“On the mouth,” Shamus shouted from behind. “Jesus. What is this, a fucking convent?”
So he kissed her on the mouth; she tasted just a little of blood, as if she had had a tooth out.
The drawing room—it was his own design—was long and perhaps too thin for comfort. The balcony ran the whole length of it, mastering the three views: the valley, the village, and the mountain range. At one end, near the kitchen, was a pine dining recess and Helen had set the table for three, using the best napkins and the beeswax candles from the top left drawer.
“She’s a bit thin,” Shamus explained. “Because I locked her up till you came.”
“You told me,” Cassidy said.
“Not blaming people, lover? Got to lock princesses in towers, haven’t we? Can’t have the bitches whoring all over the realm.”
Whether she had lost weight or not, Helen’s eyes had a defiant brightness, like the courage of the very sick.
“I managed to get a duck,” she said. “I seem to remember it’s your favourite.”
“Oh,” said Cassidy. “Oh thanks.”
“You do still like it, don’t you?” she asked very earnestly, offering him pretzels from the compartmented red plate which Sandra used for curries.
“Rather,” said Cassidy.
“I thought you might have gone off it.”
“No, no.”
“It’s only frozen. I tried to get a fresh one, but they just . . .” She dried up, then began again. “It’s so difficult on the telephone, all in a foreign language . . . he wouldn’t let me out, not at all. He’s even burnt my passport.”
“I know,” said Cassidy.
She was crying a little so he led her to the kitchen, holding her under the elbow. She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder, and breathed very deeply, filling her lungs with the strength of his presence.
“Hullo hellbeef.”
“Hi.”
“He just sort of . . . knew. He didn’t guess, or suspect, or anything ordinary, he knew. What’s it called when you mop it up through the pores?”
“Osmosis.”
“Well he’s got it. Double osmosis. I’m crying because I’m tired that’s all. I’m not sad, I’m tired.”
“I know.”
“Are you tired, Cassidy?”
“A bit.”
“He wouldn’t let me lie down. I had to sleep standing up. Like a horse.”
She was crying a great deal; he guessed she had been crying for several days and now it was habit, she cried when the wind changed and when the wind stopped or when it started again, and this was the foehn, it changed all the time.
“Cassidy.”
“Yes.”
“You’d have come anyway, wouldn’t you? Whether he told you to or not?”
“Of course.”
“He laughed. Every day you didn’t come, he laughed and said you never would. Then in between he got sad. Come on lover, he said, big boy now, where are you? Then he got loving to me and told me to pray for you.”
“I had a lot to do my end too.”
“How did the bosscow take it?”
Through her tears he heard Sandra’s scream echoing in the stairwell, up and down, like Hugo’s magic bouncing ball, between the fine cornice and the flagstone floor.
“Fine. No problem. She was happier, really . . . knowing.”
“It was easy here too, really . . . once he knew I loved you.”
“I better go back now,” said Cassidy.
“Yes. Yes he needs you.”
With a little pat of encouragement she urged him on his way.
Shamus was at the long window. He had discovered Cassidy’s binoculars and was trying to train them on the bedrooms of a distant hotel. Bored, he tossed them to the floor and sauntered to the bookshelves. The gun was stuck in his waistband; the powder puff dangled idly from his fingers.
“Someone’s big on Ibsen,” he observed distractedly.
“Sandra.”
“I like that lady. Always did. Better than Helen, anyway.”
While Helen cooked, the two men played Mark’s mouse game. The mouse, which was plastic, was fed into a slide. After it had run about, jumped a gap, slipped through several small holes, it entered a narrow cage and tripped a bell. The bell rang, the door closed, the mouse was caught. It was not a competitive game, since there was no way of losing, and therefore none of winning either, but it was a good game in the circumstances because it enabled Shamus to keep one hand on the gun. They had not had many turns however before Shamus grew restless and, using the poker from the fireplace, smashed the outer end of the cage. After that the mouse escaped, and Shamus became easy again, and even smiled, patting Cassidy on the shoulder by way of encouragement.
