The Naive and Sentimental Lover (50 page)

“You are?”

“Well honestly, Cassidy, he doesn't suppose I'm walking all the way to London and not seeing lover does he?”

“What's
in
the book?” Cassidy asked.
Content
had never bothered him before; had been a hindrance in fact to the pure, celestial enjoyment of Shamus' unread works; but now, for reasons too close to him yet to be defined—Helen's excitement perhaps, the imminence of certain death—he detected signs, and wished them clearly shown.

She lowered her voice again.

“Cassidy, there's the most
fabulous
murder at the end, all in Dublin. Shamus buys a gun and goes mad and all
sorts
of things, it's really
super
. . . .” She giggled, noticing his expression. “It's all
right,
” she assured him. “You kill
Shamus,
don't worry. Cassidy, I'm
happy,
are you?”

“Of course I am,” said Cassidy.

“How's the bosscow?”

“Fine.”

“No Thoughts?”

“Who?”

“The bosscow.”

“No. No of course not.”

“I want
everyone
to be happy, Cassidy. Shamus, bosscow, the veg,
all
of them. I want them to share our love and . . .”

Cassidy was suddenly laughing.

“Jesus,” he said, “that
will
be the day.”

Entering her embrace however—they were at the centre of the pavement, not far from Cleopatra's Needle—he was pleased to see no one he recognised, not even the Niesthals.

 

“Then
after
you've killed him,” Helen resumed, in the taxi, holding his arm in both her hands, “you're sent to an Irish prison for life and you write a great novel thousands of pages long.
His
novel. What are Irish prisons like, Cassidy?”

“Beery I should think.”

“And
very
insecure. Still,
you'll
be able to take me round one won't you? Dublin main gaol, that's his ambition for you. I'm going to do
all
his research, I've promised, and it's got to be completely authentic. He's written me the most super dedication, Cassidy. To both of us, actually.”

“Marvellous.”

“It's only
imagined,
Cassidy,” she said, kissing him lavishly. “I haven't breathed a syllable about what
really
happened, promise. Cassidy, it was
you,
wasn't it, it wasn't a waiter? I couldn't remember whether we did it in the dark or not.”

“We left the light on,” said Cassidy.

“And it was me underneath?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“You see
shooting him
is the only way you can survive, that's how he's worked you out. You've
got
to shoot him, for your sovereignty. He's the original, and you're the imitation, that's how he argues; so if you shoot him, you'll become an original in your own right, it's
extremely
classical. Then your genius will be liberated, but locked up in the prison so you can't piss it away, and all that lovely discipline you have will be further enhanced by—”

“I haven't
got
any genius. I'm a buffoon. I've got big hands and big feet and—”

“Don't worry, Shamus is giving you some of his. After all whoever sleeps with me
has
to be a genius, doesn't he? In Shamus' book at least. I mean it can't just be sordid and middle-class or there's no art. Hey Cassidy, I wrote you a letter.”

Opening her handbag she gave it to him, and waited while he read it. The envelope said:
To lover.
The page inside was lined, torn from one of Shamus' pads.

“I thought it had rhythm,” she explained, watching him as he read it. “I worked on it a lot. I wanted to check it with Shamus actually but then I thought better not. After all, I'm not his creature, am I?”

“Good God no,” Cassidy cried, laughing. “Rather the other way round I would have thought.”

“Cassidy. Don't knock him.”

“I wasn't.”

“Well don't. He's your friend.”

“Helen—”

“We've got to protect him for all we're worth. Because if he ever does find out it will destroy him. Totally.”

The football ground was empty; the children had gone. It was a quiet day for the river too, a holiday perhaps, or a day of prayer.

 

Nothing had changed, but the place belonged already to the past. His dinner jacket hung in the spare room still. A light powder, either human or mineral, greyed the shoulders. The kitchen smelt of vegetable; she had forgotten to empty the rubbish. The picture window was clouded with brown grime. The desk was just as the great writer had left it, except for the yellowed paper, curled by the sunlight, and the dust thick enough to draw in. Keats lay on the blotter. The beret hung on the corner of the chair.

They embraced, kissing; kissing in the dull daylight, lips then tongues; Cassidy caressing her, mainly on the back, tracing her spine to its end and wondering whether she would mind if he continued. Lipstick tastes different in the daylight, he thought: warm and tacky.

“Cassidy,” she whispered. “Oh Cassidy.”

She took his fingers and kissed them and put them on her breast and glanced first at the bedroom door and then at Cassidy again, then sighed.

“Cassidy,” she said.

They had left it unmade, the sheets pulled back to air, the pillows heaped in the centre as if for one person. The Casa Pupo coverlet lay on the floor, tossed aside in a hurry, and the curtains were partly drawn on the side where the neighbours overlooked. In the poor light the blue was very dark, more black or grey than blue, and the flowered wallpaper had a dishevelled, autumnal look which had never been a problem with the nursery at Abalone Crescent. Stepping over the coverlet, Cassidy went to the window and drew the curtains.

“I should have sent someone to clear up,” he said. “It was stupid of me.”

 

Making love to her, Cassidy smelt the familiar smell of Shamus' sweat, and heard the clip of carpets being beaten in the courtyard of the white hotel.

