Jake's Thing

by Kingsley Amis

  The girl in the straw hat went back into the folder and the whine of the cunning little gadget sank in pitch and disappeared. Jake sighed and swallowed. His eyelids felt heavy; in fact so did most of the rest of him. Professor Trefusis came and muttered into his ear,

  "Would you like a climax? We can give you one, not out here of course, or we can arrange for you to give yourself one in private."

  "I don't think I will, thanks very much all the same."

  When they parted a few minutes later she said to him, "I hope to see you again soon."

  "Again? Soon?"

  "After the successful completion of Dr Rosenberg's treatment."

  9—Guilt and Shame

  Jake and Rosenberg went together across the hospital hall, which had a fight going on in it near one of the sidewalls. Two medium-sized men in white suits were struggling to hold a largish man in a fawn raincoat who seemed to be doing no more than trying to free himself from them. Not many of the people standing about or passing through bothered to watch.

  "If it's been like that all the way here," said Jake, "those two are earning their money."

  Rosenberg smiled leniently. "They're ward staff. The poor fellow's objection must be to being made to leave. There, you see?"

  The man in the raincoat, at liberty for a moment, ran back towards the lifts where the two nurses caught him again. Jake had a last glimpse of the captive's forefinger straining to reach, and being held back from reaching, the call-button with great intensity, as if this were no call-button but, TV-style, the means of activating a bank alarm or nuclear missile. Outside it wasn't quite raining but was damp and chilly. Rosenberg looked to and fro a couple of times in a furtive sort of way, swinging his unnaturally large black briefcase about, then he said,

  "How were you intending to make the return journey, Mr Richardson?"

  "Bus."

  "Ah, it's not the weather for that. I have my car here, I'd be happy to give you a ride."

  "That's very kind of you."

  But the other stayed where he was a space longer, looking down at his disproportionately small feet. There was that in his manner which meant that it came as no complete surprise when he flung back his head and produced one of those stares he and Curnow went in for, had perhaps developed together as part of some research project. Jake met this one and waited. When Rosenberg spoke it was in a strained, almost querulous tone, as if he was at great moral cost dragging out a deeply overlaid memory.

  "Am I quite mistaken or did you tell me you were sometimes known to take a glass of sherry before dinner?"

  "I must have. It's true anyway."

  "I thought so. I thought so. And it's before dinner now. Some time before, I grant you, but before. You see I find a small amount of alcohol at this time of day distinctly beneficial. Tell me, have you any objection to drinking in a public house?"

  In its tone and much of its phraseology the last part of that so closely resembled the bagger's favourite question that Jake started to want to hit him, but he soon stopped and said, "Not in principle." He could have added that in practice he found the activity distasteful, especially of late; it was also true that nothing would have kept him from seeing the little psychologist in the proposed new setting.

  With a peremptory sideways movement of his head Rosenberg led off at a smart pace. A minute's walk up towards the main road brought them to a pub called the Lord Nelson which Jake, occupied with his madwoman, hadn't noticed on the way down. The exterior, royal blue picked out in yellow, was promising, and the interior had no more than half a dozen youngsters in it, wearing their offensive perpetual-holiday clothes, true, but not laughing and talking above a mild shout. The noise from the fruit machine was that of an intermittent and fairly distant automatic rifle, and even the jukebox thumped and cried away well below the threshold of pain; all in all a real find. Of course it was early yet.

  Rosenberg had said they might as well look in here, but any pretence of unfamiliarity was at once undone by the whiskered tee-shirted fellow behind the bar, who greeted him as doctor and without inquiry picked up a half-pint glass tankard and began to fill it with beer. When this was done he looked at Jake with a slight frown and narrowing of the eyes, as if less interested in what he might want to drink than in what form of lunacy possessed him.

  "And you'll have a sherry, will you not?" asked Rosenberg. "Thank you, medium dry."

  "Is sherry still the great Oxford drink or is that all folk-lore?"

  Jake made some idle answer. At the mention of Oxford any hint of misgiving or antagonism left the barman's manner; he was evidently satisfied that his customers were not doctor and patient but doctor and colleague. His underlying assumption that having to do with Oxford somehow vouched for sanity might itself be said to imply derangement, but it would be more interesting to consider what had made Rosenberg a habitué of this place. One's first assumption, that being Irish he would naturally be rushing round the corner all the time to get a lot of strong drink inside him, wasn't borne out by that modest half of hitter. Could there be a convivial side to him? It seemed unlikely, though Jake couldn't have told why.

  Again taking the lead, Rosenberg moved decisively across the room and sat down with his back to the wall on a padded bench enveloped in black artificial something. Jake, always in favour of getting a good view of anybody he might be talking to, looked round for a chair, but there was none to be seen, only long- and short-legged stools. He fetched a short-legged one, finding that its top was covered with the same stuff as the bench. Apart from being so covered it was too convex to suit a normal bum like his, pleasing as that convexity might well have been to the trend-blurred eye of whatever youthful fart had designed it. He sat regardless and faced Rosenberg across a circular table made of a semi-transparent amber-coloured substance. Huge photographs of Wild West people and scenes covered the walls.

