Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis

Dixon did this, managing to hint as he talked at how matters stood between himself and Margaret. Catchpole listened in silence with his eyes on the table, frowning slightly and playing with a couple of dead matches. His hair was long and untidy. At the end he said: 'Thanks very much. That clears things up quite a bit. I'll give you my side of the story now. Firstly, contrary to what Margaret seems to have told you, she and I were never lovers in either the emotional or what I might call the technical sense. That's news to you, I take it?'

'Yes,' Dixon said. He felt curiously frightened, as if Catch-pole were trying to pick a quarrel with him.

'I thought it might be. Well, having met her at a political function, I found myself, without quite knowing how, going about with her, taking her to the theatre and to concerts, and all that kind of thing. Quite soon I realized that she was one of these people - they're usually women - who feed on emotional tension. We began to have rows about nothing, and I mean that quite literally. I was much too wary, of course, to start any kind of sexual relationship with her, but she soon started behaving as if I had. I was perpetually being accused of hurting her, ignoring her, trying to humiliate her in front of other women, and all that kind of thing. Have you had any experiences of that sort with her?'

'Yes,' Dixon said. 'Go on.'

'I can see that you and I have more in common than we thought at first. However; after a particularly senseless row about some remark I'd made when introducing her to my sister, I decided I didn't want any more of that kind of thing. I told her so. There was the most shattering scene.' Catchpole combed his hair back with his fingers and shifted in his seat. 'I'd got the afternoon off and we were out shopping, I remember, and she started shouting at me in the street. It was really dreadful. I felt I couldn't stand another minute of it, so finally, to keep her quiet, I agreed to go round and see her that evening about ten o'clock. When the time came, I couldn't face going. A couple of days later, when I found out about her… attempted suicide, I realized that that was the very evening I'd been supposed to go and see her. It gave me a bit of a shock when I realized I could have prevented the whole thing if I'd taken the trouble to put in an appearance.'

'Wait a minute,' Dixon said with a dry mouth. 'She asked me to go round that evening as well. She told me afterwards that you'd come and told her…'

Catchpole brushed this aside. 'Are you quite sure? Are you sure it was that evening?'

'Absolutely. I can remember the whole thing quite clearly. As a matter of fact, we'd just been buying the sleeping pills when she asked me to come round, the ones she must have used in the evening. That's how I remember. Why, what's up?'

'She bought some sleeping pills while she was with you?'

'Yes, that's right.'

'When was this?'

'That she bought them? Oh, about midday I suppose. Why?'

Catchpole said slowly: 'But she bought a bottle of pills while she was with me in the afternoon.'

They looked at each other in silence. 'I imagine she forged a prescription,' Dixon said finally.

'We were both supposed to be there, then, and see what we'd driven her to,' Catchpole said bitterly. 'I knew she was neurotic, but not as neurotic as that.'

'It was lucky for her the chap in the room underneath came up to complain about her wireless.'

'She wouldn't have taken a risk like that. No, this pretty well confirms what I've always thought. Margaret had no intention of committing suicide, then or at any other time. She must have taken some of the pills before we were due to arrive - not enough to kill her of course - and waited for us to rush in and wring our hands and see to her and reproach ourselves. I don't think there can be any doubt of that. She was never in any danger of dying at all.'

'But there's no proof of that,' Dixon said. 'You're just assuming that.'

'Don't you think I'm right? Knowing what you must know about her?'

'I don't know what to think, honestly.'

'But can't you see…? Isn't it logical enough for you? It's the only explanation that fits. Look, try to remember; did she say anything about how many pills she took, what the fatal dose was, anything like that?'

'No, I don't think so. I just remember her saying she was holding on to the empty bottle all the time she…'

'The empty bottle. There were two bottles. That's it. I'm satisfied now. I was right.'

'Have another drink,' Dixon said. He felt he must get away from Catchpole for a moment, but while he was standing at the bar he found he couldn't think, all he could do was to try vainly to get his thoughts into order. He hadn't yet recovered from the ordinary basic surprise at finding that a stranger knew very well someone he knew very well; one intimacy, he felt, ought to rule out any others. And as for Catchpole's theory… he couldn't believe it. Could he believe it? It didn't seem the kind of theory to which belief or disbelief could be attached.

