"Well, we started with scanning pairs and free scanning as before," she said on the first Saturday evening, "and then we did parents and children."
"What's that?"
"First you're your father and then you're your mother and then you're yourself as a child."
"How do you mean?"
"You act it. You pick somebody of your own sex and talk to
them as if you were your father talking to you."
"Oh yes?" said Jake, leaning forward eagerly. "What about?"
"Whatever Ed decides. About your father, about sex-you try and remember what he did say. Telling you off. A good deal of that."
"Really. It must call for quite a bit of acting ability."
"You'd be surprised how good some of them are. Lionel was marvellous as his mother, he even managed to look like her. Well you know what I mean."
"Yes of course." He gave himself a mental pat on the back for having detected intimations of queerdom in Lionel.
"Martha was very interesting when she was her mother—you remember her mother's horrible to her, but Martha wasn't horrible at all, when she was being her mother I mean. You know, reasonable and kind and everything. Most odd."
"Mm. It sounds absolutely—"
"Your friend Kelly was really the star turn."
"Was she?"
"As herself as a child. Honestly it was quite frightening. The voice particularly. If you'd shut your eyes you could have sworn it was a child speaking. She was different from the time before. Much madder. Of course she wasn't putting on a show for you today. She asked after you in the lunch-break."
"That was nice." Quite safe, he thought; Brenda wasn't one to save things up, very much the contrary.
"She hasn't been round here since last Saturday has she?"
"Good God no," he said, sounding shocked. "Whatever gave you that idea?" He wasn't acting; his shock had come from the immediate perception that only the luck of the draw had made Brenda ask what she had asked instead of whether Kelly had dropped in on him, say, and from the thought of how he might have reacted if the draw had gone against him. Anybody would think I was having an affair with the bloody girl, he said to himself irritably.
"Just the way she asked after you. I expect that was to get at me."
"Why should she get at you?"
"Because she's after you, or was. Probably moved on to somebody else by now. You're not still falling for that investigative journalist impersonation, are you?"
He frowned in thought. "I don't know. Anyway, if you're right she sounds a rather pathetic character."
"Oh yes she is, some of the time."
"Sorry darling, I'm afraid I don't quite get you."
"I mean she has a pathetic act to go with her bright act and all her other acts. She's never genuine. That's what's wrong with her."
He didn't dispute this aloud and the talk moved on, eventually reaching Geoffrey and causing Jake momentary but keen regret at not having been there to see for himself. Perhaps Brenda had sensed his interest in Kelly, because in subsequent Saturday debriefings she would tend to mention her late and cursorily or not at all. To take it out of him deliberately in such a way didn't quite fit her character as he had come to know it over the years, but then she seemed as the weeks went by to be changing in other ways too, nothing spectacular or even easy to pin down, in fact the nearer he got to doing that the sillier it sounded. She was becoming more friendly and at the same time less intimate; amiable and talkative, never anywhere near chucking crockery about and yet not, or not so much, or not so often, or perhaps indeed not turning her eyes on his in the full deep glance he had known before. He found something comparable in her behaviour during the non-genital sensate focusing sessions on which, after the almost total failure of two successive genital dittos, Rosenberg had ordered them to fall back.
"Is that nice?" she would ask, stroking his chest. "Or at least comparatively nice, I know this isn't your kind of thing much but there must be degrees, quite good and not so good. How is it?"
"Oh, quite good."
"Or would you like it sort of harder, you know, pressing down more?"
"No, that's fine as it is."
"You're meant to be really relaxed to benefit from it. I'm sure it's beneficial anyway, in general, I mean. Anything that reduces stress must be, don't you think?"
"Well, so people keep saying."
"I think it's generally accepted..... Right, my turn, but let's have a kiss first..... Now you do my hip. Let me show you. All the way from here down to here and up again, slowly. Try it..... That's it but not quite so lightly. I find it helps at first to shut your eyes and think of something peaceful, like a garden or a lake. You ought to try that."
This matter-of-factness helped Jake. He still didn't look forward to the focusings but the gloom their prospect had aroused in him was somewhat alleviated. The hard work he put in each time not to seem to be gritting his teeth seemed to have its effect: there were no more complaints of lack of affection. On the two occasions when Brenda went with him to see Rosenberg in Harley Street and was asked what she thought of her marital situation, she answered in summary that it could be better but was coming along not too badly. Even her reproaches for not coming to the Workshop fell away. He began to feel occasional stirrings of hope, though his relief each time Rosenberg didn't order a return to genital sensate focusing was as heartfelt as ever. Funny how it had worked all right with Eve, he thought to himself more than once, or perhaps the difference was simply that then he had been free, responsible to nothing and nobody.
Over the weekend after the end of term the same small thing happened three times: the telephone rang, Brenda went to or across the kitchen to answer it and was hung up on as soon as she spoke. She mentioned burglars; Jake said they'd be wasting their time. He would have forgotten all about this if a not-quite-so-small-thing hadn't happened on the Monday evening while he was watching the nine o'clock news on BBC 1. The telephone rang; cursing mildly he made his way out and answered it.