  "I had lunch recently with a friend of mine," announced Rosenberg.

  "Oh yes?" said Jake encouragingly, but not just encouragingly in case what he had heard had been deemed worthy of remark in itself, which he thought was possible.

  "Have you ever come across a magazine called 'Mezzanine?'"

  "Yes, in fact—"

  "This friend of mine is the editor. He's been in the job for about four years would be my guess. That's a long time in that sort of journalism, he says. The pace, you know. I doubt if he'll stick it much longer. I'll be sorry when he goes, because he and I have been fortunate enough to build up an excellent working relationship. In practice it benefits me distinctly more than him." The doctor gave his deep laugh; the present rendering gave an effect of reluctant self-congratulation. "Oh dear. Of course he has a very acute social conscience, which makes him anxious not to publish any material. that might in any way be harmful."

  "What sort of material would that be?"

  "Encouragement of anti-social fantasies involving violence chiefly but also such matters as simulated hanging which can be dangerous."

  "You mean physically dangerous."

  "I do. Death from that cause is not uncommon."

  "Mm. So what people see and read in that way does affect their actions."

  Rosenberg put down his glass, which was still nearly full. He laughed again slightly. "Why my dear sir, of course it does. If it didn't, my work would have to take a very different form. You must realise that, even from the little we've done together."

  "I suppose I do. But going back—can't your editor pal spot what to steer clear of for himself? I mean for instance I can tell straight away that a chap whipping a girl involves violence."

  "It's not always as simple as that," said the doctor rather peevishly, then went on in the sunniest of spirits. "Where I score is having access to the unpublished 'Mezzanine' correspondence, which is most valuable. They write things they'd never dare say to fellows like me."

  "For fear of bursting out laughing in your face."

  "Ah not at all, not at all. You can always spot the ones who're trying to take you
for a ride."

  "Always? How?"

  "Let me put it to you the way my friend put it to me. If you say when you write, if you call something warm, or soft, or firm, or moist, or hard, or anything like that then you're not serious. You don't use adjectives when you're serious. Which brings us by a long way round to the fantasy you wrote for me, Mr Richardson. But first let me get you another drink."

  "My turn. Same again?"

  "No thank you, I'll just nurse this."

  Jake would have cancelled his own drink at that but he wanted a couple of minutes to reflect. Standing at the counter he decided it was dull of Rosenberg to have moved with such speed and determination from what had sounded like the start of a nice credulity—stretching story or two about 'Mezzanine' to that bloody fantasy. And there had been something dull too, in a different sense, about the tone of voice in which he had mentioned the editor and the four years in the job and the pace and the working relationship. More than dull. In the act of ordering his sherry Jake became conscious that he had heard that very tone elsewhere in the last couple of weeks, and at the same time that Rosenberg reminded him of someone. He went on trying to think where and who until he got back to the table and saw that the typewritten pages of his fantasy were spread out on it.

  "Uncontrollable passion. Irresistible desire." Rosenberg sipped slowly at his beer. "Colossal breasts. Quivering thighs. Delirious response. Do you know if I hadn't heard different from you I think I'd be wondering whether you'd ever performed sexual intercourse?"

  At the first phrase Jake had looked hurriedly about. No one was in earshot, not yet, although the bar now held twice as many youngsters as before and an additional two, moustached and flat chested respectively, were entering at that moment. He sat down, spreading his arms slightly to try to screen off Rosenberg and his reading-matter. "Would you?" he said.

  "I think I would. As the friend I was mentioning to you would put it, you're not serious."

  "Good God, do you imagine I'd have come to you in the first place and gone through all that .... rigmarole this afternoon if I weren't serious?"

  "Why did you come to me in the first place?"

  Jake started to speak and then found he had to consider. "I realised something that used to be a big part of my life wasn't there any more."

  "And you miss it."

  "Of course I miss it," said Jake, instantly seeing that the next question ought to have to do with how he could be held to miss what he no longer wanted; you don't miss a friend you'd be slightly sorry to run into, do you? Can you miss wanting something?

  Perhaps Rosenberg already knew the answers. "Any other reasons?" was what he asked.

  "Well, there's my wife to consider. Obviously."

  "There is, obviously. Very well. I didn't mean you weren't serious in your overall approach to your condition, I meant you weren't serious when you wrote this. You weren't in a state of sexual excitement."

  "These days I very rarely am. That was in another sense why I came to see you in the first place."

  "No doubt it was, but the state under discussion can be achieved with the aid of pictorial pornographic material, manual manipulation and so forth. You clearly omitted to use such aids. It's my view that consciously or unconsciously you avoided doing so. Because you sensed that if you did use them you'd almost certainly write something you'd have been embarrassed to let me see. You'd have used different words—none of your quivering thighs and delirious response. I'm sure you know the kind of words I mean."

  For all the Irishman's ridiculous accent, his articulation was as distinct as ever and he had not lowered his ordinary conversational volume. Another glance over his shoulder showed Jake that the moustached shag and the flat-chested bint, whose skull as he now saw was about the size of a large grapefruit, had moved away from the bar with their drinks and were now standing just near enough, given goodish hearing and less than full absorption in each other, to catch some of whatever Rosenberg might say next. "I'm sure I do too," mouthed Jake faintly, rolling his eyes and raising and lowering his eyebrows and pointing through himself at the couple.

