The Magus - John Fowles [159]
we went on. She said, "I feel so desperate for Englishness sometimes. For knowing where you are with things." "I know." "Then I think it's cowardly. It's part of growing up, not clinging to England as if we'd drown if we ever let go. But if you hadn't come tonight.. We came to where the beach curved away out to the headland. I led her a little way into the trees, up a bill, and then sat down against a pine and made her curl against me. We kissed; tender-mouthed, though I felt too excited for tenderness. She let me undo the top button of her blouse and I caressed her throat, her shoulders. I ran my hand lower over a silky slip--her breast underneath, almost naked. She caught my wrist then, holding my hand still, where it was. "Please don't." "It's so nice." "Please don't. Not because it isn't nice." Gently, firmly she pushed my hand out, then sat up; then stood, turned, buttoned her blouse, and swiftly knelt beside me, her face in her hands, elbows on her knees. I stroked her hair. "I'm not using you." "I know you aren't." "Your body's so pretty. It's meant to be caressed." She took my hand and kissed it; then let herself be cradled again. She said, "Talk to me." "What about?" "About England. About Oxford, about anything." So I talked; and she was touchingly like a child, lying there with her eyes closed, occasionally asking a question, sometimes saying little bits about herself, but mainly content to listen. The sky became dark. I kissed her once or twice, but it became a silent closeness, a lying touching, in which time soundlessly hurtled on. She made me hold my wrist so that she could see the dial. It was five to eleven. "I must go." "Just a few minutes more." "I shouldn't..." but even while she was saying it her arms came up and around me and as if she had been restraining herself all evening she suddenly began to kiss me with passion. If at the first moment it seemed a degree desperate, more a determination than a desire to be passionate, it soon became real. The kiss went on and on, our positions changed, so that she was lying half on top of me. I could feel rising within me the exasperation of sexual desire, of the feel of encumbering clothes, everything that stands between skin and skin. Finally we were half struggling, half kissing. And then she was pushing, pulling herself away, on her feet, and shrill shock, the whistle sounded. I sprang up and caught her by the arms. "Why did you do that?" She gave me a racked look, mixed reproach and asking for forgiveness. "You make me wild." It seemed torn out of her, a kind of self-horror. Then she was in my arms again, being gripped frantically to me and wanting to be gripped, a brutally fierce kiss. But we both heard the quick pad of the running feet. She twisted round and free. Said in a low voice to him, "Stop there." He rocked on his feet, as if in two minds, then stood twenty yards away. I whispered, "I love you. I'm mad about you." She turned back to me; her hair had fallen loose and she looked strange, struck silent, her eyes so intense; as if she had begun to suspect me all over again. I took her face in my hands and drew her a little towards me, then whispered the words again; begging her to believe. "I love you." She bowed her head, then pulled on her cardigan, saying nothing, but standing so close that it said everything. I pulled her against me for a moment, and then she answered, in a voice so low I hardly heard. "I want you to love me." A last moment; then she ran past the Negro and down through the trees towards the shingle of the beach. For an instant the mothlike whiteness of her skirt showed; was swallowed up in darkness. The Negro leaned against a pine. He was without his mask and I felt more relaxed with him than before; sure that I was the tricker this time, he the tricked. "Would you like a cigarette?" No answer. "Just to show there are no hard feelings." Suddenly he switched a torch on; only for a second, but it dazzled me; and it was plainly to silence my tongue. "Thanks." For two or three minutes we stood in dense darkness and silence. I smoked,