"I should think so, darling. I suppose it might be a bit awkward if it ever came up, but I can't see why it should. And it doesn't make any difference, does it?"
"Not now."
"I'm going to rest. I shan't sleep but I must rest or I'll feel terrible in the morning. I mean later on. Try not to worry. As I said, you're not to blame in the least."
Jake agreed with Brenda about resting and sleeping but got it wrong: he dropped off almost at once and was woken by the heat four hours later. Much the same turned out to have happened to her. On the feeling-terrible front his achievement was well above par, nothing on the scale of the morning after Eve but with similar all-round coverage of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, moral. As for worrying he was well into that by the time his eyes were open, so far that he couldn't get round to considering whether he was to blame or not: perhaps he was an innocent instrument but there was no doubt whatever that he was an instrument.
If breakfast was to be had at all he must do no more than dress, comb hair and pee before plunging downstairs. With Brenda at his side, full of complaint about how ghastly she looked, he found something called a dining room. The sun shone brightly on the non-prestige furniture, plastic tablecloths and haircord carpeting. There was a kind of sideboard with doll's-house packets of cereal, quarter-pints of milk, "sachets" of sugar and other easier-for-them items that recalled the Comyns buttery. No cooked food was available. You got your coffee out of a machine, and having done that you couldn't get it back in.
The room was set with tables for four, only about half of which were to any degree laid, so Ivor had been right in his estimate of the non-fullness of the house. Here he was now, hurrying over to them.
"Ed and Frank would like to see you in the committee-room as soon as you're ready-same side of the hall as this at the back," he said and was gone.
Brenda had agreed with Jake that it would be more comfortable to discuss Kelly's case as little as possible, so they picked the table already part occupied by Ruth and Winnie, an ideal pair for the present purpose at any rate. On his left Jake had a window that gave him a view of a stretch of lawn in need of cutting, a tall thick hedge and then nothing until some low hills with a few trees and dumps of bushes and what looked from here like smooth densely growing grass, and sky of course, in no way remarkable but quite grand on such a bright day. And yet not so grand, he felt, as the same scene would have looked to him five or ten years ago. 'Then' it would have been apparelled in ti-tum ti-tum, the glory and the freshness of a dream. Was that what Wordsworth had been on about without knowing it? How old had he been when he wrote the Ode? Thirty-something? But then he aged early in other respects. Get on to Lancewood.
Within five minutes both Jake and Brenda had had enough "breakfast", he not wanting much, she not allowed much. They soon ferreted out the committee-room, which might well have once been the office of the chief administrator of the nursing home, though most likely not designed by him: it was low-ceilinged and, even on a morning like this, dark enough to need artificial light. A minor obstacle to the natural sort was afforded by the panel of stained glass that took up the top third of what there was of a window. Although several degrees below the ones at Comyns it was the only thing in the entire place, large or small, inside or out, that might stick in the mind for ten seconds after the eye had passed over it. Human figures were represented but making out who they were, if anybody in particular, wasn't easy, at least to Jake.
Rosenberg and Ed, who was wearing sunglasses of the deepest dye, sat together behind a table with a telephone on it and enough in the way of notebooks and pens to establish them in a business-conducting posture. Ivor was in attendance, also, unexpectedly, Geoffrey. As he took one of the identical straight-backed chairs with dark-green seats, Jake asked if there was any news of Kelly.
"Not yet," said Rosenberg. "There won't be for hours."
"Have her parents been informed?"
This time Ed answered. "She has no parents. Not in any real sense. Her father died of drink and her step-father, who lives with her mother in Belfast, won't have her in their home after she tried to burn it down the second time."
"Everybody please understand that's confidential," said Rosenberg.
"The only person to inform," Ed went on, "is her landlady in Hampstead, and that can certainly wait until we know more."
Jake nodded his head. He looked at the stained-glass panel. It was divided vertically into three scenes: a kneeling girl above whom a heavily robed male figure was raising a sword, the same figure with lowered sword contemplating a quadruped about the sire of a large dog, and the girl from the first scene accompanied by someone of uncertain sex carrying a curved wand and directing her towards a classical portico. He knew the subject but couldn't place it.
