The Naive and Sentimental Lover (37 page)

It was not a laugh but a smile; a sudden, very pretty smile; to watch it was to smile himself.

“I'm just happy that's all. I know I'm silly; I can't help it, can I? I thought you were setting up a designing bitch, didn't I? Redhead in a leopardskin . . . dry martinis . . .”

Such was her merriment, and her pleasure, that she was obliged to take her bedridden employer's hand to steady herself; and to borrow his handkerchief from under the pillow to dry her eyes. And to return it to its proper place under the pillow again. And to take her leave of him affectionately, as became the informality of their situation. With a kiss, in fact, a neat, dry, soft, and very loving kiss, such as daughters bestow on fathers at their coming out.

 

“I like that lady,” said Hugo, meaning Angie, who was still lingering wistfully at the gate, as if reluctant to leave. “She gives me hugs
all
the time.... Dad?”

“Yes Hugo.”

“Do you think she's nicer than Heather?”

“Maybe.”

“Nicer than Snaps?”

“Maybe.”

“Nicer than Mummy?”

“Of course not,” said Cassidy.

“That's what
I
think,” said Hugo loyally.

Next morning early, a loud hammering filled the house in Abalone Crescent. From the hall and drawing room, unclassical male singing issued, often with improvised librettos. To the wailing of electric drills the workmen had returned.

E
xternally, Helen had not changed.

To the outward eye at least she was the same: the Anna Karenina boots were a shade more scuffed, the long brown coat a trifle more threadbare, but to Cassidy these signs of poverty only enhanced her virtue. She came down the platform first, carrying a paper parcel in both her hands as if it were a present for him, and she had that same gravity, that same essential seriousness of manner, which for Cassidy was a prerequisite of mothers and sisters alike. Her hair was also unchanged, and that was particularly fortunate since variations unnerved Cassidy; he frankly considered them fraudulent.

True, she was several feet shorter than his expectation, and the new lights at Euston Station robbed her of that angelic luminosity which candles and firelight impart. True her figure, which he remembered as fluid and noble beneath the uncomplicated Haverdown housecoat, had a certain mundanity about it when set among the Many-too-Many with whom she had been obliged to travel. But in her voice, in her embrace as she kissed him across the parcel, in her nervous laugh as she glanced behind her, he discerned at once a new intensity.

“He's been absolutely pining for you,” she said.

“Look at
you,
” said Shamus in his poofy voice, pulling her aside, much as he had done at Haverdown. “Fancy wearing
eelskin
at this time of year.”

“Jesus,” said Cassidy boldly. “Didn't know
you
were coming.”

In Cassidy's glimpse of him before the long embrace, he thought it was the collar of the deathcoat. Though he remembered also thinking, as the strong arms pulled him in, that the deathcoat had no collar, or none you could turn so high. Then he thought it was a bird, an Alpine chough, pitch black, swooping to peck out his eyes. Then the barricade of tiny pins pricked and broke before him, and he thought:
this is Jonathan because he's dark, he's grown a beard to be like God.

“He's decided he's got a weak chin,” said Helen, waiting for them to finish.

“Fancy it, lover?”

“It's terrific. Marvellous. How does Helen like it?”

 

They made the short journey by cab. The Bentley was too highhat, Cassidy had decided; but take a plain ordinary London taxi which would not embarrass them.

Inevitably, after Cassidy's high excitement at their coming, not to speak of the countless small preparations of an administrative and domestic character—would the curtains be ready in time, had Fortnum's mistaken the address?—inevitably, that first day was something of an anticlimax. Cassidy knew that Helen, after their many clandestine telephone calls in Shamus' interest, had much to say to him; he knew also that his first duty was to Shamus, who was the reason and the driving force of their reunion.

But Shamus placed heavy burdens on their forbearance. Having sat Helen on the jump seat so that he and Cassidy could hold hands in comfort, Shamus first showed Cassidy how to stroke his beard: he should do it this way, downwards, never against the nap. Next, he undertook a physical examination of Cassidy, searching his arms and legs for any sign of damage, smoothing his hair, and studying the palms of his hands. And finally satisfied, he resumed his admiration of Cassidy's suit, which was of Harris tweed, not eelskin, a grey houndstooth chosen for semi-formal occasions. Was it French? Was it waterproof?

“How's work?” Cassidy asked, hoping to start a diversion.

“Never tried it,” said Shamus.

“He's doing wonderfully,” Helen said. “
All
the news is just marvellous, isn't it, Shamus? Honestly Cassidy, he's been working marvellously since he came back, haven't you Shamus? Four, five hours a day. More sometimes, it's been just fantastic.”

Her eyes said more: we owe it to you, you have made a new man of him.

“I'm delighted,” said Cassidy, while Shamus, licking a corner of his handkerchief, wiped a smut from Cassidy's cheek.

The best news of all, Helen confided, was that Dale had come down from London and that he and Shamus had had a fantastic relationship for the whole of one day.

“Great,” said Cassidy with a smile, gently warding off more intimate embraces.

“Not jealous, lover?” Shamus enquired anxiously. “Not put out? Honest, lover? Honest?”

