from the coffee breaks, with the effect that we also gave them up. We all worked as mute as she until one o’clock, when she went home and we escaped to the refectory, gulping mouthfuls of outdoor air and stretching our shoulders.
Jesus, she was intolerable! We hated her, of course—who wants a steady fog of tear gas in his room? But equally, of course, we were dishonest about our dislike. Her grief was so genuine that any attitude but concern would have revealed us as ugly, crass. Our vocabulary was heavily spiced with words like “neurotic,” “paranoia,” “depression”; concepts we appropriated to ourselves in the facetious assumption that anybody who was not a little mad in the modern world must be unbalanced. Frances’s earnest, unaesthetic struggle challenged our right to use such terms.
“I’ll tell you,” I told them one noon, “when I’m around Frances it occurs to me that I’m not a very serious person.” This, as it happens, was disconcertingly true, without altering the fact that I knew it would produce from Malcolm, as it did, “You just hang onto your frivolity, baby.”
“She’s really sick.” That was Mom, the closest any of us came to judgment.
“Yes, but she really is sick,” admonished Malcolm. “I’ve seen some lollapaloozin’ depressed kids in my time, but that one needs help.”
“Is she getting any?” Nobody knew. We knew nothing about her. So it was decided that one of us should talk to Nicholson, and that since he would be more likely to discuss family matters with a woman, and since I was the woman he knew best of us, it should be me.
I made an appointment, which I thought would give a certain gravity to my request, and I perched formally on the chair across from him, ready to resist the charm of his expansive bobblings.
“I wanted to know a little about Frances Kean.”
“Oh me,” he commiserated, bobbling. “Is she messing things up for you down there?”
“No,” I said, rather sharply, “her work is fine. It’s slow, but fine. But she’s very unhappy and she doesn’t seem to be able to talk about it. We thought if you could tell us something about her background, we’d know better how to help her.”
He laid his head on the side and enveloped me in a beatifical smile. “You really are too good, Ginny,” he murmured, and for a minute the warm undertow tugged at me and I felt myself suffused with my own benevolence.
“Do you know of anything that happened to her at Cambridge, why she quit?”
“She lost Jesus, I believe,” he said, considered this and seemed to find it a trifle embarrassing but, uh, on the other hand, right. “Yes, her family down in Dorset, very close-knit and Christian. University just got to be too much for her, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“But did anything happen? An unhappy love affair, or drugs or anything?”
“Well, there may …” he shifted uncomfortably, “… there may have been a little period of … experimentation. All over now. None of that now. You realize there are very few of these modern students that don’t have a go at drugs.”
I said I realized that and asked if there were anything more. But he couldn’t think of anything, except to screw the cap off his pen and screw it on again.
“Do you know if she’s having psychiatric help? Because if not, I know of two or three people …”
“Oh, I don’t believe that’s needed.” The unusually brief smile with which he punctuated this statement gave it the nature of a directive. I saw how effectively he might deal with a subordinate who didn’t fall so splendidly in with his plans as I.
Let me make clear again that I like George Nicholson. He is just and spunky and he has a joyfully infectious dedication to cloth. He felt, simply and clearly, that loyalty to his wife’s family demanded that Frances should have a job, but it did not require him to become i nvolved. In order that he should not become involved the wife of his commercial manager
Jesus, she was intolerable! We hated her, of course—who wants a steady fog of tear gas in his room? But equally, of course, we were dishonest about our dislike. Her grief was so genuine that any attitude but concern would have revealed us as ugly, crass. Our vocabulary was heavily spiced with words like “neurotic,” “paranoia,” “depression”; concepts we appropriated to ourselves in the facetious assumption that anybody who was not a little mad in the modern world must be unbalanced. Frances’s earnest, unaesthetic struggle challenged our right to use such terms.
“I’ll tell you,” I told them one noon, “when I’m around Frances it occurs to me that I’m not a very serious person.” This, as it happens, was disconcertingly true, without altering the fact that I knew it would produce from Malcolm, as it did, “You just hang onto your frivolity, baby.”
“She’s really sick.” That was Mom, the closest any of us came to judgment.
“Yes, but she really is sick,” admonished Malcolm. “I’ve seen some lollapaloozin’ depressed kids in my time, but that one needs help.”
“Is she getting any?” Nobody knew. We knew nothing about her. So it was decided that one of us should talk to Nicholson, and that since he would be more likely to discuss family matters with a woman, and since I was the woman he knew best of us, it should be me.
I made an appointment, which I thought would give a certain gravity to my request, and I perched formally on the chair across from him, ready to resist the charm of his expansive bobblings.
“I wanted to know a little about Frances Kean.”
“Oh me,” he commiserated, bobbling. “Is she messing things up for you down there?”
“No,” I said, rather sharply, “her work is fine. It’s slow, but fine. But she’s very unhappy and she doesn’t seem to be able to talk about it. We thought if you could tell us something about her background, we’d know better how to help her.”
He laid his head on the side and enveloped me in a beatifical smile. “You really are too good, Ginny,” he murmured, and for a minute the warm undertow tugged at me and I felt myself suffused with my own benevolence.
“Do you know of anything that happened to her at Cambridge, why she quit?”
“She lost Jesus, I believe,” he said, considered this and seemed to find it a trifle embarrassing but, uh, on the other hand, right. “Yes, her family down in Dorset, very close-knit and Christian. University just got to be too much for her, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“But did anything happen? An unhappy love affair, or drugs or anything?”
“Well, there may …” he shifted uncomfortably, “… there may have been a little period of … experimentation. All over now. None of that now. You realize there are very few of these modern students that don’t have a go at drugs.”
I said I realized that and asked if there were anything more. But he couldn’t think of anything, except to screw the cap off his pen and screw it on again.
“Do you know if she’s having psychiatric help? Because if not, I know of two or three people …”
“Oh, I don’t believe that’s needed.” The unusually brief smile with which he punctuated this statement gave it the nature of a directive. I saw how effectively he might deal with a subordinate who didn’t fall so splendidly in with his plans as I.
Let me make clear again that I like George Nicholson. He is just and spunky and he has a joyfully infectious dedication to cloth. He felt, simply and clearly, that loyalty to his wife’s family demanded that Frances should have a job, but it did not require him to become i nvolved. In order that he should not become involved the wife of his commercial manager
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