“My Rex! My swain! My passion!”
Taking the girl’s hand, he offered it to Cassidy and the girl came with it, trying to relieve the pressure.
“Here, take it,” he invited. “Would not with her g-narl-ed fingers forage in the copious petticoats for a wee fondle of the familiar organ, eh Cassidy?”
Still holding her hand, he savagely swung her round on her stool. Two dull eyes, black-lidded, peered at them expressionlessly, first at Cassidy for help, then at Shamus for information.
“Tu veux?” she enquired.
“Now,” Shamus urged. “Kiss her! Kiss her, call her mother! Ella, Aldo is here! Rex has come home to Mrs. Oedipus.”
Abruptly stooping, Shamus buried his head in her bare shoulder, black on white like an advertisement.
For a moment it seemed as if the girl would accept him. Forced forward, one hand lifted to touch him, she watched him curiously as he pastured on her flesh. Suddenly her body stiffened. Fighting loose from him she let out a sharp cry of pain, seized his hair, and with her other hand—the fingernails, Cassidy noticed, were chewed quite low—hit him, splitting his lip.
“It’s worked!” Shamus cried. “We have impact, Cassidy! We have reaction!” Standing back, one finger to his bleeding lip, he proudly surveyed his assailant. “It’s her! It’s Ella! She wants you not me. Her Aldo! Go on, lover. Just a little peck, that’s all.”
The lights went out, three torches shone at them, and a man was talking politely in French.
“They want us to follow the torches,” Cassidy explained.
The taxi was waiting at the curb. They helped Shamus in first and Cassidy followed. He gave them a hundred francs.
“For God’s sake!” Shamus shouted. “Why didn’t they hit us?”
That’s a very nice place, thought Cassidy, that’s the nicest place I’ve ever been to, and if I can remember how to find it I shall go back and apologise and offer those sisters the chalet.
“The girl hit you,” he said, consolingly.
“Jesus, who cares about a woman?”
“Shamus, for pity’s sake tell me what’s the matter with you?”
“There’s a place called Lipp’s,” said Shamus. “They’ll hit me there all right, it’s a writer’s haven. Lipp’s,” he told the driver, his eye already on the radio.
“Shamus, please.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s to do with Dale. You rang him for hours, I saw the messages and everything.”
“If I wanted,” Shamus promised him in his most detached voice, holding Cassidy’s handkerchief to his mouth, “I would kill you. You know that don’t you, lover?”
“Lipp,” Cassidy repeated to the driver hopelessly. “Brasserie Lipp.”
“I keep you alive for one reason only: because you are a reader. You realise that, I trust. Being a prole, you are the commercial hinterland of my genius. Know what Luther said?”
“What did Luther say?” Cassidy asked wearily.
“He said, if I were Christ, and the world had done to me what it has done to Him, I’d kick the beastly thing to pieces!”
“But Shamus,” Cassidy asked, gently, when Shamus had more or less settled again, “what has the world done to you?”
Shamus seemed about to say something serious. He stared at Cassidy, at the blood on the handkerchief, at the passing lights, opened his split mouth as if to speak, closed it again, and sighed. “Holy God,” he said at last, “it’s filled itself with halfbreeds like you.”
They had eaten once already that evening, a fact which Shamus had apparently forgotten. Cassidy was in no mood to remind him. The son of an hotelier and innumerable mothers had learnt long ago that there was no better sedative than good plain food, served hot.
Dining at the Brasserie Lipp, Shamus was quiet and conciliatory.
He stroked Cassidy’s arm, vouchsafed him small, erratic smiles, gave the waiter ten francs from Cassidy’s wallet, and generally by word and deed showed signs of regaining his lighter, affectionate mood. Observing this, Cassidy deemed it wise to take command of the conversation until the good Burgundy and the soothing, old-world atmosphere of the restaurant had completed the process of recovery.
“A writer’s haven eh?” he said. “Well I’m not surprised. It’s just the place not to be recognised. Can you point any out?” he asked, with a suitably conspiratorial reverence. “Any in your bracket, are there Shamus?”
