The Naive and Sentimental Lover (41 page)

“Poor Sandra,” said Ast quietly. “She'd never understand.”

“It's
virtue,
” Cassidy insisted. “The only virtue, the only freedom, the only life. To make
wanting
the justification. For everything.”

“Oh Aldo,” said Ast, wistfully touching his hand. “It's such a journey, such a
lonely
journey.”

 

“The ordinary hours are not enough,” Cassidy declared to Sandra on Wednesday, driving back from a late dinner through empty streets. “I'm sick of enough. I'm sick of making
convention
an excuse for being bored.”

“You mean you're bored with
me,
” said Sandra.

“Christ
of course
I don't!”

“Don't swear,” she said.

“I'm sure he didn't mean it, darling,” said her mother from the back. “All men do it.”

“What's eating you then, all of a sudden?” Snaps murmured as, ladies first, she went upstairs to bed. “You're like a bloody bitch in heat.”

 

“We're back,” said Helen, calling him at work. “Did you miss us?”

“Certainly not,” said Cassidy. “I have unlimited substitutes.”

“Liar,” said Helen and kissed him down the telephone.

 

Hall was out: that was the occasion. Not sprung, as Shamus would have had it, not swapped for the American Ambassador, but out, honourably liberated with the full co-operation of the Wormwood Scrubs authorities, after remission of sentence for good conduct. His release had coincided almost to the day with the return of Shamus and Helen: valid causes both for celebration.

But surely not at the Savoy?

At the Bag o'Nails, yes. At the Victoria Palace, at one of the drag pubs which Helen liked, across the river in Battersea or Clapham. But not—in Cassidy's book at least—never for such a purpose, his beloved Savoy.

Was it Helen's idea? Cassidy doubted it.

Helen, for all her fearless virtue, had a considerable sense of decorum.

Shamus then? Was it Shamus' idea?

The finger pointed strongly in his direction. Much enlivened by his journey to the country—a tiny
lapse,
Helen said vaguely, he was cracking a bit under the book, best not refer to it—he had come back full of suggestions as to how they should celebrate. His first was a dockside firework display, the biggest London had ever seen, bigger than that of the Great Exhibition; all Cassidy's money should be devoted to it. But Cassidy claimed to remember having seen oil tankers at Egg Wharf, so that plan was dropped in favour of a
dancing.
Not an ordinary
dancing,
but a great ballet, written by Shamus to celebrate the virtues of passionate crime. Everyone would have a part, they would take the Albert Hall and forbid entry to Gerrard's Crossers.

To this plan, Helen had the sternest objections. He should finish the centre pages, she said, before he even
thought
of writing anything else. Moreover, he knew no choreography. If Shamus wanted to dance, why didn't they go somewhere where dancing was already available . . . ? And from there somehow, they agreed on the Savoy.

Therefore it was most likely, but not proven, that Shamus had started the movement, and that Cassidy and Helen, as so often, joined it once it had begun.

 

The matter settled, it was at once their principal, indeed their only, concern. Whatever reservations Cassidy and Helen might secretly have shared were at once set aside in favour of the excitement of preparation. They planned for it, they lived for it. While naïve Shamus put on his beret and settled, naked again, before the open window, the sentimental Supporters' Club took up residence in the kitchen and wrote out menus and place cards.

“Oh Cassidy, what
will
it be like? I'll bet it's absolutely
peachy.
Cassidy, can we have caviar? Say we can? Oh
Cassidy.
”

News from Shamus' agent gave them fresh cause to celebrate: he had been offered a lucrative if inglorious contract to visit Lowestoft for three weeks to write a documentary on trawlermen for the Central Office of Information. The Office would pay his expenses and a fee of two hundred pounds. Helen was delighted: sea air was just what Shamus needed.

“And you
will
come and visit us, won't you Cassidy?”

“Of course.”

