The Magus - John Fowles [258]
the address in Northumberland I had had the year before and received a letter back from his mother. She said Alexander was now a courier, working in Spain. I got in touch with the travel firm he was working for, but they said he wouldn't be back till September. I left a letter for him. _The paintings at Bourani_. I started with the Bonnards. The first book of reproductions of his work I opened had the picture of the girl drying by the window. I turned to the attributions list at the back. It was in the Los Angeles County Museum. The book had been printed m 1950. Later I "found" the other Bonnard; at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Both had been copies. The Modigliani I never traced; but I suspect, remembering those curiously Conchis-like eyes, that it was not even a copy. _Evening Standard of January 8, 1952_. No sign of a photo of Lily and Rose, in any edition. _L'Astr�. Did Conchis remember that I believed myself remotely connected with d'Urf�The story of _L'Astr� is: The shepherdess Astr� hearing evil reports of the shepherd Celadon, banishes him from her presence. A war breaks out, and Astr�is taken prisoner. Celadon manages to rescue her, but she will not forgive him. He does not gain her hand until he has turned the lion and unicorns who devour unfaithful lovers into statues of stone. _Chaliapin_. Was at Covent Garden in June, 1914, and in _Prince Igor_. "_You may be elect_." When he said that, at our first strange meeting, he meant simply, "I've decided to use you." That was also the only sense in which, at the end, I could be elect. He meant, "We _have_ used you." _Lily and Rose_. Two twin sisters, both very pretty, gifted (though I came to doubt Lily's classical education), must, if they had been up at Oxford or Cambridge, have been the double Zuleika Dobsons of their years. I could not believe that they had been at Oxford--since our years must have overlapped--but on the principle that Lily never told me the truth if she could possibly mislead me, I tried it first. I concocted a story about my being a scout for an American film producer who needed a pair of fair-haired English twins and "had heard" of two at Oxford. It wasn't a very good story and it involved me in some ludicrous improvising--which incidentally made me realise in retrospect how great had been Lily's skill in that art. I tried the magazines, I tried the OUDS and the ETC, I even braved several of the women's college bursaries; and got nowhere. I went to Cambridge and did the same thing; and got nowhere; least of all at Girton. Of course I realise that because they were twin sisters there was no reason why they should have gone to the same university. But at both Cambridge and Oxford I was shown stills from all the main undergraduate productions of the last few years--and no Lily-Rose face in any of them. Armed with a slightly less implausible story--my rich American producer had become an eccentric rich American producer--I went round a few London theatrical agencies. Several of them had pairs of twins on their books, even blonde (or platinum blonde) twins; but not Lily or Rose. The Tavistock Repertory: a total blank. No productions of _Lysistrata_. The agent's name: unknown. I tried RADA; with similar unsuccess. One cunning device in the "Julie Holmes" invention: we tend to believe people who have had the same experiences as ourselves; who mirror us. So her naval commander father equaled my brigadier father; her Cambridge, my Oxford; her unhappy love affaire, mine; her year's teaching, mine. Her being "interfered with" was an irony, obviously; or perhaps an echo of Artemis's mythical fear of the pains of childbirth. But perhaps she told me this to make it easier for me to confess in return. Looks she gave me: as if she was waiting for something. And if I had spoken...? _Othello, Act I, Scene III._ _She is abus'd, stol'n from me, and corrupted_ _By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;_ _For nature so preposterously to err,_ _Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,_ _Sans witchcraft could not._
And:
_A maiden never bold;_ _Of spirit