk. "I shall be away next weekend. We shall all be away. Otherwise I should have been very happy to invite you both." In spite of being warned, I felt a shock of disappointment, which I tried to hide. "It doesn't matter." "But if all goes well, we shall be here the week after." "In need of a seeker?" "In need of a seeker." He contemplated me; reverted tacitly to Alison. "A woman is like a keel." "There are keels and keels." "What you told me of her sounded very admirable. Very much what you should have. What you need." I saw that I had been neatly trapped into not asking him why in that case he had set Lily as bait for me. It could always be dismissed as persecution mania. "It's really my business, Mr. Conchis. My decision." "Of course. You are quite right. Please." He went briskly away to get some more water, and when he came back I had set to again, expending on the job my sullen annoyance at not being invited. Half an hour later the wall was back to something like its proper shape. I carried the tools to a shed beside the cottage and we went back round the front of the house. Conchis said he was going down to check that the boat was securely moored; I would no doubt want to wash. "Let me." "Very well. Thank you." I started off, wishing I'd kept my mouth shut, when he said my name. I turned, and he came up to me across the gravel. He gave me a powerful yet oddly paternal look. "Go to Athens, Nicholas." He glanced towards the trees to the east. "_Guai a chi la tocca_." I had very little Italian, but I knew what he meant. He moved away before I could answer; and in an odd way I knew he was saying that she was not for me because she was not for me; not because she was a schizophrenic, or a ghost, or anything else in the masque. It was a sort of ultimate warning-off; but you can't warn off a man with gambling in his ancestry. I went down to the jetty. The boat was already tied very carefully and securely; and he had had ten minutes with Lily, I supposed, to find out exactly what had gone on between us.
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Lily did not appear before dinner, or after dinner; and I became increasingly impatient. Tense would be a better word. I was tense in expectation of a new "episode," I was tense in expectation of Lily's taking part in it, and I was tense in expectation of the difficulties Conchis was putting in the way of my meeting her again. I realised that he had so manoeuvred me that I could not risk offending him again about the real machinery behind the "visitors" or about Lily. The dinner was, for me, uneasily silent. The breeze made the lamp tremble and glow and fade intermittently, and this seemed to increase the general restlessness. Only Conchis seemed calm and at ease. After the meal had been cleared he poured me a drink from a small carboy-shaped bottle. It was clear, the colour of straw. "What's this?" "_Raki_. From Chios. It is very strong. I want to intoxicate you a little." All through the dinner he