They would leave on the morning following the party, settle in over the weekend; Shamus would start work on the Monday. Shamus called it his
Codpiece
and left the arrangements to Helen.

“But won't it interfere with his novel?” Cassidy asked, very puzzled.

Helen was oddly indifferent.

“Not madly,” she said. “Anyway I want to go, and for once he can damn well do something for me.”

Which left them with the vital question of what Helen would wear.

“Oh God, I'll borrow something of Mummy's, what does it
matter?
”

“Helen.”

“Cassidy,
please
. . .”

So one afternoon, while Shamus was still working, they went back to Fortnum's where, in a sense, they had begun. The choice was absurd, for she gave style to everything she put on.

“Well
you
decide, Cassidy, you're buying it.”

“The white one,” Cassidy said promptly, “with the low back.”

“But Cassidy, it costs a—”

“
Please,
” said Cassidy impatiently.

“That was the one
I
liked,” said Helen.

From Piccadilly they went to the Savoy and selected a table for five and ordered a special cake with “Welcome Home Hall” in icing, a fruitcake because Helen said fruitcake would keep, they could take home what they didn't eat. Sitting in the cab again Helen became suddenly very solemn.

“Shamus must never know,” she said. “Never in his whole life. Promise, Cassidy?”

“Know what?”

“About this afternoon. About the dress. About all we did, the fun we had, the laughter, and your kindness. Promise.”

“But God,” he protested, “this is
us,
this is friendship, it could be
you
two, or Shamus and me, or . . .”

“All the same,” said Helen; and Cassidy, bowing to her superior knowledge, promised.

“But how will you explain the dress?”

Helen laughed. “God, you don't think he counts things do you?”

“Of course not,” Cassidy said, ashamed by his own vulgarity.

S
uddenly it was Friday, and they were driving in the Bentley to the river entrance.

The night was as warm as Paris; lighted candles waited on the table; the river bank was hung with white jewels palely mirrored in the stiff black water.

“Look Shamus,” Cassidy breathed in his ear. “Remember?”

“Meeow,” said Shamus.

 

Nothing in the fulfilment, it is said, matches the excitement of anticipation; yet as Cassidy took his place on Helen's left, in the most effective position, as it happened, to admire the flowers he had sent her that morning, and the scent he had given her the day before, to study with fraternal reverence the long fall of her white neck and the discreet swell of her white breasts; to admire with but a turn of the head the sudden, handsome profile of his beloved Shamus, he was filled again with that unearthly joy, that elusive ecstasy, short-lived though it would always be, which had become since Haverdown the purpose, and the occasional prize, of all his striving. This is the moment, he thought; now it is all here, under one spell, this is what was missing in Paris.

Sal seemed to have come unwillingly. She kept very close to Hall and trembled while she ate. Her choice was pale green, and a silver ring on her little finger. Addressed by any but Hall she seized the ring and turned it for a charm, but it brought her little luck.

“Come on Sal. Aren't you going to drink to Hall?” Cassidy asked in a jocular voice, coping well with the folk backstairs.

Shrugging, she drank to her man; but did not lift her eyes.

But Hall adored her. He sat beside her with a showman's pride, holding his knife and fork like the handlebars of the training cycle, smiling whenever he looked at her. The dinner jacket made no difference to him. Hall was a boxer; he had been a boxer in prison, now he was a boxer in a dinner jacket; only a tiny twinkle in each hooded eye suggested that he was temporarily off duty.

“Doing all right, Hall?”

From one clenched fist, a jointless thumb jerked into the air.

“All right, Lovely,” said Hall, and winked.

As to Shamus, the evening had not come a moment too soon. The stresses of tomorrow's departure, of interrupting, if only for a few weeks, his rewrite of the novel, had once more taken a heavy toll of his humour. His manner, though benevolent, was drawn and preoccupied; Hall's release, now it had taken place, was of no further interest to him. Catching Cassidy's eye, he stared at him blankly before lifting his glass.

