Cassidy

by Morris West

  ‘No, it’s something else.’ She went on reasoning it out in a flat, bleak monotone. ‘I feel like an object shunted eternally between the two of you. I can’t stand it any more.’

  ‘Sweetheart, please! This isn’t you. It’s a woman in shock. Two hours ago your father was alive. Now he’s dead. He died beside me in the car – and there was nothing I could do about it except drive faster… Now I’ve got to go through the motions of telling his colleagues. That helps me; but you must let me help you. Don’t lock yourself away. You need…’

  ‘I don’t need anything – except my own space.’

  ‘You have it… you’ve always had it.’

  ‘I know.’ It sounded off-hand and dismissive. ‘I’m worried about Mother. She mustn’t read this in a newspaper.’

  ‘I’ll call our Embassy in Paris first thing in the morning. They’ll get the French police to trace her… Now why don’t you go to bed. I’ll come and tuck you in and give you a knockout pill.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You have enough to keep you busy… Just don’t hate me too much.’

  I held out my hand to draw her into a goodnight kiss. She touched my palm lightly with her fingertips and left me. I made no move to stay her. I was glad to be alone, to brace myself against the new presence which had taken up its abode in my house.

  I closed myself in my study and made a telephone call to Sydney, Australia. Cassidy’s natural heir, the Deputy Premier, was at lunch. His secretary was unwilling to disturb him. A few blunt words convinced her that she should. I was patched through to the Cabinet dining-room. The Deputy Premier choked over the news.

  ‘Dead! I don’t believe it! Christ, this is a hell of a thing! It couldn’t have come at a worse time. We’re in recess. Some of my Ministers are abroad. The others are on vacation. We’ve got two criminal trials of public officials coming up in March. Why in God’s name didn’t Cassidy let us know he was ill!… Anyway, that’s our problem. We’ll handle it. I’ll call our Agent-General in London and have him take care of the protocol – Palace, Parliament, the Commonwealth Office, the press – and of course the transport of the body back to Australia. If there’s anything he can do for Mrs. Cassidy or your family, don’t hesitate to call on him. By the way, did Cassidy leave any Government papers with you – official correspondence, documents, that sort of thing?’

  My answer was truthful if incomplete.

  ‘I’m the executor of the will; but I haven’t even seen that document yet. It’ll be a few days before I can determine how and where his records are kept. Then there’ll be the normal probate searches. If I come across any Government material I’ll let you know – unless, of course, there’s anything special that you need traced immediately.’

  ‘Would you know where to find such material, Mr. Gregory?’

  ‘For God’s sake! My time is two in the morning. Cassidy died only three hours ago. My wife’s in shock. I’m out on my feet. A document search is the last thing on my mind!’

  ‘Forgive me, Mr. Gregory.’ The Deputy Premier was suddenly bland. ‘I’m in shock, too, and I’m being quite unreasonable. Obviously, my people and I will need to talk with you again; so perhaps you’d be good enough to give me the telephone numbers of your home and your office.’

  I gave them to him. He thanked me hurriedly and hung up. I picked up Cassidy’s briefcase, laid it on the desk, and set the combination at the day, the month and the year of Pat’s birthday. I was just about to snap open the lock when a new thought struck me.

  Cassidy had been a high man. He had driven hard bargains in his private and his public life. All sorts of people therefore would have an interest in his papers and in me as their legal custodian. Those who felt threatened might well threaten me – or my family. Those who sought power or profit might well see me as the keeper of the magic talisman.

  And then, before I had scanned a single line, I saw the real nature of the joke Cassidy had played on me. Whatever messes he had left behind I was legally bound to clean up. Whatever scores he had left unpaid I would have to settle. Whatever secrets he had, I must guard under the cloak of legal privilege. The friends he had would look to me for protection. Sooner or later his enemies would come knocking on my door.

  For one brief moment of madness I saw him, perched like a leprechaun on the lid of the briefcase, mocking me with another verse from the Gospel according to Cassidy.

