The Magus - John Fowles [35]
26
There was a letter for me. The Sunday boat had brought it. _DEAR NICHOLAS,_ _I thought you were dead. I'm on my own again. More or less. I've been trying to decide whether I want to see you again--the point is, I could. I come through Athens now. I mean I haven't decided whether you aren't such a pig that it's crazy to get involved with you again. I can't forget you, even when I'm with much nicer boys than you'll ever be. Nicko, I'm a little bit drunk and I shall probably tear this up anyway._ _Well, I may send a telegram if I can work a few days off at Atheus. If I go on like this you won't want to meet me. You probably don't now as it is. When I got your letter I knew you'd just written it because you were bored out there. lsn't it awful I still have to get boozed to write to you. It's raining, I've got the fire on it's so bloody cold. It's dusk, it's grey it's so bloody miserable. The wallpaper's muave or is it mauve hell with green plums. You'd be sick all down it._ _A._ _Write care of Ann._ Her letter came at the wrongest time. I realised that I didn't want to share Bourani with anyone. After the first knowledge of the place, and still after the first meeting with Conchis, even as late as the Foulkes incident, I had wanted to talk about it--and to Alison. Now it seemed fortunate that I hadn't, just as it seemed, though still obscurely, fortunate that I hadn't lost my head in other ways when I wrote to her. One doesn't fall in love in five seconds; but five seconds can set one dreaming of falling in love, especially in a community as unrelievedly masculine as that of the Lord Byron School. The more I thought of that midnight face, the more intelligent and charming it became; and it seemed too to have had a breeding, a fastidiousness, a delicacy, that attracted me as fatally as the local fishermen's lamps attracted fish on moonless nights. I reminded myself that if Conchs was rich enough to own Modiglianis and Bonnards, 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