The Magus (24 page)

‘You’re your own mistress.’

‘Yes.’

‘Has he suggested … ?’

‘Absolutely not. He’s said all along that if there’s something we don’t want to do, we needn’t.’

‘I wish you’d just give me some clue about what’s behind it all.’

‘You must have made some guesses.’

‘I feel I’m some sort of guinea-pig, God knows why. It’s mad, I turned up here by pure chance, three weeks ago. Just for a glass of water.’

‘I don’t think it was pure chance. I mean, you may have come like that. But if you hadn’t, he’d have found some way.’ She said, ‘We were told you were coming, before you did. When our own first supposed reason for coming here was blown sky-high.’

‘He must have sold you something better than just playing games.’

‘Yes.’ She turned towards me, an arm along the back of the seat, with an apologetic grimace. ‘Nicholas, I can’t tell you more now. Apart from anything else, I must leave you. But yes, he did sell us something better. And guinea-pig … that’s not quite right. Something better than that, too. That’s one reason we’re still here. However it may seem at the moment.’ She looked down at the sea between us. ‘And one other thing. This last hour’s been a tremendous relief to me. I’m so glad you forced it on us.’ She murmured, ‘We may have got Maurice very wrong. In which case we shall need a knight errant.’

‘I’ll get my lance sharpened.’

She gave me a long look, still with a hint of doubt in it, but which ended in a faint smile. Then she stood.

‘We walk to the statue. Say goodbye. You return to the house.’

I kept sitting. ‘Shall I see you later?’

‘He’s asked me to stand by. I’m not sure.’

‘I feel like an over-carbonated soda-bottle. Bubbling with questions.’

‘Be patient.’ She reached out a hand to make me stand.

As we made our way down the slope, I said, ‘Anyway, you did the forcing – pretending Lily Montgomery was your mother.’ She grinned. ‘Did she ever exist?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ She slipped a look at me. ‘If not better.’

‘I’m glad of that.’

‘You must have seen you’re in the hands of someone who’s very skilled at rearranging reality.’

We came beneath the statue.

I said, ‘This thing tonight.’

‘Don’t be afraid. It’s… in a way it’s outside the game. Or perhaps at the heart of it.’ She left a second, then she turned to face me. ‘You must go now.’

I took her hands. ‘I’d like to kiss you.’

She looked down, there was a faint return of the Lily persona about her.

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘Because you don’t want me to?’

‘We are being watched.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

She said nothing, but neither were the hands taken away. I put my arms round her and drew her close. For a moment she held her face turned, then I was allowed to find her lips. They remained tightly closed, ungiving against mine except for one small tremor of response just before she pushed me away. By the standards of my past it was hardly a sexual embrace at all, but there was something oddly shocked and disturbed in her eyes for a moment or two, as if it had meant more to her than to me; as if something she had determined should not happen very nearly had. I smiled, to reassure her, a kiss like that was no crime, she could trust me; she stared, then her eyes dropped. It was disconcerting, all the rationality of the last half-hour seemed to lapse for no reason. I thought perhaps she was acting a part again, for the benefit of Conchis or whoever else was watching. But her eyes came up again, and I knew they were meant for me alone.

‘If I ever find you were lying to me, I won’t go on.’

She turned before I could answer, and began walking away, quickly, almost hurriedly. I watched her for a few moments, then turned to look back across the gulley. I was in two minds whether to follow her, she was going down between the pines towards the sea. In the end I lit a cigarette, gave the magnificent but enigmatic Poseidon one last glance, and started towards the house. Just before the gulley I looked back. There was one flash of white among the foliage, then she was gone. But I was not to be left alone. No sooner had I climbed the steps on the far side of the gulley than I saw Conchis.

He was standing some forty yards away, his back to me, and he appeared to be watching, through binoculars, some bird high in the trees beyond him. As I walked towards him, he lowered the glasses and turned, and made as if he had just seen me. It was not an impressive piece of acting; but then I hadn’t realized that he was saving his talents for the scene to follow.

