The Naive and Sentimental Lover (45 page)

“Yes. I love him, too.”

“You haven't ratted?”

“No.”

“Which means,” she remarked contentedly, “we
both
love him. That's
excellent.
We
must
get marks for that. You see, Cassidy, I've never had a lover apart from Shamus. Nor have you, have you?”

“No.”

“So I think a certain
amount
of forethought is advisable. Is that coffee?”

He poured it for her, adding cream but no sugar. He poured the cream Sandra's way, spoon upside down over the surface to prevent it from penetrating too far.

 

“Do you think a fair test would be: what we would give up?” Helen suggested. “Would I give up Shamus, for instance? Would you give up the bosscow and the two veg? You see, Cassidy, we are talking about ruin as well as love.”

Cassidy was suddenly, if cautiously, conscious of a deep protective urge. A child might as well have talked about the world economy just then, as Helen about ruin; for she imposed a peace on him that was like a rest of arms after a long war. He perceived in her a potential honesty of companionship which till now, in all his isolated wandering, in all his attempts to live for himself, had seemed impossible. The laughter he had shared with Shamus was not gone; but in Helen he could possess it, trust it, rid it of its violence. She was smiling at him, and he knew he was smiling in return. Looking at her he knew also that it was the past that was a ruin, not the future: and he saw the empty autumn cities, the tarred warehouses, the bare road before the hood of his car, and he knew them only as the places where he had searched in vain for Helen.

“I love you,” said Cassidy.

“Excellent,” said Helen briskly. “I feel exactly the same.”

 

The trolley squeaked as she pushed it. Fastening the towel more securely round her, she guided the tricky wheels skilfully through the open doorway to the drawing room.

Sitting alone on the bed, waiting for her return, Cassidy was victim to many conflicting moods. Mainly, however, they ran in the direction of terror.

 

First, Old Hugo addressed his Divine Employer.

Good morning Lord,
he said cheerfully from the pine pulpit somewhere in England, his enormous hands folded in athletic piety.
How are you? This is Hugo Cassidy and his flock reporting from the Zion Tabernacle of East Grinstead, Sussex, offering up the prayers of our hearts this lovely Friday midnight. Look down in your goodness on young Aldo here will You, Lord? He is
very
much confused between sin and virtue just at the moment. My view, for what it is worth, Lord, is that he has put his hand into a snake's nest, but only
Thou,
oh Lord, in Thy wisdom can give a final ruling on this one; and so be it.

 

There was still time. If he played his cards right, stalled a little, pleaded a small illness perhaps, such as a headache or a gastric disorder, he might very well get out of this yet. Some tricky talk perhaps to begin with—well he was good at that—some friendly kissing and making up and then get dressed, shake hands, and laugh about it later as a silly mistake they both nearly made.

Would she return? A sudden hope gave him solace.

She's bolted. She looked at him, got the guilts, and decided to run . . .

In a towel?

Logic is my enemy, thought Cassidy; I should never have taken a degree.

 

He heard the door close softly and the latch slide; he heard her go back to the bathroom and he knew she was hanging up the towel because she was tidy. Suddenly, seized by panic, he imagined the total failure. He saw another Cassidy twisting, humping, recoiling, wrestling with his unrisen manhood; he heard Shamus' laughter ringing through the wall, and Helen's, Sandra's muffled grunt of irritation at his inadequacy.

 

The bathroom light had gone out; Helen had put out the bathroom light. He saw the pale rectangle die on the wall before him. Economy; Jesus, does she think I pay the electricity here? I didn't really buy the place, you know.

 

Er, Sandra, Helen, whatever your name is, there's something you ought to know, I'm afraid: I have absolutely no expertise. If you think I can do
anything
for you that Shamus can't do, well (as Sandra would say) I can't finish the sentence. I don't know how you're made: that's the truth of it; none of you. I have absolutely no picture of how you're made or what gives you satisfaction. May I be absolutely specific here?

 

She was in bed. Cassidy had not moved, had not looked; he was preparing a speech for the Annual General Meeting:

“Now many of you have come here with the highest expectations. I know that. Many years ago I myself had similar expectations of the same act. There are certain things however that you should know, and to save you unnecessary time and trouble I will be very frank. As a lover, your Chairman is a
non-starter.
Sorry but there it is. His sexual encounters with his wife have always been essentially of the formal kind, confined to what is known within the trade as the English missionary position. Many of them, so to speak, never got off the drawing board. Your Chairman is aware that there is a distance to descend and a point at which to enter. And also, that any attempt above or below that point gives rise to discomfort and criticism. Practice has done nothing to enrich his knowledge; indeed you should know that after fifteen years of sporadic congress your Chairman can still cause Mrs. Cassidy quite unreasonable pain by entering a wrong channel, so that she has been known, not infrequently, to cry out in indignation, rearrange herself with unfriendly care; and thereafter to make no sound, but to accept your Chairman's gaucherie as the lot of every woman married into the trade.”

Break. The intimate tone.