As soon as he'd rejoined him with the drinks, Catchpole said: 'You're not still unconvinced, I hope?' He swayed about in his chair with a kind of unstable exultation. 'The empty bottle. But there were two bottles, and she only used one. How do I know? Do you imagine she'd have failed to tell you she'd used two if she had used two? No, she forgot to tell a lie there. She thought it wouldn't matter. She couldn't predict my getting hold of you in this fashion. I can't blame her for that: even the best planner can't think of everything. She'd have checked up, of course, that she'd be in no danger with one bottle. Perhaps two bottles wouldn't have killed her, either, but she wasn't taking any risks.' He picked up his drink and put half of it down. 'Well, I'm extremely grateful to you for doing this for me. I'm completely free of her now. No more worrying about how she is, thank God. That's worth a great deal.' He gazed at Dixon with his hair falling over his brow. 'And you're free of her too, I hope.'

'You didn't ever mention the question of marriage to her, did you?'

'No, I wasn't fool enough for that. She told you I did, I suppose?'

'Yes. And you didn't go off to Wales with a girl around that time either?'

'Unfortunately not. I went to Wales, yes, but that was for my firm. They don't provide their representatives with girls to go away with, more's the pity.' He finished his drink and stood up, his manner quietening. 'I hope I've removed your suspicions of me. I've been very glad to meet you, and I'd like to thank you for what you've done.' He leaned forward over Dixon and lowered his voice further. 'Don't try to help her any more; it's too dangerous for you. I know what I'm talking about. She doesn't need any help either, you know, really. The best of luck to you. Good-bye.'

They shook hands and Catchpole strode out, his tie flapping. Dixon finished his drink and left a couple of minutes later. He strolled back to the digs through the lunch-time crowds. All the facts seemed to fit, but Margaret had fixed herself too firmly in his life and his emotions to be pushed out of them by a mere recital of facts. Failing some other purgative agent than facts, he could foresee himself coming to disbelieve this lot altogether.

Miss Cutler provided lunch, for those who asked for it, at one o'clock. He'd planned to take advantage of this and catch a train home just after two. Entering the dining-room, he encountered Bill Atkinson sitting at the table reading a new number of the wrestling periodical to which he subscribed. He looked up at Dixon and, as sometimes happened, addressed a remark to him. 'Just had your popsy through on the blower,' he said.

'Oh God. What did she want?'

'Don't say "Oh God".' He frowned threateningly. 'I don't mean the one that gets me down, the one that's always chucking dummies, I mean the other one, the one you say belongs to the bearded sportsman.'

'Christine?'

'Yes. Christine,' Atkinson said, contriving to make the name sound like a term of abuse.

'What did she want, Bill? This might be important.'

Atkinson turned to the front page of his journal, where two Laocoons were interlocked. He indicated that the conversation was still in existence by saying: 'Wait a minute.' After reading attentively something he'd written in the margin, he added in a wounding tone: 'I didn't get all of it, but the main thing is her train goes at one-fifty.'

'What, today? I heard she wasn't going for a few days yet.'

'I can't help what you heard. I'm telling you what I heard. She said she had some news for you that she couldn't tell me over the old phone, and that if you wanted to see her again you could see her off on this one-fifty caper. It was up to you, she said. She seemed a bit set on the idea that it was up to you, but don't ask me what she meant by it, because she didn't let on. She did say she'd "understand" if you didn't come. Don't ask me to translate that, either.' He added that the train referred to was leaving, not from the main city station, but from the smaller one near Welch's house. Some trains not originating from the city stopped at this station on their way towards London.

'I'd better get moving, then,' Dixon said, making calculations.

'You had. I'll tell the bag you won't be wanting your lunch. Go and get on that bus.' Atkinson lowered his face towards his paper.

Dixon ran out into the street. He felt as if he'd been hurrying all his life. Why wasn't she getting a train from the city station? There was an excellent one to London at three-twenty, he knew. What was her news? At any rate, he had some for her; two lots, in fact. Did her unexpected departure mean that she and Bertrand had had another row? A bus was due to turn up College Road between one-ten and one-fifteen. It was that now. The next was at one thirty-five or so. Hopeless. He ran faster. No, she wouldn't have left just because of a row. He'd stake anything on her not being the type to take a revenge of that sort for a thing of that sort. Oh, hell, her news was probably just that 'Uncle Julius' was going to offer him a job. She wouldn't have counted on his having heard so quickly. Would she have asked him to come all this way just to tell him that? Or was it all just an excuse for seeing him again? But why should she want to do that?

