John Fowles - The Ebony Tower

A Collection of Short Stories
by

Contents

The Ebony Tower

Et par forezlongues et lees

Par leusestrange et sauvages

Et passamainz felons passages

Et maintperil et maint destroit

Tant qu'ilvint au santier tot droit

--CHRETIEN DETROYES, Yvain

David arrived atCotminais the afternoon after the one he had landed at Cherbourgand driven down to Avranches, where he had spent the interveningTuesday night. That had allowed an enjoyable meander over theremaining distance; a distant view of the spectacular spired dream ofMont St Michel, strolls round St Malo and Dinan, then south in thesplendid early September weather and through the new countryside. Hetook at once to the quiet landscapes, orcharded and harvested,precise and pollarded, self-concentrated, exhaling a spent fertility.Twice he stopped and noted down particularly pleasing conjunctions oftone and depth--parallel stripes of water-colour with pencilled notesof amplification in his neat hand. Though there was some indicationof the formal origin in these verbal notes--that a stripe of colourwas associated with a field, a sunlit wall, a distant hill--he drewnothing. He also wrote down the date, the time of day and theweather, before he drove on.

He felt a little guilty tobe enjoying himself so much, to be here so unexpectedly alone,without Beth, and after he had made such a fuss; but the day, thesense of discovery, and of course the object of the whole exerciselooming formidably and yet agreeably just ahead, everything conspiredto give a pleasant illusion of bachelor freedom. Then the final fewmiles through the forest of Paimpont, one of the last large remnantsof the old wooded Brittany, were deliciously right: green and shadedminor roads with occasional sunshot vistas down the narrow rides cutthrough the endless trees. Things about the old man's most recent andcelebrated period fell into place at once. No amount of reading andintelligent deduction could supplant the direct experience. Wellbefore he arrived, David knew he had not wasted his journey.

He turned off down an evensmaller forest road, a deserted voie communale; and a mile or soalong that he came on the promised sign. Manoir de Cotminais.Chemin priv. There was a white gate, which he had to open and shut.Haifa mile on again through the forest he found his way barred, justbefore the trees gave way to sunlight and a grassy orchard, by yetanother gate. There was a sign-board nailed to the top bar. Its wordsmade him smile inwardly, since beneath the heading Chien mchantthey were in English: Strictly no visitors except by priorarrangement. But as if to confirm that the sign was not to be takenlightly, he found the gate padlocked on the inner side. It must havebeen forgotten that he was arriving that afternoon. He feltmomentarily discomfited; as long as the old devil hadn't forgottenhis coming completely. He stood in the deep shade staring at thesunlight beyond. He couldn't have forgotten, David had sent a briefnote of reminder and grateful anticipation only the previous week.Somewhere close in the trees behind him a bird gave a curioustrisyllabic call, like a badly played tin flute. He glanced round,but could not see it. It wasn't English; and in some obscure way thisreminded David that he was. Guard-dog or not, one couldn't... he wentback to his car, switched off and locked the doors, then returned tothe gate and climbed over.

He walked along the drivethrough the orchard, whose aged trees were clustered with codlingsand red cider-apples. There was no sign of a dog, no barking. Themanoir, islanded and sundrenched in its clearing among the sea ofhuge oaks and beeches, was not quite what he had expected, perhapsbecause he spoke very little French--hardly knew the country outsideParis--and had translated the word visually as well as verbally interms of an English manor-house. In fact it had more the appearanceof a once substantial farm; nothing very aristocratic about thefaade of pale ochre plaster broadly latticed by reddish beams andcounterpointed by dark brown shutters. To the east there was a littlewing at right angles, apparently of more recent date. But theensemble had charm; old and compact, a warm face of character, a goodsolid feel. He had simply anticipated something grander.

There was a gravelledcourtyard opposite the southward of the house. Geraniums by the footof the wall, two old climbing roses, a scatter of white doves on theroof; all the shutters were in use, the place asleep. But the maindoor, with a heraldic stone shield above, its details effaced bytime, and placed excentrically towards the west end of the house, waslodged open. David walked cautiously across the gravel to it. Therewas no knocker, no sign of a bell; nor, mercifully, of the threateneddog. He saw a stone-flagged hail, an oak table beside an ancientwooden staircase with worn and warped medieval-looking banisters thatled upwards. Beyond, on the far side of the house, another open doorframed a sunlit garden. He hesitated, aware that he had arrivedsooner than suggested; then tapped on the massive main door with hisknuckles. A few seconds later, realizing the futility of the weaksound, he stepped over the threshold. To his right stretched a longgallery-like living-room. Ancient partitions must have been knockeddown, but some of the major black uprights had been retained andstood out against the white walls with a skeletal bravura. The effectwas faintly Tudor, much more English than the exterior. A veryhandsome piece of dense but airy space, antique carved-woodfurniture, bowls of flowers, a group of armchairs and two sofasfurther down; old pink and red carpets; and inevitably, the art... nosurprise--except that one could walk in on it like this--since Davidknew there was a distinguished little collection beside the old man'sown work. Famous names were already announced. Ensor, Marquet, thatlandscape at the end must be a 'cool' Derain, and over the fireplaceBut he had to announce himself. He walked across the stone floorbeside the staircase to the doorway on the far side of the room. Awide lawn stretched away, flowerbeds, banks of shrubs, someornamental trees. It was protected from the north by a high wall, andDavid saw another line back there of lower buildings, hidden from thefront of the house; barns and byres when the place was a farm. Inmidlawn there was a catalpa pruned into a huge green mushroom; in itsshade sat, as if posed, conversing, a garden table and three wickerchairs. Beyond, in a close pool of heat, two naked girls lay side byside on the grass. The further, half hidden, was on her back, as ifasleep. The nearer was on her stomach, chin propped on her hands,reading a book. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, its crown looselysashed with some deep red material. Both bodies were very brown,uniformly brown, and apparently oblivious of the stranger in theshadowed doorway thirty yards away. He could not understand that theyhad not heard his car in the forest silence. But he really wasearlier than the 'tea-time' he had proposed in his letter; or perhapsthere had after all been a bell at the door, a servant who shouldhave heard. For a brief few seconds he registered the warm tones ofthe two indolent female figures, the catalpa-shade green and thegrass green, the intense carmine of the hat-sash, the pink wallbeyond with its ancient espalier fruit-trees. Then he turned and wentback to the main door, feeling more amused than embarrassed. Hethought of Beth again: how she would have adored this being plungedstraight into the legend... the wicked old faun and his famousafternoons.

Where he had firstintruded he saw at once what he had, in his curiosity, previouslymissed. A bronze handbell sat on the stone floor behind one of thedoor-jambs. He picked it up and rang--then wished he hadn't, thesharp schoolyard jangle assaulted the silent house, its sunlit peace.And nothing happened; no footsteps upstairs, no door opening at thefar end of the long room he stood in. He waited on the threshold.Perhaps half a minute passed. Then one of the girls, he didn't knowwhich, appeared in the garden door and came towards him. She now worea plain white cotton galabiya; a slim girl of slightly less thanmedium height and in her early twenties; brown and gold hair andregular features; level-eyed, rather wide eyes, and barefooted. Shewas unmistakably English. She stopped some twenty feet away, by thebottom of the stairs.