'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 seance, though there of course your feelings would have been rather different-more
