"Because she's a howling neurotic with all her wires crossed. Do you honestly believe what she did back there was faked by as much as one per cent? Ed said she couldn't run her life."
"Mm. But wouldn't she have held back a bit if she was planning to get us to believe she was faking?"
"She got carried away, or she reckoned we'd take her word for it. Or she just forgot."
"Mm. She's so bright. Seeing that in End's world everything's connected with—"
"Neurotics very often are bright—Dr Rosenberg said. By the way, what happened to you being too close to it to discuss it, the Workshop? You were discussing it pretty openly with her just now."
"I know, but that was her, she was the one who brought it up, for Christ's sake."
"You still indent have. Do you fancy her?"
"Darling, have I got to tell you again I don't fancy anybody?"
"Funny you brought up signals, anyway I just thought the ones she was sending you, because she was even though she was trying not to in front of me and thought she wasn't, I thought you might have picked them up and that would sort of take you back. I wouldn't mind. She'd be a dangerous girl to get involved with but that would be up to you. What I mean is you wouldn't have me to worry about. However this business ends up neither of us are going to have that kind of thing coming along much more in our lives. And if you did get interested in her it might be a way of you getting interested in me again."
Jake put down his cup, went across the kitchen and embraced her, mouth against neck.
18—Eve's Thing
"So that's life as lived by me at this moment in time," said Eve Greenstreet. "No worse than that of many under late capitalism, I'm sure. Not very onerous tasks in the Secretary's office, bun-fights in Rawlinson Road attended by ladies who wear hats indoors, actually I can't remember when I last went to a bun fight in Rawlinson Road or anywhere else but it's that 'kind' of thing and in point of actual fact the percentage of ladies wearing hats indoors will probably be down to single figures by the end of the year, like inflation, or rather not like inflation, and, said she still miraculously keeping her balls in the air, being married to Syd."
"Syd?" said Jake with a grin. "I thought lie was called—"
"Oh, he has a name for formal occasions and when I'm putting him in his place but in a non-variform-conditions situation he's Syd. Can it be that the fact has failed to penetrate you? After Sydney Greenstreet as the extremely wicked and extremely fat man in the star-studded cast of famed movie classic 'The Maltese Falcon'. You remember. Upon my soul sir you are a character. Said to one-time screen idol Bogie-bogie. I'm sorry but I just can't resist calling him that. Shiddown. shweethat, and shtart shingin. That's enough. End of nostalgia bit. Syd, my Syd that is, what is Syd? Well to begin with of course he's Syd. Then he's a bank manager, no connection with the university except as customers, nothing queer about our Syd. And when you're looking at him you're looking at a bank manager. But hey there Jacob old boy, you have already received notification of this phenomena among others. We had you and your charming wife come for dinner at our delightful Headington home one time shortly after our marriage."
"That's right, of course." He had completely forgotten and didn't remember anything about it now.
"Well, as I say, when you look at Syd you see a bank manager.
Unless that is you happen to have cultivated one of the strange powers of the mind that man has possessed since the dawn of his days but some hidebound and blinkered scientists continue to deny. If you 'had,' cultivated and so on, you'd see not just a bank manager but a bank manager with a noticeable and most efficient distinguishing organ of sex, one with an unusually low-turn-around time too. You better believe it, Jayqueeze buddy, when Syd fucks you you stay fucked."
"Really." Jake poured wine.
In one sense he was able to do this because he and Eve were dining in a restaurant, not as planned La Sorbonne, which had been booked up when telephoned, but a perhaps rather Spanish place recently opened in the strange quarter sprung into being after most of the oldest part of the city had been gleefully hauled down a few years before. Here, where once you could have sworn there was nothing but a couple of colleges, some lodgings and an occasional newsagent or tobacconist, stood hairdressers" and clothiers" and trumpery-bazaars of a glossy meanness formerly confined to the outskirts of the large cities. Here, within these walls, were dons and undergraduates and others in statu pupillari dressed for fishing expeditions or semiskilled work on the roads, and most of them had females with them, but Jake took no notice of any: other matters filled his attention.
It was the evening of the Tuesday after the Workshop, Eve's mother having proved not to be starting to die for the moment. They (he and Eve) had met at the restaurant at seven-thirty, and at seven-forty he had ordered a second sherry, with a third destined to follow before the arrival of the sort of paella—yes, it must be Spanish—and the bottle of red wine. Or rather the first bottle of red wine: they were now halfway through the second. Three-quarters of the amount so far drunk was inside him. She had remembered his habit of moderation and asked him if he had changed his ways and he had said not in general but this evening was a special occasion.
Eve told him a little more about her husband's abilities, then dilated her eyes and clapped her hand to her forehead. "Hold it right there," she said in vibrant tones. "Rewind." She stabbed with her forefinger as at a button or switch and made high-pitched gibbering, quacking noises that were not so very much unlike those made by a tape revolving at high speed. After a time she made more finger-motions, saying, "Clunk. Replay. Clunk," then went on in the baritone register and in an accent Jake thought over-refined, "Eve old girl, there's something I'd like to chat to you about. Would you do me the honour of letting me take you out to dinner—Well yes Jake that would be extremely nice of you thank you very much indeed," the last series of words delivered in the kind of whining monotone to be loosely associated with imitations of footballers interviewed on television. The performance ended with switching-off noises and motions.
Jake gave a laugh. "That's a new one, isn't it? Yes, I remember the scene you so vividly evoke, but there's nothing to it really. It was just an excuse to take you out to dinner after these God knows how many years."
"Cock," said Eve firmly. "Uh-uh. No, as they say, way. It was a sadly shaken and deeply disturbed Jake Richardson who, that cold, rainy, windy morning in April, encountered his one-time close friend Evelyn Greenstreet at her place of work and sepulchral was the gloom wherewith he answered her polite inquiry as to the well-being or otherwise of his wife, right?"
"Well, we had had quite a nasty row, it's true, but once I'd—"
"Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom," said Eve, this time like a tommy-gun and with appropriate arm-vibrations. "You talk now or you talk later, but understand one thing, just one thing. You talk."
And Jake did talk, though not till he had ordered cheese and a third bottle of wine. Eve demurred at the wine and asked if he was trying to get her drunk; he said he wasn't trying to do that, that these Spanish reds were very light and that they indent drink it all.
"I'm worried about Brenda," he eventually said. "She goes on complaining I don't show her enough affection."