"It's the week-end after next, starting on the Friday evening, the 8th, at least that's when we're supposed to get there so as to be able to start work in good time in the morning. The place is near Salisbury."
"I see." He saw more clearly that she had had her hair cut very short like a kind of rufous helmet. It took three or four years off her apparent age.
"Funny Brenda not telling you, Ed and Dr Rosenberg announced it last Saturday week. I...."
"What?"
"I expect it slipped her mind. Why did you stop coming after just the one time?"
"It simply struck me as frightful rubbish and a complete bore."
"Oh I quite agree, but..... What I wanted to ask you, do you think you could possibly come to it, the week-end Workshop I mean?"
So many expressions, most of them impure, tried to get out of Jake's mouth at once that for the moment he said nothing articulate.
"You see I'm absolutely dreading it, I can't tell you how much, but my parents want me to go and they're so sweet to me I really can't not go, and I thought if you were there, just there, somebody I trusted, I wouldn't feel so bad. I wouldn't, you know, do anything, I couldn't with Brenda about all the time, could I?"
"I'm sorry, Kelly, but you must realise it's quite impossible."
She got up at once from the corner of the settee where she had been sitting for less than a minute. "Never mind, it doesn't really matter, I'm sure I'll manage all right, it was just a thought, of course it was ridiculous to expect you to, I quite understand."
"I am sorry," he said, following her into the passage.
"No no, don't be, forget it, I shouldn't have asked, put you in an embarrassing position, just thinking of myself as usual." Being an erstwhile successful womaniser Jake had acted against his better judgement a number of times, but never more directly and more consciously than when he said, as he did now, "All right, sod it, I'll see if I can fix it up."
24—Something I Want to Show You
Fixing it up was not straightforward. To approach Brenda—yes, why 'hadn't' she mentioned it?—with stuff like thinking of popping up to Dry Sandford again about the 8th or 9th would be to put in an urgent request for trouble. Luckily the next day was Rosenberg day, though here again care was needed: no Kelly-told-me or Rosenberg might in his innocence or whatever it was drop that one in front of Brenda. After a resume of his latest self-abusive adventures Jake casually let fall that he was thinking of another try at the Workshop, not on the Saturday to come because he had to be in Oxford then, but on the one after, the 9th. Expressing no surprise at either his ignorance or his change of mind and not the heartiest approval of the latter, perhaps because it damaged his guilt-and-shame thesis, Rosenburg gave some particulars of the proposed weekend and went straight on, or rather straight back since they had been there several times before, to Jake's early sexual feelings and experiences. Of these he had managed to remember a very fair amount he thought he had forgotten without thereby changing his condition in the slightest.
When he brought the week-end up with Brenda she did express surprise, saying she had told him about it on the evening of the day she had herself been told, but now she came to think of it it had been at the end of the evening, most likely after he had taken his Mogadon and so was in a drowsy inattentive state. Her approval was a shade warmer than Rosenberg's but not unqualified: he had always said the Workshop was rubbish so what had happened to change his mind? Well, he had been thinking, and couldn't help being impressed by the fact (it was a fact) that she constantly said she was the better for the experience, and a weekend in the country would be nice. All right, but he wasn't to piss on the proceedings; he promised not to.
No sooner was the thing fixed up than the tonic effect of the actual fixing-up subsided and his qualms began to mount. It was true that Brenda's reports had included much activity that was daft, pointless, unpalatable and (wait for it) boring but nothing positively unsafe, lewd or illegal; just give that Ed bugger a free hand for forty-eight hours though, in a house as comparatively remote as the one designated seemed to be and for openers, as he would say, you'd be getting off lightly with gladiatorial games. And what might Kelly get up to? He turned his mind away from that, concentrating it on the thought that whatever dire possibilities occurred to him he couldn't fail her, not appear. Once, he was hard at it when he fancied he recognised the extra reason why he hadn't told Brenda about Kellyin-Oxford: if he had he would never been able to get away with wanting to join in on the weekend. Funny what you could see coming without knowing it.
As the day approached it began to look less baleful. He had found out by indirections that Geoffrey was to be of the party, so a touch at least of entertainment and satisfaction of malice was guaranteed. Then there was plain curiosity. And then there was the weather, hot and sunny all week long. When Friday arrived with more of the same and the time began to move along to six o'clock Jake felt little tingles of expectation, as he had once done before every out-of-the-way journey with the prospect of someone new and wonderful at the end of it.
Almost dead on the hour a fair-sized yellow car of foreign manufacture drew up as arranged outside 47 Burgess Avenue. It was driven by Ivor, whom Jake wouldn't have recognised after their one meeting a couple of months before. He turned out to be in his thirties, tallish, fairish, serious-looking and doing quite well in a building society. Beside him was Geoffrey. As could be seen when he emerged and came to the front door, he was most peculiarly got up in a sports jacket and flannel trousers, a shirt with an unobtrusive check, a plain woollen tie that matched his socks, and brown brogues; it was almost as if he had 'tried' to choose clothes appropriate to a week-end in the country. Mind you, he must be bloody hot in them, there was that to be said. While giving a hand with the Richardsons" luggage, shutting the boot, getting in beside Jake at the back and waiting for Brenda, he explained with a thoroughness such as to defeat all misunderstanding that he had left Alcestis their car, his and her car, to do with as she pleased; this one, this car, the car they were sitting in, belonged to Ivor, was Ivor's car.
Jake remembered very well the senile-dementia treatment he had had meted out to him at the original Workshop and wondered whether Geoffrey intended his last few hundred words as more of the same with more yet to come. If so, he was going to be in trouble quite soon, but before Jake had fixed on just what kind he caught sight of Brenda hurrying up the tiny garden path and forgot all about Geoffrey for the moment.
After so many weeks of conscientious dieting she had lost something like two and a half stone and could no longer be called fat. With the weight she had taken off some apparent years too and would have passed for forty. She was wearing what must be a new dress in pale green silk, some not very serious brown-and-white shoes and an openly frivolous white hat. How fetching, how pleasant, how 'nice' she looks, Jake thought to himself; must remember to tell her so at first opportunity.
There was some trouble with the hat when she got in beside Ivor but it passed off easily enough and they were soon on their way across town to get on to the M20. The traffic was thickish, though not so bad as it would have been if most of the people motoring out of London to the West of England countryside and resorts hadn't downed their shit-shovels about noon (Jake decided).
"What a glorious day," said Brenda in a dreamy voice. "And how lovely to be driving; just think of fighting one's way on to a train at Paddington in this heat. I mean to be driven. It is kind of you to take us, Ivor dear."