The Green Man Read Free Page A

the bar, but more likely he meant to rebuke me for using
frivolous diction in a solemn context. ‘What?’
    ‘Piano.
You know. Subdued. Not doing or saying much.’
    ‘You
must realize that’s to be expected at his age and in his condition.’
    ‘I do,
I assure you.’
    ‘And
Amy?’ asked Jack vigilantly, referring to my daughter.
    ‘Well …
she seems to be okay, as far as I can tell. Watches television a lot, plays her
pop records, all that kind of thing.’
    Jack
stared into his drink, not what I would have called a very meaningful move on
the part of somebody drinking what he was drinking, and said nothing. Perhaps
he felt that what I had said was condemnatory enough without assistance from
him.
    ‘There’s
not much for her to do here,’ I went on defensively, ‘and she hasn’t had time
to make any real friends round about. Not that she’d have much in common with
the village kids, I imagine. And it’s the holidays, of course.’
    Still
Jack said nothing. He sniffed, not altogether at physical need.
    ‘Joyce
has been a bit sluggish. She’s had a lot of work to do these last weeks. And
there’s this weather. In fact it’s been a pretty tiring summer for everybody.
I’m going to try and get the three of us away for a few days at the beginning
of September.’
    ‘What
about you?’ asked Jack with a touch of contempt.
    ‘I’m
all right.’
    ‘Are
you, by God. You don’t look it. Listen, Maurice, I won’t get a chance later—you
ought to see yourself. Your colour’s bad—yes, I know all about your not getting
much of a chance to get out, but you ought to be able to manage an hour’s walk
in the afternoons. You’re sweating excessively.’
    ‘Indeed
I am.’ I wiped with my handkerchief the saturated hair above my ears. ‘So would
you be if you had to charge around this damn place trying to keep your eye on
half a dozen things at once, and in this weather too.’
    ‘I’ve
been charging around too, and I’m not in the state you’re in.’
    ‘You’re
ten years younger than I am.’
    ‘What
of it? Maurice, what you have is alcoholic sweating. How many have you put down
already this evening?’
    ‘Just a
couple.’
    ‘Huh. I
know your couples. Couple of trebles. You’ll have another half a couple before
we go up, and at least a couple and a half after dinner. That’s well over half
a bottle, plus three or four glasses of wine and whatever you had at midday.
It’s too much.’
    ‘I’m
used to it. I can take it.’
    ‘You’re
used to it, yes. And you’ve got the remains of a first-class constitution. But
you can’t take it the way you could in the past. You’re fifty-three. You’ve
come to one of those places where the road goes sharply downhill for a bit.
It’ll go on going downhill if you carry on as you are. How have you been
feeling today?’
    ‘I’m
all right. I told you.’
    ‘Oh,
come on. How have you really been feeling?’
    ‘Oh …
Bloody awful.’
    ‘You’ve
been feeling bloody awful for a couple of months. Because you’ve been drinking
too much.’
    ‘The
only time I can be reasonably sure of not feeling bloody awful is a couple of
hours or so at the end of a day’s drinking.’
    ‘You’ll
get less sure, believe me. How’s the jactitation?’
    ‘Better,
I think. Yes, definitely better.’
    ‘And
the hallucinations?’
    ‘About
the same.’
    What we
were referring to was less disagreeable than it may sound. A form of
jactitation, taking place round about the moment of falling asleep, is known to
almost everybody’s experience: that convulsive straightening of the leg which
is often accompanied by a short explanatory dream about stumbling, or missing
the bottom stair. In more habitual and pronounced cases, the jerking movement
may affect any muscles, including those of the face, and may occur up to a
dozen times or more before the subject finally attains sleep, or abandons the
quest for it.
    At this
level of intensity, jactitation is associated with