To Shamus and Helen. For the fun of a lifetime, please come back. Cassidy.
Afterwards his telephone number in London. Do please reverse the charges.
There was a place he knew, a green hill far away in Kensal Rise, he had found it five years ago, waiting for news of Mark’s operation. It lay between a graveyard and an infant school and was known as the Valhalla. No single impulse had pointed him the way, only a sense of emptiness, of blank, contactless availability, had with God’s good help guided the driven father’s footsteps. He had telephoned the hospital from Marble Arch: call again at seven, they would know at seven whether the operation was a success.
Walking he had found himself in a cemetery, crouching from stone to stone in a quest for buried Cassidys. And thus searching became conscious of a drift, even of a positive direction, in the movement of the crowd. Young men dressed in their Saturday uniforms, hitherto aimlessly posted in groups, glanced at their watches, formed ranks, and walked away. Not long afterwards a portly man in a mauve dinner jacket alighted from a taxi and hurried after them carrying what seemed to be a blunderbuss in a black leatherine box.
Then a miracle happened.
Barely had the mauve jacket vanished through the small wicker gate than a flock of young girls, flouncing and trembling on long uncertain legs, bright as tropical birds in their thin blouses and bell skirts, stockingless, knickerless perhaps, fell tittering from the open heaven and landed at his feet, brushing past him on the same mysterious path. Enthralled, Cassidy followed, his fantasy vaulting from one wild vision to another. What ritual, what ceremony was here observed? A hanging? A prophet? Or an orgy on the Teenage Scandinavian pattern? Time, place, even caution had deserted him. He sensed only the proximity of fulfillment drying his tongue and tantalising his soft loins. He was floating. A sexual vertigo conveyed him over the municipal tarmac. Trees, ponds, fences, mothers; in a single blur they skimmed the merest edges of his vision, guided him along the secret line.
Peritonitis was forgotten; Mark was cured.
He lived only ahead of him in the coloured squadron, in the lifting quarters and the plumed haunches, in the waft of baby powder that followed in their wake. Once he stumbled, once he heard a dog snap at him, once an old man yelled “Hey watch out” but by then he was inside, the three-shilling ticket lying like a wafer in his palm. Round him coloured stars were coursing the unwindowed church. From a raised sanctuary swaying priests pounded music he could almost hum.
He was dancing.
Dancing at arm’s length with speechless girls. In small circles round their grounded handbags. Shuffling fairy rings in the French chalk. He never learned their names. Like nuns sworn to silence they took him, comforted him with the dispassion of a higher devotion, and relinquished him for other sufferers. A few, not many, rejected him on grounds of age; some abandoned him because he was clumsy or when a more favoured partner intervened. Still he did not mind: their rejection was a discipline, attaching him closer to their impenetrable community.
“Here,” said a brunette. “What’s that long face for then?”
“Sorry,” said Cassidy, and smiled.
These were the girls he could love. The girls who passed him in buses and dressed shop windows, worked for him as secretaries, peered at him from pavements as he sat in taxis, these were his nurses, his figureheads, agelessly beautiful on a changing sea.
“You can take me home if you like,” said a blonde, “if you give me a nice present.”
But Cassidy declined. In the world they inhabited for him, such girls had no home but this.
He drove there now. Drove there straight from Haverdown, three and a half hours looking through a windshield. He drove there to cure himself, the same cure that had worked for Mark. He drove there without a break, without a meal, thinking of nothing because there was nothing left. He parked at a meter and walked past the last two hundred yards. Unknown, even to himself.
The Valhalla had gone. Not requisitioned. Not bought by university or a great department store. Bombed. Eradicated. Cleaned down on both brick sides by a demolition contractor, picked away like meat from the bone by their yellow wrecking machines, and not even a doorstep left for the roses.