He suddenly bounded aside into the road, where, some yards away, a large taxi-like car was waiting in a side-street to insert itself in the further stream of traffic. Dixon cut through the nearer stream, bawling 'Taxi. Taxi.' Just what he wanted. In a moment he was able to make for the far pavement, but the taxi simultaneously drove out into the main road and began to gather speed away from him. 'Taxi. Taxi.' He was nearly there when the face of the Principal's wife, wearing a hat like a biretta, appeared at the back window, frowning at him from what had looked like an empty rear compartment. The taxi was clearly not a taxi, but the Principal's car. Was the Principal in it too? Dixon veered away through an open gate into someone's front garden, where he knelt for a minute behind the hedge. Was it really so important for him to meet Christine at the station? Wouldn't he be able to get in touch with her afterwards through 'Uncle Julius'? Had he still got the piece of paper with her phone number on it?

A rapping on glass made him turn round. An old lady and a big parrot were glaring at him from a ground-floor window. He bowed deeply, then remembered his bus and ran out on to the pavement. A couple of hundred yards away a bus was coming slowly up the hill from the city. It was too far off for him to be able to read its destination screen, and in any case his exertions had misted his glasses over. But it must be the one and he must get it. He sensed, as far as he could sense anything at the moment, that something would go badly wrong if he failed to turn up at the station, that something he wanted would be withdrawn. He began running even faster, so that people began to skip out of his way and look at him with wondering resentment. The bus, unable for the moment to begin its turn into College Road, was halted in mid-traffic and was, he could now see, his bus. He ran steadily towards the corner of College Road, but the bus began moving again and reached it before him. When he next saw the bus, it was halted about fifty yards away up College Road, and someone had just got on.

Dixon broke into a frenzied, lung-igniting sprint, while the conductor watched him immobile from the platform. When he was half-way to the bus, this official rang the bell, the driver let in the clutch, and the wheels began to turn. Dixon found he was even better at running than he'd thought, but when the gap between man and bus had narrowed to perhaps five yards, it began to widen rapidly. Dixon stopped running and favoured the conductor, who was still watching unemotionally, with the best-known obscene gesture. At once the conductor rang the bell again and the bus stopped abruptly. Dixon hesitated for a moment, then trotted lightly up to the bus and boarded it with some diffidence. He found himself unwilling to meet the eye of the conductor, who now said admiringly 'Well run, wacker' and rang the bell for the third time.

Dixon gasped out a question about the bus's time of arrival at the station, which was where it terminated its run, got a civil but evasive answer, spent a few moments beating down the stares of the nearby passengers, and climbed effortfully to the top deck. There he made his rebounding way to the front seat and collapsed into it without being able to afford the breath to groan. He began swallowing the thick burning substance that filled his mouth and throat, panted energetically for a time, and tremulously took out his packet of small cigarettes and his matches. After reading the joke on the back of the matchbox a few times and laughing at it, he lit a cigarette; this was the only action he could take for the moment. He looked out of the window; the road unfolded itself in front of him, and he couldn't help feeling some sort of exhilaration, especially at the brightness of the landscape under the sun. Beyond the lines of green-tiled semi-detached villas open fields were already appearing, and through some trees he could see a gleam of water.

Christine had said that she'd 'understand' if he failed to turn up to see her off. What did that mean? Did it mean that she 'understood' that his commitments with Margaret would have decided him not to come? Or had it some vaguely unwelcome overtone, implying that she'd 'understand' that the whole thing between them now appeared to him as a romantic mistake, Margaret or no Margaret? He couldn't allow Christine to escape him today; if she did he might not see her again at all. Not at all; that was a disagreeable phrase. Suddenly his face altered, seeming to become all nose and glasses; the bus had moved up behind a lorry slowly drawing along an elaborate trailer, which had a notice on it recommending caution and saying how many feet long it was. A smaller notice adduced further grounds for caution in the elliptic form: Air brakes. Lorry, trailer, and bus began moving, at a steady twelve miles an hour, round what gave firm promise of being a long series of bends. With difficulty Dixon snatched his gaze from the back of the trailer and, to fortify himself, began thinking about what Catchpole had said to him about Margaret.