"We asked you to stop by," Ed was saying, "to let you know we decided on a cover-story for Kelly. Suicide, even a fake one, well, it depresses a lot of people, just the thought of it, and we want the folks to get on with their work without being bothered. Frank and I have staked a lot on this Workshop and we want it to be a success. So we pass it around that Kelly's suffering from an acute allergy that needs hospital attention but isn't dangerous."
"With a very high fever as the main symptom," put in Rosenberg.
"She woke up, knew she was sick, found Frank, he got her back to bed to wait for the ambulance. Long as we all tell the same tale if we're asked we'll be okay." Ed gave a quiet reflective laugh. "Isn't it great? Allergy. They'll swallow anything. And I go for that, it solves our Kelly problem nice and neat."
The last phrase made Jake speak more sharply than he had intended. "I take it you have been in touch with the hospital?"
"Like Frank said, Jake, they won't know anything for a long time."
"You mean you haven't rung them up."
"That's what I mean, Jake."
"Well I suggest you ring them now. They'll know whether she's alive or dead, I imagine.
"If she was dead we'd know soon enough."
"Quite possibly. All the same I'd like to be told one way or the other."
"Anybody else like to be told?" asked Ed, looking round the room.
Brenda didn't speak. Geoffrey had obviously seen through the cunning attempt to betray him into indiscretion, and likewise kept quiet. Ivor said he'd like to be told.
"All right." Ed looked through a ring-spine notebook, drew the telephone towards him and began to dial. While he was doing so he said without looking round, "Ivor, go tell the folks we'll be starting late, like fifteen minutes. We're having .... administrative problems. That'll hold "em..... Good morning, I'm inquiring after a Miss Gambeson, a Miss Janet Gambeson who was admitted as a casualty around five o'clock this morning..... No, I'm afraid I don't." He turned towards Jake. "Her name isn't Kelly. I doubt that it's Janet either. Or Gambeson. Not that it matters worth a damn what she calls herself..... Yes?..... Thank you." He rang off. "She's still unconscious. Just like we said."
Ivor had come back in time to hear this. "Well, that's something."
After a pause, Ed said pleasantly, "That's all we need you for, Brenda, but we'd like Jake to stay." When she looked inquiring, he added, "There's a little bit of digging we'd like to do about Kelly."
"I wouldn't mind staying for that too, unless you...."
"No no, fine, you stay if you want, you'll probably be able to help. Now Frank, do you want to carry the ball for a bit?"
"Thank you, Ed." Rosenberg did want to. He didn't actually grasp the lapels of his unsightly cream-coloured linen jacket, but his tone made up for that. "Now as some of you may know, when a person of this kind enters a suicidal situation there are two main aims or objectives. One is to arouse attention and concern, the so-called cry for help. The other objective is to carry out an act of revenge on some other person, usually for a sexual or family reason, to make that other person feel guilty, anxious and so on. An invariable accompanying feature is that the subject takes very careful precautions against dying. If th
at does happen, it's an accident. Something has gone wrong—the person in the next room doesn't smell the gas, the rope round the neck doesn't break."
Jake had now identified the subject of the window. The curved wand was a bow, its bearer was Artemis, the portico was that of her temple at Tauris, the girl was Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and the beast was the deer supernaturally substituted for her by Artemis to forestall her sacrifice at Aulis. Shockingly rendered, but then. For a moment he felt pleased with himself.
"Now I strongly suspect," continued Rosenberg, sounding very Irish for some reason, "that that was what happened in this case, but I don't know what went wrong. If that second person, the one on whom an act of revenge was intended, if he exists, who is he? He might be somebody we don't know of, somebody who was supposed to telephone at midnight, say, but telephones are too unreliable and I just don't believe it. Since this happened here, I strongly suspect that the second person—if he exists—is also here. Here in this room. I've .... eliminated Lionel."