14
The day of the Annual Informal Meeting dawned with all the ominous tension of a first night when half the costumes are still with British Rail. Once, these meetings had been Cassidy’s treasured innovation, an entirely new concept in company Management, aimed at the improvement of relations between Shareholders and Directors. Once, as from his father’s pulpit, the adroit executive had addressed his faithful elders: first quarterly, then six-monthly, cleansed their souls of doubt, and refreshed them with new faith. Other companies, he had argued, gave as little information as possible; Cassidy’s would reverse the trend. But time, as so often, had institutionalised the revolution: now the meeting took place once a year, an unwieldy blend of Board and Annual General, and more trouble, in Cassidy’s revised opinion, than the two of them together.
By two o’clock the first arrivals had been sighted in the area of the ground-floor boardroom and report of them was brought to Cassidy by a succession of Shakespearean newsbearers. The firm’s Earl, a retired steel magnate flown from Scotland, had sat for half an hour in the waiting room before being recognised, and was now in the Informal Conference Room drinking water from the carafe. Meale (good for his polish, the mawkish pup) was despatched to converse with him informally. A retired trade unionist named Aldebout, retained to pacify shopside disputes, had been seen testing the tea in the canteen.
“I told him to have it on the house,” Lemming said proudly. “Those buggers’ll do anything for a cup of tea.”
Two brown-coated ladies from Shepton Mallet had had their mini towed away by the police.
“They tore the front bumper off too,” said Angie Mawdray, who had watched the manoeuvre from her window.
A stockroom clerk was ordered to collect it and pay the fine.
Behind the scenes a condition of barely controlled chaos reigned. Today was Friday. The Fair opened on Monday. The new ceespring chassis, finally assembled, despite Lemming’s attempts at sabotage, had gone ahead air-freight to Le Bourget but the French shipping clerk telephoned to say it had been rerouted to Orly. An hour later he rang again. The chassis had been confiscated by French customs on suspicion, the shipping clerk thought, of being an instrument of war.
“Then bribe them! Bribe them for Christ’s sake!” Cassidy shouted into the telephone, his maternal French having quite deserted him. “B . . . r . . .” and to Angie who was standing by with a dictionary, “What the hell’s the French for bribe?”
“Bri-ber,” Angie suggested promptly.
“Corrupt them!” Cassidy yelled. “Corruptez!” but the clerk said they were corrupt already.
Soon afterward the line went dead. A desperate telephone call to Bloburg, the Paris agent, produced no result. It was the feast of Saint Antoine of All Cities; Monsieur Bloburg was observing the local custom. By three o’clock when the meeting opened there was still no further word from the crisis front. Elsewhere in the building a battle was being waged with the revised brochure. The first edition, hurried through the printers at the last minute after prolonged haggling between Export and Promotion, was out of register and had to be sent back. While the second edition was still anxiously awaited, Cassidy discovered to his fury that it contained no German.
“For pity’s sake!” he shouted. “Do I have to remember everything myself?”
Who spoke German? Lemming had fought them in the war and remembered them only with black hatred. He refused to cooperate. Faulk, desperately willing, had no German, but would a little Italian help? A translation agency in Soho sent a lady with blue hair and no English who was at that moment closeted in the copy room while Angie Mawdray, loving the crisis, combed the Public Library for a German-English technical dictionary.
To no one’s surprise therefore the proceedings began late. Fighting to introduce
a sense of calm Cassidy opened with minor matters of routine. Mrs. Aldo Cassidy sent her apologies. Apologies had also been received from General Hearst-Maundy in Jamaica. They had all been sorry to learn of the untimely death of Mrs. Bannister, a longstanding and loyal member of the Board. Mrs. Allan, after seven years’ service, had accepted a senior post with another firm; Cassidy moved the customary bonus of one month’s pay for every complete year served. The motion was carried without comment. Only Lemming, who had achieved her dismissal after months of venomous intrigue, muttered, “Great loss to us all, very gallant little lady,” and appeared to brush a tear away.
It was almost half past three, therefore, before Aldo Cassidy, son of the distinguished hotelier, the Reverend Hugo Cassidy M.P. and bar., was able to deliver his long-awaited Chairman’s address on the subject of Exports. Speaking fluently and without notes, he sounded a battle cry that would have chilled Prince Rupert’s heart.
