Stanley and the Women

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘But that’s … I’m afraid I still don’t quite see what he’s defending himself against or hiding from.’

  ‘Well, there are various ways of putting it. Escaping from reality, or his own inner feelings, or inner needs might be more accurate. He’s trying to keep other people at a distance emotionally, so he puts up a wall, a wall consisting of what the likes of Nash call delusions. In cases like this that’s often due to an appalling fear of being hurt. Now at this stage one can’t be sure, but I rather think that with Steve it’s more that he’s afraid of hurting other people. He’s a very nice boy, that I do know.’ Here she sounded quite defiant, as if she thought I was obviously not going to let her get away with that, and putting me strongly in mind of my mother-in-law. ‘Our job is to persuade him to lower his defences. He won’t do that unless we can help him to get in touch with his own feelings, including especially his own anger.’

  ‘Get in touch with his own anger,’ I said. ‘I see. What sort of chance would you say there is of that?’

  ‘It’s too early to say. You’re anxious about this, I know, Stanley, but believe me it’s most important not to jump to conclusions. This is very tricky and difficult ground. We’re dealing with a scared, confused, insecure boy who has to be helped to find out who he really is.’

  A frightful feeling that had been growing on me ever since we came into the pub suddenly got much worse, so bad I could no longer pretend it was not there or was really something else. It was roughly that Collings’s general style and level of thinking would have done perfectly well for a psychiatrist in an American TV movie but might have looked a bit thin in a Sunday magazine article. And this could simply not be anything like a correct description. I was drunk, stupid too at the best of times, unable to take in ideas of any difficulty. But I had been perfectly sober when I arrived, and Steve talking about Joshua because he was afraid of hurting other people was not a difficult idea. It was not an idea at all.

  I told myself it had to be, had to make sense somehow, somewhere. The resemblance to TV must be a mistake, an illusion based on my ignorance, which had made me miss all sorts of subtle points and misunderstand phrases and expressions that were nearly or even exactly the same as bits of drivel but actually conveyed a precise scientific meaning to those in the know, and getting in touch with your own anger and finding out who you really were, etc., were technical terms referring to definite, observable processes. Or Collings’s approach was so new that they had not yet worked out a what, a terminology for it. Or she was hopeless at talking about what she did but shit-hot in action. Or something else that made it all right, because something must. Whatever she might say and however she might behave, the bint was a doctor.

  Anyway, there was no alternative to going on trying to listen. I went on doing that for forty minutes or so, the stage at which we shunted from presumable technical talk to further inquiries into my early relations with Steve. That part went quite well as far as I was concerned, because I had had time to do some remembering and get my confidence back. I could see now that for some reason, like to fit a theory, Collings was trying to make out that father and son had got on badly or in a distant sort of way. I told her different and thought she seemed to notice. At the end we fixed that I should come and see her at the hospital in a couple of days, Nowell too perhaps.

  Back in the office I went straight to something the improvers had unaccountably overlooked, a boxed-in part where you could make phone-calls in private. It was the Sundays’ day off and I got Susan at home. Just having her at the other end listening put a lot of things right. She agreed to keep a careful look-out for twitching females with cider-apple accents.

  I hesitated a moment over the next, but quite soon had Nash on the line reassuring me it was all right to call. I passed the news about Dr Abercrombie.

  ‘Oh,’ he said quietly. ‘A small one, you say.’

  ‘That’s what I was told. By somebody calling herself Dr Trish Collings, who seems to have taken over from him. She’s taken over my son, anyway.’

  ‘Oh.’ Quite a different noise, and followed by silence.

  ‘Do I gather you know her?’