“Love you, lover.”
“Love you,” said Cassidy.
“Shamus has been all over Europe,” said Helen encouragingly, emerging from the kitchen with a dish. “Haven’t you, Shamus? Marseilles he went to, Milan, Rome . . .” She rehearsed these cities as if they would spark him, much as she might sing the praises of her sullen child, but Shamus remained unresponsive. “And his book is going wonderfully, he’s been working right up to the moment when you came, haven’t you Shamus? Write, write, write from morning till evening.”
“Get the fucking duck,” said Shamus. “And shut up.”
“Cassidy, wine,” Helen reminded him with a discreet smile. “We ought to have red I suppose, with poultry.”
“I’ll fetch it,” said Cassidy, making for the door.
“Catch,” said Shamus, and threw him a large bunch of keys.
Hard, so that they smashed against the wood beside his head, and smashed again, a second time, on to the wood floor.
Many were duplicates, Cassidy noticed, picking them up. He must have collected them all together when he locked her in the attic.
The oven was the problem. It didn’t seem to heat like English ovens, Helen said, it didn’t come on inside when you turned the knob.
“It’s infrared,” said Cassidy, and showed her how it worked.
Nevertheless, the bird was still raw.
“Oh dear,” said Helen. “I’ll put it back.”
Cassidy protested: nonsense, duck should be red, that was exactly how he liked it.
Shamus also protested, but for different reasons. No she fucking well wouldn’t. If he was going to make history, he said, he wasn’t going to be delayed by an uncooked duck.
It fell to Cassidy, therefore, with his finely tuned social instinct, once again to lead the lunchtime conversation. Choosing a theme at random—it was several years since he had seen an English newspaper—he heard himself discussing the rising tide of violence in England, and more particularly the bomb outrage recently perpetrated against a Conservative Minister. He had no use for nihilists, he said. If a man had a grudge, let him speak out, Cassidy would be the first to listen. And what, after all, was the parliamentary system for if we were to be blackmailed by any Tom, Dick, and Harry who held a contrary view to our own?
“I mean what do they want to achieve, for God’s sake? Apart from the destruction of society. It’s the one question they can never answer. ‘All right,’ I’d say to them, ‘fine: the world’s yours. Now tell me what you’re going to do with it. How you’re going to cure the sick and support the old and defend us against those madmen in China?’ Well don’t you agree?” he asked, wondering whether he might leave the rest of his duck.
Helen and Shamus had drawn close together, and Helen was kissing and comforting him, smoothing his hair and laying her hand across his brow.
“We’ve rather been out of touch with English news,” she said over his shoulder. She was cutting up his food so that he could keep hold of the gun. “Shamus tried your wireless but I’m afraid it broke, didn’t it darling?”
“Never mind,” said Cassidy generously.
He offered them mashed potato, but they declined.
“Hey, Cassidy,” said Shamus, brightenin
g under Helen’s care, “what do you think of her cooking?”
“Well, if this is anything to go by, it’s excellent,” said Cassidy. “But after all, I sampled it in London too.”
“Better than the bosscow’s?”
“Much,” Cassidy lied heartily.
While Helen cleared, Shamus delved in his pocket and produced a small leather-bound volume, which he opened on his knee. It was the size of a diary but fatter, with gold leaf at the edges. Studying it, he appeared to come across passages of particular relevance, for he marked them in heavy ink, using the gun to hold the pages flat.
“It is loaded is it?” Cassidy asked, making his question sound as casual as circumstances allowed.
“Of course it is,” Helen called proudly from the kitchen. “Shamus never fired a blank in his life, did you darling?”
It’s the wine, thought Cassidy, it’s lulled him. He had chosen a heavy Burgundy, twenty-eight francs a bottle but renowned for its soporific qualities.
