Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis

This must all have been clearly audible to Christine, who now came down the room with Margaret. Both girls avoided Dixon's eye while they went out, leaving him alone with Bertrand. When the door was shut, Dixon said: 'I can't give any sort of answer, straight or crooked, to a meaningless question. What do you mean, what was my game? I wasn't playing any sort of game.'

'You know what I mean as well as I do. What were you up to?'

'You'd better ask Christine that.'

'We'll leave her out of this, if you don't mind.'

'Why should I mind?' Dixon, in spite of the thought of how Mrs Welch's bill would gobble up his bank-balance, suddenly began to exult. The preliminary manoeuvrings, the cold war between himself and Bertrand, were over at least. This was the whiff of grapeshot.

'Don't be funny, Dixon. Just tell me what was going on, will you? or I shall have to try something a little more forcible.'

'Don't you be funny, either. What do you want to know?'

Bertrand clenched his fist; then, when Dixon took off his glasses and squared his shoulders, unclenched it again. Dixon put his glasses back on. 'I want to know…' Bertrand said, then hesitated.

'What my game was? We've been into that.'

'Shut up. What did you intend doing with Christine, that's what I want to know.'

'I intended doing exactly what I did do. I intended to go away from that place with Christine, to bring her back here in a taxi, and finally to return to my digs in the same taxi. That's what I did do.'

'Well, I'm not having that, do you understand?'

'It's too late not to have it. You've had it already.'

'Now just you get this straight in your head, Dixon. I've had enough of your merry little quips. Christine is my girl and she stays my girl, got mam?'

'If you mean do I follow your line of thought, I do.'

'That's splendid. Well, if I find you playing this sort of trick again, or any sort of bloody clever trick, I'll break your horrible neck for you and get you dismissed from your job as well. Understand?'

'Yes, I understand all right, but you're wrong if you think I'll let you break my neck for me, and if you think they chuck people out of academic jobs for taking their professors' sons' girl-friends home in taxis, then you're even more wrong, if possible.'

Bertrand's reply reassured Dixon that Bertrand hadn't so far found out from his father about Dixon's present standing in the eyes of College authority. The reply was: 'Don't think you can defy me and get away with it, Dixon. People never do.'

'People are beginning to, Welch. You must realize that it's up to Christine whether she sees any more of me. If you feel you must threaten someone, go and threaten her.'

Bertrand suddenly yelled out in a near-falsetto bay: 'I've had about enough of you, you little bastard. I won't stand any more of it, do you hear? To think of a lousy little philistine like you coming and monkeying about in my affairs, it's enough to… Get out and stay out, before you get hurt. Leave my girl alone, you're wasting your time, you're wasting her time, you're wasting my time. What the hell do you mean by buggering about like this? You're big enough and old enough and ugly enough to know better.'

Dixon was saved from replying by the sudden re-entry of Christine and Margaret. The scene broke up: Christine, who seemed to be trying to flash Dixon a message he couldn't read, took Bertrand by the arm and led him, still loudly protesting, out of the room; Margaret silently offered Dixon a cigarette, which he took. Neither spoke while they sat down side by side on a couch, nor for some moments afterwards. Dixon found himself trembling a good deal. He looked at Margaret and an intolerable weight fell upon him.

He knew now what he'd been trying to conceal from himself ever since the previous morning, what the row with Bertrand had made him temporarily disbelieve: he and Christine would not, after all, be able to eat tea together the following afternoon. If he was going to eat that meal with any female apart from Miss Cutler, it would be not Christine, but Margaret. He remembered a character in a modern novel Beesley had lent him who was always feeling pity moving in him like sickness, or some such jargon. The parallel was apt: he felt very ill.

'That was about the dance business, was it?' Margaret asked.

'Yes. He seemed to resent it all rather.'

'I'm not surprised. What was he shouting?'

'He was trying to persuade me to keep off the grass.'

'As far as she's concerned?'

'That's right.'

'Are you going to?'

'Eh?'

'Are you going to keep off the grass?'

'Yes.'

'Why, James?'

'Because of you.'

He'd been expecting a demonstration of some strong feeling or other here, but she only said 'I think that's rather silly of you' in a neutral tone that wasn't ostentatiously neutral, but simply neutral.

'What makes you say that?'

'I thought we got all that settled yesterday. I don't see the point of starting the whole thing over again.'

'It can't be helped. We'd have started it again some time; it might just as well be now.'