  For the moment it was hard to tell whether the doctor had heeded or even read these signals. "We often find it best to avoid them in a consultation context for socio-psychological reasons," he said at his previous pitch, "especially in the earlier stages of therapy. But they tend to be useful in the kind of work you were doing here. I suppose I might have...." He dismissed without apparent trouble the thought of whatever it was he might have done and continued, "I strongly recommend you to use such words when you try again, which I want you to do between now and next Tuesday. They may help you to resolve your main difficulty. You see—"

  With the effect of a great door bursting open the noise of the jukebox increased perhaps fourfold in mid-beat. Rosenberg's voice mounted above a swell of half-human howling and mechanical chirruping and rumbling. "As well as what you wrote, your attitude before our investigations this afternoon commenced, you remember, and your response to some of the stimuli during them—it all suggests to me that our society's repressive attitude towards sex has engendered an unrelaxed attitude in you. You've been conditioned into acceptance of a number of rigid taboos." Perhaps now he did notice Jake's expression, which had turned to one of impatience or weariness, because he went on to bawl, "You're suffering from guilt and shame."

  "'What?'"

  "I said you're—"

  "I heard you. Look, can't we discuss this somewhere else?"

  "Please let's finish. I know this is uncomfortable for you but that's why I brought you here. Certain states of feeling can be brought to the surface more efficaciously in this type of environment than in a consultation situation. Now just one moment if I may."

  The clamour changed somehow, perhaps became more measured or emphatic. Rosenberg opened his briefcase and fingered through its contents, taking his time in a way that once more recalled Curnow. He was getting ready, Jake knew, to say or rather shout something unsayable at the instant when the noise ceased, which it must be on the point of doing. The instant came; Rosenberg was silent, but he had taken from his case and tossed down on the table between them a coloured magazine cutting pasted on to thin cardboard. The object landed with a soft click which seemed amplified in the first moment of silence. Jake saw that it was the photograph of the girl wearing just a straw hat, apart from which and in a way partly because of which she was without doubt completely stark naked and utterly nude. Her breasts were not in any true sense gigantic but they were large enough, and the rest of her made appropriate all manner of unserious adjectives. Everything about her for some reason struck him more forcibly here in the Lord Nelson than it had in the lecture theatre.

  "That's the one you liked best," said Rosenberg with unimprovable clarity. "According to that clever little machine back there."

  Jake sensed there were a number of people close behind him; he heard a movement, a grunt, a giggle, a whisper without knowing whether they referred to him or the picture or something quite different and naturally without turning to see. The temperature of the skin on the back of his neck changed, though he couldn't have said in which direction. He still had his 'Times' with him. In a manoeuvre that sent his sherry-glass rocking he shoved the newspaper over and round the picture and scooped it up and laid the package thus made on the floor. Then he gave a deep sigh.

  "Guilt and shame." Rosenberg's voice was so low that it could have been audible only to Jake, who acknowledged in time that the little bugger could be effective whatever you might think of the effect. But for now all he said was,

  "No. There are some things that are too..... No, you're wrong. You've got it all wrong."

  10—Wanker!

  That Saturday was the first day of the Oxford summer term. Jake had to go up there to supervise a collection, no charitable enterprise this, but an examination set and marked by himself and intended to assess the extent to which his pupils had done the reading set them for the vacation just ended, or more prac
tically to deter them a little by its prospect from spending every day of that period working in a supermarket and every night fornicating and smoking pot or whatever they did now. A drag, yes; all the same, satisfyingly more of a drag for them than for him and over just in time for him to be back at Burgess Avenue for Saturday Night at the Movies, of course not actually 'at' the movies but in front of the television set.

  The following Tuesday Jake went back to Oxford after he and Brenda had kept their appointment with Rosenberg in Harley Street and eaten something, in her case very little and in his not much more, at a place called Mother Courage's off the Marylebone Road. The food wasn't much good and they were rather nasty to you, but then it cost quite a lot. After walking part of the way in the interests of health, Jake got to Paddington a good twenty minutes before the departure of the 3.5, a train otherwise known to more than a few as the Flying Dodger for being the latest one even the most brazen and determined evader of his responsibilities would dare to catch at the "start" of the "working" week at the university, or "university", and in consequence much esteemed among senior members of that institution. It was sometimes not easy to get a seat for the neglectful philologists, remiss biochemists and other lettered column-dodgers who swarmed aboard it; hence part of the reason for Jake's early arrival. He stood in a queue that by its diversity would have served quite well as model for a Family of Man photograph, laid out his fifty quid or whatever it was for a second-class ticket and went along to the bookstall. Here he searched carefully among the paperbacks and in the end came up with something called 'The Hippogriff Attaché-Case' by an author unknown to him. He couldn't understand the jacket-design, which consisted chiefly of illuminated numbers and different-coloured little light-bulbs as well as a quantity of wasted space, and turned to the matter on the back of the cover.