The Naive and Sentimental Lover Read Online Free PDF Page A

his left arm seized in a grip of unexpected force.
    â€œCome on, lover,” the voice said, beguiling. “Get your cork out, I’m freezing.”
    â€œWell, if you’re sure it’s not inconvenient—” Cassidy began as he almost stumbled over the rotting threshold.
    He never discovered whether it was convenient or not. The heavy door had closed behind him. The lantern had gone. He was standing in the total blackness of an unknown interior with only his host’s friendly grasp to guide him.

    Waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the light, Cassidy endured many of the hallucinations which afflict the temporarily blinded. He found himself first in the Scala Cinema at Oxford, edging past rows of unseen knees, trampling apologetically on unseen feet. Some were hard, some soft; all were hostile. There were seven cinemas at Oxford in the days when Cassidy was privileged to receive his higher education, and he had got round them nicely in a week. Soon, he thought, the grey rectangle will open before me and a dark-haired girl in period costume will unbutton her blouse in French to the appreciative whistles of my fellow academics.
    Before any such delight was afforded him, however, he was abruptly translated to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington whither one of his stepmothers had threatened to consign him as a punishment for self-abuse. “You’re no better than an animal,” she furiously assured him. “So you’d best go and join them. For ever.” Though his vision was by now clearing, he found much evidence to support the nightmares: prickly upholstery redolent of cinemas, the pungent smells of moulting fur and formalin, the amputated heads of elks and wildebeests which glared down on him in the glazed terror of their last agony, looming mammoth shapes draped in white dust covers.
    Gradually, to his relief, more familiar images reassured him of human habitation. A grandfather clock, an oak sideboard, a Jacobean dining table; a stone fireplace armed with crossed muskets and the pleasingly familiar crest of the de Waldeberes.
    â€œMy goodness,” said Cassidy at last in what he hoped was a voice of awe.
    â€œLike it?” his companion asked. Retrieving the lantern from Cassidy knew not where, he carelessly flicked the beam over the uneven flagstones.
    â€œSuperb. Quite superb.”
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    They were in the Great Hall. Chinks of grey light marked the tall outlines of the shuttered windows. Pikes, assagais and antlers adorned the upper levels; packing cases and mouldering books were strewn over the floor. Directly before them hung a gallery of dense black oak. Behind it stone arches mouthed the openings to dismal corridors. The smell of dry rot was unmistakable.
    â€œWant to see the rest?”
    â€œI’d adore to.”
    â€œThe whole thing? Warts and all?”
    â€œFrom top to bottom. It’s fabulous. What date is the gallery by the way? I should know but I’ve forgotten.”
    â€œOh Jesus, some of it was made from Noah’s Ark, no kidding. So they tell me anyway.”
    Laughing dutifully Cassidy could not fail nevertheless to detect, above the familiar smells of antiquity, the fumes of whisky on his host’s breath.
    Ha la, he thought with an inward smile of recognition. Les aristos. Slice them where you will, they’re all the same. Decadent, devil-may-care . . . but actually rather marvellous in an other-worldish way.
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    â€œTell me,” he asked politely, as they once more turned a corner into darkness, “is the furniture for sale too?” His voice had acquired a new Englishness as he offered it for the aristocrat’s consideration.
    â€œNot till we’ve moved out, lover. Got to have something to sit on, haven’t we?”
    â€œOf course. But later?”
    â€œSure. Have what you like.”
    â€œIt would only be the smaller things,” said Cassidy cautiously. “I’ve quite a