The Magus - John Fowles [71]
he was rich enough to pick the very best in mistresses. I had to presume some sort of sexual relationship between the girl and him--to do otherwise would have been na�; but for all that there had been something much more daughterly, affectionately protective, than sexual in her glance back at him. I must have read Alison's letter a dozen times that Monday, trying to decide what to do about it. I knew it had to be answered, but I came to the conclusion that the longer I left it, the better. To stop its silent nagging I pushed it away in the bottom drawer of my desk; went to bed, thought about Bourani, drifted into various romanticsexual fantasies with that enigmatic figure; and failed entirely, in spite of my tiredness, to go to sleep. The crime of syphilis had made me ban sex from my mind for weeks; now I was not guilty--half an hour with a textbook Conchis had given me to look at had convinced me his diagnosis was right--the libido rose strong. I began to think erotically of Alison again; of the dirty-weekend pleasures of having her in some Athens hotel bedroom; of birds in the hand being worth more than birds in the bush; and with better motives, of her loneliness, her perpetual mixed-up loneliness. The one sentence that had pleased me in her unfastidious and not very delicate letter was the last of all--that simple _Write care of Ann_. Which denied the gaucheness, the lingering resentment, in all the rest. I got out of bed and sat in my pyjama trousers and wrote a letter, quite a long letter, which I tore up at the first rereading. The second attempt was much shorter and hit off, I thought, the right balance between regretful practicality and yet sufficient affection and desire for her still to want to climb into bed if I got half a chance. I said I was rather tied up at the school over most weekends; though the half-term holiday was the weekend after next and I might just be in Athens then--but I couldn't be sure. But if I was, it would be fun to see her. As soon as I could I got M� on his own. I had decided that I had to have a confidant at the school. One did not have to attend school meals with the boys over the weekend if one was off duty, and the only master who might have noticed I had been away was M� himself, but as it happened he'd been in Athens. We sat after lunch on Monday in his room; or rather he sat chubbily at his desk, living up to his nickname, spooning Hymettus honey out of a jar and telling me of the flesh and fleshpots he had bought himself in Athens; and I lay on his bed, only half listening. "And you, Nicholas, you had a nice weekend?" "I met Mr. Conchs." "You... no, you are joking." "You are not to tell the others." He raised his hands in protest. "Of course, but how... I can't believe it." I gave him a very expurgated version of the visit the week before, and made Conchis and Bourani as dull as possible. "He sounds as stupid as I thought. No girls?" "Not a sign. Not even little boys." "Nor even a goat?" I threw a box of matches at him. Half by desipience, half by proclivity, he had come to live in a world where the only significant leisure activities were coupling and consuming. His batrachian lips pursed into a smile, and he dug again into the honey. "He's asked me over next week again. As a matter of fact, M�, I wondered, if I do two preps for you... would you do my noon to six on Sunday?" Sunday duty was easy work. It meant only that one had to stay inside the school and stroll through the grounds a couple of times. "Well. Yes. I will see." He sucked the spoon. "And tell me what to tell the others, if they ask. I want them to think I'm going somewhere else." He thought a minute, waved the spoon, then said, "Tell them you are going to Hydra." Hydra was a stop on the way to Athens, though one didn't have to catch the Athens boat to go there, as there were often caiques doing the run. It had an embryonic artistic colony of sorts; the kind of place I might plausibly choose to go to. "Okay. And you won't tell anyone?" He crossed himself. "I am as silent as the... the what is it?" "Where you ought