The Naive and Sentimental Lover (8 page)

“Cassidy's Universal Fastenings. We're quoted on the Stock Exchange, fifty-eight and sixpence for a one-pound share.”

 

Helen is in his arms and the nestling movement of her breasts has told him she is either laughing or weeping. Shamus is taking the cap off the whisky bottle. All manner of visions are crowding upon Cassidy's troubled mind. The dance floor has given way. The soft hair of her mound is caressing him through the thin stuff of her housecoat. Swiss waterfalls alternate with tumbling castles and plunging stock prices; two-plus-two Bentleys lie wrecked along the roadside. He is in Carey Street on the steps of the Bankruptcy Court being pelted by infuriated creditors and Helen is telling them to stop. He is standing naked at a cocktail party and the pubic hair has spread over his navel, but Helen is covering him with her ball dress. Through all these intimations of catastrophe and exposure, one instinct signals to him like a beacon: she is warm and vibrant in my arms.

“I'd like to ask you both to dinner,” Cassidy says. “If you promise to wear real clothes. Or is that against your religion?”

Suddenly Helen is pulled from his grasp and in her place Cassidy feels the wild heart of Shamus thumping through the black jacket; smells the sweat and woodsmoke and the fumes of whisky buried in the soft cloth; hears the dark voice breathing to him in love.

“You never wanted to buy the bloody house in the first place, did you? You were having a little dream, weren't you, lover? Truth?”

“Truth,” Cassidy confesses, blushing very deeply. “I was pretending too.”

 

Moved by a single instinct they turned to look for Helen but she had gone, taking her wireless with her. Its far strains just reached them through the doorway.

“Poor kid,” said Shamus suddenly. “She really thought she owned the place.”

“I expect she's getting her shoes,” said Cassidy.

“Come on. Let's give her a ride in the Bentley.”

“Yes,” said Cassidy. “She'd like that, wouldn't she?”

S
etting off for London early next morning in the euphoria of a painless hangover, Cassidy recalled each incident of that miraculous night.

First, to overcome a certain common shyness they drank more whisky. God alone knew where Shamus had it from. He seemed to have bottles in every pocket and to produce them like a conjuror whenever the action flagged. Hesitantly at first but with growing enthusiasm they re-enacted the brighter moments of what Cassidy called their little misunderstanding, and they made Shamus talk some more Irish for them, which he did very willingly, and Helen said it was amazing, he'd never even been to Ireland but he could just put on accents like clothes, he had the gift.

Next they made Cassidy take off his braces and they all played billiards by candlelight. There was one cue, which they shared, and one ball and one candle, so Shamus invented a game called Moth. Cassidy liked games and they agreed it was very clever of Shamus to make one up on the spot. Shamus pronounced the rules in a sergeant major's voice which Cassidy (who was by way of being a mimic himself) could still perfectly remember:

“To play Moth, you puts the candle on the centre spot,
'ere.
You then 'its the ball round the candle in a clockwise direction, and I mean clockwise. Scoring will take place in the following manner. One point for each complete circuit of the candle, five points penalty for each hinfringement of the natural borders of the table. 'Elen, kick orf.”

There was a men's tee for Shamus and Cassidy and a ladies' tee for Helen. Helen won by six points, but secretly Cassidy reckoned himself the victor, because Helen twice hit the ball off the table and they hadn't counted it; but he didn't mind because it was only fun. Besides, it was a men's game; a female victory was only chivalrous.

After Moth, Shamus went and changed, and Helen and Cassidy sat alone on the Chesterfield finishing their whisky. She was wearing a black dress and black leather boots and Cassidy thought she looked like Anna Karenina in the film.

“I think you're a wonderful gallant man,” Helen told him. “And Shamus was absolutely
awful.
”

“I've never met anyone like either of you,” Cassidy assured Helen truthfully. “If you'd told me you were the Queen of England I wouldn't even have been
faintly
surprised.”

