'What about?' asked Brenda in a colourless tone.
Kelly seemed to find this an unexpected question. 'That ghastly session and the incredible things that happened and that criminal man Ed.' When neither Richardson responded immediately she hurried on, 'Of course if you're busy or anything I quite understand, I'll take myself off in a flash, you've really only to say the word.'
Something like sixty-three and a half per cent of this last bit was directed at Jake, who didn't say the word. What he did say (and when taken up later on the point by Brenda said truthfully that when he said it disinclination to chuck someone, anyone out with no decent excuse in sight came first among whatever motives he might have had) was, 'No no, we're not doing anything special, stay and have a cup of tea with us.'
'Oh thank you, you are nice. You see, the reason I've come to you two like this is there's really nobody else I can talk to. The others are all very sweet people, even poor little Chris, his bark's worse than his bite, but they're not what you'd call intellectual giants, well, Ivor's no fool and Martha's quite sensible except about her mother, but you can't sort of 'talk' to them, so up till now I've had to work on my own.'
'Work at what?' asked Brenda as before.
'It may sound silly to you both but I want to expose Ed. Oh not so much Ed personally but the whole Workshop bit. So I, what do you call it, I infiltrated this one. Jolly easy it was too. I just went to my GP, who's a silly little man and I spun him a yarn about not being able to keep a job or settle to anything and having rows with my parents, and he passed me on to that even sillier little man Rosenberg who passed me on to Ed, and there I was, simple as that. I've been going to these get-togethers for six weeks now. Oh I say what a beautiful room, it must have taken you absolute years to get it like this, Brenda, I do congratulate you.'
The room in question was naturally the sitting room into which, Jake carrying the tea tray, the three had now moved. General praises were followed by plenty of particular ones lavished on glass paperweight, trailing plant, some sort of candlestick, some sort of miniature and like lumber. It all went down well enough with Brenda, though it fell some way short of winning her over. Jake put up with it as long as he could before moving back towards a matter that had started to interest him, not a lot, but more than any bleeding paperweight or miniature was going to.
'This business of exposing the Workshop,' he said in a slender interval between such articles. 'You mean publicly? In court, for instance?'
Brenda, as she was apt to. whenever he tried to take a conversation back to an earlier point, gave a look attributing to him either slowness on the uptake or pedantry; for her, things must run on, not back, unless of course Alcestis had a 'story' to finish. But Kelly turned eager again at once and he was touched with surprise and gratitude as the variegated awfulness and fatuity of the day sank for the moment out of sight.
'Well yes,' she said. 'Well, I don't know, I haven't found out enough yet, but how it began, a friend of mine at work went to another Workshop round Sloane Square, and it was absolutely appalling she told me, people beaten up and, you know, group sex and everything, so she stopped going. Then I heard from someone else about Ed, don't repeat this either of you because it may not be true, but this person said that after one of End's sessions a chap had gone straight home and killed himself with sleeping pills. So I thought somebody had better look into it, so I joined as I said and, well, you've both just seen for yourselves.'
'Seen what?' asked Brenda.
'Well, him, Ed, encouraging Chris to be aggressive when what he needs is a damn good smack-bottom and being told not to be so boring, and poor Ruth, you're not going to tell me being made to do all that crying does any good, 'made' to do it, four times over, and Lionel, after this afternoon the only thing he can be is more confused than when he started. And Ivor ought to stick to proper treatment and not..... And making Jake strip,'—straight to Brenda in a relaxed informal interested conversational tone—'just to humiliate him. He did the same thing to Chris two weeks ago after he'd ticked Ed off without being told to. I noticed you talking to him when we stopped for lunch, Jake—how did you hit off with him?'
'He said it was obvious I was hostile.'
'Exactly. Getting back at you. But he doesn't really need that, even, something to set him off. It's just power, hurting and embarrassing and generally abusing everybody and all in the name of therapy and no one to stand in your way.'
Jake offered more tea and was accepted. 'I think in fairness I ought to remind you of what Rosenberg said to me when I resisted. About .... shame and guilt. You could say there was a connection.'
'In this business everything's connected with everything else. I forgot why it was supposed to be good for Chris to strip but I could soon run up an explanation, couldn't you, either of you?'
'Another thing it might interest you to know is that during our chat in the lunch-break he told me his plan for Ruth. What she needs is a shake-up, you see, so when the time comes she'll be put in the hot seat and told what a bloody bore she is. A great help to be told that when you're old and lonely and frightened.'
'The swine. Anyway, thanks for telling me. One more bit of information.'
'He can be very plausible, though. He had me thinking it might be a good idea, and the same with Chris and Ivor.'
'Exactly.'
They looked at each other in silence for a moment, Jake on the corner of the velvet-covered sofa and Kelly sitting animatedly forward on what had used to be called a pouf or pouffe but obviously couldn't be these days; she reminded him for an instant of someone he had recently met, he had no idea who. Brenda had been standing by a carved plant-table near the window; now, announcing by her move that she would join the conversation for a strictly limited period and purpose, she perched on the arm of the chair in which she normally watched TV or read. Her voice was rather livelier than before when she said,
'Er ...'—leaving an empty space where Kelly's name would have fitted—'do you mind if I ask you a question?'
'No, Brenda, of course not.'
'You say you, what was it, you infiltrated the Workshop so as to show it up, so that means you faked being somebody who needed therapy, psychotherapy.'
'Yes, I went to quite a lot of trouble actually, but I indent have bothered, it was as easy as pie, as I said.'
