The Naive and Sentimental Lover (36 page)

“Don't tell Wiggie, will you darling?” she begged (Wiggie was a patronymic for her daughter) and having kissed him nervously with her pursy mouth, walked the bitches on Primrose Hill to keep them quiet and healthy.

 

“He's freaked out,” said Snaps admiringly, younger sister to Sandra, but sexually much her senior.

Down from Newcastle, she had moved into a spare floor, where she played provocative records late into the night. Being a full girl and jolly, she brought occasional cheer to Cassidy's fading spirit. “Darling you are
all right
aren't you?” her mother would ask her in a terrified whisper behind half-opened doors, meaning “Are you pregnant?” or equally, “Are you not pregnant?” For though Mrs. Groat had no particular opinion on which her younger daughter should be, the two conditions were closely associated in her mind. In recent years Snaps had had several pregnancies; either she rang Cassidy and borrowed a hundred pounds or she went to an unmarried mothers' clinic she liked down in Bournemouth while Sandra mounted a nationwide search for the father. These attempts were seldom fruitful; when they were, the culprit too often proved unworthy of the search.

“Been on a thrash have you?” Snaps asked him, more directly, sitting on his bed reading a comic. “Fancy little Aldo painting Paris red, didn't know you had it in you. You'll be taking a swing at me next.”

“No I won't,” said Cassidy, who for some years had wondered, off and on, whether such a thing would be incestuous.

 

Cancer, said the charladies; wherever would they go next? And poor Mrs. Cassidy, how would she ever cope, a big house all on her own?

 

Runny tummy, said Hugo. Daddy's got runny tummy so he can't go to work.

“I
like
it when you have runny tummy, Dad.”

“So do I,” said Cassidy.

They played a lot of dominos, Hugo winning.

 

“He's faking,” said Cassidy's father, telephoning from the penthouse, needing money badly. “He's been faking all his life,
course
he has. Ask him about his spasms in Cheltenham then. Ask him about his hernia in Aberdeen! That boy's never had a genuine affliction in his life, he's as phoney as a seven-pound note—”

“You should know,” said Sandra and slammed down the receiver.

 

In confidence, John Elderman diagnosed a mild breakdown.

He had seen it coming, he whispered, but was helpless to prevent it; and pumped up rubber tubes round Cassidy's upper arm.

“Call it psychosomatic, call it what you will, it's one of those times when the old mind puts the body to bed, and the old body just
has
to do what the old mind tells it. Eh?”

“I suppose you're right,” Cassidy conceded with a weakly smile. “Any
history
at all, old man?” asked the physician, reading “normal” for the third day running.

“A bit,” Cassidy confessed, hinting at stresses overcome, brainstorms peculiar to the brilliant.

Tactfully John Elderman abstained from further question.

“Well,” he remarked instead, “you've Sandra to look after you, that's one good thing, old man.
She
knows her Aldo, doesn't she?”

 

“Poor Pailthorpe,” Sandra sighed, holding his hand on her lap and regarding her adult child with timeless love. “Poor, silly Pailthorpe, what
have
you been up to?
You
don't have to chase money like that:
we'll
get by.”

It was the balance of payments, Cassidy explained; he had wanted so desperately to help the export drive. Not for Cassidy's. For the nation.

“I wanted to get Britain off the ground,” he said.

“
Dear
one,” said Sandra, kissing him again, lightly in order not to excite him. “You're
such
a striver. And I'm such a drag.”

For an hour or more she sat with him, studying his effigy in the gloom. Her stillness was very comforting, and Cassidy loved her in return.

