Read Online Daniel Martin by John Fowles - Free Book Online Page B

Jane and me to watch’
    ‘I’m not wholly devoid of imagination, Nell. Now for fuck’s sake pack it in.’
    His voice has something rare in it: a rawness. A silence. Then as if satisfied, the old weapon once again proven good, she retreats into simplicity.
    ‘I’m sorry. We’re not blackmailing. Just begging.’
    ‘It’s all such ancient history now.’
    ‘Not for Anthony.’ She added, ‘But it’s totally up to you.’
    He wavers, calculates, stares out at downtown Los Angeles six or seven miles away; feels strangely frightened, as if the reflection in the glass is his own accusing ghost; like an empiricist threatened with supernatural pattern, though he thinks not of doors, but of traps, returns out of freedom, the digging-up of corpses; of more than one death.
    ‘Is Jane still there? Can I speak to her?’
    ‘Wait… yes, all right. Here she is.’
    ‘Dan, I’m sorry. We’re both in a rather overwrought state.’
    ‘All right, Jane. I understand. Now listen. Cast your mind back a thousand years. Do you remember a day when you threw a full champagne bottle into a river? And you said, when I asked you why, I can’t remember the exact words, but something like, It felt right. Do you remember that?’
    ‘Just.’
    ‘Then forget all these years of silence between us. All the anger. The betrayal. And give me one more equally inspired total judgment. Would it feel wrong if I didn’t come? Do you want me to come?’
    ‘I haven’t the right to say, Dan.’
    ‘Not unless I ask. Which I just have.’ He adds, ‘I’m between films. I was coming home soon.’
    And he waits, he sees, already, as he sometimes does at the very early stages of a new script, permutations, forks, openings to exploit.
    ‘Anthony would be eternally grateful. If that doesn’t sound too silly.’
    ‘And you?’
    At last she says, ‘Please. If you possibly can.’
    ‘An there’s very little time?’
    No.
    The decision is on him, almost before he knows it is there, and he feels the image is from seeing, not experience like a surfer, suddenly caught on the crest, and hurled forward. It is both a moment of will, as if, like the surfer, he was waiting for this; and simultaneously one of abandonment… no sooner willed than transferring will to the wave.
    ‘Okay. This call’s costing you the earth, so listen. Tell Anthony I’m on my way. Give him my every sympathy. And just put on Nell for one moment more, will you?’
    ‘I sometimes think I ought to have thrown myself instead of the bottle.’
    ‘I shall demand an explanation of that when we meet.’
    There is silence, the last. Then she says, ‘I don’t know what to say, Dan. Forgive me.’
    Then it is Nell again.
    ‘I’ll try and get a flight tomorrow. Just warn Caro I’m coming back, will you?’
    ‘I’ll telephone her this evening.’
    Thanks.
    And he puts down the receiver, meanly, before she can find a tone of voice for whatever repentance or gratitude she too feels. Then he stares into the lit plains of the California night, seeing Oxford, a grey winter morning, five thousand miles away. From somewhere down below there rises the neurotic switching wail of a patrol-car siren. Without turning, he says, ‘Two fingers, Jenny. Straight, please.’
    He stares at the glass when she silently brings it, then up into her eyes with a wry smile.
    ‘And fuck your great-grandmother.’
    She holds his eyes, probing. ‘What’s happened?’
    ‘My erstwhile brother-in-law wants to see me.’
    ‘But I thought… the one with cancer?’
    He swallows half the whisky. He stares down at the glass. He looks up at her, then down again. ‘We were very close once, Jenny. I’ve never really talked to you about all that.’
    ‘You told me they’d excommunicated you.’
    He turns away from her eyes, looks out again over the endless city. ‘He was my best friend at Oxford. We were a… sort of quartet. The two sisters. He and I.’ He gives her a diffident grimace, searching her