The Magus - John Fowles [65]
24
A starry darkness over the house, the forest, the sea; the dinner cleared away, the lamp extinguished. I lay back in the long chair. He let the night silently envelop and possess us; time fall away; then began to draw me back down the decades. "April, 1915. I returned without trouble to England. I did not know what I should do. Except that I had in some way to justify myself. At nineteen one is not content simply to do things. They have to be justified as well. My mother fainted when she saw me. For the first and last time in my life I saw my father in tears. Until that moment of confrontation I had determined that I would tell the truth. That I could not deceive them. Yet before them, I could not do anything but deceive. Perhaps it was pure cowardice, it is not for me to say. But there are some truths too cruel, before the faces one has to announce them to, to be told. So I said that I had been lucky in a draw for leave, and that now Montague was dead I was to rejoin my original battalion. A madness to deceive. Not economically, but with the utmost luxury. I invented a new battle of Neuve Chapelle, as if the original had not been bad enough. I even told them I had been recommended for a commission. At first fortune was on my side. Two days after I returned, official notification came that I was missing, believed killed in action. Such mistakes occurred frequently enough for my parents to suspect nothing. The letter was joyously torn up. "And Lily. Perhaps that waiting before the knowledge came that I was safe had made her see more clearly her real feelings for me. Whatever it was, I could no longer complain that she treated me more like a brother than a lover. You know, Nicholas, that whatever miseries the Great War brought it destroyed a great deal that was unhealthy between the sexes. For the first time for a century women discovered that man wanted something more human from them than a nunlike chastity, a _bien pensant_ idealism. I do not mean that Lily suddenly lost all reserve. Or gave herself to me. But she gave as much to me as she could. The time I spent alone with her... those hours allowed me to gather strength to go on with my deception. At the same time as they made it more terrible. Again and again I was possessed by a desire to tell her all, and before justice caught up with me. Every time I returned home I expected to find the police waiting. My father outraged. And worst of all, Lily's eyes on mine. But when I was with her I refused to talk about the war. She misinterpreted my nervousness. It touched her deeply and brought out all her gentleness. Her warmth. I sucked on her love like a leech. A very sensual leech. She had become a very beautiful young woman. "One day we went for a walk in woods to the north of London--near Barnet, I think, I no longer recall the name, except that they were in those days very pretty and lonely woods for a place so near London. "We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. It is not only species of animal that die out. But whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know. But pity yourself for what it did. "That afternoon Lily said she wanted to marry me. To marry by special licence, and if necessary