Shamus looked round. A heavy middle-aged couple, eating slowly and apparently without implements, returned his stare. A pretty girl, out with her boyfriend, blushed, and the boy turned and scowled at Shamus, who put his thumb to his nose.
“My bracket,” he repeated. “No I don’t think so. There’s Sartre over in the corner—” Rising, he bowed gravely to a gnomic, mottled gentleman of about eighty-five. “—but I think we can reasonably say I outgun Jean Paul. Has Monsieur Homer come in yet?” he asked the waiter, with that effortless complicity which Cassidy now took for granted.
“Monsieur . . . ?”
“Homer. Omer. Old Greek with a long white beard, looks like Father Christmas. Poof.”
“Non, monsieur,” the waiter regretted. “Pas ce soir.” A ghost of a smile, too fleeting for disrespect, enlivened his elderly features.
“Well, there you are,” Shamus said pleasantly, with a resigned shake of the head. “Quiet night I’m afraid. Boys all at home.”
“Shamus,” said Cassidy, holding with difficulty to his policy of breezy small talk, “about my soul.”
“I thought you’d had it out,” said Shamus.
A burst of laughter issued suddenly from the kitchen.
“No truly. Listen lover. I really do think I’m redeemable, don’t you? Now, I mean. Since I met you. I don’t think it’s a hopeless quest any more, looking for it, do you? I know I’m reluctant. I’ve got a lot of bad habits but, well you have shown me the way, haven’t you?” Receiving no encouragement, he added, “After all, there must be something there.”
Shamus was playing with the water jug, dipping his finger and watching the drops fall.
“Well don’t you think so? Come on.”
“I am the light,” said Shamus. “I am the light and the way. Follow me and you will end on your arse,” and reaching out, turned Cassidy’s face upwards and sideways, adjusting it for closer examination.
“Shamus don’t . . .” said Cassidy.
“You know what you radiate, don’t you? The nasty allure of an undiscovered absolute. Every poor fool who picks you up thinks he’s your first friend. What they don’t realise is, you were born with your legs crossed. Penetration,” he concluded, carelessly releasing him, “can never take place.”
A merciful waiter brought them food.
“I’ve never told you,” said Cassidy, helping Shamus to vegetables, filling his glass, and trying now by every means to win him back from his state of hostile melancholy. “I’ve always been a bit dotty about writers ever since I was at school. I used to write short stories in bed after lights. I even won prizes. Hey what about that?”—with a brave if somewhat synthetic effort at enthusiasm—“Why don’t I make a stab at it? Give up the firm, give up Sandra, give up my money, waste away in a garret . . . be like Renoir.”
“It wasn’t Renoir. It was Gauguin.”
“Perhaps I’d make it . . . starve the talent out of me . . .”
Shamus had gone back to the water jug, was trailing his finger back and forth over the surface the way they had played with the sticklebacks by the river. A little resentfully, Cassidy said—it was a point he had made to Sandra not long ago—“Well if I am so bloody empty, why do you bother with me anyway?”
“Tell me, lover,” Shamus said, very seriously, lifting the jug an inch or two off the table. “Is that smile waterproof?”
Standing up, he began pouring the water slowly over Cassidy’s head, starting with a slowish trickle directed at the crown, then gradually increasing the quantity as the mood took him. Cassidy sat very still, thinking clearly a
bout absolutely nothing; for nothing is also a concept, being neither a place nor a person but a blank, a vacuum and a tremendous help in time of trouble. He did however record that the water was running over his neck and down his spine. He did also feel it spreading over his chest, his stomach, and into his groin. His ears were full of water too, but he knew that the conversation in the restaurant had stopped because he could hear Shamus’ voice and no one else’s and the brogue was very strong.
“Butch Cassidy, son of Dale, in that you do earnestly repent you of your oafish ways, and faithfully promise to follow always in the paths of truth, experience, and love, we hereby baptise you in the name of . . .”
He stopped pouring. Thinking the jug was empty, Cassidy lifted his head, but Shamus was still standing over him, and there was a good half pint to come.
“Go on Butch. Hit me with your handbag.”
“Please don’t pour any more,” Cassidy said.
He was beginning to feel quite angry, but there seemed to be nothing he could do. The injunction, however, moved Shamus unaccountably to fury.
