Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis

He tried to get her to walk off with him, but she stayed where she was in the doorway, the lights from the corridor throwing her face into shadow. 'I meant a taxi.'

'A taxi? a taxi? just for three or four hundred yards?' He gave a shuddering laugh.' I'll have you back with Mum in less time than it'd take to phone. Good-night, Professor; goodnight, Mrs Barclay. Well, it's a good thing we haven't far to go; rather chilly. Did you say good-bye to the others for me?' They were far enough away by now for him to be able to add: 'Good. That's fine. Well done.' Nearby a car started up. Behind him he heard Mrs Barclay say something to her husband.

'What's going on?' Christine asked with undisguised curiosity. 'What's all this about?'

'We've pinched their taxi, that's one of the things that's going on. It's parked just round this corner.'

As if answering its name, the taxi, tired of waiting, emerged from the side-street and turned up towards the main road. He ran furiously off in pursuit, calling loudly: 'Taxi. Taxi.'

It drew to a stop and he went up to the driver's window. After a brief conversation, the taxi moved off again and disappeared into the main road. Dixon ran back to Christine, whom the Barclays had now rejoined. 'Sorry I couldn't get him for you,' he said to them. 'He'd got someone to pick up at the station in five minutes. What a nuisance.'

'Well, thank you very much, Dixon, for trying,' Barclay said.

'Yes, thank you all the same,' his wife said.

He took Christine's arm and walked her round into the side-street, calling good-night. They started to cross over.

'Does that mean we've lost the taxi? It was ours, was it?'

'Ours after it was theirs. No, I told the driver to drive round the corner and wait for us a hundred yards along the road. We can cut up through this alley, be there in a couple of minutes.'

'What would you have done if he hadn't driven out just then? We couldn't have driven off under the noses of those people.'

'I'd already worked out we'd have to do something like that. We'd got to establish that we and the taxi were leaving separately. That's why I was quick off the mark.'

'You were, very.'

With no more said they reached the taxi, parked outside the lighted windows of a dress-shop. Dixon opened a rear door for Christine, then said to the driver: 'Our friend isn't coming. We'll make a start, if you're ready.'

'Right, sir. Just by the Corn Exchange, isn't it?'

'No, it's further than the Corn Exchange.' He named the small town where the Welches lived.

'Oh, can't make it there, I'm sorry, sir.'

'It's all right, I know the way.'

' So do I, but they told me at the garage the Corn Exchange.'

'Did they really? Well, they told you wrong, then. We're not going to the Corn Exchange.'

'Not enough petrol.'

'Bateson's at the foot of College Road doesn't shut till twelve.' He peered at the dashboard. 'Ten to. We'll do it on our heads.'

'Not allowed to draw petrol except at our own garage.'

'We are tonight. I'll write to the company explaining. It's their fault for telling you you were only going to the Com Exchange. Now let's go, or you'll find yourself eight miles out without any petrol to get you back.'

He got in beside Christine and the car started.

XIV

'THAT was all very efficient,' Christine said. 'You're getting good at this sort of thing, aren't you? First the table, then the Evening Post thing, and now this.'

'I didn't use to be. By the way, I hope you don't object too much to the way I got hold of this taxi.'

'I've got into it, haven't I?'

'Yes, I know, but I should have thought the method would strike you as unethical.'

'It does, at least it would in the ordinary way, but it was more important for us to get a taxi than for them, wasn't it?'

'I'm glad you look at it like that.' He brooded on her use of the word 'important' for a moment, then realized that he didn't much care for her easy acquiescence in his piratical treatment of the Barclays' taxi. Even he now felt it had been a bit thick, and she presumably hadn't his excuse for wanting a taxi very badly. Like both the pretty women he'd known, and many that he'd only read about, she thought it was no more than fair that one man should cheat and another be cheated to serve her convenience. She ought to have objected, refused to go with him, insisted on returning and handing the taxi over to the Barclays, walked back, revolted by his unscrupulousness, into the dance. Yes, he'd have liked that, wouldn't he? Ay, proper champion that would have been, lad. His hand flew to his mouth in the darkness to stifle his laughter; to sidetrack it, he began distilling alarm from the thought that he'd have to find something to talk to this girl about all the way back to the Welches'. The only thing he felt at all clear about was the fact that this abduction of her was a blow struck against Bertrand, but it seemed less than prudent to begin there. Why had she consented to ditch her boy-friend in this emphatic way? There were several possible answers. Perhaps he could start with that. 'Did you manage to get away all right?' he asked.

