A Maggot - John Fowles (7 page)

The actor gave him a drily rueful smile. 'And I wish
that we still may, sir. You have raised a devilish curiosity in me,
beside my apprehensions.'

'The first you must quell. For the second you may
rest easy. It is truly like a tale, why, one of your play-pieces. I
think you would not let an audience have the final act before the
first, for all your love of fixed tomorrows? Then leave me my
mysteries also.'

The final act of my pieces will be told, sir. I am
not to have that privilege.'

'And nor can I give it, for it is not yet written.
There is the true difference.' He smiled. 'Lacy, I bid you
goodnight.'

The actor gave him one last searching, yet uncertain,
look, as if he would still say more; then bowed and turned away. But
on opening the door to leave, he stopped in surprise, and looked
back.

'Your man waits here.'

'Send him in.'

The actor hesitated, cast
one more look at the silent man in the shadows outside, passed him
with a curt gesture, and disappeared.

* * *

The deaf-mute servant comes into the room, and closes
the door. He stands by it, staring at his master by the fireplace,
who looks back. Such a fixed, mutual, interlocked regard would have
been strange if it had lasted only a second or two, for the servant
has made no sign of respect. In fact the stare lasts much longer,
beyond all semblance of a natural happening, almost as if they speak,
though their mouths do not move. It is such a look as a husband and
wife, or siblings, might give, in a room where there are other
people, and they cannot say what they truly feel; yet prolonged far
beyond that casual kind of exchange of secret feeling, and quite
devoid even of its carefully hidden hints of expression. It is like
turning a page in a printed book - and where one expects dialogue, or
at least a description of movements and gestures, there is nothing: a
Shandy-like blank page, or a gross error in binding, no page at all.
The two men stand in their silence, in each other's looking, as in a
mirror.

At last both move, and simultaneously, as a stopped
film begins again. Dick turns to the box beside which he stands by
the door. Mr Bartholomew goes back to his chair and sits, and watches
his servant lift the box and carry it to the hearth before the fire.
There he begins immediately to feed the sheafs of written paper
inside the box to the red embers; without a look at his master, as if
they were no more than old newspapers. They catch almost at once, and
now Dick kneels and starts disposing similarly of the leatherbound
books. One by one he takes them out, demi-folios and large quartos,
some smaller, and many stamped in gilt with a coat of arms, and drops
them opened with their pages down, into the mounting flames. One or
two he tears apart by main force, but most he simply lets drop, and
does no more than push them to a heap where they have fallen loose,
or with the primitive poker splays those that are slow to burn from
the packed density of their pages.

Mr Bartholomew stands and picks up the sheaf of
papers on the table, and throws them to blaze with the rest; then
stands behind the crouched servant, who now reaches beside the huge
hearth, where more logs stand piled, to set five or six transversely
across the incandescent pile of paper; then resumes once more his
watching pose. Both men now stare at this small holocaust as they had
earlier stared at each other. Intense shadows dart and shiver about
the bare room, since the hearth flames are far brighter than the
candle-branches. Mr Bartholomew makes a step to look down into the
chest beside the hearth, to be sure that it has been properly
emptied. It seems it has, for he bends and closes its lid; then
returns to his chair and sits again, waiting for this
incomprehensible sacrifice to be concluded; each fallen scrap, each
leaf and page, burnt to ashes.

Several minutes later, when it is near complete, Dick
looks across at Mr Bartholomew; and now there is the ghost of a smile
on his face, the smile of someone who knows why this is done, and is
glad. It is not a servant's smile, so much as an old friend's, even a
collusive fellow criminal's. There, it is done, is it not better so?
As mysterious a smile meets his, and for a few seconds there begins
another stare between the two. This time it is brought to an end by
Mr Bartholomew. He raises his left hand, making a circle of the thumb
and forefinger; then he stiffens his other forefinger and firmly
pierces the circle, just once.

Dick rises and goes to the foot of the bed, where the
benchstool lies; lifts it and comes back with the long piece of
furniture and sets it facing the still lively fire, some ten feet
from it. Then, returning to the bed, he opens its curtains. Without
another look at his master he leaves.

Mr Bartholomew watches the fire, seemingly lost in
thought. He remains so until the door opens again. The young woman
from upstairs, with her painted face, stands on the threshold. She
curtseys, unsmiling, comes into the room a few paces. Dick appears
behind her and closes the door, then waits by it. Mr Bartholomew goes
back to watching the fire, almost as if he resents this interruption;
at last looks coldly at the standing girl. He examines her as he
would an animal: the matching grey-pink brocaded gown and petticoat,
the lace wing-cuffs on the threequarter sleeves, the inverted cone of
her tight-laced bust, the cherry and ivory stomacher, the highly
unnatural colour of the face, the pert white head-cap with its two
hanging side-bands. She wears now also a small throat-necklace of
cornelians, the colour of dried blood. The net result is perhaps not
aesthetically unattractive; yet it seems pathetically out-of-place,
something plain and pleasant turned artificial and pretentious. The
new clothes do not improve appearance, they ruin it.

'Shall I send thee back to Claiborne, Fanny? And bid
her whip thee for thy sullenness?' The girl neither moves nor speaks;
nor seems surprised to be called a different name from the one that
Farthing gave her, of Louise. 'Did I not hire thee out to have my
pleasure?'

'Yes, sir.'

'French, Italian, all thy lewd tricks.' Again the
girl says nothing. 'Modesty sits on thee like silk on dung. How many
different men have cleft thee this last six month?'

'I don't know, sir.',

'Nor how many ways. Claiborne told me all of thee
before we struck our bargain. Even the pox is afraid to touch thy
morphewed carcase.' He watches her. 'Thou hast played boy to every
Bulgar in London. Why, even worn men's clothes to please their lust.'
He stares at her. 'Answer. Yea or nay?'

