The Naive and Sentimental Lover (28 page)

“I need money,” Shamus said.

He was reeling a little and his face was very bright.

“How much?”

Shamus took a hundred francs.

“The passing of money,” Cassidy advised him contentedly, “is a very sexual transaction.”

“Piss off,” said Shamus.

“Was that love?” Cassidy asked as they walked slowly away.

“Ours is for ever,” said Shamus with his old smile, and put his arm round Cassidy's shoulder.

“Lover.”

“Yes.”

“Go soon. Paris stinks.”

“Okay,” said Cassidy laughing. “Wherever you like.”

Fast now, and angry, a lot of drink inside them. The young squire exerting himself to keep abreast of his questing, errant master. His feet sting through his thin city shoes as the two men bound up the long stone stairway. Above them the white, incandescent dome offers its single breast to the starlit sky. Lanterns, windows lure them but the master is bent on one place, one place only, a green place, it has a green door. They turn a corner; the steps make them turn a corner, and suddenly there are no houses at all, no handrail even for the height-sick apprentice, only the deep blackness of a cave, and the lights of Paris scattered over it, the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, like the wealth of buried kings. But Shamus has no eye for magic, the past is his enemy, he has his own new Vatican ahead. He is half running, thrusting onward up the endless staircase, face wet where the street lamps catch it, driving himself from the shoulders, all the body following.

“Shamus where are we going?”

“Up.”

One day, maybe we climb the Eiger; and there'll be a green light waiting on the peak. One more, Shamus said. One more whore and we get out of town.

 

It was early for that trade, or late. A dream-like silence hung in the green glow of the table lamps and the girls of Kensal Rise sat sleepily as if they had missed the last train home, listening to Sandra's chords played on an unseen piano. Shamus, loving terminals, has entered ahead of Cassidy, his arms raised to shoulder height as if he is about to take off his coat. The girls shift to receive him, a single herd moving to the cowman.

“
Monsieur ne veut pas?
” a middle-aged lady enquires politely, not unlike the Minister's wife, but with a greater show of interest.
“Vous voulez quelqu' chose à boire?”
Norman, thinks Cassidy, Norman French. This part may not be happening; this part, actually,
is
a dream.

 

The girls have gathered to him: to Shamus the impeccable Knight. His arms are high above his head, and suddenly it is happening, it is realised, the subject of innumerable dreams. Their hands steal over him, make him their prisoner; pry, invade his knightly shirt, wrestle with the essentially English arrangement of his French waistband; rob him, strip him as the music rises, throw his absurd male clothes to the floor, divide his cloak, it is a martyrdom. Some are ugly, some are naked, but a green light makes virgins of them all, disguises their shadowed places and give a children's eagerness to their movements.

Suddenly to the thud of Sandra's slow piano, Shamus has grasped the tallest girl, a broad-buttocked, black-haired enemy, mouthed and bearded, wide-thighed. And is down on her. Has fought her down, pulling her by the arms, has forced the same arms back to pinion her. Now she averts her hips to escape the sword but Shamus is fighting with his head, shark-like, using it as a hammer to quell her white flesh.

How dark he is against her breasts, her belly, even her infernal places! Now he flings her. Has her wallowing, crying, while she holds him obediently in the scissors of her thighs.

Cassidy's voice. Who touched the light? Foul, free kick to England! The light has dimmed on their wedged bodies. This is the clinch, the hold! Wait. She stirs. Groans, draws in her breath, the sword is home! Will she resist? She writhes; shifts her spread knees, but only to admit him further.

Silence and music, one above the other.

The audience has broken ranks, drawing nearer to observe the climax. The defeated one becomes articulate.

Listen! Aha! The whore is confessing her infamy! Conceding battle, begging forgiveness, praising the everlasting king! In vain. They give her no succour. No seconds to throw in the towel; no referee to count the strokes, suppress the screams, administer the morphine. One shout is left in her.

One long-drawn sigh.

Accompanied by a frown; a grid of sexual confusion, drawn in deep fine lines at the centre of the Gallic brow. My God. My French God. My Flaherty.

He is finished? He is not finished? It is safe to approach? A typical French confusion.

Excuse me madam, do you mind?

Lights please. Lights.

Just a minute please, do you mind?

“I'll go,” says Cassidy, and stepping quickly forward, helps the drenched Crusader to his feet.

“
Monsieur ne veut pas?
” Madame enquires again, touching the squire's keen but unproven weapon through the strained worsted.

He has to have an audience,
Helen explains.
When we were rich it was the maid. Now we are poor it is Cassidy.

Five hundred francs, traveller's cheques are acceptable. Green for go.

“I need a church, lover,” Shamus whispers to the night lights of the sleeping city. “Quick! I need Flaherty and I need him express.”

