The Naive and Sentimental Lover (23 page)

This time, no one was inclined to applaud, even Informally.

“The A team incidentally will be separately accommodated in the centre of the city, where it can enjoy the advantages of mobility, separate communication, and the rest, and it will consist almost entirely—” he meant it as a joke, had even prepared it as a joke, practised the timing, shaped and reshaped the cadences “—of myself. I say
almost
because I am happy to tell you that my wife will be accompanying me.”

Only the palest murmur greeted this Informal insight into family togetherness.

“Do you want to go on to any other business?” Lemming asked, quite loud. “I think they've had about enough.”

From the corridor they heard a clatter of feet as someone ran for the Chairman's telephone.

“That'll be Paris,” said Faulk rising.

“Please stay where you are Mr. Faulk, my secretary will call me if necessary.”

Furious, but only inwardly, Cassidy picked up an agenda and glanced at the next item.

“Catering,” he read aloud with an inward shiver of discomfort.

Old Hugo's pocket money. Tread gently, raise the tone to one of metallic nonchalance, look anywhere but at the Earl, who always objects to this uncomfortable entry in the ledger.

“Catering. In view of the satisfactory profit position I propose to make a retrospective one-time ex-gratia payment to—” here he took a small breath and glanced upwards as if the name had momentarily escaped him “—our valued catering consultant Mr.
Hugo
Cassidy whose wise and politic counsel has added so much cheer to the works canteen.” Someone was knocking at the door. “May I take it that the payment is approved?”

“How much?” Aldebout asked.

The door opened and Angie Mawdray peeped into the room.

“One thousand pounds,” Cassidy replied. “Any objection?”

“Absolutely none at all,” said Clarence Faulk.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Earl's white head lift, and his white eyebrows come together in a frown, and one white hand lift in tardy intervention.

“Mister Aldo, it's Paris,” said Angie.

“I wonder if you will all excuse me for a moment,” he asked smoothly. “I happen to know this
is
a matter which requires my personal attention.”

A deferential pause.

“May I take it, ladies and gentlemen, that we can go on to the next item on the agenda? Mr. Lemming, you have that in the Informal Minutes? Mr. Faulk, perhaps you'll stand in until I come back? You might care to say a word about our Scottish promotion scheme. Mr. Meale, I may need you.”

Lemming opened the door for them. “The Frogs have called it off,” he hissed as Cassidy brushed past. “Pound to a penny they've called it off.”

“It's a
Frenchman,
” Angie Mawdray said triumphantly. “He sounds
terribly
excited.”

“Did you find that technical dictionary?”

“No.”

“Pity.” Meale handed him the telephone. “Hullo?”

“'Ullo, 'ullo, 'ullo!”

“
Hullo,
” Cassidy repeated raising his voice to carry across the Channel.
“Hullo.”

“'Ullo, 'ullo, 'ullo!”

“Hullo! Can you hear me? Meale, get hold of the exchange. Tell them to give us another line.”

Meale lifted the second telephone.

“Cassidee?”

“Listen,
écoutez, avez-vous le pram?
”

“Where is it?
Où?
” And to Meale, excited now, “It's okay. He's got it!”

“Cassidee?”

“Fine. Listen,
where-is-the-pram?
”

“
Ici
Shamus.”

“Who?”

“Jesus lover, don't say you've killed us already.”

 

Lemming had followed him upstairs and was standing in the doorway.

“Well?” he said, hoping for bad news.

Cassidy stared at Lemming and then at the telephone. He put his hand over the mouthpiece.

“I'm sorry,” he said firmly. “Do you mind shutting up? I can't conduct two conversations at once. I'll be with you in a moment. Go and hold the fort. Make yourself useful.”

Scowling, Lemming withdrew. Meale trooped after him.

“Shamus,” he whispered, “where are you?”

There was a slight pause before the answer came, and he thought he heard a second voice in the background as if Shamus were conferring with someone close to him.

“In bed,” he said at last. “A Ladbroke Grove bed.”

“Is Helen with you?”

“No, lover, it's just Daddy this time. Come and join us.”

More consultation in the background, followed by a strange cajoling as between dog and master: “Say hullo to Butch . . . go on . . .
say hullo
to Butch.” And much louder: “Butch, say hullo to Elsie.” A soft rustle as the receiver changed hands. A girl's shy giggle, thin as rayon.

“Hullo Butch,” said Elsie.

“Hullo Elsie. Elsie . . . is he all right?”

“Of course I'm all right,” said Shamus. “Come round.”

“I'm in the middle of a meeting.”

“So am I.”

“A Board Meeting,” said Cassidy. “It's supposed to be my big day. They're all waiting for me downstairs.”

Shamus was unimpressed. “I've been trying to ring you all week,” he objected. “Didn't anyone tell you? Hey and listen: who was that sexy bitch I spoke to?”

“My secretary,” said Cassidy.

“Not her, the other one.”

“My wife,” said Cassidy offering prayers to God.

“Lot of woman there boy. Very naïve. Fond of Russians too. Want to watch out for her.”

“Shamus look, I was going to write to you . . . when can I see you?”

“Tonight.”

