Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis

The examinations were now in progress, and Dixon had nothing to do that morning but turn up at the Assembly Hall at twelve-thirty to collect some scripts. They would contain answers to questions he'd set about the Middle Ages. As he approached the Common Room he thought briefly about the Middle Ages. Those who professed themselves unable to believe in the reality of human progress ought to cheer themselves up, as the students under examination had conceivably been cheered up, by a short study of the Middle Ages. The hydrogen bomb, the South African Government, Chiang Kaishek, Senator McCarthy himself, would then seem a light price to pay for no longer being in the Middle Ages. Had people ever been as nasty, as self-indulgent, as dull, as miserable, as cocksure, as bad at art, as dismally ludicrous, or as wrong as they'd been in the Middle Age - Margaret's way of referring to the Middle Ages? He grinned at this last thought, then stopped doing that on entering the Common Room and catching sight of her, pale and heavy-eyed, on her own near the empty fireplace.

Their relations hadn't altered materially during the ten days or so since the arty week-end. It had taken him the whole of an evening in the Oak Lounge and a great deal of expense and hypocrisy to get her to admit that she still had a grievance against him, and more of the same sorts of commodity to persuade her to define, amplify, discuss, moderate, and finally abandon it. For some reason, periodically operative but impossible to name, the sight of her now filled him with affection and remorse. Rejecting coffee in favour of lemon squash, for it was a hot day, he got some from the overalled woman at the serving-table and went through the chatting groups over to Margaret.

She was wearing her arty get-up, but had discarded the wooden beads in favour of a brooch consisting of a wooden letter M. A large envelope full of examination scripts was on the floor beside her chair. A falsetto explosion from the coffee-urn across the room made him start slightly; then he said: 'Hallo, dear, how are you today?'

'All right, thanks.'

He smiled tentatively. 'You don't sound as though you mean that.'

'Don't I? I'm sorry. I'm perfectly all right really.' She spoke with extraordinary sharpness. Her jaw-muscles looked tight, as if she was suffering from toothache.

Glancing about him, he moved closer, bent forward, and said as gently as he could: 'Now, Margaret, please don't talk like that. It's quite unnecessary. If you don't feel too good, tell me about it and I'll sympathize. If you feel all right, that's fine. Either way we'll have a cigarette on it. But for God's sake don't try to pick a fight with me. I don't feel like one.'

She moved abruptly on the chair-arm she was sitting on so that her back was to everybody in the room except Dixon, who saw that her eyes were filling with tears. As he hesitated, she gave a loud sob, still looking at him.

'Margaret, you mustn't,' he said in horror. 'Don't cry. I didn't mean it.'

She gave a furious downward wave of her hand. 'You were quite right,' she said shudderingly. 'It was my fault. I'm sorry.'

'Margaret…'

'No, I'm the one in the wrong. I bit your head off. I didn't want to, I didn't mean to. Everything's so bloody this morning.'

'Well, tell me about it, then. Dry your eyes.'

'You're the only one that's nice to me and then I treat you like that.' However, she took off her glasses and started blotting her eyes.

'Never mind about that. Tell me what's wrong.'

'Oh, nothing. Everything and nothing.'

'Did you have another bad night?'

'Yes, darling, I did, and it's made me terribly sorry for myself, as usual. I keep thinking to myself, Oh hell, what's the use of anything, especially me?'

'Have a cigarette.'

'Oh thank you, James, it's just what I want. Do I look all right?'

'Yes, of course. Just a little tired, that's all.'

'I didn't get off till gone four. I must go and see the doc and get him to give me something. I can't go on like this.'

'But didn't he say you'd got to adjust yourself to doing without anything?'

She looked up at him in something like triumph. 'Yes, he did. But he didn't say how I'm going to adjust myself to doing without sleep.'

'Doesn't anything seem to help?'

'Oh, God, you know all about the baths and the hot milks and the, er, aspirins and the window shut and the window open…'

They talked like this for a few minutes, while the other occupants of the room began to disperse to their various tasks. These, since it was the one time of the academic year when everybody was simultaneously not lecturing, must have been largely self-imposed. Dixon sweated quietly as the talk went on, trying to repel the persistent half-recollection or half-illusion of having casually told Margaret a couple of days previously that he'd ring her up at the Welches' the next night - which was now last night. Some invitation or promise was obviously required, if only to smother the problem. At the first opportunity he said: 'What about lunch today? Are you free?'

For some reason, these queries provoked a partial return to her earlier manner. 'Free? Who do you imagine would have asked me out to lunch?'

