Jake's Thing

by Kingsley Amis

  "Screw biologically. We've made one sort of start, but there's another sort we haven't made," said Brenda with an emphasis he had never heard her use before, or else had forgotten, "and this really is you. You've got to find out whether you feel any affection for me or whether you're the sort of man who can only feel affection for women he wants to go to bed with or wouldn't mind going to bed with or thinks of in a sort of bed what-name, context. If you're not that sort, if you do feel some affection for me even though you don't want to go to bed with me you'd better start working on it and trying to show it. And remember I can tell."

  "What about your affection for me?" he asked after a silence.

  "It's there but it's keeping itself to itself. It tends to watch its step a bit after the knocks it's taken."

  "When did it last take a knock?" This was playing for time while he tried to recover a memory.

  "Ooh, about two hours ago, when I kissed you and tried to start talking to you and you came back with any complaints and put your arm around me as if I was an old sow you were having to keep warm till the vet arrived."

  "I didn't mean it like that."

  "I don't say you 'meant' it like anything. I just might as well have been an old sow."

  "I suppose you think this is a good time to bring all this up."

  "Yes I do. Check. An excellent time. After you've taken the first step towards getting your, well, your confidence back and before you sell yourself the idea that that's all you have to do. I mean before you absolutely stop wondering what went wrong. Dr Rosenberg seemed to think they go together, you know, screwing and being affectionate, as far as I could make out what he meant, and so do a lot of other people."

  "Yes of course." Jake had remembered. "You believed me when I said you looked beautiful in the sitting-room just before we came out."

  "I believed something. Something nice. What made you say it?"

  "Just remembering how things used to be, sort of suddenly."

  She dropped her gaze to her plate, which was now quite empty, and pushed her hand out towards him between the dish warmer and the soy sauce. He took the hand and squeezed it, telling himself it was amazing how after all these years one went on forgetting the old truth that women meant things differently from men. They (women) spoke as they felt, which meant that you (a man) would be devastated forever if you took them literally. (The compensation, in fact bonus on aggregate, was that they thought you operated in the same way, so that they forgave and forgot the devastating things you said to them. He had once, in the course of one of their rows about her relations, called Brenda an illiterate provincial, which had gone down at least as badly as expected at the time but had never since been thrown in his face, thank God; just think what he would have done about and with an accusation of remotely comparable nearness to the bone. And felt about it too.) So what she had said last Tuesday to Rosenberg and him, what he had lain awake going over in his mind in the medium-sized hours the following day, what had then seemed to him to write or at any rate rough-draft finis to their marriage—all that that had boiled down to was saying in bold sans-serif Great Primer italics that she was seriously fed up with him and he had bloody well better stop feeling sorry for himself and take a bit of notice of her for a change. And she had been and was absolutely right. So there they were.

  "I think all this might sort itself out in the end with a bit of luck," he said.

  "So do I, darling."

  "Good. .... We must have earned at least a beta-double-plus from Dr Rosenberg for this evening's work."

  "If not beta-alpha query."

  "If he could see us now he'd be nodding his little head in approbation."

  "Rubbing his tiny hands with satisfaction."

  "Showing all his miniature teeth in a benevolent smile."

  "Dancing on the tips of his microscopic toes."

  "Shaking his filter-passing buttocks."

  "I quite like him really."

  Jake lifted the corner of his lip and sighed. "What's this do he's got lined up for us next week-end?"

  "The Workshop?"

  "Oh 'Christ,' I'd forgotten it was called that, I must have censored it out of my memory."

  "What's wrong with it?"

  "Wrong with it? If there's one word that sums up everything that's gone wrong since the War, it's Workshop. After Youth, that is."

  "Darling, you are a silly old oxford don, it is only a word."

  "Only a word?—sorry. No, this whole thing is all about language."

  "Whole thing? What whole thing?"

  "Well, the .... you know, bloody Rosenberg and his jargon, and beyond that, the way nobody can be bothered to..... Anyway, what is this fucking Workshop? I may say that if it's a 'fucking' Workshop you can all count me out. I'm buggered if I'm going to start taking part in exhibeeshes in my condition, or even trying to."

