The Magus - John Fowles [5]
She was bizarre, a kind of human oxymoron. "Are you alone? At the party?" "Yes." "Would you keep with me this evening?" "Of course." "Come back in about twenty minutes?" "I'll wait." "I'd rather you came back." We exchanged wary smiles. I went back to the party. Margaret came up. I think she'd been waiting. "I've a nice English girl enxious to meet you, Nicholas." "I'm afraid your friend's jumped the gun." She looked round, and pulled me out into the little hall. "This is difficult to explain. But Alison--well, we're second cousins, and she's engaged to my brother. A lot of my brother's friends are here tonight." "So?" "She's been very mixed up." "I still don't understand." "It's just that I don't want a roughhouse. We hed one once before." I looked blank. "People grow jealous on other people's behalf?" "I shan't start anything." Someone called her from inside. She tried to feel sure of me, but couldn't, and apparently decided she couldn't do anything about it. "Fair deal. But please remember. Will you?" "If you insist." She gave me a veteran's look, then a nod, not a very happy one, and went away. I waited for about twenty minutes, near the door, and then I slipped out and went back up to my own flat. I rang the bell. There was a long pause, then there was a call behind the door. "Who is it?" "Twenty minutes." The door opened. She had her hair up, and a towel wrapped round her; very brown shoulders, very brown legs. "I've been soaking. Boy, it was good." She went quickly back into the bathroom. I shouted through the door. "I've been warned off you." "Maggie?" "She says she doesn't want a roughhouse." "Fucking cow. She's my cousin." "I know." "Studying sociology. London University." There was a pause. "Thinks she knows it all." "She tells me you're engaged." "Isn't it crazy? You go away and you think people will have changed and they're just the same." "What does that mean?" "Wait a minute." There was a long pause. "Here I am." The door opened and she came out into the living room. She was wearing a very simple white dress, and her hair was down again. She had no makeup, and looked ten times prettier. She gave me a little bitten-in grin. "_Je vous plais?_" "Very much." Her look was so direct I found it disconcerting. "We go down?" "Just one finger?" I filled her glass again, and with more than one finger. Watching the whisky fall, she said, "I don't know why I'm frightened. Why am I frightened?" "What of?" She turned away. "I don't know. Maggie. The boys. The dear old diggers." "This roughhouse?" "Oh God. It was so stupid. There was a nice Israeli boy, you see, and we were just kissing. It was a party. That was all. But Charlie told Pete, and they just picked a quarrel, and... oh God. You know. He-men." Downstairs I lost her for a time. A group formed round her. I went and got a drink and passed it over someone's shoulder; talk about Cannes, about Collioure and Valencia. Jazz had started in the back room and I went into the doorway to watch. Outside the window, past the dark dancers, were dusk trees, a pale amber sky. I had a sharp sense of alienation from everyone around me. A girl with spectacles, myopic eyes in an insipidly pretty face, one of those soulful-intellectual creatures born to be preyed on and exploited by artistic phonies, smiled coyly from the other side of the room. She was standing alone and I guessed that she was the "nice English girl" Margaret had picked for me. Her lipstick was too red, and she was as familiar as a species of bird. I turned away from her as from a cliffedge, and went and sat on the floor by a bookshelf. There I pretended to read a paperback. Alison knelt beside me. "I'm sloshed. That whisky. Hey, have some of this." It was gin. She sat beside me. "Well?" I thought of that white-faced English girl with the red smudged mouth. At least this girl was alive; brown, crude, but alive. "I'm so glad you returned tonight." "Yes?" She sipped her gin and gave me a small grey look. "Ever read this?" "Let's cut corners. To hell with literature. You're clever and I'm beautiful. Now let's talk about