Stanley and the Women (17 page)

I had
wondered whether Morgan Wyndham would be inquisitive or tremendously casual or
just determined to delay me, but he was not even there. Only a major disaster
could get me now, and before one could arrive I ran out. Rather than wait for
the lift I charged down the stairs, along the street, across and along again,
and almost banged into Lindsey coming out of the swing doors of her paper.

‘Ah,’
I said, feeling a great surge of relief. ‘Are you
lunching somewhere?’

‘Yes,
but I’ve got a minute. Right.’

She
meant she agreed to a quick swallow in the pub next along but two, the one she
and her mates always went to. Like all newspaper pubs it was nothing like the
nicest in walking distance, not even the nicest a minute away, just the
nearest. Inside, the noise from the people almost drowned the music. There was
nowhere to sit, and there seemed to be nowhere to stand either, except in the
hearth each side of an unlit gas fire. I bought drinks and carried them over,
trying to keep them unspilled by moving three-quarters backwards through the
customers, who were huddled along the bar three or four deep and shoulder to
shoulder like a crowd waiting to watch a procession go by. The row seemed to
have got worse since we came in, but it was too late to go anywhere else and
the Crown and Sceptre would probably have been as bad by this time.

‘How
did you know how to find me?’ shouted Lindsey, having sensibly held back till
we reached this stage. Then she shouted something else I missed.

‘Genius.’
I found that at least I could put my glass down on the mantelpiece. ‘I had to
tell you —’

‘Who
was that madwoman you had with you just now? What the hell was the matter with
her that she went on like that? Do you know your tastes are getting quite extraordinary.’

‘That’s
actually what I came to tell you about, love. Listen, will you believe me if I
swear something is true?’

‘I
might. Try me and see.’

‘She
and I are not, repeat not, having an affair.’

‘Not… I’ve got it. Oh, you’re not? She went on as if you were.

And a
sight less subtle on the subject than you were, darling, I thought. I said, or
rather bawled, ‘That was just her, I’ve no idea what she was playing at. But
surely you saw me going on as if I wasn’t?’

‘Well,
you would, wouldn’t you, in the circs?’

‘Maybe.
But it’s not so, I promise you. It’s
not so.’

‘Stanley,
have you come all this way just to tell me that?’

‘Yeah.
Don’t ask me why, eh?’

‘Oh,
come on. Between old friends. What makes you feel so strongly?’

‘I just
couldn’t stand the idea. Of you making that mistake. She revolts me.’ I had
said the last part without thinking, and it was close, but still not quite
tight. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

‘I
might if you tell me who she is. She obviously isn’t anything to do with the
Chronicle.
I think I get full marks there for keeping my Irish temper in check and not
retorting to the insult to my intelligence. And you’ll have to tell me too what
you were doing with her, and it had better be good.’

‘Some
check. You went for her like a bleeding pickpocket. Quite right, though, mind
you. But what if she’d been on the point of buying an acre of space off me?’

‘No
serious concern would let a cow like that buy pussy. Fess up now, Stanley — who
is she?’

‘Who’d
you think she is?’ I said to hold off the inevitable.

‘Christ,
I took her for something you’d picked up when you were pissed and were
desperately trying to ditch. You greeted me like a hundred-pound note. And then
she buggered it up for you.’

‘I never
get as pissed as that. I wouldn’t touch her with yours, if you know what I
mean.’ Again, true as far as it went. ‘And I don’t pick up anything when I’m
pissed these days.’

‘Tamed.
Poor old Stan. Now … deliver.’

‘She’s
the psychiatrist who’s looking after my son Steve who’s had a psychological
breakdown.’ On the way here I had reconciled myself to telling her that, though
perhaps not to yelling it at her as I had had to do, but there it was.

‘What?’
She screwed her face. ‘Sorry.’

‘My son’s
in a mental home,’ I roared, ‘and she’s the doctor.’

