NATASHA SPENDER
51
energetic opposition. He often didn't listen or, like a magpie, picked
out only the bits which would fit his own picture, which was however
always one of genuine solicitude for us and belligerency towards our
imagined "enemies." He wished to deliver us from the "hardships" of
our
I
ives, and thought of rescuing all of us because "there was nobody
around so I had to," though he cou ld very well see some of the people
who were around, but he discounted for rather arbitrary reasons their
competence or concern. Nevertheless, his sympathy was genuine and
abundant. To Alison he even offered to arrange to have somebody in
America bumped off for having ill-treated her-"lt'll cost a thousand
bucks!" he said, with a swagger, suggesting that he had onl y to raise a
finger for the MafIa to act, and steadfastly ignoring that she thought
this might be going a little
too
far.
Suddenly and rather d.ramatically he announced he was going
to
do a drying-out-cure at home, and though it was going to be tough he
was man enough
to
take it on. Indeed, in spite of the dramatics, he was.
We nursed him on a rota system; I remember Jocelyn coming in one
day to take over her turn, looking as fresh as paint, the sad o ld
Raymond in the throes of it, gallantly trying
to
hurl outrageous
witticisms at her, her smiling, droll, and spirited replies, and our most
unhappy admiration of his courage and endurance, in which the
doctor shared.
He was always immensely preoccupied with thoughts of illness,
his own and that of all his friends about whom he became unduly
over-anxious, and his letters were full of medical details, his or theirs. I
thought it indiscreet of him
w
tell me such facts about others who
might not like me to know them, but it clearly was an obsession of his.
He looked for illness in all of us, he wished
to
return
to
the life of
caring for an invalid, and felt utterly lost without the gentle round of
devotion and simple errands he had been used to doing in the tragic
prev ious year, when, he said, he had not been drinking. But by now his
desire to care for any invalid could have. fulfilment on ly in fantasy so
long as his own health was so precarious. Thus it was, I now think,
that of al l the shuttle service friends, he wished to be of particular
service to me, as the one who cou ld be seen as having been recently ill,
though leading the usual hard working life of concerts, family, and
looking after friends, including him.
It
is now clear that in the
friendship which ensued while I was in reality rather energetically
organizing the nursing of an ailing Raymond, and Alison teased me
about being "our patrol leader, " he was with genuine concern occu–
pied with thoughts of rescuing an invalid; possibly this was satisfying