"I'm your man," said Jake at once. "She asked me to come and see her some time after midnight to be shown what she called a kind of letter. Which it was in a sense. I talked it over with my wife and decided it would be safer not to go."
There was silence. Ivor looked incredulous, Geoffrey puzzled for once in his life. Brenda glanced at Jake and gave him an approving nod and smile. Ed did the same in his thank-Christ-quite-different manner and said,
"Good, Jake. Excellent. I hope you're not feeling bad about it? We all understand why you didn't go along. None of us would have—I hope. You were absolutely right not to."
"How can you say that after what's happened? 'Of course' I'm feeling bad about it."
"Jake, you mustn't, you mustn't!" Ed spoke with great and impressive earnestness. "Can't you see, you idiot, it's what she wants, it's her malice and her awful..... You're falling for it, you're playing it her way by feeling bad. She's 'sick' Jake, it's not like you've mistreated some normal human being as we all do all the time and pay the penalty. See it for what it is, a vicious child's game with you cast as loser. Have the flexibility to.... oh, God."
"She won't die, darling," said Brenda. "You can be quite certain of that. I'm sure there are accidents as Dr Rosenberg says, but Kelly isn't going to have one, she's too bright in the way she's bright. You said last night, I mean earlier this morning, you said she'd have found out about the dose. Indeed she would, she'd have found out what was a completely safe dose, and it doesn't matter to her if it's a laughably safe dose and everybody knows it was that 'afterwards'. She'll have had her hour and made her point and be on to something else by then."
"Right, Brenda. Very good."
For a moment Jake tried to push out of his mind the memory of a weeping face, then stopped trying. He had wondered at the time what Kelly had been "expressing" at Mr Shyster's; now he knew. Hatred. Of whom or what? Of self. But there could be no such thing: all that could be meant was the hatred felt by one part of the self for another. Perhaps in her that hating part was powerless, able to do no more than look on aghast at the acts the other displayed and to grieve at them. How dismal, if true.
"Er, may I ask a question?" This was Geoffrey. He was frowning. "There's something I'm afraid I can't quite follow." (Like the arrow to the Gents, you sodding moron, thought Jake.) "If, er, if Kelly was revenging herself on Jake, what was she revenging herself for, I mean because of what? Had Jake offended her or something?"
"Yes I had. She tracked me down in my rooms in Oxford and offered herself to me, Christ, bloody well tried to rape me, and I .... fended her off in a very ungraceful, ungracious way, and she called me every filthy name she could lay her tongue to and said everything she could think of that she thought might hurt me...." He turned to Brenda and said, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, I wish I had. I was going to and then it sort of got too late."
"I understand perfectly."
There was an edge to her tone he didn't much care for but he forgot about that when Ed, who had been nodding slowly and sapiently in time with Rosenberg, butted in by saying,
"Then I guess we got the hysterics and tears and self-reproaches bit, right?"
"Right, I mean yes. And then, I suppose it was the pathetic bit."
More nodding. Geoffrey held up his hand like a schoolboy. "Er..... It must have been a very unpleasant experience for you."
"Good, I'm glad I managed to get that across."
"Well then, why did you come here when you must have known you'd be bumping into her?"
"Because she asked me to," said Jake, raising his voice. "Because she came round and saw me and did her pathetic 'bit.'"
"After what had happened in Oxford?"
"Precisely. That was the order of events."
"All right, you two," said Ed. "We're all finished here. Very good Jake, you seem to have it straightened out now. And thank you for straightening us out, me and Frank. We have everything we need. Case dosed. Come on everybody, let's go do some work."
"Just a minute if you don't mind." Jake's voice was back to its normal level. "What exactly do you mean by case closed?"
"That there's nothing more to be said. With your help we have assembled one classic sortie of one type of hopeless neurotic."
"I can think of one or two more things to be said. Doesn't either of you feel any sense of responsibility for what's happened?"
"We feel concerned, of course, since she's our patient, in very different senses in our two cases."
"Do you now? But I was talking about responsibility. Anyway, how long has she been your patient in very different senses?"
