“He can’t just lie.”
“He doesn’t quite do that, it’s just he comes up with these bland answers you somehow can’t get round.”
And then mysteriously, over the baklava, she left him.
He ran on, giving of his best, but she slipped further and further away from him. A shadowed silence descended on her from within, causing her features suddenly to age, and sadden, her eyes to find an object to her left, and her cuffed hands to join like troubled friends before a common dread.
He played for laughs; he did his voices; he populated the political stage with a carnival of exotic personalities. Old So-and-So was a kind of Carnaby Street Hemingway, acting tough and attending his wife’s deliveries, but deep down he was just a puff-ball, Cassidy had fixed him in ten minutes. Someone else was always stealing the tea out of the canteen; the secretaries walked in fear of So-and-So, he was a pincher and pounced on them from doorways. He tried to play on her concern; very few really knew how grave was our economic situation. What was the Government to tell us? There came a moment when by telling the truth you made the truth more real and more terrible: “I mean God, we all know that problem.”
“Yes,” said Sandra, still in her own dark place, “we do.”
“And what about the people farther away?” she asked, still distracted. “Up north, or wherever you went? How were they? Also fools and knaves?”
“Oh, the Trade Union barons. Well they’re really tough. They were a real eye-opener, believe me. I mean if you like realism, those are the boys who know what it’s all about.”
“I’m glad somebody does,” said Sandra, still looking away from him.
Only promises remained to him.
“Look,” he said. “Now it’s done, finished—”
“What is?”
“The Report. The Paper. It’s off my hands. I told you. That’s why we’re here.”
“I know. I do know. You told me.”
“I thought we’d take a holiday. Up sticks and away. Dump the boys with John and Beth—” for once he remembered her name “—and go. Wherever you like. While we’re still young.” To himself, he sounded like television. How did he sound to her? He could not tell.
“Just you and me,” he said.
And brought her back.
Not all the way perhaps but far enough. Slowly, not all at once, the shadows withdrew from her face and a puckish, rather gallant smile took possession of her homeless features. A laugh escaped her, mocking none but herself, and she took his hand, touched it rather, sliding the tips of two very pretty fingers up and down the back.
“We could take a castle in Spain,” she suggested. And then, to his considerable concern, for he was not in any mood that night to deal with weighty matters: “You’re God really, aren’t you, Aldo? After all, if we don’t believe in you, what do we believe in?”
“Listen. First we’ll have a party. As soon as they’ve finished the drawing room. Then we’ll go. Next day. Take off. Now when’s the drawing room promised for?”
Details now, details gave reality. Whom they would ask: just people they liked, no one official, least of all Trade and Politics. Maybe a few of Heather’s friends to brighten it up. John and Beth of course, maybe a separate room for the kids.... Yes, said Sandra, it would be fun to have a children’s party going at the same time.
Now, about the holiday. Problem one: Where? All right, if she’d gone off Tito how about the Bahamas, he would even stand the cost of a trip to Bermuda.
Very cautiously, Sandra counted off her unbreakable engagements; and broke them one by one.
There was something else on Cassidy’s mind: they should do more together.
“Perhaps that’s one of the things we might think about on holiday.”
As a matter of fact he had been talking to Lacon and Ollier about it, his theatre ticket people, only yesterday.
“I thought you were in Leeds yesterday,” said Sandra, almost as if she were thinking about something else.
On the phone. He was actually talking to them about travel, then they got on to the question of theatre, was there anything worth seeing in the West End these days?
“What I was going to say was—”
“Sorry,” said Sandra.
“What for?”
“Doubting you.”
Checked, Cassidy glanced at her to make sure she was serious, but there was neither irony nor any other kind of insurrection in her face: only that same inward sadness, returning like a grown child to the empty houses of her youth.
“What I was going to say was: why not go to the theatre once a week automatically just to get a show under one’s belt so to speak? At least we’d have something to talk about.”
