The Naive and Sentimental Lover (46 page)

“I think I'm queer too.”

“Absolute nonsense. When we were young we did it just as well as other people and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It's just that I'm a bore. Sorry, but there's nothing I can do about
that.
”

“Sandra, I love you.”

Long silence.

“I love you too,” she said. “But still.”

 

 

“Shall I go and look at him?” Cassidy suggested.

“To get his blessing?”

“I'm sure he's awake.”

“My God,” said Helen, sitting bolt upright, her anger thoroughly aroused. “What a disgusting idea. He'd kill you if he found out, don't you realise. He'll be
far
worse than Hall ever was to that poor American.”

“Yes, I suppose he would,” Cassidy conceded.

“If he knew that you and I were in here,
naked, lovers
. . .” Her indignation found no further expression. “Christ!” she ended, and lay back with a thump.

“But we're not lovers, are we?” Cassidy asked cautiously. “Not yet.” Meaning: penetration has not been effected, Counsel could still put up a pretty good case; she forced me into it.

“Do you think he cares what we
do?
It's what we
feel
that matters.” She turned to him almost desperately. “And we
do
feel, don't we, Cassidy? Don't we? Cassidy, I've gone the bank. What the
hell
are you putting into this?”

“Everything,” he said, having briefly passed in review all the things that had made him happy: Hugo, Mark, the Bentley, the Night Animals House, and Sandra in a good temper. “All I ever loved.”

 

And suddenly was kissing her, taking her; was her master, conjured into her and over her; and Helen, his nimble, fluttering dying Helen, a brilliant conjunction of all his dreams. Her touch took nothing; she steered and danced, lay passive, rode above him; but still she only gave, and all the while she seemed to follow him, studying him for yes and no, testing the limits of his permission, creating in him, of her obedience, a growing obligation to love her in return.

“Natural break,” she whispered, and lay beside him, her eyes on his.

 

“Bold lover,” said Helen.

“I want to laugh,” said Cassidy.

“I'll have to put it to the Board,” she whispered, the passion trembling in her smile.

“I love you,” said Cassidy.

“Get on with your work,” said Helen.

 

Elise and Mrs. Bluebridge floated hand in hand, intoning sweet phrases from Old Hugo's good book; respectful waiters clapped to him in rhythmic unison; sinners and strivers, toiling up God's hill, turned to watch him with approval. The chorus multiplied.
Oui, Burgess, oui. Ça te fait plaisir? Beaucoup de plaisir,

 

Elise.
In Kensal Rise the green lights switched excitedly while the band played a Sherborne song:
Vivat rex Edwardus Sextus. Vivat!
The girls looked on, no longer dancing, studying respectfully the master's effortless technique. Now mothers with prams appeared among the crowd, waving, thanking, owing him their babies.

“Sandra!” he cried in welcome.

She had brought her meths drinkers: in crocodile, dressed for church, clean-shaven.

“You chaps!” he called to them, arresting the movement, “look here, now, you'd enjoy this; take you out of yourselves!”

“It would teach them a lesson,” Sandra agreed and sighed the way she sighed when he put his dirty clothes in the wrong basket.

Oh Christ, I
am
growing. Believe me lover, I have grown, I am growing, you have taught me
anger,
you have
kindled
me, fired me deep down; the fire spreads from the root; a running, faster fire, water won't help now, my lover, I'm up there with the best of you, drenched and still bathing; better than the best of you; cooking in your place, your cave, your oven; wake if you want. For pity's sake, lover, how can you sleep when murder is being done?

She was telling him: “Cassidy, you're the best, oh Christ, oh Cassidy, oh love!”

Lights were breaking in his eyes; at his back, the movement was small and agonised. She was calling to God and to Cassidy, to Shamus and her father. Her legs were laid wide like a Buddha's, she moved in a slow trance, patting him from side to side with her crooked knees. Captain, art thou sleeping there below? I'd like to be with you now, Shamus, actually; she's joined her own dark people, she's out there with the deep feelers. Actually, Shamus, I want you back.

 

It was achieved. A stretching of the back, two cats upon an ironing board. It was achieved. Hey ho and fuck it: a grateful end to waiting, a settling of chairs and mirrors in the moonlight, a clearing, an evacuation of the spirit as she let him die in her, keeping her body still to drink. He stayed there, being polite, waiting for the passage of years and the boy to climb out of the water. Thinking about the Bentley and had he heard it crash? Thinking about Shamus and was he watching from the door? Thinking about being Christ caught between two thieves; about being a thief and caught between two Christs; about being a child sleeping with his parents, and a parent sleeping with his children; about needing three, and about Angie Mawdray's signs of the zodiac: “Seven and three,” she said. “They're the magic numbers.” About Biafran children screaming on the piano and the new lifeboat in the almost finished hall, on the right as you go in, on the Sheraton satinwood dee-shaped table with the dropped leaf six hundred guineas. A paper lifeboat, issued by the Association, with a small slit for putting in the pennies; Sandra had discovered a new affection for the drowning.

Why can't we be one person? he wondered. Why do we have to be so many, mixed together in a single womb?

 

Released from her, performing the thoughtful father's duty of holding her hand because she was crying, Cassidy addressed the Board for the last time during his office as President.

