John Fowles - The Magus

I looked covertly at Alison; the tip of her nose was bright red. But I was thinking that after all she had guts; that if it hadn’t been for her we wouldn’t have been there, this world at our feet, this sense of triumph; this transcendent crystallization of all I felt for Greece.

“You must see things like this every day.”

“Never like this. Never even beginning to be like this.” Two or three minutes later she said, “This is the first decent thing that’s happened to me for months. Today. And this.” After a pause, she added, “And you.”

“Don’t say that. I’m just a mess. A defilement.”

“I still wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else.” She stared out towards Euboea; bruised face, being dispassionate for once. She turned and looked at me. “Would you?”

“I can’t think of any other girl I’ve ever known who could walk this far.”

She thought it over, then looked at me again. “What an evasive answer that was.”

“I’m glad we came. You’re a trouper, Kelly.”

“And you’re a bastard, Urfe.”

But I could see that she wasn’t offended.

Almost at once tiredness, as we returned, attacked us. Alison discovered a blister on her left heel, where the new shoe had rubbed. We wasted ten minutes of the quick-dying light trying to improvise a bandage for it; and then, almost as abruptly as if a curtain had dropped, night was on us. With it came wind. The sky remained clear, the stars burned frantically, but somewhere we went down the wrong rocky slope and at the place I expected the refuge to be there was nothing. It was difficult to see footholds, increasingly difficult to think sensibly. We foolishly went on, coming into a vast volcanic bowl, a stark lunar landscape; snow-streaked cliffs, violent winds howling round the sides. Wolves became real, not an amusing reference in a casual conversation.

Alison must have been far more frightened, and probably far colder, than I was. At the center of the bowl it became clear that it was impossible to get out except by going back, and we sat for a few minutes to rest in the lee of a huge boulder. I held her close against me for warmth’s sake. She lay with her head buried in my sweater, in a completely unsexual embrace; and cradling her there, shivering in that extraordinary landscape, a million years and miles from the sweltering Athens night, I felt it meant nothing, it must mean nothing. I told myself I would have felt the same with anyone. But I looked out over the grim landscape, an accurate enough simile of my life, and remembered something the muleteer had said earlier; that wolves never hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth.

I forced Alison to her feet and we stumbled back the way we had come. Along a ridge to the west another col and slope led down towards the black distant sea of trees. Eventually we saw contoured against the sky a tor-shaped hill I had noticed on the way up. The refuge was just the other side of it. Alison no longer seemed to care; I kept hold of her hand and dragged her along by main force. Bullying her, begging her, anything to keep her moving. Twenty minutes later the squat dark cube of the refuge appeared in its little combe.

I looked at my watch. It had taken us an hour and a half to reach the peak; and over three hours to get back.

I groped my way in and sat Alison on a bunk. Then I struck a match, found the lamp and tried to light it; but it had no wick and no oil. I turned to the stove. That, thank God, had dry wood. I ripped up all the paper I could find: a Penguin novel of Alison’s, the wrappings off the food we had bought; then lit it and prayed. There were backpuffs of papery, then resinous smoke, and the kindling caught. In a few minutes the hut grew full of flickering red light and sepia shadows, and even more welcome heat. I picked up a pail. Alison raised her head from her knees.

“I’m going to get some water now.”

“Okay.” She smiled wanly.

“I should get under some blankets.” She nodded.

But when I came back from the stream five minutes later she was gingerly feeding logs through the upper door of the stove; barefooted, on a red blanket she had spread over the floor between the bunks and the fire. On a lower bunk she had laid out what was to be our meal: bread, chocolate, sardines, paximadia , oranges; and she had even found an old saucepan.

“Kelly, I ordered you to bed.”

“I suddenly remembered I’m meant to be an air hostess. The life and soul of the crash.” She took the pail of water and began to wash the saucepan out. As she crouched, I could see the sore red spots on her heels. “Do you wish we hadn’t done it?”

“No.”

She looked back up at me. “Just no?”

“I’m delighted we did it.”

Satisfied, she went back to the saucepan, filled it with water, began to crumble the chocolate. I sat on the edge of the bunk and took my own shoes and socks off. I wanted to be natural, and I couldn’t; and she couldn’t. The heat, the tiny room, the two of us, in all that cold desolation.

“Sorry I went all womany. It’ll never happen again.”

There was a ghost of sarcasm in her voice, but I couldn’t see her face. She had begun to stir the chocolate over the stove.

“Don’t be silly.”

A squall of wind battered against the iron roof, and the door groaned half open.

She said, “Saved from the storm.”

I looked at her from the door, after I had propped it to with one of the skis. She was stirring the melting chocolate with a twig, standing sideways to avoid the heat, watching me. She pulled a flushed face, and swiveled her eyes round the dirty walls. “Romantic, isn’t it?”

“As long as they keep the wind out.” She smiled secretly at me and looked down at her saucepan. “Why do you smile?”

“Because it is romantic.”

I sat down on the bunk again. She pulled off her jumper and shook her hair free. I invoked the image of Lily; but somehow it was a situation that Lily could never have got into; so could not be very absent-present in. I tried to sound at ease.

“You look fine. In your element.”

“So I should. I spend most of my life slaving in a four-by-two galley.” She stood with one hand on her hips; a minute of silence; old domestic memories from Russell Square; watching her cook. “What was that Sartre play we saw?”

“ Huis Clos .”

“This is Huis even closer.”

“Why?”

She kept her back turned. “Being tired always makes me feel sexy.” I breathed in. She said softly, “One more risk.”

“Just because the first tests are negative, it doesn’t mean

She flashed a look round, a shy smile. “All right. Only… if you… you know.”

I stared at her. “You’re sweet.”

“Not very good at saying it.”

“I’m so absolutely fucked up. In all ways.”

She lifted a blackbrown dob from the saucepan. “I think this delicious consommé a la reine is ready.”

She came and bent beside me with that peculiar downwards look and automatic smile of air hostesses.

“Something to drink before dinner, sir?”

She thrust the saucepan under my nose, mocking herself and my seriousness, and I grinned; but she didn’t grin back, she gave me one of her gentlest smiles. I took the saucepan. She went to the bunks at the far end of the little hut; began to unbutton her shirt.

“What are you doing?”

“Undressing.”

I looked away. A few seconds later she was standing by me with one of the blankets wrapped sarong fashion around her; then quietly sat on another folded blanket, on the floor, a careful two feet away from me. As she turned to reach for the food behind her, the blanket fell apart over her legs. She readjusted it when she turned back; but somewhere in the recesses of my mind that little Priapus threw up his hands, and that other member of his body, and leered wildly.