Jake's Thing

by Kingsley Amis

  Though he inspected the discs thoroughly, Rosenberg made no comment on this or any other point about them and Jake didn't care to ask him. He took even longer over the questionnaire, nodding as he looked through it with a slow regularity Jake began to find offensive: was he (Jake) such a predictable mess? He had only just begun to find this when the doctor suddenly raised his head and, Curnow-like, stared at him for God knew how long. Could this be a reaction to the breach of discipline in his answer to 'M41' I think children should receive sex education 1 as soon as they can understand 2 before puberty 3 at puberty—'never' scrawled at the bottom? More likely it was his regarding '(M49)' the thought of being watched while engaged in sexual intercourse as not very pleasant nor fairly pleasant nor even a little unpleasant but very unpleasant that had produced the stare, on this view a signal much less of hostility or alarm than of wonder, of a desire to fix in the mind something to tell one's grandchildren.

  It was soon clear that the fantasy was altogether on the wrong lines. Rosenberg's chubby little features filled with deep disappointment. Once or twice he screwed up his eyes and frowned as if in actual pain, whether bodily or mental. But in the end he laid aside the neatly typed sheets with a muttered promise to take a more careful look later and asked Jake a lot of questions about his childhood and adolescence, some on new topics like any dreams, wet and non-wet, he remembered from that period and how he had felt about the physical changes he had experienced then, others over already-traversed ground, his parents" relationship and suchlike, in the evident but vain hope of eliciting significant contradiction of previous responses. Together with his detailed account of the non-genital sensate focusing session, interspersed with further questions from Rosenberg which continuing to listen in silence would in most cases have rendered needless, these activities filled tip the hour. Or very nearly: there was time at the end for three momentous directives. One—Jake and Brenda were to go on to practise genital sensate focusing, a term which Rosenberg explained with a wealth of well-known words derived from the classical tongues. Two—Brenda was to accompany Jake on his next visit to the consulting-room. And three—before that could come to pass, the following Thursday afternoon in fact, Jake was to visit the sex laboratory at the McDougall Hospital. By way of reassurance Rosenberg again asked him to say, virtually with his hand on the book, whether he had any objection to exposing his genitals in public and was given the answer no.

  The nearer it got to Thursday afternoon the less that answer squared with the truth. In the past he had been very willing indeed to carry out such exposure to selected individual females in private, though not of course just like that, but in the Army, in sports changing-rooms and so on he had been one of the majority who preferred where possible to keep themselves to themselves. At the time he had followed that policy without thinking of it as a policy or as anything at all, but now it looked as if he had better start thinking of it as something. This change of approach was just part of the steady progress towards more sophisticated awareness which had come to fuck up (so it seemed to him) most kinds of human behaviour in the last however many years it was. Preferring to keep himself to himself must be allied to the quirk whereby he regarded the thought of being watched while engaged in sexual intercourse as very unpleasant. And that was going to have to do for the minute.

  His bus map told him that having taken the 127 to Gower Street he could change there to a 163 and, via Chelsea, Putney Bridge and Southfields, be transported to Colliers Wood. That was what he did. On this journey he had remembered to bring the 'Times' crossword puzzle but the lurching and plunging of the vehicle at the various irregularities of the highway, together with the difficulty of the dues, led him to stop it soon. He was also distracted by the very loud unsteady wailing noise to be heard whenever the driver used his brakes. The view out of the windows south of the river, after the 163 had passed under a couple of dozen railway bridges in a mile or so, was definitely less attractive than what was to be seen from the 127. Here were derelict churches covered with grime, yards of hoardings with no posters on them, dining-rooms and small draper's shops such as he hadn't seen since the "30s, waste lots big enough to accommodate a shopping complex barely to be dreamed of and, beyond them, hulking greyish towers of offices or dwellings that loomed in the smoky distance. He supposed that people who lived here might well vote for or against somebody at an election, neither of which he had bothered to do since 1945 (Liberal). The ones he saw had an archaic look too, dumpy, dark-clothed, wearing hats: the infiltrators from Schleswig-Holstein had not reached here yet.

  Sitting near the front of the bus on the upper deck he became aware by degrees that a sort of altercation was going on behind him, the sort, as it soon proved, in which only one voice was to be heard, a woman's, deep and powerful, projected with that pressure of the diaphragm used by actors.

  "It isn't right, is it? I mean do you think it's right? After all these years and all I been through? I said I've had enough, I done everything you told me and I've had enough, I said. I told him straight. What's in it for me, I said, yeah, what's in it for me? I've had e-bloody-nough. Now that's my rights, isn't it? I reckon that's my rights, don't you? I said don't you?"

  He looked over his shoulder to see what kind of unfortunate was having to put up with this, and found that nobody and everybody was, staring hard out of the window or at a newspaper or into space. The speaker wore a dark-brown coat flecked with green and a very pale lilac-coloured silk scarf round the neck. That neck looked too slender for the job of connecting the broad-shouldered trunk to the large round head. The woman's complexion was dull, her chin pointed, her nose thin, her hair straight and dry, standing out and up from her scalp. While she continued to talk she seemed never to look directly at anyone, always between people.

