The Magus (54 page)

I heard Hermes come out by the seldom-used door with the dolphin knocker under the side-colonnade, and start locking it. I decided: the faster I set things in motion, the better. I turned and marched for the gate, jumping off the edge of the colonnade on to the gravel. Hermes called sharply from the door.

‘The food,
kyrios!’

I waved a hand at him without stopping: to hell with food also. I saw his donkey, bulging sacks already tied to its back, tethered beside the cottage door. As if in some idiotic fear of not carrying out Conchis’s orders to the letter, the islander ran down the colonnade and over the bare earth to where the beast was tethered. I went on past, taking no notice of him, though I half saw that he snatched something from the shade inside the doorway. Then I heard his hurried footsteps on the gravel behind me. I turned to wave him angrily away again. But I stopped, my hand frozen.

What he held out was a rush basket. It was one I had seen before, beside Julie, during our long Sunday together. I stared slowly up from it to Hermes’s eyes. He held it a shade closer, coaxingly, for me to take. Then he said in Greek, You must. For the first time since I had known him, there was the ghost of a smile on his face.

Still I hesitated. Then I dropped my duffel-bag and took the basket and pulled it open: two apples, two oranges, two packages wrapped in white paper and neatly tied – and beneath, half hidden, the gold foil of the neck of a bottle of French champagne. I shifted one of the sandwich packets to see the label: Krug. I looked up with what must have seemed a childish bewilderment. He said one word.

‘Perimeni.’

She waits.

Then he nodded behind him, back towards the cliffs east of the private beach. I looked, expecting to see a figure. In the silence I heard the boat returning from the yacht. This time Hermes pointed, then repeated the same word.

You do not know my meaning yet.

To preserve some semblance of dignity, I walked as far as the steps across the gulley; but there I could hold back no longer and raced down them, and up the other side. The statue of Poseidon stood in the sun, but on this occasion somewhat less than majestically. A home-made notice, flapping in the breeze like a forgotten garment on a line, had been suspended from the outstretched arm. It showed only an indicating hand, but it pointed through the trees towards the cliffs. I strode down through the bushes into the pines.

⁵⁶

Almost at once I spotted her through the thin trees. She stood at the cliff-edge, in pale blue trousers, a dark-blue shirt, a pink sun-hat, and she was looking towards me. I waved, and she waved back – but then, to my surprise, instead of coming towards me, she turned and went out of sight down the steep slope immediately above the sheer cliff. I was too relieved, too elated, to think much of it – perhaps she wanted to signal to the yacht that all was well. I broke into a run. Not twenty-five seconds passed between my first seeing her and my arrival at where she had stood … and where I now stood myself incredulously. The ground fell away steeply for some twenty yards before it came to the lip of the cliff proper. There was nowhere to hide, a litter of small rocks and scree, a few patches of scrub not a foot high; but she had completely disappeared. No one as conspicuously dressed … I dropped the basket and my duffel-bag and went along the top of the slope in the direction she had taken … but it was pointless. There were no large rocks, no secret gulleys. I scrambled down to the very edge of the cliff, but only a trained climber could have descended there, and then only with a rope.

It was a reversal of all physical reason. She had vanished into thin air. I stared down at the yacht. The dinghy was being hoisted aboard, I could see at least ten people on deck, crew and passengers; the long hull was already on the move and heading slowly along to where I stood, as if I was to be publicly mocked one last time.

Then without warning there was a stage cough behind me. I jerked round – to an extraordinary sight. Some fifteen yards behind me, half way up the slope, Julie’s head and shoulders had emerged from the ground. Her elbows were on the ground itself and behind her head, like some sinister and grotesque black halo, was a jagged circle. But there was nothing sinister about her mischievous face.

‘Have you lost something? Can I help you?’

‘Christ almighty.’

I climbed closer, stopped six feet from where she still grinned up at me. Her skin was much browner, now approached her sister’s degree of tan. I could see the circle behind her was an iron lid, like a hinged drain-cover. Stones had been cemented all round its upper rim. Julie herself was in a vertical iron tube sunk into the ground. Two wire hawsers ran down from the lid, some counterbalance system. She bit her lips, and curled a beckoning finger.

‘Won’t you come into my parlour, said the

It was apt. There was a real spider on the island that made neat little trapdoors on every bank; I’d watched the boys trying to entice them out. But suddenly her voice and expression changed.

‘Oh you poor thing – what’s happened to your hand!’

‘He didn’t tell you?’ She shook her head, concerned. ‘Not to worry. It’s past history now.’

‘It looks horrid.’

She climbed out. We stood a moment, then she reached, took the scarred hand and examined it, looked solicitously up into my eyes. I smiled.

‘That’s nothing. Wait till you hear the dance he’s led me over this last twenty-four hours.’

‘I rather thought he might.’ She looked down at the hand again. ‘But it’s bearable now?’

‘When I get over the shock.’ I nodded at the hole in the ground. ‘What the hell is it?’

‘The Germans. In the war.’

‘Oh God. I should have guessed.’