'I thought you might have told Mrs Neddy you'd be back.'

'As it happens, she's having a little luncheon-party and asked me to turn up.'

'Oh well, somebody has asked you to lunch, then.'

She said 'Yes, that's right' in a puzzled, lost way that, by suggesting she'd forgotten what she'd just said or even what they were talking about, succeeded in alarming him more than her recent tears. He said quickly:

'What sort of a lunch-party is it?'

'Oh, I don't know,' she said with fatigue. 'Nothing startling, I imagine.' She looked at him as if her spectacles were becoming opaque. 'I must go now.' Slowly and inefficiently, she started looking for her handbag.

'Margaret, when shall I see you again?'

'I don't know.'

'I'm a bit short of cash until… Shall I get Neddy to ask me down for tea at the week-end?'

'If you like. Bertrand'll be there, though.' She still spoke in an odd, expressionless voice.

'Bertrand? Oh well, we'd better leave it, then.'

With an almost imperceptible increase in emphasis, she said: 'Yes. He's coming down for the Summer Ball.'

Dixon felt like a man who knows he won't be able to jump on to the moving train if he stops to think about it. 'Are we going to that?' he said.

Ten minutes later, it having been established that they were going to that, Margaret was on her way out, all smiles, to lock up her exam scripts, to powder her nose, and to phone Mrs Welch with the news that she wouldn't, after all, be attending the luncheon-party, which had turned out to be of much less importance than had at first appeared; Margaret would, instead, be lunching off beer and cheese rolls in a pub with Dixon. He was glad that his trump card had had such a spectacular effect, but, as is the way with trump cards, it had seemed valuable enough to deserve to win ten tricks, not just the one, and had looked better in his hand than it did on the table. He had in his possession, however, two pieces of information of which Margaret was ignorant. One was the connexion, whatever it was, between Bertrand Welch and Carol Goldsmith, which had suddenly leapt up again in his thoughts at the news, from Margaret, that Bertrand was taking Carol to the Summer Ball, her husband being committed to go to Leeds as Welch's legate for the week-end. Presumably Bertrand's blonde and busty Callaghan piece had now, to her credit, been discarded. The interest of this situation compensated, in large part, for the likelihood that Carol, Bertrand, Margaret, and himself would be going to the Ball together; 'as a little party', Margaret had put it. The second thing Dixon knew and Margaret didn't was that Bill Atkinson had previously agreed to meet him in the very pub he and Margaret were now about to go to. Atkinson's presence would be a valuable stand-by in case of renewed difficulty with Margaret (though God knew there shouldn't be any of that so soon after the playing of the trump card), and his taciturnity would rule out any risk of their arrangement to meet being suddenly and untowardly revealed. But, more important than any of that, Atkinson and Margaret had not yet met. Trying to imagine what each would say to him about the other afterwards made Dixon grin to himself as he sat down to wait (God only knew for how long) for Margaret. To fill in some of the time he found some College stationery and began to write:

'Dear Dr Caton: I hope you will not mind my troubling you, but I wonder if you could let me know when my article…'

IX

'PROFESSOR Welch. Professor Welch, please.'

Dixon huddled himself further into the periodical he was reading and unobtrusively made his Martian-invader face. To him, it was a serious offence to pronounce that name in public, even when there was no chance of its bearer being thereby conjured up; Welch was known to be taking the whole day off, as distinct from days like yesterday (the day of their conversation about Dixon's job) when Welch merely took the early and late morning and the afternoon off. Dixon wished that the porter, a very bad man, would stop bawling that particular name and go away before his eye fell on Dixon and marked him down as a Welch-surrogate. But it was no use; in a moment he felt the approach of the porter down the length of the Common Room towards his chair, and had to look up.

The porter wore an olive-green uniform of military cut, and a peaked cap which didn't suit him. He was a long-faced, high-shouldered man with hairs growing out of his nose, and his age was hard to estimate. His expression, which rarely altered, couldn't be expected to at the sight of Dixon. Still approaching, he said huskily: 'Oh, Mr Jackson.'

Dixon wished he had the courage to twist energetically about in his chair in search of this quite new and unknown character. 'Yes, Maconochie?' he said helpfully.

'Oh, Mr Jackson, there's someone on the telephone for Professor Welch, but I can't seem to find him. Would you take the call for him, please? You're the only person in the History Department I can find,' he explained.

'Yes, all right,' Dixon said. 'Can I take it in here?'