  ‘Virtue brings its own rewards: starvation rations and the backside out of your breeches… Now lift up the lid, sonny boy, and take a look at Charlie Cassidy’s candy store!’

  So I did just that. I opened the briefcase to find it filled with cassettes of microfiches, numbered in sequence and labelled with a list of contents. Laid on top of the cassettes was a heavy manila envelope containing Cassidy’s will and three trust deeds, each with its own schedules and annexures. There was also a handwritten note addressed to me.

  …As to the will, even you, Martin the Righteous, must agree it’s a tidy and generous document. The usual bequests to servants and old retainers, then four million in diversified assets to my daughter and her offspring. No problems for my executor either. The schedules of assets are updated to December 31 last year. The title deeds and script are lodged with the bank at head office. There’s money for taxes and other current liabilities and no taint or stain on a single dollar bill.

  Then you come to the trusts, which require no work from you, merely an acquaintance with the documents. There’s the Clare Cassidy Foundation which, during her lifetime, takes care of my wife in the manner to which I have accustomed her and devolves after her death to the benefit of the City Mission. The Gallery Endowment comprises my own art collection – not a bad one either, for a country boy who saw his first picture on top of a chocolate box – and a handsome annuity for future acquisitions. I’m no Paul Getty, but they won’t be cursing me in the streets either, especially when they see the size of the gift to the Children’s Foundation Fund for the care and education of the handicapped.

  It all adds up to a round ten million, which is just about what my adoring public will expect and approve by way of posthumous benefaction. The trick is to be rich enough so they know you’ve made good – but not filthy rich, so it sticks in their gullet. And if you think I’m taking a lot of care of my reputation from the wrong side of the grave, you’re right! Who the hell wants to be immortal in infamy?

  But given that infamy is always predicated of politicians, I decided long ago to come to terms with ill-repute and, wherever possible, turn it into profit. So I started the little collection which you now have under your hands. It looks like a ragbag of letters, documents, diary entries, accounts, obiter dicta, snippets from telephone taps. In fact, it’s a highly systematised summary of the life, times and unofficial diversions of Charles Parnell Cassidy. But before you delve into it, let me give you fair warning. All of it is dangerous, some of it lethal, material. So I’m offering you three choices.

  First, you can get rid of the stuff, at a nice profit. You deliver it in care of Nordfinanz Bank, Zurich, for consignment to one Mr. Marius Melville. You will hear no more of it, and the bank will credit you immediately with five million US dollars, which is the price I agreed with Mr. Melville if I should ever decide to sell.

  There’s only one problem with that arrangement. It puts an awful lot of power in Melville’s hands and, with me gone, he wouldn’t hesitate to use it. If ever you meet him, show respect. He merits it. And never forget that while he keeps iron faith with his friends, he’s as ruthless as Caligula to his enemies.

  The second option is to deliver all the material to the Attorney-General of the State of New South Wales. He won’t pay you for it. He won’t even like you once he sees what’s in it! He’ll hand the whole collection to his senior staff for what he’ll call ‘verification and assessment’. Which is another way of saying he’ll be very happy if they can make it go away. Then, after great gurglings and rumblings and leaks to the press and calls for yet another Royal Commission
, it will do just that. Material will be abstracted, key documents will be lost until the whole potent pattern is destroyed. You, of course, won’t have to worry. You’ll be Martin the Righteous, sleeping the sleep of the just, with the receipt for a failed reformation tucked under your pillow.

  Your final option is to examine the material yourself and make your own decision as to its use or its destruction. You’ll be the potent one then – if you want to be. You’ll be the rich one – if that’s what you want. You’ll also be the target for anyone who fears what I know about him – and that’s a long list with a lot of big names on it.

  Interesting situation, isn’t it? I’m sorry I won’t be here to know your decision. But maybe the Almighty will grant me one backward look before he boots me down to the Fifth Circle of Hell. Why the Fifth? I’ll give you Dante’s answer:

  ‘Lo buon maestro disse: Figlio or vedi

  L’anime di color che vinse l’ira…’

  That’s me and that’s thee, sonny boy:

  ‘The souls of those overcome by rage.’