The observation post … Conchis would have simply concealed the entrance, blocked off the front slits. We went beside it. The hole plunged down into darkness. I could see a ladder, massive counterweights at the end of the wires, a dim patch of concrete floor at the bottom. Julie reached and tipped the lid. It fell smoothly down to ground level, where the incrusted and projecting stones on the upper side fitted the surrounding ones like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. One would never have seen it; one might just, walking over the lid, have noticed an odd fixity about the stones – but even then the neck was in a little prominence one would ordinarily have skirted.

I said, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’

‘You surely didn’t think; I would –’ but she broke off.

‘Just half an hour ago he told me you were his mistress. That I’d never see you again.’

‘His
mistress!’

‘And June as well.’

It was her turn to be shocked. She stared at me as if I must be testing her in some way, then gave a little puff of protest.

‘But you can’t have believed him!’ I received her first serious, or nearly serious, look. ‘If you believed him for a moment I’ll never speak to you again.’

A moment later my arms were round her and our mouths had met. It was brief, but agreeably convincing. She pulled her head gently away.

‘I think we’re being watched.’

I looked back down to the yacht; and released her body, but not her hands.

‘Where’s June?’

‘Guess.’

‘I’m beyond guessing.’

‘I’ve had a long walk today. A lovely walk.’

‘The village? Hermes’s house?’

‘We’ve been there since Friday. So close to you. It was awful.’

‘Maurice … ?’

‘Has lent it to us for the summer.’ Her smile deepened. ‘I know. I’ve been pinching myself as well.’

‘Good God. This other thing he was planning?’

‘Abandoned. He suddenly announced one evening that he hadn’t time for it. There was some talk about next year, but… ‘ she gave a little shrug. That was to be the cost of our happiness. I sought her eyes.

‘You still want to stay?’

She held my eyes a second, then bowed her head. ‘If you think we could stand each other just as ordinary people. Without all the excitement.’

‘That’s so silly I’m not going to answer it.’

She smiled up. ‘Then it looks as if you’re stuck with me.’

The siren of the yacht sounded. We turned, hand in hand. It had come opposite us, some three hundred yards offshore. Julie raised an arm and waved; and after a moment I did the same. I could make out Conchis and Joe, with Maria’s black figure between them. They raised their arms and waved back. Conchis called towards a man in the bows. There was an ascending plume of smoke, a report, a tiny black object hurtling skywards. It climbed, slowed, then burst. A shower of incandescent stars glittered for a few moments with an explosive crackle against the azure; then another, then a third. Fireworks, for the end of a theatre. A prolonged moan on the siren, more waving arms. Julie put her hands to her mouth and kissed them out to the yacht, I waved again. Then the long white hull began to curve away from the coast.

‘Did he really say I was his kept woman?’

I told her
verbatim.
She stared after the yacht.

‘What a cheek.’

‘I knew it was a put-on. It’s just that dear old poker-face of his.’

‘I shall jolly well slap it next time I see him. June’ll go mad.’ But then she smiled at me. ‘Still … ‘ she pulled my hand. ‘That walk. I’m famished.’

‘I want to see where you lived.’

‘Afterwards. Please let’s eat.’

We climbed back to where I had left the basket, and installed ourselves under a pine-tree. She undid the sandwiches, I opened the champagne, and lost some of it, it had got too warm. But we toasted each other, then kissed again, and started eating. She wanted to know everything that had happened the day before, and I told her; then everything else, the night manoeuvres, the supposed letter to her from me the week before, my not having been ill.,.

‘You did get my real letter from Siphnos?’

‘Yes.’

‘Actually we wondered if it was some last trick. But he’s been so sweet to us. Ever since our little show-down.’

I asked her what they’d been doing … in Crete and cruising around. She grimaced. ‘Lying in the sun and getting bored.’

‘I can’t think why there had to be the delay.’

Julie hesitated. ‘He did make one attempt last weekend to sell us the idea of … you know, pushing you off on to June. I suppose he couldn’t quite give up hope on that.’

‘Look at this.’ I reached for my duffel-bag and showed her the envelope of money; told her how much it was, what I still felt inclined to do with it. But she was swift to disagree.

‘No honestly, you must take it. You’ve earned it, and he’s got so much.’ She smiled. ‘And you may have to start buying me meals soon. Now I’m out of work.’

‘He didn’t try and tempt you with more money?’

‘He did actually. It was the house in the village and you against the completion of contract money.’

‘A bit rough on June?’

Julie sniffed. ‘She wasn’t allowed a vote.’

‘I adore that sun-hat.’

It was soft, childlike, short-brimmed. She took it off and contemplated it, again like a child, almost gauchely, as if no one had ever paid her physical compliments before. I leant across and kissed her cheek, then put an arm round her shoulders and drew her to me. The yacht was two or three miles away now, disappearing round the end of Phraxos to the east.

‘And the grand enigma – not a clue?’

‘You’ve no idea. We were almost on our knees to him the other day. But that’s the other price. It was going on in that absurd way, or this. Being left in the dark.’

‘I wish to God I knew what happened here last year – and the one before.’

‘You haven’t heard from them?’

‘Not a word.’ I added, ‘I’d better confess.’ I told her about the letters I had written checking on her, and showed her the one from her bank in London.

‘I think that’s absolutely foul of you, Nicholas. Fancy not trusting us.’ She bit her lips. ‘Nearly as foul as June’s ringing up the British Council in Athens and checking on you.’ I grinned. ‘I made ten bob out of that.’

‘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.’