The Magus - John Fowles [287]
I stared at the side of an empty cereal packet. On it a nauseatingly happy "average" family were shown round a breakfast table; breezy tanned father, attractive girlish mother, small boy, small girl; dreamland. Metaphorically I spat. Yet there must be some reality behind it all, some craving for order, harmony, beyond all the shabby cowardice of wanting to be like everyone else, the seffish need to have one's laundry looked after, buttons sewn on, ruts served, name propagated, meals decently cooked. I made another cup of coffee. Cursed Alison, the bloody bitch. Why should I wait for her? Why of all places in London, a city with more eager girls per acre than any other in Europe, prettier girls, droves of restless girls who came to London to be stolen, stripped, to wake up one morning in a stranger's bed. Then Jojo. The last person in the world I had wanted to hurt. As if I had kicked an emotionally starving mongrel in its poor, thin ribs. A violent reaction set on me, born of self-disgust and resentment. All my life I had been a sturdy contra-suggestible. Now I was soft; remoter from freedom than I had ever been. I thought with a leap of excitement of life without Alison, of setting out into the blue again... alone, but free. Even noble, since I was condemned to inflict pain, whatever I did. To America, perhaps; to South America. Freedom was making some abrupt choice and acting on it; was as it had been at Oxford, allowing one's instinct-cum-will to ffing one off at a tangent, solitary into a new situation. Hazard, I had to have hazard. I had to break out of this waiting room I was in. I walked through the uninspiring rooms. The Bow _chinoiserie_ plate hung over the mantelpiece. The family again; order and involvement. Imprisonment. Outside, rain; a grey scudding sky. I stared down Charlotte Street and decided to leave Kemp's, at once, that day. To prove to myself that I could move, I could cope, I was free. I went down to see Kemp. She took my announcement coldly. I wondered if she knew about Jojo, because I could see a stony glint of contempt in her eyes as she shrugged off my excuse--that I had decided to rent a cottage in the country. "You taking Jojo, are you?" "No. We're bringing it to an end." "_You're_ bringing it to an end." She knew about Jojo. "All right. _I'm_ bringing it to an end." "Tired of slumming. Thought you would be." "Think again." "You pick up a poor little scob like that, God only knows why, then when you're sure she's head over fucking heels in love with you, you act like a real gentlemen. You kick her out." "Look --" "Don't kid me, laddie." She sat square and inexorable. "Go on. Run back home." "I haven't got a bloody home, for Christ's sake." "Oh yes you have. They call it the bourgeoisie." "Spare me that." "Seen it a thousand times. You discover we're human beings. Makes you shit with fright." With an insufferable dismissiveness she added, "It's not your fault. You're a victim of the dialectical process." "And you're the most impossible old --" "Dah!" She turned away as if she didn't care a damn, anyway; as if life was like her studio, full of failures, full of mess and disorder, and it took her all her energy to survive in it herself. A Mother Courage gone sour. She went to her paints table and started fiddling. I went out. But I had hardly got to the top of the stairs to the ground floor when she came out and bawled up at me. "Let me tell you something, you smug bastard." I turned. "You know what will happen to that poor damn kid? She'll go on the game. And you know who'll have put her there?" Her outstretched finger seared its accusation at me. "Mister Saint Nicholas Urfe. Esquire." That last word seemed the worst obscenity I had ever heard pass her lips. Her eyes scalded me, then she went back and slammed the studio door. So there I was, between the Scylla of Lily de Seitas and the Charybdis of Kemp; bound to be sucked down. I packed in a cold rage; and lost in a fantasy row with Kemp, in which I scored all the points, I lifted the Bow plate carelessly off its nail. It slipped; struck the edge