Free Mantissa by John Fowles Page A

artist’s model. “You’re really asking for it again. The only good line you came up with was when that doctor said you ought to be stuffed and put in a museum.”
    She looks in the twilight for somewhere to hang her tunic; then walks around the end of the bed to the cuckoo clock in the far corner. There she hangs it from a projecting chamois-head at the corner of one of the eaves. Without looking at him she returns to the bed, plumps up the pillows, and sits back in the center of it with folded arms. He moves to join her.
    “Oh no you don’t. You can get the chair and sit there.” She points to a place on the carpet ten feet from the bed. “And listen to someone else for once in your life.”
    He fetches the chair and sits where she has indicated; then folds his arms as well. The Grecian-haired girl on the bed stares at him with an unconcealed suspicious resentment, then quickly at something lower down his body, before transferring her disdainful gaze to the light-panel over the door. There is a silence, during which his eyes do not leave her body. It is not a body, now it is revealed in all its beauty, that encourages leaving in any sense. It somehow contrives, all at the same time, to be both demure and provocative, classical and modern, individual and Eve-like, tender and unforgiving, present and past, real and dreamed, soft and…
    She gives him a fierce look. “And for God’s sake stop staring at me like a dog waiting for a bone.” He looks down. “Unlike you I try to think before I tell a story.” He bows his head in assent. “You’d better regard it as a tutorial. Not just about sexual arrogance, either. But on how to get simply and quickly to the point, instead of beating endlessly about the bush. Like some people I could mention.”
    There is a further silence, then she begins to narrate.
    “If you must know, it happened at home. I was only sixteen. There was a place, a sort of alpine meadow surrounded by dense undergrowth, where I used to go sometimes on my own to sunbathe. It was very hot, July, and I’d taken off my tunic. A favorite aunt of mine – actually I’ve always been more like a daughter to her than a niece – has always held strong naturist views. It was she who first taught me not to be ashamed of my body. Some people say I look rather like her. She has a thing about sea-bathing as well – summer and winter. But that wouldn’t mean anything to you.”
    She unfolds her arms and puts her hands behind her head, still staring at the light over the door.
    “Anyway. There I was in my meadow. A couple of nightingales singing in the bushes nearby. Wild flowers, buzzing bees, all that sort of thing. The sun on my fifteen-year-old back. Then I thought I might get burnt. So I knelt up and rubbed some olive oil I’d brought all over my skin. I can’t imagine why, but as I was smoothing it in, instead of reflecting on naturist principles I began thinking about a young shepherd. By pure chance I’d met him once or twice. His name was Mopsus. Purely by chance, on walks. There was a beech tree he used to loll about under when it was hot. Playing a pipe, and if you think my lute is out of tune… anyway. A month before my mother – you know about my parents?”
    He nods.
    “She just had this thing about shepherds. After the divorce.”
    He nods again.
    “Not that you could ever imagine, being a man. I mean twins are bad enough. But nonuplets, and the whole lot daughters. There had to be a limit, even in those days.” She looks at him as if he might disagree; but he puts on his most understanding face. “I had to live with it all my childhood. Constant rows over the alimony. I’m not entirely blaming Daddy, she went through more sets of lawyers than dresses at a sale. And anyway, heaven knows she made enough out of the nine of us once we were old enough. Talk about traveling freak shows. We were hardly ever off the road in the beginning. It was worse than being the Rolling Stones. And we