'I suggest we move outside,' said Jake. 'You probably wouldn't want us to be overheard.'
There was a door near by. A gravel path with bald patches took them to a rough lawn that was much larger than the one to be seen from the dining room. It gave extensive hospitality to buttercups, daisies, dandelions, chickweed, groundsel, charlock, viper's bugloss, plantain, moss and couch. Near its middle stood a large elm tree which might well have been on the point of toppling over from disease but for the moment kept the sun off satisfactorily.
'It's most important—' began Rosenberg.
'First me, then you,' said Jake. 'I don't want to hurt your feelings unnecessarily or say anything I might regret, so I'll just tell you you're a disgrace to the medical profession, which admittedly is saying something. As practised by you, sexual therapy doesn't exist. There are things that are merely treated as parts of a figment called that, the pathetic bits and pieces of machinery and pornography and genital and non-genital sensate focusing and early sexual experiences and fantasies and Christ knows what that you've tried to make me mistake for a technique, a coherent method. Yes, those fantasies. You were quite right about them, not that it matters in the very least, that stuff I wrote for you wasn't 'serious' at all. I told you I have no homosexual feelings, no sadism or anything like that, I'm not a voyeur, anyway not in the usual sense, but I am given to thoughts of subjecting women to certain indignities, I'll say no more than that. Except that I've never put those thoughts into practice and never will now I knew none of it would have shocked you, but that's not the point: it's private, you see. And I don't think the fact that I was born in 1917 has any bearing. Plenty of my contemporaries wouldn't have minded telling me all about such matters, let alone you. And there must be the same division among youngsters, though I'm sure you apply the same 'method' to everybody People's behaviour changes, 'society' changes, but not feelings. And while we're on 'society' let me remind you of something you said to me in that terrible pub, something about repressive attitudes making me feel sexually unrelaxed. Repressive? In 1977? I was doing fine when things really were repressive, if they ever were, it's only since they've become. oh, permissive that I've had trouble. In the old days a lot of people, men as well as women, didn't know what to expect of sex so they didn't worry when it didn't work too well. Now everybody knows exactly what's required of them and exactly how much they've fallen short down to the last millimetre and second and drop, which is frightfully relaxing for them. No wonder you boys have got enough trade.
'Hence guilt and shame at inadequacy—all quite superficial according to you. Do you still think so? As regards the other lot, your lot, I mean my alleged deep-down guilt and shame about sex itself, what makes you think that what's deep down is more important than what's up top? Anyway, I suppose it is possible they'd been there all the time but totally screened by my libido, which eventually receded and left them in full view. But if that's what they are they're only the foundation of something quite different, as I tried to explain when I was telling you about that woman I had in Oxford.' He paused again. 'What outlandish bits of anatomy, what an extraordinary thing to do, what curious reactions you keep saying to yourself. It's like being a child again, when an older boy's telling you the story and it all seems too unlikely for words. And when you do it, any of it, it's as if it's abnormal, almost monstrous. I know it isn't really. You can't imagine how you ever....'
Jake gave it up. A scream sounded from the house, no doubt uttered by a participant occupied in self- draining or ensconced in the hot seat.
'And you wouldn't have minded being overhead telling me any of this?' Rosenberg had received Jake's strictures with a composure that indicated an extreme of either humility or complacency.
'Good for you, Frank. No, because I won't be seeing any of them again.'
'Except your wife.'
'Yes, but that's rather different. Now you must excuse me.'
'What about my turn to speak?'
'I've cancelled it. Nothing you could say would interest me.'
'Mr Richardson, if we were to go on from where you've just brought us, I'm sure we could make a very —'
'No we couldn't, you'd never reach me, I say, that sounds like one of your words, any more than you could reach Kelly. Not really the same sort of person as I am. I'd think about that if 1 were you, doctor.'
'I'd be glad to recommend other practitioners with different approaches.'
'Thank you, but for one thing they'd all be too unconventional and unpuritanical for me. Good-bye.' There was a handshake. 'You know, now it comes to it and I realise I shan't be coming to see you any more I can't help feeling, how shall I put it, full of fun.'
Jake's last sight of Rosenberg had his little figure standing under the elm in sad thought for a moment, then violently slapping the back of his neck at the assault of some serviceable insect. It was the only human thing he had ever seen him do and it seemed to show up his total nullity as a person. The house was very dark after the glare of outdoors. No sound came from the conference-room. Jake telephoned for a taxi, went upstairs, shaved and packed his bag. He thought of writing a note for Brenda but soon decided against it: if he was to say anything he would have had to say a great deal, and he would be seeing her the next evening.
Shortly after five o'clock that afternoon a nurse told him that Miss Gambeson was now sleeping normally. He said thank you, declined to leave a message, went to the station and was back home for a full Saturday evening's viewing.
26—What, and Miss Television?
Brenda didn't get home till midnight on the Sunday. She explained that there had been a little party after the official closure of the Workshop, nothing very wild, just a few bottles of Italian wine. Thanks to Ivor's abilities and the lack of traffic they had made an amazingly quick journey. Yes, all things considered the weekend had been a great success. These and other matters were treated with the affable remoteness he had begun to observe in her recent behaviour. Soon they agreed that it was getting late and retired to their separate rooms as usual.
The next morning Jake awoke rather before his usual time, but feeling more rested than he had for weeks, so instead of turning to and fro on the off-chance that a girl would cross his mind he got up, put on dressing-gown and slippers and went down to the kitchen. While he waited for the kettle to boil he opened the back door. It was going to be another hot day, though with that faint heaviness of or in the air that can betoken the imminent end of a fine spell, especially to someone who has just read in the paper that unsettled weather is forecast. He looked at the garden, advanced a step or two into it. Rain or shine the grass would have to be cut soon, the chrysanthemums staked and all the roses dead-headed, and ideally much else done besides, but in the last four or five years even this tennis-court sized plot had begun to be too much for him, not physically but mentally or morally—he couldn't be fucking bothered. These days what he did do he did largely to prevent it being said that he had let the place go to rack and ruin. Once, Brenda would have given him a hand with the light jobs just as he had done his bit indoors; now, their respective spheres were theirs almost exclusively.
Thinking of things being too much for him stirred the thought that he was going to be sixty the following week. This seemed to him an indefensibly ludicrous proposition; there must be some mistake. If, when he was in
