The Naive and Sentimental Lover (49 page)

Very cautiously, Sandra counted off her unbreakable engagements; and broke them one by one.

 

There was something else on Cassidy's mind: they should
do
more together.

“Perhaps that's one of the things we might think about on holiday.”

As a matter of fact he had been talking to Lacon and Ollier about it, his theatre ticket people, only yesterday.

“I thought you were in Leeds yesterday,” said Sandra, almost as if she were thinking about something else.

On the phone. He was actually talking to them about travel, then they got on to the question of theatre, was there
anything
worth seeing in the West End these days?

“What I was going to say was—”

“Sorry,” said Sandra.

“What for?”

“Doubting you.”

Checked, Cassidy glanced at her to make sure she was serious, but there was neither irony nor any other kind of insurrection in her face: only that same inward sadness, returning like a grown child to the empty houses of her youth.

“What I was going to say was: why not go to the theatre once a week
automatically
just to get a show under one's belt so to speak? At least we'd have something to talk about.”

They agreed on Wednesdays.

“And I want to go to church again.”

“For my sake?”

“Well, yours and the children's. Even if they reject it later, it's right for them to have it now.”

“Yes,” said Sandra, very thoughtful again. “It will always be part of their lives, whether they reject it or not. After all—” he thought she had finished but she had not “—after all, if you live long enough with a dream, it
is
real isn't it?”

 

Desperately he searched his imagination for stronger remedies. He had heard from old Niesthal that there was a marvellous sale at Christie's next week, no dealers would be there because of the holidays. Why not go?

“Apparently there's some fabulous eighteenth-century glass. You've always wanted old glass.”

“Have I?”

He talked about the chalet in Sainte-Angèle; perhaps they should drop in there on their way to Bermuda to make sure it was still in one piece; how the children had adored it last winter but he did wonder all the same whether Christmas wasn't better spent at home.

“It's up to you,” she said. “We'll spend it wherever you say.”

 

He was going to offer further thoughts on Switzerland; he had a lot ready. He was going to suggest they retired there, that it was a good place to die, the eternity of the mountains gave a kind of solace; he was going to draw her on an academic point: did mountains exist more in
time
than in
space,
did something massive by definition become something of great longevity? But instead she spoke to him on her own initiative, drawing on thoughts deep down.

“Aldo.”

“Yes.”

“You know I love you, don't you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I
mean
it,” she repeated, with a frown. “I actually really love you. It's a whole condition of mind. It doesn't allow for . . .”

Not being an articulate girl, she found no end to her sentence, so she got up and went to the ladies' room. Cassidy paid the bill and called a cab. The same night they made love. For her own reasons Sandra was very slow. Finally, somewhere in the darkness, she called out; but whether from pain or joy he could no longer tell.

In the morning, she was crying again and he dared not ask her why.

“
S
he's here,” said Angie Mawdray in a sepulchral voice, perhaps the next day; perhaps autumn, since time had lost much of its reliability.

Several possibilities occurred to Cassidy; only the certainties were excluded. Heather Ast, for instance, popping in to say hullo on the way to have her hair done; Bluebridge wanting money, the obligatory scene; Mrs. Groat, Snaps, to discuss a new pregnancy. Heather Ast again, on a point of detail relating to Sandra's welfare.

“
Who
is here?” he asked, with a tolerant smile.

Angie's face, normally a treasure chest of appealing smiles and twinkling eyes, was ashen.

“You never told me she was a Beauty,” she whispered.

 

The receptionist, a friend of Lemming, was also impressed, for she winked at Cassidy as he passed her on his way to the waiting room and Cassidy made a mental note to dismiss her very soon indeed. There had been, he remembered, an incident at last year's annual cricket match for which she had yet to pay—a matter of a locked changing room and an absent batsman—and that wink made retribution certain.

 

The waiting room door was ajar. She was sitting in the deepest chair, a recliner of black hide, leaning right back with her knees not quite together. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling.

“Grunt like a pig,” she commanded.

Cassidy grunted.

“A lazy, non-telephoning, non-writing, head-in-the-mud pig.”

He grunted again.

“That's authentic,” she conceded and then she opened her eyes and they kissed and went to tea at Fortnum's because she was ravenous after her walk.

 

She's here.

She's walked, he recorded, as the memories came rushing back, the fun, the laughter, the bodies tied. Tripped the country miles from cod-country to South Audley Street on her very much deteriorated Anna Karenina boots. Hitchhiked, a gorgeous lorry driver called Mason. Mason had stopped for her to pick the blue flowers, bought her tea, wrapped her blue flowers in the
Evening Standard
—she was carrying them still, on her lap, they would go beside the bed tonight—Mason had invited her to have it off with him.

“But I didn't, Cassidy, promise, just a kiss and a
thank you, Mason, I'm not that sort of girl.
”

“Very laudable,” said Cassidy. “Exemplary in fact,” and ordered her eggs, a second helping.

“Dear lover, are you in the pink? Can I kiss you, or will they call the lilly? That's what Mason called them, Cassidy:
lilly.
For police. Did you know? Cassidy, I love you
enormously,
that's my first vital piece of news. A blanket investment, Cassidy, not even my
toes
sticking out, Cassidy. Lock, stock, and body. Cassidy, you really
do?
Love me, I mean?”

“Really.”