  You never knew and it’s taken me fifteen years to tell you, that you were the son I always wanted and never had. Like every father with his first-born, I wanted to mould you to my own image, or at least to the undefaced image of myself. But you rebelled. You wanted to be your own man at any cost – and the costs came high for all of us. When first we quarrelled I thought you would break yourself on me. Then we would all kiss and make up and be happy in mutual malice, the way the Irish like to be, wherever they live.

  Instead, I broke myself on you. I lost my daughter. I lost my wife. I lost all joy in my grandchildren. I came to hate the man I wanted to love as a son. The only satisfaction I had was that I’d left a drop of poison in your cup too. Stupid, isn’t it – but that’s the way the human animal is made. Comes a time, as we both know, when things have gone too far to mend, when love dries up and the heart hardens in rejection. That’s why I’ve cut you out of my will and made you a backhanded gift of the worst side of myself.

  That’s another reason why I’m resolved not to linger through the last bad days. Marian’s doctor friend believes in tidy and painless exits. He’s given me a pill so that I can terminate myself before the going gets too rough and he’ll sign the death certificate without a blush.

  What more is there to tell? The rest is cliché.

  Moriturus te salutat…

  Charles

  Suddenly I was choking with anger at the bitter, fruitless folly of it all. I marched upstairs with the letter in my fist, thrust it at Pat, who was lying sleepless on the pillows staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Read it!’ I told her harshly. ‘Read it and tell me which of the stallions won the fight.’

  Then I left her and went back to my study. I poured myself half a tumbler of whiskey, gagged on the first mouthful and hurried to the bathroom to heave my heart out.

  When I came back, sweating and nauseous, Pat was waiting. She stretched out her hands to me and I grasped them gratefully. She said: ‘I’m going to ask a big thing of you, Martin. I want you to say a prayer with me for the resting of his soul.’

  I never felt less like praying. She knew it, but she talked on quietly.

  ‘He used to quote an old proverb. He said it was Gaelic. “A wolf must die in his own skin.” Well, he’s done just that. I wish I could cry for him. I can’t. But I owe him at least a prayer. You see, he wanted to be forgiven, but he was too proud to ask. That’s why he took the death-pill. He wouldn’t burden us with a care he felt he didn’t deserve. Can you believe that? Will you try to believe it, for both our sakes?’

  ‘I want to: but what about this – this collection he’s left that can make me rich, powerful and dead? It sounds like the apples of Sodom that turn to dust in your mouth.’

  ‘I think it’s something else, a service he needs done. I don’t believe a life like his can be wrapped up in a will and three trust deeds. There must be other debts to pay, obligations of one kind or another. He couldn’t ask you straight out, so, in his letter, he tried to goad you into helping him.’

  ‘Maybe we should say two prayers – one for him and one that he’s not playing another dirty trick on us.’

  She rummaged in a drawer of the bedside table and brought out an old Roman Missal which she had used as a girl. We recited a Pater and an Ave and the De Profundis. Then we went to bed and made a strange fugitive loving that ended in our own little death and we slept afterwards separate and cold as marble effigies on a cathedral tomb.

  I woke in the small hours, out of a comic nightmare in which Leprechaun Cassidy, with his fists full of dollars, danced on our marble slab to the tune of the Rakes of Mallow.

  3

  Three days later, I left London on Qantas Flight QF2, bound for Bahrain, Singapore and Sydney. Charles Parnell Cassidy flew with me, his embalmed body sealed in a stainless-steel box and coffined in a mahogany casket with silver-gilt ornaments, his secret history locked in the briefcase under my seat.

  My travelling companion was not much livelier: a good-looking girl in a grey jumpsuit and big owl-glasses who, the moment after take-off, downed a couple of pills, wrapped herself in a blanket and went to sleep. I regretted her absence. I like company when I am travelling. I like women’s company at any time. Tonight, of all nights, I should have been glad of some diversion from the black imps dancing a jig through my brain-box.

