The Naive and Sentimental Lover (24 page)

Blank,
he repeated.

Blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. Brainwash myself. Cassidy washes blankest. No lies, no truths, only a condition, only survival, only faith. Flaherty we need you. “If I wasn't blank,” he thought, shading his eyes from darkness with his cupped hands, “I would call you an inexorable bore. You block me. I could be a writer if it wasn't for you. As it is I'm stuck in bloody prams.”

The tears were back, slipping through his fingers. He named them one by one: remorse, fury, impotence, the Holy Trinity. I baptise thee in the name of apathy. He'd a good mind to go and show them to Sandra, that was what she did after all, waited till she'd got a good head of steam, then bled it all over him drip drip and boo-hoo. “I hate your fucking tears,” he would shout. “Look at
mine.
”

“Goodnight, Daddy,” said Hugo.

At breakfast as usual after such scenes Sandra made herself extremely agreeable. She kissed him maternally, vouchsafed him glances of great complicity, kept her mother in bed, and gave him tea instead of coffee, which she normally considered low.

“About what John Elderman said,” Cassidy ventured as she cuddled him from behind.

“Oh don't worry about that, I was just in a bad mood,” she replied lightly and kissed his head.

“Did you have a good night otherwise?”

“Fine, did you?”

“Sorry about Paristown.”

“Paristown,” she repeated with a smile. “What a baby you are.” Kisses again. “It's going to be a real fight for you isn't it?”

“Well maybe.”

“Don't be silly, I know it is. You can't fool me you know.” She kissed him again. “Women
like
fighters,” she said.

But Cassidy had not yet finished with John Elderman.

“You see the truth is, Sandra, I don't have motives.”

“I know, I know.”

More kisses. Cassidy consolidated his position. “I mean not even subconscious ones. I mean I could set up all those arguments so that they read absolutely differently.”

“Of course you could,” she said. “It's just John showing off. And you're
much
brighter than John, as he perfectly well realises. But still.”

“I get into a fix and I react. It's got nothing to
do
with being queer.”

“Of course it hasn't. And it was sweet of you to lend all that money to him,” she added generously. “It's just that
sometimes
I don't understand your motives. And of course I believe in your football fields. It's just I wish those foul people would say
yes
for once.”

“But Sandra, they're so
corrupt.
”

“I know, I know.”

“It takes
years
to wear them down . . .”

Skilfully he set up his operational defences. I'll be out day and night . . . The Embassy's sending a car for me to the airport . . . After that anything can happen . . . Don't ring me, let
me
do it on the Company . . .

“So they
should
send a car,” she said. “All their cars. Have a motorcade just for Aldo. Poop poop like Toad.”

By the time he left, the charwomen were already arriving, some by taxi, some driven by their husbands. In the hall, dogs were barking, the telephone was ringing on several floors. The builders had already begun; the mason was making tea.

“I'll ring if it gets easier,” he promised. “Then you take the next plane. Not the one-but-next, the next.”

“Goodbye, Pailthorpe,” she said. “Lover.”

Turning out of her sight he glimpsed her mother standing behind her hovering like a senile nurse ready to catch her if she fell. Nearly he turned back. Nearly from a call box he rang her. Nearly he missed the plane. But Cassidy had been near to things all his life, and this time, come what may, he was going to touch them.

In Paristown.

L
ove affairs, Cassidy had always known, are timeless, and therefore elusive of sequence. They occur, if at all, beyond the branches of our customary trees, in certain half-lit clouds from which day creatures are excluded; they occur at moments when the soul, in some unfathomable way, is more sublime than the loveliest environment, and all that the eye perceives illustrates the inner world.

So it was with Paris.

Haverdown was a night, the Paris Fair (according to the Pramsellers Association, Cassidy was never able to obtain independent corroboration) lasted four days. Yet each commanded for Cassidy the same compelling rhythm: the same fumbling first encounter, the same blind walk from the predictable to the unimagined; an inward walk to the closed-off places of his heart; outward to the closed-off places of a city. Each hung at first upon an instinct of failure; each was crowned by the same triumphal climax; each instructed him, and left him more to learn.

 

They met, it was arranged, at number-two terminal, in the departure lounge. The Many-too-Many were everywhere but Shamus had found a place to himself, a corner reserved for bath chairs. It was some time before Cassidy discovered him and he was beginning to panic. Shamus sat crookedly in the steel frame, as if twisted by a terrible injury, and he was wearing dark glasses and a beret. His powerful shoulders were hunched forward inside the familiar black jacket and he carried nothing but an orange which he was quietly rolling from one hand to the other as if to bring the life back to his limbs. He spoke in a cracked whisper. It was Elsie, he said; Elsie had made demands. Also she drank formaldehyde, which dissolved the glottal stop and caused spasms of the vertebrae. It was the first time Cassidy had seen him by daylight.

“How's the book going?”

“What book?”

“The novel. You were bringing it to London. Did they like it?”

Shamus knew of no novel. He wanted coffee and he wanted to be pushed round the lounge so that he could see healthy people and hear little children laughing. Over coffee—the attendants were assiduous, cleaned the table, removed unwanted chairs—Cassidy enquired after Alastair the railwayman and other characters of that great evening, but Shamus was not informative. No, he and Helen had not returned to Chippenham; the taxi-driver had gone out of their lives. No, he could not remember when they had left Haverdown. The sodders had cut the water off so they had headed for the East End of London, two friends called Hall and Sal, Hall was a boxer, the bread of life.