'Oh yes; nobody seemed to object very much.'

'What did you say to them?'

'I just explained things to Uncle Julius - he never minds what I do - and then I just told Bertrand I was going.'

'How did he react to that?'

'He said, "Oh, don't do that, I'll be with you in a minute." Then he went on talking to Mrs Goldsmith and Uncle. So I came away then.'

'I see. It all sounds very easy and quick.'

'Oh, it was.'

'Well, I'm very glad you decided to come with me after all.'

'Good. I couldn't help feeling guilty rather, at first, about walking out on them all, but that's worn off now.'

'Good. What finally made you make up your mind?'

After a silence, she said: 'I wasn't enjoying it much in there, as you know, and I started feeling awfully tired, and it didn't look as if Bertrand could leave for some time, so I thought I'd come along with you.'

She said this in her best schoolmistressy way, elocution-mistressy in fact, so Dixon repeated as stiffly: 'I see.' In the light of a street-lamp he could see her sitting, as he'd expected, on the very edge of the seat. That was that, then.

She suddenly broke in again in her other manner, the one he associated with their phone conversation: 'No, I'm not going to try and get away with that. That's only a part of it. I don't see why I shouldn't tell you a bit more. I left because I was feeling absolutely fed-up with everything.'

'That's a bit sweeping. What had fed you up in particular?'

'Everything. I was absolutely fed-up. I don't see why I shouldn't tell you this. I've been feeling very depressed recently, and it all seemed to get too much for me tonight.'

'A girl like you's got no call to be depressed about anything, Christine,' Dixon said warmly, then at once fell against the window and banged his elbow smartly on the door as the taxi lurched aside in front of a row of petrol pumps. Behind these was an unlit building with a painted sign, faintly visible, reading Car's for hire - Batesons - Repair's. Dixon got out, ran to a large wooden door, and began to pound irregularly upon it, wondering whether, or how soon, to add shouts to his summons. While he waited, he ran over in his mind some handy all-purpose phrases of abusive or menacing tendency against the appearance of a garage-man unwilling to serve him. A minute passed; he went on thumping while the taxi-driver slowly joined him, his very presence a self-righteously pessimistic comment. Dixon laid down for himself the general lines of an appropriate face, involving free and unusual use of the lips and tongue and endorsed by manual gestures. Just then a light sprang up inside and very quickly the door was opened. A man appeared and declared himself able and willing to serve petrol. During the next couple of minutes Dixon was thinking not about this man but about Christine. He was filled with awe at the thought that she seemed, not only not to dislike him to any significant extent, but to trust him as well. And how wonderful she was, and how lucky he was to have her there. The admissions, the implied confessions about his feelings for her he'd made to Carol, had seemed outlandish at the time; now they seemed perfectly natural and just. The next half-hour or so formed the only chance he'd ever have of doing anything whatever about those feelings. For once in his life Dixon resolved to bet on his luck. What luck had come his way in the past he'd distrusted, stingily held on to until the chance of losing his initial gain was safely past. It was time to stop doing that.

Dixon paid the garage-man and the taxi moved off. 'You haven't any reason to be depressed, I was saying,' he said.

'I don't see how you can know that,' she said, severely again.

'No, of course I can't know it, but I shouldn't think you have too bad a time on the whole,' he said with an ease that surprised him. He could see that she needed time and encouragement to work back to her more open manner, and reflected that this sort of perception was as unfamiliar in him as all the other things he was feeling. 'I'd have put you down as somebody reasonably successful in most things.'

'I didn't mean to sound like a martyr. You're right, of course, I do have a good time and I've been very lucky in all sorts of ways. But, you know, I do find some things awfully difficult. I don't really know my way around, you know.'

Dixon wanted to laugh. He couldn't imagine any woman of her age less in need of such lore. He said as much.

'No, it's perfectly true,' she insisted. 'I haven't had a chance to find out yet.'

'You mustn't mind me saying this, but I should have thought there'd be plenty of people only too willing to show you.'

'I know, I see what you mean exactly, but they don't try to. They assume I know already, you see.' She was talking animatedly now.

'Oh, they do, do they? How's that, would you say?'

