"Perhaps she didn't know."
"Perhaps. They'd be quite glad, all of them, if she came back."
"I shouldn't think she will," said Val, looking at Euan. "I should think she's got reasons for staying away.”
“All sorts of reasons," said Euan.
Val had never ascribed Roland's sudden disappearance to anything other than a desire to be with Maud Bailey. She had, in a moment of rage, telephoned Maud's flat, only to be told by a rich American voice that Maud was away. When asked where, the voice said with a mixture of amusement and rancour, "I am not privileged to know that." Val had complained to Euan, who had said, "But you didn't want him, did you, it was over?" Val had cried, "How do you know that?" and Euan had said, "Because I've been watching you and assessing the evidence for weeks now, it's my job."
So here she was, staying with Euan, in the house by the stables. In the cool of the evening they walked round the yard, so well swept, so orderly, with the large-eyed long heads peering out over the stable doors, and inclining gracefully to accept apples, with wrinkling soft lips and huge, inoffensive, vegetarian teeth. The low brick house was covered with climbing roses and wistaria. It was the sort of house where breakfast was kidneys, bacon, mushrooms, or kedgeree in silver dishes. The bedroom was designed, and full of cream and rose-coloured chintz, frothing around solid old furniture. Val and Euan made love in a kind of cavern of rosy light, and looked out of the open window onto the dark shadows and subdued night-scent of real roses.
Val looked down at the naked length of Euan Maclntyre. He was like his horse in reverse. All the central part of his body was pale-ranging from buff to very white. But his extremities were brown, as The Reverberator's were white. And he had the same face. Val laughed.
" 'O love, be fed with apples while you may,' " she said.
"What?""
It's a poem. It's Robert Graves. I love Robert Graves. He stirs me up.”
“Go on, then." He made her say it twice, and then recited it himself:
"Walk between dark and dark-a shining space
With the grave's narrowness, though not its peace."
"I like that," said Euan Maclntyre. "I didn't think-”
“You didn't think yuppies liked poetry. Don't be vulgar and simplistic, dear Val.”
“I'm sorry. I don't know-more to the point-why you like me.
"We work together, don't we? In bed?"
"Oh yes-"
"One knows that sort of thing. And I wanted to see you smile. You were torturing a lovely face into an expression of permanent disappointment, and soon it would have been too late."
"An act of charity." Half in the Putney Val's voice. "Don't be silly." But he had always loved mending things. Broken models, stray kittens, grounded kites. "Look, Euan, I'm no good at being happy, I shall mess you up.”
“That depends on me. On me too, that is. 'O love, be fed with apples while you may.' "
Chapter 23
The irruption, or interruption, occurred at the Baie des Trépassés. It was one of Brittany's smiling days. They stood amongst the sand-dunes and watched the wide waves crawling in quietly from the Atlantic. The sea wove amber-sandy lights in its grey-green. The air was milk-warm, and smelled of salt, and warm sand, and distant sharp leaves, heather or juniper or pine.
"Would it be so magical, or sinister, without its name?" Maud asked. "It looks bland and sunny.”
“If you knew about the currents you might find it dangerous. If you were a sailor."
"It says in the Guide Vert that its name comes from a corruption of "boe an aon" (baie du ruisseau) into "boe an anaon" (baie des âmes enpeine). It says that the City of Is was traditionally in those marshes at the river-mouth. Trépassés, trespassed, passed, past. Names accrue meaning. We came because of the name."
Roland touched her hand, which took hold of his.
They were standing in a fold of the dunes. They heard, from beyond the next sandhill, a loud transatlantic cry, rich and strange: "And that must be the Ile de Sein, right out there, I've always dreamed of seeing that place, where the nine terrible virgins lived who were called Seines or Senas or Sènes after the island, which isSein, which is a fantastically suggestive and polysemous word, suggesting the divinity of the female body, for the French use sein you know to mean both breasts and womb, the female sexual organs, and from that it has also come to mean a fishing-net which holds fish and a bellying sail which holds wind, these women could control tempests, and attract sailors into their nets like the sirens, and they built this funeral temple for the dead druids-a dolmen I suppose it was, another female form, and whilst they constructed it there were all sorts of taboos about not touching the earth, not letting the stones fall to the earth, for it was feared the sun or the earth would pollute them or be polluted by them, just like the mistletoe, which can only be gathered without touching the earth. It has often been thought that Dahud Queen of Is was the child of one of these sorceresses, and when she became Queen of the Drowned City she became Marie-Morgane, a kind of siren or mermaid who drew men to their death, and it is thought she was a relic of a matriarchy as the Sènes were, in their floating island. Have you read Christabel's Drowned City?"
"No," said a male voice. "It is an omission I must rectify."
"Leonora," said Maud."And Blackadder," said Roland.
The two could be seen advancing towards the sea. Leonora's hair was loose, and, as she came out of the shelter of the dunes, was lifted in dark snaking ringlets, by the small sea-wind. She wore a Greek sun-dress in very fine cotton, a swirl of tiny pleats, scarlet patterned with silver moons, held by a wide silver band of cloth above her ample breasts, exposing shoulders dark gold with the glare of no English sun. Her large and shapely feet were naked, and her toe-nails painted alternately scarlet and silver. As she advanced, the wind fluttered the pleats. She held up her arms, with a musical chime of catching bracelets. Behind her came James Blackadder, in heavy shoes and a dark parka over dark creased trousers.
"Over there must be Nantucket, and the soft green breast of the New World.”
“Fitzgerald can hardly have been talking about druidesses.”
“But he made the Earthly Paradise a woman.”
“A disappointing one."
Or course.
Maud said, "They must have got together and worked out where we were."
Roland said, "If they got here, they must have seen Ariane."
Maud said, "And read the journal. If Leonora wanted to find Ariane, she would have. And I take it Blackadder reads French.”
“They must be pretty mad with us. Tricking them, taking advantage, they're bound to think.”
“Do you think we should go and confront them? Or be confronted?"
Do you? Maud put out both her hands and he took them. She said, "I think we should, and I think we can't. I think we must go. Quickly.”
“Where?”
“Back, probably.”
“Unenchanted?" said Roland.
"Are we enchanted? I suppose we must start thinking again, sometime.”
“Not yet," he said quickly.
"No, not yet."
They drove silently back to their hotel. Turning out of its car park, as they came in, was a large black Mercedes. Because its windows were darkened, Maud could not see, as it passed by, whether Cropper had observed her at the wheel, or not. In any case, the Mercedes did not slacken its speed, but vanished, in the direction they had come from.