Where to from here? What next?
He raised his beer and sipped it, thinking about the first time he had come in here and the exchange he had had with Lots about the reason for his not drinking. He had learned from the minds of well-adjusted colleagues why people did like to drink, and stopped there, with the vicarious ability to copy them. He had also seen why some of his patients drank to excess, and preferred not to be taken in by the same fallacy.
Setting the glass down, he became aware of raised voices at the table in the opposite corner to his own. A group of two young men — untidily dressed and about two days unshaven—and a plain girl with fair hair in a rather shapeless dress, were involved in heated argument. At least, one man and the girl were; the other man seemed to be listening with amusement.
“But don’t you see?” thundered the girl, slamming her open palm on the table so that the trio’s glasses jumped “You’re ignoring the lessons of the whole of the past century in order to rehash things which have been done twenty times over better than you’ll ever manage to do them!”
“You must be blind, deaf, dumb and moronic to say a thing like that!” blazed back her opponent. “One of your most damnable faults, and you’ve got plenty, is making wild and empty generalizations! Anyone with a grain of intelligence—”
“Excuse me, you two,” said the mildly amused young man. “I’ll come back when it’s less noisy around here.”
“Good riddance!” snapped the girl as he picked up his drink and crossed the floor to Howson’s table. Howson bridled instinctively, but the stranger betrayed no reaction to his appearance.
“Mind if I sit here for a bit ? I won’t be able to get a word in edgewise until they calm down, and since neither of them really knows what they’re talking about… Cigarette ?”
Howson was on the point of refusing — smoking was discouraged at the therapy centre, even with carcinogen-free tobacco available now — when it occurred to him that the young man was being extremely courteous. He had no means of knowing that Howson was more than his vacuous face suggested, yet had addressed him with perfect aplomb.
He accepted the cigarette with a word of thanks.
“What’s it all about, anyway?” he ventured as he bent to receive a light.
“Charma,” said the other around his cigarette, “insists that Jay is doing incompetent and unsatisfactory work. She’s right. She is, however, totally wrong in maintaining that he’s merely repeating something that’s been done hundreds of times. He does have a fairly original idea; he simply isn’t good enough to cope with it properly. He thinks he is. So — they disagree.”
“Does this happen a lot ?”
“It goes on all the blasted time!” said the young man in a ponderously aggrieved tone.
“And what sort of work ?”
“Oh — bit hard to define. I guess you might call his things liquid mobiles. Charma refers to them as wet fireworks, and though I suppose you could argue that she has something there, it doesn’t exactly delight Jay. Main trouble is, he ought to be a chemist and hydrodynamicist as well as a guy with an eye for a lighting effect, and he isn’t, so he can’t exploit the very genuine possibilities of his technique.”
About twenty-two or—three, Howson judged as he looked at his new acquaintance. He was of medium height, plumply good-looking, with untidy black hair and heavy glasses. He wore a faded shirt open at the neck, dark trousers with light stains on the knees, and open sandals. An enormous watch caught the light on his wrist. A sheaf of pens and pencils was clipped in his shirt pocket.
“You’re students?” suggested Howson, recollecting the nearness of the new university building.
“No more, no more. We got a wee bit dissatisfied with academic standards a while back, and since the academic standard-bearers were likewise less than pleased with us we agreed to stop “bothering each other. Another drink ?”
“No, let me,” said Howson, and signalled a waiter. He paid with the topmost of a bundle of bills which made his companion purse his mouth in parodied awe.
“It always gives me pleasure to accept a drink from the rich,” he said solemnly. “It means I’m doing my humble bit towards the redistribution of capital.”
“Set “em up for those two as well,” Howson told the waiter indicating Jay and Charma. “Ah — what’s your particular line, by the way?”
“I compose. Badly. What’s yours ?”
“I’m a doctor,” said Howson after a moment’s hesitation.
“I’d never have guessed. We ought to try you on Man, maybe — an embryo sociologist we know, who’s a fanatical determinist. Trying to make out that professions and trades can be correlated with physical types. Mark you, someone like you is calculated to throw a spanner in the works no matter what you do for a living — sort of wild variable. Say, you’ve managed to quiet them down!” He twisted on his chair to face Jay and Charma.
Howson followed his movement. Charma was lifting her newly filled glass to him. “Your doing?” she said. “Thanks! And gulped it thirstily. Small wonder, after all the shouting she had done.
“Rudi!” Jay said, displaying his wrist-watch. “Things ought to be waking up at Clara’s now. Think we could drop by ?”
“Good idea,” said Howson’s new friend. “Say, this guy here is a doctor. We ought to tell Brian and see how his face falls, no?”
“He’d never believe you,” Charma said. She drained her glass.
“And even if he did,” supplemented Jay, “he has more special exceptions than conforming cases in the scheme already.”
“We should prove it to him, then,” insisted Rudi. “Is he going to be at Clara’s this evening ?”
“When did you know that man miss a party?” countered Jay.
“Okay!” Rudi turned to Howson. “That is, if you’re not doing anything. I’m sorry — I seem to have made plans for you — uh—?”
“Gerry,” Howson supplied. “Well, as a matter of fact…”
As a matter of fact I’d love to go to this party. If I want to learn to face people, I’d like to start with people like these—iconoclastic, angry about prejudice, willing to accept me even if only because I’m out of the ordinary.
“Clara won’t mind an extra guest,” Rudi prompted, mistaking his hesitation. “We’ll take along a couple of packs of beer, and everything will be okay.”
“ In that case,” Howson said, rising,” I’ll surely come.”
On the threshold, waiting while Jay and Rudi manoeuvred the big packs of beer-cans through the narrow door, he suggested, Taking a cab ?”
Jay gave a hoot of laughter, elbowing back the door.
“Jay. you’re an unobservant bastard,” said Rudi severely. “Just because you’re long-legged and bursting with vitamins you think everyone shares your passion for sore feet. Now I, since I’m observant, happen to know that Gerry here has a wad of cash big enough to buy us a cab for the trip. Charma, get out in the gutter and pull up your skirt!”
24
Howson was in the grip of an excitement so violently contrasted with his earlier depression that he had to try and analyse his reactions for the sake of his own peace of mind.