“But you still must have—”

“Feared a fate worse than death? Not really. Partly because Maurice was so eager that we should do it. He said his whole life and happiness depended on it. At one point he even offered to give us a thousand pounds more each.” She stood still, and stared down at me. “Arid never, never the smallest sign of what we were obviously looking for.”

“You said yes again?”

“After a night of talking it over with June. A qualified yes.” She sat down beside me and smiled. “You’ve no idea how sure we’ve been growing that you were helping him to deceive us. That was another thing.”

“It must have been obvious I was no actor.”

“It wasn’t. I thought you were brilliant. Acting as if you couldn’t act.” She turned and lay on her stomach. “Well—we think the story about mystification was just another blind. According to the script we deceive you. But the deceiving deceives us even more.”

“This script?”

“It doesn’t help explain anything. Every week he tells us what we shall do next weekend. In terms of entries and exits. The sort of atmosphere to create. Sometimes lines. But he lets us improvise a lot. All along he says that if things go in some slightly different way it doesn’t really matter. As long as we keep to the main development.”

“That talk about God the other night?”

“They were lines I’d learnt.”

I looked down. “You started telling me all this because you’re frightened.”

She nodded, but seemed for a moment at a loss for words.

“To begin with there was no talk about getting you to fall in love with me except in a very distant nineteen-fifteeny sort of way. Then by that second week Maurice persuaded me that I had to make some compromise between my 1915 false self and your 1953 true one. He asked me if I’d mind kissing you.” She shrugged. “One’s kissed men onstage. I said, no, if it was absolutely necessary. That second Sunday I hadn’t decided. That’s why I put on that dreadful act.”

“It was a nice act.”

“That first conversation with you. I had terrible trac. Far worse than I’ve ever had on a real stage.”

“But you forced yourself to kiss me.”

“Only because I thought I had to.” I followed the hollow of her arched back. She had raised one foot backwards in the air, and the skirt had fallen. The blue silk stocking finished just below the knee; a little piece of bare flesh.

“And yesterday?”

“It was in the script.” Her hair clouded her face.

“That’s not an answer.”

She shook her hair back, gave me a quick look, less shy than I had hoped. “This other thing’s so much more important. And I’m trying to explain.”

“Subject postponed.”

“First of all he must have known that sooner or later you and I would break down the barrier of pretenses—I mean you said it that first night, we are both English, the same sort of background. It was inevitable.”

She stopped, as if she did not want to bring up the next point.

“Go on. And?”

“He warned me last week that I mustn’t get emotionally involved with you in any way.” She stared at the ground in front of her. A blue butterfly hovered over us, moved on.

“Did he give a reason?”

“He said that one day soon I should have to make you hate me. Because you are to fall in love with June. It’s this ridiculous story again.”

“So?”

She turned and sat up and pulled the ends of her hair together under her chin. It made her look Scandinavian, a swan maiden.

“He’s also taken to denigrating you in front of us. Says, oh—you’re too English. Unimaginative. Selfish. Perhaps he’s really accusing us. Anyway, the first time I argued. But now I know he’s deliberately doing it to drive me the other way. Driving us together.” She released her hair, but remained staring thoughtfully out to sea. “He hasn’t got us here to mystify us. But for some other reason. And we think he’s a voyeur. Not an ordinary voyeur, but still a voyeur.” She looked at me. “That’s it.”

Our looks became tangled in supposition: in double and treble deception.

“We seem to have all the same ideas.”

“Because he means us to.”

I stood up, hands on hips. “But it’s fantastic. I mean… what?”

“He’s got a ciné-camera. With a telephoto lens. He says it’s for birds.” I gave her another squinny, and she shrugged. “It would explain why he never… touches us, or anything.”

“If I ever caught the old bastard…”

She folded her arms on her knees. “The thing is this. Do you really want us to come running to you? Which would mean everything here was finished?”

“I’d love you to come running to me.” But she continued staring up, forcing me to answer. “I suppose not.”

“Do you remember that speech he gave me—he did give it to me, as a sort of emergency speech—I said it down on the shingle that Sunday—about your having no poetry? No humor, and all the rest? I’m sure it was just as much for me as for you.”

I sat down by her again.

“This hypnosis?”

“We wouldn’t have let him. But he’s never even asked us. That was the script again.” She wanted to know what it had been like for me. But as soon as I could lied us back to the present.

“Have you seen that cabinet of pottery in the music room?”

“He begged us not to look at it. Which of course made sure that we did.”

“Sometimes I feel it’s all a kind of teasing.”

She turned quickly. “So do I! It’s exactly the word. I think you have to take certain things on trust about people. And I can’t believe Maurice is an evil man. Even perverted. But I don’t know.” She ran her hands through her hair. “There’s that beastly Negro.”

“Yes, what about him?”

“His real name’s Joe—we think. Only we’re supposed to call him Anubis in front of you. He’s a mute.”

“A mute!” I began to understand why he had spat in my face. “You know what he did last night?” I told her. Her eyes dilated a little; at first not believing, then believing me.

“But that’s horrible.”

“Hardly teasing.”

She looked back over her shoulder. “He’s always close to us. Maurice insists that it’s for our protection. But June and I discovered last week that he smokes marijuana. That’s yet another thing.”

“You’ve told Maurice?”

“He says it isn’t an addictive drug. Joe is a blind spot with him.

“You haven’t told me where you live here.”

She turned on the rug and knelt. “Nicholas, now you know our side—do you want to go on? Do you think we ought to go on?” Her eyes searched mine, looking for a decision.

“What do you feel?”

“I feel braver now.”

“We could go on just for a bit. Wait and see.”

She leant schoolgirlishly forward on her hands for a moment. “If we do I don’t want to tell you where we disappear to.”

“Why?”

“In case you gave it away.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Please. Nothing else. Just that.” She sat back on her heels.

“But supposing you were—”

“It’s not as if we were prisoners. If we had to run, we could. One of us could.”

I watched her eyes. “As you’re not in fact emotionally involved, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.” I lay back on my elbow and still kneeling, she looked down at me; then gave a little smile.

“Fronti nulla fides.”

“Gloss, please.”

“It hasn’t been the hardest role to play.”

I began to think that the real girl she was excited me far more than her Lily self; was more tangible, and yet also retained more than a little of the part she had played. The shape of her breasts, her stockiriged feet; a girl too intelligent to abuse her prettiness; and then too intelligent again not to admit it.

“How did you get your scar?”

She raised her left hand and looked at it. 'When I was ten. Playing hide-and-seek.” Her eyes glanced from it at me. “I should have learnt my lesson. I was in a garden shed, and I knocked this long—what looked like a stick off a peg and put up my arm to shield myself.” She mimed it. “It was a scythe. I’m lucky not to be one-handed.”