The Last of Philip Banter

by John Franklin Bardin

  Then Philip thought of Dr George Matthews. He had known George when he was finishing up his pre-med course and they had kept in touch ever since, even writing back and forth to each other while Matthews was doing post-graduate work in psychopathology in Zurich. Once or twice Philip had nearly dropped his end of the correspondence; but Matthews had always persisted, writing letter after letter until Philip was shamed into answering: Matthews had said that Philip interested him since he was ‘perhaps, the archetype of the narcissistic personality’. Philip had intended to look that up and find out what it meant, but he never had. Now that George Matthews had offices in New York and a booming practice, they met about once a month for lunch. George was a full-fledged psychiatrist, certainly the one best person to consult about this. He might be able to tell Philip what to do.

  Philip reached for the telephone and had the girl get him Dr Matthews’ number. He was lucky and George, although he said his appointment book was filled for six weeks in advance, was free for lunch. Philip said he would meet him at their club at twelve and hung up. He checked his watch and saw that it was already after eleven and he had not washed or shaved since the evening before. Well, he could have a wash, at least, before he met George. He put on his hat and went out the door, telling Miss Grey that he was going to lunch and then to the barber, but he would be back afterwards.

  As Philip passed the switchboard girl, she signalled to him. ‘Pardon me, Mr Banter, but I have a call for you.’

  Philip remembered the ‘Confession’s’ first prediction. ‘Ask who it is,’ he said.

  The girl spoke into her mouthpiece, listened for a moment and then looked up at Philip. ‘It’s your wife, Mr Banter. She wants to meet you for lunch.’

  A chill warped at Philip’s neck. ‘Tell her I’ve just left,’ he said quickly. ‘Tell her I didn’t say when I’d be back.’

  Philip slipped through the door hurriedly and walked rapidly down the hall towards the elevator. He was still seeing the look of startled, slightly pleased – here was something to gossip about! – surprise on the frigid face of the receptionist; he could still hear her haughty voice exclaiming,’ But, Mr Banter!’

  He jabbed the down button. That had been a close call.

  As soon as Philip left the office, Miss Grey reached for the telephone and asked the operator to connect her with Tom Jamison. When he answered, she said, ‘I have some more news.’ She listened for a moment. ‘I’m going out at twelve; I know that’s early for you, but can you make it then? All right. Twelve-fifteen at the usual place.’

  She hung up the receiver, stood and went to the door. She looked up and down the hall before she closed the door quietly and walked into Philip’s office. Sitting down at his desk, she began to go through the drawers methodically – shaking her head in displeasure from time to time. The large bottom drawer was locked. She pulled at it several times, banged it hard with the heel of her palm. She took a hairpin from her hair and inserted it in the lock, but then she thought better of it. She shook her head again and withdrew the hairpin. Standing, she walked to the window – ‘Damn!’ she said.

  After looking out of the window for a few minutes, she went back into her own cubicle, opened the door to the hall and seated herself at her desk. A copy of the New Yorker caught her eye and she picked it up. This would help pass the time until twelve o’clock.

  Tom Jamison was a young man whose face wore a perpetually worried expression. If the corners of his mouth had not turned down, and his forehead had not been scored with wrinkles, he might have been considered handsome. As it was, his habitual frown belied his even features and good bone structure. Now, his frown deepened. He regarded Alice Grey, who was sitting across from him at the table, and tried to speak above the din of the crowded restaurant. ‘Why didn’t you pick the lock?’ he asked.

  The girl did not understand him. She asked him to repeat his question.

  ‘I don’t want to speak too loud,’ he said. ‘You never can tell who might hear.’

  ‘Silly!’ Miss Grey smiled at him. ‘No one’s listening to us. They’re all too busy making themselves heard.’

  ‘Why didn’t you pick the lock?’ he asked again. This time the girl heard his words.

  ‘I was afraid that I’d scratch the finish of the desk and he would notice it. Then I had no way of knowing that he had put it there.’

  ‘It was the only locked drawer, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t that be the logical place for him to put it?’

  ‘I suppose so. But he could have taken it with him.’

  ‘Did he have anything under his arm when he left?’

  The girl thought about this for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. If he did, I didn’t see it. But I wouldn’t be sure.’

  Jamison was angry. ‘Why not? Weren’t you making it your business to keep your eye on him? Now we may never get it back! And, if we don’t, sooner or later he’s going to put two and two together…’

  ‘Oh, Tom, I’m sorry. I do the best I can.’

  ‘I wish we had never gotten into this,’ he said.

  ‘But when I told you about it, you had no objections.’

  ‘If you got each one of them back. Anyway, you had already gone ahead with the first one before you told me.’

  ‘But, Tom, a hundred dollars – now it’s two hundred dollars. You know how long it takes us to earn that!’

  Jamison cut a piece of meat with his knife and started to put it into his mouth. Then he thought of something and his fork stopped halfway between the plate and his lips. ‘You never did tell me what you did the other night,’ he complained.

