The Magus by John Fowles Read Free Book Online Page B

Pasty. Shape, old boy. Central ridge. Here’s your school and your village in this corner. All the rest of this north side and the entire south side deserted. That’s the lie of the land.’
    ‘The school?’
    ‘Best in Greece, actually.’
    ‘Discipline?’ He stiffened his hand karate-fashion.
    ‘Teaching problems?’
    ‘Usual stuff.’ He preened his moustache in the mirror behind the bar; mentioned the names of two or three books.
    I asked him about life outside the school.
    ‘Isn’t any. Island’s quite pretty, if you like that sort of thing. Birds and the bees, all that caper.’
    ‘And the village?’
    He smiled grimly. ‘Old boy, your Greek village isn’t like an English one. Absolute bloody dump socially. Masters’ wives. Haifa dozen officials. Odd pater and mater on a visit.’ He raised his neck, as if his shirt collar was too tight. It was a tic; made him feel authoritative. ‘A few villas. But they’re all boarded up for ten months of the year.’
    ‘You’re not exactly selling the place to me.’
    ‘It’s remote. Let’s face it, bloody remote. And you’d find the people in the villas pretty damn dull, anyway. There’s one that you might say isn’t, but I don’t suppose you’ll meet him.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Actually, we had a row and I told him pretty effing quick what I thought of him.’
    ‘What was it all about?’
    ‘Bastard collaborated during the war. That was really at the root of it.’ He exhaled smoke. ‘No – you’ll have to put up with the other beaks if you want chat.’
    ‘They speak English?’
    ‘Most of ‘em speak Frog. There’s the Greek chap who teaches English with you. Cocky little bastard. Gave him a black eye one day.’
    ‘You’ve really prepared the ground for me.’
    He laughed. ‘Got to keep ‘em down, you know.’ He felt his mask had slipped a little. ‘Your peasant, especially your Cretan peasant, salt of the earth. Wonderful chaps. Believe me. I know.’
    I asked him why he’d left.
    ‘Writing a book actually. Wartime experiences and all that. See my publisher.’
    There was something forlorn about him; I could imagine him briskly dashing about like a destructive Boy Scout, blowing up bridges and wearing picturesque off-beat uniforms; but he had to live in this dull new welfare world, like a stranded archosaur. He went hurriedly on.
    ‘You’ll piss blood for England. Be worse for you, with no Greek. And you’ll drink. Everyone does. Have to.’ He talked about retsina and aretsinato, reiki and ouzo – and then about women. ‘The girls in Athens are strictly O.O.B. Unless you want the pox.’
    ‘No talent on the island?’
    ‘Nix, old boy. Women are about the ugliest in the Aegean. And anyway – village honour. Makes that caper highly dangerous. Shouldn’t advise it. Discovered that somewhere else once.’ He gave me a curt grin, with the appropriate hooded look in his eyes.
    I drove him back towards his club. It was a bronchial mid-afternoon, already darkening, the people, the traffic, everything fish-grey. I asked him why he hadn’t stayed in the Army.
    ‘Too damn orthodox, old boy. Specially in peacetime.’
    I guessed that he had been rejected for a permanent commission; there was something obscurely wild and unstable about him, under the mess mannerisms.
    We came to where he wanted to be dropped off.
    ‘Think I’ll do?’
    His look was doubtful. ‘Treat ‘em tough. It’s the only way. Never let ‘em get you down. They did the chap before me, you know. Never met him, but apparently he went bonkers. Couldn’t control the boys.’
    He got out of the car.
    ‘Well, all the best, old man.’ He grinned. ‘And listen.’ He had his hand on the door-handle. ‘Beware of the waiting-room.’
    He closed the door at once, as if he had rehearsed that moment. I opened it quickly and leant out to call after him. ‘The what?
    He turned, but only to give a sharp wave. The Trafalgar Square crowd swallowed him up. I couldn’t get the