John Fowles - The Magus

One night soon after that we went to the cinema. Kemp, who thought I was mad to be sleeping with such an ugly layabout—I didn’t attempt to explain the true situation—but was glad I was showing at least one sign of normality, came with us, and afterwards we all went back to her “studio” and sat boozing cocoa and the remains of a bottle of rum. About one Kemp kicked us out; she wanted to go to sleep, as indeed I did myself. I went with Jojo and stood by the front door. It was the first really cold night of the autumn, and raining hard into the bargain. We stood at the door and looked out.

“I’ll sleep upstairs in your chair, Nick.”

“No. It’ll be all right. Stay here. I’ll get the car.” I used to park it up a side street. I got in, coaxed the engine into life, moved forward; but not far. The front wheel was flat as a pancake. I got out in the rain and looked, cursed, and went to the boot for the pump. It was not there. I hadn’t used it for a week or more, so I didn’t know when it had been pinched. I slammed the lid down and ran back to the door.

“I’ve got a bloody fiat.”

“Gude.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t be such a loon. I’ll sleep in your auld armchair.”

I considered waking Kemp, but the thought of all the obscenities she would hurl round the studio soon killed that idea. We climbed up the stairs past the silent sewing rooms and into the fiat.

“Look, you kip in the bed. I’ll sleep here.”

She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and nodded; went to the bathroom, then marched into the bedroom, lay on the bed and pulled her wretched old dufflecoat over her. I was secretly angry with her, I was tired, but I pulled two chairs together and stretched out. Five minutes passed. Then she was in the door between the rooms.

“Nick?”

“Mm.”

“Come on.”

“Come on where.”

“You know.”

“No.”

She stood there in the door for a silent minute. She liked to mull over her gambits.

“I want you to.” It struck me that I’d never heard her use the verb “to want” in the first person before. -

“Jojo, we’re chums. We’re not going to bed together.”

“It’s only kipping together.”

“No.”

“Just once.”

“No.”

She stood plumply in the door, in her blue jumper and jeans, a dark stain of silent accusation. Light from outside distorted the shadows round her figure, isolated her face, so that she looked like a Munch lithograph. Jealousy; or Envy; or Innocence.

“I’m so cold.”

“Get under the blankets then.”

She gave it a minute more and then I heard her creep back to bed. Five minutes passed. I felt my neck get stiff.

“I’m in the bed. Nick, you could easy sleep on top.” I took a deep breath. “Can you hear?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“I thought you were asleep.”

Rain pounded down, dripped in the gutters; wet London night air pervaded the room. Solitude. Winter.

“Could I come in a wee sec and put the fire on?”

“Oh God.”

“I won’t wake you at all.”

“Thanks.”

She slopped into the room and I heard her strike a match. The gas phutted and began to hiss. A pinkish glow filled the room. She was very quiet, but after a while I gave in and began to sit up.

“Don’t look. I havna any clothes on.”

I looked. She was standing by the fire pulling down an outsize man’s singlet. I saw, with an unpleasant little shock, that she was almost pretty by gaslight. I turned my back and reached for a cigarette.

“Now look, Jojo, I’m just not going to have this. I will not have sex with you.”

“I didn’t fancy to get into your clean bed with all m' clothes on.”

“Get warm. Then hop straight back.”

I got halfway through my cigarette.

“It’s only 'cause you been so awfla nice to me.” I refused to answer. “I only want to be nice back.”

“If it’s only that, don’t worry. You owe me nothing.”

I slid a look round. She was sitting on the floor with her plump little back to me, hugging her knees and staring into the fire. More silence.

She said, “It isn’t only that.”

“Go and put your clothes on. Or get into bed. And then we’ll talk.”

The gas hissed away. I lit another cigarette from the end of the last.

“I know why.”

“Tell me.”

“You think I’ve got one of your nasty London diseases.”

“Jojo.”

“I mebbe have. You don’t have to be ill at all. You can still carry all the microbes round with you.”

“Stop it.”

“I’m only sayin' what you’re thinldn'.”

“I’ve never thought that.”

“I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you at all.”

“Jojo, shut up. Just shut up.”

Silence.

“You juist want to keep your beautiful Sassenach coddies clean.”

Then her bare feet padded across the floor and the bedroom door was slammed—and sprung open again. After a moment I heard her sobbing. I cursed my stupidity; I cursed myself for not having paid more attention to various signs during the evening—washed hair done into a ponytail, one or two looks. I had a dreadful vision of a stem knock on the door, of Alison standing there. I was also shocked. Jojo never swore and used as many euphemisms as a girl of fifty times her respectability. Her last line had cut.

I lay a minute, then went into the bedroom. The gasfire cast warm light through. I pulled the bedclothes up round her shoulders.

“Oh Jojo. You clown.”

I stroked her head, keeping a firm grip on the bedclothes with the other hand, in case she made a spring for me. She began to snuff. I passed her a handkerchief.

“Can I tell you somethin'?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve never done it. I’ve never been to bed with a man.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m clean as the day I was born.”

“Thank God for that.”

She turned on her back and stared up at me.

“Do you not want me now?”

That sentence somewhat tarnished the two before. I touched her cheek and shook my head.

“I love you, Nick.”

“Jojo, you don’t. You can’t .”

She began to cry again; my exasperation.

“Look, did you plan this? That fiat tire?” I remembered she had slipped out, allegedly to go upstairs, while Kemp was making the cocoa.

“I couldna help it. That night we went to Stonehenge. I didna sleep a wink all the wa' back. I juist sat there pretendin'.” Tears in her eyes again.

“Jojo. Can I tell you a long story I’ve never told anyone else? Can I?”

I dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief and then I began to talk, sitting with my back to her on the edge of the bed. I told her everything about Alison, about the way I had left her, and I spared myself nothing. I told her about Greece, I told her, if not the real incidents of my relationship with Lily, the emotional truth of it. I told her about Parnassus, all my guilt. I brought it right up to date, to Jojo heseif and why I had cultivated her. She was the strangest priest to confess before; but not the worst. For she absolved me.

If only I had told her at the beginning; she would not have been so stupid then.

“I’ve been blind. I’m sorry.”

“I couldna help it.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Och. I’m only a teenage moron from Glasgow.” She looked at me solemnly. “I’m only seventeen, Nick. It was all a fib.”

“If I gave you your fare, would you—”

But she was shaking her head at once.

There were minutes of silence then and in it I thought about pain, about hurting people. It was the only truth that mattered, it was the only morality that mattered, the only sin, the only crime. Once again I had committed the one unforgivable: I had hurt an innocent person. It needed clearer definition than that, because no one was innocent. But there was a capacity in everyone to be innocent, to offer that something innocent in them, perhaps to offer it as clumsily as Jojo had, even not to offer it innocently, but with darker motives. But there remained a core of innocence, a purely innocent will to give something good; and this was the unforgivable crime—to have provoked that giving and then to smash, as I had just had to smash, the gift to pieces.