The Naive and Sentimental Lover (58 page)

“The total passion,” he announced, in a strong Irish voice, quoting, Cassidy suspected, one of Flaherty's brochures, “demands the total sacrifice—”

About to continue he was interrupted by a whispered “Amen” from Beth Elderman, followed by the higher, obedient whispers of her many daughters.

“
Shut up,
” he told her, in suppressed fury. “Keep quiet or I'll shoot you. Jesus, lover—”

“She didn't mean any harm,” said Cassidy.

Picking up the prayer book—it was held open by the weight of the gun—he read aloud:

“
I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed
—which is
now
actually, lover. Not tomorrow, not next day, not in Christopher Robin land, but now—yes or no?”

“Yes,” said Helen.

“I'm talking to
him.
I know about you, you whore, be quiet or you'll get another hit.
Him
I mean. Cassidy. Our lover. Will you or will you not have this woman for your illegally wedded wife, whether sick, pissed, maimed, imbecile, however much she whores around? Will you, forsaking all others, including the bosscow, the veg, the Bentley, and”—he put down the prayer book—“and me, lover,” he said, very softly. “Because that's the way it works.”

Helen's hand was linked in Cassidy's. From behind him he heard the loose, persistent cough of his French mother and the creak of pews echoing in the vaulted ceiling. Those kids, he thought; the Elderman woman; why don't they
do
something? They're my friends, not his.

“Lover.”

“Yes.”

“This gun is for shooting defectors, not lovers.”

“I know.”

“If you say
no,
I shall shoot you for sure, because I hate you quite a lot. That's called jealousy, also an emotion. Right? But if you say yes and you don't want her, believe me that
is
. . . that really
is
. . . not polite.”

Helen was looking at him and he knew her look because it was Sandra's look, it covered everything, the whole contract to live and die.

“The point being, lover, that once you drag her off to your cave Daddy won't be there to help you. You can have her, if you want her. But from that moment on you've got to find your own reason for living. I can't do more for you and you can't do more for me.”

“No.”

“What the hell do you mean:
no?
” Helen demanded, releasing his hand.

“I mean he can't do any more. I agree.”

“You see,” Shamus explained, “although she's a stupid little bitch, I love her. That's why she's so cheeky. She's got us both. So I'm offering you all I've got and all I want: and naturally, I'll be put out if you reject it. But you've got to decide. Don't let that bitch carry you. Love you, lover.”

“Love you,” Cassidy replied automatically.

“Then which is it? Yes please or no thank you?”

All this while Shamus had been watching him most intently through the candles, and sweat had formed on his face, which now ran like crooked tears over his shaven cheeks; but his eyes were black and steady, as if neither the pain nor the heat of his torture were relevant to his words. On Cassidy's left, Helen was whispering, urging and complaining, but he heard only Shamus; it was Shamus, most definitely, who held his attention.

“Say yes, you fool,” Beth Elderman shouted suddenly from the back, and Shamus raised the gun and might well have shot her if Helen had not intervened. Instead, he came round the altar, took Cassidy by the arm, and led him into the furthest part of the room, to the corner where the table was before they moved it; to a place so dark they could barely be heard.

“She's a heavy eater, boy,” he murmured. “Big grocery bills coming up. Dresses, cars; she'll want the lot.”

“
Cassidy!
” Helen shouted, furious.

“She can have whatever she wants,” said Cassidy loyally.

“Why not just give her the money: you don't have to put up with
her
as well. Five thousand should see her right.”

With a quick, conspiratorial glance at the congregation, Shamus had drawn Cassidy towards him so that Shamus' lips were at Cassidy's ear and Shamus' lower cheek was pressed against Cassidy's temple. Coming so close to him so suddenly, Cassidy smelt Paris again, and the drink, and the garbage in the street; smelt the woodsmoke from the fireplace lingering in his dressing gown and the sweat that was on him all the time; and whatever detachment he had found was gone, because this was Shamus, who had once been Cassidy's freedom; and had loved him; who needed him and had leant on him; rested on him in his hopeless search; played with him by the river.