Waiting for Helen again, the two men went on to the balcony for target practice. Ammunition was not a problem, for the pockets of the deathcoat were filled with bullets of different bores and calibres, and though some were clearly too large, quite a number appeared to be suitable.
First, at Shamus’ request, Cassidy demonstrated the safety catch.
“It’s here,” he said, pointing. “You push it away from you.”
“Will it shoot?”
“Not when it’s on, no.”
“This on?”
“No. The other way.”
Pointing the pistol at Cassidy’s head he pulled the trigger but nothing happened.
“And if I do it this way—”
“Then it shoots. Shamus, shouldn’t we wait till the fog’s cleared?”
The fog in fact had thickened; beyond it, not far away, he could hear rain falling, and that mysterious grumbling of agricultural machinery which seemed always to fill the valley in times of unseasonable stillness. While they stood there, two skiers, muffled like ghostly abbots, lurched down the trail in the direction of the station and vanished, their skis rasping in the watery snow. Shamus, who was already aiming at them as they disappeared, lowered the gun with an exclamation of annoyance and peered round for other game.
“What’s the range of this thing, anyway?”
“About forty yards for accuracy. It’ll kill at three hundred.”
“It won’t fire rapid will it?”
“No.”
“I tried to get dumdums but they didn’t have any.” He aimed the gun again, this time at a chimney on the other side of the path. “She loves you rotten.”
“I know.”
“And you’re equally passionate about her. You pine every minute out of her sight. You can’t get to sleep quick enough to dream of her, you can’t wake soon enough to come and prise her from my arms. Wife, veg, Bentley are as nothing beside your overwhelming, all-consuming, all-dignifying passion for her?”
Turning his head he gazed at Cassidy over the barrel of the raised gun.
“Poor old lover, what else could we do? Couldn’t let you rot out there, could we, all on your own in the cold? Not when we spend our whole fucking lives looking for just what you’ve found. I mean . . . what kind of man would dig twenty years for gold and not want it when he makes a strike? Eh?”
“No one.”
Shamus’ gaze had not left his face.
“No one,” Cassidy repeated.
“Attaboy,” said Shamus, thrilling to him with a sudden brilliant smile.
Taking his arm he led him back to the drawing room.
“Helen,” he shouted, still holding Cassidy’s arm. “Get ready, you cow! Courage, lover,” he whispered. “Got to be brave soldier now.”
Cassidy nodded.
“Otherwise Papa have to shoot you.”
Again he nodded.
“Shan’t be five minutes,” Helen called from the bedroom.
Together they moved the table into the centre of the room.
“We need witnesses,” said Shamus from the kitchen. “How the fuck can I be the midwife of history when there aren’t any witnesses?” He emerged with a tablecloth, a white damask, part of Sandra’s trousseau. “Christ, those could do with a rub I must say,” he said, looking critically at Cassidy’s shoes, which had suffered considerably from the walk from the station. “And what’s with those linoleum trousers, then, what the hell are they all about?”
“They’re cavalry twill,” said Cassidy. “They’re the best I’ve got out here.”
He had bought them after he committed suicide; the others were ruined by the clover.
“I wish we had all the right kit,” said Shamus with a sigh.
Helen was wearing a new grey suit, one of Sandra’s bought in Berne last year specially for Club cocktail parties; a little oldfashioned for some tastes, but very neat all the same, with flashes of green on the collar and a matching scarf to cover her throat. She came in rather slowly, eyes shining; she had put fresh powder on her bruise and she carried a small bunch of cyclamen heads cut from the plant in the kitchen. Her mouth was stretched tight, probably a smile. The flowers trembled and she was nervous.
“That’s her is it?” Shamus asked, as if he had suddenly gone blind.
He was looking out of the window, his back towards them. His shoulders had risen very high. Neither Helen nor Cassidy could see his face, but they could hear him humming in low, flat tones.
36
Shamus had changed colour.