“Ideals are like the stars,” he told them—a favourite dictum of the great hotelier. “We cannot reach them but we profit by their presence. The Common Market—” almost ignoring the applause “—the Common Market—thank you!—the Common Market is a fact of life. We must either join it or beat it. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow shareholders old and new, Cassidy’s are prepared to do both.”
Having painted a somewhat paradoxical picture of a Europe crumbling under the impact of his firm’s assault, but mysteriously held together by its fastenings, he came at last upon the specific matter of the Fair.
“Now I make no apology for taking a strong, a very strong selling force to Paris. We’ve got the guns, and we’ve got the troops as well!”
More cheers. Cassidy lowers his voice.
“Now we shall be spending your money and we shall be spending a lot of it. No one ever did good business with a dirty shirt. There will be two teams. I shall call them Team A and Team B. Team B, under the distinguished leadership of Mr. Faulk, whose brilliant promotional record will stand us in good stead—” loud applause“—willsetsailtonight.It’sayoungteam—”anunfriendly glance at Meale, who had recently taken to wearing pointed shoes, and humming in the corridors “—it’s a tough team. It is there to sell. Man the tent, demonstrate the prototype, stimulate interest, yes. But above all, it will sell. And I hope that by the time the Fair opens officially on Monday one or two order books will not be quite as empty as they are at this minute. The point is this. Many of these foreign buyers have limited resources. They arrive with so much to spend, they go when they’ve spent it.”
Lifting a folded sheet of blank paper he passed it across their enchanted vision.
“Furthermore we have done a little bit of spying. I have here a list of all the principal buyers attending the Fair, together with their addresses while they are in Paris. It seems to me, you see, that if these fellows haven’t all that much to spend—” a nicely judged pause “—then the best thing they can do is spend it on Cassidy’s, and that means before they spend it on someone else!”
As the laughter and applause gradually died, the Chairman’s expression was seen to harden and his voice took on a more severe tone.
“Fellow stockholders, members of the Board, I leave you with these words.” Slowly one hand rose, the fingers half uncurled as if in benediction. “A man is judged—as judged we shall all be, my friends—by what he looks for, not by what he finds. Let it never be said that the House of Cassidy has been deficient on the score of enterprise. We shall seek and we shall find. Thank you very much.”
He sat down.
During the tea break the Earl as elder statesman took him aside. He was a decrepit, silvery man and he had lunched at the Connaught at Company expense.
“Listen to the advice of an old man,” he said speaking very slowly through the fumes of a rare whisky. “I’ve seen it in steel, I’ve seen it in deer. Don’t burn yourself out. Don’t try to run the whole course before breakfast.”
“I won’t,” Cassidy assured him, laying a steadying hand on his shoulder. “I really won’t.”
“What you do in your twenties you pay for in your thirties, what you do in your thirties you pay for in your forties . . .”
“Yes but look here—” they had reached the Directors’ lavatory “—I’ve got all you people to worry about haven’t I, sir?”
“You’ve not been drinking by any chance, have you?” the Earl enquired.
“Good God no!”
“You know,” the Earl continued, his head propped conveniently against the cistern, “I’ve been watching you. You’re the most terrible bloody liar. Eh, tell us,” said the Earl, drawing closer and affecting to wash his hands. “You seem to be making a hell of a big profit. Do you need a dash more working capital by any chance? On the QT, you know. So’s we don’t have to bother the tax laddies, you know.”
The Informal audience had thinned a little after tea, and something of Cassidy’s verve had also left him. Skating over the detailed function of the B team (responsible for the logistics of the second phase) he for a while drifted a little glumly round problems of creating new agencies and opening spares depôts.
“There is even a possibility,” he said, “I speak of course of the long term here, let’s have no misunderstanding about this—that Cassidy’s will eventually—I refer to the distant future—arrange for local, even regional manufacture of their product under licence and on the basis of part profit-sharing.”