'Don't be ridiculous. You'd have much more fun with her than you ever had with me.'

'That's as may be. The point is that I've got to stick to you.' He said this without bitterness, nor did he feel any.

There was a short silence before she replied: 'I don't hold with these renunciations. You're throwing her away for a scruple. That's the action of a fool.'

This time, a minute or more went by before either spoke. Dixon felt that his role in this conversation, as indeed in the whole of his relations with Margaret, had been directed by something outside himself and yet not directly present in her. He felt more than ever before that what he said and did arose not out of any willing on his part, nor even out of boredom, but out of a kind of sense of situation. And where did that sense come from if, as it seemed, he took no share in willing it? With disquiet, he found that words were forming in his mind, words which, because he could think of no others, he'd very soon hear himself uttering. He got up, thinking that he might go to the window and somehow derive alternative speech from what he saw out of it, but before reaching it he turned and said: 'It isn't a matter of scruples; it's a matter of seeing what you've got to do.'

She said clearly: 'You're faking this up because you're frightened of me.'

He looked at her closely for the first time since she'd come back into the room. She was sitting there with her feet drawn up on the couch and her arms round her knees; her expression was one of intentness. She might have been discussing some academic point on which she was both informed and interested. He noticed that she was wearing much less make-up than usual. 'Not after yesterday,' he said. Again he wasn't conscious of having decided what to say.

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Never mind. Stop objecting like this. The whole thing's perfectly straightforward.'

'Not as far as I'm concerned, James. I can't understand you at all.'

'Yes you can.' He went and sat beside her again. 'Let's go to the pictures tonight. You can get out of the theatre. Carol won't mind, I know.'

'I wasn't going, anyway.'

'That's all right, then.'

He reached out and took her hand: she made no movement. There was another pause, during which they heard someone run heavily downstairs into the hall. Margaret glanced at him for a moment, then turned her head away. In a parched sort of voice, she said: 'All right, I'll come to the pictures.'

'Good.' Dixon felt glad it was over. 'I'll go and find Neddy and book a seat in the car. He can get six in all right. You go up and get ready.'

They went out into the hall, where Welch, now wearing a blue serge suit of startlingly extravagant cut, was to be seen admiring his picture. When Margaret said 'I shan't be a minute' and went up the stairs, Dixon reflected that their conversation, whatever its other peculiarities, had reflected an honesty on both sides that their relations had never shown before. That was something, anyway.

Welch's mouth opened at his approach, no doubt in preparation for some pronouncement beginning 'The point about child art, of course', but Dixon got in first by explaining that Margaret would also, if convenient, like a seat in the car. After a very brief visitation from his wondering frown, Welch nodded and walked with Dixon to the front door, which he opened. They went out on to the step. A light breeze was blowing and the sun shone through a thin tissue of cloud. The heat had gone out of the day.

'I'll just go and bring the car round,' Welch said. I'd quite forgotten we were going out, you see, or I wouldn't have garaged it. I shan't be a minute.'

He went off. As he did so, somebody else's step could be heard on the stairs. Dixon turned round and saw Christine coming towards him wearing a little black bolero, but otherwise dressed exactly as he'd seen her on the arty week-end. Perhaps these were the only ordinary clothes she had, in which case he oughtn't to have let her give him that pound for the taxi. She smiled at him and joined him on the step. 'I hope you didn't have too bad a time with Bertrand,' she said.

'Bertrand? Oh… no, it was all right.'

'I managed to calm him down after a bit.'

He watched her; she stood with her legs apart and looked very sturdy and confident. The breeze blew a small lock of fair hair the wrong way, half-across the parting. She screwed up her eyes slightly as she faced the sun. It was as if she were about to do something dangerous, important, and simple which she knew she could have a creditable shot at whether she succeeded or not. A feeling of grief that was also a feeling of exasperation settled upon Dixon. He looked away over the fields beyond the nearby hedge to where a line of osiers marked the bed of a small stream. A crowd of rooks, perhaps a couple of hundred, flew towards the house, then, directly above the stream, swerved aside along its course.

'About this tea tomorrow,' Dixon said, half-turning back to Christine.

'Yes?' she said, looking a little nervous. 'What about it?' As she said this, Welch started up his car at the side of the house. She added: 'You needn't worry. I'll be there all right.' Before he could reply she glanced over her shoulder into the hall and shook her finger at him, frowning.