"Is it possible to speak to Mrs Richardson please?" asked a very hoarse voice with at least two accents in it, one foreign, another perhaps regional, and a couple of speech impediments.
"I'm afraid she's out." Earlier, Brenda had said she was going to a film about gypsies with Alcestis, the sort of thing she had done two or three times recently, if not a spiffing scheme in itself then a bloody sight better one than bringing Alcestis here.
"Can I get her later?"
"She won't be back till eleven at the earliest. I suggest you—" Click. Jake would have forgotten all about this too if, ten minutes later, the doorbell hadn't chimed and it hadn't turned out to be Kelly who had caused it to do so.
"Jesus Christ," he said.
"It's all right, no trouble I promise you, I'm perfectly okay, I can only stay a minute, can I just come into the passage?"
He looked at her. She seemed to have shrunk a good deal since he left her to Ernie, perhaps because of the head-scarf that flattened her hair against her skull and the tightly drawn raincoat, but her manner was much what it had been then. Anyway, what could he do? He stood aside and shut the door after her.
"What do you want? Was it you on the telephone just now?"
"Yes. Brenda hates me. She's probably quite right. Have you told her about me coming to see you in Oxford?"
"Certainly not."
"Good, I didn't think you would have done. I haven't told anybody, not even my parents. What I wanted to ask you was about this week-end Workshop."
"What? What week-end Workshop?"
"Didn't Brenda tell you?"
"No. You'd better..... You can't just stand there, take your things off and come and sit down."
"It's okay, honestly."
"Do as I tell you. Now what's this all about?"
"It's the week-end after next, starting on the Friday evening, the 8th, at least that's when we're supposed to get there so as to be able to start work in good time in the morning. The place is near Sa
lisbury."
"I see." He saw more clearly that she had had her hair cut very short like a kind of rufous helmet. It took three or four years off her apparent age.
"Funny Brenda not telling you, Ed and Dr Rosenberg announced it last Saturday week. I...."
"What?"
"I expect it slipped her mind. Why did you stop coming after just the one time?"
"It simply struck me as frightful rubbish and a complete bore."
"Oh I quite agree, but..... What I wanted to ask you, do you think you could possibly come to it, the week-end Workshop I mean?"
So many expressions, most of them impure, tried to get out of Jake's mouth at once that for the moment he said nothing articulate.
"You see I'm absolutely dreading it, I can't tell you how much, but my parents want me to go and they're so sweet to me I really can't not go, and I thought if you were there, just there, somebody I trusted, I wouldn't feel so bad. I wouldn't, you know, do anything, I couldn't with Brenda about all the time, could I?"
"I'm sorry, Kelly, but you must realise it's quite impossible."
She got up at once from the corner of the settee where she had been sitting for less than a minute. "Never mind, it doesn't really matter, I'm sure I'll manage all right, it was just a thought, of course it was ridiculous to expect you to, I quite understand."
"I am sorry," he said, following her into the passage.
"No no, don't be, forget it, I shouldn't have asked, put you in an embarrassing position, just thinking of myself as usual." Being an erstwhile successful womaniser Jake had acted against his better judgement a number of times, but never more directly and more consciously than when he said, as he did now, "All right, sod it, I'll see if I can fix it up."
24—Something I Want to Show You
Fixing it up was not straightforward. To approach Brenda—yes, why 'hadn't' she mentioned it?—with stuff like thinking of popping up to Dry Sandford again about the 8th or 9th would be to put in an urgent request for trouble. Luckily the next day was Rosenberg day, though here again care was needed: no Kelly-told-me or Rosenberg might in his innocence or whatever it was drop that one in front of Brenda. After a resume of his latest self-abusive adventures Jake casually let fall that he was thinking of another try at the Workshop, not on the Saturday to come because he had to be in Oxford then, but on the one after, the 9th. Expressing no surprise at either his ignorance or his change of mind and not the heartiest approval of the latter, perhaps because it damaged his guilt-and-shame thesis, Rosenburg gave some particulars of the proposed weekend and went straight on, or rather straight back since they had been there several times before, to Jake's early sexual feelings and experiences. Of these he had managed to remember a very fair amount he thought he had forgotten without thereby changing his condition in the slightest.
When he brought the week-end up with Brenda she did express surprise, saying she had told him about it on the evening of the day she had herself been told, but now she came to think of it it had been at the end of the evening, most likely after he had taken his Mogadon and so was in a drowsy inattentive state. Her approval was a shade warmer than Rosenberg's but not unqualified: he had always said the Workshop was rubbish so what had happened to change his mind? Well, he had been thinking, and couldn't help being impressed by the fact (it was a fact) that she constantly said she was the better for the experience, and a weekend in the country would be nice. All right, but he wasn't to piss on the proceedings; he promised not to.
