The Naive and Sentimental Lover (16 page)

“We should, shouldn't we? It's the silly English thing, I'm afraid. Regulations are part of our tradition. We make them, then we fall in love with them.”

The expression held Kurt still for several chronometric seconds. “Fall in love?” he repeated.

“Figuratively.”

Kurt saw him to the door. “Please give her my regards.”

“I will. Thanks. I say, I don't know whether you read the English papers but there's a southern Irish man who's announced he's God. Not the new Christ, apparently. God.”

Kurt's frown was as faint as a pencil line after the rubbing out.

“Southern Ireland is Catholic,” he said.

“That's right.”

“I am sorry. I am evangelical.”

“Goodnight,” said Cassidy.

“Goodnight,” said Kurt.

 

For an hour, perhaps longer, he took taxis to places. Some smelt of Old Hugo's cigars, some of the scent of women he loved but had never met. It was dusk by the time he approached the Crescent and the lights were on in the houses either side. Stopping the cab he walked the last hundred yards and the Crescent was like the night they had first seen it, a treasure chest of pastel doors and antique coaching lamps, bound books, rocking chairs, and happy couples.

“You can have any one of the three. This one, this one, this one.”

“Let's have them all,” said Sandra, holding his hand as they stood in the rain. “Lorks, Pailthorpe—” using their game words and giving his hand a squeeze “—whoever will we get to fill so many rooms?”

“We'll found a dynasty,” said Cassidy proudly. “We'll be the Greeks, the Minoans, the Romans. Masses of little Pailthorpes, fat as butter. So.”

Woollen gloves she wore, and a woollen headscarf soaked through, and the rain lay on her face like tears of hope.

“Then there won't
never
be enough rooms,” she said proudly. “Cos I'm going to have litters of them. Ten at a time like Sal-Sal. Till you trip over them on the stairs.
So.
”

Sal-Sal was a Labrador bitch, their first, now dead.

 

She had drawn the curtains early, as if she were afraid of each day's dying. When she was young she had enjoyed the evenings, but now the curtains made an early night of them, and the twilight was left outside. The house stood in darkness, a dark green column, six floors of it, one corner stuck like a prow on to the pavement and chipped at handlebar height where the tradesboys passed. He hardly noticed the scaffolding any more, it had been there so long. He saw the house like a face under the hair of it, changing only where the masons changed it as they replaced the wooden lintels with hand-turned stone.

And if you do decide to go into the Church,
said Sandra,
we'll let it to a boys' club for peanuts.

Yes, Cassidy agreed,
we will. So
.

Ducking under the scaffolding he unlocked the front door and stepped inside. Bundles of Oxfam clothing in the hall, a plastic lifeboat for putting pennies in.

Music.

She was practising a simple hymn; just the tune, no attempt at harmony.

He looked for Heather's coat. Gone.

Christ, he thought; not a witness, not a referee. It'll take them a month to find our bodies.

“Hi,” he called up the stairs.

The music continued.

Sandra had her own drawing room and the piano was too large for it. It stood between her doll's house and a crate of bricà-brac she had bought at Sotheby's and not yet unpacked, and it looked as though it had been dropped there from above like a lifeboat and no one knew where to sail it. She sat very upright before it, manning it alone, one light burning for help and the metronome ticking out a signal. On its bow, where it finally tapered to a halt, stood a pile of dusty circulars about Biafra. From under the words “Biafra the Facts,” a black baby, terribly emaciated, screamed soundlessly into the crystal chandelier. Sandra wore a housecoat and her mother had put up her hair for her as if to say it wouldn't be needed any more that night. There was a hole in the wall behind her, jagged like a shell hole. Builders' dust sheets covered the floors, and a very big Afghan hound watched her from the depths of a Queen Anne winged chair.

“Hi,” he said again. “What gives?”

Her concentration deepened. She was a slight, hard-bodied girl with brown, male eyes and, like the house, she wore a wistful, uninhabited look which somehow discouraged trespass and yet lamented loneliness. Something had been planted there and withered. Regarding her, and waiting for the storm to break, Cassidy had the uncomfortable feeling that that something was himself. For years he had tried to want what she wanted, and found no external reason to want anything else. But in all those years he had never quite known what she wanted. Recently, she had acquired several small accomplishments, not for herself, but to pass on to her children before she died. Yet her children wearied her, and she was frequently unkind to them in little spiritual ways, the way children are unkind to one another.

“You're getting on fine,” Cassidy volunteered. “Who's teaching you?”

“No one,” she said.

“How was trade?”

“Trade?”

“Down at the clinic. Many turn up?”

“You call that trade?” she asked.

“No one turned up,” she said.

“Perhaps they're cured,” he suggested, his voice slowing to the rhythm of the music.

“No. They're out there. Somewhere.”

The metronome ticked slowly to a halt.

“Shall I wind it up for you?”

“No thank you,” she said.

Awkwardly, not wishing to disturb the Afghan, he balanced one buttock on the winged chair. It was very uncomfortable and the original embroidery pricked his tender skin.

“So what did you do?”

“Baby-sat.”

“Oh. Who for?”

