The Magus, A Revised Version (81 page)

‘
Is that all I was worth?
’

‘
All she was worth.
’

I looked to the east. The yacht had disappeared, the sea was empty now, the wind blew gently through the pines above us, shifted wisps of her hair. She had slumped a little against me where I sat with my back to the pine-stem.
I
felt like one of those rockets, like the champagne we had drunk. I turned her face and we kissed, then lay, still kissing, side by side in the sun-flecked shade. I wanted her, but not so urgently, now that all summer lay ahead. So
I
contented
myself with a hand beneath her shirt on her bare back, and her mouth. In the end she lay half across me, with her lips against my cheek, in silence.

I whispered,
‘
Have you missed me?
’

‘
More than it
’
s good for you to know.
’

‘
I
’
d like to lie like this every night of my life.
’

‘
I wouldn
’
t. Not comfortable enough.
’

‘
Don
’
t be so literal-minded.
’
I held her a little tighter.
‘
Say I may. Tonight.
’

She ran fingers through my shirt.

‘
Was she nice in bed? Your Australian friend?
’

I lay there, chilled a moment, staring up through the pine-branches at the sky beyond, half inclined to tell her … then no, it was better to wait.

‘
I
’
ll tell you all about her one day.
’

She pinched my skin gently.
‘
I thought you had.
’

‘
Why do you ask, anyway?
’

‘
Because.
’

‘
Because what?
’

‘
I
’
m probably not as… you know.
’

I turned and kissed her hair.
‘
You
’
ve already proved you
’
re much cleverer.
’

She was silent a moment, as if she wasn
’
t fully reassured.

‘
I
’
ve never really been physically in love with anyone before.
’

‘
It
’
s not an illness.
’

‘
An unknown place.
’

‘
I promise you
’
ll like it.
’

Another little silence.
‘
I wish there was another you. For June.
’

‘
She wants to stay?
’

‘
A little while.
’
Then she murmured,
‘
That
’
s the trouble with being twins. You always have the same tastes in everything.
’

‘
I thought you didn
’
t see eye to eye on men.
’

She kissed my neck.
‘
We do on this one.
’

‘
She
’
s teasing you.
’

‘
I bet you wish we had gone through with
Three Hearts.
’

‘
I
’
m gnashing my teeth in disappointment.
’

There was another pinch, less gentle this time.

‘
Seriously.
’

‘
You
’
re like a little girl sometimes.
’

‘
It
’
s how I feel.
My
toy.
’

‘
Who you
’
re going to take to bed with you tonight?
’

‘
It
’
s only a single bed.
’

‘
Then there won
’
t be room for pyjamas.
’

‘
Actually I
’
ve given up wearing them here.
’

‘
You
’
re driving me wild.
’

‘
I drive myself wild. Lying naked there thinking about you.
’

‘
What am I doing?
’

‘
All sorts of wicked things.
’

‘
Tell me.
’

‘
I don
’
t imagine them in words.
’

‘
Gentle things or rough things?
’

‘
Things.
’

‘
Tell me
just one.
’

She hesitated, then whispered,
‘
I run away and you catch me.
’

‘
What do I do then?
’
She said nothing. I reached my hand down her back.
‘
Put you over my knees and smack you?
’

‘
Sometimes I have to be very, very slowly seduced.
’

‘
Because you
’
ve never been made love to before?
’

‘
Mm.
’

‘
I want to undress you now.
’

‘
Then you
’
d have to carry me back.
’

‘
I wouldn
’
t mind.
’

She leant up on an elbow, then leant across and kissed me, a little smile.

‘
Tonight. I promise. And June
’
s waiting for us.
’

‘
Let me see your place first.
’

‘
It
’
s horrid. Like a tomb.
’

‘
Just one quick dekko.
’

She stared down into my eyes, as if for some reason she was inclined to argue me out of it; then smiled and stood and reached a hand for me. We went back down the steep slope over the sea. Julie stooped and pulled on a stone: the encrusted lid rose, the dark hole gaped. She turned and knelt, felt down with a foot for the top rung of the ladder, then began to clamber down. She reached the bottom some fifteen feet below and her face craned up.

