The Naive and Sentimental Lover

  Runny tummy, said Hugo. Daddy’s got runny tummy so he can’t go to work.

  “I like it when you have runny tummy, Dad.”

  “So do I,” said Cassidy.

  They played a lot of dominos, Hugo winning.

  “He’s faking,” said Cassidy’s father, telephoning from the penthouse, needing money badly. “He’s been faking all his life, course he has. Ask him about his spasms in Cheltenham then. Ask him about his hernia in Aberdeen! That boy’s never had a genuine affliction in his life, he’s as phoney as a seven-pound note—”

  “You should know,” said Sandra and slammed down the receiver.

  In confidence, John Elderman diagnosed a mild breakdown.

  He had seen it coming, he whispered, but was helpless to prevent it; and pumped up rubber tubes round Cassidy’s upper arm.

  “Call it psychosomatic, call it what you will, it’s one of those times when the old mind puts the body to bed, and the old body just has to do what the old mind tells it. Eh?”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Cassidy conceded with a weakly smile. “Any history at all, old man?” asked the physician, reading “normal” for the third day running.

  “A bit,” Cassidy confessed, hinting at stresses overcome, brainstorms peculiar to the brilliant.

  Tactfully John Elderman abstained from further question.

  “Well,” he remarked instead, “you’ve Sandra to look after you, that’s one good thing, old man. She knows her Aldo, doesn’t she?”

  “Poor Pailthorpe,” Sandra sighed, holding his hand on her lap and regarding her adult child with timeless love. “Poor, silly Pailthorpe, what have you been up to? You don’t have to chase money like that: we’ll get by.”

  It was the balance of payments, Cassidy explained; he had wanted so desperately to help the export drive. Not for Cassidy’s. For the nation.

  “I wanted to get Britain off the ground,” he said.

  “Dear one,” said Sandra, kissing him again, lightly in order not to excite him. “You’re such a striver. And I’m such a drag.”

  For an hour or more she sat with him, studying his effigy in the gloom. Her stillness was very comforting, and Cassidy loved her in return.

  The malady had taken him by surprise. Had stalked him in the night and overwhelmed him with the dawn. First a nightmare, then daylit visions had assailed him; hallucinations, dialogues between the many characters of his mind. Their theme was retribution. He was striding through London over grassy, secluded squares, drawing weightless children by the hand; he was floating down the rue de Rivoli in the Bentley, driving it from the top deck; he was charging through noisy female streets, and suddenly—it could be anywhere—he would be confronted by an alp near Sainte-Angèle, the Angelhorn. No Entry, No Diversion, and No Exit. An alp of twisting jagged spires, Wilde’s upturned sow; of giddy paths and incalculable embarrassments, where whores, hoteliers, tax inspectors, police officials, and coachmen leered and gesticulated from steaming caverns or hugged each other beside diminished riverbeds. Sometimes, nervously approaching its lower slopes and feeling already the onslaught of his vertigo, he saw himself opening a copy of the Daily Express and reading aloud from its erudite pages: Is Pram Maker Fourth Man? Anarchist Writer also connected? Algerian porter tells of night orgy in thunderstorm; honeymoon couple claim: we heard them through wall. Writer’s wife utterly innocent. Chapman Pincher Exclusive.

  Also, of his own bankruptcy, on inner pages lit in brothel green: Are Cassidy’s burnt out? Have Fastenings Come Unstuck? M.P.’s Son answers Official Receiver: “I spent it on tipping. My crime was generosity.”

  “Comfort!” the wretched sinner cried miserably to the whores. “Look what has become of me!” But before he could rid himself of his cassock (a monkish sinner, this Cassidy) they ran off white-buttocked into the avalanche gullies where Shamus, already armed and disencumbered, was waiting to enjoy them.

  Such a vision was not entirely of Cassidy’s own invention. Its prototype hung in the ever-lit chambers of his childhood, in the days when God was still pleased to have Old Hugo feed the mind, in the kitchen of his first mother, where she sighed and ironed surplices of her husband’s own design: an alp named Hades drawn by pious artists, printed in polychrome by an early process, and framed in inflammable timber. At its foot were depicted all the horrors which small boys long to commit: theft and arson; gaming and veiled lechery. On the fearful peak, black angels burned the same offenders.

