"Bit of a coincidence, wouldn't that be, or have I got it wrong? I expect I have. I just thought he was terrifically brave."
"Perhaps he was. I told him I thought so, which can't do any harm, I suppose, though he didn't seem to take it in much."
They were nearly home now, hurrying through the rain that had begun to fall. Two carloads of Asians dawdled past. Brenda said hesitantly.
"What did you think of the other stuff, the other people?"
"Oh I really don't know, don't ask me yet. I'm what Ed would do doubt call too close to it."
"All right. But you were good. Can't have been much fun."
"Thank you darling."
As soon as they were indoors Brenda slipped out to the kitchen and put the kettle on; Jake followed.
"You can't have tea at this time," he told her, "it's a quarter to seven."
"Oh can't I, you just watch me. It's either that or gin and it had better not be gin. Not for a bit anyway."
"What I could really do with is a cigarette."
She gave him a glance of sympathy but said nothing. After a moment he picked up her discarded coat and headscarf and put them with his own hat and coat in the hall cupboard, which had a floral china doorknob on it. An aeroplane went slowly by, or rather not slowly at all but staying in earshot for about three-quarters of an hour. With greater intensity than ever before he wished he still had his "libido", because if he had he and Brenda would be on their way upstairs now to make love. Of course they would; nothing like the Workshop had ever come their way before but of course they would. The thing about you and your wife making love was that it made things all right, not often for ever but always for a time and always for longer than the actual love-making. In that it was unique: adultery could make life more interesting but it couldn't make things all right in a month of Sundays. And as for booze you must be joking—as well expect a fairly humane beating—up to do the job.
He went back into the kitchen where Brenda was spooning the Jackson's Earl Grey, one of their few indulgences, into the teapot, which was floral too.
"Look at me not making buttered toast," she said.
"I do so, and I admire."
"Twelve pounds I've lost in just three weeks. The Guzzlers say that's as fast as it's safe to go."
"I'm sure they're right."
The doorbell chimed. Jake always wished it wouldn't do that but would ring or be a buzzer instead; the trouble was it counted as being outside the house, which was his province, and he couldn't be bothered so it went on chiming. Anyway, when he opened the door he found Kelly was there, though she wasn't for long; she furled her umbrella and stepped across the threshold so promptly and confidently that he at once assumed that Brenda had invited her during one of the breaks at Mr Shyster's and for some odd reason neglected to mention it. Standing now by the cheval glass the girl nodded and smiled inquiringly at him.
"We're in the kitchen," he said; "Brenda's just making a cup of tea."
"Oh marvellous. Is it this way?"
Brenda had entered upon the very act of tea making. The look she gave reversed Jake's understanding as fast as it had formed: the appearance of Kelly was a surprise to her, and not a particularly welcome one either. If the second half of this was noted it wasn't reacted to; Kelly walked over to the sink and stood her umbrella up in it to drain, talking eagerly the while.
"It's so kind of you both to let me just barge in on you like this, I hope you don't mind too much. You may be wondering how I found you, well I simply followed you from that frightful house. At a respectful distance, so I wasn't quite sure which gate you went in at but I got it on the second try. It's the most awful cheek on my part but I did so want to have a chat with you both."
"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."