The Naive and Sentimental Lover (60 page)

“Shamus!” He called loud. “Shamus!” he repeated. “Shamus!”

Using his intelligence too late, he looked back at the buffet window trying to think which way the noise had come from as they sat there. Helen was staggering towards him, wrapped in the sheepskin. Christ, he thought, she actually put it on before she came out to look for him. Behind her, not venturing so far, Rasputin the guard looked on from the doorway, his glass still in his hand.

“Go and look down there,” Cassidy told her, pointing down an alley where a very old jeep was sinking slowly into the ground. “Look for footprints, call his name.”

“What's he done?” she whispered. “Cassidy, what's he done?”

“Anything wrong?” an English lady asked from behind the porter. “I thought I heard a bang.”

“I say,” said another. “Did you hear that noise?”

Helen did not move. She was hugging the coat right across her body.

“Go and look for him!” he shouted at her.

Oh Christ she's frightened stiff; that's why she put on the coat, she wanted an excuse for waiting. Seizing her shoulders he shook her; her head fell stupidly from side to side.

“He's hitting her,” an English lady said.

“Poor gal, she's pregnant,” said the deaf one, as they all advanced into the snow.

“We've killed him,” Helen whispered.

 

Leaving her, he ran quickly down the alley, calling Shamus. He was running directly at the snow now, he had to lower his head to see any distance at all.

He had entered a drift, the snow was in his trousers, his neck, colder than water, colder than fear and his feet were numb. Wading, he came on a pile of logs leaning against a tin roof and the snow was scratched where someone had climbed up. At first he thought the marks were handprints, each finger separate, and he had a crazy vision of Shamus doing handstands while he tried to shoot himself upside down. Then he remembered that Shamus was barefooted, and that he liked impact and a spot of pain; and he saw him sitting astride the station roof, hugging the clock as if it were his latest friend, aiming at him very deliberately, a difficult down-angle shot which mercifully missed.

“Shootibangs,” said Shamus.

“Shootibangs,” Cassidy agreed.

“I heard a shot! Another shot, a second one!” Helen shouted, tugging at his arm. “For Christ's sake Cassidy, find someone who can
do
something!”

“He's up there,” Cassidy explained, pointing. “Shooting at me.”

The bullet had passed very close; he had felt the wind of it or something, but the snow made it rather unreal, he was cold and he didn't much care.

Advancing from the buffet doorway, Rasputin the guard was screaming maternal French. Shooting on station property was absolutely forbidden, he was saying; it was doubly forbidden to foreigners.

“Look out,” said an English lady to him, “or he'll shoot you too, I can tell.”

 

Helen was scrambling up the log pile.

“Here, let me help you,” he said automatically, offering his hand, but Shamus was already coming down. The dressing gown round his waist, he was sliding on his bare behind.

In a bunch, the English ladies withdrew.

 

“Sorry lover. Couldn't remember what her name was, the one with the tits.”

“Maria,” said Cassidy.

“That's it, Maria. I needed a whore, you see.”

“I understand,” said Cassidy.

The guard was still shouting. Irritated, Shamus fired a round at his feet and he ran to the buffet, joining Cassidy's English mothers at the door.

The three of them were standing in the station fore-court, Shamus shivering in the dressing gown, but the snow was so heavy they might have been anywhere; in Paris, in Haverdown, or here.

“Have to make world history some other time,” said Shamus.

“That's it.”

“What do you mean?” Helen demanded. “What are you saying?”

Cassidy felt obliged to explain.

“It's nothing, Helen. It's just that the main axis is between you two. I'm just . . .” He began again. “Maybe it's between us two, him and me. Only . . . Shamus,” he said hopelessly.

“Yes lover?”

“I can't say it, I don't know the words. You're the writer, you tell her.”

“Sorry lover. Your world: you end it.”

“You mean you don't love me,” said Helen.

“No,” said Cassidy. “It's not quite that . . .”

“You love the bosscow.”

“No. No, it isn't options either.”

“He doesn't love
me,
” Shamus explained, very simply. “He's gone off me and you're no good to him on your own.” He was tearing up the cheque and throwing the pieces over the snow. “Money matter,” he explained. “He walked into it with his eyes wide shut. I could shoot him if you like,” he suggested to Helen, gallantly.

“I don't mind,” said Cassidy. “It's up to you.”

“He doesn't mind,” said Shamus.

“Cassidy!” Helen cried.

“That match is rained off,” Shamus said. “So shut up snivelling or you'll get a kick. I blame myself, lover. I was really going to let you go. I had it all worked out. I was going to train to be a doctor, you see. Elderberry was going to teach me how to do it. Then the bugger said it took ten years. Lover, I haven't
got
ten years. Have I?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Kept talking about the bosscow, what a bitch she was. He's the worst, that Elderberry, a bum.”

“I used to hate him too.”

“And his wife's a rotten fuck. I can't stand howlers. Ya, ya, ya, all that stuff. Like Swiss porters.”

Cassidy nodded. “There was one like that in Paris.”

