This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart Read Free Book Online Page B

this, you know. The very mention of a gun seems to have blown everything up right out of proportion. The man’s not a homicidal maniac or anything like it – and never has been, or he wouldn’t be here at all.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. Silly of me to panic.’ She gave a sigh, and subsided in her chair. ‘In any case Lucy probably dreamed it! If she never even
saw
a gun, and never heard it, either … ! Oh, well, let’s forget it, shall we?’
    I didn’t trouble to insist. It no longer mattered. What I had just learned was too fresh and too distressing. I said miserably: ‘I wish I’d been a bit nicer to Mr Gale,that’s all. He must have had a foul time. It’s bad enough for other people, but for his son—’
    ‘Oh, honey, don’t look so stricken!’ Phyl, her worry apparently gone, was back in the role of comforter. ‘We’re all probably
quite
wrong, and there’s nothing the matter at all, except that the old man needs a bit of peace and quiet to recuperate in, and Max is seeing he gets it! If it comes to that, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Max who insists on the quarantine for his own sake; he’s writing the score for some film or other, so the story goes, and
he
never appears at all. Hence all the “trespassers will be shot” stuff, and young Adonis playing bodyguard.’
    ‘Young
who
?’
    ‘Adonis. The gardener.’
    ‘Good heavens! Can anyone get away with a name like that, even in Greece?’
    She laughed. ‘Oh, he does, believe you me!’
    She turned to Godfrey then, saying something about Adonis, who had apparently been a close friend of Spiro’s. I caught Miranda’s name again, and something about a dowry, and difficulties now that the brother was dead; but I wasn’t really listening. I was still caught up unhappily in the news I had just heard. We do not take easily to the displacing of our idols. It was like making a long and difficult journey to see Michelangelo’s David, and finding nothing there but a broken pedestal.
    I found I was reliving, as clearly as if it had been yesterday, that ‘last appearance’ in
The Tempest
; the gentle, disciplined verses resigning Prospero’s darkpowers, and with them, if this story were true, so much more:
    ‘…
This rough magic
I here abjure: and when I have requir’d
Some heavenly music (which even now I do)
To work mine end upon their senses, that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book
…’
    I stirred in my chair, pushed my own distress aside with an effort of will, and came back to the
salotto
, where Godfrey Manning was taking his leave.
    ‘I’d better go. I meant to ask you, Phyl, when’s Leo coming over?’
    ‘He may manage this next weekend, I’m not sure. But definitely for Easter, with the children. D’you have to go? Stay to lunch if you like. Maria’s done the vegetables, thank goodness – how I hate potatoes in the raw! – and the rest’s cold. Won’t you stay?’
    ‘I’d like to, but I want to get back to the telephone. There may be news.’
    ‘Oh, yes, of course. You’ll phone me straight away if you hear anything, won’t you?’
    ‘Certainly.’ He picked up the portfolio. ‘Let me know as soon as you think Maria would like to see me.’
    He said his goodbyes, and went. We sat in silence till the engine of his car faded among the trees.
    ‘Well,’ said my sister, ‘I suppose we’d better find something to eat. Poor Godfrey, he’s taking it hard. Abit surprising, really, I never thought he’d be knocked endways quite like that. He must have been fonder of Spiro than he cares to admit.’
    ‘Phyl,’ I said abruptly.
    ‘Mm?’
    ‘Was that true, or was it just another of your stories, when you said Julian Gale was probably Miranda’s father?’
    She looked at me sideways. ‘Well … Oh, damn it, Lucy, you don’t have to take everything quite so literally! Heaven knows – but