Bertrand came out on to the step, glancing from one of them to the other. He was wearing a blue beret, which had much the same effect on Dixon as Welch senior's fishing-hat. If such headgear was a protection, what was it a protection against? If it wasn't a protection, what was it? What was it for? What was it for?

As if divining what he wanted to ask, Christine again frowned at him, then at Bertrand. 'Now whatever you two think of each other,' she said, 'for goodness' sake pull yourselves together, both of you, and behave decently in front of Mr and Mrs Welch. I thought you'd both gone off your heads just now.'

'I was only telling him where he…' Bertrand began.

'Well, you're not going to tell him anything now,' she turned to Dixon, 'and you're not going to tell him anything. If you start quarrelling in the car I'll jump out.'

They stood apart from each other for a few moments, while Dixon's regret concentrated on the fact that to abandon the pursuit of Christine meant imposing a cease-fire in the Bertrand campaign. Then Welch's car, with its owner at the wheel, came bouncing round the corner and the three of them moved towards it. Mrs Welch, accompanied by Margaret, came out of the house, shut the front door, and joined them, not looking at Dixon. A rather undignified scramble for places now ensued, ending with Dixon in occupation of the middle of the triple front seat with Margaret on his left. Behind them sat Mrs Welch, Christine, and Bertrand. Dixon thought the arrangement prettily symmetrical. Breathing noisily, Welch snatched his foot off the clutch-pedal, and, in the kangaroo mode to which it must by now be accustomed, the car started on its journey.

XIX

DIXON looked at the telephone where it stood on a black plush cloth in the middle of a bamboo table situated in Miss Cutler's drawing-room. He felt like an alcoholic surveying a bottle of gin; only by using it could he obtain the relief he wanted, but its side-effects, as recent experience had proved, were likely to be deleterious. He must cancel the tea-date with Christine, now only six hours ahead. To do that he must take the chance of Mrs Welch answering the phone. This, in other circumstances a certain deterrent, he'd decided to risk in preference to keeping the date and telling Christine to her face that their little adventure was at an end. The thought of such a meeting being their last was not to be endured. He sat down by the phone, gave the number, and in a few seconds heard Mrs Welch's voice. It didn't discompose him, but before saying anything he made his lascar's face in order to draw off his anger. Did Mrs Welch spend all her time sitting, had she perhaps had a bed made up, within arm's length of the phone in case he might ring up?

'Trying to connect you,' he fluted as he'd planned. 'Hallo, who is that?'

Mrs Welch mentioned her number.

'Speak up, London,' he went on; 'you're through.' Then he jammed his teeth together, opened his mouth laterally as far as he could, and said in a growling over-cultured bass: 'Hallaher, hallaher,' following this with a whinnying 'You're through, London' and, in the bass voice 'Hallaher, have yaw a Miss Kellerhen steng with yaw, plizz?' He made a rushing noise with his mouth which he thought imitated line disturbances.

'Who's that speaking, please?'

Dixon rocked to and fro as if in grief, bringing his mouth up to the phone and back again as he spoke: 'Hallaher, hallaher. Forteskyah hyah.'

'I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch…'

'Forteskyaw… Farteskyaw…'

'Who is that speaking? It sounds like…'

'Hallaher… Is thet yaw, Miss Kellerhen?'

'Is that you, Mr…?'

'Farteskyah,' Dixon bawled desperately, muffling his mouth with his hand and trying not to cough.

'That's Mr Dixon, isn't it? What are you trying to…?'

'Hallaher…'

'Kindly stop this… ridiculous, this…'

'Three minutes up,' he neighed, slobbering. 'Finish off, please, time's up.' He added a last throat-peeling 'Hallaher', the phone at the full length of his arm, and fell silent. This was a rout.

'If you're still there, Mr Dixon,' Mrs Welch said after a moment, in a voice sharpened to excoriation by the intervening few miles of line, 'I'd like to tell you that if you make one more attempt to interfere in my son's or my affairs, then I shall have to ask my husband to take the matter up with you from a disciplinary point of view, and also that other matter of the…'

Dixon rang off. 'Sheet,' he said. Trembling, he reached for his cigarettes; in the last few days he'd given up all attempt to ration himself. He'd have to keep his date now; a telegram would be too curt. And Mrs Welch would probably station herself so as to intercept it anyway. As he was lighting his cigarette, the bell of the phone went off within two feet of his head; he started violently and began coughing, then took up the phone. Who could this be? An oboist for Johns, most likely, or perhaps a clarinettist. He said 'Hallo.'