After a
second of shock she laid her hand on my left shoulder and her head on my right.
I put my arm around her waist and took her free hand. There was a short pause.
When she moved back she looked at me in a kind way I had never seen before,
miming the message that nothing much to the point could be said here and now. I
nodded.

‘Would
you like to tell me about it? Some other time?’

I
nodded again. ‘I’ll give you a ring. Thanks.’

Not
long after that Lindsey took herself off to her lunch. I got hold of a
Carlsberg Special Brew and tried for a cheese sandwich, but they only had Brie
and French bread, so I took that. I ate it jammed in a corner with the plate
under my chin taking alternate bites of Brie and bread because there was
nowhere to put the plate down and spread the one on the other. Then I went back
to the office and kipped for a spell in the library. Nobody ever disturbed you
there.

I tried to get Lindsey
next morning at her office, but she was out. So I tried to leave a message, but
nobody knew how to find the person I could leave it with. I had another go in
the afternoon, no more successful, and after that sort of gave up. In any case
there was less incentive now, after the long cheering chat I had had with Susan
the previous evening. On the Collings wordage she took the line that the jargon
of any trade was likely to strike outsiders as crude and rubbishy.

‘I’d
try to forget it if I were you, darling,’ she said. ‘And the other thing of
course is that some of the best people in their line are bloody hopeless when
they try to explain it.’

‘Yes,’
I said, ‘I thought of that.’

‘You
certainly get that with writers. There are all sorts of examples. Oh … Yes,
Nabokov. You know,
Lolita.
Talks balls by the yard about what he does
and yet he’s an absolutely super novelist. Wait and see, that’s the ticket.’

But
when I got on to what I reckoned had been Collings’s general approach, as
opposed to just her style, Susan was less encouraging.

‘What
kind of theory?’ she asked.

‘Well,
something like mental trouble being caused or anyway helped on by experiences
in childhood, where obviously what the parents did or didn’t do is important. I
was reading an article by some American the other week that said something like
that.’

‘Some
American will say anything, won’t he, if you give him time. So Steve had a
breakdown because you took no notice or the wrong kind of notice of him when he
was little. Nasty as well as crap. Did she act hostile, this creature? Why aren’t
you drinking?’

‘I
thought I’d had enough for a bit.’

‘Yes, I
noticed you were rather pissed when you came in. You can afford to be a little
more pissed than that after the day you’ve had. Where were we? Oh yes —
hostile?’

‘More
clinical,’ I said en route to the drinks tray. ‘I don’t want to say she was
hostile when what I mean is I didn’t like what she was telling me. No, but
there were definite hostile bits.’

‘You
said she was sort of sexy but getting it wrong. Did — sorry, you must be fed up
with answering questions, but did she … issue anything in the way of an
invitation to you? It wouldn’t surprise me, with such an attractive man.’ She
beamed at me.

I
beamed back. ‘Yeah, I thought so.’

‘And I
presume the lady received a dusty answer. You know when you were talking on the
telephone I thought it sounded as if she was taking it out of you for
something. I bet that’s it. I bet that’s it.’

‘You
seriously … you mean because she flies a little kite and I don’t want to
know, she decides to even up by trying to prove I neglected my son. My God.’

‘Oh, I’m
sure she didn’t decide to do anything. None of it would have been conscious.
She’d have said she was doing a perfectly ordinary piece of objective analysis.
You know what women are like. You ought to by now.’

‘Now I
come to think of it she did remind me of Nowell. More than once. But I mean, my
God.’

Then
Susan said it was only a guess and went off to run up dinner. On further
inspection I threw out her guess — doctors were trained not to behave like
that. I held firm even though I had in my possession one solid piece of
evidence in its favour that was hidden from Susan. It showed great powers of
something-or-other to have got there unassisted by knowing about Lindsey’s
little demonstration that she had a stake in me, which Collings could not have
found at all funny. And I had probably made things worse by if not actually
dribbling with lust then at least by making some sign that feelings were
mutual. But that assumed that Collings was capable of … Sod it.

