Until ze snow take all zeir bread a-way . . .
Until ze snow take all zeir bread a-way. . . .
Woken from his melancholy, Shamus stared at him wide-eyed. It was the first time Cassidy had done a voice for Shamus, and Chevalier was one of his best.
“Lover go on. That’s great. In the first position, go on! Jesus that’s great, that’s human. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well your voices are so much better.”
“Balls! Go on, you sodder, sing!”
So Cassidy continued:Zey wiggle zeir feathers . . .
Zey wiggle zeir pretty tails . . .
Zey hop, and lerve, and sing zeir leedle song . . .
Until ze snow, ze gruel snow . . .
Take all zeir bread away....
“More, lover! Jesus that’s great! Hey listen everybody, listen to Cassidy!”
Leaping up, Shamus was about to summon a larger audience when they saw the girl, standing, smiling at them, wearing a smart fawn coat and a red shiny handbag like a Swiss conductor’s purse on the small trains that mount the Angelhorn.
She was young and quite tall, hair cut short like a boy’s; a trim, fair girl with fine skin that wrinkled into crazing when she smiled. Her toes and heels were together, and her legs, though these were not relevant to the restoration of Shamus’ identity, were very straight but not at all thin, Angie Mawdray’s legs in fact, revealed on the same generous scale.
“Ask to look at her hands,” Shamus urged.
She was smiling at Cassidy, not Shamus; she seemed to think him more her kind of man.
“She’s wearing gloves,” Cassidy objected.
“Then tell her to take them off, you ape.”
“Do you speak English?” Cassidy asked.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said.
“For Christ’s sake, lover, this is important!”
“Vos mains,” Cassidy said, “nous voulons voir. . . . Wouldn’t you like to sit down?” he asked politely, offering her his seat.
Demurely, still smiling, she sat between them on the bench. Lifting her right hand, Cassidy gently removed the glove. It was of fine white nylon and it slipped off very easily like a stocking. The hand beneath it was soft and smooth and it curled naturally into Cassidy’s.
“Now ask her whether she irons passports,” said Shamus.
“I’m sure she does,” said Cassidy.
“Then ask her what she charges. One passport, one fuck. Taxes, service, the lot.”
“I’d rather just pay her, Shamus. Please.” And to the girl: “Je m’appelle Burgess,” he explained. “Mon ami est l’écrivain Maclean.”
“Bonjour, Maclean,” said Elise politely, while her hand fluttered in Cassidy’s like a tiny bird. “Et moi je m’appelle Elise.”
At the reception desk of the white hotel Cassidy borrowed an iron, a black smoothing iron of about 1870, Sandra had one in the kitchen and preferred it to the Morphy Richards. The receptionist was an Algerian boy, a very tired accomplice, but the sight of Elise appeared to give him hope.
“She’ll need blotting paper,” said Shamus. “Blotting paper to put between the pages.”
His temporary elation had left him.
“Okay, okay,” said Cassidy.
The corridors were very narrow and dark. Through the connecting wall, a baby grizzled continuously. Cassidy helped Elise with her coat and sat her in a chair with a glass of wine to make her feel at home, and soon they were exchanging commonplaces about the weather and the hotel. Elise lived with her family, she said; it was not always convenient but it was economic and one had company. Cassidy said he lived with his family too, his father was an hotelier, the guests were sometimes tiresome. Shamus, meanwhile, deaf to such formalities, had gone straight to the window and pulled the table into the centre of the room. Tipping the electric heater on its back, he laid the flatiron on top of it.
“Ah vous avez deux chambres!” said Elise, as Shamus emerged from the bedroom with a blanket. “Ça c’est commode, alors!”
It was an entire suite, Cassidy assured her, and leading the way showed her the full reach of the premises. The courtyard had a vine tree and a fountain; the bathroom was lined with old marble. Elise found it romantic, but feared it was expensive to heat.
“For fuck’s sake!” Shamus shouted. “She’s not buying the place is she? Tell her to come and iron my bloody passport.”