“I think I'll survive,” said Cassidy, with another knowing glance at Helen.

“Actually,” said Helen, “Dale isn't Dale at all, is he Shamus? He's Michaelovitsch, he's a Jew,
all
the good publishers are Jews, aren't they, Shamus? Well of course they
would
be really, they've got the most fantastic taste, in art and literature, in everything, Shamus always says so.”

“That's
perfectly
true,” Cassidy agreed, thinking of the Niesthals and recalling something Sandra had recently said. “That's perfectly true,” he repeated, grateful to have a topic of conversation on which he could shine. “It's because historically the Jews weren't allowed to own land. Virtually throughout the
whole
of Europe,
right
through the Middle Ages. The Dutch were marvellous to them but then the Dutch are marvellous people anyway, look at the way they resisted the Germans. So of course, what happens? The Jews had to specialise in
international
things. Like diamonds and pictures and music and whatever they could move when they were persecuted.”

“Lover,” said Shamus.

“Yes?”

“Fuck off.”

“Please go on about Dale,” said Cassidy to Helen, trying not to laugh. “When's he actually
publishing?
That's the point. When do we start looking in the best-seller lists?”

Helen was prevented from replying by a sudden unearthly shriek which filled the cab and caused both herself and Cassidy to start violently. Shamus was working a laugh machine. It was a small cylinder made of Japanese paper, with steel ribs inside. Every time he turned it over it gave a dry cackle which, carefully controlled, slowed to a choking, tubercular cough.

“He calls it Keats,” said Helen, in a tone which suggested to Cassidy that even maternal angels do not have unlimited patience.

“It's fantastic,” said Cassidy, recovering from his alarm. “Mirthless and right. Carry on,” he called to the driver. “It's okay, we were just laughing.” He closed the partition window. “We'll be there soon,” he said, with a reassuring smile at Helen.

She's tired from the journey, he thought. Shamus has probably been playing her up.

No one mentioned Paris.

 

It was a place on its own over a warehouse, with an outside steel staircase to the red front door. A nautical place, right on the river, with a view of two power stations and a playground to one side. Cassidy had taken it furnished for a great deal of money, and changed the furniture because it was too ordinary. There were flowers in the kitchen and more beside the bed, and there was a crate of Scotch in the broom cupboard. Talisker '54 from Berry Brothers and Rudd. There was a ship's wheel on the wall and rope for a bannister, but mainly it was the light you noticed, the upside-down light, that came off the river and lit the ceiling not the floor.

Demonstrating each tasteful feature—the new Colston washing-up machine, the coyly stowed deep-freeze in its random Iroko boarding, the draft extractors, the warm-air heating system, the Scandinavian stainless steel cutlery, not to mention the all-brass window fastenings of his own design—Cassidy felt the pride of a father who is giving the young couple a fair start in life. This is what Old Hugo would have done for me and Sandra, he thought, if he'd not been Tied Up With a Deal. Well, let's hope they show themselves worthy of it.

“Cassidy,
look,
there's even brown sugar for coffee. And serviettes, Shamus. Look,
Irish
linen. Oh my
God,
oh no, oh no . . .”

“Something wrong?” Cassidy asked.

“He's had our initials put on them,” said Helen, almost crying for the sheer joy of her discovery.

He left the bedroom till last. The bedroom was his very particular pride. Green, he had wanted. Blue, Angie Mawdray had urged. Wasn't blue rather
cold?
Cassidy countered, quoting Sandra. In Harrods they found the answer: floppy blue flowers on the palest green background, the very same print which for years had given him such pleasure in Hugo's nursery at Abalone Crescent.

“Let's put it on the ceiling as well,” Angie urged, with a woman's sympathy for Helen. “So they've got something to look at when they're lying on their backs.”

To match, they had selected a Casa Pupo coverlet, the biggest available size to cover the biggest available bed. And sheets with a fabulous blue print, and fabulous pillowcases in the same way-out pattern. And white curtains bordered with a greenblue braid. And a fabulous white drugget to set it all off.

“Cassidy,” Helen breathed, “it's the biggest bed we've ever had.” And blushed, as became her modesty.

“Bathroom through there,” said Cassidy, more to Shamus this time, in a very practical voice, as if bathrooms were men's work.

“Big enough for three,” said Shamus, still looking at the bed.

 

They stood at the long window, watching the barges, Helen one side of him, Shamus the other.

“It's the loveliest place I've ever seen,” said Helen. “It's the loveliest place we've ever had, or ever will have.”

“I rather like
views,
” said Cassidy, playing it right down to make it easy for them. “That's what first drew me to it actually.”

“And the water,” said Helen, understanding.

A long string of barges slid by, slow and out of step, overtaking one another as they passed the window, falling back into lines as they disappeared.

“Anyway,” said Cassidy, “should be all right for a while.”

“We don't want
all right,
do we, lover,” Shamus quietly reminded him. It was some time since he had spoken. “Never did, never will. We want the sun, not the fucking twilight.”

“Well there's plenty of sun
here,
” said Helen brightly, with another confiding glance at Cassidy. “I adore picture windows. They're
so
modern.”