  "It's nothing like that, it's a sort of group where everyone has a different sort of problem and says what it is and the others talk back to them. It's meant to help you unburden yourself and gain insight. But Dr Rosenberg explained it to us. Weren't you listening?"

  "I suppose unburdening yourself might be a good thing in some cases. No, I was too bored."

  "You must try and make it a success, you know, and take it seriously."

  "I promise you I'll try, but at this distance it does give off a distinct smack of piss."

  15—At Mr Shyster's

  The following day week, Saturday, at a quarter to ten of an overcast but so far not actually wet morning, Jake and Brenda made their way on foot to a house in Maclean Terrace some five hundred yards from their own. The events of the intervening eight days may be briefly summarised. There had been two further sessions of genital sensate focusing, the first slightly, the second considerably less successful than the initial one; the consultation with Rosenberg had thrown further light on Jake's sexual behaviour and attitudes but made visible thereby nothing in particular, or so it seemed to the patient; Brenda had told Jake, this time over tandoori chicken and bindhi gosht at the Crown of India in Highgate, that if he wanted to show affection for her he must try harder and then had discussed their holiday plans for September; Eve Greenstreet had cancelled her dinner with Jake because it looked as if her mother had started dying; and Mrs Sharp had tried to break down Jake's study door in order to admit a woodworm authority while he (Jake) was deeply engaged with business-head and Carter-face. Oh, and Brenda had had lunch and been to a film about peasants with Alcestis.

  The house that was to house the Workshop was a little older and, to judge by its front, a little larger than the Richardsons". That front had also had nothing done to it but in a bigger way: parts of the stucco facing had fallen off and there was a quite interesting-looking crack running down from the corner of an upstairs window. The front garden had no flowers or shrubs in it but quite enough in the way of empty beer-tins, fag-packets and cardboard food-containers thrown over the low hedge by tidy-minded passers-by and not removed by the inmates. What were the latter going to be like? Jake, who would have had to confess unwillingly to suffering slight twinges of curiosity and expectation as well as uneasiness at what might be in store for him, felt the uneasiness start to mount and become better defined. He noted successively the broken window-pane mended with a square of linoleum, the lidless dustbin in which a thick slightly shiny off-white vest with shoulder-straps and a bottle that held Cyprus sherry caught the eye, the bucket half full of what you hoped was just dirty water and the comfortable-looking two-legged armchair in the passage that led to the rear. Agoraphobic stockbrokers, dentists afflicted with castration anxiety, anally-fixated publicity consultants he had been prepared for; mixed-up berks from building sites or off those lorry things that pulped your rubbish were quite a different prospect. Nor was he one whit reassured by the child's bicycle propped against the side of what was doubtless known as the porch.

  No knocker or bell push was to be seen on or near the peeling front door, so Jake pounded on it with the side of
his fist. In the interval that followed he and Brenda embraced, briefly and without looking at each other. Then the door opened quite normally to reveal a longhaired middle-aged man holding a glass of what looked like whisky and water, which he swirled all the time.

  "Yer?"

  "We're looking for something called the Workshop," said Jake.

  "Doctor you wanted, was it?"

  "Yes. Yes, I suppose so,"

  The fellow motioned with his head, his locks flying. He said in a lowered tone, "Second on the left down there," stood aside and carefully shut the door behind the Richardsons. Apart from what might perhaps have been a bead curtain the interior was featureless, also rather dark; there was a faint sweetish smell, not unpleasant; in the distance an organ, probably but not certainly through one or another means of reproduction, could be heard playing something a bit religious. In the past, Jake thought to himself, this would have made quite a plausible setting for a down-market spiritualist séance, though there of course your feelings would have been rather different-more certitude of tangible benefit and so on.

  The room he and Brenda went into made much the same impression, but with more emphasis on things being dirty and damp. It also had Rosenberg in it. The little psychologist slipped to the floor from the sofa-like object on which he had been perching and shook hands with the curious warmth he always showed on meeting, not quite false and yet not right, off target, appropriate to some other relationship, perhaps that of a nephew.