  "I'm not going to say there," she repeated several times in the same tone as before, accusing rather than angry. "I told him so. I said, I don't mind coming along, well I do, but I will. I don't mind coming along but I'm not going to stay. I've had enough of that. Where's it got me, that's what I'd like to know. It's not fair, it's taking advantage, that's what it is. He's got me where he wants me and there's nothing I can do about it. I been given a raw deal, haven't I, a raw bloody deal. Don't anybody think I've been given a raw deal?"

  Jake had turned back to face his front after one good look. The sound-quality of the last couple of dozen words told him that the woman had got up and was moving towards the top of the stairs, presumably on the way to getting off the bus. On an impulse he didn't at once understand he shifted round in his seat and said, "Yes, I do."

  Now she did look straight at someone and he saw with unusual clarity that everything about her face was wrong. The tip of her nose was a narrow white peak above a pair of ill-matched nostrils partly outlined in red; her eyes didn't so much protrude or glare as have no discernible sockets to lie in; her eyebrows were irregular streaks of bristle; her ears were set a little too far back on her skull; the borders of her lips were well marked at one corner and blurred at the other; the state of her skin showed him for the first time what it really meant to say that someone was pale and drawn. That's right, he thought to himself: they're not just mad inside their heads, they're mad to their fingertips, to the ends of their hair. And he had spoken to her to make her give him the straight look he had needed in order to see that in her.

  What might have been the beginnings of a smile showed on the woman's face in the second before she stepped clumsily to one side and passed out of view down the stairs. Soon afterwards the bus stopped and from his position above the pavement he saw her walk away, swinging her arms a lot. Some distance ahead lay a small piece of park or public garden, a grassy triangle where, with a show of energy unexpected in these latitudes a group of men in helmets and jerkins were attacking some trees. Products of their labours were strewn about them in the shape of much sound timber and vigorous foliage. The peevish wavering groan of their saws could be clearly heard through the noise of the traffic. At firs
t idly, then with concern, Jake took in a rusty street-sign that said Trafalgar Place. Distracted by the incident of the madwoman, he was about to overshoot the stopping-point he had picked out on his deluxe 'A to Z.' He toiled his way downstairs at his best speed but no kind of speed shown by him would have affected the progress of the bus, which finally dropped him a couple of hundred yards beyond the turning he wanted.

  It was raining slowly but, with his umbrella and navy-blue light mackintosh, he found this no great infliction and set off with a brisk stride, a touch elated at having successfully brought off what was for him an out-of-the-way journey. There were six minutes to go before his appointment, which should be enough if the hospital was reasonably close to the main road. He had nearly reached the corner when he saw something he did find a great infliction, a figure he recognised standing on the opposite pavement and looking at him. Of course the McDougall was a psychiatric as well as a psychological joint; of course those who attended it regularly knew the nearest bus stop to it; of course chaps who were fool enough to speak to people like that deserved all they got. And of course his first thought was of flight, but he loathed being late for anything. If he had known the district even slightly he might have risked a detour but again he didn't. So he turned the corner and quickened up to light-infantry speed.

  "Excuse me!"

  It was harsh and hostile and he ignored it.

  "Excuse me."

  This time he thought he detected a note of appeal and found himself half-turning and slowing down so that the woman could catch him up. "Yes?"

  "I seen you on the bus, didn't I?"

  "I believe so, yes."

  "You said you thought I been given a raw deal."

  "Yes, I .. .

  "Why d'you say that?" she asked merely as if she wanted to know.

  "Well, I thought you seemed a bit upset and I wondered if I could cheer you up, that's all."

  "You're the first one as said I been given a raw deal for I don't know how long. They all say I get the best attention and all they want to do is take care of me but they got a funny way of showing it is what I say. I was in the hospital for five months and all they done was boss me around. The doctor just give his orders and never took a blind bit of notice of how I felt or what I thought. It's not fair, it's taking advantage."

  All this had been said in a tone that showed a sense of injury but none of the bitterness noticeable on the bus. Poor devil, thought Jake, a complete stranger throws her a kind word and she calms down immediately—these bloody doctors are all the same. Not that he had stopped looking for the hospital, of which at the moment there was no sign.

  "Are you disturbed?" went on the lunatic.

  He grasped at once that to her there could be no other reason for coming this way than her own. "No, just, er, tension."

  "I been disturbed for .... a long time. Ever since my mum died but they say it's nothing to do with that. Do you think it's to do with that?"

  "I don't know. It must have something to do with it, I'd have thought."

  "You're the first one as ever said I been given a raw deal." She turned her head towards him and smiled, showing a wide variety of teeth. "That was real nice, that was. Real nice."

  "Oh I think most other people would have done the same," he said, trying not to gabble it, to stay calm, to work out what to do if she pounced on him.

  "I get very lonely. I'd like someone to come and see me. After I've had my tea, that's when I wouldn't mind someone, that sort of time. They don't, though, not them, no fear, they got better things to do, the lot of them. Dead selfish, the lot of them. Six weeks it's been since Harry come, and as for that June...."