‘
Be careful. Some of the rungs are worn.
’

I turned and climbed down after her. It was unpleasantly claustrophobic inside the tube. But at the bottom, opposite the ladder, a small square room opened out, about fifteen feet by fifteen. In the poor light I could make out a door in each sidewall and on the side towards the sea, the blocked apertures of what must have once been machine-gun, or observation, slits. A table, three wooden chairs, a small cupboard. There was a fusty staleness in the air, as if silence had a smell.

‘
Have you got a match?
’

She held out a hurricane lamp, and I lit it. The left wall of the room was painted with a clumsy mural
–
a beer-cellar scene, foaming steins, bosomy girls with winking eyes. Dim traces showed that there had once been colours, but now it was only the black outlines that remained. It was as remote as an Etruscan wall-painting; of a culture long sunken under time. On the right-hand wall was something more skilful
–
a perspective street vista that I guessed to be of some Austrian city … Vienna, perhaps. I guessed, too, that Anton had helped to execute it. The two side-doors looked like bulkhead doors aboard a ship. There were massive padlocks on each.

Julie nodded.
‘
That was our room, in there. Joe used the other.
’

‘
What a godawful place. It smells.
’

‘
We used to call it the Earth. Have you ever smelt a fox-earth?
’

‘
Why are the doors locked?
’

‘
I don
’
t know. They never have been. I suppose there must be people on the island who know the place exists.
’
She gave a wry smile.
‘
You
’
re not missing anything. Just costumes. Beds. More ghastly murals.
’

I looked at her in the lamplight.
‘
You
’
re a brave girl. To face this sort of thing.
’

‘
We hated it. So many sour, unhappy men. Locked away here with all that sunlight outside.
’

I touched her hand.

‘
Okay. I
’
ve seen enough.
’

‘
Would you put out the lamp?
’

I extinguished it, and Julie turned to climb the ladder to the outside. Slim blue legs, the brilliant daylight dazzling down. I waited a moment at the bottom, to keep clear of her feet, then started after her. The top of her body disappeared.

And then she screamed my name.

Someone, perhaps two someones, had sprung from behind the lid and grabbed her arms. She seemed to be lifted, almost jerked bodily out and away
–
a leg kicked wildly sideways, as if she were trying to hook a foot behind the counterweight wires. My name again, but cut short; a scuffle of stones outside, out of my sight. I clawed violently up the remaining rungs. For one fraction of a second a face appeared in the opening above. A young man with
crew-cut
blond hair, the sailor I had seen that morning at the house. He saw I was still two rungs from the top, and immediately slammed the lid down. The shocked counterweights rattled against the metal wall by my feet. I bellowed in the sudden pitch darkness.

‘
For God
’
s sake! Hey! Wait a minute!
’

I pushed with all my force on the underside of the lid. It gave inf
in
itesimally, as if someone were sitting or standing on it. But it refused to budge at a second attempt. The tube was too narrow for me to apply much upward pressure.

Once more I strained to heave it up; then listened. Silence. I tried the lid one last time, then gave up and climbed down to the bottom. I struck a match, relit the hurricane-lamp; tried the two massive doors. They were impenetrable. I tore open the cupboard. It was as empty of objects as what had just happened was of reason. Snarling with rage, I remembered Conchis
’
s fairy-godfather exit: the gay farewell, the fireworks, the bottle of Krug. Our revels now are ended. But this was Prospero turned insane, maniacally determined never to release his Miranda.

I stood at the foot of the ladder and seethed, trying to comprehend the sadistic old man
’
s duplicities: to read his palimpsest. His
‘
theatre without an audience
’
made no sense, it couldn
’
t be the explanation.
The one thing all actors and actresses craved was an audience. Perhaps
what he was doing did spring in part from some theory of the
theatre, but he had said it himself:
The masque is only a metaphor.
So?
Some incomprehensible new philosophy: metaphorism? Perhaps he saw himself as a professor in an impossible faculty of ambiguity, a sort of Empson of the event. I thought and thought, and thought again, and arrived at last at nothing but more doubt. It began to extend to Julie and June as well. I returned to the schizophrenia stage. That must be it, it was all planned from the beginnin
g, I was
never to have her, always to be tormented, mocked like Tantalus. Yet how could any girl do what she had done
–
I could still feel her kisses, remember every word of that deliberately erotic little whispered conversation she had initiated
–
and not mean an iota of it? Except someone who was indeed mentally deranged and in some way aware that her promises need never be met?