A Maggot - John Fowles Read online

  You choose to be playful. I think this not the moment.'

  'Then let us talk no more nonsense. I bring no harm to king or country, nor to any person thereof. I place neither body nor soul in danger. My mind perhaps, but a man's mind is his own business. What I am upon may be a wild goose chase, a foolish dream. Whom I wish to meet may . . . ' but he broke off, then put the paper with the others on the table beside his chair. 'No matter.'

  'This person is in hiding?'

  Mr Bartholomew stared at him for a moment.

  'No more, Lacy. I beg you.'

  'I must still ask why I should be deceived, sir.'

  'My friend, that question sits strangely in your mouth. Have you not spent your own life deceiving?' Lacy seemed set back a moment by such a charge. The man in the chair stood and went to the fire, his back to the actor. 'But I will tell you. I am born with a fixed destiny. All I told you of my supposed father I might have said of my true one - and much worse, for he is an old fool; and hath given birth to another, that is my elder brother. I am, as you might be, offered a part in a history, and I am not forgiven for refusing to play it. Mark, the case between us is not exact. If you will not play, you lose but your money. I lose ... more than you may imagine.' He turned. 'I have no liberty, Lacy, unless I steal it first. If I go where I will, as now, I must go as a thief from those who would have me do as they want. That is all. And now truly, I would say no more.'

  The actor looked down, with a little shrug and nod, as if confessing himself baffled; and the speaker went on in a more even tone, and watching him.

  'Tomorrow we leave together. In a very few miles we shall come to where we must part. The road you and your man shall take joins that to Crediton and Exeter, which city I would have you gain with all speed. Once there you may return to London as you please and when you please. The only thing I desire of you to conceal is all that concerns me and the manner of our coming to this place. As we agreed at the beginning.'

  'Does the maid not come with us?' 'No.'

  'I must tell you something.' He left a little pause. 'Jones, that is Farthing, believes he has seen her before.'

  Mr Bartholomew turned away to the fire again. There was a small silence.

  'Where?'

  The actor eyed his back. 'Entering a bagnio, sir. Where he was told she was employed.'

  'And what said you to that?'

  'I would not believe him.'

  'You were right. He is mistaken.'

  'But nor is she now a lady's maid, sir, by your own admittance. I think you must know your man is smitten. Farthing tells me, for good reason. He is not spurned.' He hesitated. 'He has gone to where she lies, at night.'

  Mr Bartholomew gave him a long look, as if the actor now grew impertinent; but then he showed a distinctly sarcastic smile.

  'May a man not lie with his own wife?'

  The actor was once again caught unawares. He stared moment at Mr Bartholomew, then down.

  'So be it. I have said what I must.'

  'And I do not impugn the regard that inspired it. We will settle our business and bid our formal adieux tomorrow, but permit me now to thank you for your assistance and patience. I have had little commerce with your profession. If they are all like you, I perceive I have lost by my ignorance. Though you cannot credit me in so much else, you will, I hope, credit me in that. I most sincerely wish we might have met in more open circumstances.'

  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 f
rom 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?'

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

  'And gave thee thy wages?'

  'If a broom-handle be wages.'
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  '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