  He was recalled from this torment by Ast thanking him for flowers. Sitting on his bed, close, to emphasise her gratitude. Ast in ripe harvest yellow, loose fitting at the looser places.

  “Did you mean it?” she asked softly. “What you wrote?”

  Sandra was out buying pigs’ trotters, their gravy would give him nourishment.

  “With all my love,” Heather recited. “And all my sorrow. Aldo, you couldn’t have made that up. Sent from Paris too, with all those distractions.”

  She too held his hand; but folded, worked into the higher cushions of her thighs; at the point, on her own person, which she had reached at dinner at the Eldermans’, on his. Having first closed the door against extraneous disturbance.

  “You were so right to rebuke me,” she whispered. “And I was so pompous wasn’t I?”

  Hard upon these early visions came their physical counterparts: outbreaks of sudden sweating accompanied by erratic beatings of the heart, inflammation of the ears and throat, and a hot dryness of the eyes; written calculations by Sandra to turn Fahrenheit to Centigrade.

  “He’s a hundred and four,” she told John Elderman on the second visit. “He’s miles sub,” she assured him on the third. Thereafter they discussed his condition over nightly dinners in the basement, for John Elderman liked to come at seven when the rest of the world was healed.

  For a while, still hovering on the brink of death, and loudly protesting his innocence of the many crimes of which, in his other mind, he constantly accused himself, Cassidy decided that Shamus was a myth. “He never existed,” he told himself, and pulling the blankets to his nose, pretended he was in a sledge.

  Appalled by the memories of outlandish heresies in the Sacré Coeur, he availed himself of Sandra’s extensive library on the lives of holy men, and resolved, during luxurious hours in the lavatory, to follow their example.

  “I’ve matured,” he told her. “I’d like to consider going into the Church again, it’s sort of fitting into place.”

  And later: “Let’s get out of the rat race for a while, go somewhere we can think.”

  Sandra suggested Oxford; they had been happy there. “Or we might try Scotland. The dogs would adore it.”

  “Scotland would be fine,” said Cassidy. Using the bedside telephone he made bookings at Gleneagles. But only in his imagination, for Scotland had no appeal for him; it lacked the company he craved.

  In answer to the patient’s summons, Angie Mawdray also called. She brought the mail and twelve small roses in a white tissue.

  “They’re for you,” she said in a low voice. “To make up for the ones you sent me from Paris.”

  Rummaging in her Greek bag, she drew out a handwritten letter from the country which he hid under the bedclothes. She did not look at him during this transaction, and her expression discouraged conversation.

  “They’re from Faulk,” Cassidy told Sandra, to explain the young buds. “From all of them really, but Faulk chose them.”

  “People really care about you,” Sandra said generously, sniffing their elusive scent. “People really love you, don’t they.”

  “Well,” said Cassidy.

  “We all do,” Sandra insisted.

  And settling, resumed her vigil of unblinking adoration.

  For his convalescence, Cassidy wore a blue cashmere dressing gown which Sandra bought him specially from Harrods: sickness was an emergency, money could be spent on it. At first he lunched in bed and came down for an hour only, to play with Hugo.

  “That’s not prop
er billiards,” said Hugo contemptuously, and reported him to Sandra for illegal practices.

  “Now you listen to me, young Hugo,” said Sandra with serene indulgence. “If your Daddy wants to play billiards with a candle, then that’s his way of playing billiards.”

  “It’s the best way too, isn’t it Dad?” said Hugo proudly.

  “It’s called Moth,” Cassidy explained. “We used to play it in the Army as a way of passing the time.”

  Next morning, surveying the cloth, Sandra was extremely cross.

  “How on earth am I supposed to get the wax off?”

  “She’s baity with you for getting up,” Hugo explained. “She likes you better in bed.”

  “Nonsense,” said Cassidy.

  Continuing his cautious return to normal life, the invalid went to great lengths to spare himself collision. To telephone Helen in the country, for instance, he used his credit card to avoid distressing entries on the bill; to speak with Miss Mawdray at South Audley Street he selected moments when Sandra was out shopping. Despite these precautions, he was exposed to some hard bargaining.

  “But Cassidy,” Helen insisted, not flesh yet, but an excellent telephone personality; also an angel. “You can’t possibly afford it!”

  “For God’s sake, Helen, what’s money for?”

  “But Cassidy, think what it’s going to cost you.”

  “Helen, look. What would you do if you were me, and loved him my way? Right?”

  “Cassidy,” said Helen, beaten down.

  For the same reasons Messrs. Grimble and Outhwaite of Mount Street W. had firm instructions not to ring him at the residence. Deal only with Miss Mawdray, he told them; Miss Mawdray knows exactly what is needed.

  Nonetheless, it was Cassidy who had to keep them at the wheel.

  “Water,” he insisted to old Grimble, speaking under the blankets. The house, though solid, had strange acoustical tricks; chimneys in particular were dangerous ducts of sound from floor to floor. “It must be near water. All right, use sub agents; yes of course I’ll pay double commission. Good heavens it’s a Company flat isn’t it? Pay whatever you have to and bill Lemming for it. I mean really it’s too bad.”

  Such conversations reminded him that he was not wholly mended, for they moved him to intemperate reactions which he afterwards regretted. Sometimes, collapsing against the heaped pillows, his heart stammering with anger, his complexion red with heat, he wept to himself in the mirror. Not a sane man left in town, he told himself. And worse: they’re all against me.

  “The one in Chiswick’s not bad,” said Angie wearily, calling on him after a long day’s hunting. “If you don’t mind Chiswick. It’s got a fabulous gloom and it looks right on to the river.”

  “Is it noisy?”

  “Depends, doesn’t it. Depends what you call noisy.”

  “Look: could you work there? Creative work I mean . . . something you had to be inspired for?”

  It was Angie’s third day out, and her temper was running short.

  “How should I know? I can’t count the decibels, can I? Tell her to go and listen for herself, I should.”

  Sulking, she lit a cigarette from a thin box of ten.

  She? Cassidy repeated to himself; what a ridiculous, disgraceful notion! Good God, she thinks I’m . . .

  “It’s not a she,” he said very firmly. “It’s a he. A writer if you must know. A married writer who needs support at a critical time in his career. Not just moral support but practical support. He’s suffered a professional reverse which could seriously affect the course of—what the devil are you laughing at?”

  It was not a laugh but a smile; a sudden, very pretty smile; to watch it was to smile himself.

  “I’m just happy that’s all. I know I’m silly; I can’t help it, can I? I thought you were setting up a designing bitch, didn’t I? Redhead in a leopardskin . . . dry martinis . . .”

  Such was her merriment, and her pleasure, that she was obliged to take her bedridden employer’s hand to steady herself; and to borrow his handkerchief from under the pillow to dry her eyes. And to return it to its proper place under the pillow again. And to take her leave of him affectionately, as became the informality of their situation. With a kiss, in fact, a neat, dry, soft, and very loving kiss, such as daughters bestow on fathers at their coming out.

  “I like that lady,” said Hugo, meaning Angie, who was still lingering wistfully at the gate, as if reluctant to leave. “She gives me hugs all the time.... Dad?”

  “Yes Hugo.”

  “Do you think she’s nicer than Heather?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Nicer than Snaps?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Nicer than Mummy?”

  “Of course not,” said Cassidy.

  “That’s what I think,” said Hugo loyally.

  Next morning early, a loud hammering filled the house in Abalone Crescent. From the hall and drawing room, unclassical male singing issued, often with improvised librettos. To the wailing of electric drills the workmen had returned.

  24

  Externally, Helen had not changed.

  To the outward eye at least she was the same: the Anna Karenina boots were a shade more scuffed, the long brown coat a trifle more threadbare, but to Cassidy these signs of poverty only enhanced her virtue. She came down the platform first, carrying a paper parcel in both her hands as if it were a present for him, and she had that same gravity, that same essential seriousness of manner, which for Cassidy was a prerequisite of mothers and sisters alike. Her hair was also unchanged, and that was particularly fortunate since variations unnerved Cassidy; he frankly considered them fraudulent.