³⁵

As I walked over the carpet of pine-needles to meet him – he was more formally dressed than usual by day, in dark blue trousers and an even darker blue polo-necked jumper – I decided to be very much on guard, which something about his quizzical look did nothing but confirm as wise. I felt pretty sure that his leading actress had not been lying to me, at least as regards her admiration for him and her belief that he was not an evil man. I had also detected a stronger residue of doubt, even of fear, than she had actually revealed to me. She had needed to convince herself as well as me. I had only to set eyes on the old man again to know that I retained more of the doubt than the rest.

‘Hallo.’

‘Good afternoon, Nicholas. I must apologize for my absence. There has been a small scare on Wall Street.’ Wall Street seemed to be on the other side of the universe, not just of the world. I tried to look concerned.

‘Oh?’

‘I foolishly entered a financing consortium two years ago. Can you imagine Versailles with not one
Roi Soleil,
but five of them?’

‘Financing what?’

‘Many things.’ He went on quickly. ‘I had to go to Nauplia to telephone Geneva.’

‘I hope you’re not bankrupt.’

‘Only a fool is ever bankrupt. And he is bankrupt from birth. You have been with Lily?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’

“We began to walk back towards the house. I sized him up, and said, ‘And I’ve met her twin sister.’

He touched the powerful glasses round his neck. ‘I thought I heard a sub-alpine warbler. It is very late for them to be still on migration.’ It was not exactly a snub, but a sort of conjuring trick: how to make the subject disappear.

‘Or rather,
seen
her twin sister.’

He walked several steps on; I had an idea that he was thinking fast.

‘Lily had no sister. Therefore no sister here.’

‘I only meant to say that I’ve been very well entertained in your absence.’

He did not smile, but inclined his head. We said nothing more. I had the distinct feeling that he was a chess master caught between two moves; immensely rapid calculation of combinations. Once he even turned to say something, but changed his mind.

We reached the gravel.

‘Did you like my Poseidon?’

‘Wonderful. I was going to – ‘

He put his hand on my arm and stopped me, and looked down, almost as if he was at a loss for words.

‘She may be amused. That is what she needs. But not upset. For reasons you of course now realize. I am sorry for all this little mystery we spread around you before.’ He pressed my arm, and went on.

‘You mean the … amnesia?’

He stopped again; we had just come to the steps.

‘Nothing else about her struck you?’

‘Lots of things.’

‘Nothing pathological?’

‘No.’

He raised his eyebrows a fraction, as if I surprised him, but went up the steps; put his glasses on the old cane couch, and turned back to the tea-table. I stood by my chair, and gave him his own interrogative shake of the head.

‘This obsessive need to assume disguises. To give herself false motivations. That did not strike you?’

I bit my lips, but his face, as he whisked the muslin covers away, was as straight as a poker.

‘I thought that was rather required of her.’

‘Required?’ He seemed momentarily puzzled, then clear. ‘Ah, you mean that schizophrenia produces these symptoms?’

‘Schizophrenia?’

‘Did you not mean that?’ He gestured to me to sit. ‘I am sorry. Perhaps you are not familiar with all this psychiatric jargon.’

‘Yes I am. But- ‘

‘Split personality.’

‘I know what schizophrenia is. But you said she did everything … because you wanted it.’

‘Of course. As one says such things to a child. To encourage them to obey.’

‘But she isn’t a child.’

‘I speak metaphorically. As of course I was speaking last night.’

‘But she’s very intelligent.’

He gave me a professional look. ‘The correlation between high intelligence and schizophrenia is well known.’

I ate my sandwich, and then grinned at him.

‘Every day I spend here I feel my legs get a little longer.’

He looked amazed, even a shade irritated. ‘I am most certainly not pulling your leg at the moment. Far from it.’

‘I think you are. But I don’t mind.’

He pushed his chair away from the table and made a new gesture; pressing his hands to his temples, as if he had been guilty of some terrible mistake. It was right out of character; and I knew he was acting.

‘I was so sure that you had understood by now.’

‘I think I have.’

He gave me a piercing look I was meant to believe, and didn’t.

‘There are personal reasons I cannot go into now why I should -even if I did not love her as a daughter – feel the gravest responsibility for the unfortunate creature you have been with today.’ He poured hot water into the silver teapot. ‘She is one of the principal,
the
principal reason why I come to Bourani and its isolation. I thought you had realized that by now.’