“He hits me,” he added, as if that were a recommendation. And that was all.

“Don't hold with the past, lover, never did. Past stinks.”

With quivering hands he drew the warm cup closer to his chest. Only the mention of Flaherty brought a spark to his lifeless eyes. The correspondence was flourishing, he said; he had little doubt that Flaherty's claims were justified.

They ate the orange in silence, half each. On the aeroplane, to which Shamus was assisted by burly stewards, he slept with his beret pushed up against the window like a cushion, and at Orly there was a small embarrassment. Firstly about another bath chair—the French had brought one on the runway, but Shamus indignantly refused it—secondly about luggage. Cassidy had purchased a new pigskin grip to match his globe-trotting camelhair coat, and he was watching the baggage chute fretfully because he knew what the French were. Having successfully recovered it, he found Shamus already at the barrier, emptyhanded.

“Where's yours?”

“We ate it,” Shamus replied. A hostess, drawn by his compelling looks, scowled at him. “Bitch,” he shouted at her, and she blushed and went away.

“Hey, steady on,” said Cassidy, embarrassed.

“I
loathe
air hostesses,” said Shamus, and meeowed.

A limousine assumed them and for a while both were silent, stunned by beauty. The city was bathed in perfect sunlight. It fired the river, shimmered on the pink streets, and turned the golden eagles into phoenixes of present joy. Shamus sat in his favourite place beside the driver waving very slowly to the crowds, and occasionally lifting his beret. A few people waved back and a pretty girl blew him a kiss, a thing which had never happened to Cassidy in his life. At the St. Jacques they were received with all the ostentatious tolerance which French hoteliers accord to homosexuals and the unmarried. The staff assumed at once that Shamus was in charge. Cassidy had taken a suite with twin beds to cover all eventualities and the manager had sent a bowl of fruit.
Pour Monsieur et Madame,
the card read.
Avec mes compliments les plus sincères.
Shamus ordered champagne on the telephone in French, calling it shampoo, and the telephonist laughed a great deal. “
Ah, c'est vous,
” she said, as if she had already heard about him. They drank the champagne warm because the ice had melted by the time it was delivered, and afterwards they walked down the rue de Rivoli where they bought Shamus a suit and three shirts and a pair of handsome lacquered shoes.

“How's the Bentley?”

“Fine.”

“Bosscow in the pink?”

“Oh yes.”

“Nipper?”

“Also yes.”

“Leg?”

“Leg fine. On the mend.”

And a toothbrush, Shamus reminded him, so they bought a toothbrush as well, because Shamus had left his at Elsie's in case her husband needed it when he came back from prison.

“How's Helen?” Cassidy asked.

“Fine, fine.”

In a minuscule flower shop, buying two carnations, Shamus kissed the girl on the nape of the neck, a salute which she received with composure. He appeared to have a way of handling women which caused them no offence, like Sandra with dogs.

“Charm the lady buyers at the Fair,” he explained, as she pinned the buttonholes in place. “Worth a fortune.”

At six o'clock Bloburg, Cassidy's Paris agent, lumbered massively into the foyer, exuding mad compliments even before he was through the swing door, and Shamus withdrew to the bedroom to read about prams.

“Aldo by God you are two hundred years younger how do you manage it my dear fellow look at me I am dying already! Cassidy how are you, listen tomorrow I give you a fantastic dinner, a place only the French are knowing, the best place Cassidy, the cream!”

All Bloburg's hospitality was enjoyed tomorrow. He was a sad, noisy man who had lost everything in the war, children, houses, parents. On previous visits Cassidy had made much of him, even advising him on his luckless love life.

“Cassidy you are number one! All Paris is speaking of you listen I am telling you! You are an
artist
Cassidy! All Paris is fantastic for an
artist!
”

Paris is fantastic, artists are fantastic, Cassidy is fantastic; but not even Cassidy, who could take a great deal of flattery, any longer believed in sad Bloburg as his champion.

“Let's have a drink,” he suggested.

“Cassidy you are so generous! All Paris is saying . . .”

He left late, having lingered in the hope of food, but Cassidy was hardened against him. He wanted to eat with Shamus and time was important to him.

 

Dining in the hotel, feeling their way with one another and not yet finding the right note, they drank to the book.

“Whose book?” said Shamus, lowering his glass.

“Your book. Your new one, ass. May it be a massive success.”

“Hey lover.”

“Yes.”

“Great brochures. Punchy, confident, persuasive. I enjoyed every word.”

“Thanks.”

“Write them yourself?”

“Largely.”

“Great talent there lover. Want to work on it.”

“Thanks,” said Cassidy again and returned to his lobster. They did it very well, he thought, in a garlic butter flavoured with rosemary.

“How long since you invented that braking system?” Shamus asked.

“Oh ten years . . . more, I suppose.”

“Anything since?”

“Well the sales side, you know. Manufacture, marketing, exploitation. We've even started producing our own bodies. In a small way, you know.”

“Sure, sure.”

Catching sight of his own reflection in the mirror, Shamus paused to admire his new suit, lifted his glass and drank to himself, then lifted his glass again to acknowledge the toast.

“But no new earth-shattering invention?” he resumed, settling back into his chair. “Huh? Huh?”

“Not really.”

“What about that new folding chassis?”

Cassidy gave a confessive laugh.

“I put my name on it but I'm afraid it was my design people who dreamed it up.”