“For God's sake, lover,” Shamus insisted. “Why screw up a friendship like ours for the sake of a bit of cunt?”

His lips stayed, their breath trembling on the membranes of his ear. Shamus' jaw was pressed against his head, and Shamus' hands were linked at his neck. Pushing Cassidy gently away from him at last, he surveyed him in his own familiar way, reading (it seemed to Cassidy) his whole life there, all its paradoxes, its evasions, and its insoluble collisions. For a moment, the sky cleared for Cassidy, and he saw the hilltop where they had flown the gliders. And he thought:
Let's go back there. From the hill I can understand it all.

Then Shamus smiled: the broad, untrustworthy smile of a victor.

“Well?”

“There's no point,” said Cassidy.

“What do you mean?
No point?
You're here because there
is
a point! There's got to be a fucking point! I had
you,
and I'm giving you to
her.
I had
her
and I'm giving her to
you!
”

“I mean there's no point in trying to talk me out of it, I love her.”

“What was that?” said Shamus very quietly.

“I said I loved her.”

“And still do?”

“Yes. More than you.”

“More than you love me, or more than I love her?”

“Both,” said Cassidy numbly.

“Again, say it again,” Shamus urged, seizing him.

“I love her.”

“Shout it out! Her name, everything.”

“I love Helen.”

“Aldo loves Helen!”

“I Aldo love Helen. I Aldo love Helen. I Aldo love Helen!”

Suddenly, without Cassidy understanding why, the rubric, the rhythm of the words took hold of him. The louder he shouted, the brighter, the more excited Shamus' smile: the louder he shouted, the larger the room became, the more it filled and echoed. Shamus was pouring water over him, Lippstyle, a jugful, purifying him in the name of the Few, Helen was kissing him, sobbing and asking why it took him so long. The sound rose; some children were clapping but one was crying, as in the eye of his imagination Cassidy saw his own drenched, stupid body upright in a pool of holy water, shouting love at a laughing world.

“I Aldo love Helen! Can you hear? I Aldo love Helen!”

John Elderman was standing, beating his hands together; his wife was holding her string gloves to her chin, weeping and laughing.

“This is
it,
” John Elderman was crying. “My God this is the big league. I'll never aspire to this, never.”

“If only more people could see it,” said Mrs. Elderman.

But they can, Cassidy shouted, they can. Why don't you turn your head you fool? Sandra's family was packing the pews behind her, Mrs. Groat dressed in fruit and flowers, escorted by her several sisters and lady cousins; Snaps in beige velvet, her cleavage uselessly exposed. From the other side of the aisle came the tearful coughing of the Abandoned One and the plain sobs of Old Hugo, standing beside the empty place for A. L. Rowse. The strains of an organ were filling the room, “Abide With Me” and “Sheep May Safely Graze.”

“I Aldo love Helen. I Aldo love Helen. I Aldo love Helen.”

“Oh love, oh love,” Helen sobbed; she was drying him with a tea towel; her bruise was bright again where her tears had washed away the make-up. “And he didn't stand in our way,” she sobbed. “Oh Shamus, darling.”

“You see lover,” Shamus explained, “you're the only one I ever had. I mean Christ had twelve, didn't he, eleven good, one bad. But I've only got
you,
so you had to be right, didn't you?”

 

The lights had gone on. Shamus was passing around Talisker. Helen, very proud and quiet on Cassidy's arm, was receiving the congratulations of the guests. Well they had met in the West Country actually, she said; about a year ago; they had really been in love ever since, but they had agreed for Shamus' sake to keep it a secret. The speeches were short and to the point, no one became boring or untimely. Shamus, drinking heartily, the colour high on his cheeks, was the very soul of contentment: if they had children they must be brought up Catholic, he said, it was the only condition he had made.

