Lucky Jim

'I'd like us to go over to your uncle now, Christine,' Bertrand said. 'There are one or two things I want to discuss with him, if you remember.'

'In a minute, Bertrand; there's plenty of time,' Christine said 'dignantly'.

'No no, there isn't plenty of time; the thing's due to start in about ten minutes, and that isn't plenty of time for what I want to talk about.'

Dixon had noticed that Bertrand always said 'No no' instead of 'No', combining at small outlay a simultaneous lowering and raising of the eyebrows in verbal form. He wished he wouldn't do that. Past Bertrand's head, he could see Carol beginning to edge away from Cecil and Margaret - he noticed her for the first time - in his own direction. Quoting from a film he'd once seen, he said to Christine: 'Better do as he says, lady, otherwise he's liable to kick your teeth in.'

'Run away and play, Dixon.'

'Bertrand, how can you be so rude?'

'Me be so rude? I like that. Me be so rude. What about him? Who the hell does he think he is? Telling you to…'

Christine had gone red. 'Have you forgotten what I told you before we came?'

'Look, Christine, I didn't come here to talk to this… this fellow, nor about him, I may say. I came here simply and solely to get hold of your uncle, and it's now…'

'Why, hallo, Bertie dear,' Carol said behind him. 'I want you. Come over here, will you?'

Bertrand had performed a start of surprise and half-turn in one movement. 'Hallo, Carol, but I was just…'

'I shan't keep you a minute,' Carol said, and gripped his arm. 'I'll return him in good condition,' she added over her shoulder to Christine.

'Well… hallo, Christine,' Dixon said.

'Oh, hallo.'

'This really is the last time, isn't it?'

'Yes, that's right.'

He felt petulant and self-pitying. 'You don't seem to mind as much as I do.'

She looked at him for a moment, then abruptly turned her head aside, as if he were showing her a photograph in a book of forensic medicine. 'I've done all my minding,' she said. 'I'm not going to do any more now. Neither will you if you've got any sense.'

'I can't help minding,' he said. 'Minding isn't a thing you can do anything about. I can't help going on with it.'

'What's the matter with your eye?'

'Bertrand and I had a fight this afternoon.'

'A fight? He didn't say anything to me about it. What were you fighting about? A fight?'

'He told me to keep off the grass where you were concerned, and I said I wouldn't, so we started fighting.'

'But we agreed… You haven't changed your mind about…?'

'No. I just wasn't going to let him tell me what to do, that's all.'

'But fancy having a fight.' She seemed to be repressing a laugh. 'You lost, by the look of you.'

He didn't like that, and remembered her tendency to grin during the hotel tea. 'Not at all. Take a look at Bertrand's ear before you start deciding who won and who lost.'

'Which one?'

'The right. But there probably won't be much to see. The damage was mostly internal, I should think.'

'Did you knock him over?'

'Oh yes, right over. He stayed down for a bit, too.'

'My God.' She stared at him, her full, dry lips slightly apart. A pang of helpless desire made Dixon feel heavy and immovable, as if he were being talked to by Welch. Then he felt that never had he been reminded so clearly of his first meeting with her as in the last couple of minutes, and glared at her.

At this moment of silence, Bertrand suddenly reappeared from behind the wife of one of the aldermen with a quick shuffling movement, rather like a left-arm bowler coming into a batsman's view round the umpire. His face was red; he was obviously almost beside himself with rage, either in its pure form or compounded with some other emotion. Carol followed him, looking inquisitive.

'That's enough of that,' Bertrand said, his voice a choking bay. 'This is just how I expected things to bam.' He caught hold of Christine's arm and pulled her away with some violence. Before moving off, he said to Dixon: 'Right, my lad. This is the finish for you. You'd better start looking for another job. I mean that.' Christine gave Dixon a brief, startled glance over her shoulder as she was virtually frog-marched towards the group that contained her uncle. Carol too looked at Dixon, a speculative look. Then she followed the other two. A loud homicidal-maniac laugh came from the Principal.

Dixon experienced a return of the ill feeling he'd had some minutes before. Then he found his thoughts being blindly swept along by panic. Bertrand must mean what he said; whatever it was that went on in Welch's head, the facts his son had to reveal must surely have a significant influence - and even if they didn't, there were his wife's contributions to add to the scale, that was if she hadn't added them already on her own initiative. Dixon realized he'd been wrong in thinking that the Bertrand-campaign was over and won; the last shot had still to be fired, and he was in the open and unarmed. What he'd warned himself of at the outset had really happened; he'd let himself be carried away, the joy of battle really had robbed him of his discretion and prudence. He was helpless; above all, helpless to prevent that bearded slob from standing there with his hand on Christine's arm, confident, proprietary, victorious. She stood by her boy-friend in an awkward, uncomfortable attitude, even an ungraceful one, but for Dixon's money there could be no more beautiful way for a woman to stand.

'Taking your last look, eh, James?'

At this sudden appearance of Margaret on his blind side, Dixon felt like a man fighting a policeman who sees another approaching on a horse. It dazed him. 'What?' he said.

'You'd better have a good look at her, hadn't you? You won't get another chance.'

'No, I don't suppose I…'

'Unless of course you've fixed it to run up to London every so often, just to keep in touch.'

Dixon stared into her face, genuinely surprised, surprised too that Margaret could, at this stage, do anything to surprise him. 'What do you mean?' he asked dully.

'No use pretending, is there? Doesn't take much imagination to see what you're thinking.' The tip of her nose wiggled slightly as she talked, in the way it always did. She stood with her feet apart and her arms crossed on her breast, as Dixon had seen her many times, making small-talk in this room or one of the little teaching-rooms upstairs. She didn't look at all strained, or excited, or ill-at-ease, or annoyed.

Dixon heaved a sigh of weariness before plunging in with the kind of protests and excuses laid down for him by the conventions of this particular pursuit. As he talked, he reflected how easily, by what deft sleight-of-hand, he'd been deprived of his one moral advantage in recent dealings with Margaret: his uninfluenced decision to take no more active interest in Christine. It was a bit rough to be reproached for hankering after what he'd voluntarily turned down. His spirits were so low that he wanted to lie down and pant like a dog: jobless, Christineless, and now grand-slammed in the Margaret game.

With no conclusion reached, their conversation was brought to an end by the drift of the Principal's group towards the door. Gore-Urquhart was apparently deep in talk with Bertrand and Christine. Welch called: 'Ready, Dixon?' With Mrs Welch at his side, he more than ever resembled an old boxer, given to a bit of poaching now and then, standing with his ex-kitchenmaid wife.

'See you in the Hall, Professor,' Dixon called back; then, with a word to Margaret, he hurried out and into the Staff Cloakroom. Stage-fright was upon him now; his hands were cold and damp, his legs felt like flaccid rubber tubes filled with fine sand, he had difficulty in controlling his breathing. While he was using the lavatory, he began making his Evelyn Waugh face, then abandoned it in favour of one more savage than any he normally used. Gripping his tongue between his teeth, he made his cheeks expand into little hemispherical balloons; he forced his upper lip downwards into an idiotic pout; he protruded his chin like the blade of a shovel. Throughout, he alternately dilated and crossed his eyes. Turning away, he found himself confronted by Gore-Urquhart, allowed his face to collapse, and said: 'Oh, hallo'.