'I think it's generally accepted..... Right, my turn, but let's have a kiss first..... Now you do my hip. Let me show you. All the way from here down to here and up again, slowly. Try it..... That's it but not quite so lightly. I find it helps at first to shut your eyes and think of something peaceful, like a garden or a lake. You ought to try that.'
This matter-of-factness helped Jake. He still didn't look forward to the focusings but the gloom their prospect had aroused in him was somewhat alleviated. The hard work he put in each time not to seem to be gritting his teeth seemed to have its effect: there were no more complaints of lack of affection. On the two occasions when Brenda went with him to see Rosenberg in Harley Street and was asked what she thought of her marital situation, she answered in summary that it could be better but was coming along not too badly. Even her reproaches for not coming to the Workshop fell away. He began to feel occasional stirrings of hope, though his relief each time Rosenberg didn't order a return to genital sensate focusing was as heartfelt as ever. Funny how it had worked all right with Eve, he thought to himself more than once, or perhaps the difference was simply that then he had been free, responsible to nothing and nobody.
Over the weekend after the end of term the same small thing happened three times: the telephone rang, Brenda went to or across the kitchen to answer it and was hung up on as soon as she spoke. She mentioned burglars; Jake said they'd be wasting their time. He would have forgotten all about this if a not-quite-so-small-thing hadn't happened on the Monday evening while he was watching the nine o'clock news on BBC 1. The telephone rang; cursing mildly he made his way out and answered it.
'Is it possible to speak to Mrs Richardson please?' asked a very hoarse voice with at least two accents in it, one foreign, another perhaps regional, and a couple of speech impediments.
'I'm afraid she's out.' Earlier, Brenda had said she was going to a film about gypsies with Alcestis, the sort of thing she had done two or three times recently, if not a spiffing scheme in itself then a bloody sight better one than bringing Alcestis here.
'Can I get her later?'
'She won't be back till eleven at the earliest. I suggest you—' Click. Jake would have forgotten all about this too if, ten minutes later, the doorbell hadn't chimed and it hadn't turned out to be Kelly who had caused it to do so.
'Jesus Christ,' he said.
'It's all right, no trouble I promise you, I'm perfectly okay, I can only stay a minute, can I just come into the passage?'
He looked at her. She seemed to have shrunk a good deal since he left her to Ernie, perhaps because of the head-scarf that flattened her hair against her skull and the tightly drawn raincoat, but her manner was much what it had been then. Anyway, what could he do? He stood aside and shut the door after her.
'What do you want? Was it you on the telephone just now?'
'Yes. Brenda hates me. She's probably quite right. Have you told her about me coming to see you in Oxford?'
'Certainly not.'
'Good, I didn't think you would have done. I haven't told anybody, not even my parents. What I wanted to ask you was about this week-end Workshop.'
'What? What week-end Workshop?'
'Didn't Brenda tell you?'
'No. You'd better..... You can't just stand there, take your things off and come and sit down.'
'It's okay, honestly.'
'Do as I tell you. Now what's this all about?'
'It's the week-end after next, starting on the Friday evening, the 8th, at least that's when we're supposed to get there so as to be able to start work in good time in the morning. The place is near Salisbury.'
'I see.' He saw more clearly that she had had her hair cut very short like a kind of rufous helmet. It took three or four years off her apparent age.
'Funny Brenda not telling you, Ed and Dr Rosenberg announced it last Saturday week. I....'
'What?'
'I expect it slipped her mind. Why did you stop coming after just the one time?'
'It simply struck me as frightful rubbish and a complete bore.'
'Oh I quite agree, but..... What I wanted to ask you, do you think you could possibly come to it, the week-end Workshop I mean?'
So many expressions, most of them impure, tried to get out of Jake's mouth at once that for the moment he said nothing articulate.
'You see I'm absolutely dreading it, I can't tell you how much, but my parents want me to go and they're so sweet to me I really can't not go, and I thought if you were there, just there, somebody I trusted, I wouldn't feel so bad. I wouldn't, you know, do anything, I couldn't with Brenda about all the time, could I?'
'I'm sorry, Kelly, but you must realise it's quite impossible.'
She got up at once from the corner of the settee where she had been sitting for less than a minute. 'Never mind, it doesn't really matter, I'm sure I'll manage all right, it was just a thought, of course it was ridiculous to expect you to, I quite understand.'
'I am sorry,' he said, following her into the passage.
'No no, don't be, forget it, I shouldn't have asked, put you in an embarrassing position, just thinking of myself as usual.' Being an erstwhile successful womaniser Jake had acted against his better judgement a number of times, but never more directly and more consciously than when he said, as he did now, 'All right, sod it, I'll see if I can fix it up.'
24—Something I Want to Show You
Fixing it up