  ‘What other night?’

  ‘Day before yesterday. The night I couldn’t get away.’

  The girl looked down at her plate. She spoke without looking at him. ‘I waited around for your call — you could have ’phoned, you know, even if you couldn’t make it. After more than an hour I gave you up and went out. I took a bus up to Central Park and walked around. Later – I don’t know when – I left the Park and went to a bar. I – I had a few drinks and – and then I went home.’

  He looked at her questioningly. ‘Is that all you did?’

  ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘I suppose I do.’

  She looked up at him. Her eyes were wet and her cheeks glistened. ‘Tom, you must believe me. I work so hard. I look forward to the time when we can be married. Now that it is almost within our grasp – and I’m sure it will be, Tom, if you get Banter’s job – please trust me.’

  Tom laughed. ‘You’re so certain Foster will give me that job – that Philip will leave. How can you be so sure?’ he spoke bitterly.

  ‘I’ve told you as much as I can. You know that by rights it’s your job – it always was your job.’

  ‘Not when the white-haired boy’s around. And he’s still around as far as I can see.’

  Miss Grey shook her head. ‘But not for long, Tom. I can assure you of that, I think. Philip Banter is on his way out.’

  They finished their meal in silence.

  2

  Dr George Matthews finished tamping tobacco into his meerschaum, struck a match and puffed strenuously until his head was wreathed with a laurel of heavy smoke. The delicately tinted bowl of his pipe glinted merrily in a ray of sunshine that slanted from one of the club’s vaulted windows. Matthews held it out at arm’s length and admired it: this was a fine pipe, an excellent example of a kind of workmanship found only in Switzerland before the war and now, doubtless, irreplaceable. Still paying homage to his pipe, Matthews addressed Philip. ‘Your secretary does seem a bit of a nuisance, Phil,’ he said. ‘and I can’t say I blame you for being irked with her. Yet there is a tenseness about you, a drawn and hectored air, that leads me to wonder if there isn’t some other flaw in your – at least up to now – enviably prosperous existence.’ The corners of Matthews’ wide, heavy-lipped mouth (he always reminded Phi
lip of a Saint Bernard about the mouth) curled with sly humour. ‘Then again I noticed a quality of angst in the hasty telephone call with which you summoned me to lunch this morning, and – if I may say so – almost traumatic apprehension. “Banter,” I told myself, “has got the wind up over something.” ‘He drew his pipe slowly back towards his mouth, inserting the stem carefully between his thick, sensual lips as if it were a piece of laboratory apparatus. ‘Tell me, am I not right?’

  Matthews had been pleased when Philip called him. He had not expected to have the patient come to him so quickly. Yet all through lunch Philip had talked around the subject that Matthews knew, from his interview with Dorothy and her father the day before, must be uppermost in his mind. So, although he firmly believed that the patient must bring his troubles to the psychiatrist, Matthews decided to make a leading comment that might make it easier for his friend to speak of his disorder.

  Philip’s reaction was complex. He laughed, and lifted his coffee cup to keep Matthews from seeing his confusion. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re not right. Or, rather, yes, you are – but not in the way you think.’

  ‘“Yes and no” is a good enough answer to a general question. In fact, I can think of few questions of the kind I just posed that deserve any other answer. There are times when “yes” can be an evasion and “yes and no” quite forthright.’

  As usual, Philip realized, George had managed to relieve his embarrassment. He set down his coffee cup and lighted a cigarette. For once he decided he would be frank. Sometimes it was wisest to lay all one’s cards on the table. But, although candour was his earnest desire, when Philip spoke he found his words taking a devious path.

  ‘I am disturbed,’ he began, ‘greatly disturbed. But not about myself or anything that has happened to me.’ He paused after saying that and wondered at how he could resolve one moment to be frank and yet be so incapable of simple honesty the next. ‘I’ve come to you about someone I know who… who is suffering from a delusion.’ Philip’s face went damp and his breath caught in his throat as he lied. However, now that he had framed it, the subterfuge seemed necessary. I shall tell the rest of it straight enough, he promised himself. And Matthews, at the same time, recognized the most familiar device of the inexperienced confessor and redoubled his interest in his friend’s conversation.

  ‘What kind of delusion does this person experience?’ he asked.

  Philip hesitated. ‘I may be wrong in calling it a delusion,’ he began again. ‘It is a very real experience to my friend.’

  ‘Would it be a delusion if it weren’t?’ Matthews asked soberly.

  ‘Of course. But what I mean is – suppose a man came into his office one morning and found a manuscript there, piled beside his typewriter, one sheet still on the machine. His first impulse is to ask his secretary who has been using his typewriter, then, on second thoughts, he decides to read some of it first to see what it is about.’

  ‘Natural enough. Might be blackmail,’ George commented.

  Philip nodded his head vigorously. ‘Exactly. So he reads it. He finds it is a self-termed “Confession”, supposedly written by himself, of events that the manuscript says have happened to him – only they haven’t.’