“God what a relief. I told Mason, I said Mason, if he stands me up you will
have
to go to bed with me, whether you like it or not it's a territorial imperative; is that the right expression? Like Schiller. To restore my pride.”

She leaned forward, full of important information.

“Cassidy, you have opened me up. Is that rude? I was a toady till I met you. A lackey. A bourgeois housebeast. You have turned me into a
suffragette,
no fooling. Cassidy,
say
you love me.”

“I love you.”

“He loves me,” Helen assured the waitress. “Him, and my husband, and a man called Mason, a lorry driver.”

“Gosh,” said the waitress and they all laughed.

“Cassidy, you are a
swine
not to ring me. Shamus was
very
put out.
Where's lover? Why won't lover ring?
It went on night and day until I got absolutely fed up with it. ‘He's
my
lover not yours,' I told him—”

“Helen you didn't—”

“And I looked
everywhere
for the Bentley. I told Mason: Mason, if we see Cassidy's Bentley, you've got to make an emergency halt because me and Cassidy are lovers and . . . Cassidy, kiss me, you are a
total
pig.”

“You could have rung
me,
” Cassidy reminded her, having temporarily satisfied her needs.

“Cassidy, I did. I rang you the
whole weekend
and you just listened to it burr, burr and did absolutely nothing. Just sat there gawping at your carpet slippers.”

“At the weekend?” Cassidy repeated, as iron bars gathered round his chest.

“Yes but I got the bosscow every time, so I rang off. At least I suppose it was the bosscow, she was
terribly
grey.” She pulled a bovine face. “If you tell me who you
are
I
might
tell you where mah husband is,” she said, in an uncomfortably good imitation of Sandra.

“I thought you were going to ring the office,” said Cassidy. “I thought we agreed.”

“But Cassidy it was the
weekend.
”

“How's Shamus?” he asked, watching her eat the smoked salmon.

 

“He's absolutely
super
and I love him and
Codpiece
went like a song. I tell you, Cassidy, that fellow's on a real winning streak. Well we both are, aren't we? And
all
thanks to you.”

What had happened to her? What had freed her? Did
I
do this?

“Those fishermen are
fabulous,
Cassidy, you should smell them.” She ventured what Cassidy assumed was a Lowestoft accent. “‘
Ya mine for the neet,
' that's what one of them said to me. I had to explain to him, Cassidy. I'm booked, I said. I've got a rich lover who invented the disc brake, and he guards me like a
lemur.
Do you like being described as a
lemur,
Cassidy?” Without a breath she returned to her other interest. “He's even been
paid,
that's how well
Codpiece
went. No rewrite, no Dale, no nothing. In fact—” indicating a little guiltily her new coat “—I'm wearing the fee. Don't worry, Cassidy”—leaning urgently forward—“I'm
nude
underneath, promise.”

“Helen. Hey listen: you're completely out of control. What's come over you? You're not tight are you?”

“It's called
love,
” Helen said, a little sharply. “And it's nonalcoholic.”

 

A model moved slowly round them, a skeletal, moody girl of no attraction.

“I'm better than her anyway.”

“Much,” Cassidy agreed.

“He talks about you
masses,
” she went on. “And he misses you
terribly.
He keeps saying, ‘Is he all right? Shouldn't you ring him?' To
me!
And how he must keep faith with you because he loves you, and you gave him his, and the circle must never be broken.” She lowered her voice. “And he's
terribly
ashamed about what happened at the Savoy, Cassidy.”

“Oh well, I don't think he should be really.”

“He's right back to self-denial. No booze, no bed, nothing. . . . Oh Cassidy he
so
missed you. He just wanted to hear you
speak,
Cassidy. He wanted to hear your
voice
and the slimy way you put sentences together when you're being boardroom.” She looked round in case they were overheard. “He's imagined it, Cassidy. The whole thing, isn't he clever? Just as if he'd made us up. Cassidy, those flowers are
blue.
”

“I take the point,” said Cassidy, and went to the telephone.

 

The Minister of Labour, he told Sandra. A most mysterious summons from the Private Office; he wondered whether this might be what they were waiting for; he had heard there was a seat going begging in one of the East Anglian constituencies.

“An all-night session I expect,” said Sandra.

“It looks like it,” he conceded. “We're meeting in Lowestoft. I'm leaving in a couple of minutes.”

“What did you mean?” he asked Helen, as they sauntered along the Embankment. “
Imagined
the whole thing? What
whole thing
exactly?”

“You and me as lovers, and himself as my husband. It's the theme of his new book, and it's
fabulous
Cassidy, honestly it is,
miles
better than the last one, you ought to read it. It's so
violent,
Cassidy. Honestly.”

“That's marvellous,” said Cassidy heartily. “By the way, what happened to the rewrite?”

“Oh, on the shelf marked
fragment.
You're to include it in his posthumous writings. He says you'll survive him by
decades.
Which you will, won't you Cassidy, because you're so dodgy. Dale's
livid.
”

“I'll bet he is.”

“It's as good as written. He's made a complete sketch, whole chunks finished. All he has to do is put them together. I mean I could
almost
do it for him, but you know what he is.... A quick dash to Switzerland, record the fleeting vision, back to England in triumph. That's the plan. Oh we'll want that chalet of yours by the way, Shamus says mountains will be
just
right for it. I'm to get the key off you.”