‘Of course I had … in a way.’

‘This is the one place where the poor child can roam a little and indulge her fantasies.’

‘Are you trying to tell me that she’s mad?’

‘Mad is a meaningless non-medical word. She suffers from schizophrenia.’

‘So she believes herself to be your long-dead fiancee?’

‘I gave her that role. It was deliberately induced. It is quite harmless and she enjoys playing it. It is in some of her other roles that she is not so harmless.’

‘Roles?’

‘Wait.’ He disappeared indoors and came back almost at once with a book. ‘This is a standard textbook on psychiatry.’ He searched for a moment. ‘Allow me to read a passage. “One of the defining characteristics of schizophrenia is the formation of delusions which may be elaborate and systematic, or bizarre and incongruous.”‘ He looked up at me. ‘Lily falls into the first category.’ He went on reading. ‘“They, these delusions, have in common the same tendency to relate always to the patient; they often incorporate elements of popular prejudice against certain groups of activities; and they take the general form of self-glorification or feelings of persecution. One patient may believe she is Cleopatra, and will expect all around her to conform to her belief, while another may believe that her own family have decided to murder her and will therefore make even their most innocent and sympathetic statements and actions conform to her fundamental delusion.” And here. “There are frequently large areas of consciousness untouched by the delusion. In all that concerns them, the patient may seem, to an observer who knows the full truth, bewilderingly sensible and logical.”‘

He took a gold pencil from his pocket, marked the passages he had read and passed the open book over the table to me. I glanced at the book, then, still smiling, up at him.

‘Her sister?’

‘Another cake?’

‘Thank you.’ I put the book down. ‘Mr Conchis – her sister?’

He smiled. ‘Yes, of course, her sister.’

‘And–’

‘Yes, yes, and the others. Nicholas – here, she is queen. For a month or two we all conform to the needs of her unhappy life.’

And he had that, very rare in him, gentleness, solicitude, which only Lily seemed able to evoke. I realized that I had stopped smiling; I was beginning to lose my sense of total sureness that he was inventing a new stage of the masque. So I smiled again.

‘And me?’

‘Do children in England still play that game … ‘ he put his hand over his eyes, at a loss for the word,
‘cache-cache?’

I took a breath, remembering only too vividly the subject of our conversation’s recent use of the same image; and thought, the cunning little bitch, the cunning old fox, they’re throwing me backwards and forwards like a ball. That last strange look she had given me, all that talk of not betraying her, a dozen other things; I felt humiliated, and at the same time fascinated.

‘Hide-and-seek? Of course.’

‘The hider must have a seeker. That is the game. A seeker who is not too cruel. Not too observant.’

‘I’d rather got the impression that I was the centre of attention.’

‘I wish to involve you, my friend. I wish you to gain something from this. I cannot insult you by offering you money. But I hope there will be reward for you too.’

‘I’m not complaining about my salary. But I would like to know a little more about my employer.’

‘I think I told you that I had never practised medicine. That is not quite true, Nicholas. In the twenties I studied under Jung. I do not now count myself a Jungian. But my principal interest in life has remained psychiatry. Before the war I had a small practice in Paris. I specialized in schizophrenic cases.’ He put his hands on the edge of the table. ‘Do you wish to see evidence? I can show you papers I published in various journals.’

‘I’d like to read them. But not now.’

He sat back. ‘Very well. You must in no circumstances reveal what I am going to tell you.’ His eyes bored gravely into mine. ‘Lily’s real name is Julie Holmes. Four or five years ago her case attracted a great deal of attention in psychiatric circles. It is one of the best documented. Even if it was not already highly unusual in itself, it was virtually unique in there being a twin sister of a perfectly normal psychological type who could provide what scientists call a control. The aetiology of schizophrenia has long caused fierce debate between the neuro-pathologists and psychiatrists proper – whether it is essentially a physical and genetically conditioned or a spiritual disorder. Julie and her sister clearly suggest the latter is the case. Whence the great interest they have aroused.’