This time, almost as if recognizing Maitland's need, the vision came to him quickly. He passed the dark cliffs, and the waves vaulting into the cave mouths, and then entered the twilight world of the grottoes beside the river. Outside, through the stone galleries, he could see the surface of the water glittering like a sheet of prisms, the soft blue light reflected in the vitreous mirrors which formed the cavern walls. At the same time he sensed that he was entering the high-gabled house, whose surrounding wall was the cliff face he had seen from the sea. The rock-like vaults of the house glowed with the olive-black colours of the marine deeps, and curtains of old lace-work hung from the doors and windows like ancient nets.
A staircase ran through the grotto, its familiar turnings leading to the inner reaches of the cavern. Looking upwards, he saw the green-robed figure watching him from an archway.
Her face was hidden from him, veiled by the light reflected off the damp mirrors on the walls. Impelled forward up the steps, Maitland reached towards her, and for an instant the face of the figure cleared…
'Judith!' Rocking forward in his chair, Maitland searched helplessly for the water jug on the table, his left hand drumming at his forehead in an attempt to drive away the vision and its terrifying lamia.
'Richard! What is it?'
He heard his wife's hurried footsteps across the lawn, and then felt her hands steadying his own.
'Darling, what on earth's going on? You're pouring with perspiration!'
That afternoon, when he was left alone again, Maitland approached the dark labyrinth more cautiously. At low tide the gulls returned to the mud flats below the garden, and their archaic cries carried his mind back into its deeps like mortuary birds bearing away the body of Tristan. Guarding himself and his own fears, he moved slowly through the luminous chambers of the subterranean house, averting his eyes from the green-robed enchantress who watched him from the staircase. Later, when Judith brought his tea to him on a tray, he ate carefully, talking, to her in measured tones. 'What did you see in your nightmare?' she asked. 'A house of mirrors under the sea, and a deep cavern,' he told her. 'I could see everything, but in a strange way, like the dreams of people who have been blind for a long time.' Throughout the afternoon and evening he returned to the grotto at intervals, moving circumspectly through the outer chambers, always aware of the robed figure waiting for him in the doorway to its innermost sanctum.
The next morning Dr Phillips called to change his dress-'Excellent, excellent,' he commented, holding his torch in one hand as he retaped Maitland's eyelids to his cheeks. 'Another week and you'll be out of this for good. At least you know what it's like for the blind.' 'One can envy them,' Maitland said. 'Really?'
'They see with an inner eye, you know. In a sense everything there is more real.'
'That's a point of view.' Dr Phillips replaced the bandages. He drew the curtains. 'What have you seen with yours?' Maitland made no reply. Dr Phillips had examined him in the darkened study, but the thin torch beam and the few needles of light around the curtains had filled his brain like arc lights. He waited for the glare to subside, realizing that his inner world, the grotto, the house of mirrors and the enchantress, had been burned out of his mind by the sunlight. 'They're hypnagogic images,' Dr Phillips remarked, fastening his bag. 'You've been living in an unusual zone, sitting around doing nothing but with your optic nerves alert, a no-man's land between sleep and consciousness. I'd expect all sorts of strange things.' After he had gone Maitland said to the unseen walls, his lips whispering below the bandages: 'Doctor, give me back my eyes.'
It took him two full days to recover from this brief interval of external sight. Laboriously, rock by rock, he re-explored the hidden coastline, willing himself through the enveloping sea-mists, searching for the lost estuary.
At last the luminous beaches appeared again. 'I think I'd better sleep alone tonight,' he told Judith. 'I'll use mother's room.' 'Of course, Richard. What's the matter?' 'I suppose I'm restless. I'm not getting much exercise and there are only three days to go. I don't want to disturb you.' He found his own.way into his mother's bedroom, glimpsed only occasionally during the years since his marriage. The high bed, the deep rustle of silks and the echoes of forgotten scents carried him back to his earliest childhood. He lay awake all night, listening to the sounds of the river reflected off the cut-glass ornaments over the fireplace.
At dawn, when the gulls flew up from the estuary, he visited the blue grottoes again, and the tall house in the cliff. Knowing its tenant now, the green-robed watcher on the staircase, he decided to wait for the morning light. Her beckoning eyes, the pale lantern of her smile, floated before him.
However, after breakfast Dr Phillips returned. 'Right,' he told Maitland briskly, leading him in from the lawn. 'Let's have those bandages off.' 'For the last time, Doctor?' Judith asked. 'Are you sure?' 'Certainly. We don't want this to go on for ever, do we?' He steered Maitland into the study. 'Sit down here, Richard. You draw the curtains, Judith.'
Maitland stood up, feeling for the desk. 'But you said it would take three more days, Doctor.' 'I dare say. But I didn't want you to get overexcited. What's the matter? You're hovering about there like an old woman. Don't you want to see again?' 'See?' Maitland repeated numbly. 'Of course.' He subsided limply into a chair as Dt: Phillips' hands unfastened the bandages. A profound sense of loss had come over him. 'Doctor, could I put it off for-'
'Nonsense. You can see perfectly. Don't worry, I'm not going to fling back the curtains. It'll be a full day before you can see freely. I'll give you a set of filters to wear. Anyway, these dressings let through more light than you imagine.'
At eleven o'clock the next morning, his eyes shielded only by a pair of sunglasses, Maitland walked out on to the lawn. Judith stood on the terrace, and watched him make his way around the wheelchair. When he reached the willows she called: 'All right, darling? Can you see me?' Without replying, Maitland looked back at the house. He removed the sunglasses and threw them aside on to the grass. He gazed through the trees at the estuary, at the blue surface of the water stretching to the opposite bank. Hundreds of the gulls stood by the water, their heads turned in profile to reveal the full curve of their beaks. He looked over his shoulder at the high-gabled house, recognizing the one he had seen in his dream. Everything about it, like the bright river which slid past him, seemed dead. Suddenly the gulls rose into the air, their cries drowning the sounds of Judith's voice as she called again from the terrace. In a dense spiral, gathering itself off the ground like an immense scythe, the gulls wheeled into the air over his head and swirled over the house. Quickly Maifiand pushed back the branches of the willows and walked down on to the bank.
A moment later, Judith heard his shout above the cries of the gulls. The sound came half in pain and half in triumph, and she ran down to fiae trees uncertain whether he had injured himself or discovered something pleasing. Then she saw him standing on the bank, his head raised to the sunlight, the bright carmine on his cheeks and hands, an eager, unrepentant Oedipus.
The Lost Leonardo
The disappearance - or, to put it less euphemistically - the theft of the Crucifixion by Leonardo da Vinci from the Museum of the Louvre in Paris, discovered on the morning of April I9, I965, caused a scandal of unprecedented proportions. A decade of major art thefts, such as those of Goya's Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery, London, and collections of impressionists from the homes of millionaires in the South of France and California, as well as the obviously inflated prices paid in the auction rooms of Bond Street and the Rue de Rivoli, might have been expected to accustom the general public to the loss of yet another over-publicized masterpiece, but in fact the news of its disappearance was received by the world with genuine consternation and outrage. From all over the globe thousands of telegrams poured in daily at the Quai d'Orsay and the Louvre, the French consulates at Bogota and Guatemala City were stoned, and the panache and finesse of press attaches at every embassy from Buenos Aires to Bangkok were strained to their not inconsiderable limits. ' I myself reached Paris over twenty-four hours after what:! was being called 'the great Leonardo scandal' had taken I place, and the atmosphere of bewilderment and indignation was palpable. All the way from Orly Airport the newspaper headlines on the kiosks blazoned the same story. As the Continental Daily Mail put it succinctly: