The Naive and Sentimental Lover

  “The impact confirms the shape. That’s why we have to collide all the time. To confirm our shape. To feel our outer edges.” She drank. “Trouble with that is, if you have too much impact, you lose your shape altogether. Bash it to bits. Till there’s nothing left to confirm.”

  “That won’t happen to him,” said Cassidy sternly. “Not while we’re around.”

  “No,” Helen agreed, after long reflection. “No. It mustn’t must it? I wish you could sing. I’d like to do that with you. Sing with lover.”

  “Well I can’t,” said Cassidy.

  Like a swimmer she lifted her arms to shoulder level, first forward, then sideways, then raised herself on her toes, as if preparing to dive out of the window.

  “Funny to think of them dancing down there,” she said. “To sleep while other people dance. That’s not the way we used to be, me and Shamus.”

  Without warning, her voice changed. “Cassidy, why am I miserable?”

  “Reaction,” Cassidy suggested. “Shock.”

  “Because I’m bloody miserable. I’m a miserable, maudlin, middle-aged cow.”

  She puffed, then sniffed her breath, testing it for alcohol.

  “Miserable, maudlin, middle-aged, and pissed,” she confirmed. “God what a fool!”

  “Helen—”

  She was speaking too loud, loud enough to wake him in fact.

  “Here I am sitting in the peachy Savoy Hotel in a peachy white dress and what am I doing?”

  “Helen,” Cassidy admonished, but too late; she was already taking off her shoes.

  “All because my bloody husband blows a gasket. Dance with me.”

  “Helen please, we’ll wake him up—”

  Her arms were already round him, seeking his hand, guiding his shoulder. Lightly, tentatively, their eyes still on the prone figure of their sleeping prophet, the two disciples followed the far drumbeat of the band. The carpet was very deep and made no sound.

  “Oh Cassidy,” she murmured, “what a fool I nearly was.”

  Her cheek was against his, her hair was in his eyes, and all down the length of him her body swayed and trembled like his own.

  “After all,” she remarked, “it’s what he would want if he was awake.”

  Somehow, it was not at all clear how—a common will conveyed them, neither lover steered—somehow they were in the bedroom. The connecting door was probably open: Cassidy had his eyes closed, he could not tell; and waking, as it were, and finding the angel Helen in his arms and the ominously large bed behind her (robbed of its saffron eiderdown) he saw that her eyes also were closed. Fate, therefore, must be held responsible: there was no human author.

  “Wafted,” Helen announced. “Is that you Cassidy?” And to confirm the identification, held her hand over his face like a muzzle.

  “Bark,” she said.

  “I can’t,” said Cassidy.

  Settling more comfortably into his arms, she affectionately possessed herself of his ears and fondled them between her forefinger and thumb.

  “Dear Cassidy. How soft your fur is. Kiss me.”

  “No,” said Cassidy.

  “Seduce me.”

  “No,” said Cassidy. “Absolutely not,” and closed his eyes again.

  The kiss seemed to approach from a long way off. It began far up river among the black steel forests of East India Dock, tipped the taut spanned bridges of the Embankment, skimmed the tide’s smooth surface as it glowed ever larger, brighter, and more bold; until, part heat, part liquid, part light, it scaled the fourteen rigid storeys of the Savoy and found its final resting place in the inflamed interiors of Aldo Cassidy and his best friend’s wife.

  “Cassidy,” Helen said severely, “unhand me,” and putting him aside, addressed herself to the domestic task of making the bed respectable while Cassidy went to the bathroom in case he had caught her lipstick.

  “I do wish I was a whore,” she remarked, slapping the pillows into shape. “I’d be a damn sight better at it than Sal, I’ll bet. Why can’t I be a whore? I like this hotel, Cassidy. I like the food, I like the drink, and I like the people. Very much. I’ve got a super body too. Sturdy, workman-like, resilient. So why can’t I?”

  “Because you love him,” said Cassidy.

  “Doesn’t stop him, does it? He fucks around. He seduces people, he goes screwing all over Europe. So why can’t I?”

  “I’ll go and see how he is,” said Cassidy. “Then perhaps we can go home.”

  He was in the bedroom again, but strictly in transit, making for the drawing room and safety, when Helen to his alarm suddenly sprang into the air and landed on all fours on the bed.

  “Fuck him,” she declared in exasperation, pulling her hair down over her eyes. “I Helen fuck myself of Shamus. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s a reactionary, don’t you realise? A drooling old Victorian fuddy-duddy. One law for him, another for us. Hogswallop. Shamus has conned us, Cassidy. Shamus has pulled off the biggest bloody load of hokum since . . . whoever pulled off the last load of hokum. Shamus hates convention. That’s the message. But we mustn’t. Oh no. We’ve got to love it. I’m hungry,” she added, straightening her hair. “He ruined our dinner too. Our dinner, Cassidy, and he just stepped on it.”

  “Shamus,” Cassidy breathed urgently, on his knees before the body. “Wake up. Please wake up.” And shook him, out of her hearing, quite hard.

  “The scales,” Helen announced from the bedroom, “have fallen from my eyes. A revolution of one, that’s me. His freedom for my freedom and fuck the consequences.”

  “Shamus,” Cassidy insisted. “For Christ’s sake. We need you.”

  But Shamus refused to wake. He was lying on his stomach, dead to the world. The coverlet had fallen to the floor and his naked back was slippery with sweat.

  “Cassidy,” Helen called. “Is it true? Do wicked ladies really have it off with waiters in hotels? Just lie prone when their Horlicks arrives, exposing their irresistible charms through diaphanous nightshirts?”

  “Give me a towel,” said Cassidy. “And shut up. Lover, listen, we’ve got to go.”

  A damp towel flopped at his feet.

  “Listen, I did things for you . . . all sorts of things. I dragged you out of the gutter didn’t I? Stripped you, bought you suits, fed you, cleared up your sick . . . I believe in you. I really do. More than anyone in the world. Well, I try, anyway. Shamus, you owe me . . . wake up!”

  “Bold,” said Helen, still in the bedroom. “That’s what you were tonight. Bold, bloody, and resolute. Doughty Cassidy. You had grip. I admire grip in a man. Good evening,” she continued into the telephone. “This is suite fourteen thirty-eight. Is there any chance of getting a little something to eat, a snack of some sort? Two fillet steaks, a bottle of . . .” It ran on, enough to hold out for a week.

  “Don’t order for me,” Cassidy called. “I don’t want anything. Shamus.” Turning him over, he laid the cold towel over his face, pressing it quite roughly against his brow, his cheeks.

  “You haven’t any crackers, have you?” Helen was enquiring. “Not to eat, to pull . . .”

  He heard the shuffle of her dress as she settled more comfortably on the bed.

  “Are you brown, Cassidy? I always think of you as golden. Just a neat white bottom and the rest all gold.” More rustles from the bed. “I’m in a sledge,” she explained. “Wrapped in bearskins. Swish, swish. With Siberian wolves all round.” A wolf howl: “Ow-oo-oo. That’s a good life out there, Cassidy.”

  “Yes,” said Cassidy, who treasured a similar fantasy.

  “You’d protect me, wouldn’t you, Cassidy? One look at you and a wolf would . . .” She lost the thread. “Wolfwood,” she repeated. “Sounds like a railway station. Cassidy, which would you rather be: raped by Cossacks or torn to pieces by wolves?”

  “Neither,” said Cassidy.

  “Me too,” Helen agreed amiably. “You know gorillas rape. I wouldn’t like that. Cassidy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you
got a hairy chest? Hair’s virile isn’t it?”

  “Supposed to be.”

  “You know quite little boys get erections. Even babies, it’s amazing. Cassidy.”

  “Yes.”

  “I feel very naïve. Do you?” Silence. “Or just sentimental?”

  “Hullo lover,” said Shamus, opening his eyes.

  Seizing him by the shoulders, Cassidy set to work, patting his cheeks, sitting him upright, trying to remember what boxers’ seconds did to get their champions back into the ring.

  “Shamus listen, listen to me. Shamus, she’s planning murder, take her away, you’ve got to . . .”

  “Where’s Hall?” said Shamus.

  “He disappeared. Hey, let’s go and find him, how about that? Go down to Cable Street, how about that? Get pissed, have a fight or two, really hit the moon for once, why not? Cable Street! That’s a real place down there, not like this, all hygienic and clean—”

  “Why didn’t he hit me?”

  “Why should he? He loves you. He’s your friend, like me. You don’t hit friends, you hit enemies.”

  “She told him,” Shamus related, with sudden clarity of recall. “Sat there and told him straight out. ‘Hall, Shamus has offered me five quid to have it off with him and I want to go home.’ He just looked at me. Why did he do that, lover? Christ he could have killed me with one hand. Look what he did to that bosun, that fellow was maimed for life. What’s wrong with me? I mean a boxer! If a boxer won’t hit me, who the fuck will?”

  Receiving no answer, but seeing perhaps Cassidy’s face, fresh and nicely polished by the soap, he swung his fist at it and missed.

  “Jesus!” he shouted. “Won’t anybody hit me?” And fell back, square on to the pillow, where he closed his eyes in pain.

  “Cassidy,” Helen called.

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “I don’t know. No.”

  “I’ve stopped being a whore now.”

  “Good.”

  Shamus frowned. “That sounded like Helen,” he said.

  “It was. She’s having a bath.”

  Listening, Cassidy heard the rustle of clear water running on the moon and casual dance music issuing from a space-born radio, school of Frank Sinatra.

  “Well what the fuck is Helen doing in Paristown?” Shamus demanded testily.

  “It’s not Paris. It’s London.”

  Which is the trouble really, Cassidy reflected. In Paris it would all have been tolerable, somehow. In London, I’m afraid it’s not; not really.

  The sound of water stopped.

  “Cassidy,” Helen called again.

  “Yes.”

  “Just Cassidy,” she said, with the deep content of someone lying naked in a warm bath. “It’s just a pretty name, that’s all. Cassidy. I like saying it, you see. Because it’s a pretty name.”

  “Fine,” said Cassidy.

  “Lot of woman there, boy,” said Shamus, and rolling over, fell asleep.

  “Cassidy,” Helen was saying. “Cassidy. Cassidy. Cassidy?”

  At Sherborne, Shamus, we called it bullying.

  We may not have had a very high opinion of ourselves—that would have been hubris and not at all to be encouraged—but we did, I think, respect one another. The nicer of us did anyway. That, it seems to me, Shamus, is the definition of a reasonable man. He doesn’t mind what you do to him, but he minds what you do to other people. Sorry I’m not being clearer, but I’ll get there slowly, I’m a bit of a plodder in some ways; not a flyer like you, I’m afraid, Shamus.

  Sit down, will you?

  There are a few things I have to explain to you, seeing you are new here and not quite our class. A bully is someone who picks on those who are weaker than himself. Not physically weaker necessarily; spiritually too. Emotionally also, perhaps. A bully performs acts of brutality against those who cannot retaliate. Our code does not like bullies. The regimental flags in the Abbey, for instance, were not scarred by unfair battles, our forebears did not march on undefended cities for their conquests. Well they may have done, but not often. Well, they wouldn’t now.

  So I’m afraid, Shamus, we do not approve. Sal may be a slut. Conceded. But Hall was your friend. He loved you and he loved Sal, and that’s why he didn’t hit you.

  Perhaps he even loved Helen too, in a pure way.

  “Cassidy,” said Helen. She was trying different pronunciations. “Cassidee,” she said, in unconscious imitation of Elise. “Cassidy,” she growled in a deep, Sinatra drawl. “You are a MOLE, you live in a HOLE. How’s the patient?”

  “Bearing up,” said Cassidy.

  “Will he live?”

  “Maybe.”

  Hall you see, Shamus, was here in double trust. You’ve read Macbeth, haven’t you. A prescribed work for O-Level English? Hall was your kinsman and your subject, or whatever it says. You appointed him to the Few, even if he wasn’t really a playing member; even if the Few are by nature self-appointed. You gave him his wings and then you shot him down. Which makes you rather low and small, don’t you think?

  That is why you deserve to be beaten, I’m afraid; that is why, in a minute, you will be asked to lower your handsome black head into the third washbasin from the left, hold the taps firmly, and offer a passive target to myself and my under-prefects. Do you understand? Is there anything you would like to say in mitigation?

  Because actually, at this precise moment in time I am very anxious to hate you.

  Yes lover, said Shamus, but not aloud. Of course I’ve got something to say. Bags in fact. Ready? Pen poised?

  Shamus, the great guru, speaks:

  Never regret, never apologise. That’s the upper classes.

  Let’s be Old Testament, lover; Old Testament’s for the upper classes, New Testament’s for compromisers.

  To live without heed to the consequences; to give everything for today and not a damn for tomorrow: that’s the upper classes.

  One day as a lion is worth a lifetime as a mouse: that’s the upper classes.

  Never regret, never apologise.

  Got to find a new innocence, lover, old one’s worn out.

  Those who love the world take it; those who are afraid make rules.

  All relationships have to be pursued to their end. That’s where the Blue Flower grows.

  Immoralism, lover, is a necessary precondition for the creation of new values. . . . When I fucks, I revolts. . . . When I sleeps, I acquiesces.

  Don’t hold with motives, lover, never did. Act first, find the reason afterwards, that’s my advice.

  Acts are truth, lover. Garbage, the rest is. Horseshit.

  And finally, lover, you’re the biggest fucking liar in the business, you treat your wife with pig-like indifference, and you’re in no position to beat anybody, see my portrait of you after Haverdown. Good morning.

  “I’m not brown,” said Helen from the bathroom. “I’m white.”

  “I know,” said Cassidy, still at Shamus’ side. “I saw you at Haverdown. I always wondered how you heated the water.”

  “Kettles,” Helen explained. “We got the bath ready, but by the time we’d made love it was cold again. So we had to heat it up. That’s why the fire was still going when you arrived.”

  “I see.”

  “There’s an explanation for everything if you look for it.”

  Seizing his hand, Cassidy put his lips close to Shamus’ ear.

  “Shamus. Lover, wake up!”

  Shamus you are a terrible shit but you are our priest and if you’re not careful you’ll marry us.

  Shamus, I love you and you love me, I can see it in you even when you’re hating me, you long for me. Alive or dead, Shamus, naked or in your deathcoat, screwing in the green brothel or carrying candles in the Sacré Coeur, you are our genius, our father, our creator. Therefore, if you love me, wake up and release me from this improbable situation.

  “Shamus. Wake up!”

  I am not like you, Shamus, I am not
emotional, I am not drastic. I am an hotelier’s son. I’m not anything more than that. I am rational and I like things as they are as long as they favour my situation. I’m a lover not of people but of compromise and orthodoxy. You might very well call me the archetypal victim of Fly. I’m a Jaguar driver, a Gerrard’s Crosser, a doctor, and quite frequently a bishop in drag. I hold very much with the past, and if I knew where I came from I would return there like a shot. Also, you are right, I am a mother-fucker.

  Now Shamus, having proved all that to me, proved it quite conclusively, will you kindly wake up and get me out of this!

  “Cassidy? Ici parle Helen. Bonjour.”

  “Bonjour,” said Cassidy politely.

  He shouldn’t have poured water over me at Lipp’s.

  He shouldn’t have hit me at football.

  He shouldn’t have propositioned Sal just because he needed a collision.

  “Forgive lover. Forgive. Please forgive.”

  Without opening his eyes, Shamus drew Cassidy’s hand into the bed and held it against his hot cheek.

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” Cassidy whispered. “It’s fine. Listen, how about some more formaldehyde?”

  Rising, he was about to switch on the overhead light when Shamus spoke again, in quite a strong voice.

  “Lots, lover. Lots to forgive.”

  “What, then?”

  “Lent the Bentley to Hall. He was pissed, you see. Anyway, couldn’t have him going home in a cab, could I? Got to travel in style. Not angry, lover?”

  “Why should I be?”

  “Not hit me?”

  “Go to sleep,” said Cassidy.

  “Je m’appelle Hélène,” Helen announced still from the bathroom. She had recently started French lessons at an academy in Chester Street.

  “Hélène est mon nom. Hurrah pour Hélène. Hélène est beau. Belle. Fuck. Beau-belles, bow-bells, bow-bells, bow-bells!”