“Great party, lover,” he murmured, with a sudden, loving smile. “Kiss kiss. Bless you lover.”

“Bless you,” said Cassidy.

He could not help wishing all the same that Shamus had worn a dinner jacket. He had even taken him aside the previous day and offered to buy him one, but Shamus had declined.

“Got to wear the uniform lover,” he insisted. “Can't let down the regiment.”

Uniform was the deathcoat and a lavishly confected bow tie of found material, a belt, perhaps, from an old black dress of Helen's. He wore it in silence, musket reversed.

 

To Helen and Cassidy, therefore, fell the burden of conversation; they assumed it nobly. Helen, passing olives and smiling at the ever-attentive waiters, talked brilliantly about the theatre.

“I mean how can it live? How many people
understand
Pinter; how
many?
”

“I don't,” said Cassidy boldly. “I go in, I sit down, I wait for the curtain, and all I'm thinking is: God, am I up to this?”

“If only they could be more
explicit,
” Helen lamented—all this to bring in Hall and Sal. “I mean
Shakespeare
reached the masses, why can't
they?
And after all, let's face it, all of us belong to the masses when it comes to art. I mean for something to be any good, it
has
to have universality. So why can't they, well,
be
universal?”

“Take
Moon,
” said Cassidy. “
Moon
was universal.”

Failing by these subtle excursions to bring in either Shamus or their guests of honour, Helen wisely changed the subject.

“Tell us about your
greatest
fight,” she said to Hall, over the smoked salmon. “The one you would like most to be remembered by.”

“Well,” said Hall, “I don't know.”

“Getting Sal's knickers off,” Shamus suggested. And to the wine waiter, whose attentions for some time had been annoying him, “Just bring us a bottle each and piss off.”

“To Hall and Sal,” said Helen quickly, lifting her champagne glass.

“To Hall and Sal,” they said.

“Shamus, drink to Sal.”

Obediently Shamus emptied his glass. The band was playing something fast to warm the evening up.

 

“Is he all right?” Cassidy asked, out of Hall's hearing.

“Dale rang,” said Helen.

“Oh Christ. Not about the rewrite?”

“It's still not vulgar enough.”

“I hate that man,” said Cassidy. “I really hate him.”

“Dear Cassidy. You're so loyal.”

“What about
you
for God's sake?”

Shamus and Sal were dancing. Sal danced very upright, the way people dance on ships, away from him, watching the other people as if to copy them. Shamus' ballroom style, by contrast, was essentially his own. Having gained the centre of the floor, he set to work consolidating his position by means of a series of wide, wolflike gyrations, while Sal waited patiently for his return.

“He's got this territorial thing,” Helen explained. “He longs for land. He bought a field once, down in Dorset. We used to go and walk over it when he was feeling bad.”

“What happened to it?”

“I don't know.” The question seemed to puzzle her, for she frowned and looked away. “Still there I suppose.” Cassidy waited, knowing there was more. “It had a cottage on it. We were going to convert it. That's all.”

“Helen.”

“Yes.”

“Will you
use
the chalet? Go there, as my guests? Will you let me do that?”

Her smile was so weary.

“Listen,” he continued, “I'll
lend
him the travel money, he can pay it back from
Codpiece
when he gets his cheque . . .”

“It's all
owed,
” she said. “It's all spent.”

“Helen
please.
It would do you so much good. You'll just
love
the mountains.”

The music had stopped but Sal and Shamus were embracing under the spotlight. Sal neither resisted nor cooperated. Shamus was kissing the nape of her neck, a prolonged, explicit kiss which captured the attention of the band and reminded Cassidy of the search for Mrs. Oedipus.

“Sal likes a dance,” said Hall as they finally returned.

There was no telling, from Hall's expression, whether he was pleased or not; his face had been folded that way for years and prison had not made it more responsive.

“So do I,” said Cassidy.

The music started again. At once, Helen led him back to the dance floor.