A muffled thumping indicated a new arrival and a series of loud creaks the progress up the passage of Mr Shyster, if indeed it was he. A double series of creaks coming the other way duly followed, there was a light tap at the door and a girl of about twenty came in. She was dressed rather unfashionably (Jake decided) in a terracotta-coloured trouser-suit and frilly green shirt and carried a long umbrella with a curved handle.
"This is Kelly," said the doctor. "All Christian names is the rule here. Kelly, this is Jake and this is Brenda."
"How do you do Jake, how do you do Brenda," said the girl in a pleasant expensive-upbringing voice, shaking hands firmly and looking each of them straight in the eye. Considering her ease of manner, healthy skin and teeth and at least perfectly adequate features (good unsoft mouth), hair (reddish) and figure (far from flat-chested), he found it hard to imagine what her special problem could be.
While Rosenberg was filling in about what Jake did and where Kelly lived (just where Orris Park merged into Hampstead) another person's approach was heard. It proved to be that of Geoffrey Mabbott. He showed not the least surprise at finding the Richardsons there, a very Geoffrey-like reaction but so total that Jake's first thought, soon to be corrected, was that he had been told of their recruitment. Jake's next thought, rounded out later that day, was that he wasn't as surprised to see Geoffrey as he ought by rights to have been, and not just because after all Geoffrey was a bit touched and lived locally. No, the real reason was that Rosenberg always reminded him of Geoffrey. Since bringing to light at their first session that Rosenberg didn't know where Freud functioned, what had happened in 1848 or who James Bond was, he had established with varying degrees of certainty that Rosenberg had never heard of the ''Titanic, haggis, T. S. Eliot, plutonium, Lent, Vancouver (city, let alone island or chap), Herodotus, Sauternes, the Trooping of the Colour, the 'Times Literary Supplement', the battle of Gettysburg, Van Gogh, Sibelius, 'Ulysses'—(a) good going for an Irishman (b) and no doubt Ulysses too-chlorophyll, Florence Nightingale, the Taj Mahal, pelota, lemurs, Gary Cooper and Hadrian's Wall; theoretically, on the face of it, in the strict sense there was no reason why you shouldn't never have heard of one or other or even all of that lot and still be a good psychologist; after all, he hadn't never heard of pornography, parents, marriage, erections and sex; and yet somehow..... (By the way, how had he ever got to hear of sherry-and-Oxford, even sherry and Oxford?) Geoffrey wouldn't never have heard of most of the items on the list but he would tend not to have much idea of who or what they were, scoring not very near misses with the same consistency as Rosenberg showed in not recognising the target at all. In Geoffrey's world Eliot would be a famous actor, of Victorian times, Vancouver a lake in Rhodesia, chlorophyll a newish health food, Florence Nightingale a campaigner for female suffrage. These magpies of his were seldom associated with the wrong bullseye, Eliot not being taken for a female novelist nor chlorophyll for an antiquated anaesthetic; Jake would never have felt easier in his mind about them and about Geoffrey if they had been.
This morning he had dressed in the dark as usuaclass="underline" chocolate-brown corduroy trousers, navy-blue cable-stitch pullover, black shoes and the jacket of his dark-grey suit. His manner was friendly but slightly restless, again a familiar combination. Jake lost no time in asking him whether Alcestis was expected to join them.
"Alcestis?"
"Yes. Is she joining us?"
Geoffrey frowned and shook his head. "No," he said with an upward inflection. "Where did you get that idea from?"
"I didn't get—"
"I mean why should she be joining us?"
"Well, Brenda's here, and I thought—"
"I know, Jake, I know Brenda's here, I've just this moment spoken to her," said Geoffrey, gently enough but with some triumph at having so readily diagnosed the acute senile dementia that must have caused Jake to be brought to this place.
To distract himself from restraining himself from kicking Geoffrey in the balls Jake said, "What's whatsisname like, Ed, the fellow who runs these do's?"
First Geoffrey dilated his eyes. Then he drew in his breath in a long hiss, slowly pouting his lips as he did so. Next he clenched his fists, raised them slowly again to shoulder level, lowered his head until it was between them and pounded his cheekbones rhythmically, meanwhile slowly once more expelling his breath. After that he unclenched his hands, indeed made them quite flat, pushed them out horizontally in front of him to the length of his arms and cut the air with them a number of times. Finally he dropped them to his sides and gave Jake a nod that showed he had finished.
"Oh 'I see,'" said Jake. "My goodness, he does sound an interesting sort of chap."
When the facilitator arrived a few minutes afterwards he was at once distinguishable as such from the two or three other men who turned up at about the same time. Jake didn't quite know what he had expected beyond somebody designed to be as offensive in his sight as possible: hairiness, uncleanliness, youthfulness, jeans, beads, hat etc. The reality was the opposite of all that without being in consequence the least bit more encouraging. Ed turned out to be in his late thirties, heavily built, dark after a Spanish or Italian fashion, wearing an oddly cut oatmeal-coloured suit that was none the less a suit, moving in a way that put you in mind of a cross between an experienced actor and a man well used to responsibility. He soon showed he had a trick of stroking his face in detail while he peered at you. When he spoke it was in a deep slightly wheedling voice.
"All right everybody, let's get to work," he said. "We have a couple of new participants today, Brenda and Jake. Hi Brenda, hi Jake."
Salutations of differing amplitude came from the rest of the company, now seated in a rough square with Ed on his feet in the middle. Counting him and Rosenberg there were twelve persons present, seven men and five women.
"Now let's just introduce you around. This is Lionel, who steals things out of stores and says he can't help it, and this is Winnie, who's so shy she can't stand to talk to anybody even although she comes here every week, and this is Ivor, who's afraid of the dark and being alone and a whole raft of other things, and I have word you know Geoffrey, who gets worried because he's figured out he's an asshole, and this is Ruth, who doesn't have anything to do except cry all the time, and this is Chris, who doesn't like the human race, and this is Kelly, who can't run her life, and this is Martha, who has to look after her mother and says her mother is mean to her."
It wasn't that Ed recited this in a lifeless or even a neutral tone, it was simply that Jake couldn't tell whether he was amused or compassionate or bored or contemptuous or generously indignant. Those so briskly characterised showed no signs of surprise or resentment: Lionel, who stole things, even blinked and pursed his lips in a self-deprecatory fashion as if he thought Ed had in his case been somewhat over-gracious.
After a moment, Ed went smoothly on. "What's with Jake is that he can't get it up any more, and what's with Brenda is she thinks it's her fault for having gotten middle-aged and fat, so she feels bad." (Jake knew they were all looking at him but he didn't look back at any of them.) "Now since we have our two new participants we'll make today a salad. For openers, scanning pairs. Jake, Brenda, that means each of you looks another
person over and they do the same with you but no intimate physical contact. You start with the eyes—the others'll show you. All right—Ivor, Winnie...."