  I was damnably depressed and more afraid than I wanted to admit. I didn’t like the sound of Cassidy’s heavies. Australia has a long history of rough-neck politics and Sydney has bred more than its share of professional frighteners. If they intervened they would begin with an offer to trade. If I refused the rough stuff would begin – and I would want my family as far away from the action as possible.

  We had agreed, therefore – though not without some sharp argument – that I should be the one to take Cassidy home to Australia and bury him. I was kin enough to discharge all the public pieties: attend the Requiem Mass and the State funeral, toss the first sod into the grave, shake the hands of the distinguished mourners. For the rest, common prudence dictated that Pat and Clare and the children should stay far removed from publicity and gossip.

  Already the Australian editorials were saying that Cassidy had picked a good time to die. The air was rank with scandal: drugs, violence in gangland, corruption of the police, of the judiciary, of Parliament itself. Cassidy, dead, was beyond attainder. The Opposition could not impugn his reputation without damaging its own. The Government could dump all its messes on his grave and walk away with clean hands and virtuous smiles – unless, of course, one Martin Gregory got a sudden attack of conscience and decided to go public with Cassidy’s private files.

  I had been a servant of the law all my life. I believed I had been a good servant. Cassidy himself had trained me. So, when he handed me the record of his works and days, he knew that he was giving me a hairshirt that would scratch and chafe until I stripped it off. As I tossed uneasily through the small hours of the morning, I half expected him to pop his head through the floor like Jack-in-the-box and thumb his nose at me.

  This was the paradox of the man. Time was when he had loved the law. He understood its ancient principles. He cherished its refinements. No shoddy drafting for him, no chancy interpretation, no slipshod research. ‘If you want to gamble,’ he would say, ‘go to the dog-track and use your own money, not the client’s. You are dealing with sacred things here, matters of trust, matters of decision that will bind future generations. And get it into your thick skulls: we make our money out of the mistakes of other attorneys.’

  It was high-minded, heady stuff and we juniors loved him for it, even while we hated his rasping tongue. But somewhere along the way he had turned traitor. He had sold out. I had to know why and to whom, before I could make any decision about the documents he had entrusted to me. I had to find out the true identity of Marius Melville who would pay me five million dollars, cash on the barrelhead, for the same documents. T
he alliteration made the name sound maddeningly familiar, but I could find no real man to hang it on. Drifting between sleep and waking, I played association games, matching the sounds to the pulsing rhythm of the jets… Marius, Mario, Marionette, Melville, Melitta…

  A steward nudged me awake and whispered: ‘Sorry, sir; but you’re talking in your sleep – rather loudly, I’m afraid. It’s disturbing the other passengers.’

  I mumbled an apology. He gave me a wide, toothy grin and faded into the blackness like the Cheshire cat. I lay there, feeling confused and foolish, wondering whether I could make it to the toilet without falling over my own feet and disturbing the passengers again.

  The girl beside me stirred under her blanket, tilted her seat upright and switched on the reading light. She turned to me and murmured, ‘I’m sorry he woke you. Your pillow-talk was just getting interesting.’

  ‘That could get me into a lot of trouble.’

  ‘I know. I once lost a very adequate boyfriend that way.’

  Her eyes were innocent behind the big owl spectacles, but I knew – or thought I knew – a baited hook from a leaf in the water. So I chuckled dutifully and asked if she were going through to Sydney. She told me, yes. I decided that if I were going to be picked up I might as well freshen myself before the rush to the lavatories started. Stubble and a stale mouth are unavoidable in marriage. They do not conduce to agreeable intercourse on a crowded aircraft.

  As I shaved and brushed my teeth, and dabbed lotion on my jowls, I remembered another pearl of wisdom from the lips of the great Cassidy: ‘It’s the exiles who own the earth, sonny boy, because they’re tough enough to walk without shoes and eat stale crusts, and mate in strange beds with women they can’t even pass the time of day with… Walk any road on the planet and you’ll find a Greek or a Celt or a Jew or a Chinese making money out of the locals. Look up in any sky and you’ll see the wild geese flying across the moon…’