  "And how are we now?" he asked. "Do make yourselves comfortable."

  In the circumstances this was self-evidently out of the question but Jake and Brenda made no demur about taking off their topcoats and throwing them across a chair that could have come from his rooms at Comyns, and then settling themselves side by side on a kind of bench that had the attraction of being not far from a tall electric fire. This gave off a hasty buzzing sound from time to time.

  "Whose house is this?" asked Jake.

  "It belongs to Mr Shyster," Rosenberg seemed to say. He spoke with an air of self-satisfaction.

  "Does he run the ..."—Jake set his teeth—".... Workshop?"

  "He does not," said Rosenberg, shocked that anybody at all should need to be set right on this point. "The facilitator is called Ed."

  "The what?" asked Jake delightedly, having heard quite well.

  "Facilitator. We like to avoid words like organiser and leader. They have the wrong associations."

  "Whereas facilitator has exactly the right ones. I see."

  Brenda looked hard at Jake. "Does it matter what he's called?"

  "Oh indeed it does, Mrs Richardson, indeed it does. Words embody attitudes of mind."

  "I was making the very same point the other day," said Jake with a respectful nod of the head. "And who is Ed? Apart from being the facilitator of the Workshop, that is."

  "Well, he had a brilliant and extremely creative career in the United States and came to this country just over a year ago. He says he thinks it's his duty to stay because the need for him is greater here. They're streets ahead of us over there in this field, as you might imagine."

  Jake had sub vocalised an oath. Funny how everything horrible or foolish was worse if it was also American. Modern architect modern American architect. Woman who never stops talking—American ditto. Zany comedian. Convert to Buddhism..... "Oh yes," he said when Rosenberg passed.

  "I asked you both to come a few minutes early to tell you a little about this work. First of all I take no part, I merely observe. End's object is to induce the participants to express their emotions, to confess what he or she thinks he or she is really like or what's wrong with him or her, or to say what he or she feels about another participant. Or the others may help him or her to a more intense experience. Things of that nature. The essential point is that the emotion should be expressed in full—no holds barred, as we say. Also it must be 'emotion:' Ed'll be listening not to what you say but how you say it."

  "So it's all right if I talk nonsense," said Jake.

  "Oh indeed, Ed wants to know how you 'feel.'"

  "I don't think I can feel much about nonsense except that it is nonsense."

  "You were saying just now what we said was meant to be important," said Brenda. "Words embodying things."

  "That's the mental aspect. It's the emotions we're on to now."

  "Oh."

  "Now the purpose of Workshop activity is twofold. The first applies in equal measure to every participant. It enables him or her to achieve release and gain insight into himself or herself. The second purpose is individual and is different for every participant. It helps him or her to overcome his or her special problem. In your case, Mr Richardson, it's the overcoming of sexual guilt and shame. You'll find that by—"

  "You keep saying that," said Jake in some irritation, "and I keep telling you I don't—"

  "I keep saying it because it's true and you won't accept it. Look at yourself at the McDougall."

  "I have, and what of it? Anyone would have felt the same."

  "Wrong. As you'll come to see. You think it's disgraceful that your libido has declined. Yes you do. As you'll come to see it's no more disgraceful than catching cold. But I mustn't lay too much stress there, that's just on the surface. Deeper down you feel that the slightest little deviation from any sexual norm is cause for guilt and shame, as your fantasy showed. There are parts of your sexual make-up you still refuse to let me see."

  Jake slowed himself down. "Look, Dr Rosenberg, if I have got any parts like that I don't know what they are. As I've explained to you before, I don't particularly object to oral sex or anal sex or the rest of the boiling, I just don't enjoy that kind of thing as much as the .... straightforward stuff. Didn't enjoy it, I should say. No desire to be a voyeur or be at the receiving end of one. Et cetera. And what of it if I had? And I had to eke out my fantasy with adjectives and so forth because what I was imagining was too simple to run to the number of words you asked me for."