Actually
I had shut up about Lindsey altogether, both today and last Friday. This
keeping-dark was required anyway by the regular blanket ban on mentioning as
much as the name of one female to another unless it was absolutely necessary.
More than that, though, I had told Susan about the affair I had had with
Lindsey pretty well straight away, in one of those fits of blurting that come
over some men when they fall in love. In the telling I had made it as plain as
a dozen pikestaffs that the whole thing had been over before I had ever met
her. Never mind — my confession, which was what my harmless bit of reminiscing
had turned into almost from the word go, ended up a disaster, needing a pair of
Regency candlesticks and dinner at the Connaught. I had forgotten, or perhaps
in those days had yet to learn, the rule about comparability, avoidance of. You
can let on that you once slept with the Richard who sweeps the floors and sells
the french letters at the barber’s or with a royal, and mostly get away with
it, but not when it was someone they were at Oxford at the same time as, even
if the two have barely set eyes on each other since. Except perhaps to announce
her death I could never again mention Lindsey to Susan.

Over
kedgeree and Spanish plonk in the kitchen I mentioned Nash and his reaction to
the news of Collings. When I had finished my mention Susan said, ‘Old Robbie
telephoned today about something and I told him I’d run into a shrink called
Nash, because the name had rung a faint bell in my head, and Robbie knew it
straight away. Apparently apart from being very eminent in his field he made a
terrific splash in the Fifties with a book for the general reader about madness
in literature. It seems Cyril Connolly raved about it, but of course he often… Anyway, Robbie said he thought he could get hold of a copy for me. Well, it’s
a fascinating subject.’

I could
never have explained, even to myself, why it was that my general estimate of
Nash, highish almost from the start and inclined to lift under the influence of
today’s events, took a small but sharp dive at this disclosure. Of course I
kept my mouth shut about that. Later Susan played the hi-fl, Bach and then I
thought Nielsen. Later still she did a marvellous job of impressing on me that
I was not to blame myself for whatever it was that had happened to Steve. She
had hardly started before I became too drunk to remember afterwards any of the
individual bits, but the general effect lasted me well into the next day and
even took some of the punch out of my hangover. Nothing actually happened that
day — two men and a woman told me at different times that Thurifer Chemicals
were staying with their half-page after all, and Trish Collings phoned me at
work to make an appointment at her hospital at 9 the following morning. Nowell
had promised to be there too, said Collings. Fat bleeding chance, I thought to
myself, as regards your 9 a.m. anyway. And why 9 a.m., come to that? To show who
was boss, said Susan, and I tried not to agree, because I had decided it was
better all round to give Collings the benefit of any doubt. Well, almost any.

An alarm phone-call woke
me at 7. My first action after ringing off was to grab the usual large jug of
water beside the bed and take a hearty gulp. This turned out too late to
contain some live creature which had no doubt fallen or flown there, not long
before, probably, because to judge by the results inside me there was still
quite a bit of flight left in it. I stumbled out of the dark bedroom and hung
over the wc for a minute or two, thinking very hard about not being sick and
impressing on myself a fact learnt in childhood, that there was enough acid in
my stomach to burn a hole in a carpet.

After
some long, unaffected groans, a go with the toothbrush and a hot shower with
shampoo I felt very tired. Nothing occurred between then and the time I left
the house that would surprise anyone who has ever got up in the morning in
London or a similar place. When I took Susan up a cup of tea she again offered
to come on the trip with me and I again thanked her and said there was no need.

It was
raining busily away when I started on my disagreeable journey. I took the Apfelsine
through the middle — straight down the hill, along past the office, across
Blackfriars Bridge, to the Elephant and into the Old Kent Road. Very likely
other routes would have been cleverer, but that morning the thought of even
trying to be clever seemed dreadful, not to be borne. At first the traffic was
so light that I looked like getting there in about ten minutes, but then an
almost stationary Belgian container-lorry, stuck trying to back into a
side-turning and so gigantic it must have been built for laughs, put my mind at
rest. South of the river I was on home ground, or not far off. By the time I
got to New Cross I had come to within five miles of where I had been born and
brought up.