They agreed on Wednesdays.
“And I want to go to church again.”
“For my sake?”
“Well, yours and the children’s. Even if they reject it later, it’s right for them to have it now.”
“Yes,” said Sandra, very thoughtful again. “It will always be part of their lives, whether they reject it or not. After all—” he thought she had finished but she had not “—after all, if you live long enough with a dream, it is real isn’t it?”
Desperately he searched his imagination for stronger remedies. He had heard from old Niesthal that there was a marvellous sale at Christie’s next week, no dealers would be there because of the holidays. Why not go?
“Apparently there’s some fabulous eighteenth-century glass. You’ve always wanted old glass.”
“Have I?”
He talked about the chalet in Sainte-Angèle; perhaps they should drop in there on their way to Bermuda to make sure it was still in one piece; how the children had adored it last winter but he did wonder all the same whether Christmas wasn’t better spent at home.
“It’s up to you,” she said. “We’ll spend it wherever you say.”
He was going to offer further thoughts on Switzerland; he had a lot ready. He was going to suggest they retired there, that it was a good place to die, the eternity of the mountains gave a kind of solace; he was going to draw her on an academic point: did mountains exist more in time than in space, did something massive by definition become something of great longevity? But instead she spoke to him on her own initiative, drawing on thoughts deep down.
“Aldo.”
“Yes.”
“You know I love you, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I mean it,” she repeated, with a frown. “I actually really love you. It’s a whole condition of mind. It doesn’t allow for . . .”
Not being an articulate girl, she found no end to her sentence, so she got up and went to the ladies’ room. Cassidy paid the bill and called a cab. The same night they made love. For her own reasons Sandra was very slow. Finally, somewhere in the darkness, she called out; but whether from pain or joy he could no longer tell.
In the morning, she was crying again and he dared not ask her why.
30
“She’s here,” said Angie Mawdray in a sepulchral voice, perhaps the next day; perhaps autumn, since time had lost much of its reliability.
Several possibilities occurred to Cassidy; only the certainties were excluded. Heather Ast, for instance, popping in to say hullo on the way to have her hair done; Bluebridge wanting money, the obligatory scene; Mrs. Groat, Snaps, to discuss a new pregnancy. Heather Ast again, on a point of detail relating to Sandra’s welfare.
“Who is here?” he asked, with a tolerant smile.
Angie’s face, normally a treasure chest of appealing smiles and twinkling eyes, was ashen.
“You never told me she was a Beauty,” she whispered.
The receptionist, a friend of Lemming, was also impressed, for she winked at Cassidy as he passed her on his way to the waiting room and Cassidy made a mental note to dismiss her very soon indeed. There had been, he remembered, an incident at last year’s annual cricket match for which she had yet to pay—a matter of a locked chan
ging room and an absent batsman—and that wink made retribution certain.
The waiting room door was ajar. She was sitting in the deepest chair, a recliner of black hide, leaning right back with her knees not quite together. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling.
“Grunt like a pig,” she commanded.
Cassidy grunted.
“A lazy, non-telephoning, non-writing, head-in-the-mud pig.”
He grunted again.
“That’s authentic,” she conceded and then she opened her eyes and they kissed and went to tea at Fortnum’s because she was ravenous after her walk.
She’s here.
She’s walked, he recorded, as the memories came rushing back, the fun, the laughter, the bodies tied. Tripped the country miles from cod-country to South Audley Street on her very much deteriorated Anna Karenina boots. Hitchhiked, a gorgeous lorry driver called Mason. Mason had stopped for her to pick the blue flowers, bought her tea, wrapped her blue flowers in the Evening Standard—she was carrying them still, on her lap, they would go beside the bed tonight—Mason had invited her to have it off with him.
“But I didn’t, Cassidy, promise, just a kiss and a thank you, Mason, I’m not that sort of girl.”