Afterwards they drank Talisker in the drawing room and Helen began shivering for no reason, like Sandra sometimes when he talked to her about politics.

“You haven't got
another
love nest have you?” she asked.

Over lunch at Boulestin, their spirits fully restored, they had a marvellous plan. They would use only sleazy boarding houses, like real illicit lovers.

 

The Adastras Hotel in the neighborhood of Paddington Station,
Cassidy wrote in his secret Baedeker,
may be compared with a certain white hotel in Paris yet to be located by your chroniclers. It has the same elderly, unpretentious grace and many fine old plants long nurtured by the management. Terminus freaks will find a haven here; the bedrooms abut directly on to the shunting sheds, and afford an all-night, no-holds-barred spectacle of a little-known aspect of the British Transport system. The hotel is particularly favoured by illicit lovers: its fine, damp-consumed cornices dating from the nineteenth century, its marbled fire grates stuffed with yellow newspaper, not to speak of its outrageously impertinent waiters, who look to the unattached clientèle for the gratification of their sexual needs, all provide a background of desolate incongruity exceptionally conducive to high performance.

“Shamus cramped me. He made me such a
prig. Observing.
Who the hell wants to observe? He's not a schoolmaster, and I'm not his pupil. It's over, all that stuff, and he's got to realise it. Fie.”

“Fie.”

“Pshaw.”

“Pshaw.”

“Meeow.”

“Meeow.”

“You're a bear, Cassidy. A big, wuffly bear. Cassidy, I want to be raped.”

A
Pailthorpe
bear, thought Cassidy.

Cheeribye, the porter had said, seeing them to their room, mind you get your money's worth.

Do stations never sleep? he wondered. Clang-clang, clang. You must dance but I must sleep.

 

Got to be a lion tonight lover; mouse-time again soon.

 

“Cassidy.”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I could make you the happiest man on earth.”

“I am already.”

“More, Cassidy.”

“I
can't.
That was the full menu.
Honestly.
”

“Nonsense. Put your mind to it and you can do anything. You are suffering from a thoroughly unrealised potential.”

 

An announcer was calling the night sleeper to Penzance. Departs at midnight, Cassidy thought; a little after; his eyelids were very heavy. Bright bands of railway light lay on the papered ceiling.

“Promise?” Helen asked.

“Promise.”

“For ever and ever and ever and ever?”

“And ever.”

“I promise?”

“I promise.”

There was no blood available so they had Talisker instead.

“What else is in that book?”

“I told you. You write the great novel in prison.”

“But how does he find out?”

“Find out what?”

“That they're lovers, you and me.”

“He read me that bit,” Helen said gravely. “It was very spectral.”

“What does that mean?”

“It was never really
dramatised.
It just happened.”

“How?”

“In the book, he's called Balog. Shamus is.
Gradually Balog came to suspect what he already knew. That his virtue had gone into his friend and his friend had taken Sandra for his lover.
”

Discovering in himself physical resources he had long given up for spent, Cassidy sat up abruptly in bed.

“
Sandra?
” he repeated.

“He rather
likes
the name. He thinks it suits me.”

“But that's absolutely
disgusting.
I mean everyone will . . .” He checked himself. Better to talk to Shamus directly on the matter. It's really too much. I mean, I take the man to Paris, dress him, pay his rent, and the next thing he does is lampoon my wife, make a public show of her. “Anyway,” he said, in a nasty, academic tone, “how can you suspect something you already know?”

There was a long silence. “If there's one thing Shamus
does
understand,” said Helen firmly, “it's the structure of the novel.”

“Well it's ridiculous, that's my view. Comparing
you
with Sandra. It's insulting.”

“It's art,” said Helen, and turning her back lay a long way from him.

“You don't think you should ring Lowestoft do you?” Cassidy suggested. “In case he's back?”

“What would we do if he was?” Helen asked tartly. “Invite him up to join us? Cassidy, you're not
afraid
of him are you?”

“I'm worried about him if you must know. I happen to love him.”

“We both do.”

Gently she began kissing him. “Grinch,” she whispered. “Grizzlebear, hellbeef.”

Oxford, the announcer said. Your last chance to get aboard.

But by then she had decided he was in need of the ultimate comfort.

 

The day dawned very slowly, an internal dawn of yellow mist that gradually brightened under the sooty domes of the station roof. At first, watching through the window, Cassidy took it for the steam of locomotives. Then he remembered that locomotives had no steam any more, and he realised it was fog, a thick, venomous fog. Helen was asleep, cut off from him by the inner peace that comes with faith. No frown, no cry, no anguished whisper against the hellhound Dale: a deep repose, virtue is rewarded.

Helen
is
our virtue; Helen is eternal.

Helen can sleep.

 

Rising late, they spent the day visiting their favourite places but the gibbons took no pleasure in the fog, and the bust of Mussolini had been removed for cleaning.

“Probably stolen by Fascists from Gerrard's Cross.”

“Probably,” Cassidy agreed.

They did not go to Greenwich.

In the afternoon they saw a French film which they agreed was fabulous, and when it was over they went back to the Adastras for another exchange of views.

Afterwards, in the intimacy of shared repose, she told him with little prompting how she and Shamus had parted.