'I think it must just be because I look as if I'm full of poise and that sort of thing. I look as if I know all about how to behave, and all that. Two or three people have told me that, so it must be right. But it's only the way I look.'

'Well, it is true you look fairly sophisticated, if that's the right word. Even a bit upstage sometimes. But it…'

'How old would you say I am?'

Dixon thought an honest answer would, for once, be appropriate. 'About twenty-four, I should say.'

'There you are, then,' she said triumphantly. 'Just what I thought. I'm twenty next month. The eighteenth.'

'I didn't mean of course you didn't look very young as far as just your actual face goes, I just…'

'No, I know; but it's the age I seem, isn't it? It's the way I look, isn't it?'

'Yes, I suppose it is. But it isn't just that on its own, is it?'

'Sorry: what isn't what on its own?'

'I mean it's not just your appearance that makes you seem older and more experienced and all that. It's the way you behave and talk, a lot of the time, too. Don't you think so?'

'Well, it's awfully hard for me to tell, isn't it?'

'Must be, naturally. It's… you seem to… keep getting on to your high horse all the time; hard to describe it exactly. But you have got a habit, every now and then, of talking and behaving like a governess, though I don't know much about them, I must admit.'

'Oh, have I?'

Though the tone of this question illustrated just what he was talking about, Dixon, feeling it couldn't matter what he said, said: 'There, you're-doing it now. When you don't know what to do or say, you fall back on being starchy. And that all fits in with your face; that's probably what gave you the idea of being starchy in the first place, your face, I mean. And that makes a total effect of a prim kind of self-assurance, and you don't want to be prim but you do want to be self-assured. Yes… But that's quite enough of Uncle Jim's Corner. We're getting off the point. How does all this tie up with being depressed? There's still nothing to be depressed about.'

She hesitated while Dixon sweated slightly, repenting of his burst of old-trouper confidence, then she said with a rush: 'It's all to do with men, you see. I hadn't had much to do with men till I got my job in London last year… Look, you don't mind talking about me all the time, do you? It seems so self-centred. You don't think…?'

'You can forget all that. I want to hear about this.'

'All right, then. Well… I hadn't been working in the bookshop very long, when a man got talking to me and asked me to come to a party. So I went, of course, and there were a lot of artist kind of people there, and one or two ones from the B.B.C. You know the sort of thing?'

'I can imagine.'

'So… then it all started. I kept being asked out by men, and of course I kept going, it was such marvellous fun. And I still do enjoy it a great deal. But they kept… trying to seduce me the whole time. And I didn't want to be seduced, you see, and as soon as I'd convinced them of that, they were off. Well, I didn't mind that much, because there always seemed to be another one ready to…'

I'll bet there did. Go on.'

'I'm afraid this sounds terribly…'

'Go on.'

'Well, if you're quite sure… Anyway, after a few months of that I met Bertrand, that was in March. He didn't seem quite like the others, chiefly because he didn't start trying to make me be his mistress the entire time. And he can be very nice, you know, though I don't suppose you… After a bit the thing was, I was starting to get rather fond of him, and at the same time - this is the funny part - I was getting a bit fed-up with him in other ways while I was still getting more fond of him. He's such a queer mixture, you see.'

Naming to himself the two substances of which he personally thought Bertrand a mixture, Dixon said: 'In what way?'

'He can be extremely understanding and kind one minute, and completely unreasonable and childish the next. I feel I never know where I am with him, or what he really wants. Sometimes I think it's all to do with how he's getting on with his painting. Anyhow, what with one thing and another we started having rows. And I can't bear rows, especially because he was always putting me in the wrong by them.'

'How do you mean?'

'You know, he'd start one with me when he could put me in the wrong by starting one, and force me to start one when starting one would put whoever started one in the wrong. There'll be one over tonight, of course, and he'll put me in the wrong, as usual. But he's in the wrong, he's the one who's wrong. All this business with Mrs Goldsmith - it's all right, I'm not going to ask you about it - but I know there's something going on there, but he won't tell me what it is. I don't suppose it's anything much; he just gets a bit excited when… But he won't tell me what's happening. He'll pretend there isn't anything, and he'll ask me if I really think he'd get up to anything behind my back, and I'll have to say No, otherwise…'

'This is none of my business, Christine, but in my opinion friend Bertrand's letting himself in for you giving him the air.'