Free Stanley and the Women by Kingsley Amis Page A

enough.’
    ‘Indeed
you have. But the first part was good. M’m. Would you say, would you assent to
the proposition that all women are mad?’
    Cliff
did about ten tremendous nods involving the whole top half of his body with
lips pressed tight together and eyes goggling. I said, ‘Yes. No, not all. There
are exceptions, naturally.’
    It was
such a gift for Nash to say Naturally back that I had no idea how he avoided
it, but he did, just pushed his mouth forward and went on staring at me in what
seemed to be his way, not offensively, seeing either quite a lot or not much of
anything, it was hard to tell.
    ‘Yes,’
he said after some of this. ‘We won’t pursue the point. I’ll be having a word
with Mrs Hutchinson. Well. I must say this is a most convenient arrangement,
acquiring copious information before so much as clapping eyes on the patient.
On other occasions I’ve found it to be markedly different, you know. Now, Mr
Duke, I suggest you go and ask your son to come and have a talk with me. Yes, I’m
a doctor if he wants to know, and yes, I’m a psychiatrist. Of course I am.’
    I put
this proposition to Steve in various not too different forms as he lay in bed
in what I thought had to be a mightily uncomfortable position looking towards
the ceiling, though his eyes were probably not reaching that far. The room
smelt rather, but not as badly as it might have done if he had been really
grown-up. I opened a window. I also noticed a couple of new shirts still in
their plastic covers and some sets of underclothes out of the chest of drawers
— Susan’s doing. She had understood straight away that he had nothing to wear
but what he stood up in.
    After
about ten minutes and nothing special about what I had just said or how I had
said it Steve got quite actively out of bed. He was wearing grubby underpants
and a sort of vest. With the same willing manner he put on his old shirt, his
intensely crumpled trousers and a pair of multicoloured rubber shoes fit for
an Olympic track event. I still didn’t believe it until I had gone downstairs
and into the sitting room with him, introduced him to Nash and seen Nash stare
at him in the way I had noticed, and hung on for a moment before Nash politely
waved me out of the room.
    Cliff
had come out with me. On our way down to the kitchen he nodded to me again, not
so dramatically as before but at least as expressively. I got us a gin and
tonic each and we sat down at the table. The chairs there were supposed to be
particularly good in some way, but to me they were straightforward all-wood
jobs with slatted or splatted backs.
    ‘We’re
doing well so far, obviously,’ said Cliff. ‘Him being so amenable. You should
see some of them. But it’s not just handy for everyone else, it’s a good sign.
I can’t believe he’s really ill. He’ll have been sniffing glue or chewing this,
that and the other — you see. Anyway, what did you think of him? Freddie Nash.’
    I said,
‘Well, he’s hardly my cup of tea, is he? That voice. And isn’t it rather a
performance?’
    ‘Oh Stan, of course it’s a performance, among other things. Doctors are colossal
actors, you know that well enough. Worse than actual actors, because they’ve
got more power.
    ‘What
were you going to say about him over the phone earlier? You said you thought he
was a bit something but you didn’t say what. A bit what?’
    ‘Oh, a
bit … Well, a bit rigid. Inflexible, kind of style. If that sounds as if he
thinks he knows everything then I’ve got it wrong. Just, when he does know
something then that’s it. And I’ve heard one or two of the younger people say
there are areas he hasn’t kept up with. You’d expect that at his age. But they
all agree he’s very good.’
    ‘Has he
got a wife?’
    ‘Yes,
lots. Four at least. He may still be on the fourth, or he may not, or he may be
on the fifth by now, I don’t know, but it’s one of those. Why?’
    ‘Well,
I naturally wondered, when he came out