 

At High Mass in the Sacré Coeur, among more candles than they had had at the Tour d'Argent, more even than at Sherborne Abbey, Shamus and Cassidy watched the devout gestures of pure boys while covertly passing back and forth the half bottle of whisky.

“It's for the fabric,” Cassidy explained. “For rebuilding the church. It's falling down.”

“Jesus,” said Shamus, staring at the mute mouth of the offertory box. “Jesus. There must be someone you don't pay.”

 

It is not easy to leave Paris when you are drunk and tired and on foot; when you are lurching through columns of yellow-lit concrete, looking for a field; when no whore knows the way and taxi drivers decline your custom. First they tried to find the Fair: they would creep into the marquee and sleep in prams. But the Fair had moved. Twice they recognised the road that led to it; each time, it led them false. So they decided to look instead for a river that would guide them to the sea, but the river path ended at a bridge, and beyond the bridge rose a forest of hideous buildings blocking their escape. At a tram station they found an empty tram, but Cassidy could not locate the power and prayers did not avail them.

“Dance,” Shamus proposed. “Maybe he likes dance best.”

 

In a cobbled alley two men of equal height, different only in their colour, are dancing. One of them is Shamus; one of them, as the ever-observant Cassidy correctly records, is himself.

It is dawn, not evening, because no one is paying attention, no one is up, no one is there. Occasionally, from Heaven, voices address them in a mother language, Flaherty presumably, or Mrs. Flaherty even, they are here incognito, a week's trip to inspect the Franco-Irish faithful. But the text of God's message, as so often alas, reaches them in garbled form, it would be rash to act on it. Their movements are for an audience; complex but perfectly performed. A divine audience; one that will transport them from a city no longer congenial to Shamus. They have completed
Swan Lake
and now they are playing Shadows, stalking one another's image along the moist stucco of an uncomplaining wall, but Shamus finds this number unrewarding, and having dealt the wall a quite unreasonable kick, bids Cassidy follow him in a dance of his own invention. Cassidy, anxious to oblige, is trying to keep time while sending many cordial greetings to his retired musical instructors, including Mrs. Harabee of Sherborne School Dorset.

Now Doubtful,
think.

I am thinking Mrs. Harabee.

Yes, Mrs. Harabee.

Come on Pailthorpe,
says Sandra,
you imitate people's voices, well now imitate their songs, that's all.

I can't.

Of course you can. I've heard you singing
perfectly
well in church, but still.

But that was with other people, Sandra.

“Yes Shamus.”

“Well then fucking listen.”

 

Shamus sings a line likening Helen's breasts to the twin hills of Shamaree. Obediently Cassidy tries to repeat it.

“I can't,” he says, breaking off. “It's all right for you, you're artistic.”

 

Touched by Cassidy's musical incompetence, Shamus the darker one embraces him, kissing his cheeks and mouth, twining his fingers in Cassidy's conventionally heterosexual hairstyle. Cassidy has no particular feelings at the point of oral impact, but is embarrassed by his own unshaven state. About to apologise to Shamus, who appears to have gone to sleep on his breast, the Oxford undergraduate is abruptly summoned by bells. Not merely the peal, as Shamus later said, but the bells themselves, despatched in place of thunderbolts by Flaherty's angry hand, hurtle downwards over the rooftops and smash into the courtyard in multiplying chaos, inflicting sonic tortures normally reserved for the inhabitants of Sodom. In terror, Shamus puts his hands over his ears and shouts:

“Stop it! Stop it! We repent. Pooves' penitence, Flaherty lay off! Christ, lover, you bloody fool, look what you've
done!
”

“You started it,” Cassidy objects, but the great writer having already taken flight, his disciple follows.

They are running therefore, Shamus leading, his hands still over his ears, weaving and ducking to avoid the falling bells, his jacket billowing like a life belt.

“Don't look back, you fool, run! Christ why did you take us to that church, you fucking idiot! Flaherty, you live! Lover! Hell!”

 

Cassidy is down.

He falls probably full length, cracking his knee against the lid of a Parisian dustbin and distinctly feeling the kneecap dislodge itself and roll away into the opposing scrum. Shamus drags him to his feet. The horse is looking round at them as they unwind the brake. Of some age this horse, its face is grey, black rings surround its eyes.

The bells have stopped.

 

“What did I tell you?” says Shamus contentedly. “South,” he tells the horse. “
Sud.
We would have shun-shine.”

Pulling up the blanket, he turns to Cassidy and draws him down into the leather cushions of the
fiacre.

“Come on lover, give us a kiss.”

Salt sweat joins the loved ones' faces, Old Hugo's stubble recalls a lifetime's quest.