The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [395]
female in him; there, they suspect, is the only sort of lover who can sufficiently identify himself with them to … deliver them of being just women, catalysts, strops, oil-stones. Most of us have to be content to play the role of machine à plaisir! ’
I: ‘Why do you laugh, suddenly like that?’
She: ‘I was remembering making a fool of myself with Purse-warden. I suppose I should feel ashamed of it! You will see what he says about me in the notebook. He calls me “a juicy Hanoverian goose, the only truly kallipygous girl in the city”! I cannot think what possessed me, except that I was so worried about my painting. It had dried up on me. I couldn’t get any further somehow, canvas gave me a headache. I finally decided that the question of my own blasted virginity was the root cause of the business. You know it is a terrible business to be a virgin — it is like not having one’s Matric or Bac. You long to be delivered from it yet
… at the same time this valuable experience should be with someone whom you care for, otherwise it will be without value to your inside self. Well, there I was, stuck. So with one of those characteristic strokes of fancy which in the past confirmed for everyone my stupidity I decided — guess what? To offer myself grimly to the only artist I knew I could trust, to put me out of my misery. Pursewarden, I thought, might have an understanding of my state and some consideration for my feelings. I’m amused to remember that I dressed myself up in a very heavy tweed costume and flat shoes, and wore dark glasses. I was timid, you see, as well as desperate. I walked up and down the corridor of the hotel outside his room for ages in despair and apprehension, my dark glasses firmly on my nose. He was inside. I could hear him whistling as he always did when he was painting a water colour; a maddening tuneless whistle! At last I burst in on him like a fireman into a burning building, startling him, and said with trembling lips : “I have come to ask you to dépuceler me, please, because I cannot get any further with my work unless you do.” I said it in French. It would have sounded dirty in English. He was startled. All sorts of conflicting emotions flitted across his face for a second. And then, as I burst into tears and sat down suddenly on a chair he threw his head back and roared with laughter. He laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks while I sat there in my dark glasses sniffing. Finally he collapsed exhausted on his bed and lay staring
at the ceiling. Then he got up, put his arms on my shoulders, removed my glasses, kissed me, and put them back. Then he put his hands on his hips and laughed again. “My dear Clea” he said,
“it would be anyone’s dream to take you to bed, and I must con-fess that in a corner of my mind I have often allowed the thought to wander but … dearest angel, you have spoilt everything. Th is is no way to enjoy you, and no way for you to enjoy yourself. Forgive my laughing! You have effectively spoiled my dream. Offering yourself this way, without wanting me, is such an insult to my male vanity that I simply would not be able to comply with your demand. It is, I suppose, a compliment that you chose me rather than someone else — but my vanity is larger than that!
In fact your request is like a pailful of slops emptied over my head!
I shall always treasure the compliment and regret the refusal but
… if only you had chosen some other way to do it, how glad I would have been to oblige! Why did you have to let me see that you really did not care for me?”
‘He blew his nose gravely in a corner of the sheet, took my glasses and placed them on his own nose to examine himself in the mirror. Then he came and stared at me until the comedy over-flowed again and we both started laughing. I felt an awful sense of relief. And when I had repaired my damaged make-up in the mirror he allowed me to take him to dinner to discuss the problem of paint with magnificent, generous honesty. The poor man listened with such patience to my rigmarole! He said: “I can only tell you what I know, and it isn