The Magus, A Revised Version (87 page)

‘
You hid it disgustingly well.
’

‘
Only because I knew it was all nearly over.
’

‘
I hear it
’
s your first year as well.
’

‘
And my last. I couldn
’
t do it again. Especially now …
‘
again she appealed for understanding, forgiveness.
‘
June
’
s always been so mysterious about it. I had to see what it was like.
’

‘
I
’
m glad. Finally.
’

She came close against me again.

‘
I haven
’
t lied about one thing.
’

‘
I wonder what that is.
’

My hand was found, gently pinched in reproach. Her voice dropped to a whisper.
‘
Anyway, you can
’
t go back to your school in this rain.
’
She added,
‘
And I hate being alone in thunder and lightning.
’

‘
So do I. Now you mention it.
’

Our next lines were not spoken; and once they were exchanged, she took my hand and led me upstairs. We came to the door of the room I had searched three days before. But there she hesitated, then gave me a faintly self-mocking yet genuinely shy look.

‘
What I said on Sunday?
’

‘
You long ago made me forget every other girl I
’
ve

She looked down.
‘
This is where my witchcraft stops.
’

‘
I always liked us better as Ferdinand and Miranda.
’

She smiled a moment, as if she had forgotten that; gave me an intense look, seemed about to say something else, changed her mind. She opened the door and Ave went
in. There was a lamp on by the
bed, the shutters were closed. The bed was as she had left it, the sheet and a folkweave bedspread thrown aside, the pillow crumpled; some open book of poetry beneath the lamp, I could see its broken lines of print; an abalon
e
-shell used as an ashtray.
“
We stood a little at a loss, as people do when they have foreseen such moments too long. Her hair was down, the white hem of her nightdress reached almost to her ankles. She glanced round the room, as if with my eyes, as if I might be contemptuous of such domestic simplicity; made a little grimace. I smiled, but her shyness was contagious
–
and the changed reality between us, what she had really meant by no more
‘
witchcraft
’
: no more games, evasions, tantalizings. For a bizarre few seconds those seemed, in retrospect, to hold a paradoxical innocence; Adam and Eve before the Fall.

Mercifully the world outside came to our aid. There was a flash of lightning. The lamp shuddered, then went out. We were plunged into pitch darkness. Almost at once there was a tremendous peal of thunder overhead. Before it had died away she was in my arms and we were kissing hungrily. More lightning, even louder and closer thunder. She twisted against me, clinging like a child. I kissed the crown of her head, patted her back, murmured.

‘
Shall I undress you and put you to bed and hold you?
’

‘
Let me sit on your lap a minute. It makes me so nervous.
’

I was led in the darkness to a chair opposite the bed, against the wall. I sat, she sat across my knees, and we kissed again. Then she nestled against me; found my free hand and laced her fingers through mine.

‘
Tell me about your friend. What really happened.
’

I told her what I had told her sister a few minutes before.
‘
It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I felt so fed up with Maurice. With you. I couldn
’
t face just hanging around here.
’

‘
Did you tell her about me?
’

‘
Only that I
’
d met someone on the island.
’

‘
Was she upset?
’

‘
That
’
s the absurd thing. If only she had been. Hadn
’
t buried it all so
“
well.
’

Her hand squeezed mine gently.
‘
And you didn
’
t want her at all?
’

‘
I felt sorry for her. But she really didn
’
t seem too surprised.
’

‘
Not answering my question.
’

I smiled in the darkness at this not very well concealed battle between sympathy and feminine curiosity.

‘
I kept thinking how much rather I
’
d be with you.
’

‘
Poor girl. At least I can imagine how she must have felt.
’

‘
She wasn
’
t like you. She never took anything seriously. Especially if it was male.
’

‘
But she must have taken you seriously. In the end.
’

I had anticipated that.
‘
I think I was just a kind ot symbol, Julie. Of all sorts of other things that had gone wrong in her life. The last straw, I suppose.
’

‘
What did you do in Athens?
’

‘
A few sights. Had a meal. Sat and talked. Drank too much. It was all very civilized, really. Or seemed it.
’

Her nails dug gently into the back of my hand.
‘
I bet you did go to bed.
’

‘
Would you be angry if we had?
’

Her head shook against mine.
‘
No. I deserved it. I
’
d understand.
’
She raised my hand and kissed it.
‘
I wish you
’
d tell me.
’

‘
Why are you so curious?
’

‘
Because there
’
s so much I don
’
t know about you.
’

I took a breath.