Not blushed or paled, white to red, red to white, according to the supposed laws of mediaeval ballad; simply, his whole person appeared to have taken on the darker, stormy colours of his fervent mood. Watching him, Cassidy dully recognized what he had always known but not till now understood: that Shamus had no physical constancy, no shape or profile to be remembered by; that he was as changeful as the sky outside the window; as blustering, as calm, as light or dark, as driven or as still; and that Cassidy in his mind had spent too long defining him, mistaking his presence for a kind of familiarity; and that he might as well have tried to love the wind as tame this man for the drawing rooms where Cassidy was at home. He had known Shamus when he was six foot tall and had the softness of a dancer; when he was squat and violent, and his shoulders were rounded like a wrestler’s; he had known him male and female, child and man, lover and bully; but as a single man he would never know him. That’s why he wrote, thought Cassidy, placing him already in the past; he had to make one person of all that army. That’s why he was so jealous of God: God has a kingdom and can absorb us all, God rejoices in the variety of his images, God has cathedrals to contain his countless likenesses; but Shamus has only this one body and must drag himself round the world pretending to be one person, that is the penalty of being Shamus, of never surrendering to one place or one woman.
Shamus was also having trouble with the gun.
His new black dressing gown, brought out by Helen, fitted him well, but the cord was not strong enough to carry the weight of such a heavy weapon. Having tried without success to strap it to his hip, he ordered Helen to knot it at the shoulder. But the gun, swinging free, interfered with his sight of the gold-edged book, and in the end he dumped it irritably on the table between the lighted candles.
“Now sit down,” he commanded, indicating the sofa. “Close. Hold hands and shut up, both of you.” About to go on, his eye caught Helen’s beatific smile and he was moved suddenly to anger.
“Stop leering!” he shouted at her, brandishing the gun.
“I wasn’t leering. I was loving you.”
Replacing the gun, he draped himself in the damask tablecloth, folding it lengthways and hanging it round his neck, so that the two ends dangled forward like a long scarf.
“What the hell’s that rumbling?” he muttered, looking towards the window.
“It’s the central heating. It goes on and off automatically. The south wind upsets the thermostat.”
“Now p
ay attention,” said Shamus, “while I define love.”
He held the small book closed in his left hand, the goldlined pages outward.
“Love,” Shamus proclaimed, as they settled nervously to silence, “love is the bridge between what we are and what we can become. Love is the measure—” looking at Helen “—of our potential. I said stop leering!”
“It’s only nervousness,” Helen insisted rather pathetically. “I was exactly the same at our wedding, you know I was.”
“Shamus,” said Helen softly. “Shamus.”
His eye was on the long window which was now quite blanked out by fog. Raindrops were bursting on the pane like inner actions of the glass, coming from nowhere, held there, not running.
“Lover?” he said, head away from them still, with the alertness of the blind.
“Yes.”
“Why did David and Jonathan break it up?”
“I thought you knew.”
“I told you—” still to the window “—I told you I never read that stuff.”
“Reasons of state I think. They just got divided.”
“Shilling off income tax,” Shamus suggested.
“Something like that. Shamus?”
“Force of circumstance?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so.”
“Not a quarrel about a fifth-rate concubine, for instance?”
“Shamus, we can stop now if you like. There’s no need for a service.”
“No need?”
“I only mean it doesn’t need the formal gesture. None of us is religious, very.”
Shamus did not seem to hear him, his gaze was still on the fog, and the motionless raindrops frozen into the glass.
“There aren’t any fucking circumstances,” he said. “There are just people. Lovely people,” he continued, in the voice of an American Midwest hostess. “And if everybody was lovely there wouldn’t be any war would there darlings? I never dreamed you’d make it, Cassidy, that’s the truth. I never dreamed you had it in you. I must have been growing cynical. Glad you saved me, lover; no point in bitterness. After all, how often do we meet it: real, total love? Once in a lifetime if we’re lucky. Twice if we’re Helen.”