 

The malady had taken him by surprise. Had stalked him in the night and overwhelmed him with the dawn. First a nightmare, then daylit visions had assailed him; hallucinations, dialogues between the many characters of his mind. Their theme was retribution. He was striding through London over grassy, secluded squares, drawing weightless children by the hand; he was floating down the rue de Rivoli in the Bentley, driving it from the top deck; he was charging through noisy female streets, and suddenly—it could be anywhere—he would be confronted by an alp near Sainte-Angèle, the Angelhorn. No Entry, No Diversion, and No Exit. An alp of twisting jagged spires, Wilde's upturned sow; of giddy paths and incalculable embarrassments, where whores, hoteliers, tax inspectors, police officials, and coachmen leered and gesticulated from steaming caverns or hugged each other beside diminished riverbeds. Sometimes, nervously approaching its lower slopes and feeling already the onslaught of his vertigo, he saw himself opening a copy of the
Daily Express
and reading aloud from its erudite pages:
Is Pram Maker Fourth Man? Anarchist Writer also connected? Algerian porter tells of night orgy in thunderstorm; honeymoon couple claim: we heard them through wall. Writer's wife utterly innocent. Chapman Pincher Exclusive.

Also, of his own bankruptcy, on inner pages lit in brothel green:
Are Cassidy's burnt out? Have Fastenings Come Unstuck? M.P.'s Son answers Official Receiver: “I spent it on tipping. My crime was generosity.”

“Comfort!” the wretched sinner cried miserably to the whores. “Look what has become of me!” But before he could rid himself of his cassock (a monkish sinner, this Cassidy) they ran off white-buttocked into the avalanche gullies where Shamus, already armed and disencumbered, was waiting to enjoy them.

Such a vision was not entirely of Cassidy's own invention. Its prototype hung in the ever-lit chambers of his childhood, in the days when God was still pleased to have Old Hugo feed the mind, in the kitchen of his first mother, where she sighed and ironed surplices of her husband's own design: an alp named Hades drawn by pious artists, printed in polychrome by an early process, and framed in inflammable timber. At its foot were depicted all the horrors which small boys long to commit: theft and arson; gaming and veiled lechery. On the fearful peak, black angels burned the same offenders.

He was recalled from this torment by Ast thanking him for flowers. Sitting on his bed, close, to emphasise her gratitude. Ast in ripe harvest yellow, loose fitting at the looser places.

 

“Did you mean it?” she asked softly. “What you wrote?”

Sandra was out buying pigs' trotters, their gravy would give him nourishment.

“
With all my love,
” Heather recited. “
And all my sorrow.
Aldo, you
couldn't
have made that up. Sent from
Paris
too, with all those distractions.”

She too held his hand; but folded, worked into the higher cushions of her thighs; at the point, on her own person, which she had reached at dinner at the Eldermans', on his. Having first closed the door against extraneous disturbance.

“You were so
right
to rebuke me,” she whispered. “And I was so
pompous
wasn't I?”

Hard upon these early visions came their physical counterparts: outbreaks of sudden sweating accompanied by erratic beatings of the heart, inflammation of the ears and throat, and a hot dryness of the eyes; written calculations by Sandra to turn Fahrenheit to Centigrade.

“He's a
hundred and four,
” she told John Elderman on the second visit. “He's
miles
sub,” she assured him on the third. Thereafter they discussed his condition over nightly dinners in the basement, for John Elderman liked to come at seven when the rest of the world was healed.

 

For a while, still hovering on the brink of death, and loudly protesting his innocence of the many crimes of which, in his other mind, he constantly accused himself, Cassidy decided that Shamus was a myth. “He never existed,” he told himself, and pulling the blankets to his nose, pretended he was in a sledge.

Appalled by the memories of outlandish heresies in the Sacré Coeur, he availed himself of Sandra's extensive library on the lives of holy men, and resolved, during luxurious hours in the lavatory, to follow their example.

“I've matured,” he told her. “I'd like to consider going into the Church again, it's sort of fitting into place.”

And later: “Let's get out of the rat race for a while, go somewhere we can think.”

Sandra suggested Oxford; they had been happy there. “Or we might try Scotland. The dogs would adore it.”

“Scotland would be fine,” said Cassidy. Using the bedside telephone he made bookings at Gleneagles. But only in his imagination, for Scotland had no appeal for him; it lacked the company he craved.

 

In answer to the patient's summons, Angie Mawdray also called. She brought the mail and twelve small roses in a white tissue.

