The Magus - John Fowles [262]
loggia. There was a canopied swing-seat, some elegant cast-iron seats painted white. Money; I guessed that Sir Charles Penn had had a golden scalpel. She sat in the swing-seat and indicated a chair for me. I murmured something about the garden. "It is rather jolly, isn't it? My husband does almost all this by himself and now, poor man, he hardly ever sees it." She smiled. "My husband's an economist. He's stuck in Strasbourg." She swung her feet up; she was a little too girlish, too aware of her good figure; reacting from a rural boredom. "But come on. Tell me about your famous writer I've never heard of. You've met him?" "He died in the Occupation." "Poor man. What of?" "Cancer." I hurried on. "He was, well, very secretive about his past, so one has to deduce things from his work. We know that he was Greek, but he may have pretended to be Italian." I jumped up and gave her a light for her cigarette. "I just can't believe it was Mr. Rat. He was such a funny little man." "Can you remember one thing--his playing the harpsichord as well as the piano?" "The harpsichord is the plonkety-plonk one?" I nodded, but she shook her head. "You did say a writer?" "He turned from music to literature. You see, there are countless references in his early poems--and in, well, a novel he wrote--to an unhappy but very significant love affaire he had when he was still in England. Of course we just don't know to what extent he was recalling reality and to what extent embroidering on it." "But--am I mentioned?" "There are all sorts of clues that suggest the girl's name was a flower name. And that he lived near her. And that the common bond was music..." She sat up, fascinated. "How on _earth_ did you trace this to us?" "Oh--various clues. From literary references. I knew it was very near Lord's cricket ground. In one... passage he talks of this girl with her ancient British family name. Oh, and her famous doctor father. Then I started looking at street directories." "How absolutely extraordinary." "It's just one of those things. You meet hundreds of dead ends. But one day you really hit a way through." Smiling, she glanced towards the house. "Here's Gunnel." For two or three minutes we had to go through the business of getting coffee poured; polite exchanges about Norway--Gunnel had never been further north than Trondheim, I discovered. Benjie was ordered to disappear; and the _ur_-Lily and I were left alone again. For effect, I produced a notebook. "If I could just ask you a few questions..." "I say--glory at last." She laughed rather stupidly; horsily; she was enjoying herself. "I believed he lived next to you. He didn't. Where did he live?" "Oh I haven't the faintest idea. You know. At that age." "You knew nothing about his parents?" She shook her head. "Would your sisters perhaps know more?" Her face gravened. "My eldest sister lives in Chile. She was ten years older than me. And my sister Rose --" "Rose!" She smiled. "Rose." "God, this is extraordinary. It clinches it. There's a sort of... well a sort of mystery poem that belongs to the group about you. It's very obscure, but now we know you have a sister called Rose..." "Had a sister. Rose died just about that time. In 1916." "Of typhoid?" I said it so eagerly that she was taken aback; then smiled. "No. Of some terribly rare complication following jaundice." She stared out over the garden for a moment. "It was the great tragedy of my childhood." "Did you feel that he had any special affection for you--or for your sisters?" She smiled again, remembering. "We always thought he secretly admired May--my eldest sister--she was engaged, of course, but she used to come and sit with us. And yes... oh goodness, it's strange, it does come back, I remember he always used to show off, what we called showing off, if she was in the room. Play frightfully difficult bits. And she was fond of that Beethoven thing--_For Elise_? We used to hum it when we wanted to annoy him." "Your sister Rose was older than you?" "Two years older." "So the picture is really of two little girls teasing a foreign music teacher?"