  ‘I know of her.’ A great sigh sounded in my ear. ‘You do realize, Mr Duke, that medical etiquette is unmistakable and strict on the point that no practitioner may say anything derogatory about another, or more accurately anything at all beyond the barest facts. So I won’t. Say anything at all. For now.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She’ll probably ask you a lot of questions about yourself. Oh really. M’m. Well, it can’t do any harm to answer them. I suppose she didn’t say anything about those tests I asked to have done on your boy. No. Of course everything takes time these days. Er, now I come to think of it there’s another fellow in that hospital I have some acquaintance with, at least there was two or three years ago. More like five. Fellow name of Stone. He’s … different from the … from Dr Collings. I’ll get after him and tell you what I find out. Cheer up, Mr Duke. The boy’s quite safe in there.’

  My third call broke the run of abnormal luck. Lindsey was out, not back yet. Where from? Sorry. I looked at my watch and thought. From what I knew of her she would look into her office if she could before going to lunch. As I rushed off to look into mine I wondered why it had suddenly got so urgent to see Lindsey in the flesh, too urgent for any rubbish like message-leaving. Oh yes, she must not be allowed to go on thinking or suspecting that Collings and I were having an affair a moment longer than necessary, and stopping her had to be done face to face.

  I had wondered whether Morgan Wyndham would be inquisitive or tremendously casual or just determined to delay me, but he was not even there. Only a major disaster could get me now, and before one could arrive I ran out. Rather than wait for the lift I charged down the stairs, along the street, across and along again, and almost banged into Lindsey coming out of the swing doors of her paper.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, feeling a great surge of relief. ‘Are you lunching somewhere?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve got a minute. Right.’

  She meant she agreed to a quick swallow in the pub next along but two, the one she and her mates always went to. Like all newspaper pubs it was nothing like the nicest in walking distance, not even the nicest a minute away, just the nearest. Inside, the noise from the people almost drowned the music. There was nowhere to sit, and there seemed to be nowhere to stand either, except in the hearth each side of an unlit gas fire. I bought drinks and carried them over, trying to keep them unspilled by moving three-quarters backwards through the customers, who were huddled along the bar three or four deep and shoulder to shoulder like a crowd waiting to watch a procession go by. The row seemed to have got worse since we came in, but it was too late to go anywhere else and the Crown and Sceptre would probably have been as bad by this time.

  ‘How did you know how to find me?’ shouted Lindsey, having sensibly held back till we reached this stage. Then she shouted something else I missed.

  ‘Genius.’ I found that at least I could put my glass down on the mantelpiece. ‘I had to tell you —’

  ‘Who was that madwoman you had with you just now? What the hell was the matter with her that she went on like that? Do you know your tastes are getting quite extraordinary.’

  ‘That’s actually what I came to tell you about, love. Listen, will you believe me if I swear something is true?’

  ‘I might. Try me and see.’

  ‘She and I are not, repeat not, having an affair.’

  ‘Not… I’ve got it. Oh, you’re not? She went on as if you were.

  And a sight less subtle on the subject than you were, darling, I thought. I said, or rather bawled, ‘That was just her, I’ve no idea what she was playing at. But surely you saw me going on as if I wasn’t?’

  ‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you, in the circs?’

  ‘Maybe. But it’s not so, I promise you. It’s not so.’

  ‘Stanley, have you come all this way just to tell me that?�
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  ‘Yeah. Don’t ask me why, eh?’

  ‘Oh, come on. Between old friends. What makes you feel so strongly?’

  ‘I just couldn’t stand the idea. Of you making that mistake. She revolts me.’ I had said the last part without thinking, and it was close, but still not quite tight. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

  ‘I might if you tell me who she is. She obviously isn’t anything to do with the Chronicle. I think I get full marks there for keeping my Irish temper in check and not retorting to the insult to my intelligence. And you’ll have to tell me too what you were doing with her, and it had better be good.’

  ‘Some check. You went for her like a bleeding pickpocket. Quite right, though, mind you. But what if she’d been on the point of buying an acre of space off me?’

  ‘No serious concern would let a cow like that buy pussy. Fess up now, Stanley — who is she?’

  ‘Who’d you think she is?’ I said to hold off the inevitable.

