“Has Neptune cut your tongue off?”
“You look so ravishing. Like a Renoir.”
She moved a little further away, and twirled her ombrelle. I slipped into my beach-shoes and, toweling my back, caught her up.
“I prefer you without the silver bow.”
She raised a finger to her lips, banning the subject, then smiled with a sort of innocent sideways slyness; she had a remarkable gift for creating and diminishing distance by an intonation, a look. She sat down on a low projecting piece of rock that was overshaded by a pine tree, where the precipitous gulley ran down to the shingle; then closed her sunshade and pointed with it to a stone beside her, a little away from her, in the sun, where I was to sit. But I spread my towel on the rock and sat beside her in the shade. I thought how ridiculous it really was to pretend that she was in some way “psychic”; the moist mouth, the down on her bare forearms, a scar above her left wrist, her slim neck, her loose hair, an animated glance she turned to give me.
“You’re the most deliciously pretty girl I’ve ever seen.”
“Am I?”
I had meant it; and I had also meant to embarrass her. But she simply widened her smile and stared back at me, and I was the one who eventually looked down.
“Do we still have to… keep to the rules?”
“If you want me to sit with you.”
“Who’s the other girl?”
“What other girl?”
Her innocence was charming; so natural and so false; an irresistible invitation to take nothing seriously.
“When am I going to meet your brother?”
Her prettily lashed eyes flickered modestly down and sideways. “I hope you did not venture to think he was really my brother?”
“I ventured to think all sorts of things.”
She sought my meaning, for a moment held my eyes, then bit her lips. For no reason at all I began to feel less jealous.
“Wouldn’t you like to bathe?”
“No. I cannot swim.”
“I could teach you. It’s very easy.”
“Thank you. I do not like sea water.”
Silence. She shifted a pebble with her shoe. It was a pretty buttoned shoe of gray kid over a white silk stocking, but very old-fashioned. The hem of her dress came within three of four inches of her ankles. Her hair blew forward, clouding her face a little. I wanted to brush it back.
“You speak like a Scandinavian sometimes.”
“Yes?”
“‘I cannot swim.’ ‘I do not like.’”
“What should I say?”
“I can’t swim. I don’t like.”
She made a little pout, then put on a very creditable foreign accent. “Does it mattair eef I am not Eenglish?”
Then she smiled like the Cheshire Cat; disappearing behind her humor.
“Does it matter if you tell me who you really are?”
“Give me your hand. I will read your fortune. You may sit a little closer, but you must not wet my dress.”
I gave her my hand. She held it tightly by the wrist and traced the palmistry lines with the forefinger of her free hand. I was able to see the shape of her breasts at the bottom of the opening in her dress, very pale skin, the highly caressable beginning of soft curves. It was strange; she managed to suggest that this hackneyed sex-gambit—one I had used myself on occasion—was rather daring, mama-defying. Her fingertip ran innocently yet suggestively over my palm. She began to “read.”
“You will have a long life. You will have three children. At about forty years old you will nearly die. You are quite sensitive, but you are also very treacherous. There are… there are many treacheries in your life. Sometimes you betray yourself. Sometimes you betray those who love you.”
“Why do I betray?”
She looked seriously up at me. “The palm says what is. Not why it is.”
“Can I read yours?”
“I have not finished. You will never be rich. Beware of horses, strong drink and old women. You will make love to many girls, but you will love only one, and you will marry her and be very happy.”
“In spite of nearly dying at forty.”
“Because you nearly die at forty. Here is where you nearly die. The happiness line is very, very strong after that.”
She let go of my hand.
“Now can I read yours?”
She hesitated a moment, then put her small hand in mine, and I pretended to read it. I tried to read it quite seriously in one way—the Sherlock Holmes way. But even that great master at detecting in a second Irish maidservants from Brixton with a mania for boating and bullseyes would have been baffled. However, Lily’s hands were very white, very smooth, very unblemished; whatever else she was she was not a maidservant from anywhere.
“You are taking a long time, Mr. Urfe.”
“My name is Nicholas.”
“May I call you Nicholas?”
“If I may call you… ?”
“You may call me Lily, Nicholas. But you may not sit for hours pretending to read my hand.”
“It’s a very difficult hand to read. Very obscure. I can only see one thing clearly.”
“And what is that?”
“It’s extremely nice to look at and to hold.”
She snatched it away. “There. You prove what I said. You are treacherous.”
“Let me have it back. I’ll be serious.” But she shook her head, and put both her hands behind her, and turned, and looked at me with a perfectly done pert Edwardian rebelliousness. A wisp of hair blew across her face; the wind kindled in her clothes a wantonness, bared her throat, so that she suddenly looked very young, absurdly young, seventeen; a world away from an avenging goddess. I remembered what Conchis had said about the original Lily’s gentleness and mischievousness, and I thought how wonderfully well he had cast this Lily—there was, it seemed to me, a natural teasing obliquity in her that couldn’t be acted. Not when she was so close, in daylight; she seemed far less sophisticated than she had on the terrace the night before. All the condescension had disappeared. Impulsively she thrust her hand back out at me. I began to read it.
“I see all the usual things. Long life. Happiness. Children. And then… intelligence. A lot of intelligence. Some heart. And yes—great acting ability, combined with a strong sense of humor. And this line means that you love mystery. But I think the acting’s strongest.”
A little white cloud floated across the sun, casting shadow over the beach. She took her hand away, and stared down at it in her lap.
“And death?”
“I said a long life.”
“But I am dead. One cannot die twice.”
I touched her arm. “You’re the most living dead person I’ve ever met.”
She did not smile; there was swiftly, too swiftly, something very cold and gray in her eyes, a silent trouble.
“Oh come on. There is a limit.”
“Death is the limit.”
I knew she must be improvising her moods and dialogue with me. The cloud had come; she had brought in death. It was time to call her bluff.
“Look—”
“You still do not understand.”
“Of course I’ll keep up the pretense in front of Maurice.”
“We are in front of Maurice.”
I thought for one mad moment that he had crept up behind us. I even looked round. There was no one; and no place where anyone could have hidden and overheard us.
“Lily—I admire him. I like him. I like this extraordinary masque of his. Very much. And I admire you for being so… faithful? But—”
She said abruptly, “I have no choice.”
This was a new tack. I thought I heard a faint note of regret. That he insisted on her keeping up the pretense at all times? On pain of dismissal, perhaps?
“Meaning?”
“Everything you say to me and I say to you, he hears, he knows.”
“You have to tell him?” I sounded incredulous.