“For Christ’s sake,” he shouted, pouring the rest in one long sustained movement. “Grow, you little weed, grow!”
The waiter was an old, kindly man, and he had the bill ready. Cassidy kept the money in his back pocket, and somehow the water had got in there too, and the notes were all stuck together. The waiter didn’t mind because Cassidy gave him a lot of them.
A copper urn stood in the corner for walking sticks and umbrellas. Taking out a silver-handled cane, Shamus began piping on it, swaying from the hips like a snake charmer and emitting a low wailing noise through his nose. Everyone waited, but no snake emerged. Using the stick as a club, Shamus drove it in sudden fury against the heavy chasing.
“All right you sodder,” he shouted into the urn. “Go on. Sulk. Jesus Christ, lover,” he breathed as they got outside, “oh God, lover, forgive, forgive.” Shaking his head, he took Cassidy’s hand and held it against his tear-stained cheek. “Lover, oh lover, forgive!”
21
“Shamus, tell me! Please tell me. What the hell’s the matter?
What’s happened to you? Who the hell is Dale?”
“He’s the bloke who bombed Hiroshima,” Shamus explained.
Shamus drunk.
Not high or tight or any other pretty word, but dirty, violent drunk. Sweating terribly, reeling and staggering as he held to Cassidy, refusing to go anywhere he knew but demanding always to move. Vomiting.
“Wander, Jew, wander,” he kept saying. “Wander.”
His arm, hooked round Cassidy’s neck, is divided between destroying and embracing him. Twice they have gone down, toppled by his iron grip, and Cassidy’s trouser is cut from the knee to the foot. We’re all that’s left of an army, the rest are dead. The night is dead too, and the dawn is limping after them. They are in a square again but not dancing any more, the dancing is over, no horses either, just an early bitch of Sandra’s, long dead, eyeing them from a doorway.
Shamus is vomiting again punctuating his spasms with cries of anger.
“Fucking body,” he shouts. “Do what you’re bloody told! How the hell can I keep my promises if my body won’t work? Tell it lover. Shamus has promises to keep. Tell it to carry me!”
“Come on body,” Cassidy says, trying to hold its sinking weight, “Come on body, Shamus has promises to keep.”
“For I have promises to keep . . .”
Shamus is trying to set the words to music. He sings quite well in Cassidy’s unmusical opinion, a very Shamus sort of singing, half talking, half humming, but with a lot of quality to the voice even when (as watchful Cassidy accurately surmises) he is out of tune.
“The night is lo-v-e-ly, dark and deep—sing you bugger, Dale—the night - is - lovely - dark and deep—sing!”
“I don’t know the words, Shamus,” Cassidy said, catching him again as he lurched forward. “I’m not Dale but I’d sing if I knew the words, I promise.”
Shamus stopped dead.
“Who wouldn’t?” he said at last. “Jesus, who wouldn’t?” Putting both hands over Cassidy’s face, he lifted it into his own. “It’s singing when you don’t know the bloody words that tears your guts out, lover.”
“But you do know the words, Shamus.”
“Oh no I don’t. Oh no I bloody don’t, Dale my lovely. You think I do. Why I love you: worshipping prole. What more can a man ask? The roar of the proles at the door, dizzy faces . . . cameras click.... It’s all anyone wants. Queen, me, Flaherty, all of us.”
Putting his whole weight on Cassidy’s shoulders, Shamus forced him down on to the curb.
“Now give yourself a nice comfy rest Dale, old son,” he said in Irish, “while your poor Uncle Shamus tells you the secret of the universe,” and pulled the bottle of Scotch from Cassidy’s inside pocket. After a couple of mouthfuls, he became quite sober but his arm was still locked round Cassidy’s in case he tried to run away.
“I’m not Dale,” said Cassidy again, patiently. “I’m your lover. Cassidy.”
“Then I’ll tell Cassidy instead. What do we have in common, you and me, Cassidy, in ourselves? Guess.” He shouted very loud. “Guess, Cassidy! Before I turn you into Dale again, you crawling little funk!”
A window opened on the other side of the street.
“You American?” a man’s voice enquired, in an American accent.
