The Naive and Sentimental Lover Read Online Free PDF Page B

him less than he might have expected.
    â€œWhat about all those acres?” he asked. “Don’t they keep you busy any more?”
    The smell of woodsmoke which Cassidy had hitherto admired for its rural fragrance became suddenly oppressive.
    â€œAh, fuck the acres. Who the hell wants land any more? Form-filling . . . rabies . . . pollution.... American air bases. It’s over, I’m telling you. Unless you’re in mink of course. Mink are great.”
    â€œYes,” Cassidy agreed, somewhat confused by this idiosyncratic description of the farmer’s problems. “Yes I hear mink can make a lot of money.”
    â€œHey listen. You religious at all?”
    â€œWell half and half . . .”
    â€œThere’s this fellow in County Cork calling himself the one true living God, have you read about him? J. Flaherty of Hillside, Beohmin. All over the papers it was. Do you think there’s anything in it at all?”
    â€œI really don’t know,” said Cassidy.
    Obedient to his companion’s whim, Cassidy allowed himself to be brought to a halt. The dark face came very close to his and he was suddenly aware of tension.
    â€œOnly I wrote to him see, challenging him to a duel. I thought that’s who you might be.”
    â€œOh,” said Cassidy. “Oh no, well I’m afraid I’m not.”
    â€œYou’ve a trace of him though, all the same, you’ve definitely a spot of divinity in you, I could tell it a mile off.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œOh yes.”
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    They had turned a second corner and entered another corridor even longer and more derelict than the first. At its far end red firelight was playing on a stone wall and whorls of smoke were curling towards them through the open doorway. Seized by a sudden sense of lassitude, Cassidy had the eerie feeling of walking through an adverse tide. The darkness was dragging against his feet like currents of warm water. The smoke, he thought, the smoke has made me dizzy.
    â€œBloody chimney’s bunged up. We tried to get the fellow to fix it but they never come, do they?”
    â€œIt’s the same in London,” Cassidy agreed warming to his favourite topic. “You can ring them, write to them, have an appointment, it makes absolutely no difference. They come when they want and charge what they want.”
    â€œBastards. Jesus, my grandfather would have flogged the lot of them.”
    â€œYou can’t do that these days I’m afraid,” said Cassidy loudly, in the voice of one who also yearned for a simpler social order. “They’d be down on you like a ton of bricks.”
    â€œI’ll tell you this for nothing, it’s time we had another bloody war. Listen, they say he’s about forty-three years of age.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œGod. This fellow in Cork. That’s a bloody odd age for him to choose, don’t you think so? I mean let’s have him young or old, that’s what I said to him see, who the hell thinks he’s God at forty-three? Still, when I saw the car, then you . . . well you can’t blame me can you? I mean if God was going to run a car, well that Bentley of yours . . .”
    â€œHow is the servant problem round here?” Cassidy enquired, cutting him short.
    â€œBloody awful. All they want is fags, telly, and fucks.”
    â€œI suppose they get lonely. Like you.”
    Cassidy was now quite recovered from his initial nervousness. His companion’s racy tones, echoing ahead of him, were for all their quaintness pleasantly reassuring; the firelight was now definitely closer and the sight of it, after their inward journey through the successively darker chambers of the enormous mansion, gave him further cheer. His composure however was barely won before it was violently intruded upon by a new and wholly unannounced phenomenon. A sudden waft of tinny music issued from a side doorway and a girl crossed their