The Magus - John Fowles [115]
�" She bowed her head. Then she said, "Next week I'm going away--as I do every autumn when the children are off my hands. I shan't be hiding, but just doing what I do every September." "You'll be with Maurice?" "Yes." Something curiously like an apology lingered in the air; as if she knew the strange twinge of jealousy I felt and could not pretend that it was not justified; that whatever richness of relationship and shared experience I suspected, existed. She looked at her watch. "Oh dear. I'm so sorry. But Gunnel and Benjie will be waiting for me at King's Cross. Those lovely cakes..." They lay in their repulsive polychrome splendour, untouched. "I think one pays for the pleasure of not eating them." She grimaced agreement, and I beckoned to the waitress for the bill. While we were waiting she said, "One thing I wanted to tell you is that in the last three years Maurice has had two serious heart attacks. So there may not even be... a next year." "Yes. He told me." "And you did not believe him?" "No." "Do you believe me?" I answered obliquely. "Nothing you said could make me believe that if he died there would not be another year." She took her gloves. "Why do you say that?" I smiled at her; her own smile. No other answer. She nearly spoke, then chose silence. I remembered that phrase I had had to use of Lily: out of role. Her mother's eyes, and Lily's through them; the labyrinth; privileges bestowed and privileges rejected; a truce. A minute later we were going down the corridor towards the entrance. Two men came down it towards us. They were about to pass when the one on the left gave a kind of gasp. Lily de Seitas stopped and threw her arms back; she too was caught completely by surprise. He was in a dark blue suit with a bow tie, a mane of prematurely white hair, a voluble, fleshy mouth in a florid face. She turned quickly. "Nicholas--would you excuse me--and get me that taxi?" He had the face of a man, a distinguished man, suddenly become a boy again, rather comically melted by this evidently unexpected meeting into a green remembering. I made a convenient show of excessive politeness to some other people heading for the tearoom, which allowed me to hang back a moment to hear what the two might say. Lily de Seitas said nothing, but he spoke. "My dear Lily... my dearest girl..." and he couldn't say any more. He was holding both her hands, drawing her aside, and she was smiling, that strange smile of hers, like Ceres returned to the barren land. I had to go on, but I turned again at the end of the corridor. The man he was with, a department curator or something, had walked on and was waiting by the tearoom door. The two of them stood there. I could see the tender creases round his eyes; and still she smiled, accepting homage. There were no taxis about and I waited by the curb. I wondered if it had been the "someone quite famous" in the sedan; but I did not recognise him. Or some last trick, a professional adoration. His eyes had been for her only, as if the business he had been on shrivelled into nothingness at the sight of that face. She came out hurriedly a minute or two later. "Can I give you a lift?" She was not going to make any comment. Either it was arranged, or it had been by chance but was now being used by her, as her daughters used clouds that crossed the sun and casual strollers down a road; and something about her hermetic expression made it, yet once again, infuriatingly, seem vulgar to be curious. She was not goodmannered, but expert with good manners; used them like an engineer, to shift the coarse bulk of me where she wanted. "No thanks, I'm going to Chelsea." I wasn't; but I wanted to be free of her. I watched her covertly for a moment, then I said, "I used to think of a story with your daughter, and I think of it even more with you." She smiled, a little uncertainly. "It's probably not true, but it's about Marie Antoinette and a butcher. The butcher led a mob into the palace at Versailles. He had a cleaver in his hand and he was shouting that he was going to cut Marie Antoinette's throat. The mob killed the guards and the butcher forced the door of the royal apartments. At last he rushed into her bedroom. She was alone. Standing by a window. There was no one else there. The butcher with a cleaver in his hand and the queen." "What happened?" I caught sight of a taxi going in the wrong direction and waved to the driver to turn. "He fell on his knees and burst into tears." She was silent a moment. "Poor butcher." "I believe that's exactly what Marie Antoinette said." She watched the taxi turn. "Doesn't everything depend on the tone of voice? And who was the butcher crying for?" I looked away from her intelligent eyes. "No. I don't think so." The taxi drew up beside the curb. She hesitated as I opened the door. "Are you sure?" "I was born on the butcher's side." She watched me for a moment, then gave up, or remembered. "Your plate." She handed it to me from her basket. "I'll try not to break it." "It carries my good wishes." "Thank you for both." We sounded formal; she had set herself on the queen's side; or perhaps, truer to her role, and _sunt lacrimae rerum_, on no side. "And remember. Alison is not a present. She has to be paid for. And convinced that you have the money to pay." I acquiesced, to make her go. She took my hand, but kept it and made me lean forward, first to my surprise to kiss me on the cheek, then to whisper something in my ear. I saw a passing workman look disapprovingly at us: the bloody enemy, striking our effete poses inside the Petit Trianon of the English class system. She stood back a moment, pressed my arm as if to drive home what she had whispered, then stepped quickly inside the taxi. She gave me one look through the window, still the look of the whispered words. Our eyes met through the glass. The taxi moved, the head receded. I gazed after it until it disappeared out of sight past Brompton Oratory; without tears, but just, I imagined, as that poor devil of a butcher must have stared down at the Aubusson carpet.