“She’s washing,” said Cassidy. “Shamus please—”
“Washing to hell. She’s disinfecting herself. Spraying Flit on her fanny, that’s what they all do. Put you through a bloody sheep dip if they get half a chance. Here, take sixpence and get the blotting paper.”
“What’s the hurry?” Cassidy demanded, now quite cross. “What difference does it make? The iron isn’t even hot yet. Relax.”
“Get the blotting paper!”
Suddenly cautious, Cassidy said, “She’ll be all right with you alone won’t she?”
“Of course she won’t. What the hell are you talking about? Do you realise that in an average working day that angel of light eats about ten of us alive? She does not observe, she does not expect to observe, either the inhibitions or the priorities of the English middle class. For all she cares—” They heard the flush of the lavatory; Elise returned from the bedroom. “—you and I can truss her up like a turkey and play football with her as long as we get her back on the street in good time to find two more of us.”
He thrust the passport into the girl’s hand.
“But Shamus, I don’t think she is one. I think she’s just an ordinary girl.”
Like Heather Ast, he wanted to say; Hugo would like her very much.
Carefully, Elise turned the pages. Her fingers were slim and competent, and found their way most cleverly into narrow places.
“Mais vous vous n’appelez pas Maclean,” she remarked at last, comparing Shamus with the photograph.
“Maclean, c’est son nom de plume,” said Cassidy quickly, still at the door.
“Get the blotting paper!”
The stationer was across the road and Cassidy ran all the way. When he came back, out of breath, Shamus and Elise were standing at opposite sides of the room not looking at one another. Her hair was disarranged and she seemed angry.
“All right,” said Shamus, looking from one to the other of them. “Have your big relationship. Christopher Robin and Wendy touch wees, go beddie-byes. But when I come back I want her out and that passport ironed.”
“Shamus—” Cassidy called, but the door had closed on him with a bang.
“Il n’est pas gentil, votre ami,” said Elise.
“He’s worried,” said Cassidy, and so am I. And in his best maternal French explained that Shamus was a great writer, perhaps the greatest of his time, that she was the first person in the whole world not to find him irresistible, that he had just finished his masterpiece and was naturally concerned with its reception. His anxiety in fact (Cassidy felt he could confide in her) related to a matter of business. To the film rights. The sale was made but yet to be confirmed; these deals had a way of falling through. She may have seen the film Doctor Zhivago, well Shamus wrote it; also Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
Elise listened very gravely to these explanations, but although she admired Maclean’s work they did not satisfy her. Men with two names, she said, reopening his identity at the first page, were not to be trusted, and Maclean was not gentle.
“Vous êtes aussi artiste, Burgess?” she asked.
“Un peu,” said Cassidy. Hearing him she smiled with shy complicity.
“Moi aussi,” she murmured, with a little nod. “Un peu artiste, mais pas . . . entièrement.”
She was a very quiet girl. He had known at once she had a decent quiet, but now in the gathering dusk she filled the room with stillness. She ironed slowly and with concentration, head cocked a little as if she were waiting for Shamus’ return, and when a footfall sounded in the corridor she paused and looked in that direction. Sandra, when
she ironed, put her feet wide apart and stuck out her elbow like her father the Brigadier, but Elise kept very upright, conscious only of her task.
“I thought we might go out to dinner,” he said. “Just the two of us.”
Her head lifted; he could not see her expression but he took it for one of doubt.
“We could go to the Tour d’Argent if you like.”
She ironed another page.
“No, Burgess,” she said quietly. “Pas de Tour d’Argent.”
“Oh but I can afford it. Je suis riche, Elise . . . vraiment. Whatever you like, the theatre if you prefer.”
“Vous n’avez pas de théâtre à Londres, Burgess?”
“Yes. We do, of course. Lots. Only I don’t seem to go very much.”
Again, for a time, she made no answer. Footsteps ascended the stairs but they passed without a pause, lacking Shamus’ sprightliness. Closing the passport, Elise set the iron on its edge and folded the blanket on the table, then moved slowly round the room, picking up the dirty glasses and emptying the ashtrays.
“Tu veux vraiment sortir, Burgess?” she asked from the sink.
“I want to make you happy,” he said. “I’d like to give you a good time. I’m quite safe, honestly.”
