JOHN HAFFENDEN
579
Sherry was a bright woman for whom Berryman conceived a
special fondness. He decided that he could maintain his own sobriety
by caring for her; he would continue in life by gathering people he
could help. He even reached a point of wanting to adopt her. While it
appeared capricious, his motive was in truth profoundly felt. At about
this time, he read
Please Touch
by Jane Howard, a journalist who had
interviewed him in Dublin for an article in
Life
magazine and who
subsequently became a friend. Berryman marked this quotation on
page eighty-two: "'...You're insecure? Make somebody else secure',"
and explained on the end-paper simply: "me > Sherry." While there
was invariably a strong element of sexual attraction in his relation–
ships with young women (as with another fellow-patient , a capable,
kind, and bright woman called Lavonne), and while it was true that for
Berryman sexual involvement was a chief form of coping with loneli–
ness, it was also true that he felt a deep sense of altruism. He was
impressed with the sublime significance of Step Twelve: "Having had
a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this
message to alcoholics, and
to
practice these principles in all our
affairs. "
Berryman tended otherwise
to
be exclusive and reluctant in his
relationships in the Unit. He was drawn particularly
to
Betty Peddie,
who was not in the same therapy group but occupied a room across the
hall from him, and
to
a man named Bruce. He felt that they constituted
an elite, but they did not share that sense. The "Author's Notes" to
Recovery
include a brief account of the connection:
Liz was a foxy intelligent sumptuous woman, rich , with [our
splendid girls, a bad but unassuming portrait-painter, a great friend
o[ his. Towards their discharge, a year ago, he had proposed that
three of them-(Bruce) was the witty snobbish advertising director
[or the second largest department store in the .city-start their own
AA group. Incredible? Yet at the time he hadn't understood at all
when (Terry Troy), to whom he had mentioned the gorgeous project
in two sel1lences on the wing, had just said, 'Sounds selective to me'
and vanished down the corridor towards some meeting.
Berryman unders tood the error of his selectiveness very well on reading
Jane Howard 's book, where he noted on the endpaper: "242, 35 vs.
Bruce/ Liz/ me." On page 242, he marked the following quotation:
"One is that heterogeneous labs are more effective than homogeneous
ones-that you will benefit more if your group includes some people
unlike yourself; of a different color or from a different tax bracket or a
different level of management." Page thirty-five supported the senti-