  Just then there was a sign of the hospital in the form of a hospital sign, and the monologue on selfishness kept up satisfactorily while the two approached Reception—All Patients, stopping only at the swing doors. Inside, Jake's companion, swinging her arms in her awful way, went straight on without a word or a look while he made for the desk. A girl in a grey uniform standing behind it called over his shoulder,

  "Excuse me dear, are you sure you know where to go?"

  The words were delivered with unimpeachable gentleness but it was as if—no, to hell with as if: the madwoman had heard something different. She stopped dead and sent towards the desk a look of great fear and hatred. In that moment Jake recognised that, with the sole exception of the three words he had spoken on the bus, she had heard nothing of what he had said to her; he also withdrew what he had been thinking a couple of minutes earlier about bloody doctors.

  "Who are you going to see, dear?"

  "Holmes. Dr Holmes."

  "Good, he'll be waiting for you." The girl blew out her cheeks as she turned to Jake. "I'm new—they told me everyone was supposed to report here. Sorry—can I help you?"

  "I was told to ask for Professor Trefusis." He squared his jaw, took darting glances round the hall and tapped his rolled newspaper against the palm of his hand, trying to look like the vital, dynamic, thrusting head of a giant transcontinental sex consortium. "I'm Dr Richardson."

  "Oh yes, doctor, room 35, third floor."

  In the lift, he asked himself what the hell he was doing there. Then he realised he hadn't noticed anything at all about what the girl at the desk had looked like except for her grey uniform, and told himself what.

  8—Informal Basis

  "Mr Richardson? Do come in. I'm Professor Trefusis."

  After the Rosenberg business no mere Yap Islander or Kalahari Bushman going under that name would have disconcerted Jake in the least, but a woman did rather, especially one that even he in his reduced state could see was very attractive, in her middle thirties probably, with thick blonde hair parted at the side, blue eyes and a figure that would not have thrown 'Zoom' into abject disgrace. Her manner was quiet and friendly. In succession she introduced him to Dr Thatch, a boyish-looking boy with mnemonically helpful abundant long hair, Dr something he missed, another boy but still distinguishable from his colleague by being nearly bald, Miss Newman, a lumpish, gloomy girl of about twenty(?), and Mr something he couldn't believe was a name, which didn't matter much because the man it referred to, tall and of dignified bearing, stood out at once from everyone else in the room by being black; he was said to be a citizen of Ghana and present only as an observer. Oh, so everyone else was going to twiddle with him, hey?

  "And Dr Rosenberg of course you know."

  Seen by Jake for the first time in the company of others, the Irishman looked unexpectedly less small than on his own; he could have been as much as five foot, even perhaps an inch or two more. He shook hands and gave a cheerful smile.

  "The purpose of this preliminary encounter," said Professor Trefusis in the tones of a lecturer, but of an outstandingly good lecturer, one interested in the subject, "is to establish amicable relations on an informal basis. We find the quickest way of doing this is for me to quote a few personal details relating to each member of the team. Now we know about you, Mr Richardson, that your first name is Jaques or Jake, that you're sixty years old, you're married, you're employed at Oxford University and you have a house in Orris Park. My first name is Rowena, I'm thirty-six years old, married to a photographer, we have two children in their teens and we live just up the road from here in Tooting. Dr Thatch is called Bill..."

  Jake stopped listening then. He meant to switch on again to hear the bald doctor's name but forgot to. This part was easy enough; what was to come? What 'sort' of thing? Before he could ask, Rowena Trefusis (Daphne du Maurier? No, more like Barbara Cartland) got there on her own.

  "...people you're going to work with in a relaxed atmosphere. The work itself is quite straightforward. We hook you into an electric circuit—the current passed is minute, so even if everything went wrong at once you'd be in no danger even of discomfort—and then we present you with a series of sexual stimuli and measure your responses to them. It's an essentially simple process and the procedure is totally informal."

  "That's good," said
Jake, thinking it was something to be spared a totally formal procedure of measuring his responses.

  "We try to use dress as a way of promoting informality. No white coats here, you'll have noticed."

  He just about had; now that he looked further he saw that the boys were wearing zipped-up jackets of imitation leather and trousers of some stuff like oakum or jute, Miss Newman the same sort of trousers and a light pullover with a Union Jack on it and the head of the team a smartly cut suit in what might have been highbrow mackintosh material. The African of course was turned out like a Japanese businessman. Jake made some approving noises.

  "Well, I think we might as well—"

  "Just one moment if I may, Professor Trefusis." Rosenberg's manner had turned grave. "You're sure, Mr Richardson, you've no objection to exposing your genitals in public?"

  If you ask me that again, my little man, Jake thought to himself, I'll expose yours right here and now and your weeny bum for good measure. He said, "Quite sure."

  "Very well, so let's be getting along to the theatre."

  "The what?" Images of operating tables and surgical masks rose in Jake's mind. "Isn't that going to be rather..."

  All of them except Miss Newman laughed. Professor Trefusis stopped them almost at once and looked self-reproachful.

  "I'm sorry, Mr Richardson, we've made that mistake before.

  Have no fear—you won't have to face any spotlights or rolls of drums. Dr Rosenberg meant the lecture theatre."