“Now I am perfectly conscious of these deficiencies. In my time I have read books, studied photographs, doodled on telephone pads, attended, during national service, army lectures; I have even, in rare moments of mutual frankness with Mrs. Cassidy, delved surreptitiously with my fingers among the perplexing folds. Yet the terrain persistently eludes me. In my imagination, it has the whorls and curlicues of a fingerprint: no two examples, the brochure reads, are ever wholly identical. I am perfectly conscious, here, of a cross fire of psychological interpretations—Dr. John Elderman, our medical consultant, will happily give you a handbook on the subject—and I have fought hard
over the years,
together with your other Directors, for a clearer orientation. In vain. Now you may very well feel that a
younger
man, less—I believe the fashionable word is inhibited is it not, Mr. Meale?—less
inhibited
might serve you better. If so, well, let me assure you that you will have the
fullest
and the most
wholehearted
cooperation of the entire Board, and no bad feelings shall be allowed to interfere with a
healthy,
a
satisfactory
. . .”

Still standing before an attentive if absent audience—a rug's width, in fact, from the edge of the double bed—he felt her gaze on him, and heard the silence of her contemplation.

“You're not very good at it, are you, Cassidy?” said Helen quietly.

“No.”

“Well we're just going to have to put a lot of work in, aren't we?”

“Yes, I suppose we are.”

“You can't do it in a dinner jacket,” she said.

He undressed.

“Now what you do next is: you kiss me.”

He kissed her, leaning across her, so that their lips met at a right angle.

“I'm afraid you'll have to get nearer,” she said. And as if it were an inspiration: “Hey, how about getting into bed with me?”

He got into the bed.

“It's called foreplay,” she explained. “Then there's consummation—” rather in the tone with which she had ordered dinner “—and then there's afterglow.”

 

Swedish.

Just a Swedish episode. She probably doesn't even realise she's naked, a lot of people don't make anything of nudity at all these days, hardly know whether they're dressed or not. That was one of the things he liked about the films at the Cinephone, actually; you could look at them in their
wild state.
Might drop in there tomorrow, actually; see what they had running. Actually.

Tentatively, still listening for sounds from next door, he made the first reconnaissance. Her skin, he noticed, had a curiously flaccid texture, a cloying liquidity to the touch which he suddenly found unappealing. Her breasts particularly, which in repose largely assumed the requisite shape—and clothed were most distinguished—yielded too easily to his hand, betraying the hard bone underneath. Also, she was too white, with a whiteness that was not luminous so much as vegetable, moreover a vegetable grown underground, and entirely contrary to his appetites. Momentarily revolted by a body so shadowless and obscenely, whitely naked, he moved away from her and busied himself with the bedside light while he tried to think of something to say.

“You're not putting it
out,
are you?” Helen asked crisply in the same tone which had earlier reminded him of Sandra.

“Of course not.”

It's her purity, he told himself; this is what you feel when you sleep with a total woman.

“You're
thinking
aren't you?” Helen said sympathetically.

“Yes.”

“What about?”

“Love, life . . .
us,
I suppose,” Cassidy replied cautiously and lowered his head on to the pillow with a half-concealed sigh. “Shamus,” he added, in a despairing appeal to her conscience.

“Would you feel better if you hated him?” she asked.

“Well it would be more Old Testament, wouldn't it?”

“That's what
he
thinks. What do you think?”

“Well . . . no.”

“You haven't got the
guilts
have you, Cassidy? Because he's your lover and my husband?”

Cassidy might not understand everything, but he did know that between Shamus and Helen moral scruple was not a plea which would be accepted in evidence.

“Of course not.”

“Then what is it? Touch me.”

“I did.”

“Touch me again.”

“I am touching you.”

“Only my hand.”

“I love you, Helen,” Cassidy said, allowing his tone to give the impression that this was only one side of an inward argument.

“But you don't want me,” Helen suggested. “You've changed your mind. I must say you've picked a bloody good time.”

Cassidy smiled. “God if only you knew,” he said, with a poor shot at world-weariness.

“Is it
really
so difficult to take?” Helen asked. “After all the lessons we've had?”

 

Receiving no answer, she evidently decided to renounce the initiative and they lay in silence again for quite a long time, while Cassidy took advice from those closest to him.

“Dad.”

“Yes, Hug?”

“You know,
Dad.
”

“What do I know, Hug?”

“I like this lady.”

“Good.”

“She's not as nice as Heather, though, is she?”

“It's just that you know Heather better. And Heather knows us better too.”

“Heather's not so
pushy.
Dad.”

“Yes Hug.”

“I like Angie better too.
Dad.
”

“Yes Hug.”

“Has Angie Mawdray seen your pennier?”

“Certainly not. Why on
earth
should she have seen it?”

“Mummy has.”

“Mummy's different.”

“Has Snaps?”

“No.”

“Mummy's
lovely,
” said Hugo. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight Hug.”

 

“A lot of people do it,” said Sandra, standing at the door in the darkness and sighing to wake him up. “And it's
perfectly
natural. Just because you don't enjoy it, it doesn't mean everyone else doesn't, but still.”

“I know.”

“Well get on with it.”

“It's just that I'm impotent.”

“Nonsense, you're lazy and you eat too much. It's all those
ridiculous
Conservative dinners. No wonder you're bloated. Socialists don't
have
dinners. They have tea and sandwiches.”