  ‘Christ, I took her for something you’d picked up when you were pissed and were desperately trying to ditch. You greeted me like a hundred-pound note. And then she buggered it up for you.’

  ‘I never get as pissed as that. I wouldn’t touch her with yours, if you know what I mean.’ Again, true as far as it went. ‘And I don’t pick up anything when I’m pissed these days.’

  ‘Tamed. Poor old Stan. Now … deliver.’

  ‘She’s the psychiatrist who’s looking after my son Steve who’s had a psychological breakdown.’ On the way here I had reconciled myself to telling her that, though perhaps not to yelling it at her as I had had to do, but there it was.

  ‘What?’ She screwed her face. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘My son’s in a mental home,’ I roared, ‘and she’s the doctor.’

  After a second of shock she laid her hand on my left shoulder and her head on my right. I put my arm around her waist and took her free hand. There was a short pause. When she moved back she looked at me in a kind way I had never seen before, miming the message that nothing much to the point could be said here and now. I nodded.

  ‘Would you like to tell me about it? Some other time?’

  I nodded again. ‘I’ll give you a ring. Thanks.’

  Not long after that Lindsey took herself off to her lunch. I got hold of a Carlsberg Special Brew and tried for a cheese sandwich, but they only had Brie and French bread, so I took that. I ate it jammed in a corner with the plate under my chin taking alternate bites of Brie and bread because there was nowhere to put the plate down and spread the one on the other. Then I went back to the office and kipped for a spell in the library. Nobody ever disturbed you there.

  I tried to get Lindsey next morning at her office, but she was out. So I tried to leave a message, but nobody knew how to find the person I could leave it with. I had another go in the afternoon, no more successful, and after that sort of gave up. In any case there was less incentive now, after the long cheering chat I had had with Susan the previous evening. On the Collings wordage she took the line that the jargon of any trade was likely to strike outsiders as crude and rubbishy.

  ‘I’d try to forget it if I were you, darling,’ she said. ‘And the other thing of course is that some of the best people in their line are bloody hopeless when they try to explain it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I thought of that.’

  ‘You certainly get that with writers. There are all sorts of examples. Oh … Yes, Nabokov. You know, Lolita. Talks balls by the yard about what he does and yet he’s an absolutely super novelist. Wait and see, that’s the ticket.’

  But when I got on to what I reckoned had been Collings’s general approach, as opposed to just her style, Susan was less encouraging.

  ‘What kind of theory?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, something like mental trouble being caused or anyway helped on by experiences in childhood, where obviously what the parents did or didn’t do is important. I was reading an article by some American the other week that said something like that.’

  ‘Some American will say anything, won’t he, if you give him time. So Steve had a breakdown because you took no notice or the wrong kind of notice of him when he was little. Nasty as well as crap. Did she act hostile, this creature? Why aren’t you drinking?’

  ‘I thought I’d had enough for a bit.’

  ‘Yes, I noticed you were rather pissed when you came in. You can afford to be a little more pissed than that after the day you’ve had. Where were we? Oh yes — hostile?’

  ‘More clinical,’ I said en route to the drinks tray. ‘I don’t want to say she was hostile when what I mean is I didn’t like what she was telling me. No, but there were definite hostile bits.’

  ‘You said she was sort of sexy but getting it wrong. Did — sorry, you must be fed up with answering questions, but did she … issue anything in the way of an invitation to you? It wouldn’t surprise me, with such an attractive man.’ She beamed at me.

  I beamed back. ‘Yeah, I thought so.’

  ‘And I presume the lady received a dusty answer. You know when you were talking on the telephone I thought it sounded as if she was taking it out of you for something. I bet that’s it. I bet that’s it.’

  ‘You seriously … you mean because she flies a little kite and I don’t want to know, she decides to even up by trying to prove I neglected my son. My God.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure she didn’t decide to do anything. None of it would have been conscious. She’d have said she was doing a perfectly ordinary piece of objective analysis. You know what women are like. You ought to by now.’

