Read Online The Naive and Sentimental Lover by John le Carré - Free Book Online

Come hunting! We can mount you.”
    â€œI’m afraid I don’t ride. Otherwise I’d like to.”
    â€œNever mind! Listen, we love you, we don’t care about things like that, nor does the horse! And besides you’ve a great leg for a boot, lover, hasn’t he, Helen? Truth.”
    â€œTell him, Shamus,” Helen said quietly. “Tell him or I will.”
    â€œAnd in the evening—” his enthusiasm for his new friend was rising with every image “—come the evening we’ll play mah-jongg, and you shall read poetry to us and tell us all about the Bentley. No need to dress up, black tie will do. And we’ll dance. Nothing grand, just twenty couples or so, the County and a few earls to stiffen them, don’t you know, and when finally the last coach has teetered drunkenly down the drive—”
    â€œShamus!”
    The next moment she had crossed the room and was standing before Cassidy, arms down and hair straight like a child sent to say goodnight.
    â€œAnd we’ll have the Montmorencys in!” Shamus shouted. “Cassidy would love the Montmorencys! They’ve got two fucking Bentleys!”
    Very softly, her hazel eyes gazing bravely into his, Helen began speaking.
    â€œCassidy, there’s something you’ve got to hear. We’re squatters,” she said. “Voluntary squatters. Shamus doesn’t believe in property, he says it’s a refuge from reality, so we go from one empty house to another. He’s not even Irish, he just has funny voices and a theory that God is living in County Cork disguised as a forty-three-year-old taxi driver. He’s a writer, a marvellous, wonderful writer. He’s altering the course of world literature and I love him. And as for you,” standing on tiptoe she put her arms round his shoulders and leaned the length of her body against him. “As for Cassidy, he’s the sweetest man alive, whatever he believes in.”
    â€œWhat does he do, for Christ’s sake?” Shamus cried. “Ask him where he gets it all from!”
    â€œI make accessories for prams,” Cassidy replied. “Foot brakes, canopies, and chassis.”
    His mouth had gone quite dry and his stomach was aching. Music, he thought; someone must make music. She’s holding me for dancing and the band won’t play and everyone’s looking at us saying we’re in love.
    â€œCassidy’s Universal Fastenings. We’re quoted on the Stock Exchange, fifty-eight and sixpence for a one-pound share.”
    Â 
    Helen is in his arms and the nestling movement of her breasts has told him she is either laughing or weeping. Shamus is taking the cap off the whisky bottle. All manner of visions are crowding upon Cassidy’s troubled mind. The dance floor has given way. The soft hair of her mound is caressing him through the thin stuff of her housecoat. Swiss waterfalls alternate with tumbling castles and plunging stock prices; two-plus-two Bentleys lie wrecked along the roadside. He is in Carey Street on the steps of the Bankruptcy Court being pelted by infuriated creditors and Helen is telling them to stop. He is standing naked at a cocktail party and the pubic hair has spread over his navel, but Helen is covering him with her ball dress. Through all these intimations of catastrophe and exposure, one instinct signals to him like a beacon: she is warm and vibrant in my arms.
    â€œI’d like to ask you both to dinner,” Cassidy says. “If you promise to wear real clothes. Or is that against your religion?”
    Suddenly Helen is pulled from his grasp and in her place Cassidy feels the wild heart of Shamus thumping through the black jacket; smells the sweat and woodsmoke and the fumes of whisky buried in the soft cloth; hears the dark voice breathing to him in love.
    â€œYou never wanted to buy the bloody house in the first place, did you? You were having a little dream, weren’t you,