"Just over a year," said Rosenberg. He seemed curious to know where this discussion might lead.
"Since March." Ed seemed to know roughly where and not to mind.
"And has she made one of these suicide attempts or phoney suicide attempts before?"
"Not that I know of," said Rosenberg.
"Well you know of one now. Doesn't it strike you at all that that means she's got worse while you've been "treating" her? While she's been undergoing your "therapy"?"
Ed squeezed his chin and said rather wearily, "It might have happened at any time. Any time at all."
"And you've always been and always will be quite powerless to prevent it or render it to the slightest extent less likely. Which matters a bit, some people might think, because even a phoney suicide attempt is quite a serious matter, not just a fairly interesting example of something, which is all you seem to see in it. As your mate was saying, they do sometimes succeed. Kelly isn't alive yet."
"No let him finish, Frank. After all, he's our patient too, remember."
"Only for the next couple of minutes, and that only in case I may say something I'd prefer to be privileged, if that still counts at all. Let's try a spot of adding up. You've done less than nothing for Kelly. How about Ivor? Ivor, have you improved since you started going to Ed?"
"I think I'm about the same, thank you Jake."
"Nothing for Ivor. What about Chris? Perhaps you cured him and sent him on his way rejoicing. Did you?"
"Jake, I don't deal in cures." Ed sounded angry but in full command of himself. "Did I offer you a cure? I aim to release checks on emotion and to improve insight, that's all."
"Funny how it's got about that both of those must be good. Stop bottling up that emotion that makes you want to hit your wife with a sledgehammer. Gain insight, you're bound to like what you see. To prefer it to what you couldn't see before. Let me tell you, 'Ed', there's no such thing as a totally phoney suicide attempt. They all want to be at least a little bit dead for a little while. If you were Kelly and found out more about yourself, how would you feel? More likely to knock yourself off or less? And talking of Kelly, there's a small piece of her that can see properly, of course there is or what is it that's gaining insight, but you'll never reach it, not with your methods. Methods, Christ. You just make it up as you go along, which I suppose you call being empirical if you
know the word, and there'll always be plenty of applicants, lonely pansies like Lionel who want a nice chat and poor old dears like Ruth who want a good cry and fatheads like Geoffrey who want to show off. What you're up to is hideously boring to anyone without wants or needs of that sort. But then on the other hand it's intellectually beneath contempt—I should have made it dear that the whole of this bit applies equally to your undistinguished colleague. As against all that what you do is dangerous in the extreme. And yet when you come to weigh it up it's funny too, in other words it would be impossible for anyone with a grain of humour in them. All you have, but in abundance, is arrogance and effrontery. Oh, and a certain amount of greed."
"Have you finished?" asked Ed.
"I think so. Should there be more?"
"You're the best judge of that, Jake. I've let you run on because anybody can see you have this most painful conflict between concern for a martyr-figure and anger at having been made the victim of a—"
"I'm not letting you run on, old boy, I can't have you explaining me, that would be, as you would certainly say, too much. I cease to be your patient as of this moment. And also, in a very different sense of course, junior's patient too."
"Mr Richardson," said Rosenberg, "may I talk to you in private for just a few minutes?"
"Certainly. Hang on." Jake moved across to Brenda and tried to signal or will her to leave the room with him, using every means short of verbal directive, but she sat on in her chair next to the doorway and looked at him without curiosity. It occurred to him that in the last couple of minutes he had rather pissed on the proceedings, thereby breaking a promise, and pissed on Geoffrey, shown himself to be at least momentarily against him, too. "Sorry," he said to her, feeling hard up for words. "Things sort of got on top of me. I'd better be off, get a train. Sorry."
"I understand," she said as before.
"Well .... cheerio, love. See you when? Tomorrow night? Okay, fine."
As he made to kiss her cheek she seemed to relent and kissed him on the mouth with some warmth. He waved in a general fashion at the rest of the room, looking at nobody, and went. After a word to Ed to start without him, Rosenberg followed.
Jake's Thing Page 26