“It's no good tonight. I'm leaving for Paris on Monday, there's a convention on. We've got frightful problems with printers and God knows—”

“For
where?
”

“Paris.”

“You going to
Paristown?
”

“On Monday.”

“To sell prams?”

“Yes.”

“I'm coming with you. And bring the Bentley, we'll need the back seat.”

T
he house was in darkness when he returned. It reminded him, as he groped his way upstairs, of the day Old Hugo's father had died and the aunts had put the house into mourning. They had never had a death before but they knew exactly how to dress, both themselves and the house, where to find black and how far to draw the curtains, where there was religion on the wireless and what to do with all the smiling magazines.

The bedroom door was locked.

“She's asleep I'm afraid,” Mrs. Groat called from the kitchen. “Uh-ha.”

A towel was laid out on the nursery bed and his toothbrush beside it. Hugo was asleep. He undressed slowly thinking she might come in, then decided to shave to annoy his mother-in-law. The irritation dated from the birth of Mark, whom Sandra had had at home. Sandra had said there would be no pains—she had read books proscribing them—but her confidence proved unfounded. Soon the house had been filled with her sharp screams as she stubbornly rejected Pentothal and her mother sobbed in the kitchen reliving her own fights like a boxer retired from the ring. “Oh
God
you men,” she shouted at Cassidy as he boiled water for purposes he dared not contemplate. “God if only you knew . . .” Ridden by guilt but furious at what he considered to be an odious display of female self-indulgence Cassidy had exercised the one male prerogative left to him. He shaved.

For similar reasons the same impulse overtook him now. Unbuttoning his shirt he rattled the razor in hot water, clanked the brush on the glass shelf, then needlessly shaved his amazingly youthful face.

Sandra kept him waiting a long time.

“I know you're awake,” she said. “I can tell from your breathing.”

She was standing in the nursery door, silhouetted against the landing light, and he imagined her face locked in the tension of uncomprehending resentment. She must have been there a good while for he had heard her first sigh ten minutes ago.

“You are without nobility,” she continued quietly in her Ophelia voice. “You are without any scrap of decency or moral fibre or human compassion. You haven't got one instinct that is remotely honourable. I know perfectly well you're lying again. Why don't you admit it?”

Cassidy grunted and shifted one arm in a restless slumber but his mind was working fast.

He waited.

“I suppose you're taking A. L. Rowse,” she suggested nastily, “
instead
of me.”

Pulling up the blankets Cassidy did his swan act, swaying his head in the muddied water of Something Lock.

“Who was that Russian who rang you?”

“Who was that Russian who rang you?”

“Aldo!”

“Actually,” said Sandra sadly, “he sounded rather fun.”

Actually,
thought Cassidy,
he is.

“You're a complete child. Which is exactly what homosexuals are. You can't take menstruation or babies or death or
anything.
You have absolutely
no
sense of reality. You want the whole world to be pretty and tidy and full of love for Aldo.”

She became grim.

“Well the world isn't like that, and
that,
my boy, is something you've got to learn. But still.
Aldo?
”

“The world is a tough, bitter place,” she continued using her father's tone, elbows and feet apart. “A
damned
tough and bitter place. Aldo, I
know
you're awake.”

“I'm going to leave you Aldo, I've decided. I'm going to take the children to Shropshire. Mummy has found a house near Ludlow. It's simple but it will do us perfectly well if you're not going to be there. We all live much more frugally when you're not with us. As for the children they must have father substitutes. I shall look for them in Ludlow. Thisbe and Gillian will go to kennels till we have moved.”

Thisbe and Gillian were the Afghans. Bitches of course.

“I'm very sorry for you,” she continued. “You know nothing about love or life and least of all women. But still.”

Under the blankets Cassidy vigorously concurred.
That's why I'm going to Paris, you see. That's why I'm not taking you. I'm going to look for what you always say you've got, so fuck it. But still.

“John Elderman says you have taken a subconscious vow to avenge yourself on your mother. You hate her for sleeping with your father. For this reason you also hate
me.
But still.”

“So I'm very sorry for you,” she repeated. “It's not your fault, there's nothing you can do. I've tried to help you but I've failed.”

That's it,
he thought, mentally raising one hand.
Keep it there. You have totally failed. You have failed to read my mind, my expressions, and my considerable distress in your company. You think you've got a monopoly of the metaphysics in this house but I tell you mate you wouldn't recognise God if He punched you on the jaw.

Annoyed, apparently, that he still had not spoken, let alone contradicted her, she became more specific.

“Your responses are
entirely
homosexual,” she declared, returning to an earlier charge. “Both towards your father
and
towards your sons. You don't love them as relatives—”

“You don't love them as relatives you love them as
men.
”

But still,
Cassidy thought,
you hang around don't you?

“Meanwhile you lie to me about those stupid charities.
I
know you're lying,
Mummy
knows you're lying,
everyone
knows. They're just a
stupid
excuse.
Bristol!
Do you really think
Bristol
needs a playing field from
you?
They wouldn't look at it if you
gave
it to them.
Footbridge. Pavilion. Levelling. Tchah!
”

She returned to her room.