The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

  Sam and Mary--but who can be bothered with the biography of servants? They married, and bred, and died, in the monotonous fashion of their kind.

  Now who else? Dr. Grogan? He died in his ninety-first year. Since Aunt Tranter also lived into her nineties, we have clear proof of the amiability of the fresh Lyme air.

  It cannot be all-effective, though, since Mrs. Poulteney died within two months of Charles's last return to Lyme. Here, I am happy to say, I can summon up enough interest to look into the future--that is, into her after-life. Suitably dressed in black, she arrived in her barouche at the Heavenly Gates. Her footman--for naturally, as in ancient Egypt, her whole household had died with her--descended and gravely opened the carriage door. Mrs. Poulteney mounted the steps and after making a mental note to inform the Creator (when she knew Him better) that His domestics should be more on the alert for important callers, pulled the bellring. The butler at last appeared.

  "Ma'am?"

  "I am Mrs. Poulteney. I have come to take up residence. Kindly inform your Master."

  "His Infinitude has been informed of your decease, ma'm. His angels have already sung a Jubilate in celebration of the event."

  "That is most proper and kind of Him." And the worthy lady, pluming and swelling, made to sweep into the imposing white hall she saw beyond the butler's head. But the man did not move aside. Instead he rather impertinently jangled some keys he chanced to have in his hand.

  "My man! Make way. I am she. Mrs. Poulteney of Lyme Regis."

  "Formerly of Lyme Regis, ma'm. And now of a much more tropical abode."

  With that, the brutal flunkey slammed the door in her face. Mrs. Poulteney's immediate reaction was to look round, for fear her domestics might have overheard this scene. But her carriage, which she had thought to hear draw away to the servants' quarters, had mysteriously disappeared. In fact everything had disappeared, road and landscape (rather resembling the Great Drive up to Windsor Castle, for some peculiar reason), all, all had vanished. There was nothing but space--and horror of horrors, a devouring space. One by one, the steps up which Mrs. Poulteney had so imperially mounted began also to disappear. Only three were left; and then only two; then one. Mrs. Poulteney stood on nothing. She was most distinctly heard to say "Lady Cotton is behind this"; and then she fell, flouncing and bannering and ballooning, like a shot crow, down to where her real master waited.

  45

  And ah for a man to arise in me,

  That the man I am may cease to be!

  --Tennyson, Maud (1855)

  * * *

  And now, having brought this fiction to a thoroughly traditional ending, I had better explain that although all I have described in the last two chapters happened, it did not happen quite in the way you may have been led to believe. I said earlier that we are all poets, though not many of us write poetry; and so are we all novelists, that is,we have a habit of writing fictional futures for ourselves, although perhaps today we incline more to put ourselves into a film. We screen in our minds hypotheses about how we might behave, about what might happen to us; and these novelistic or cinematic hypotheses often have very much more effect on how weactually do behave, when the real future becomes the present, than we generally allow. Charles was no exception; and the last few pages you have read are not what happened, but what he spent the hours between London and Exeter imagining might happen. To be sure he did not think in quite the detailed and coherent narrative manner I have employed; nor would I swear that he followed Mrs. Poulteney's postmortal career in quite such interesting detail. But he certainly wished her to the Devil, so it comes to almost the same thing.

  Above all he felt himself coming to the end of a story; and to an end he did not like. If you noticed in those last two chapters an abruptness, a lack of consonance, a betrayal of Charles's deeper potentiality and a small matter of his being given a life span of very nearly a century and a quarter; if you entertained a suspicion, not uncommon in literature, that the writer's breath has given out and he has rather arbitrarily ended the race while he feels he's still winning, then do not blame me; because all these feelings, or reflections of them, were very present in Charles's own mind. The book of his existence, so it seemed to him, was about to come to a distinctly shabby close.