Then Shamus returned looking very spruce indeed and said “
Take your hands off ma girl
” in a Wild West voice and they all got into the Bentley and drove to the Bird and Baby, which was Shamus' name for the Eagle and Child. The plan was to eat there, but Helen explained privately to Cassidy that they probably wouldn't eat there because Shamus didn't hold with first places.

“He likes to work his way into an evening,” she said.

Shamus wanted to drive but Cassidy said unfortunately the car was only insured for him, which wasn't quite true but a sensible precaution, so Shamus sat in front with Cassidy and when Cassidy changed gear Shamus put his foot on the clutch for him so that Shamus could be copilot. “Wife-swapping” Shamus called it. The first time this happened they went into reverse at fifteen miles an hour but Cassidy managed to get his own foot on the clutch and no damage was done to the gearbox. Shamus was not car-minded, but he was very appreciative.

“Jesus,” he kept saying, “this is the life, hey Helen can you hear me back there? . . . To hell with writing, from now on I'm going to be a big fat Gentile bourgeois.... Got your cheque book then, Cassidy? . . . Hey where's the cigars?”

All this in a nonstop monologue of breathless praise which made Cassidy wonder how a man who so clearly coveted property could have found the courage to renounce it.

Sure enough they had not been in the bar ten minutes before Shamus made for the door.

“This place stinks,” he said in a very loud voice.

“Absolutely stinks,” Helen agreed.

“The landlord stinks too,” Shamus said and one or two heads turned to them in surprise.

“The landlord is a prole,” Helen agreed.

“Landlord, you're a lowlander and a sheep-shagger and you come from Gerrard's Cross. Goodnight.”

“Never hold him back,” said Helen. They were walking to the car, going ahead in the hope that Shamus would follow. “Promise you never will.”

“I wouldn't even try,” Cassidy assured her. “It would be an absolute crime.”

“You really feel for other people don't you?” said Helen. “I watch you doing it all the time.”

“Why
Gerrard's Cross?
” asked Cassidy, who knew the place only as a desirable semi-rural dormitory town on the western fringes of Greater London.

“It's where the worst proles come from,” she said. “He's been there and he knows.”

“Chippenham,” Shamus called from behind them.

At Chippenham railway station, they drank more whisky at the buffet. Shamus had a passion for terminals, Helen said, he saw all life as arrivals and departures, journeys to unnamed destinations.

“We have to keep moving,” she said. “I mean don't you agree, Cassidy?”

“God yes,” said Cassidy, and thought—the analyser in him thought—yes, that's what's exciting about them, they share a mutual desire for somewhere to go.

“The ordinary hours just aren't enough for him,” Helen said. “He needs the night as well.”

“I know,” said Cassidy. “I can feel.”

The platform ticket machine was out of order but the collector was Scottish and let them through for nothing because Shamus said he came from the Isle of Skye, and that Talisker was the best whisky in the world and that he had a friend called Flaherty who might be God. Shamus christened the collector Alastair and took him with them to the buffet.

“He's completely classless,” Helen explained, while Shamus and Alastair at the other end of the bar discussed the similarities of their professions in rich Scottish accents. “He's a sort of Communist really. A Jew.”

“It's fantastic,” said Cassidy. “I suppose that's what makes him a writer.”

“But you're like that too aren't you,” Helen said, “deep down? Don't you have to get on with your workmen and that kind of thing?
They
don't put up with any side, surely?”

“I hadn't thought of that,” said Cassidy.

The train arrived while they were drinking, next stop Bath, and suddenly they were all standing in a first-class compartment, waving to Alastair through the window.

“Goodbye Alastair, goodbye. God, look at him,” Helen urged. “What a face in that lamplight, it's immortal.”

“Fantastic,” Cassidy agreed.

“Poor little sodder,” said Shamus. “What a way to die.”

“You know,” said Helen later, when they had closed the window, “Cassidy really
notices
things.” Using her arms to help, she lifted her long legs on to the cushions. “He's got a real
eye,
if only he'd use it,” she added drowsily and was soon asleep.

