The Magus - John Fowles [205]
mind you writing, I've passed your letter on to Mr. Vulliamy, who is headmaster of our primary, such a nice man, and he was very excited by the idea, I think having pen pals in France and America is getting rather old hat anyway, don't you. I'm sure he will be getting in touch with you._ _I'm so glad you've met Julie and June and that there's someone else English on the island. It does sound so lovely. Do remind to write. They are awful about it._ _Yours most sincerely,_ _CONSTANCE HOLMES_ Tuesday came; again I went down to meet the boat; and again June was not on it. I felt restless, futile, unable to decide what to do. In the evening I strolled up from the quay to the square of the execution. There was a plaque there against the wall of the village school. The walnut tree still stood on the right; but on the left the iron grilles had been replaced by wooden gates. Two or three small boys played football against the high wall beside it; and it was like the room, that torture room, which I had gone to see when I came back from the village on the Sunday evening--locked, but I went round outside and peered in. It was now used as a storeroom, and had easels and blackboards, spare desks and other furniture; completely exorcised by circumstance. It should have been left as it had been, with the blood and the electric fire and the one terrible table in the centre. Perhaps I was overbitter about the school during those days. The examinations had taken place; and it promised in the prospectus that "each student is examined personally in written English by the native English professor." This meant that I had two hundred papers or so to correct. In a way I didn't mind. It kept other anxieties and suspenses at bay. Wednesday came. Once again I met the boat, in vain. I half hoped for a letter, but that was in vain, too. I decided on a course of action. I would wait till the weekend; if I had heard nothing by then, I would go to Athens. Wednesday had been a sultry day with a veiled sun, a sort of end-of-the-world day, very un-Aegean. That night I sat down for a really long session of correcting. Thursday was the deadline for handing in papers to the assistant headmaster. The air was very heavy, but about half-past ten I heard distant rumbles. Rain was mercifully coming. Half an hour later, when I had worked about one-third of the way through the pile of foolscap, there was a knock on the door. I shouted. I thought it was one of the other masters or perhaps one of the sixth-form leavers who had come cadging advance results. But it was Barba Vassili. He was smiling under his white walrus moustache; and his first words made me jump from my desk. "_Sygnomi, kyrie, ma perimeni mia thespoinis_."
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"Excuse me, sir, but a young lady is waiting." "Where?" He indicated the gate. I was tearing on a coat. "With blonde hair?" "A very beautiful young lady. She is English?" But I was past him and running down the corridor. I called back to his grinning face--"_To phos!_"--to make him turn out the light. I leapt down the stairs, out of the building and raced along the path to the gate. There was a bare bulb there above Barba Vassili's window; a pool of white light. I expected to see her standing in it, but there was no one. The gate was locked at that time of night, since the masters all had passkeys. I felt in my pocket and remembered that I had left mine in the old jacket I wore in class. I looked through the bars. There was no one in the road, no one on the thistly wasteland that ran down to the sea fifty yards away, no one by the sea. I called in a low voice. But no quick shape appeared from behind the walls. I turned exasperatedly. Barba Vassili was coming slowly down through the trees. "Isn't she there?" He seemed to take ages to unlock the side gate we used. We went out into the road and looked both ways. He pointed, but doubtfully, down the road away from the village. "That way?" "Perhaps." I began to smell a rat. There was something in the old man's smile; it was ten past eleven; the thundery air, the deserted road. And yet I didn't care