The Magus - John Fowles [285]
"Don't look. I havna any clothes on." I looked. She was standing by the fire pulling down an outsize man's singlet. I saw, with an unpleasant little shock, that she was almost pretty by gaslight. I turned my back and reached for a cigarette. "Now look, Jojo, I'm just not going to have this. I will not have sex with you." "I didn't fancy to get into your clean bed with all m' clothes on." "Get warm. Then hop straight back." I got halfway through my cigarette. "It's only 'cause you been so awfla nice to me." I refused to answer. "I only want to be nice back." "If it's only that, don't worry. You owe me nothing." I slid a look round. She was sitting on the floor with her plump little back to me, hugging her knees and staring into the fire. More silence. She said, "It isn't only that." "Go and put your clothes on. Or get into bed. And then we'll talk." The gas hissed away. I lit another cigarette from the end of the last. "I know why." "Tell me." "You think I've got one of your nasty London diseases." "Jojo." "I mebbe have. You don't have to be ill at all. You can still carry all the microbes round with you." "Stop it." "I'm only sayin' what you're thinldn'." "I've _never_ thought that." "I don't blame you. I don't blame you at all." "Jojo, shut up. Just shut up." Silence. "You juist want to keep your beautiful Sassenach coddies clean." Then her bare feet padded across the floor and the bedroom door was slammed--and sprung open again. After a moment I heard her sobbing. I cursed my stupidity; I cursed myself for not having paid more attention to various signs during the evening--washed hair done into a ponytail, one or two looks. I had a dreadful vision of a stem knock on the door, of Alison standing there. I was also shocked. Jojo never swore and used as many euphemisms as a girl of fifty times her respectability. Her last line had cut. I lay a minute, then went into the bedroom. The gasfire cast warm light through. I pulled the bedclothes up round her shoulders. "Oh Jojo. You clown." I stroked her head, keeping a firm grip on the bedclothes with the other hand, in case she made a spring for me. She began to snuff. I passed her a handkerchief. "Can I tell you somethin'?" "Of course." "I've never done it. I've never been to bed with a man." "Jesus." "I'm clean as the day I was born." "Thank God for that." She turned on her back and stared up at me. "Do you not want me now?" That sentence somewhat tarnished the two before. I touched her cheek and shook my head. "I love you, Nick." "Jojo, you don't. You _can't_." She began to cry again; my exasperation. "Look, did you plan this? That fiat tire?" I remembered she had slipped out, allegedly to go upstairs, while Kemp was making the cocoa. "I couldna help it. That night we went to Stonehenge. I didna sleep a wink all the wa' back. I juist sat there pretendin'." Tears in her eyes again. "Jojo. Can I tell you a long story I've never told anyone else? Can I?" I dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief and then I began to talk, sitting with my back to her on the edge of the bed. I told her everything about Alison, about the way I had left her, and I spared myself nothing. I told her about Greece, I told her, if not the real incidents of my relationship with Lily, the emotional truth of it. I told her about Parnassus, all my guilt. I brought it right up to date, to Jojo heseif and why I had cultivated her. She was the strangest priest to confess before; but not the worst. For she absolved me. If only I had told her at the beginning; she would not have been so stupid then. "I've been blind. I'm sorry." "I couldna help it." "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." "Och. I'm only a teenage moron from Glasgow." She looked at me solemnly. "I'm only seventeen, Nick. It was all a fib." "If I gave you your fare, would you --" But she was shaking her head at once. There were minutes of silence then and in it I thought about pain, about hurting people. It was the only truth that mattered, it was the only morality that mattered, the only sin, the only crime. Once again I had committed the one unforgivable: I had