  And the "I," that entity who found such slickly specious reasons for consigning Sarah to the shadows of oblivion, was not myself; it was merely the personification of a certain massive indifference in things--too hostile for Charles to think of as "God"--that had set its malevolent inertia on the Ernestina side of the scales; that seemed an inexorable onward direction as fixed as that of the train which drew Charles along.

  I was not cheating when I said that Charles had decided, in London that day after his escapade, to go through with his marriage; that was his official decision, just as it had once been his official decision (reaction might be a more accurate word) to go into Holy Orders. Where I have cheated was in analyzing the effect that three-word letter continued to have on him. It tormented him, it obsessed him, it confused him. The more he thought about it the more Sarah-like that sending of the address--and nothing more--appeared. It was perfectly in key with all her other behavior, and to be described only by oxymoron; luring-receding, subtle-simple, proud-begging, defending-accusing. The Victorian was a prolix age; and unaccustomed to the Delphic.

  But above all it seemed to set Charles a choice; and while one part of him hated having to choose, we come near the secret of his state on that journey west when we know that another part of him felt intolerably excited by the proximity of the moment of choice. He had not the benefit of existentialist terminology; but what he felt was really a very clear case of the anxiety of freedom--that is, the realization that one is free and the realization that being free is a situation of terror.

  So let us kick Sam out of his hypothetical future and back into his Exeter present. He goes to his master's compartment when the train stops.

  "Are we stayin' the night, sir?"

  Charles stares at him a moment, a decision still to make, and looks over his head at the overcast sky.

  "I fancy it will rain. We'll put up at the Ship."

  And so Sam, a thousand unpossessed pounds richer, stood a few minutes later with his master outside the station, watching the loading of Charles's impedimenta on to the roof of a tired fly. Charles showed a decided restlessness. The portmanteau was at last tied down, and all waited on him.

  "I think, Sam, after that confounded train journey, I will stretch my legs. Do you go on with the baggage."

  Sam's heart sank.

  "With respeck, Mr. Charles, I wouldn't. Not with them rainclouds up there about to break."

  "A little rain won't hurt me."

  Sam swallowed, bowed.

  "Yes, Mr. Charles. Shall I give horders for dinner?"

  "Yes . . . that is ... I'll see when I come in. I may attend Evensong at the Cathedral."

  Charles set off up the hill towards the city. Sam watched him gloomily on his way for a little while, then turned to the cabby.

  "Eh--'card of Hendicott's Family 'Otel?"

  "Aye."

  "Know where it is?"

  "Aye."

  "Well, you dolly me up to the Ship double quick and you may 'ear somethink to your hadvantage, my man."

  And with a suitable aplomb Sam got into the carriage. It very soon overtook Charles, who walked with a flagrant slowness, as if taking the air. But as soon as it had gone out of sight he quickened his pace. Sam had plenty of experience of dealing with sleepy provincial inns. The luggage was unloaded, the best available rooms chosen, a fire lit, nightwear laid out with other necessities--and all in seven minutes. Then he strode sharply out into the street, where the cabby still waited. A short further journey took place. From inside Sam looked cautiously round, then descended and paid off his driver.

  "First left you'll find 'un, sir."

  "Thank you, my man. 'Ere's a couple o' browns for you." And with this disgracefully mean tip (even
for Exeter) Sam tipped his bowler over his eyes and melted away into the dusk. Halfway down the street he was in, and facing the one the cabby had indicated, stood a Methodist Chapel, with imposing columns under its pediment. Behind one of these the embryo detective installed himself. It was now nearly night, come early under a gray-black sky.

  Sam did not have to wait long. His heart leaped as a tall figure came into sight. Evidently at a loss the figure addressed himself to a small boy. The boy promptly led the way to the corner below Sam's viewpoint, and pointed, a gesture that earned him, to judge by his grin, rather more than twopence. Charles's back receded. Then he stopped and looked up. He retraced a few steps back towards Sam. Then as if impatient with himself he turned again and entered one of the houses. Sam slipped from behind his pillar and ran down the steps and across to the street in which Endicott's Family stood. He waited a while on the corner. But Charles did not reappear. Sam became bolder and lounged casually along the warehouse wall that faced the row of houses. He came to where he could see the hallway of the hotel. It was empty. Several rooms had lights. Some fifteen minutes passed and it began to rain.