No sooner was the thing fixed up than the tonic effect of the actual fixing-up subsided and his qualms began to mount. It was true that Brenda's reports had included much activity that was daft, pointless, unpalatable and (wait for it) boring but nothing positively unsafe, lewd or illegal; just give that Ed bugger a free hand for forty-eight hours though, in a house as comparatively remote as the one designated seemed to be and for openers, as he would say, you'd be getting off lightly with gladiatorial games. And what might Kelly get up to? He turned his mind away from that, concentrating it on the thought that whatever dire possibilities occurred to him he couldn't fail her, not appear. Once, he was hard at it when he fancied he recognised the extra reason why he hadn't told Brenda about Kellyin-Oxford: if he had he would never been able to get away with wanting to join in on the weekend. Funny what you could see coming without knowing it.
As the day approached it began to look less baleful. He had found out by indirections that Geoffrey was to be of the party, so a touch at least of entertainment and satisfaction of malice was guaranteed. Then there was plain curiosity. And then there was the weather, hot and sunny all week long. When Friday arrived with more of the same and the time began to move along to six o'clock Jake felt little tingles of expectation, as he had once done before every out-of-the-way journey with the prospect of someone new and wonderful at the end of it.
Almost dead on the hour a fair-sized yellow car of foreign manufacture drew up as arranged outside 47 Burgess Avenue. It was driven by Ivor, whom Jake wouldn't have recognised after their one meeting a couple of months before. He turned out to be in his thirties, tallish, fairish, serious-looking and doing quite well in a building society. Beside him was Geoffrey. As could be seen when he emerged and came to the front door, he was most peculiarly got up in a sports jacket and flannel trousers, a shirt with an unobtrusive check, a plain woollen tie that matched his socks, and brown brogues; it was almost as if he had 'tried' to choose clothes appropriate to a week-end in the country. Mind you, he must be bloody hot in them, there was that to be said. While giving a hand with the Richardsons" luggage, shutting the boot, getting in beside Jake at the back and waiting for Brenda, he explained with a thoroughness such as to defeat all misunderstanding that he had left Alcestis their car, his and her car, to do with as she pleased; this one, this car, the car they were sitting in, belonged to Ivor, was Ivor's car.
Jake remembered very well the senile-dementia treatment he had had meted out to him at the original Workshop and wondered whether Geoffrey intended his last few hundred words as more of the same with more yet to come. If so, he was going to be in trouble quite soon, but before Jake had fixed on just what kind he caught sight of Brenda hurrying up the tiny garden path and forgot all about Geoffrey for the moment.
After so many weeks of conscientious dieting she had lost something like two and a half stone and could no longer be called fat. With the weight she had taken off some apparent years too and would have passed for forty. She was wearing what must be a new dress in pale green silk, some not very serious brown-and-white shoes and an openly frivolous white hat. How fetching, how pleasant, how 'nice' she looks, Jake thought to himself; must remember to tell her so at first opportunity.
There was some trouble with the hat when she got in beside Ivor but it passed off easily enough and they were soon on their way across town to get on to the M20. The traffic was thickish, though not so bad as it would have been if most of the people motoring out of London to the West of England countryside and resorts hadn't downed their shit-shovels about noon (Jake decided).
"What a glorious day," said Brenda in a dreamy voice. "And how lovely to be driving; just think of fighting one's way on to a train at Paddington in this heat. I mean to be driven. It is kind of you to take us, Ivor dear."
"Not at all Brenda, I had three empty seats, and this is the only way I can travel. Has that come up, incidentally? My psychiatrist says it's quite common, chaps who can't face any kind of public transport or even a car or even being driven by someone they trust in their own car aren't bothered at all driving their own car. To do with being in control apparently. Isn't that interesting?"
It interested Jake, who remembered now about Ivor's phobias, in more than one way. As soon as they reached the M20 they moved into the fast lane and stayed there. Jake wasn't at all a nervous traveller but after a few miles he did start wondering what substantial fraction of the speed of sound they had reached. The object seemed to be to overtake everything else going in their
direction: container trucks, articulated lorries, quite serious-looking private cars appeared in the far distance, swelled hectically in size and in effect hurtled past them like express-trains. Beside him Geoffrey stirred, shifted and made sudden darting movements with his head in pursuit of items that, seen clearly enough for long enough, might prove to arouse his puzzlement or dissatisfaction. At one point the momentary placing of a tall vehicle in an inner lane meant that he clearly missed a sign that Jake had happened to catch.
"Services in so many miles," he said, pretending to be trying to be helpful. "I couldn't see how many."
"What?"
"Services some distance ahead."
"What distance?"
"Services," Jake began, then noticed that Geoffrey's frown, in being from the start, deepened slightly at this third utterance of the noun. "Services are things like food, cups of tea, facilities for—"
"Wouldn't it be better to push on until we're nearer the other end?"
"I'm sure it would, I was just explaining about Services. As well as food and tea they have petrol and probably—"
Jake's Thing Page 24