Lucky Jim

of the World, asked Dixon's opinion on a clue in its prize crossword, and made an impracticable suggestion for the entertainment of the company at the Welches', Dixon watched the Callaghan girl listening to something Bertrand was explaining about art. She was sitting bolt upright in her chair, her lips compressed, wearing, he noticed for the first time, exactly what she'd been wearing the previous evening. Everything about her looked severe, and yet she didn't mind sheets and charred table-tops, and Margaret did. This girl hadn't minded fried eggs eaten with the fingers, either. It was a puzzle.

Raising his voice a little, Dixon said: 'Well, thanks very much for ringing, Bill. Apologize to my parents, will you, and tell them I'll be back as soon as I can?'

'Tell Johns from me where to put his oboe before you go.'

'I'll do my best. Good-bye.'

'That's the real point about Mexican art, Christine,' Bertrand was saying. 'Primitive technique can't have any virtue in itself, obviouslam.'

'No of course not; I see,' she said.

'I'm afraid I shall have to leave right away, Mrs Welch,' Dixon said. 'That phone call…'

They all looked round at him, Bertrand impatiently, Mrs Welch censoriously, Welch with incomprehension, Bertrand's girl without curiosity. Before Dixon could begin to explain, Margaret walked in through the open door, followed by Johns. Her recovery from prostrating fatigue had been rapid; had Johns somehow assisted it?

'A-ah,' Margaret said. It was her usual greeting to a roomful of people; a long, exhaled, downward glissando. 'Hallo, everybody.'

Those already in the room began moving uneasily about in response to this. Welch and Bertrand began talking simultaneously, Mrs Welch looked rapidly to and fro between Dixon and Margaret, Johns hung whey-faced at the threshold. When Welch, still talking, sprang ataxically from his chair towards Johns, Dixon, finding his own chance to talk about to lapse, moved forward. He heard Welch use the phrase 'figured bass'. He coughed, then said loudly and with unforeseen hoarseness: 'I'm afraid I've got to be off now. My parents have come to see me unexpectedly.' He paused, to give room for any cries of protest and regret. When none came, he hurried on: 'Thank you very much for putting me up, Mrs Welch; I've enjoyed myself very much. And now I'm afraid I really must be off. Good-bye, all.'

Avoiding Margaret's eye, he walked through the silence and out of the door. Apart from making him feel he might die or go mad at any moment, his hangover had vanished. Johns grinned at him as he passed.

VIII

'OH, Dixon, can I have a word with you?'

To its recipient, this was the most dreadful of all summonses. It had been a favourite of his Flight- Sergeant's, a Regular with old-fashioned ideas about the propriety of getting an N.C.O. out of the men's hearing before subjecting him, not to a word, but to an uproar of abuse and threats about some harmless oversight. Welch had revived it as a short maestoso introduction to the allegro con fuoco of his displeasure over each new item in the 'bad impression' Dixon had been building up, and it heralded at best the imposition of some fresh academic task designed, conceivably, to probe his value to the Department. Michie, too, had more than once used it to signal a desire to talk, and ask questions, about Medieval Life and Culture. It was Welch who delivered the summons now, swaying about in the doorway of the little teaching room which Dixon shared with Goldsmith. Intellectually, Dixon could conceive of such a request leading to praise for work done on indexing Welch's notes for his book, to the offer of a staff post on Medium Aevum, to an invitation to an indecent house-party, but emotionally and physically he was half- throttled by the certainty of nastiness.

'Of course, Professor.' While he followed Welch next door, wondering whether the subject for debate was the sheet, or his dismissal, or the sheet and his dismissal, Dixon reeled off a long string of swear-words in a mumbling undertone, so that he'd be in credit, as it were, for the first few minutes of the interview. He stamped his feet hard as he walked, partly to keep his courage up, partly to drown his own mutterings, partly because he hadn't yet smoked that morning.

Welch sat down at his misleadingly littered desk. 'Oh… uh… Dixon.'

'Yes, Professor?'

'I've… about this article of yours.'

With all his incoherences, Welch was always straightforward when reproofs were to be delivered, so that this remark was comparatively encouraging. Dixon said guardedly: 'Oh yes?'

'I was having a chat the other day with an old friend of mine from South Wales. The Professor at the University College of Abertawe, he is now. Athro Haines; I expect you know his book on medieval Cwmrhydyceirw.'

Dixon said 'Oh yes' in a different tone, but still guardedly. He wanted to indicate eager and devout recognition that should not at the same time imply first-hand knowledge of the work in question, in case Welch should demand an epitome of its argument.

'Of course, their problems down there are very different from… from… The Pass classes in particular. He was telling me… It seems that in the first year everybody, doesn't matter whether they're going to go on with History or not, they all have to get through a certain amount of…'

Dixon switched off most of his attention, just keeping enough of it going to enable him to nod at proper intervals. He felt relieved; nothing really bad was going to happen, whatever might prove to be the bridge over the fast-widening gap between his article and this Haines character. A resolve began to form in his mind, frightening him before he could properly identify it. Now that he was alone with Welch, he'd have a show-down with him, force him to reveal what had been decided about his future, or, if nothing was definite yet, when it would be definite and what issue was going to make it definite. He was tired of being blackmailed, by the hope of improving his chances, into grubbing about in the public library for material that 'might come in handy' for Welch's book on local history, into 'just glancing through' (i.e. correcting) the proofs of a long article Welch was having printed in a local journal of antiquities, into holding himself in readiness to attend a folk-dancing conference (thank God he hadn't had to go after all), into attending that terrible arty week-end last month, into agreeing to lecture on Merrie England - especially that. And it was getting very late in the term: less than a month to go. Somehow he must mortar or bayonet Welch out of his prepared positions of reticence, irrelevance, and the long-lived, wondering frown.

Welch suddenly made him switch everything on again by saying: 'Apparently this Caton fellow was in for the chair at Abertawe at the same time as Haines, three or four years ago it must be now. Well, naturally Haines couldn't tell me much, but he gave me the impression that Caton might well have got the chair instead of him, only there was something rather shady about him, you see. Don't let this out, will you, Dixon? but there was something like a forged testimonial or something of the sort, I gathered. Something rather shady, anyway. Now, of course, this journal of his may be quite above-board and so on, I'm not saying it isn't; it may be quite… above-board. But I thought I ought to let you know about this, Dixon, so that you can take any action you think… you think you… you think fit, you…'

'Well, thank you very much, Professor, it's very good of you to warn me. Perhaps I'd better write to him again and ask…'

'You haven't had a reply to your letter asking for something definite about when he's publishing your thing?'

'No, not a word.'

'Well then, you must certainly write to him again, Dixon, and say you must have a definite date of publication. Say you've had an inquiry from another journal about what you're writing. Say you must know definitely within a week.' Such fluency, like the keen glance which accompanied it, Welch seemed to reserve specially for telling people what to do.

'I'll certainly do that, yes.'

'Do it today, will you, Dixon?'

'Yes, I will.'