The Magus - John Fowles [4]
lunch with Miss Spencer-Haigh; a Friday. About six, there was a knock on the door, and the stockier of the two girls I had seen was standing there. "Oh hi. I'm Margaret. From below." I took her outstretched hand. "Gled to know you. We're heving ourselves a bottle pardy. Like to come along?" "Oh. Well actually.. "It'll be noisy up here." It was the usual thing, an invitation to kill complaint. I hesitated, then shrugged. "All right. Thanks." "Well thet's good. Eight?" She began to go downstairs, but she called back. "You hev a girl-friend you'd like to bring?" "Not just now." "We'll fix you up. Hi." And she was gone. I wished then that I hadn't accepted. So I went down when I could tell a lot of people had already arrived, when the ugly girls--they always arrive first--would, I hoped, be disposed of. The door was open. I went in through a little hall and stood in the doorway of the living room, holding my bottle of Algerian burgundy ready to present. I tried to discover in the crowded room one of the two girls I had seen before. Loud male Australian voices; a man in a kilt, and several West Indians. It didn't look my sort of party, and I was within five seconds of slipping back out. Then someone arrived and stood in the hall behind me. It was a girl of about my own age, carrying a heavy suitcase, with a small rucksack on her shoulders. She was wearing a whitish old creased mackintosh, and she had the sort of tan that only weeks in hot sun can give. Her long hair was not quite blonde, but bleached almost to that colour. It looked odd, because the urchin cut was the fashion; girls like boys, not girls like girls; and there was something German, Danish, about her--waif-like, yet perversely or immorally so. She kept back from the open doorway, beckoned me. Her smile was very thin, very insincere, and very curt. "Could you find Maggie and ask her to come out?" "Margaret?" She nodded. I forced my way through the packed room and eventually caught sight of Margaret in the kitchen. "Hi there! You made it." "Someone wants to see you outside. A girl with a suitcase." "Oh no!" She turned to a woman behind her. I sensed trouble. She hesitated, then put down the quart beer bottle she was opening. I followed her plump shoulders back through the crowd. "Alison! You said next week." "I know, Maggie. I spent all my money." Her voice was faintly Australian. "It doesn't matter. I feel like a party. Is Pete back?" "No." Her voice dropped, half warning. "But Charlie and Bill are." "Oh _merde_." She looked outraged. "I must have a bath." "Charlie's filled it to cool the beer. It's stecked to the brim." The girl with the tan sagged. I broke in. "Use mine. Upstairs." "Yes? Alison, this is..." "Nicholas." "Would you mind? I've just come from Paris." I noticed she had two voices; one almost Australian, one almost English. "Of course. I'll take you up." "I must go and get some things first." As soon as she went into the room there was a shout. "Hey, Allie! Where you been, girl?" Two or three of the Australian men gathered round her. She kissed them all briefly. In a minute Margaret, one of those fat girls who mother thin girls, pushed them away. Alison reappeared with the clothes she wanted, and we went up. "Oh Jesus," she said. "Australians." "Where've you been?" "All over. France. Spain." We went into the flat. "I'll just clean the spiders out of the bath. Have a drink. Over there." When I came back, she was standing with a glass of Scotch in her hand. She smiled again, but it was an effort; shut off almost at once. I helped her take off her mackintosh. She was wearing a French perfume so dark it was almost carbolic, and her primrose shirt was dirty. "You live downstairs?" "Uh huh. Share." She raised her glass in silent toast. She had very wide-apart grey eyes, the only innocent things in a corrupt face, as if circumstances, not nature, had forced her to be hard. To fend for herself, yet to seem to need defending. And her voice, only very slightly Australian, yet not English, veered between harshness, faint nasal rancidity, and a strange salty directness.