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.
We ate. The paximadia, rusks fried in olive oil, were as uninteresting as always, the hot chocolate watery and the sardines inappropriate, but we were too hungry to care. Finally we sat—I had slipped onto the floor as well—satiated, backs against the edge of the bunk, adding more smoke to that from the stove. We were both silent, both waiting. I felt like a boy with his first girl, at the moment when the thing has to stop, or to go on to the end. Frightened to make any move. Her bare shoulders were small, round, delicate. The end of the blanket she had tucked in under her armpit had become loose. I could see the top of her breasts.
The silence grew acutely embarrassing, at least to me; a sort of endurance test, to see which of us would have to break it first. Her hand lay on the blanket between us, for me to reach out and touch. I began to feel that she had exploited the whole situation, engineered everything to place me in this predicament: this silence in which it was only too clear that she was in command, not myself; only too clear that I wanted her—not Alison in particular, hut the girl she was, any girl who might have been beside me at that moment. In the end I threw my cigarette into the stove and lay back against the bunk and shut my eyes, as if I was very tired, as if sleep was all I wanted—as indeed, bar Alison, it was. Suddenly she moved. I opened my eyes. She was naked beside me, the blanket thrown back.
“Alison. No.” But she knelt and began to undress me.
“Poor little boy.”
She straddled my legs and unbuttoned my shirt, pulled it out. I shut my eyes and let her make me barechested.
“It’s so unfair.”
“You’re so brown.”
She ran her hands up the side of my body, my shoulders, my neck, my lips; playing with me, examining me, like a child with a new toy. She knelt and kissed the side of my neck and the ends of her breasts brushed my skin.
I said, “I’d never forgive myself if…”
“Don’t talk. Just lie still.”
She undressed me completely, then led my hands all over her body, to know it all again, soft skin, small curves, slimness, her always natural nakedness. Her hands. As she caressed me, I thought, it’s like being with a prostitute, hands as adept as a prostitute’s, nothing but a matter of pleasure… and I gave way to the pleasure she gave me. After a while she lay on top of me, her head on my chest. A long silence. The fire crackled, burnt our legs a little. I stroked her back, her hair, her small neck, surrendered to the nerve-ends in my flesh. I imagined lying in the same position with Lily, and I thought I knew it would be infinitely disturbing and infinitely more passionate; not familiar, not aching with fatigue, hot, a bit sweaty… some cheapened word like randy; but white-hot, mysterious, overwhelming passion.
Alison murmured, shifted, bit me, swayed over me in a caress she called the pasha caress, that she knew I liked, all men liked; my mistress and my slave. I remember our dropping into the bunk, a coarse straw mattress, the harsh blankets, holding me a moment, kissing me once on the mouth before I could pull away, then turning her back; my hand on the wet breasts, and her hand holding it there, the small smooth belly, the faint washed and rainwashed smell of her hair; and then, in seconds, too soon to analyze anything, sleep.
I woke up sometime in the night, and went and drank some water from the pail. Small pencils of late-risen moon came through the old bullet holes. I went back and leant over Alison. She had thrown back the blanket a little and her skin was a deep shadowed red in the ember light; one breast bare and slightly slumped, her mouth half open, a slight snore. Young and ancient; innocent and corrupt; in every woman, a mystery.
The wave of affection and tenderness I felt made me determine, with that sort of revelationary shock ideas about courses of action sometimes have when one wakes up drugged with sleep, that tomorrow I must tell her the truth; and not as a confession, but as a means of letting her see the truth, that my real disease was not something curable like syphilis, but far more banal and far more terrible, a congenital promiscuity. I stood over her, almost touching her, almost tearing the blanket back and sinking on her, entering her, making love to her as she wanted me to; but not. I gently covered the bare breast, then picked up some blankets and went to the next bunk.
42
We were woken by someone knocking on the door, then half opening it. Sunlight slashed through. He withdrew when he saw we were still in the bunks. I looked at my watch. It was ten o'clock. I pulled on my clothes and went out. A shepherd. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the bells of his flock. He struck back with his crook the two enormous dogs that bared their teeth at me and produced from the pockets of his greatcoat a cheese wrapped in sorrel leaves, which he had brought for our breakfast. After a few minutes Alison came out, tucking her shirt into her jeans and screwing up her eyes against the sun. We shared what was left of the rusks and the oranges with the shepherd; used up the last of the film. I was glad he was there. I could see, as clear as printed words in Alison’s eyes, that she thought we had crossed back into the old relationship. At the same time she left it to me to make the next move. She had broken the ice; but it was for me to jump into the water.
The shepherd stood up, shook hands and strode off with his two savage dogs and left us alone. Alison stretched back in the sun across the great slab of rock we had used as a table. It was a much less windy day, April-warm, a dazzling blue sky. The sheep bells sounded in the distance and some bird like a lark sang high up the slope above us.
“I wish we could stay here forever.”
“I’ve got to get the car back by tomorrow morning.”
“Just wishing.” She looked at me. “Come and sit here.” She patted the rock by her side. Her gray eyes stared up at me, at their most candid. “Do you forgive me?”
I bent and kissed her cheek and she put her arms round me so that I lay half across her, and we had a whispered conversation, mouths to each other’s left ears.
“Say you wanted to.”
“I wanted to.”
“Say you love me a little still.”
“I love you a little still.” She pinched my back. “A lot still.”
“And you’ll get better.”
“Mm.”
“And never go with those nasty women again.”
“Never.”
“It’s silly when you can have it for free. With love.”
“I know.”
I was staring at the ends of hair against the rock, an inch or two from my eyes, and trying to bring myself to the point of confession. But it seemed like treading on a flower because one can’t be bothered to step aside.
“You’re killing my back.”
I pushed up, but she held me by the shoulders, so that I had to stare down at her. I sustained her look, its honesty, for a while, then I turned and sat with my back to her.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just wondered what malicious god made a nice kid like you see anything in a bastard like me.”