“Very laudable,” said Cassidy. “Exemplary in fact,” and ordered her eggs, a second helping.
“Dear lover, are you in the pink? Can I kiss you, or will they call the lilly? That’s what Mason called them, Cassidy: lilly. For police. Did you know? Cassidy, I love you enormously, that’s my first vital piece of news. A blanket investment, Cassidy, not even my toes sticking out, Cassidy. Lock, stock, and body. Cassidy, you really do? Love me, I mean?”
“Really.”
“God what a relief. I told Mason, I said Mason, if he stands me up you will have to go to bed with me, whether you like it or not it’s a territorial imperative; is that the right expression? Like Schiller. To restore my pride.”
She leaned forward, full of important information.
“Cassidy, you have opened me up. Is that rude? I was a toady till I met you. A lackey. A bourgeois housebeast. You have turned me into a suffragette, no fooling. Cassidy, say you love me.”
“I love you.”
“He loves me,” Helen assured the waitress. “Him, and my husband, and a man called Mason, a lorry driver.”
“Gosh,” said the waitress and they all laughed.
“Cassidy, you are a swine not to ring me. Shamus was very put out. Where’s lover? Why won’t lover ring? It went on night and day until I got absolutely fed up with it. ‘He’s my lover not yours,’ I told him—”
“Helen you didn’t—”
“And I looked everywhere for the Bentley. I told Mason: Mason, if we see Cassidy’s Bentley, you’ve got to make an emergency halt because me and Cassidy are lovers and . . . Cassidy, kiss me, you are a total pig.”
“You could have rung me,” Cassidy reminded her, having temporarily satisfied her needs.
“Cassidy, I did. I rang you the whole weekend and you just listened to it burr, burr and did absolutely nothing. Just sat there gawping at your carpet slippers.”
“At the weekend?” Cassidy repeated, as iron bars gathered round his chest.
“Yes but I got the bosscow every time, so I rang off. At least I suppose it was the bosscow, she was terribly grey.” She pulled a bovine face. “If you tell me who you are I might tell you where mah husband is,” she said, in an uncomfortably good imitation of Sandra.
“I thought you were going to ring the office,” said Cassidy. “I thought we agreed.”
“But Cassidy it was the weekend.”
“How’s Shamus?” he asked, watching her eat the smoked salmon.
“He’s absolutely super and I love him and Codpiece went like a song. I tell you, Cassidy, that fellow’s on a real winning streak. Well we both are, aren’t we? And all thanks to you.”
What had happened to her? What had freed her? Did I do this?
“Those fishermen are fabulous, Cassidy, you should smell them.” She ventured what Cassidy assumed was a Lowestoft accent. “‘Ya mine for the neet,’ that’s what one of them said to me. I had to explain to him, Cassidy. I’m booked, I said. I’ve got a rich lover who invented the disc brake, and he guards me like a lemur. Do you like being described as a lemur, Cassidy?” Without a breath she returned to her other interest. “He’s even been paid, that’s how well Codpiece went. No rewrite, no Dale, no nothing. In fact—” indicating a little guiltily her new coat “—I’m wearing the fee. Don’t worry, Cassidy”—leaning urgently forward—“I’m nude underneath, promise.”
“Helen. Hey listen: you’re completely out of control. What’s come over you? You’re not tight are you?”
“It’s called love,” Helen said, a little sharply. “And it’s nonalcoholic.”
A model moved slowly round them, a skeletal, moody girl of no attraction.
“I’m better than her anyway.”
“Much,” Cassidy agreed.
“He talks about you masses,” she went on. “And he misses you terribly. He keeps saying, ‘Is he all right? Shouldn’t you ring him?’ To me! And how he must keep faith with you because he loves you, and you gave him his, and the circle must never be broken.” She lowered her voice. “And he’s terribly ashamed about what happened at the Savoy, Cassidy.”
“Oh well, I don’t think he should be really.”
