NATASHA SPENDER
39
Jocelyn Rickards, talked LO me of the alarm we both felt about his
survival. She believed that his good manners would never permit him
to implement his ev idently strong suicidal impulses if he had an
imminen t social engagement with a lady. So in turn we each invited
ourselves to a meal with him, or him to one with us. Other friends
joined in, and so began the "shuttle service" by which our small group
tried to ensure that he was never out of sight of an impending gentle
and undemanding social engagement, and that he could at bad times
telephone one of us at any time in the twenty-four hours.
Those telephone calls in the small hours (for he was particularly
insomniac after his wife's death) could start out as long stretches of
si lence broken only by heavy breathing, followed by grim battles of his
nihilism versus our spirit, but sooner or later he might be coaxed into
feeling that there was not long to wait for the festivities of the
following day; or his sardonic mockery of one's efforts to encourage
him led to his being unable to resist making a joke, and then sudden
delight at his own sally brought with it a resurgence of pleasure and
hopefulness; he would ring off chuckling with triumph at having got
the best of an argument and no doubt happily thinking up further
voll eys to shoot off at luncheon. Sometimes "Hang on till breakfast–
time" was the only way
to
deal with those early morning calls if an else
fail ed, and then one or other of us would go to breakfast with him,
"The Dawn Patrol" as Alison Hooper called it.
The nucl eus of the shuttle service was Jocelyn Ric::kards, Alec
Murray, Alison Hooper and the Spenders. Others joined in, but some
dropped out fairly quickly because of the "emotional blackmail " he
used in his suicidal state. Our motive (as mine continued to be to the
end, having been the last survivor of that group to continue the
responsibility) was to see him through to a point where he would want
to
go on living; where he could recognize and accept reality without
disrupting the fantasy inLO which all his psychic energy had been
channelled when he was writing his novels; and above all where he
would reverse the process of slowly killing himself with drink. But
alternating with extreme alcoholic behavior, his fantasy seemed en–
tirely LO be used in acting out romantic Don Quixote illusions, from
the unLOward effects of which we tried gently to deliver him, though at
times it seemed far from easy or even advisable to do so, for the process
would make him rather ruffled. As we came to know him better, and
to
answer the many suicide threa ts or cries for help, both of which seemed
to
be absolutely genuine, yet elaborately staged, it became no easier to
judge the degree of his desperation, for you can't take chances with
