Read A Maggot - John Fowles for Free Online

that too is pulled over her
close-drawn hair and hung beside the rest. She is naked now, above
her swanskin and linen under-petticoats.
    She does all this quickly and naturally, as if she is
alone. The effect on the watching man is peculiar, since from the
moment she has begun undressing, his feet have been cautiously
shifting; but not towards her. He edges thus back against the inner
wall of the room; only its beams and plaster can prevent him from
retreating further still.
    Now she pours water and washes, having extracted a
small wash-ball of gilliflower soap from the glass pot: her face and
neck, the front of her body and her arms. Her movements make the
candle-light in front of her tremble a little; occasionally some
small twist of her body or arms causes a gleaming reflection on the
wet skin, or shows a soft rim of its whiteness on the edge of the
black-brown silhouette of her bare back. Among the rafters moves a
sinister parody, in elongated and spiderlike shadows, of the simple
domesticity of the ritual. It is sinister in both senses, for it is
clear now she is left-handed by nature. Not once does she turn while
this is going on, or while she is patting herself dry; and not once
do the silent man's eyes move from her half-naked body.
    Now she takes the blue bottle and moistens a corner
of her linen towel in the liquid it contains, which she dabs here and
there about her bared body; at the sides of her neck, beside her
armpits, and somewhere in front. A perfume of Hungary water creeps
down the room.
    She reaches sideways for her smicket and puts it on
again. And now she does turn, and brings the candle to the bed,
beside the man. She sits. Another little china pot is taken - the
ball of soap has been carefully dried and replaced in its own
container - and set beside the candle. It contains ceruse, a white
cream or unguent made of lead carbonate, a universal cosmetic of her
age, more properly seen as a lethal poison. She takes some on a
forefinger and rubs it on her cheeks, then all over her face with
little circular movements. The neck receives similar treatment; the
tops of the shoulders. She reaches next back to the bundle an takes
the mirror and one of the minuscule blue bottles, stoppered with a
cork. She examines her face for a moment. The light o this improvised
dressing-table is too far away; picking up th candlestick, she turns
towards the man, indicating where she wants it held, closer.
    He comes forward and takes it, and holds it slightly
to one side, within a foot of the girl's face. She spreads the linen
towel on he lap, carefully unlids the last small gallipot; it holds a
carmine ointment. A minute amount of this she touches across her lips
spreading the colouring first with her tongue, next, mirror in hand,
with a fingertip; every so often she touches the fingertip against
each cheekbone and rubs the colouring there as well, using it as a
rouge as well as a lip-salve. At last, satisfied with the effect, she
puts the mirror down and relids the gallipot. Having done that, she
pushes the human candle-holder's wrist gently away and reaches for
another blue bottle. That has a goose quill in its cork when it is
opened. To apply its colourless liquid she tilts her head back and
allows one drop to fall into each opened eye. Perhaps it stings, for
she blinks rapidly on each occasion. That bottle is recorked; and
only then does she look up at the man.
    The brilliance of her eyes, already dilating under
the influence of the belladonna, the heightened colour of her mouth
and cheeks - the carmine is not a natural red at all - make it clear
that this is no maid, though the effect is far more doll-like than
aphrodisiac. Only those tawny irises, in their enlarging pupils,
remain of the simple young woman who dozed on the bed fifteen minutes
before. The corner of her red lips curve just enough to hint at a
smile; yet innocently, almost as if she is the staring man's sister,
indulging some harmless foible in him. After a few