The Magus, A Revised Version Read Online Free PDF Page B

whose faces fall absolutely flat from nostrils to chin, came up. Maggie had gone out and wanted Alison to remove all her things. So we went down and brought them up. I had a talk with Ann. In her quiet, rather prim way she showed more sympathy for Alison than I was expecting; Maggie was evidently and aggressively blind to her brother ’ s faults.
    For days, afraid of Maggie, who for some reason stood in her mind as a hated but still potent monolith of solid Australian virtue on the blasted moor of English decadence, Alison did not go out except at night. I went and bought food, and we talked and slept and made love and danced and cooked meals at all hours, sous les toits, as remote from ordinary time as we were from the dull London world outside the windows.
    Alison was always feminine; she never, like so many English girls, betrayed her gender. She wasn ’ t beautiful, she very often wasn ’ t even pretty. But she had a fashionably thin boyish figure, she had a contemporary dress sense, she had a conscious way of walking, and her sum was extraordinarily more than her parts. I would sit in the car and watch her walking down the street towards me, pause, cross the road; and she looked wonderful. But then when she was close, beside me, there so often seemed to be something rather shallow, something spoilt-child, in her appearance. Even close to her, I was always being wrong-footed. She would be ugly one moment, and then some movement, expression, angle of her face, made ugliness impossible.
    When she went out she used to wear a lot of eye-shadow, which married with the sulky way she sometimes held her mouth to give her a characteristic bruised look; a look that subtly made one want to bruise her more. Men were always aware of her, in the street, in restaurants, in pubs; and she knew i t. I used to watch them sliding their eyes at her as she passed. She was one of those rare, even among already pretty, women that are born with a natural aura of sexuality: always in their lives it will be the relationships with men, it will be how men react, that matters. And even the tamest sense it.
    There was a simpler Alison, when the mascara was off . She had not been typical of herself, those fi rst twelve hours; but still always a little unpredictable, ambiguous. One never knew when the more sophisticated, bruised-hard persona would reappear. She would give herself violently; then yawn at the wrongest moment. She would spend all one day clearing up the flat, cooking, ironing, then pass the next three or four bohemianly on the floor in front of the fire, reading Lear, women ’ s magazines, a detective story, Hemingway – not all at the same time, but bits of all in the same afternoon. She liked doing things, and only then finding a reason for doing them.
    One day she came back with an expensive fountain pen.
    ‘ For monsieur. ’
    ‘ But you shouldn ’ t. ’
    ‘ It ’ s okay. I stole it. ’
    ‘ Stole it! ’
    ‘ I steal everything. Didn ’ t you realize? ’
    ‘ Everything! ’
    ‘ I never steal from small shops. Only the big stores. They ask for it. Don ’ t look so shocked. ’
    ‘ I ’ m not. ’ But I was. I stood holding the pen gingerly. She grinned.
    ‘ It ’ s just a hobby. ’
    ‘ Six months in Holloway wouldn ’ t be so funny. ’
    She had poured herself a whisky. ‘ Sant é . I hate big stores. And not just capitalists. Pommy capitalists. Two birds with one steal. Oh, come on, sport, smile. ’ She put the pen in my pocket. ‘ There. Now you ’ re a cassowary after the crime. ’
    ‘ I need a Scotch. ’
    Holding the bottle, I remembered she had ‘ bought ’ that as well. I looked at her. She nodded.
    She stood beside me as I poured. ‘ Nicholas, you know why you take things too seriously? Because you take yourself too seriously. ’
    She gave me an odd little smile, half tender, half mocking, and went away to peel potatoes. And I knew that in some obscure way I had off ended her; and myself.
    One