‘
Perhaps I should have. Then at least she might still be alive.
’

There was a little silence, then she kissed my cheek.
‘
I
’
m only trying to find out if I
’
m spending the night with a callous swine or a bruised angel.
’

‘
There
’
s only one way to find that out.
’

‘
You think?
’

Another light kiss, then she slipped gently free of my arm and moved away a little beside the bed. It was very dark in the room, and I could see nothing. But then lightning shivered through the shutters. For a brief flash I saw her by the cassone, peeling her nightdress over her head. Then it was sound, her feeling her way back towards me, a crack of thunder, a little shocked outbreath. I reached and found her groping hand and pulled her back naked to my lap.

Our mouths met, and I explored her body: the breasts, the smooth stomach, the little thatch of hair, the thighs. I could have used a dozen hands, not one … to have her surrendered at last, compliant, mine. She shifted, st
ood a moment, then straddled my
lap and began to unbutton my shirt. In another flash of lightning I glimpsed the expression on her face
–
a kind of intent seriousness, like a child undressing a doll. She forced the shirt, and the jacket I was still wearing, back away from my body. Then she clasped her hands behind my neck, as she had in the sea at Moutsa, and sat away a little.

‘
You
’
re the most beautiful thing I
’
ve ever seen.
’

‘
You can
’
t see me.
’

‘
Felt.
’

I bent and kissed her breasts, then pulled her against me and found her mouth again. She was wearing some strange scent, musky and faintly orange, like cowslips; and it seemed to match something both sensual and innocent in her, a growing abandon to passion that was also a willed attempt to be what she felt I must want: feverish, strained, not playful at all. In the end she tore her mouth away, as if she was exhausted. After a few moments, she whispered.

‘
Let
’
s open the shutters. I love the smell of the rain.
’

She slipped away and went to open them. I got quickly out of my remaining clothes, and caught her as she turned back from the window; made her turn, held her close from behind, so that we stood with the rain teeming down three feet away, the cool wall of dark air. All the lights in the village were out, the generator fuse must have blown. Lightning split the sky over towards the mainland and for a moment or two the crowded houses below us, all the walls and the roofs, even the sea below, were illuminated with an uncanny pale-violet light. But the thunder took longer to arrive; the short centre of the storm had already passed on.

Julie leant back against me, abandoning the front of her body to the night and my encircling hands. I smoothed down the little belly, ruffled the pubic hair. Her head turned against me, then she raised her right leg and rested it on a stool below the window, so that the hand could caress more easily. She took my other hand, led it to her breasts; then stood absolutely passive, letting me excite her
–
as if the rain was her real lover, and the outside night; as if I was now to do to her what she had done to me in the sea. Little splashes of the downpour bounced from the sill against my lower hand and her skin, but she seemed oblivious of them.

I whispered,
‘
I wish we could go outside.
’

Her mouth twisted to kiss me in quick assent, but then her hands found mine again and pressed to keep them where they were. She preferred this now: to be gently abused, slowly coaxed … there was still lightning, but it began to seem from another world, the only real world was her body and my own … the curves of her back, the warmth there, the pods of silken skin with their aroused tips, the indulged, solicited, caress below. It was a little as I had imagined it in the beginning, the Lily Montgomery phase: this delicate, elusive creature half-swooning, succumbed to the animal part of herself; and not quite adult yet
–
beneath her airs and graces, something of the innocent perversity of a little girl playing at sex with little boys.

Suddenly, half a minute later, she caught my hands and made them lie on her stomach; imprisoned them.

‘
What
’
s wrong?
’

‘
You
’
re being wicked.
’

‘
That was the idea.
’

She turned against me, her face buried.

‘
Tell me what you liked her doing to you best.
’

I remembered an old Urfe law: that girls possess sexual tact in inverse proportion to their standard of education. But I saw some delicious instruction ahead in this case.

‘
Why do you want to know?
’

‘
Because I want to do it to you.
’

I held her a little closer.
‘
I like you as you are.
’

She whispered,
‘
You
’
re so big.
’

Her hands stole down between us. We stood apart a little. There seemed something virginal about her; yet wanting to be corrupted, led further. She whispered again.

‘
Have you got a thing?
’

‘
In my coat.
’

‘
Shall I put it on for you?
’