'Thank you, Mr Jackson. No, the telephone in here goes on to the public exchange. The lady wanting the Professor's on the College switchboard. I'll switch her through to the Registrar's Clerk's room. He won't mind you taking it in there.'

A lady? It must be either Mrs Welch or some poor half-crazed creature connected with the arts. Mrs Welch would be better, in that her message would be comprehensible, but worse in that she might have found out about the sheet, or even the table. Why couldn't they leave him alone? Why couldn't every single one of them without any exception whatsoever just go right away from where he was and leave him alone?

Luckily, the Registrar's Clerk, another very bad man, wasn't in his room. Dixon picked up the phone and said: 'Dixon here.'

'Intermediate Geology, that's right, yes,' a voice said comfortably. 'Who's that?' another said. A buzzing followed, terminated by an eardrum-cracking click. When Dixon had got hold of the receiver again and put it to his other ear, he heard the second voice say: 'Is that Mr Jackson?'

'Dixon here.'

'Who?' It was a vaguely familiar voice, but not Mrs Welch's; it sounded like an adolescent girl's.

'Dixon. I'm taking the message for Professor Welch.'

'Oh, Mr Dixon, of course.' There was a noise which might have been a smothered snort of laughter. 'I might have guessed it'd be you. This is Christine Callaghan.'

'Oh, hallo, er, how are you?' The apparent deliquescence of the bowel that recognition brought on was only momentary; he knew he could deal with her voice creditably enough while the rest of her remained, presumably, in London.

'I'm fine, thanks. How are you? I hope you've had no more trouble with your bedclothes?'

Dixon laughed. 'No, I'm glad to say that's all blown over; touch wood.'

'Oh, good… Look, is there any way of getting hold of Professor Welch, do you know? Isn't he anywhere in the University?'

'He hasn't been in all the morning, I'm afraid. He's almost certain to be at home now. Or have you tried there?'

'Oh, how annoying. Perhaps you can tell me, though: do you know if he's expecting Bertrand down?'

'Well, yes, as it happens I do know that Bertrand's coming down at the week-end. Margaret Peel told me.' Dixon's equanimity had departed; evidently this girl didn't know she'd been junked by Bertrand, at least as far as the Summer Ball was concerned. Answering her questions about Bertrand was going to be tricky.

'Who told you?' Her voice had sharpened a little.

'You know, Margaret Peel. The girl who was staying with the Welches when you came down that time.'

'Oh yes, I see… Did she happen to mention whether Bertrand will be going to your Summer Ball affair?'

Dixon thought quickly; no questions about Bertrand's possible partner must be asked. 'No, I'm afraid not. But everybody else'll be going, anyway.' Why didn't she get hold of Bertrand and ask him?

'I see… But he is definitely coming down?'

'Apparently.'

She must have sensed his puzzlement, because she now said: 'I expect you're wondering why I don't ask Bertrand himself. Well, you see, he's often rather a difficult chap to get hold of. At the moment he's just sort of gone off, nobody knows where. He likes to come and go when he feels like it, hates being tied down and all that. Do you see?'

'Yes, of course.' Dixon bunched his free hand and waggled its first two fingers.

'So I thought I'd see if his father knew where he was or anything. The whole point is, what I really wanted to know is this. My Uncle, Mr Gore-Urquhart, got back from Paris sooner than he expected, and he's got an invitation from your Principal to the Summer Ball thing. He doesn't really know whether to come or not. Well, I could persuade him to come if Bertrand and I were going, and then Bertrand and he could get to know each other, and Bertrand wants that. But I must know soon, because it's the day after tomorrow and Uncle would want to know in good time, where he's to spend the week-end, I mean. So… well, it's rather a mix-up, I'm afraid.'

'Can't Mrs Welch throw any light on the matter?'

There was a pause. 'I've not actually been on to her.'

'Well, she's bound to know more about it than I do, isn't she? … Hallo?'

'I'm still here… Listen, keep this quiet, won't you? but I'd like not to get on to her if I can find out any other way. I… we didn't hit it off too well when I stayed. I don't want to have to, well, discuss Bertrand with her over the phone. I think she thinks I'm… Never mind; but you see what I mean?'

'I do indeed. I don't hit it off too well with the lady either, as a matter of fact. Now I've got a suggestion. I'll ring up the Welches for you now and get the Professor to ring you. If he's not there I'll leave a message or something. Anyway I'll see to it, somehow or other, that Mrs Welch doesn't get involved. If it's no good I'll ring you back myself and tell you. Will that do, now?'