  Sam bit his nails for a while, in furious thought. Then he began to walk quickly away.

  46

  As yet, when all is thought and said,

  The heart still overrules the head;

  Still what we hope we must believe,

  And what is given us receive;

  Must still believe, for still we hope

  That in a world of larger scope,

  What here is faithfully begun

  Will be completed, not undone.

  My child, we still must think, when we

  That ampler life together see,

  Some true results will yet appear

  Of what we are, together, here.

  --A. H. Clough, Poem (1849)

  * * *

  Charles hesitated in the shabby hall, then knocked on the door of a room that was ajar and from which light came. He was bade enter, and so found himself face to face with the proprietress. Much quicker than he summed her up, she summed him: a fifteen-shillinger beyond mistake. Therefore she smiled gratefully. "A room, sir?"

  "No. I ... that is, I wish to speak with one of your ... a Miss Woodruff?" Mrs. Endicott's smile abruptly gave way to a long face. Charles's heart dropped. "She is not... ?"

  "Oh the poor young lady, sir, she was a-coming downstairs the day before yesterday morning and she slipped, sir. She's turned her ankle something horrible. Swole up big as a marrow. I wanted to ask the doctor, sir, but she won't hear of it. 'Tis true a turned ankle mends itself. And physicians come very expensive."

  Charles looked at the end of his cane. "Then I cannot see her."

  "Oh bless me, you can go up, sir. 'Twill raise her spirits. You'll be some relative, I daresay?"

  "I have to see her ... on a business matter."

  Mrs. Endicott's respect deepened. "Ah ... a gentleman of the law?"

  Charles hesitated, then said, "Yes."

  "Then you must go up, sir."

  "I think ... would you please send to ask if my visit were not better put off till she is recovered?"

  He felt very much at a loss. He remembered Varguennes; sin was to meet in privacy. He had come merely to inquire; had hoped for a downstairs sitting room--somewhere both intimate and public. The old woman hesitated, then cast a quick eye at a certain open box beside her rolltop desk and apparently decided that even lawyers can be thieves--a possibility few who have had to meet their fees would dispute. Without moving and with a surprising violence she called for one Betty Anne.

  Betty Anne appeared and was sent off with a visiting card. She seemed gone some time, during which Charles had to repel a number of inquisitive attempts to discover his errand. At last Betty Anne came back: he was prayed to go up. He followed the plump maid's back to the top floor and was shown the scene of the accident. The stairs were certainly steep; and in those days, when they could rarely see their own feet, women were always falling: it was a commonplace of domestic life.

  They came to a door at the end of a mournful corridor. Charles, his heart beating far faster than even the three flights of steep stairs had warranted, was brusquely announced.

  "The gennelmun, miss."

  He stepped into the room. Sarah was seated by the fire in a chair facing the door, her feet on a stool, with both them and her legs covered by a red Welsh blanket. The green merino shawl was round her shoulders, but could not quite hide the fact that she was in a long-sleeved nightgown. Her hair was loose and fell over her green shoulders. She seemed to him much smaller--and agonizingly shy. She did not smile, but looked down at her hands--only, as he first came in, one swift look up, like a frightened penitent, sure of his anger, before she bowed her head again. He stood with his hat in one hand, his stick and gloves in the other.

  "I was passing through Exeter."

  Her head bowed a fraction deeper in a mingled understanding and shame.

  "Had I not better go at once and fetch a doctor?"

  She spoke into her lap. "Please not. He would only advise me to do what I am already doing."

  He could not take his eyes from her--to see her so pinioned, so invalid (though her cheeks were a deep pink), helpless. And after that eternal indigo dress--the green shawl, the never before fully revealed richness of that hair. A faint cedary smell of liniment crept into Charles's nostrils.