  True, she was several feet shorter than his expectation, and the new lights at Euston Station robbed her of that angelic luminosity which candles and firelight impart. True her figure, which he remembered as fluid and noble beneath the uncomplicated Haverdown housecoat, had a certain mundanity about it when set among the Many-too-Many with whom she had been obliged to travel. But in her voice, in her embrace as she kissed him across the parcel, in her nervous laugh as she glanced behind her, he discerned at once a new intensity.

  “He’s been absolutely pining for you,” she said.

  “Look at you,” said Shamus in his poofy voice, pulling her aside, much as he had done at Haverdown. “Fancy wearing eelskin at this time of year.”

  “Jesus,” said Cassidy boldly. “Didn’t know you were coming.”

  In Cassidy’s glimpse of him before the long embrace, he thought it was the collar of the deathcoat. Though he remembered also thinking, as the strong arms pulled him in, that the deathcoat had no collar, or none you could turn so high. Then he thought it was a bird, an Alpine chough, pitch black, swooping to peck out his eyes. Then the barricade of tiny pins pricked and broke before him, and he thought: this is Jonathan because he’s dark, he’s grown a beard to be like God.

  “He’s decided he’s got a weak chin,” said Helen, waiting for them to finish.

  “Fancy it, lover?”

  “It’s terrific. Marvellous. How does Helen like it?”

  They made the short journey by cab. The Bentley was too highhat, Cassidy had decided; but take a plain ordinary London taxi which would not embarrass them.

  Inevitably, after Cassidy’s high excitement at their coming, not to speak of the countless small preparations of an administrative and domestic character—would the curtains be ready in time, had Fortnum’s mistaken the address?—inevitably, that first day was something of an anticlimax. Cassidy knew that Helen, after their many clandestine telephone calls in Shamus’ interest, had much to say to him; he knew also that his first duty was to Shamus, who was the reason and the driving force of their reunion.

  But Shamus placed heavy burdens on their forbearance. Having sat Helen on the jump seat so that he and Cassidy could hold hands in comfort, Shamus first showed Cassidy how to stroke his beard: he should do it this way, downwards, never against the nap. Next, he undertook a phy
sical examination of Cassidy, searching his arms and legs for any sign of damage, smoothing his hair, and studying the palms of his hands. And finally satisfied, he resumed his admiration of Cassidy’s suit, which was of Harris tweed, not eelskin, a grey houndstooth chosen for semi-formal occasions. Was it French? Was it waterproof?

  “How’s work?” Cassidy asked, hoping to start a diversion.

  “Never tried it,” said Shamus.

  “He’s doing wonderfully,” Helen said. “All the news is just marvellous, isn’t it, Shamus? Honestly Cassidy, he’s been working marvellously since he came back, haven’t you Shamus? Four, five hours a day. More sometimes, it’s been just fantastic.”

  Her eyes said more: we owe it to you, you have made a new man of him.

  “I’m delighted,” said Cassidy, while Shamus, licking a corner of his handkerchief, wiped a smut from Cassidy’s cheek.

  The best news of all, Helen confided, was that Dale had come down from London and that he and Shamus had had a fantastic relationship for the whole of one day.

  “Great,” said Cassidy with a smile, gently warding off more intimate embraces.

  “Not jealous, lover?” Shamus enquired anxiously. “Not put out? Honest, lover? Honest?”

  “I think I’ll survive,” said Cassidy, with another knowing glance at Helen.

  “Actually,” said Helen, “Dale isn’t Dale at all, is he Shamus? He’s Michaelovitsch, he’s a Jew, all the good publishers are Jews, aren’t they, Shamus? Well of course they would be really, they’ve got the most fantastic taste, in art and literature, in everything, Shamus always says so.”

  “That’s perfectly true,” Cassidy agreed, thinking of the Niesthals and recalling something Sandra had recently said. “That’s perfectly true,” he repeated, grateful to have a topic of conversation on which he could shine. “It’s because historically the Jews weren’t allowed to own land. Virtually throughout the whole of Europe, right through the Middle Ages. The Dutch were marvellous to them but then the Dutch are marvellous people anyway, look at the way they resisted the Germans. So of course, what happens? The Jews had to specialise in international things. Like diamonds and pictures and music and whatever they could move when they were persecuted.”