“He’s right back to self-denial. No booze, no bed, nothing. . . . Oh Cassidy he so missed you. He just wanted to hear you speak, Cassidy. He wanted to hear your voice and the slimy way you put sentences together when you’re being boardroom.” She looked round in case they were overheard. “He’s imagined it, Cassidy. The whole thing, isn’t he clever? Just as if he’d made us up. Cassidy, those flowers are blue.”
“I take the point,” said Cassidy, and went to the telephone.
The Minister of Labour, he told Sandra. A most mysterious summons from the Private Office; he wondered whether this might be what they were waiting for; he had heard there was a seat going begging in one of the East Anglian constituencies.
“An all-night session I expect,” said Sandra.
“It looks like it,” he conceded. “We’re meeting in Lowestoft. I’m leaving in a couple of minutes.”
“What did you mean?” he asked Helen, as they sauntered along the Embankment. “Imagined the whole thing? What whole thing exactly?”
“You and me as lovers, and himself as my husband. It’s the theme of his new book, and it’s fabulous Cassidy, honestly it is, miles better than the last one, you ought to read it. It’s so violent, Cassidy. Honestly.”
“That’s marvellous,” said Cassidy heartily. “By the way, what happened to the rewrite?”
“Oh, on the shelf marked fragment. You’re to include it in his posthumous writings. He says you’ll survive him by decades. Which you will, won’t you Cassidy, because you’re so dodgy. Dale’s livid.”
“I’ll bet he is.”
“It’s as good as written. He’s made a complete sketch, whole chunks finished. All he has to do is put them together. I mean I could almost do it for him, but you know what he is.... A quick dash to Switzerland, record the fleeting vision, back to England in triumph. That’s the plan. Oh we’ll want that chalet of yours by the way, Shamus says mountains will be just right for it. I’m to get the key off you.”
“You are?”
“Well honestly, Cassidy, he doesn’t suppose I’m walking all the way to London and not seeing lover does he?”
“What’s in the book?” Cassidy asked. Content had never bothered him before; had been a hindrance in fact to the pure, celestial enjoyment of Shamus’ unread works; but now, for reasons too close to him yet to be defined—Helen’s excitement perhaps, the imminence of certain death—he detected signs, and wished them clearly shown.
She lowered her voice again.
“Cassidy, there’s the most fabulous murder at the end, all in Dublin. Shamus buys a gun and goes mad and
all sorts of things, it’s really super. . . .” She giggled, noticing his expression. “It’s all right,” she assured him. “You kill Shamus, don’t worry. Cassidy, I’m happy, are you?”
“Of course I am,” said Cassidy.
“How’s the bosscow?”
“Fine.”
“No Thoughts?”
“Who?”
“The bosscow.”
“No. No of course not.”
“I want everyone to be happy, Cassidy. Shamus, bosscow, the veg, all of them. I want them to share our love and . . .”
Cassidy was suddenly laughing.
“Jesus,” he said, “that will be the day.”
Entering her embrace however—they were at the centre of the pavement, not far from Cleopatra’s Needle—he was pleased to see no one he recognised, not even the Niesthals.
“Then after you’ve killed him,” Helen resumed, in the taxi, holding his arm in both her hands, “you’re sent to an Irish prison for life and you write a great novel thousands of pages long. His novel. What are Irish prisons like, Cassidy?”
“Beery I should think.”
“And very insecure. Still, you’ll be able to take me round one won’t you? Dublin main gaol, that’s his ambition for you. I’m going to do all his research, I’ve promised, and it’s got to be completely authentic. He’s written me the most super dedication, Cassidy. To both of us, actually.”
“Marvellous.”
“It’s only imagined, Cassidy,” she said, kissing him lavishly. “I haven’t breathed a syllable about what really happened, promise. Cassidy, it was you, wasn’t it, it wasn’t a waiter? I couldn’t remember whether we did it in the dark or not.”