'I have worn men's clothes, sir.'

'For which thou shale roast in hell.'

'I shan't be alone, sir.'

'But double roasted, since thou art the cause.
Think'st thou God makes no distinction in his wrath between those
that fall and those that make them fall? Between Adam's weakness and
Eve's wickedness?'

'I cannot tell, sir.'

'I tell thee. And I tell thee I'll have my money's
worth of thee, whether thou wilt or not. Didst ever hear a public
hackney tell its master how to ride?'

'I have done your will, sir.'

'In shadow. Thy insolence has showed as naked as thy
breasts. Dost think me so blind I did not catch that look of thine at
the ford?'

'It was but a look, sir.'

'And that tuft of flowers beneath thy nose but
violets?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Thou lying jade.'

'No, sir.'

'I say yes, sir. I saw thy glance and what it spake:
what stench in the nostrils thy damned violets were for.'

'I wore them for themselves, sir. I meant no else.'

'And swear to it?'

'Yes, sir.'

"Then get thee to thy knees. Here.' He points to
a place in front of him, beside the bench. The girl hesitates, then
comes forward and kneels, her head still bowed. 'And let me see thy
eyes.' The grey ones stare down into the uplifted brown. 'Say this: I
am a public whore.'

'I am a public whore.'

'Hired for your use.'

'Hired for your use.'

'To please you in all.'

To please you in all.'

'I am issued of Eve, with all her sins.'

'I am issued of Eve.' 'With all her sins.'

'With all her sins.'

'And guilty of insolence.'

'Guilty of insolence.'

'Which henceforward I do renounce.'

'Which henceforward I do renounce.'

'And so I swear.'

'So I swear.'

'Or may I be damned in hell.'

'Damned in hell.'

Mr Bartholomew stares down into her eyes a long
moment. There seems something demonic now in that face beneath the
bald head; demonic not in its anger or emotion, but in its coldness,
its indifference to this female thing before him. It speaks of a
hitherto hidden trait in his character: a sadism before Sade, still
four years unborn in the dark labyrinths of real time; and as
unnatural as the singeing smell of burnt leather and paper that
pervades the room. Had one to represent in a face the very antithesis
of human feeling, it is here, and frighteningly so.

'Thou art shriven. Now bare thy putrid body.'

The girl looks down a moment at the floor, then rises
to her feet and begins to unlace her dress. Mr Bartholomew still sits
implacably in the chair where he has read. The girl turns her back
slightly to him as her undressing proceeds. At the conclusion of it
she sits on the far end of the benchstool, beside the garments she
has removed, and peels off her clocked stockings. At last she sits
naked, but for the necklace of cornelians and the cap, with her hands
in her lap, her head once more bowed. Her body is not truly to the
masculine taste of its time: it is slim and small-breasted, and more
white than rosy, although it shows not a sign of the morphew it has
just been accused of.

'Shall he serve thee?' The girl says nothing.
'Answer.'

My inclination is to you, sir. But you won't have
it.'

'No, to him. And his cockpiece.'

'It was your will.'

'To see you sport and couple. Not strut your
attachment like turtling doves. Art not ashamed, to have had
acquaintance with the finest, and now fall so low?' Once more she
says nothing. 'Answer.'

Seemingly driven at last beyond timidity, she does
not. Mr Bartholomew stares at her, with her mutely mutinous bowed
head, then across at Dick by the door; and again they regard each
other, as before she came, in some mysterious blank page. Yet not for
long; although with no apparent sign from Mr Bartholomew, Dick turns
abruptly and leaves. The girl glances quickly round at the door, as
if surprised at this going; but will not look at Mr Bartholomew for
explanation.

Now they are alone, he stands and goes to the fire.
There he stoops and takes the poker and carefully pushes some last
scraps of page and paper that have escaped burning towards the now
flaming logs that were added. He straightens and looks down at what
he has done, his back to her. Slowly her head comes up to watch him.
Some kind of speculation, or calculation, clouds those brown eyes.
She hesitates, then stands and goes softly on her bare feet behind
that impassive back. She murmurs something in a low voice, inaudible
across the room. The offer made is not difficult to guess, since her
hands rise in a cautious yet practised fashion and come to rest on
the sides of his damask coat, while her naked body moves to press
lightly against his back, as a pillion passenger's might.

The hands are immediately caught; not angrily, but
merely prevented from slipping forward; and unexpectedly his voice is
less scathing and bitter.

'Thou art a fool and a liar, Fanny. I heard thy
pantings when last he rammed thee.'

"Twas only feigning, sir.'

What thou'dst fain have.'

'No, sir. 'Tis you I desire to please.'

'He says nothing, and her hands attempt to escape his
and insinuate themselves forward. Now they are firmly removed.

'Then dress. And I'll tell thee how.'

Still she solicits. 'With all my heart, sir. I'll
make you stand tall as a beadle's staff, that then you may use on
me.'

'Thou hast no heart. Cover thy shamelessness. Away.'

He remains at the fire with his back turned while she
dresses, it a seeming brown study. When she is ready, she sits again
on the bench and waits; so long that in the end she speaks.

'I am dressed, sir.'

'He glances half round, as if indeed from some
reverie, then resumes his staring down at the fire.

'When wert thou first debauched?'

Something in that voice from the hidden face, some
unexpected spark of curiosity, makes her slow to answer.

'At sixteen, sir.'

'In a bagnio?'

'No, sir. A son of the house where I was maid.'

'In London?'

'In Bristol. Where I was born.'

'He got thee with child?'