NATASHA SPENDER
45
say ing " You bought a lo t of me T erry," and another time " I owned a
piece of him. I had in vested time and money in him. " Thi s ticking
taximeter o f money a t the hea rt o f it seems a forlornl y mi strustful
attitude to fri endship, po igna ntl y so, considering Raymond 's gener–
os ity. In Marlowe' s brief lo ve affair with the milli onairess Linda
Lorin g the taximeter ti cks through the di alogue on the credit side, and
in the unfini shed novel
Poodle S prings
Marlowe ma rri es Linda,
seeming ly alert
to
the dangers o f being morall y defeated as T erry had
been by her sister's money. But we sha ll never know how it might have
ended.
All th ree characters were drinkers, like Raymond himself, two of
them di sintegra ting and despa iring, for onl y the idea l-self Ma rlowe
shows a d ispos ition towa rds integrity. As aspects o f Raymond 's own
character their dominance veered with hi s mood, Roger Wade hi s " bad
self, " Philip Marlowe hi s "good self," and Terry Lomax hi s anxio us
one. These three, often in confli ct, were in good times subordina ted to a
fourth , the geni al, generous and benevolently paternal fri end .
At the out set, we were too confIdent tha t his oscillations between
euphori a and helpl ess sui cidal gloom were no more than the tempor–
ary derangement consequent on bereavement. We thought onl y time
was needed to end them. Raymond confided to Jocelyn during their
first luncheon tha t he didn ' t have long to live as he had incurable
cancer of the throat. After a tuss le she persuaded him to consult a
Harley Street ph ys ician; we saw him into the Wes tminster Hospita l,
whence after a few days he emerged with the diagnos is of smoker's
laryngitis and a determination to ignore all in struction s. After con sid–
erable provocation the di stinguished phys ician withdrew po litely from
all responsibility for hi s wayward uncoopera tive pa tient, this being the
first of many such rela tionships Raymond was to have but no t to ho ld
with English doctors. Who on earth could have persuaded him to seek
psychi atric help, for he certainl y wasn 't a docil e pa tient? Alison and I
used to consult a fri end , Dr. John Thompson (la ter of the Albert
Einstein Hospital), as to how our fri endl y but unprofessional help
could be mos t effective, but since it
was
onl y ama teur, all one can say is
that it was probabl y better than no thing. Soon afterwards there was
li ver troubl e and a host of minor ailments, through all o f which we
nursed him or saw him into the hospital , trying (when liver tes ts
required
total
abstinence) to extract the carefull y hidden whisky bo ttl es
from hi s luggage without hi s spotting us.
He used to seek our admira tion for the " Hemingway-Rockefeller–
Bogart" persona he projected from hi s pas t, yet he little knew tha t