  "Please just listen. Deepest down of all you think everything about sex is unpleasant as a result of your puritanical upbringing."

  "Good .... God."

  "Excuse me but we must get on. Mrs Richardson, your problem is inferiority feelings. You agree with that, I think."

  "You bet I do. I feel completely hopelessly—"

  "Save it for the Workshop. The only other thing I have to say—well, two things. You two are the only participants with directly sexual problems, and everyone is selected with great care—vetted. Some people will try to enter this kind of work for the wrong motives: to acquire a sexual partner or just to enjoy the dramatic aspect or plain curiosity. One of the ways in which Ed is so good is lie can detect those fellows as if it's by taking one look at them. Ah."

  A muffled thumping indicated a new arrival and a series of loud creaks the progress up the passage of Mr Shyster, if indeed it was he. A double series of creaks coming the other way duly followed, there was a light tap at the door and a girl of about twenty came in. She was dressed rather unfashionably (Jake decided) in a terracotta-coloured trouser-suit and frilly green shirt and carried a long umbrella with a curved handle.

  "This is Kelly," said the doctor. "All Christian names is the rule here. Kelly, this is Jake and this is Brenda."

  "How do you do Jake, how do you do Brenda," said the girl in a pleasant expensive-upbringing voice, shaking hands firmly and looking each of them straight in the eye. Considering her ease of manner, healthy skin and teeth and at least perfectly adequate features (good unsoft mouth), hair (reddish) and figure (far from flat-chested), he found it hard to imagine what her special problem could be.

  While Rosenberg was filling in about what Jake did and where Kelly lived (just where Orris Park merged into Hampstead) another person's approach was heard. It proved to be that of Geoffrey Mabbott. He showed not the least surprise at finding the Richardsons there, a very Geoffrey-like reaction but so total that Jake's first thought, soon to be corrected, was that he had been told of
their recruitment. Jake's next thought, rounded out later that day, was that he wasn't as surprised to see Geoffrey as he ought by rights to have been, and not just because after all Geoffrey was a bit touched and lived locally. No, the real reason was that Rosenberg always reminded him of Geoffrey. Since bringing to light at their first session that Rosenberg didn't know where Freud functioned, what had happened in 1848 or who James Bond was, he had established with varying degrees of certainty that Rosenberg had never heard of the ''Titanic, haggis, T. S. Eliot, plutonium, Lent, Vancouver (city, let alone island or chap), Herodotus, Sauternes, the Trooping of the Colour, the 'Times Literary Supplement', the battle of Gettysburg, Van Gogh, Sibelius, 'Ulysses'—(a) good going for an Irishman (b) and no doubt Ulysses too-chlorophyll, Florence Nightingale, the Taj Mahal, pelota, lemurs, Gary Cooper and Hadrian's Wall; theoretically, on the face of it, in the strict sense there was no reason why you shouldn't never have heard of one or other or even all of that lot and still be a good psychologist; after all, he hadn't never heard of pornography, parents, marriage, erections and sex; and yet somehow..... (By the way, how had he ever got to hear of sherry-and-Oxford, even sherry and Oxford?) Geoffrey wouldn't never have heard of most of the items on the list but he would tend not to have much idea of who or what they were, scoring not very near misses with the same consistency as Rosenberg showed in not recognising the target at all. In Geoffrey's world Eliot would be a famous actor, of Victorian times, Vancouver a lake in Rhodesia, chlorophyll a newish health food, Florence Nightingale a campaigner for female suffrage. These magpies of his were seldom associated with the wrong bullseye, Eliot not being taken for a female novelist nor chlorophyll for an antiquated anaesthetic; Jake would never have felt easier in his mind about them and about Geoffrey if they had been.

  This morning he had dressed in the dark as usual: chocolate-brown corduroy trousers, navy-blue cable-stitch pullover, black shoes and the jacket of his dark-grey suit. His manner was friendly but slightly restless, again a familiar combination. Jake lost no time in asking him whether Alcestis was expected to join them.