“Consider the arithmetic, gentlemen, of this unusual situation. (Miss Mawdray, a little more coffee for Mr. Meale perhaps, he appears a trifle tired.) You have all read Nietzsche of course; those who have not will no doubt recall the German poet Somebody. Such men, gentlemen, have devised remarkable explanations for our human behaviour. They arrange us like stars in a horoscope. Well look at us. An example may be found in the perfect arrangement of our three parallel bodies. This is how, in our mystical assumption, we shall ultimately find our places in the firmament. In line, with our feet pointing east. Here, no longer in his dinner jacket, lying in his own hotel, is a bourgeois who gave his life in search of a dream. I will call him, tonight, on the customary Michelin rating, a two-star lover; good, but not quite worth a journey. To my left, separated from me by his wife and a mercifully insulated wall, lies an artist broken on the wheel of his genius: a galaxy of a man, but not organised.

“And between us, lover, between us, lies the truth. Naked, and a little exhausted, crying like a child.”

 

Leaving her to sleep, he unlocked the door and crept back into the drawing room. The coverlet had fallen to the floor. He lay even more naked than Helen, even more childish, more young. Were his eyes open or closed? There was not enough light to tell. Bending over him, Cassidy put his ear as close as he dared to the bare chest and heard the restless unequal thumping of his heart.

Who wrote that? My book or his?

Sleep.

 

Outside the window, one star burned, but neither Elise nor any other fantasy was there to welcome him. From Kensal Rise to Abalone Crescent, from South Audley Street to the river where it passes Pimlico, there was no one who was not thinking of the dawn.

 

 

The envelope was covered in green stamps depicting palm trees and monkeys. It was postmarked several months ago. He must have put it in his pocket and forgotten to open it. The script like Sandra's was infantile but adamant.

It ended quaintly
P. Groat Brigadier
(
retd
) and warned Cassidy in a P.S. to look after his tennis racquet:

 

 

The Bentley stood in the bay where he had parked it. No, the doorman said, jovially handing him the keys, of course no one had taken it; not without Mr. Cassidy's consent, of course not.

A
spell of cold weather, bringing rain and unseasonable winds, coincided with Cassidy's descent into Hades. At home over the weekend he barely spoke; though he was tender to his child and noticeably protective of his wife, his outward manner remained aloof, preoccupied.

“There's trouble about the Paper,” he told Sandra. “The Unions are in an ugly mood.”

Concerned, she saw him to the car.

“If there's anything I can do to help, let me know. Sometimes a woman's touch is what they need.”

“I will,” said Cassidy, and embraced her fondly, if distractedly.

 

Alone in his Bentley, the louche criminal prowled the London streets, shunning the main thoroughfares and the gaze of inquisitive policemen. He drove distractedly, regarding with loathing his deceiver's eyes in the driving mirror, red-rimmed, shadowed with debauchery. Aldo Cassidy, fifty thousand pounds reward, crime innocence. I'd have drawn it better, he thought, I'd have made me more contemptible.

 

“You'll ring us soon, won't you?” Helen had said on the doorstep, looking into him and beyond. “Cassidy.”

“Can't be soon enough, lover,” Shamus whispered, shuffling ahead of them up the steel stairs. “Come and play football.”

“I will.”

“How about now?”

“I've got to put in time with the bosscow.”

“I'll bet those bad-tempered ladies are
great
in bed,” said Shamus, unlocking the kitchen door. “Helen smirks too much. Too happy. Hey Helen, maybe we ought to get miserable for a bit.”

“Goodbye Cassidy,” said Helen, smiling.

“Good luck with
Codpiece,
” said Cassidy.

“We'll write,” said Helen.

Shamus swung on her fast. “Will you? Can you do that? Maybe you could do
Codpiece
too.”

“I meant letters,” said Helen. “Not scripts.”

Changing into his suit, Cassidy left his dinner jacket for Helen to press.

 

An airport drew him, possibly Heathrow. Parked in a lay-by, the loathsome sinner watched large jets take off to safety in the mist. If only he had his passport. Telephone the office, Mawdray can bring it in a taxi. For a while, coasting past petrol stations and motels, he searched for a secluded kiosk, then gave up. I'd never get away with it, they'd intercept the call, catch me at the barrier.
West End adulterer makes Airport Dash.

 

Windsor, where the flag of Saint George dangled wetly over the historic stone. The obscene goat passed in unremarked shame, gazing at shoppers, coveting their dullness. Tradition; what had Cassidy ever had of tradition? Where was Cromwell Cassidy now, that valiant Puritan campaigner? In the Savoy Hotel, thank you, ten pounds extra for the staff and send the bill to the Company, sleeping with his best friend's wife.

 

Why did no lightning strike him? This lorry, hurtling over the narrow bridge: why did its articulated trailer not slam his preening hood, shatter the glass of his unnatural immunity? Perhaps he should kill someone; that would be an answer. A lonely cyclist, for instance, setting out for honest labour in the fields, mounting this very crest at the end of a long day's toil, his simple mind upon hearth and children?

Settling more comfortably into his seat, Cassidy allowed his ready imagination to complete the catastrophe: the granite church, the meagre grave, the tragic group unheeding of the rain. The widow pauses at the iron gate. Cassidy, haggard and unshaven, lays a hand upon her arm.

Send the children to Harrow,
he begs her.
I have some influence with the headmaster. I would like to care for them as my own.

She does not weep but only shakes her head.

Give me back my Harry,
she whispers.
That's all I want.

My trouble is, I drive too carefully.

In Aylesbury, a pretty market town not normally frequented by adulterers, the repulsive voluptuary bought his wife a crocodile handbag and composed, over coffee in a roadside hostelry, a letter of withdrawal to his former friend Shamus, the well-known prophet.