This time, no one was inclined to applaud, even Informally.
“The A team incidentally will be separately accommodated in the centre of the city, where it can enjoy the advantages of mobility, separate communication, and the rest, and it will consist almost entirely—” he meant it as a joke, had even prepared it as a joke, practised the timing, shaped and reshaped the cadences “—of myself. I say almost because I am happy to tell you that my wife will be accompanying me.”
Only the palest murmur greeted this Informal insight into family togetherness.
“Do you want to go on to any other business?” Lemming asked, quite loud. “I think they’ve had about enough.”
From the corridor they heard a clatter of feet as someone ran for the Chairman’s telephone.
“That’ll be Paris,” said Faulk rising.
“Please stay where you are Mr. Faulk, my secretary will call me if necessary.”
Furious, but only inwardly, Cassidy picked up an agenda and glanced at the next item.
“Catering,” he read aloud with an inward shiver of discomfort.
Old Hugo’s pocket money. Tread gently, raise the tone to one of metallic nonchalance, look anywhere but at the Earl, who always objects to this uncomfortable entry in the ledger.
“Catering. In view of the satisfactory profit position I propose to make a retrospective one-time ex-gratia payment to—” here he took a small breath and glanced upwards as if the name had momentarily escaped him “—our valued catering consultant Mr. Hugo Cassidy whose wise and politic counsel has added so much cheer to the works canteen.” Someone was knocking at the door. “May I take it that the payment is approved?”
“How much?” Aldebout asked.
The door opened and Angie Mawdray peeped into the room.
“One thousand pounds,” Cassidy replied. “Any objection?”
“Absolutely none at all,” said Clarence Faulk.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Earl’s white head lift, and his white eyebrows come together in a frown, and one white hand lift in tardy intervention.
“Mister Aldo, it’s Paris,” said Angie.
“I wonder if you will all excuse me for a moment,” he asked smoothly. “I happen to know this is a matter which requires my personal attention.”
A deferential pause.
“May I take it, ladies and gentlemen, that we can go on to the next item on the agenda? Mr. Lemming, you have that in the Informal Minutes? Mr. Faulk, perhaps you’ll stand in until I come back? You might care to say a word about our Scottish promotion scheme. Mr.
Meale, I may need you.”
Lemming opened the door for them. “The Frogs have called it off,” he hissed as Cassidy brushed past. “Pound to a penny they’ve called it off.”
“It’s a Frenchman,” Angie Mawdray said triumphantly. “He sounds terribly excited.”
“Did you find that technical dictionary?”
“No.”
“Pity.” Meale handed him the telephone. “Hullo?”
“’Ullo, ’ullo, ’ullo!”
“Hullo,” Cassidy repeated raising his voice to carry across the Channel. “Hullo.”
“’Ullo, ’ullo, ’ullo!”
“Hullo! Can you hear me? Meale, get hold of the exchange. Tell them to give us another line.”
Meale lifted the second telephone.
“Cassidee?”
“Oui?”
“Comment ça va?”
“Listen, écoutez, avez-vous le pram?”
“Oui, oui, oui, oui. Tous les prams.”
“Where is it? Où?” And to Meale, excited now, “It’s okay. He’s got it!”
“Cassidee?”
“Oui?”
“Comment ça va?”
“Fine. Listen, where-is-the-pram?”
“Ici Shamus.”
“Who?”
“Jesus lover, don’t say you’ve killed us already.”
Lemming had followed him upstairs and was standing in the doorway.
“Well?” he said, hoping for bad news.
Cassidy stared at Lemming and then at the telephone. He put his hand over the mouthpiece.
“I’m sorry,” he said firmly. “Do you mind shutting up? I can’t conduct two conversations at once. I’ll be with you in a moment. Go and hold the fort. Make yourself useful.”
Scowling, Lemming withdrew. Meale trooped after him.
“Shamus,” he whispered, “where are you?”