 

The two men sat on the opposite bench passing the bottle and regarding her in the light of their separate experience. She lay on her side in a pose as classical as it was effortless, knees drawn and overlapping, Goya's Maja, naked and fully clothed.

“She's the most beautiful wife I've ever seen,” Cassidy said.

“She's pissed,” said Shamus, drinking. “Absolutely ossified.”

“
Shamus
says,” said Helen drowsily, “I'd be a whore if he ever let me off the lead.”

“Oh my God,” said Cassidy, as if that were a very shallow view.

“I wouldn't, would I, Cassidy?”

“Never.”

“I would,” said Helen, and turned over. “He beats me too, don't you, Shamus? I wish I had a
gentle
lover,” she reflected, talking to the cushions. “Like Cassidy or Mr. Heath.”

“You know,” Cassidy said still contemplating her long body, “I don't care whether you own Haverdown or not. That house will belong to you for ever.”

“For ever is now,” said Shamus and drank some more whisky.

“Shamus,” Cassidy began, as dreams and visions pressed upon him.

“What is it, lover?”

“Nothing,” said Cassidy, for love has no language.

 

At Bath station, where the fresh air reminded Cassidy that he had drunk a great deal of neat whisky, Shamus underwent one of those sudden changes of humour which had made him such unnerving company at Haverdown. They were standing on the platform and Helen was gazing at a pile of mailbags, weeping silently into Cassidy's handkerchief.

“But what's the matter?” Cassidy insisted, not by any means for the first time. “You must
tell
us, Helen, mustn't she, Shamus?”

“They were stitched by prisoners,” she cried at last, and resumed her weeping.

“For fuck's sake,” Shamus shouted furiously, and rounded on Cassidy. “And you: stop curling your fingers round your cuff like that. Christopher Robin's dead, right? D'you hear that, Helen?
Dead.
”

“Sorry,” said Cassidy and the incident was forgotten.

 

Meals, in Cassidy's world, were sacrosanct. They were truces for conviviality or silence; time out, when neither passion nor hostility was allowed to mar the devout communion.

They ate at a place called Bruno's, on a slope, because Shamus was in his Italian mood and would speak no English, and because slopes (as Helen explained) have tension, a view which Cassidy found extremely profound. Bath stank, Shamus said. Bath was the lousiest city in the world. Bath was toytown, halfway between the Vatican and the Wind in the Willows, designed by Beatrix Potter for rural proles.

“Shamus is a terrific innocent really,” Helen told him. “Of course anyone is a terrific innocent who is looking for love all the time, don't you agree?”

Astonished by the depth, let alone the urbanity of this observation, Cassidy agreed.

“He hates sham. He hates it more than anything in the world.”

“That's absolutely what
I
hate too,” said Cassidy stoutly, and glancing surreptitiously at his watch, thought: I must ring Sandra soon or she'll wonder.

At Bruno's also they played another Shamus game called Fly, which he had invented specifically to disconcert rural proles and uncover sham. Shamus selected the victim as he entered. He chose mainly the younger managerial type of person whom he consigned at once to certain arbitrary categories: Gerrard's Crossers, bishops, publishers, and, in deference to Cassidy, pram manufacturers. These, he said, were the basic components of the Many-too-Many, the compromisers for whom freedom was a terror; these were the backcloth for the real drama of life. The purpose of the game was to demonstrate the uniformity of their responses. As soon as Shamus gave the word the three of them must stare at the prole's fly, Shamus fixedly, Helen with fluttering coyness, and Cassidy with an artful embarrassment that was particularly effective. The results were varied but gratifying: a furious blush, a hurried descent of the right thumb along the telltale seam, a hasty gathering of the jacket. In one case—submerged poof, Shamus declared, typical of the pram trade these days,
real
pooves were not submerged—the victim actually retreated altogether with a distracted apology about car lights and returned minutes later after what must have been an exhaustive check.