The Magus - John Fowles [200]
kissed her. After a moment she sank back and I lay beside her. Her shirt had rucked up and I bent and kissed her stomach, then touched her navel with my tongue, and she pressed my head down against her bare skin. The lunch stood on the table. Hermes picked up one of the roped crates as soon as he saw us, and began to carry it down to the beach. Four times he reappeared during the meal and went down with another crate. She went and changed out of her suit into pale blue trousers; dark blue, pale blue, changing before a walk... I remembered Alison. And looking at Julie, forgot her. We sat and ate; not very much. Neither of us was hungry. "I went mad while you were away. Trying to find out where you hid here." "Maurice thought someone in the village would tell you." "In the village?" She reached out and took a Kalamata olive; bit it, her amused eyes on mine. "I'll show you. If you're good." "I've just remembered. Some Latin poem Maurice asked me to ask you about. _Nullos_ something? By Catullus." "_Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle_..." "That was it." "The last line says, 'What a woman tells a passionate lover should be written in wind and running water." "Should it?" She dropped her eyes. "Ask me tomorrow." "I love you." But Hermes came to fetch the last picture crate and we were silent. I reached out with my bare foot and touched hers. Our eyes were serious, our feet played, pressed; soles and souls. We went up to my room to get my things. Julie stood in the door while I filled my dufflebag. I sat on the bed to tie up the strings round the neck. She came in and gently lifted the old photo of the house. The gecko clung to the wall. I said, "You've slept in this room." She nodded. I reached out and caught her hand, and made her sit beside me. We sat in silence, in the silent house, as if there were ghosts that could be listened to and heard. I kept on thinking of the bare skin under the shirt; of her body; and then of how much more than bare skin and body she was. Perhaps it was seeing her in contemporary clothes; but I was intensely aware of her in a new nonsexual way. As a companion, a partner in life; in some ways, as an innocent--a very intelligent innocent, but one that needed protecting, cherishing; and her innocense, living up to. I felt a new sort of ardour, an anxious desire to hide nothing from her, to have nothing of her hidden from me. I was longing to tell her about Alison, longing for her sympathy and understanding. But the lie I had told her a fortnight before stood like a black guard, like Joe, between me and the absolving sunlight. As soon as we had consummated the physical thing, I would go to confession; and even then I knew a little wave of relief at the thought that there was now only one witness of that weekend in Athens. Those moments on Parnassus need never he told. As a substitute, to confess something, I told her about the letters I had written: to the bank, to her mother. "I don't mind. We've done the same." "The same!" "June telephoned the British Council. From Nauplia. Years ago." We grinned. Silence. Hands. "Julie." "Nicholas." Always those tenderly impenetrable eyes. "I want to marry you." She withdrew her hands gently. I moved closer and put my arms round her shoulders. "What's wrong?" "I want you to take me to bed with you first." "But I'm dying to. You know I am." She misinterpreted my movement. "Not here." "Of course not here." "I'm so frightened that you'll be disappointed." I shook her. "You're just a neurotic spinster." "I know." "I'll be as patient and gentle as..." She gave me a quick smile, then stood up and went to the door. We remained staring at each other. She murmured, "Not too gentle." I followed her fair head down the stairs. She went ahead of me into the music room, then whisked round, playful, a sudden idea. She said just one word. "Encore?" I knew what she meant. I stood back against the wall. She disappeared, a pause, the sound of a drawer opening, then she was standing in the doorway, with the recorder flue brush in her hand; with miraculously the same look at me, the