Free Mantissa by John Fowles Page B

had the most ghastly manager, our so-called musical uncle, he was an absolute pansy – of course that’s why Mummy picked him, he had about as much interest in women as a film-star has in anonymity. We used to call him Aunt Polly, Thalia and me. That’s my only other sister who has a sense of humor. He used to pluck tweely away while we were supposed to prance around in our special costumes looking frightfully soulful and intelligent and all the rest of it. I mean that was the act. You’ve never seen anything so pathetic in all your life.”
    He raises his eyebrows in gratitude for this valuable insight into primitive Greek religion.
    “Apollo Musagetes, that was his real name. His stage name.”
    Now his mouth opens, in some surprise.
    “That’s what irritated me so much when you talked of swanning through the olive groves. Some chance. We’d hardly started menstruating before we were pushed off on our first tour. Pindus, Helicon, every wretched little mountain between. Honestly, I knew every temple dressing-room in Greece by the time I was fourteen. We might get booked in as the Glorious Muses. All we really were was the Delphi Dancing Girls. Most of it was about as much fun as playing Pittsburgh on a wet Sunday night.”
    He makes an appropriate gesture of prayer, for forgiveness.
    “Pig. Anyway, my mother had this boy transferred off the mountain the month before. Two of my sisters had complained about something they’d seen him doing, I was never told quite what. Apparently he was being rather beastly to one of his ewes. That was it, of course. Out he went. I can’t imagine why he should have crossed my mind that particular day.”
    She reclines a little farther back, and raises her knees; then extends one leg in the air, turning and inspecting the slim ankle for a moment, before bringing it back to its partner.
    “Actually… oh well, there was something, I suppose I’d better tell you. Again, by pure chance, one day before he was given the boot, I was walking on my own and happened to pass near his beech tree. It was terribly hot that day, too. I was rather surprised to notice he wasn’t there, though all his smelly old sheep were. Then I remembered, Olympus knows why, that there was a spring not far away. It came out of a cave and made a little pool. Actually it was our pool, it was supposed to be a kind of combined bath and bidet for my sisters and myself, but never mind. Anyway, I had nothing better to do, all this was in that absolutely marvelous time before the alphabet and writing was invented – my Zeus, if we’d only realized. We should be so lucky.” She throws him a dark look. “So I went to the pool. He was having a bathe. Naturally I didn’t want to disturb his privacy, so I stepped behind some bushes.” She glances at the man on the chair. “Is this boring you?”
    He shakes his head.
    “You’re quite sure?”
    He nods.
    “I was only fourteen.”
    He nods again. She turns on her side, towards him, and curls up her legs a little. Her right hand smooths the sheet.
    “He came out of the Pierian Fountain – that was Aunt Polly’s prissy name for this pool – and sat on a rock beside it to dry. And then – he was only a simple country boy, of course. Actually, to cut a long story short, he began… well, playing with a rather different sort of pipe. Or syrinx, as we called it. He obviously thought he was alone. I was frankly quite shocked. Disgusted. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen naked men before, at my aunt’s in Cyprus.” She looks up. “Did I tell you she lived in Cyprus?”
    He shakes his head. She goes back to smoothing the sheet.
    “Anyway. As a matter of fact I’d always thought their little hanging things looked rather silly. All that horrible pelt surrounding them. I couldn’t understand why they shaved their beards every day, but not that. Why they couldn’t see that my aunt and her woman friends and me looked so much prettier.” She looks up again. “I suppose