“Bon,” she said, and smiled distantly, as if his wish were no longer her concern. “Bon, c’est comme vous voulez.”
Dear Lover, he wrote, You are a bad-tempered sodder. Elise is taking me to her pad. Back by ten thirty.
And left the note beside the freshly ironed passport.
At the door, letting him help her into her coat, Elise kissed him. At first it was a child’s kiss, Mark beneath the mistletoe. Then, like a tiny paintbrush, her tongue traced the line between his lips, moved upwards to his eyelids.
“We could go to Allard,” he said, stepping ahead of her into the corridor. It was a place which Bloburg recommended.
“Burgess . . .” Her hand was on his arm.
“Oui?”
“Je n’ai pas faim.”
Cassidy laughed. “Oh, come on,” he said. “You’ll be hungry by the time we get there.” And left another note at the desk, virtually a duplicate but ending “Love.”
At Allard, he offered her a trip to London to learn the hotel trade in which, he said, his father was immensely influential. Elise was very grateful but declined: her mother, she said, forbade her to travel alone. After that they talked little. Elise ate faster than Cassidy, and when she had finished she asked for a cab, which Cassidy paid for in advance.
She would have loved to stay longer, she explained to him, but she had obligations to her family.
Somewhere, nevertheless, in a white house in Paris, in an attic lifted from the warm streets and set above a courtyard that echoed with the rifle shots of beaten carpets, in a city trembling with the energies of love, in a wide brass bed with a down comforter washed white by the moon, somewhere between dusk and dawn, in that hour which after great exertion comes before intense fatigue, alone at last in the inward world of his romantic dreams, Cassidy loved Elise.
She came to him through the window, in long strides of her sheer white legs; lit by the striped moonlight of the shutters, she stood at his bedhead whispering Burgess. Her body rose like a white candle out of her fallen clothes, her tiny nipples were pink stains in the wax. Burgess are you there? Yes Elise. Burgess tu es tellement gentil: do you really want to marry me? Yes Elise. Why are you dressed, Burgess? I was going to find you Elise. I was going to walk the streets until I found you, then take you to the Sacré Coeur, where influential priests are waiting to perform the ceremony. That is a very sensible arrangement. But what shall we do about money? I have secreted twenty thousand pounds at the Banque Fédérale in the Elysées. I achieved this illegally by making fictitious payments for French components. Burgess, she breathed.
She undressed him with gravity, loosening first his tie and lifting it in a loop wide of his ears in order not to crush the silk. Burgess, mon artiste, my inventor, my child, my husband, my provider, is anyone as rich as you? No, said Cassidy. But best of all it has not affected my integrity. That is true, said Elise. You have great naturalness. Sometimes, undressing him, she had to pause and settle him for her pleasure, pressing his head against her breasts or lap, his cheek into the silky odourless hair between her long closed thighs, arranging him like loved sculpture in the moonlight, commending his dimensions to unseen female friends, calling him kind and virile, gentle, brave, and virtuous. Venez, she whispered at last, turning to him the long plain of her back. Follow my immaculate and pert behind, my twin watermelons which slyly conceal the crevice of forbidden love, the Secret Flower of the uninhibited Orient. Elise, my person is protruding and erect. Will you cohabit with me? It is my highest ambition, Burgess. She led him from the centre, encircling his manhood with her long, domesticated fingers as they drifted back and forth over the Paris sky. Tu aimes ça Burgess? Do I give you pleasure? Shall I do it also with my mouth? I feel what you feel Burgess. My responses are entirely homosexual. Just the fingers thank you, Cassidy replied. The fingers will do very nicely. Burgess, you are so pure. Elise, who is this helping you? he asked after a moment. Do I detect other fingers at work as well as your own, Elise? Surely I hear Frank Sinatra singing and discern the fumes of woodsmoke in your hair? No one, she assured him. They are my hands only, you are dreaming of another. Saying this, she opened his legs and traced with her nail’s edge the tiny seam that joined him front and back, once, twice, three times. More Burgess? A little please. That will do thank you. And here a little attention? Elise enquired, cradling his grateful globes, making the hair of them signal with sharp small fires, making the skin taut and loving. Now I leave you, she whispered, your manhood agonisingly suspended in the darkness. You wouldn’t like to finish it off, would you, while you’re here? Cassidy asked. You know the rules, Elise replied softly, melting into the moonlight. See you at the Sacré Coeur.
