by John Fowles
The truth was that the recurrent new feeling I had for Alison had nothing to do with sex. Perhaps it had something to do with my alienation from England and the English, my specieslessness, my sense of exile; but it seemed to me that I could have slept with a different girl every night, and still have gone on wanting to see Alison just as much. I wanted something else from her now—and what it was only she could give me. That was the distinction. Anyone could give me sex. But only she could give me … I couldn’t call it love, because I saw it as something experimental, depending, even before the experiment proper began, on factors like the degree of her contrition, the fullness of her confession, the extent to which she could convince me that she still loved me; that her love had caused her betrayal. And then I felt towards the godgame some of the mixed fascination and repulsion one feels for an intelligent religion; I knew there ‘must be something’ in it, but I as surely knew that I was not the religious type. Besides, the logical conclusion of this more clearly seen distinction between love and sex was certainly not an invitation to enter a world of fidelity. In one sense Mrs de Seitas had been preaching to the converted in all that she had said about a clean surgical abscission of what went on in the loins from what went on in the heart.
Yet something very deep in me revolted. I could swallow her story, but it lay queasily on my stomach. It flouted something deeper than convention and received ideas. It flouted an innate sense that I ought to find all I needed in Alison and that if I failed to do so, then something more than morality or sensuality was involved; something I couldn’t define, but which was both biological and metaphysical; to do with imagination and with death. Perhaps Lily de Seitas looked forward to a sexual morality for the twenty-first century; but something was missing, some vital safeguard; and I suspected I saw to the twenty-second.
Easy to think such things; but harder to live them, in the meanwhile-still-twentieth century. Our instincts emerge so much more nakedly, our emotions and wills veer so much more quickly, than ever before. A young Victorian of my age would have thought nothing of waiting fifty months, let along fifty days, for his beloved; and of never permitting a single unchaste thought to sully his mind, let alone an act his body. I could get up in a young-Victorian mood; but by midday, with a pretty girl standing beside me in a bookshop, I might easily find myself praying to the God I did not believe in that she wouldn’t turn and smile at me.
Then one evening in Bayswater a girl did smile; she didn’t have to turn. It was in an espresso bar, and I had spent most of my meal watching her talking opposite with a friend; her bare arms, her promising breasts. She looked Italian; black-haired, doe-eyed. Her friend went off, and the girl sat back and gave me a very direct, though perfectly nice, smile with her eyes. She wasn’t a tart; she was just saying, if you want to start talking, come on.
I got clumsily to my feet, and spent an embarrassing minute waiting at the entrance for the waitress to come and take my money. My shameful retreat was partly inspired by paranoia. The girl and her friend had come in after me, and had sat at a table where I couldn’t help watching them. It was absurd. I began to feel that every girl who crossed my path was hired to torment and test me; I started checking through the window before I went in to coffee-bars and restaurants, to see if I could get a corner free of sight and sound of the dreadful creatures. My behaviour became increasingly clownish; and I grew angrier and angrier with the circumstances that made it so. Then Jojo came.
It was during the last week of September, a fortnight after my last meeting with Lily de Seitas. Bored to death with myself, I went late one afternoon to see an old René Clair. I sat without thinking next to a humped-up shape and watched the film—the immortal Italian Straw Hat. By various hoarse snuffling noises I deduced that the Beckett-like thing next to me was female. After half an hour she turned to me for a light. I saw a round-cheeked face, no make-up, a fringe of brown hair pigtailed at the back, thick eyebrows, very dirty fingernails holding a fag-end. When the lights went on and we waited for the next feature she tried, with a really pitiable amateurishness, to pick me up. She was dressed in jeans, a grubby grey polo-necked sweater, a very ancient man’s duffel coat; but she had three queer asexual charms—a face-splitting grin, a hoarse Scots accent, and an air of such solitary sloppiness that I saw in her at once both a kindred spirit and someone worthy of a modern Mayhew. Somehow the grin didn’t seem quite real, but the result of pulling strings. She sat puppy-slumped like a dejected fat boy, and tried very unsuccessfully to dig out of me what I did, where I lived; and then, perhaps because of the froglike grin, perhaps because it was a lapse so patently unlikely to lead to danger, so patently not a test, I asked her if she wanted a coffee.
So we went to a coffee-bar. I was hungry, I said I was going to have some spaghetti. At first she wouldn’t have any; then she admitted she had spent the last of her money on getting into the cinema; then she ate like a wolf. I grew full of kindness to dumb animals.
“We went on to a pub. She had come from Glasgow, it seemed, two months before, to be an art student. In Glasgow she had belonged to some bizarre Celtic-Bohemian fringe; and now she lived in coffee-bars and cinemas, ‘with a wee bitta help from ma friends’. She had packed art in; the eternal provincial tramp.
