All the time I was silent, and kept my eyes closed. She teased the words; I was the frog. A willing frog; the wind blew in the pines above, she said each couplet in her dry-sweet voice. After each couplet, she paused. A little silence, the wind. Then the next couplet.
She finished. Without moving, I opened my eyes and looked back. A fiendish green-and-black face, with protuberant fire-red eyes, glared down at me. I twisted over. She was holding a Chinese carnival mask on a stick, in her left hand. I saw the scar. I grinned, and she lowered the mask to her nose and stared over it at me with taunting eyes.
She had changed into a long-sleeved white blouse and a long gray skirt and her hair was tied back by a black velvet bow. I pushed the mask aside. She was smiling.
“I have come to gobble you up.”
“I haven’t even been a-wooing yet.” She half raised the mask again and looked at me over the top of it with silent incredulity. “Well, I haven’t been a-wooing you yet.”
“You cannot woo me.”
“Why not?”
“Forbidden.”
“By you?”
“By everything.”
She put her hands round her enskirted knees and leant back and stared up through the branches at the sky. A fine throat. She was wearing absurd black lace-up boots.
“I saw your twin sister this morning.”
“That was very clever. I have no sister.”
“Yes you have. She was standing with a charming young man dressed in black. It was quite a shock. To see him dressed at all.” She looked down, and made no answer. “Where did you hide?”
“I went home.”
“Over there?” I pointed towards the sea.
“Yes. Over there.”
I knew it was no good; she wouldn’t lay down the other mask. I shrugged, smiled at her now rather serious, perceptibly watchful face and reached for my cigarettes. I offered her one, but she shook her head. She watched me strike the match and inhale a couple of times, and then suddenly reached out her hand.
“Have one.” I held out the packet, but she wanted the cigarette in my mouth.
“One puff.”
She took the cigarette and pecked out her lips at it in the characteristic way of first smokers; took a little puff, then a bigger one. She coughed and buried her head in her knees, holding out the cigarette for me to take back.
“Horrible.”
“Beautifully acted.”
She bowed her head again to cough. I looked at the nape of her neck, her slim shoulders, her total reality.
“Where did you train?”
“Train?” She spoke into her knees.
“Which drama school? RADA?”
She shook her head, then looked up and said, “I have never had a dramatic training.” I had the impression that this was the truth, a remark out of role; and that she sensed that I sensed it, and had to improvise defense. She went on quickly, “As far as I know.”
“Oh of course. You suffer from amnesia.” She was silent, looking straight ahead, as if in two minds about whether to play at being offended or not. She threw me a veiled look, then stared ahead again. I lay on my elbow. “I don’t mind in the least being made a fool of, but I can’t stand every attempt at natural curiosity being treated as bad taste.” I watched the side of her face. We were at right angles to each other. She remained chin on knees, eyes lost in the distance.
I said after a few moments, “You’re trying—very successfully—to captivate me. Why?”
She made no attempt this time to be offended. One realized progress more by omissions than anything else; by pretenses dropped.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
She picked up the mask and held it like a yashmak again.
“I am Astarte, mother of mystery.” The piquant gray-violet eyes dilated, and I had to laugh.
I said, very gently, “Buffoon.”
The eyes blazed. “Blasphemy, oh foolish mortal!”
“Sorry, I’m an atheist.”
She put down the mask.
“And a traitor.”
“Why?” I remembered the reference to treachery during the palm-reading.
“Astarte knows all.” She looked sideways at me, coolly, changing the mood. The cable from Alison.
There was silence. She kept hugging her knees, looking at the ground in front of her.
“He told you about this girl.”
“You told me.”
“I told you!”
“I was there when you told Maurice.”
“But we were in the garden. You can’t have been.”
She wouldn’t look at me. “She is Australian. You… lived with her as man and wife.”
“He told you, didn’t he?” Silence. “You know what her job is?” She nodded. “Let me hear you say it.”
“She is an air-hostess.”
“What is an air-hostess?”
“She looks after passengers on airplanes.”
“How do you know that? You died in 1916.”
“I asked Maurice.”
“I bet you’re good at chess.”
“I cannot play chess.”
“Why don’t you ask him about your own past?”
“I know I was born in London. We lived in a part of London called St. John’s Wood. Maurice lived in St. John’s Wood too. I studied music, I was in love with Maurice, we became engaged, but then the dreadful war came and he had to go away and I went to nurse and… I caught typhoid.” She was barely pretending this was true; simply reciting her “past,” with a small smile, in order to tease me.
I reached out and caught her hand. At the same time I heard the sound of a boat engine; she heard it as well, but her eyes gave nothing away.
She said in a small, cold voice. “Please let me go.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“You’re hurting my wrist.”
“Promise not to go.”
There was a pause. She said, “I promise not to go.” I quickly raised her wrist and kissed it before she could react. She gave me an uncertain glance, then pulled her hand away, but not too roughly. She swiveled round and turned her back to me. I picked up a cone.
“I suppose he told you this Australian girl sent me a cable yesterday.” She did not answer. “If you said I could meet you, how shall I put it… officially?… here next weekend, or unofficially somewhere else… in the village? Anywhere. I shouldn’t go.” There was a pause. “I’m trying to be frank. Not treacherous.” Her back was silent. “I haven’t been very happy on Phraxos. Not until I came here, as a matter of fact. I’ve been, well, pretty lonely. I know I don’t love… this other girl. It’s just that she’s been the only person. That’s all.”
“Perhaps to her you seem the only person.”
“There are dozens of other men in her life. Honestly. There’ve been at least three more since I left England.” A runner ant zigzagged neurotically up the white back of her blouse and I reached and flicked it off. She must have felt me do it, but she did not turn. “It was nothing. Just an affaire.”
She didn’t speak for some time. I craned round to see her face. It was pensive. She said, “I know you did not believe what Maurice said last night. But it was true.” She glanced round solemnly at me. “I am not the real Lily. But I am not anyone impersonating the real Lily.”
“Because you’re dead?”
“Yes. I am dead.”
I crouched beside her, tapped her shoulder.
“Now listen. All this is very amusing. But it just doesn’t hold water. First there are several of you. You’ve got a twin sister, and you know it. You do this disappearing trick, and you have this charming line of mystery talk. Period dialogue and mythology and all the rest. But the fact is, there are two things you can’t conceal. You’re intelligent. And you’re as physically real as I am.” I pinched her arm, and she winced. “I don’t know whether you’re doing all this because you love the old man. Because he pays you. Because it amuses you. Because you’re his mistress. I don’t know where you and your sister and your other friends live. I don’t really care, because I think the whole idea’s original, it’s charming to be with you, I like Maurice, I think this is all fun… but don’t let’s take it all so bloody seriously. Play your charade. But for Christ’s sake don’t try to explain it.”