  "You are not in pain?"

  She shook her head. "To do such a thing ... I cannot understand how I should be so foolish."

  "At any rate be thankful that it did not happen in the Undercliff."

  "Yes."

  She seemed hopelessly abashed by his presence. He glanced round the small room. A newly made-up fire burned in the grate. There were some tired stems of narcissus in a Toby jug on the mantelpiece. But the meanness of the furnishing was painfully obvious, and an added embarrassment. On the ceiling were blackened patches--fumes from the oil lamp; like so many spectral relics of countless drab past occupants of the room.

  "Perhaps I should ..."

  "No. Please. Sit down. Forgive me. I ... I did not expect..." He placed his things on the chest of drawers, then sat at the only other, a wooden chair by the table, across the room from her. How should she expect, in spite of her letter, what he had himself so firmly ruled out of the question? He sought for some excuse.

  "You have communicated your address to Mrs. Tranter?"

  She shook her head. Silence. Charles stared at the carpet.

  "Only to myself?"

  Again her head bowed. He nodded gravely, as if he had guessed as much. And then there was more silence. An angry flurry of rain spattered against the panes of the window behind her.

  Charles said, "That is what I have come to discuss."

  She waited, but he did not go on. Again his eyes were fixed on her. The nightgown buttoned high at the neck and at her wrists. Its whiteness shimmered rose in the firelight, for the lamp on the table beside him was not turned up very high. And her hair, already enhanced by the green shawl, was ravishingly alive where the firelight touched it; as if all her mystery, this most intimate self, was exposed before him: proud and submissive, bound and unbound, his slave and his equal. He knew why he had come: it was to see her again. Seeing her was the need; like an intolerable thirst that had to be assuaged.

  He forced himself to look away. But his eyes lighted on the two naked marble nymphs above the fireplace: they too took rose in the warm light reflected from the red blanket. They did not help. And Sarah made a little movement. He had to look back to her.

  She had raised her hand quickly to her bowed head. Her fingers brushed something away from her cheek, then came to rest on her throat.

  "My dear Miss Woodruff, pray don't cry ... I should not have not come... I meant not to ..."

  But she shook her head with a sudden vehemence. He gave her time to recover. And it was while she made little dabbing motions with a handkerchief that he was overcome with a
violent sexual desire; a lust a thousand times greater than anything he had felt in the prostitute's room. Her defenseless weeping was perhaps the breach through which the knowledge sprang--but suddenly he comprehended why her face haunted him, why he felt this terrible need to see her again: it was to possess her, to melt into her, to burn, to burn to ashes on that body and in those eyes. To postpone such desire for a week, a month, a year, several years even, that can be done. But for eternity is when the iron bites.

  Her next words, to explain her tears, were barely audible.

  "I thought never to see you again."

  He could not tell her how close she had come to his own truth. She looked up at him and he as quickly looked down. Those same mysterious syncopal symptoms as in the barn swept over him. His heart raced, his hand trembled. He knew if he looked into those eyes he was lost. As if to ban them, he shut his own. The silence was terrible then, as tense as a bridge about to break, a tower to fall; unendurable in its emotion, its truth bursting to be spoken. Then suddenly there was a little cascade of coals from the fire. Most fell inside the low guard, but one or two bounced off and onto the edge of the blanket that covered Sarah's legs. She jerked it hastily away as Charles knelt quickly and seized the small shovel from the brass bucket. The coals on the carpet were quickly replaced. But the blanket smoldered. He snatched it away from her and throwing it on the ground hastily stamped out the sparks. A smell of singed wool filled the room. One of Sarah's legs still rested on the stool, but she had put the other to the ground. Both feet were bare. He looked down at the blanket, made sure with one or two slaps of his hand that it no longer smoldered, then turned and placed it across her legs once more. He was bent close, his eyes on the arranging. And then, as if by an instinctive gesture, yet one she half dared to calculate, her hand reached shyly out and rested on his. He knew she was looking up at him. He could not move his hand, and