I looked down under his eyes, then up. “What?”
“If you must speculate, explore other possibilities. But remember. What it is, has no name.”
He stood up, as if he had really only been waiting for a certain time, I presumed the time for Lily to “disappear,” to pass.
As I stood as well I said, “Thank you. Once again. For possessing me.”
He grinned then, his monkey grin, and took my elbow as we walked towards the door of his room. The Bonnards glowed gently from the inner wall. On the landing outside, I came to a decision.
“I think I’ll go for a stroll, Mr. Conchis. I don’t feel very sleepy. Just down to Moutsa.”
I knew he might say that he would come with me and so make it impossible to be at the statue at midnight; but it was a counter-trap for him, an insurance for me. If he let me go out alone, then it would be that he wanted me to walk into the trap, if there was a trap; and if he was genuinely innocent of the assignation, I could still—if discovered and then accused—pretend that I had assumed he was not.
“As you wish.”
He put out his hand in his foreign way and clasped mine with unusual warmth, and watched me for a moment as I went downstairs. But before I had reached the bottom I heard his door close. He might be out on the terrace listening, so I crunched noisily over the gravel to the track out of Bourani. But at the gate instead of turning down to Moutsa I went on up the hill for fifty yards or so and sat down against a tree trunk, from where I could watch the entrance and the track. It was a dark night, no moon, but the stars diffused a very faint luminescence over everything, a light like the softest sound, touch of fur on ebony.
My heart was beating faster than it should. It was partly at the thought of meeting Lily, partly at something far more mysterious, the sense that I was now deep in the strangest maze in Europe. I remembered the feeling I had had one morning walking back to the school; of being Odysseus or Theseus. Now I was Theseus in the maze; somewhere in the darkness Ariadne waited; and the Minotaur.
I sat there for quarter of an hour, smoking but shielding the red tip from view, ears alert and eyes alert. Nobody came; and nobody went.
At five to twelve I slipped back through the gate and struck off eastwards through the trees to the gulley. I moved slowly, stopping frequently. I reached the gulley, waited, then crossed it and walked as silently as I could up the path to the clearing with the statue. It came, majestic shadow, into sight. The seat under the almond tree was deserted. I stood in the starlight at the edge of the clearing, very tense, certain that something was about to happen, straining to see if there was anyone in the dense black background. I had an idea it might be a man with blue eyes and an axe.
There was a loud ching. Someone had thrown a stone and hit the statue. I stepped into the darkness of the pine tree beside me. Then I saw a movement, and an instant later another stone, a pebble, rolled across the ground in front of me. The movement showed a gleam of white, and it came from behind a tree on my side of the clearing, higher up. I knew it was Lily.
I ran up the steep slope, stumbled once, then stood. She was standing beside the tree, in the thickest shadow. I could see her white dress inside the opened cloak, her blonde hair, and suddenly she reached forward with both hands. In four long strides I got to her and her arms went round me, the cloak fell, and we were kissing, one long wild kiss that lasted, with one or two gulps for air, for a fevered readjustment of the embrace, and lasted… in that time I thought I finally knew her. She had abandoned all pretense, she was hot, passionate, she kissed with her tongue as prim 1915 could never have kissed. She let me have her body; met mine. I murmured one or two torn endearments, but she stopped my mouth. A torrent of feelings rushed through me; the knowledge that I was hopelessly in love with her. I had wanted other girls. Alison. But for the first time in my life I wanted desperately to be wanted in return.
She stroked the side of my face, and I turned to kiss her hand; caught it; and brushed my lips down its side and round the wrist to the scar on the back.
A second later I had let go of her and was reaching in my pocket for the matches. I struck one and lifted her left hand. It was scarless. I raised the match. The eyes, the mouth, the shape of the chin, everything about her was like Lily. But she was not Lily. There were little puckers at the corner of her mouth, a slight over-alertness in the look, a sort of calculated impudence; a much more modern face, though it could belong only to a twin sister. She sustained my stare, then looked down, then up again under her eyelashes; she had Lily’s mischievousness, but not her cool gentleness.
“Damn.” I flicked the match away, and struck another. She promptly blew it out.
“Nicholas.” A low, reproachful—and strange—voice.
“There must be some mistake. Nicholas is my twin brother.”
“I thought midnight would never come.”
“Where is she?”
I spoke angrily, and I was angry, but not quite as much as I sounded. It was so neat a modulation into the world of Beaumarchais, of Restoration comedy; and I knew the height the dupe has fallen is measured by his anger.
“She?”
“You forgot your scar.”
“How clever of you to see it was makeup before.”
“And your voice.”
“It’s the night air.” She coughed.
I caught hold of her hand and pulled her roughly over to the seat under the almond tree. Lily had never intended to meet me; it was not the kind of trap I had been expecting, but it was still a trap, with all the same implications for Lily’s honesty of intention.
“Now. Where is she?”
“She couldn’t come. And don’t be so rough.”
“Well where is she?” The girl was silent. “In bed with Maurice?”
“Shame on you.”
“I don’t think you’re very sensitive to shame.”
“I thought it was rather exciting.” She glanced sideways at me. “And so did you.”
“For Christ sake I thought you…” but I didn’t bother to finish the sentence.
“Perhaps you ought to kiss me again.”
She sat as Lily had sat that other afternoon, in a deliberate parody of the same position. Her eyes shut, her mouth slightly thrust forward, as if waiting to be kissed. I ignored her, leant forward, and tried to be lighter.
“Why must I be tormented like this?”
“Is kissing me torment?”
I turned and smiled; as if I admitted being the fool.
“Have a cigarette?”
I fished out a packet of Papastratos and she took one; screwed it into a long black cigarette holder she carried in a little silver wrist bag. I gave her a good look in the match flare; and she examined me, as if she was not feeling so frivolous as she pretended. She inhaled expertly. Her face had, under the soubrette part she was playing, the same intelligence as Lily’s; and for a moment I had a mad feeling that after all it was Lily. But I clung to the moment I had seen her on the terrace; when Lily had had to have a twin sister. Finally she gave a little embarrassed smile, avoided my stare; as if at a loss.
“How was Beirut?”
She was taken by surprise; abruptly cautious. “Who told you about that?”
“Your sister.”
“It was nice. And she didn’t.”
Her face was suspicious; all the lightness had gone.
“All right. She didn’t. Maurice did.”
“I see.” Her voice was cold, still inexplicably wary of something.
“Is there some crime in asking you how Beirut was?”
For answer she reached out and took the box of matches I still had in my hand; struck one. I received a second prolonged scrutiny. I smiled, to show her I was totally unfooled; but prepared to play a part in this new variation.