Don’t be late, Cassidy called. Don’t be late. Late. Late.
“Shamus?”
How could he face such solitude out there? What was he doing, far into the night? Out with the Few? I’m not enough for him. He needs writers; people who read his books.
An imitation ormolu clock glistening in the moonlight permanently stuck at half past two. Outside the window the beating of carpets, tapping to nothing in slow drips.
Shamus, come back.
If only to turn me outward again; to turn my hand to better loves than me.
Darling, the outward Cassidy wrote next day, at frightful length, punishing his erring hand. It was nine o’clock in the morning, Shamus had not returned.
Things have not so far gone particularly well, and if it’s any consolation to you—which I doubt!—you are well clear of the wicked city and its temptations. The Embassy people, true to form, made a complete hash of our Stand—no telephones, no separate Cassidy tent for entertainment, just all thrown together like cattle—and although we landed one big order on the first day, trade has generally been very sticky. I have a hunch that as you predicted the Vietnam war is finally having its effect—there is simply less money around, people are wary of what they buy and quite bad about settling. Our one big order—three hundred chassis—went to a very suspect lady (middle-aged) who took a thousand strollers from Bee-Line last year and still hasn’t paid up. McKechnie had to recoup from the Exports Credit Guarantee people, and they won’t cover her any more. (sorry!) However, it was Meale’s first major triumph and I could hardly refuse to accept the order for fear of hurting his confidence, which is to say the least a delicate plant.
Also, I have to confess that I am not much good on my own, which I suppose you knew all along. On the other hand, the alternatives to solitude are none too beguiling either. I have avoided Lemming and co. like the plague—the idea of “doing Paris” with the trade is almost physically repellant to me.
As to Bloburg he is being an absolute pest. I know you feel strongly that one should show him particular consideratio
n, but even tolerance has its limits. Having landed me with an exhausting and frequently worthless programme of entertaining etc., he is constantly trying to “fix me up” as he calls it with female friends of his. One of these, a damsel called Elise, actually appeared at my bedroom door late at night with a note from him. Never fear—she was a very scarey lady indeed, with those very brown unblinking eyes which your mother rightly distrusts. I am convinced she was on drugs, and when I sent her off she just drifted away down the corridor as if she didn’t give a damn. Very unflattering! So much then for vice and infidelity, but since I had poor McKechnie with me at the time—he and his wife are in very deep water and the poor fellow was almost in tears—the incident passed off more as a joke than anything else. I honestly feel that people who reach that pass should break it up and have done with it, don’t you?
Last night, Meale disappeared in a huff after a ridiculous dispute with Lemming at the hotel—something to do with an iron, if you please, who should have it first. Anyway, he waltzed off and I suppose that when he comes back I shall have to step in and bang their heads together.
I talk because I have nothing to say, he thought, numbering the fourth page; she would love me better if I had slept with Elise. Is that—rereading his turgid prose—is that in fact what I want her to believe?
In the few spare moments left to me, I have tried to make contact with the French playing fields people, but not much joy. Yesterday I did succeed in going out to one of the suburbs and inspecting a potential site, of all things in a dried-up riverbed—you might look into that possibility in England—what does the Water Board do with its dried-up riverbeds? But mainly it was the hair-raising drive there and back which left an impression! We did about ninety all the way—no brakes and of course no seat belts.
Incidentally, I tried to ring you last night and again this morning and just got a burr, burr, burr. Where are you all the time? I do trust you are not compensating for my absence in any inadvisable way!! I was going to propose you came out here for a few days after the Fair has ended—say on the Monday or Tuesday—and then perhaps I could give you the attention you have so long deserved, restore my somewhat frayed nerves after this silly, maddening week, and get to know you again the way we used to. If you still know what I mean. Do you? Please give my special love to Hug. I have bought you both super presents. Can’t wait to deliver them.