  Matthews laid down his pipe and studied Philip closely. ‘What kind of events?’

  ‘My friend says the manuscript predicted that he was to meet a girl at a dinner given by his wife. He was to make love to her, to have an affair with her. And his wife was to be aware of what was happening.’

  Matthews spoke deliberately, soothingly. ‘You say “predict”. And yet you say the manuscript purports to be a “Confession” written by your friend. Isn’t this a contradiction in terms?’

  ‘You would think so, wouldn’t you? That’s one of the reasons why I called what has happened to my friend a delusion.’ Philip pushed his chair away from the table and restlessly crossed his knees. ‘But he says no. He says that although the manuscript was entitled “Confession” and although it was supposed to be about events that happened the night before, the events told about in the manuscript did not actually happen until after he had read about them, that evening in fact. So the “Confession” was really a prophecy.’

  Matthews picked up his pipe, stuffed more tobacco into it, tamped and re-tamped it. He genuinely enjoyed the strongly aromatic smoke and he fancied himself as a pipe-collector; but his habit had a practical, as well as an aesthetic, advantage. A man who plays with a pipe is able to keep silent for long intervals and is free to observe his companion’s actions – a necessary trait for a psychiatrist. Thus Matthews’ pipes were wont to go out more often than those of most smokers so that when he fiddled with matches and cleaners his patients would be unaware that their doctor’s eyes were upon them. Now, as he used this device to regard Philip obliquely, he grew more certain of his friend’s anxiety. Where he had been sceptical about Dorothy’s fears, and inclined to reassure her, he was now sure that Philip was badly neurotic. This onslaught of neurosis was not entirely unexpected; on the contrary, George had never understood why his friend had not had a break sooner. He had first known him as a shy, withdrawn lad who was sensitive about his unusual good looks; he had watched at the sidelines, figuratively speaking, while Philip drew on an inexhaustible supply of compensatory energy to spurt with unnatural rapidity into a position of leadership and to acquire a Byronic reputation; later, at a veritable distance, he had kept in touch with the mature life of this compulsive Casanova whose narcissism combined a perpetual, wily aggression against the distaff side with an uncanny acumen in the masculine, competitive world. Philip reminded him of his first acquaintance with him today: he had a diffidence that was disarming, and his attempt at dissimulation in telling the story of his hallucination was completely ingenuous. Matthews was frankly fascinated.

  ‘You think he has been writing it himself, don’t you, Phil? ‘Matthews puffed the words out with the first fog of rank smoke from his re-lighted meerschaum. He wanted the blunt question to have full shock value.

  Again Philip hesitated. Now that he was talking about what was happening to him, it all seemed silly. But he had begun, he had said enough to pique George’s curiosity so that he would have to continue. ‘No, it’s not like that, or rather maybe it is. He could be writing it himself. He won’t ever admit that he ever suspected himself of it, but I am sure he has thought of it. Yet I am inclined to think that someone else is writing it, you see.’

  Matthews shook his head. ‘I wonder if you really think so. I know you say you think this is being done to your friend, but then you come to me to ask my advice. Am I right in supposing that the contents of the “Confession” are slanderous? Well, then, if you really believe that your friend is not be-devilling himself – but is being be-devilled – why don’t you go to the police?’

  Philip’s hand was trembling. He thrust it into his pocket so that the doctor would not see. ‘I wanted to rule out the possibility that he might be writing it himself before I advised him to do that. If it’s a matter for the police – well, then he will have to talk to them himself. But I promised him that I would speak to you about it first.’

  ‘Oh, he knows that you are consulting me? Doesn’t that mean that he does suspect himself to be the author of this mysterious manuscript?’ Matthews made a sound that resembled a deep chuckle, but his expression remained grave and the chuckle might have been an indication of digestion.

  Philip knew that he had been caught up and that this was his friend’s way of telling him to come clean. Instead, his explanation became more involved – partly out of the perversity that makes us defend a lost argument for just a little longer after we know it is lost. ‘I’ve tried to make him see the bad logic of his position. But he insists every time that although I suspect him, he does not suspect himself. When I mentioned you, he even urged me to talk to you about it – but he professed to want me to see you only because I needed to be reassured that “it was impossible that I should be writing it”.
Those are his very words.’

  This time George Matthews laughed openly and resonantly. ‘He’s an obstinate cuss, isn’t he?’

  Philip smiled and nodded his head. ‘Tell me the truth, George. Could my friend be writing this story about himself – could he be telling himself what he planned to do and at the same time pretend that what he planned had already taken place – without his ever knowing it?’

  Matthews rested his pipe against his cup and saucer; although he no longer held it in his hand, one of his fingers lingered beside the bowl and caressed it, taking pleasure in its warmth. ‘You will have to tell me more about your friend before I can answer that. What does he do for a living?’

  ‘He’s a writer.’

  ‘What does he write? Advertising?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he married? ‘