sort of woman does it take to measure what happens to chaps' willies for a living? What does your mummy do? And how can her husband cope? The she he meant was entirely the fair professor; Miss Newman never entered his thoughts. It was that, he saw afterwards, that made the whole shooting-match bearable: by luck or amazing judgement they had passed over for the artificial-stimulator-wielding spot all the impossible kinds of person, to wit males, attractive females and unattractive females, and come up with somebody as near nobody as anybody could be, somebody totally unmemorable, somebody who did nothing at all except as ordered. Or perhaps her behaviour, or absence of behaviour, was the result of her having been carefully briefed in the interests of relaxation of atmosphere and total informality.
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 habitue 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