“They're for you,” she said in a low voice. “To make up for the ones you sent me from Paris.”

Rummaging in her Greek bag, she drew out a handwritten letter from the country which he hid under the bedclothes. She did not look at him during this transaction, and her expression discouraged conversation.

“They're from Faulk,” Cassidy told Sandra, to explain the young buds. “From all of them really, but Faulk chose them.”

“People really
care
about you,” Sandra said generously, sniffing their elusive scent. “People really
love
you, don't they.”

“Well,” said Cassidy.

“We
all
do,” Sandra insisted.

And settling, resumed her vigil of unblinking adoration.

 

For his convalescence, Cassidy wore a blue cashmere dressing gown which Sandra bought him specially from Harrods: sickness was an emergency, money could be spent on it. At first he lunched in bed and came down for an hour only, to play with Hugo.

“That's not proper billiards,” said Hugo contemptuously, and reported him to Sandra for illegal practices.

“Now you listen to me, young Hugo,” said Sandra with serene indulgence. “If your Daddy wants to play billiards with a candle, then that's his way of playing billiards.”

“It's the
best
way too, isn't it Dad?” said Hugo proudly.

“It's called Moth,” Cassidy explained. “We used to play it in the Army as a way of passing the time.”

Next morning, surveying the cloth, Sandra was extremely cross.

“How on earth am I supposed to get the wax off?”

“She's baity with you for getting up,” Hugo explained. “She likes you better in bed.”

“Nonsense,” said Cassidy.

 

Continuing his cautious return to normal life, the invalid went to great lengths to spare himself collision. To telephone Helen in the country, for instance, he used his credit card to avoid distressing entries on the bill; to speak with Miss Mawdray at South Audley Street he selected moments when Sandra was out shopping. Despite these precautions, he was exposed to some hard bargaining.

“But
Cassidy,
” Helen insisted, not flesh yet, but an excellent telephone personality; also an angel. “You can't possibly afford it!”

“For God's sake, Helen, what's money for?”

“But Cassidy,
think
what it's going to cost you.”

“Helen, look. What would
you
do if
you
were me, and loved him
my
way? Right?”

“Cassidy,” said Helen, beaten down.

For the same reasons Messrs. Grimble and Outhwaite of Mount Street W. had firm instructions not to ring him at the residence. Deal only with Miss Mawdray, he told them; Miss Mawdray knows exactly what is needed.

Nonetheless, it was Cassidy who had to keep them at the wheel.

“Water,” he insisted to old Grimble, speaking under the blankets. The house, though solid, had strange acoustical tricks; chimneys in particular were dangerous ducts of sound from floor to floor. “It
must
be near water. All right, use sub agents; yes of course I'll pay double commission. Good heavens it's a Company flat isn't it? Pay whatever you have to and bill Lemming for it. I mean really it's
too bad.
”

Such conversations reminded him that he was not wholly mended, for they moved him to intemperate reactions which he afterwards regretted. Sometimes, collapsing against the heaped pillows, his heart stammering with anger, his complexion red with heat, he wept to himself in the mirror. Not a sane man left in town, he told himself. And worse: they're all against me.

 

“The one in Chiswick's not bad,” said Angie wearily, calling on him after a long day's hunting. “If you don't mind Chiswick. It's got a fabulous
gloom
and it looks right on to the river.”

“Is it noisy?”

“Depends, doesn't it. Depends what you call noisy.”

“Look: could you work there? Creative work I mean . . . something you had to be inspired for?”

It was Angie's third day out, and her temper was running short.

“How should I know? I can't count the decibels, can I? Tell her to go and listen for herself, I should.”

Sulking, she lit a cigarette from a thin box of ten.

She?
Cassidy repeated to himself; what a ridiculous, disgraceful notion! Good God, she thinks I'm . . .

“It's not a
she,
” he said very firmly. “It's a
he.
A writer if you must know. A married writer who needs support at a critical time in his career. Not just moral support but practical support. He's suffered a professional reverse which could seriously affect the course of—what the devil are you laughing at?”