“Piss off,” Shamus yelled, and back to Cassidy: “Well?”
“Well we love each other, if that’s any help,” Cassidy suggested, using one of their earlier dialogues as a working guide. “We’ve got love in common, Shamus.”
“Balls,” said Shamus, and brushed away a tear. “Sheer bloody romantic bollocks, if you’ll forgive me, which you will, as usual.”
Two tarts were standing a few feet away from them. One of them carried a loaf of bread, and was eating mouthfuls off the end of it.
“The greedy one looks like your mother,” said Shamus.
“I think we’ve done that one,” Cassidy said wearily.
“Êtes vous la mère de mon ami?” Shamus enquired.
The tarts scowled and went away, tired of the prolonged joke.
“Well perhaps that’s it. Perhaps we are queer,” said Cassidy, still working on the false assumption that he would do best to rely on Shamus’ themes, and offer them as his own.
“Zero,” said Shamus. “Did I ever once venture just the smallest finger up your skirts? Not the tiniest little digit, did I?”
“No,” said Cassidy, as Shamus hauled him abruptly to his feet. He was more tired than he had ever been in his life. “No, you didn’t.”
“Then will you listen to me please? And will you stop putting forward low-grade arguments, please?”
Cassidy had little option, for Shamus was holding him in a cruel embrace, and their faces were pressed together, rough cheek on rough cheek.
“And will you please give me your very fullest attention, Dale? What we have in common is the most dreadful, hopeless, fucking awful pessimism. Right?”
“Okay, I’ll buy that.”
“And the other thing we have in common is the most dreadful, awful, hopeless, fucking awful . . . mediocrity.”
Real fear seized Cassidy; real unreasoning alarm.
“No Shamus, that’s not true, that’s absolutely not true. You’re special Shamus, we all know that—”
“You do, do you, lover?”
The grip tightened.
“I know. Helen knows. We all know. . . .” Cassidy was going now, really frightened; holding on and desperate to survive. The Bentley was sinking in the river; Abalone Crescent was falling to its knees. “Christ you idiot you only have to walk into a room, tell a story, give them your rat’s-eyes, and they know, we all know, that it’s you, Shamus; your world. You’re our chronicler, Shamus, our magus. You’ve got all we want, the truth, the dream, the guts. Okay you’re impossible. But you’re the best! You make it real for us, we know how go
od you are.”
“You do?”
It was Cassidy’s left arm Shamus had taken now; he had driven the upper part into the shoulder socket, and the pain was like the water at Lipp’s, spreading and creeping and screaming all at once.
“Shamus you’ll break it in a minute,” Cassidy warned.
“You really believe that crap I tell you? Listen, I am the lousiest fucking conjuror in the business and you fall for every fucking trick. Nietzsche. Schiller. Flaherty. I never read those fucking people in my life. They’re scraps. Tit-bits. Fag-ends. I pick them out of the gutter for breakfast and you poor fuckers think they’re a bloody feast. I am a bum. You want to throw me out, pramseller: that’s what you want to do. I don’t work, I don’t write, I don’t exist! It’s the fucking audience that’s doing the magic, not me. I am a fraud. Got it? A con man. A fucking clapped-out conjuror with an audience of one.”
“No!” Cassidy shouted. “NO! NO! NO!”
“You think I’m your friend.” Shamus had found a place to lie down, so Cassidy was obliged to lie beside him, partly to hear the words and partly not to lose his arm. “Well I don’t want a fucking friend. I don’t even know how to deal with a friend. I want a fucking archaeologist, that’s what I want. I’m Troy, not a fucking bank clerk. There are nine dead cities buried in me and each one is more rotten than the next fucker. And what do you do? You stand there like a bloody tourist and bleat, ‘No! No! Shamus no.’ Yes, Cassidy. Yes, Shamus is a bum. There’s a nasty smell around here. Know what it is? Failure!”
“Shamus,” said Cassidy quietly. “I would swap all my fortune for your talent . . . for your life, and for your marriage . . .”
“All right,” Shamus whispered, letting him loose as the tears came. “All right, lover. If I’m so bloody marvellous, why did you turn down my novel?”
Cassidy’s world swung, and held still.