“He's a
writer,
” Beth Elderman was telling the girls, her face flushed with maternal pride. “That's a very special kind of person, that's why he knows
all
about the world. You must never,
never
compromise, do you understand? Sally listen, what did Mummy say?”

“I meet so much of it,” John Elderman said shrewdly through his grown-up pipe. “Every blasted day in the surgery, three, maybe four cases, you'd be astonished. So much of it could be
avoided,
” he told Shamus very confidentially, “if only they had
help.
”

“And of course how he put up with the
other
one for so long,” Beth Elderman said to anyone who would listen, “God alone knows. I mean
that
was
total
disaster.”

T
he guests gathered on the doorstep, children at the front, grown-ups behind. The festive toboggan lay ready, Mark's again; John Elderman and Shamus had lashed the luggage to the prow. A light, sharp wind had sprung up from the north. The fog had gone for good, the rain had turned to snow, a fine, hard-driven snow that was already settling on the window sills.

For her going away, the bride wore a fitted sheepskin coat which she had found in Sandra's wardrobe, and a charming white fur hat which Mark called Mummy's rabbit's ears.

“Isn't it funny,” she said in her excitement, “how everything fits me, just like that?”

Her boots were sealskin, though she did not approve of killing seals. She kissed the girls lavishly and counselled them to be good and kind, and to grow up lovely wives.

“Which you will, I know,” she said, crying a little. “I just
know
you will.”

To Beth Elderman, she imparted some last-minute domestic advice. The oil system was impossible to understand, the best thing to do was kick it.

“And there's cold duck in the fridge and extra milk on the sideboard. For God's
sake
don't buy the Co-op butter, it's
no
cheaper and it's absolutely foul.”

“We think you're doing the right thing,” said Beth.

“We know you are,” said her husband.

“So long,” said Shamus.

He had placed himself, modestly, at the end of the line, in the shadow of the others; he was holding a torch in one hand and a glass in the other; he was barefoot, and the skirts of his dressing gown could have been a curtain borrowed from the window in the hall.

“Is that all you've got to say?” said Helen at last.
“So long?”

“Watch out for rabbit holes.”

“I'd like to kiss you,” said Helen.

“Kissin' don't last,” said Shamus, in a Somerset accent which Cassidy had not heard before. “Cookin' do.”

Rather hopelessly, she turned to John Elderman.

“Don't worry,” said the great psychiatrist. “We'll bring him round.”

With a somewhat ungainly hoist of the skirts, and a last look at Shamus, she boarded the toboggan, sitting well forward with the luggage so that Cassidy could manage the more responsible rear position.

“Are you getting divorced?” asked a little girl.

“Be quiet,” said Beth Elderman.

“Hugo says he is,” said the same little girl.

“Aldo,” said Beth Elderman, with her plant and rock smile. “Give us a ring. We're in the book.” She kissed him, smelling very slightly of ether. “Remember you're a friend as well as a patient,” she added.

Her husband gave him a manly hand.

“Godspeed, Aldo. Don't overdo it. We admire you.”

About to say goodbye to Shamus, Cassidy appeared to remember something.

“Crikey,” he said, all boyish. “Hang on a sec.” And darted past them into the house.

 

Hugo's room was very cold. He tested the radiator. On, but icy. Must be an airlock in the heating. His toys were put away; only a red anorak, the wet-look for this season, hung like a doll's suit from the painted hanger.

 

Mark's room was lined with pictures cut from magazines, mainly advertisements. The largest was a centre-fold spread of a whole family smiling into the camera while they loaded fishing kit into a Range Rover. That's how he wanted us, Cassidy thought, studying the bronzed, untroubled features of the father. Mr. and Mrs. Britain sporting by the river.

“Lost something?” Shamus asked from the doorway, offering him his whisky glass. He was very relaxed. The gun, broken like a shotgun, hung vaguely over his forearm, and he had put the powder puff behind his ear like a Tahitian maiden's flower.