The Magus - John Fowles [48]
myself as Chopin, and I had my new book on birds beside me. It is 1910. "Suddenly I hear a noise on the other side of the brick wall which separates the garden of the next house from ours. This house is empty, so I am surprised. And then... a head appears. Cautiously. Like a mouse. It is the head of a young girl. I am half hidden in my bower, I am the last thing she sees, so I have time to examine her. Her head is in sunshine, a mass of pale blonde hair that falls behind her and out of sight. The sun is to the south, so that it is caught in her hair, in a cloud of light. I see her shadowed face, her dark eyes and her small half-opened inquisitive mouth. She is grave, timid, yet determined to be daring. She sees me. She stares at me for a moment in her shocked haze of light. She seems more erect, like a bird. I stand up in the entrance of my bower, still in shadow. We do not speak or smile. All the unspoken mysteries of puberty tremble in the air. I do not know why I cannot speak... and then a voice called. Li-ly! Li-ly! "The spell was broken. And all my past was broken, too. Do you know that image from Seferis--'The broken pomegranate is full of stars'? It was like that. She disappeared, I sat down again, but to read was impossible. I went to the wall near the house, and heard a man's voice, and silver female voices that faded through a door. "I was in a morbid state. But that first meeting, that mysterious... how shall I say, message from her light, from her light to my shadow, haunted me for weeks. "Her parents moved into the house next door. I met Lily face to face. And there was some bridge between us. It was not all my imagination, this something came from her as well as from me--a joint umbilical cord, something we dared not speak of, of course, yet which we both knew was there. "She was very like me in many ordinary ways. She too had few friends in London. And the final touch to this faiiy story was that she too was musical. Not very strikingly gifted, but musical. Her father was a peculiar man, Irish, with private means, and with a passion for music. He played the flute very well. Of course he had to meet Bruneau, who sometimes came to our house, and through Bruneau he met Dolmetsch, who interested him in the recorder. Another forgotten instrument in those days. I remember so well Lily playing her first solo on a flat-sounding descant recorder made by Dolmetsch and bought for her by her father. "Our two families grew very close. I accompanied Lily, we sometimes played duets, sometimes her father would join us, sometimes the two mothers would sing. We discovered a whole new continent of music. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, Arbeau, Frescobaldi, Froberger--in those years people suddenly realised that there had been music before 1700." He paused. I wanted to light a cigarette, but more than that I wanted not to distract him, his reaching back. So I held the cigarette between my fingers, and waited. "Lily. She had, yes, I suppose a Botticelli beauty, long fair hair, grey-violet eyes. But that makes her sound too pale, too Pre-Raphaelite. She had something that is gone from the world, from the female world. A sweetness without sentimentality, a limpidity without na�ty. She was so easy to hurt, to tease. And when she teased, it was like a caress. I make her sound too colourless to you. Of course, in those days, what we young men looked for was not so much the body as the soul. Lily was a very pretty girl. But it was her soul that was _sans pareil_. "No obstacles except those of propriety were ever put between us. I said just now that we were very alike in interests and tastes. But we were opposites in temperament. Lily was always so very selfcontrolled, patient, helping. I was temperamental. Moody. And very selfish. I never saw her hurt anyone or anything. But if I wanted something I wanted it at once. Lily used to disgust me with myself. I used to think of my Greek blood as 'dark' blood. Almost Negro blood. "And then too I soon began to love her physically. Whereas she loved me, or treated me, more as a brother. Of course