The Magus - John Fowles [96]
in the village? Anywhere. I shouldn't go." There was a pause. "I'm trying to be frank. Not treacherous." Her back was silent. "I haven't been very happy on Phraxos. Not until I came here, as a matter of fact. I've been, well, pretty lonely. I know I don't love... this other girl.. It's just that she's been the only person. That's all." "Perhaps to her you seem the only person." "There are dozens of other men in her life. Honestly. There've been at least three more since I left England." A runner ant zigzagged neurotically up the white back of her blouse and I reached and fficked it off. She must have felt me do it, but she did not turn. "It was nothing. Just an affaire." She didn't speak for some time. I craned round to see her face. It was pensive. She said, "I know you did not believe what Maurice said last night. But it was true." She glanced round solemnly at me. "I am not the real Lily. But I am not anyone impersonating the real Lily." "Because you're dead?" "Yes. I am dead." I crouched beside her, tapped her shoulder. "Now listen. All this is very amusing. But it just doesn't hold water. First there are several of you. You've got a twin sister, and you know it. You do this disappearing trick, and you have this charming line of mystery talk. Period dialogue and mythology and all the rest. But the fact is, there are two things you can't conceal. You're intelligent. And you're as physically real as I am." I pinched her arm, and she winced. "I don't know whether you're doing all this because you love the old man. Because he pays you. Because it amuses you. Because you're his mistress. I don't know where you and your sister and your other friends live. I don't really care, because I think the whole idea's original, it's charming to be with you, I like Maurice, I think this is all fun... but don't let's take it all so bloody seriously. Play your charade. But for Christ's sake don't try to explain it." I knew I had called her bluff then; regained the initiative. I stood up behind her and lit a cigarette. She sat, looking down in front of her. After a moment her face went down on her knees. The boat came into the cove; Conchis had returned. I waited, thinking that I ought to have realised that a little force would do the trick. She was silent a long time. Then her shoulders gave a little shake. She was pretending to cry. "Sorry. No go." She stared round. Her eyes were full of very real tears. I knelt beside her. She gave a rueful smile and brushed her eyes with the back of her wrist. I put my hand on her shoulder. I could feel the warmth of her skin through the linen; reached in my pocket and found a handkerchief. "Here." She dabbed at her eyes, and looked at me, with a pleading simplicity. "I tried. I tried very hard." "You're wonderful... you've no idea how strange this experience has been. I mean, beautifully strange. Only, you know, it's one's sense of reality. It's like gravity. One can resist it only so long." She handed me back my handkerchief, and we stood up, very close together. I knew I wanted very much to kiss her, to hold her. She looked at me, submissively. "A truce?" "A truce." "I want you to say nothing for... ten minutes. A little walk, if you like." "I like." "Nothing--not a word?" "I promise. If you --" But her warning finger was towards my lips. We turned and began to walk up the slope. After a time I took her hand.
34
I kept my side of the promise as firmly as I kept hold of her hand. She led me up through the trees to a point higher than where I had forced my way over the gulley the week before, to where there was a path across, with some rough-hewn steps. I had to let go of her hand because of the narrowness of the path, but at the top of the other side she waited and held it out for me to take again. We went over a rise and there, on the upper slope of a little hollow, stood a statue. I recognised it at once. It was a copy of the famous Poseidon fished out of the sea near Euboea at the beginning of the century. I had a postcard of it in my room. The superb man stood on a short raised floor of natural