The Magus - John Fowles [265]
vocabulary and her looks was accounted for. It was suddenly credible that she was fifty; and incredible that I had thought her rather unintelligent. I followed her into the room. "I'm interrupting your lunch." She gave me a dry backwards look. "I've been expecting an interruption for several weeks now." She sat in an armchair and gestured for me to sit on the huge sofa in the centre of the room, but I shook my head. She glanced at a silver tray of drinks by the wall; I shook my head again. She was not nervous; even smiled. "Well?" "We start from the fact that you have two enterprising daughters. Let me hear you re-invent from there." "I'm afraid my invention's at an end. I can only fall back on the truth now." But she was still smiling as she said it; smiling at my not smiling. "Maurice is the twins' godfather." "You do know who I am?" It was her calmness; I could not believe she knew what they had done at Bourani. "Yes, Mr. Urfe. I know _exactly_ who you are." Her cool eyes warned me; and annoyed me. "And what happened?" "And what happened." She looked down at her hands, then back at me. "My husband was killed in 1945. In the Far East. He never saw Benjie." She saw the impatience on my face and checked it. "He was also the first English master at the Lord Byron School." "Oh no he wasn't. I've looked up all the old prospectuses." "Then you remember the name Hughes." "Yes." She crossed her legs. She sat in an old wingchair covered in pale gold brocade; very erectly. All her "county" horsiness had disappeared. "I wish you'd sit down." "No thank you." She accepted my bleakness with a little shrug, and looked me in the eyes; a shrewd, unabashed and even haughty stare. Then she began to speak. "My father died when I was eighteen. Mainly to escape from home I made a disastrous--a very stupid--marriage. Then in 1929 I met my second husband. My first husband divorced me. We married. We wanted to be out of England for a time and we hadn't much money. He applied for a teaching post in Greece. He was a classical scholar... loved Greece, We met Maurice. Lily and Rose were conceived on Phraxos. In a house that Maurice lent us to live in. "I don't believe a word. But go on." "I funked having twins in Greece and we had to come back to England." She took a cigarette from a silver box on the tripod table beside her. I refused her offer of one; and let her light her cigarette herself. She was very calm; in her own house; mistress. "My mother's maiden name was de Seitas." She appraised me; her daughter's look. "You can confirm that at Somerset House. She had a bachelor brother, my uncle, who was very well off and who treated me--especially after my father's death--as much as a daughter as my mother would allow him to. She was a very domineering woman." "You're saying now that you never met... Maurice before 1930?" She smiled. "Of course not. But I supplied him with all the details of that part of his story to you." "And a sister called Rose?" "Go to Somerset House." "I shall." She contemplated the tip of her cigarette; made me wait a moment. "The twins arrived. A year later my uncle died. We found he had left me nearly all his money on condition that Bill changed his name by deed-poll to de Seitas. Not even de Seitas-Hughes. My mother was mainly responsible for that meanness." She looked at the group of miniatures that hung beside her, beside the mantelpiece. "My uncle was the last male of the de Seitas family. My husband changed his name to mine. In the Japanese style. You can confirm that as well." She added, "That is all." "It's very far from all. My God." "May I, as I know so much about you, call you Nicholas?" "No." She looked down, once again with that infuriating small smile that haunted all their faces--her daughters', Conchis's, even Anton's and Maria's in their different ways, as if they had all been trained to give the same superior, enigmatic smiles; as perhaps they had. And I suspected that if anyone had done the training, it would be this woman. "You mustn't think that you are the first young man who has stood before me bitter