A Maggot - John Fowles (8 page)

'No, sir. But his mother discovered us one day.'

'And gave thee thy wages?'

'If a broom-handle be wages.'

'How cam'st thou to London?'

'By starving.'

"God gave thee no parents?'

'They would not have me back, sir. They are Friends.'

'How friends?'

'What people call Quakers, sir. My master and
mistress too.'

He turns, and stands astride, his hands behind his
back.

What next?'

'The young man gave me a ring, before we were
discovered. It was stole from his mother's box, sir. And I knew when
'twas found out, I should be accused, for she would not hear wrong of
him. So I sold it where I could and came to London, and found a
place, and thought myself fortunate. But I was not, for the husband,
my master, came to lust after me; and I must let him have his way,
fear of my place. Which my new mistress discovered, and then was I
out again upon the street. Where I must come in the end to begging,
because I could find no honest work. There was that in my face seemed
not to please mistresses, and 'tis they who do the hiring.' After a
moment she adds, 'I was carried to it by need, sir. 'Tis so with most
of us.'

'Most in need do not turn strumpet.'

'I know, sir.'

'Therefore the corruption lies in thy wanton nature?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And thy parents were right to reprobate, for all
their false doctrine?'

'For what I did, sir. But I was blamed for all. My
mistress made out I had bewitched her son. Not true, he forced the
first kiss, he stole the ring without my asking, and all that
followed. My father and mother would not hear, for they said I had
denied the inner light. That I was Satan's child, not theirs, and
would poison my sisters.'

'What inner light is that?'

'The light of Christ. 'Tis the manner of their faith,
sir.'

'And not thine, since that day?'

'No, sir.'

'No belief in Christ?'

'No belief that I shall meet Him in this world, sir.
Nor the next.'

'Thou hast belief in a next world?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Which must be Hell, must it not, for such as thee?'

'I pray not, sir.'

'Is it not as sure as that this wood will burn to
ashes?' The girl's head bows deeper, and she does not reply. He goes
on in the same even voice. 'Or as sure as the hell that awaits thee
here on earth, when thou'rt become too stale for the bagnio. Thou'lt
end a

common bawd, Fanny, or a crone in the poorhouse. If
the pox has not already claimed thee. Or think'st thou to multiply
thy sins and swell to another Claiborne in thy after-years? That will
not save thee.' He waits, but the girl does not speak. 'What stops
thy tongue?'

'I would not be what I am, sir. Far less Mistress
Claiborne.'

'The virtuous wife, no doubt. With mewling brats at
thy skirts.'

'I am barren, sir.'

'Then thou art a prize pigeon indeed, Fanny.'

Slowly her head rises and she meets his eyes; it
seems more in puzzlement than in outrage at being taunted so, as if
she were trying to read on his face what she could not comprehend in
his words. His next action is even more incomprehensible, for of a
sudden that arctic face smiles - it is true, hardly an unmistakably
human smile, yet neither is it a cynical or sneering one. Most
singularly, it is nearest to an understanding one. Greater
strangeness still follows, for he takes three or four steps, plants
himself in front of her; bends and takes her right hand and raises it
briefly to his lips. Having done which, he does not release the hand,
but holds it, staring down at her face, and still not without a
smile. For a moment they are, Mr Bartholomew with his bald head,
Fanny with her painted face, like pantaloon figures from some fete
galante by Watteau, despite the very different environment. Abruptly,
he drops the hand and turns away to his original chair, where he
sits, leaving her to stare in shock after him.

'Why did you that, sir?'

'Know you not why gentlemen kiss a woman's hand?'
That final surprise, in his change of person of address to her, is
too much. She lowers her head, and shakes it. 'For what you are about
to give me, dear lamb.'

Her lost eyes seek his again.

'What shall I give, sir?'

'We are come near those waters I spake of, that shall
cure me. Tomorrow we shall meet those who keep them, and who have it
in their power to advance my most cherished hopes. I would bring them
a present, a token of my esteem. Not of money, nor jewels, they care
not for such things. It shall be of you, Fanny.' He contemplates her.
'What say you to that?'

'What I must, sir. That I am bound to Mistress
Claiborne, and sworn to return.'

'A bond with the Devil's no bond.'

'That may be, sir. But she's worse than the Devil to
those that forsake her. She must, or we should all run loose.'

'Have you not said, but a minute past, that you wish
you were not what you are?'

Her voice is almost inaudible.

'I would not be worse still.'

'Did she not say when we engaged that you must please
me in all?'

'Yes, sir. But not that I must please others also.'

'I purchased you for three weeks, did I not?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Then I have two weeks' use of you yet. And in that
use that I have purchased, and dearly, I command this. You shall
tomorrow essay to please those we hope to meet.'

She bows her head, as if in reluctant submission, and
he continues.

'I would have you mark my every word, Fanny. You must
not mistake the manner and appearance of those who keep these waters.
They are but late arrived from their native country. It is most far
from this of ours, and they do not speak our tongue.'

'I know some little French, of Dutch some words
also.'

'Nor that neither. With them you must converse as you
have learnt with Dick.' He is silent, staring at her still bowed
head. 'You have shown well enough there, Fanny. My displeasure was
semblance, to test you for this my real intent. But listen well. In
their country there are no women like you. You have a faculty of
playing the prudish virgin. Such I would have you be tomorrow. No
paint, no finery, no London manners. No knowing looks, no sign of
what you truly are. Demure in all, a young woman brought up in
country modesty, one innocent of men. They we meet would see respect
in you, not your practised lust, not such as you showed me but this
half-hour gone, and have showed a thousand others besides. Is that
understood?'

