The Naive and Sentimental Lover (31 page)

“What's the hurry?” Cassidy demanded, now quite cross. “What difference does it make? The iron isn't even hot yet. Relax.”

Suddenly cautious, Cassidy said, “She'll be all right with you alone won't she?”

“Of course she won't. What the hell are you talking about? Do you realise that in an average working day that angel of light eats about ten of us alive? She does not observe, she does not
expect
to observe, either the inhibitions or the priorities of the English middle class. For all she cares—” They heard the flush of the lavatory; Elise returned from the bedroom. “—you and I can truss her up like a turkey and play football with her as long as we get her back on the street in good time to find two more of us.”

He thrust the passport into the girl's hand.

“But Shamus, I don't think she
is
one. I think she's just an ordinary girl.”

Like Heather Ast, he wanted to say; Hugo would like her very much.

Carefully, Elise turned the pages. Her fingers were slim and competent, and found their way most cleverly into narrow places.

“
Mais vous vous n'appelez pas Maclean,
” she remarked at last, comparing Shamus with the photograph.

“
Maclean, c'est son nom de plume,
” said Cassidy quickly, still at the door.

The stationer was across the road and Cassidy ran all the way. When he came back, out of breath, Shamus and Elise were standing at opposite sides of the room not looking at one another. Her hair was disarranged and she seemed angry.

“All right,” said Shamus, looking from one to the other of them. “Have your big relationship. Christopher Robin and Wendy touch wees, go beddie-byes. But when I come back I want her
out
and that passport ironed.”

“
Shamus
—” Cassidy called, but the door had closed on him with a bang.

“
Il n'est pas gentil, votre ami,
” said Elise.

“He's worried,” said Cassidy, and so am I. And in his best maternal French explained that Shamus was a great writer, perhaps the greatest of his time, that she was the first person in the whole world not to find him irresistible, that he had just finished his masterpiece and was naturally concerned with its reception. His anxiety in fact (Cassidy felt he could confide in her) related to a matter of business. To the film rights. The sale was made but yet to be confirmed; these deals had a way of falling through. She may have seen the film
Doctor Zhivago,
well Shamus wrote it; also
Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

Elise listened very gravely to these explanations, but although she admired Maclean's work they did not satisfy her. Men with two names, she said, reopening his identity at the first page, were not to be trusted, and Maclean was not gentle.

“
Vous êtes aussi artiste, Burgess?
” she asked.

“
Un peu,
” said Cassidy. Hearing him she smiled with shy complicity.

“
Moi aussi,
” she murmured, with a little nod.
“Un peu artiste, mais pas . . . entièrement.”

She was a very quiet girl. He had known at once she had a decent quiet, but now in the gathering dusk she filled the room with stillness. She ironed slowly and with concentration, head cocked a little as if she were waiting for Shamus' return, and when a footfall sounded in the corridor she paused and looked in that direction. Sandra, when she ironed, put her feet wide apart and stuck out her elbow like her father the Brigadier, but Elise kept very upright, conscious only of her task.

“I thought we might go out to dinner,” he said. “Just the two of us.”

Her head lifted; he could not see her expression but he took it for one of doubt.

“We could go to the Tour d'Argent if you like.”

She ironed another page.

“No, Burgess,” she said quietly.
“Pas de Tour d'Argent.”

“Oh but I can afford it.
Je suis riche, Elise . . . vraiment.
Whatever you like, the theatre if you prefer.”

“Yes. We do, of course. Lots. Only I don't seem to go very much.”

Again, for a time, she made no answer. Footsteps ascended the stairs but they passed without a pause, lacking Shamus' sprightliness. Closing the passport, Elise set the iron on its edge and folded the blanket on the table, then moved slowly round the room, picking up the dirty glasses and emptying the ashtrays.

“
Tu veux vraiment sortir, Burgess?
” she asked from the sink.

“I want to make you happy,” he said. “I'd like to give you a good time. I'm quite safe, honestly.”

“
Bon,
” she said, and smiled distantly, as if his wish were no longer her concern.
“Bon, c'est comme vous voulez.”

 

Dear Lover,
he wrote,
You are a bad-tempered sodder. Elise is taking me to her pad. Back by ten thirty.

And left the note beside the freshly ironed passport.

 

At the door, letting him help her into her coat, Elise kissed him. At first it was a child's kiss, Mark beneath the mistletoe. Then, like a tiny paintbrush, her tongue traced the line between his lips, moved upwards to his eyelids.

“We could go to Allard,” he said, stepping ahead of her into the corridor. It was a place which Bloburg recommended.