I felt increasingly sure of my chastity with her; and perhaps that was why I liked her so much so fast. She amused me, she had character, with her husky voice and her grotesque lack of normal femininity. She also had a total absence of pity about herself; and therefore all the attraction of an opposite. I drove her to her door, a rooming-house in Notting Hill, and she evidently thought I would be expecting to ‘kip’ with her. I quickly disillusioned her.
‘Then we’ll no see each other again.’
‘We could.’ I looked at her dumpy figure beside me. ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Twenty.’
‘Eighteen?’
‘Ge’ away wi’ you. I’m all of twenty.’
‘I’ve got a proposition to make.’ She sniffed. ‘Sorry. A proposal. Actually, I’m waiting around for someone ... a girl … to come back from Australia. And what I’d very much like for two or three weeks is a companion.’ Her grin split her face from ear to ear. ‘I’m offering you a job. There are agencies in London that do this sort of thing. Provide escorts and partners.’
She still grinned. ‘I’d awfla like you just to come up.’
‘No—I meant exactly what I offered. You’re temporarily drifting. So am I. So let’s drift together … and I’ll take care of the finances. No sex. Just companionship.’
She rubbed the insides of her wrists together; grinned again and shrugged, as if one madness more was immaterial.
So I took up with her. If they had their eyes on me, it would be up to them to make a move. I thought it might even help to precipitate matters.
Jojo was a strange creature, as douce as rain—London rain, because she was seldom very clean-and utterly without ambition or meanness. She slipped perfectly into the role I cast her for. We slopped round the cinemas, slopped round the pubs, slopped round exhibitions. Sometimes we slopped round all day up in my flat. But always, at some point in the night, I sent her slopping back to her cubbyhole. Often we sat for hours at the same table reading magazines and newspapers and never exchanging a word. After seven days I felt I had known her for seven years. I gave her four pounds a week and offered to buy her some clothes and pay her tiny rent. She accepted a dark-blue jersey from Marks and Spencers, but nothing else. She fulfilled her function very well; she put off every other girl who looked at us and on my side I cultivated a sort of lunatic transferred fidelity towards her.
She was always equable, grateful for the smallest bone, like an old mongrel; patient, unoffended, casual. I refused to talk about Alison, and probably Jojo ceased to believe in her; accepted, in her accept-all way, that I was just ‘a wee bit cracked’.
Then one October evening I knew I wouldn’t sleep an
d I offered to drive her anywhere she wanted within a night’s range. She thought for a moment and said, goodness knows why, Stonehenge. So we drove down to Stonehenge and walked around the looming menhirs at three o’clock with a cold wind blowing and the sound of peewits in the moon-drenched wrack above our heads. Later we sat in the car and ate chocolate. I could just see her face; the dark smudges of her eyes and the innocent puppy-grin.
‘Why are you grinning, Jojo?’
‘ ‘Cause I’m happy.’
‘Aren’t you tired?’
‘No.’
I leant forward and kissed the side of her head. It was the first time I’d ever kissed her, and I started the engine immediately. After a while she went to sleep and slowly slumped against my shoulder. When she slept she looked very young, fifteen or sixteen. I got occasional whiffs of her hair, which she hardly ever washed. I felt for her almost exactly what I felt for Kemp; great affection, and not the least desire.
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 flat.’
‘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 flat.
‘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 duffel coat 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?’
‘M’m.’
‘Come on.’
‘Come on where?’
‘You know.’
‘No.’
She stood there in the door for a silent moment. 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 poured 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, or at least clearly female, 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 didna 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 took 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 thinkin’.’
‘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 just 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 stern 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 gasfnc 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 snuffle. 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 flat tyre?’ 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. Ijuist sat there pretendin’.’
‘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 herself 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 them. I thought about the only truth that mattered, the only morality that mattered, the only sin, the only crime. When Lily de Seitas had told me her version of it at the end of our meeting at the museum I had taken it as a retrospective thing, a comment on my past and on my anecdote about the butcher. But I saw now it had been about my future.
History has superseded the ten commandments of the Bible; for me they had never had any real meaning, that is, any other than a conformitant influence. But sitting in that bedroom, staring at the glow of the fire on the jamb of the door through to the sitting-room, I knew that at last I began to feel the force of this super-commandment, summary of them all; somewhere I knew I had to choose it, and every day afresh, even though I went on failing to keep it. Conchis had talked of points of fulcrum, moments when one met one’s future. I also knew it was all bound up with Alison, with choosing Alison, and having to go on choosing her every day. Adulthood was like a mountain, and I stood at the foot of this cliff of ice, this impossible and unclimbable: Thou shalt not inflict unnecessary pain.
‘Could I have a fag, Nick?’