“Here,” said Shamus, handing him the revolver. “Souvenir. You might use it some time.”

“Thanks,” said Cassidy.

Shamus looked down at his bare legs, where they disappeared into the snow. He wore a white crown; a rim of white had settled over his black eyebrows.

“Jesus,” he whispered, “we're a long way from home.”

“Yes, we are.”

“Sorry lover,” Shamus said again. “You nearly made it. Come on you bitch,” he said to Helen, shaking her without affection. “My feet are cold.”

“It wasn't your fault,” said Cassidy to Helen. “Please don't feel bad about it. It's all in me, not you.”

“Quiet lover. Quiet. Bedtime now.”

Coming forward, Shamus kissed him for the last time. When the kiss was over, Shamus turned away. Helen was still holding him. Then Shamus set off, vigorously, hauling her whichever way he wanted her to go, and they had actually started up the hill before she spoke.

“For a while,” she said, and began again because she was crying. “For a while you really
did
care.”

“Of course I did. All the time—”

“Not about me, you fool. About yourself. You put a value on yourself.”

“Helen, please don't cry—”

“Shut up and listen! You put a value on
yourself,
” she repeated. “That's something you never did before.” Shamus was dragging her; she fell, and half got up. “For God's
sake
do it again,” she shouted. “Find someone else. Don't go back into that awful dark.”

“Keep trying, lover,” Shamus assented, with a last careless wave. “Never regret, never apologise.”

The snow had almost covered them. Sometimes he saw them, sometimes there was nothing; it was no longer possible to tell. Once, through a clearing as it were, he made out two uprights, one straight and one crooked, and either they were posts along the fencing or two people leaning together as they struggled with the very deep snow. But as they vanished finally, into the nothing that lay beyond the blizzard, he thought he heard—but could never be sure—he thought, though, that he heard her say “Goodbye, Cassidy,” like a whisper alone, as if she were saying goodbye to the old year, to a decade or a lifetime, and then at last his own eyes filled with tears and he lowered his head. As he did so they seemed to go down with him, both together, like two pedestrians in the rain, before the hood of his rich man's car.

T
he retirement of Mr. Aldo Cassidy, the Founder, Chairman, Managing Director, and principal shareholder of Cassidy's General Fastenings, from active business life was noted with interest in the City press, and with some admiration. A fine example, they said, of a brilliant young businessman who put a lot into commerce and had taken a lot out, and was now retiring to enjoy the fruits. Would the lure of big business draw him back? Would the former whizz kid tire of rural charms? Only history would decide.

Those who knew him best spoke warmly of his great love for the country.

“A perfectionist,” a well-known West End Estate Agent testified. “We only ever offered him the best that Britain has for sale.”

It was known that the Manorship of Haverdown in Somerset had long been his ambition, not least because of the family connection : an ancient forebear of Mr. Cassidy had rested there with a detachment of Cromwell's horse. “We Cassidys have always been fighters,” the Chairman recalled amid laughter and applause, explaining his decision to the shareholders; and accepted with tears in his eyes the handsome canteen of silver which had been purchased by private subscription.

The merger with Bee-Line Accessories Limited had long been in the air: City editors were confident that the inevitable streamlining was in the long-term interest of shareholders. For the new Chairman Meale, nothing but praise: a typical graduate of the tough Cassidy school, they said; a man to watch.

The sale of the house in Abalone Crescent was also noted in the property columns:
A Vision Uncompleted
ran the caption. The knowledgeable named a price of forty-two thousand pounds.

 

How did they live there, Sandra and Aldo, for the rest of their natural lives? Did the marriage prosper? At first, they talked over their problem with great frankness. Dr. Elderman and his wife were invaluable, coming often and staying long. Sandra accepted that Cassidy had suffered spiritual death, but she was prepared, for the children's sake, to overlook it.

“He should never have had money,” she concluded. “If he'd been poor, he couldn't have
afforded
to be unfaithful.”

For company, she invited Heather to make Haverdown her permanent home, and Heather, though she had doubts about whether they were just being kind, finally consented to accept an empty wing. When Sandra made pickle, Heather made pickle too. When she ground her liver
pâté,
Heather ground it with her; when she went to country sales, Heather helped her to keep her head; and when she went to London to see how the clinic was progressing, Heather and Cassidy would go to bed together and talk about Sandra's limitations. Sandra was not aware of this practice, and if she had been she would have been extremely cross.

 

For entertainment, Cassidy browsed at the local library, where young girls attended after school; or he would drive to Bristol on a pretext and visit a dingy cinema in a railway concourse where torrid films were shown to needy peasants. In the early days, attracted by the appearance of shared happiness, he would sometimes flirt with a married couple. The curate had recently imported a plump bride from the North; a pair of Old Etonian antique dealers opened an emporium. But little came of these advances, and with time he abandoned them.

 

All three political parties considered him for the local council, but specific overtures were never made.

He became a lay preacher but his services were seldom called upon, though he was acknowledged to have a good voice and an agreeably pious nature.