“The Eldermans.”

She spoke with an infinite patience, in sad acceptance of an unfathomable mystery. The Eldermans were the doctor and his wife, a hearty, treacherous couple and Sandra's closest allies.

“Well, that was nice,” said Cassidy, genially. “Go to the flicks did they? What did they see?”

“I don't know. They just wanted to be together.”

Very stiffly, she played a descending scale. She finished very low and the Afghan growled in discomfort.

“Sorry,” said Cassidy.

“What for?”

“About Hugo. I just got worried.”

“Worried what about?” she asked, frowning. “I don't think I understand.”

In his heart, Cassidy was prepared to confess to anything—human crimes had no logic for him, and he readily assumed he had committed them all. Outward confession, however, was painful to him, and offensive to his notions of deportment.

“Well,” he began reluctantly, “I deceived you. I took him to a specialist. I pretended I was taking him to
High Noon
and instead I took him to a specialist.” Receiving not even a reply, let alone absolution, he added more crisply, “I thought that was what we've been quarrelling about for the last eight days.”

With a noise like slopping water the Afghan began chewing at her forepaw, trying to get at something deep in the skin.

“Stop that!” Sandra bellowed; and to Cassidy: “Are we quarrelling? I'm sure we're not.”

The Afghan paid her no attention.

“Oh well that's fine,” said Cassidy. And being close to anger, let the hymn soothe him, both lines.

“Where's Heather?” he asked.

“Out with a boyfriend.”

“I didn't know she had one.”

“Oh, she has.”

“Is he nice?”

“He cherishes her.”

“Oh well that's fine.”

The hole in the wall gave into what was once a study. The plan was to link the two rooms, which they agreed had been the original architect's original intention.

“What did the specialist
say
?” she enquired.

“He took another set of X-rays. He'll ring me tomorrow.”

“Well let me know, won't you?”

“I'm sorry I deceived you. It was . . . emotion. I care very much for him.”

She played another slow scale. “Of course you do,” she said, as if accepting the inevitable. “You're very fond of your children. I know you are. It's perfectly natural, why apologise? Have you had a
good
year?” she asked politely. “Spring's the time you count your money, isn't it?”

“Useful,” Cassidy replied cautiously.

“You mean you've made a lot of profit?”

“Well, before tax, you know.”

Folding away her music she went to the long window and stared at things he couldn't see.

“Goodnight darling,” her mother called reproachfully from upstairs.

“I'll be up in a minute,” Sandra said. “Did you buy an evening paper?”

“No, no I'm afraid not.”

“Or hear the news by any chance?”

He thought of telling her about Flaherty but decided against. Religion was one of the subjects they had agreed not to discuss.

“No,” he said.

She said no more but only sighed so finally he asked:

“What news?”

“The Chinese have launched their own satellite.”

“Oh my Lord,” said Cassidy.

The political world meant nothing to either of them, Cassidy was convinced of it. Like a dead language it provided the opportunity for studying at one remove the meaning of their own. If she talked America she was objecting to his money and Cassidy would reply in kind with a reference to the falling value of the pound; if she talked world poverty she was harping upon their early days when a slender budget had forced upon them an attitude of selfless abstinence. If she talked Russia, a country for which she professed the profoundest admiration, he knew that she longed for the plainer, passionate laws of a more vigorous sex life, for a never-never land in which his own sophistries could once more be subjugated to urges he no longer felt for her.

It was only recently however that she had entered the field of Defence. Uncertain of her meaning he selected a jovial tone.

“Was it yellow?”

“I don't know what colour it was I'm afraid.”

“Well I'll bet it was a flop,” he said.

“It was a complete success. Jodrell Bank has confirmed the Chinese bulletin.”

“Oh Lord well that'll stir things up I suppose won't it?”

“Yes. I forgot how much you enjoy sensation.”

She had moved closer to the window. Her face so near the glass seemed to be lit by darkness and her voice was as lonely as if she were talking of lost love. As if the day Thou hast given her, Lord, was ended.

“You do realise don't you that the Pentagon assessment of war risk foresees an annual rise of two per cent per annum?” With the tip of her small finger she drew a triangle and crossed it out. “That gives us fifty years at the most.”

“Well, not
us,
” he said still striving for a cheerful note.

“I meant civilisation. Our children in case you'd forgotten them. It's not much fun is it?”

Under the piano, two cats who had till then slept peacefully in each other's arms woke and began spitting.

“Perhaps it'll change,” he suggested. “Perhaps it'll go down again; it might. Like the stock market.”

With a shake of her dark hair she dismissed all chances of survival.

“Well, even if it doesn't there's not much we can do about it, is there?” he added injudiciously.

“So let's just go on making money. It'll be nice for the children won't it, to die rich. They'll thank us for that, won't they?” Her voice had risen a key.

“Oh no,” said Cassidy, “I don't mean that at all. God, you make me out to be a sort of monster . . .”

“But you don't propose to
do
anything do you? None of us does.”

“Well . . . there are the boys' clubs . . . the playing fields ... the Cassidy Trust . . . I mean I'm sorry they haven't
happened
yet, but they will, won't they?”