“Burgess . . .”
Her hand was on his arm.

Cassidy laughed. “Oh, come on,” he said. “You'll be hungry by the time we get there.” And left another note at the desk, virtually a duplicate but ending “Love.”

 

At Allard, he offered her a trip to London to learn the hotel trade in which, he said, his father was immensely influential. Elise was very grateful but declined: her mother, she said, forbade her to travel alone. After that they talked little. Elise ate faster than Cassidy, and when she had finished she asked for a cab, which Cassidy paid for in advance.

She would have loved to stay longer, she explained to him, but she had obligations to her family.

Somewhere, nevertheless, in a white house in Paris, in an attic lifted from the warm streets and set above a courtyard that echoed with the rifle shots of beaten carpets, in a city trembling with the energies of love, in a wide brass bed with a down comforter washed white by the moon, somewhere between dusk and dawn, in that hour which after great exertion comes before intense fatigue, alone at last in the inward world of his romantic dreams, Cassidy loved Elise.

She came to him through the window, in long strides of her sheer white legs; lit by the striped moonlight of the shutters, she stood at his bedhead whispering
Burgess.
Her body rose like a white candle out of her fallen clothes, her tiny nipples were pink stains in the wax.
Burgess are you there?
Yes Elise.
Burgess tu es tellement gentil: do you really want to marry me?
Yes Elise.
Why are you dressed, Burgess?
I was going to find you Elise. I was going to walk the streets until I found you, then take you to the Sacré Coeur, where influential priests are waiting to perform the ceremony.
That is a very sensible arrangement. But what shall we do about money?
I have secreted twenty thousand pounds at the Banque Fédérale in the Elysées. I achieved this illegally by making fictitious payments for French components.
Burgess,
she breathed.

She undressed him with gravity, loosening first his tie and lifting it in a loop wide of his ears in order not to crush the silk.
Burgess, mon artiste, my inventor, my child, my husband, my provider, is anyone as rich as you?
No, said Cassidy. But best of all it has not affected my integrity.
That is true,
said Elise.
You have great naturalness.
Sometimes, undressing him, she had to pause and settle him for her pleasure, pressing his head against her breasts or lap, his cheek into the silky odourless hair between her long closed thighs, arranging him like loved sculpture in the moonlight, commending his dimensions to unseen female friends, calling him kind and virile, gentle, brave, and virtuous.
Venez,
she whispered at last, turning to him the long plain of her back.
Follow my immaculate and pert behind, my twin watermelons which slyly conceal the crevice of forbidden love, the Secret Flower of the uninhibited Orient.
Elise, my person is protruding and erect. Will you cohabit with me?
It is my highest ambition, Burgess.
She led him from the centre, encircling his manhood with her long, domesticated fingers as they drifted back and forth over the Paris sky.
Tu aimes ça Burgess? Do I give you pleasure? Shall I do it also with my mouth? I feel what you feel Burgess. My responses are entirely homosexual.
Just the fingers thank you, Cassidy replied. The fingers will do very nicely.
Burgess, you are so pure.
Elise, who is this helping you? he asked after a moment. Do I detect
other
fingers at work as well as your own, Elise? Surely I hear Frank Sinatra singing and discern the fumes of woodsmoke in your hair?
No one,
she assured him.
They are my hands only, you are dreaming of another.
Saying this, she opened his legs and traced with her nail's edge the tiny seam that joined him front and back, once, twice, three times.
More Burgess?
A little please. That will do thank you.
And here a little attention?
Elise enquired, cradling his grateful globes, making the hair of them signal with sharp small fires, making the skin taut and loving.
Now I leave you,
she whispered,
your manhood agonisingly suspended in the darkness.
You wouldn't like to finish it off, would you, while you're here? Cassidy asked.
You know the rules,
Elise replied softly, melting into the moonlight.
See you at the Sacré Coeur.

Don't be late, Cassidy called. Don't be late. Late. Late.

“Shamus?”

How could he face such solitude out there? What was he doing, far into the night? Out with the Few? I'm not enough for him. He needs writers; people who read his books.

An imitation ormolu clock glistening in the moonlight permanently stuck at half past two. Outside the window the beating of carpets, tapping to nothing in slow drips.

Shamus, come back.

If only to turn me outward again; to turn my hand to better loves than me.

 

Darling,
the outward Cassidy wrote next day, at frightful length, punishing his erring hand. It was nine o'clock in the morning, Shamus had not returned.

I talk because I have nothing to say, he thought, numbering the fourth page; she would love me better if I
had
slept with Elise. Is that—rereading his turgid prose—is that in fact what I
want
her to believe?