'So be it they would have me to their beds, I must?'

'What they shall plainly want, that you must do.'

'Whether I would or not?'

'I tell you you shall do their will, that is mine.
Doth Claiborne let you pick and choose, as you were fine lady?'

She bows her head again, and there is silence. Mr
Bartholomew surveys her. His expression now is without cynicism or
sarcasm, or the former cruelty. If anything it shows a strange
patience, or calm; from anachronistic skinhead he seems now become
something even more improbable: Buddhist monk, praeternaturally
equable and contained, drowned in what he is and does. Yet there is a
hint of something else in his eyes, that is more unexpected still.
Nothing in his seeming behaviour until now has predicted this: a
contentment, a satisfaction of the kind his servant Dick had
momentarily shown when the papers were burnt. Nearly a minute passes,
and then he speaks again.

'Go to the window, Fanny.'

She looks up at him, and her side of the silence at
least is explained. Her eyes are wet with tears again, the small
tears of one who knows herself without choice. Her time has little
power of seeing people other than they are in outward; which applies
even to how they see themselves, labelled and categorized by
circumstance and fate. To us such a world would seem abominably
prescribed, with personal destiny fixed to an intolerable degree,
totalitarian in its essence; while to its chained humans our present
lives would seem incredibly fluid, mobile, rich in free will (if not
indeed Midas-rich, less to be envied than to be pitied our lack of
absolutes and of social certainty); and above all anarchically, if
not insanely, driven by self-esteem and self-interest. Fanny does not
weep with frustrated rage, from a modem sense of self, because life
obliges it to suffer this kind of humiliation, but much more with a
dumb animal's sadness. Such humiliation is as inseparable from life
as mud from winter roads; or as child-death from child-birth (of the
2,710 deaths registered in England in the by no means unusual month
previous to this day, very nearly half were of infants below the age
of five). The conditions of such past worlds were more inexorably
fixed than we can imagine; and as little worth expecting sympathy
from as seems proven by Mr Bartholomew's impassive face.

He says quietly, 'Do as I say.'

She still hesitates, but then abruptly stands and
goes to it.

'Now open the shutter and look out.' He waits till he
hears, for he does not turn in his chair to look, the shutter open.
'Do you see the Redeemer on His throne in the heavens, beside His
Father?'

She looks back to where he sits. 'You know not, sir.'

Then what instead?'

'Nothing. The night.'

'And in that night?'

She glances quickly out of the window. 'Nothing but
the stars. The sky is come clear.'

'Do the beams of the brightest shake?'

Again she looks. 'Yes, sir.'

'Do you know why?'

'No, sir.'

'I will tell you. They shake with laughter, Fanny,
for they mock you. They have mocked you since your day of birth. They
will mock you to your day of death. You are but a painted shadow to
them, and all your world. It matters not to them whether you have
faith in Christ or not. Are sinner or saint, drab or duchess. Man or
woman, young or old, it is all one. Whether Hell or Heaven awaits
you, good fortune or bad, pain or bliss, to them it is equal. You are
born for their amusement, as you are bought for mine. Beneath their
light you are but brute, as deaf and dumb as Dick, as blind as Fate
itself. They care not one whit what may become of you, no more for
the courses of your miserable existence than those on a high hill who
watch a battle in the plain below, indifferent to all but its
spectacle. You are nothing to them, Fanny. Shall I tell thee why they
scorn?' She is silent. 'Because thou dost not scorn them back.'

The girl stares across the room at the oblivious back
of his head.

'How should I scorn stars, sir?'

'How do you scorn a man?'

She is slow to answer.

'I turn away, or flout his desire.'

'But say that man's a justice, who would have you
whipped and clapped in the stocks without fair cause?'

'I should protest I was innocent.'

'And if he doth not hear?' She is silent. 'Then you
must needs sit

in the stocks.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Is such, true justice?'

'No.'

'Now say the justice who gives you such justice is no
man, but you yourself, and the stocks you sit in made not of iron and
wood, but of your blindness for the one part and your folly for the
other? What then?'

'I am bemused, sir. I know not what you would have of
me.'

He stands and walks to the hearth.

'What I should have of far more than thee, Fanny.'
'Sir?'

'No more. Get thee to where thou must lie, until thou
wak'st.'

She does not move for a moment or two, then starts to
cross the room towards the door; but stops behind the stool, and
looks obliquely at him.

'My lord, I beg you, what would you have?'

But the only answer she receives is his raised left
arm and hand, that point towards the door. He turns his back upon
her, in final dismissal. She gives Mr Bartholomew one last look, and
an unseen curtsey, and leaves.

For some time in the silence he remains standing and
staring at the now dying fire. At last he turns and looks at the
stool; and a little later goes to the window. There he looks out and
up as she had done, almost as if he wishes to assure himself that
there are indeed stars alone in the sky. It is impossible to read by
his face what he is thinking, although there appears on it now a last
paradoxical metamorphosis. If anything it seems a translation, in
terms of his own sex and features, of the meekness the girl's face
has shown him during their one-sided conversation. In the end he
quietly latches the shutter close again. He walks towards the bed,
unbuttoning his long waistcoat. As he comes to it, he sinks to his
knees on the broadplanks and buries his bald head against its side,
as a man seeking undeserved forgiveness or the oblivion of infancy
might, against a mother's skirt.