  ‘Now I come to think of it she did remind me of Nowell. More than once. But I mean, my God.’

  Then Susan said it was only a guess and went off to run up dinner. On further inspection I threw out her guess — doctors were trained not to behave like that. I held firm even though I had in my possession one solid piece of evidence in its favour that was hidden from Susan. It showed great powers of something-or-other to have got there unassisted by knowing about Lindsey’s little demonstration that she had a stake in me, which Collings could not have found at all funny. And I had probably made things worse by if not actually dribbling with lust then at least by making some sign that feelings were mutual. But that assumed that Collings was capable of … Sod it.

  Actually I had shut up about Lindsey altogether, both today and last Friday. This keeping-dark was required anyway by the regular blanket ban on mentioning as much as the name of one female to another unless it was absolutely necessary. More than that, though, I had told Susan about the affair I had had with Lindsey pretty well straight away, in one of those fits of blurting that come over some men when they fall in love. In the telling I had made it as plain as a dozen pikestaffs that the whole thing had been over before I had ever met her. Never mind — my confession, which was what my harmless bit of reminiscing had turned into almost from the word go, ended up a disaster, needing a pair of Regency candlesticks and dinner at the Connaught. I had forgotten, or perhaps in those days had yet to learn, the rule about comparability, avoidance of. You can let on that you once slept with the Richard who sweeps the floors and sells the french letters at the barber’s or with a royal, and mostly get away with it, but not when it was someone they were at Oxford at the same time as, even if the two have barely set eyes on each other since. Except perhaps to announce her death I could never again mention Lindsey to Susan.

  Over kedgeree and Spanish plonk in the kitchen I mentioned Nash and his reaction to the news of Collings. When I had finished my mention Susan said, ‘Old Robbie telephoned today about something and I told him I’d run into a shrink called Nash, because the name had rung a faint bell in my head, and Robbie knew it straight away. Apparently apart from being very eminent in his field he made a terrific splash in the Fifties with a book for the general reader about madness in literature. It seems Cyril Connolly raved about it, but of course he often… Anyway, Robbie said he thought he could get hold of a copy for me. Well
, it’s a fascinating subject.’

  I could never have explained, even to myself, why it was that my general estimate of Nash, highish almost from the start and inclined to lift under the influence of today’s events, took a small but sharp dive at this disclosure. Of course I kept my mouth shut about that. Later Susan played the hi-fl, Bach and then I thought Nielsen. Later still she did a marvellous job of impressing on me that I was not to blame myself for whatever it was that had happened to Steve. She had hardly started before I became too drunk to remember afterwards any of the individual bits, but the general effect lasted me well into the next day and even took some of the punch out of my hangover. Nothing actually happened that day — two men and a woman told me at different times that Thurifer Chemicals were staying with their half-page after all, and Trish Collings phoned me at work to make an appointment at her hospital at 9 the following morning. Nowell had promised to be there too, said Collings. Fat bleeding chance, I thought to myself, as regards your 9 a.m. anyway. And why 9 a.m., come to that? To show who was boss, said Susan, and I tried not to agree, because I had decided it was better all round to give Collings the benefit of any doubt. Well, almost any.

  An alarm phone-call woke me at 7. My first action after ringing off was to grab the usual large jug of water beside the bed and take a hearty gulp. This turned out too late to contain some live creature which had no doubt fallen or flown there, not long before, probably, because to judge by the results inside me there was still quite a bit of flight left in it. I stumbled out of the dark bedroom and hung over the wc for a minute or two, thinking very hard about not being sick and impressing on myself a fact learnt in childhood, that there was enough acid in my stomach to burn a hole in a carpet.

  After some long, unaffected groans, a go with the toothbrush and a hot shower with shampoo I felt very tired. Nothing occurred between then and the time I left the house that would surprise anyone who has ever got up in the morning in London or a similar place. When I took Susan up a cup of tea she again offered to come on the trip with me and I again thanked her and said there was no need.