gleam of envy in Beesley's eye. Dixon reflected firstly how inefficient a bar to wasting one's time was the knowledge that one was wasting it (and especially in what Welch called 'matters of the heart'); secondly how narrow a gap there really was between Beesley's status and his own in such matters; and thirdly how little there was to envy in what established him as on the far side of the gap from Beesley - the privileges of being able to speak to one woman and of being in the same party as another. But, fourthly, the possession of the signs of sexual privilege is the important thing, not the quality nor the enjoyment of them. Dixon felt he ought to feel calmed and liberated at reaching this conclusion, but he didn't, any more than unease in the stomach is alleviated by discovery of its technical name.
They reached the bar, a small room not designed for the purpose. The still recent tradition of a 'wet' Summer Ball had been instituted, though few could of course bring themselves to believe it, by the College authorities, on the argument that the amount of drunkenness among student patrons, alarming at one time, could be reduced by providing cheap non-spirituous liquors on the premises, and by thus rendering less acutely attractive the costly and injurious gulping of horses' necks or of inferior gin and synthetic lime-juice in the city's pubs. More oddly still, perhaps, this argument had shown itself to be sound, so that in the room now visited by Dixon and the rest three minor College employees were toiling at barrels of beer and cider under panels representing, similarly to the larger ones in the Ballroom, swarthy potentates about to be danced upon by troupes of midget Circassians, or caravans of Chinese merchants being sucked up into the air by whirlwinds. The pallid pillars were here replaced by potted and tubbed palms of an almost macabre luxuriance. Among these last lurked Maconochie, the titular supervisor of the three barmen, adding to the effect in some indefinable way by wearing a starched white coat over his olive-green trousers.
Gore-Urquhart and Carol were sitting in one of the further palm-groves, talking fairly hard. When he saw the others coming towards them, Gore-Urquhart rose to his feet. This formality was so unfamiliar in the circles Dixon normally moved in that for a moment he wondered whether the other meant to oppose their approach by physical force. He was younger than Dixon had expected any distinguished man, and an uncle of Christine's, to be: somewhere in the middle forties. His evening suit, too, was not nearly as spectacularly 'faultless' as might have been predicted. His large smooth face, surmounting a short thin body, was the least symmetrical, short of actual deformity, that Dixon had ever seen, giving him the look of a drunken sage trying to collect his wits, a look intensified by slightly protruding lips and a single black eyebrow running from temple to temple. Before the party was finally seated Maconochie, no doubt well tipped already, loped forward to see what drinks were wanted. Dixon watched his servility with enjoyment.
'I've managed to keep out of your Principal's way so far,' Gore-Urquhart said with his strong Lowland- Scottish accent.
'That's no mean achievement, Mr Gore-Urquhart,' Margaret said with a laugh. 'I'm sure he's got all his spies out for you.'
'Do you think so, now? Will I be able to get away again if he catches me?'
'Most unlikely, sir,' Bertrand said. 'You know what they're like in this part of the world. Throw them a celebrity and they'll fight over him like dogs over a bone. Why, even in my small way I've had a good deal of that sort of thing to endure, especially from academic so-called society. Just because my father happens to be a professor, they think I must want to talk to the Vice-Chancellor's wife about the difficulties her wretched grandson's having at his school. But, of course, it must be a thousand times worse for you, sir, am I right?'
Gore-Urquhart, who'd been listening to this with attention, said briskly 'In some ways', and drank from his glass.
'Anyway, Mr Gore-Urquhart,' Margaret said, 'you're quite safe for the moment. The Principal holds court on these occasions in a room at the other end of the dance-floor - he doesn't mix with the rabble in here.'
'So while I'm with the rabble I'm fairly safe, you mean, Miss Peel? Good, I'll stay with the rabble.'
Dixon had been expecting a silver-bells laugh from Margaret to follow this remark, but it was still hard to bear when it came. At that moment Maconochie arrived with the drinks Gore-Urquhart had ordered. To Dixon's surprise and delight, the beer was in pint glasses and, after waiting for Gore-Urquhart's 'Find me some cigarettes, laddie,' to Maconochie, he leaned forward and said: 'How on earth did you manage to get pints? I haven't seen anything but halves in here the whole evening. I thought it must be a rule of the place. They wouldn't give me pints when I asked for them. How on earth did you get round it?' While he said this he saw irritably that Margaret was looking from him to Gore-Urquhart and back again and smiling deprecatingly, as if to assure Gore-Urquhart that, despite all evidence to the contrary, this speech betokened no real mental derangement. Bertrand, too, was watching and grinning.
Gore-Urquhart, who didn't seem to have noticed Margaret's smiles, jerked a short, nicotined thumb towards the departing Maconochie. 'A fellow Scottish Nationalist,' he said.
All the people facing Dixon and to his left - Gore-Urquhart himself, Bertrand, and Margaret - laughed at this, and so did Dixon, who looked to his right and saw Christine, seated next to him with her elbows on the table, smiling in a controlled fashion, and beyond her Carol, at Gore-Urquhart's left, staring rather grimly at Bertrand. Before the laughter cleared, Dixon noticed Bertrand becoming aware of this scrutiny and looking away. Perturbed by the small tension in the company, and finding now that Gore-Urquhart's eyes were fixed on him from under the black eyebrow, Dixon twitched his glasses on to the right part of his nose and said at a venture: 'Well, it's an unexpected pleasure to be drinking pints at a do like this.'
'You're in luck, Dixon,' Gore-Urquhart said sharply, handing round cigarettes.
Dixon felt himself blushing slightly, and resolved to say no more for a time. None the less he was pleased that Gore-Urquhart had caught his name. With a braying flourish of trumpets, the music started up in the Ballroom, and people began to move out of the bar. Bertrand, who'd settled himself next to Gore-Urquhart, began talking to him in a low voice, and almost at once Christine addressed some remark to Carol. Margaret said to Dixon: 'It is sweet of you to have brought me here, James.'
'Glad you're enjoying yourself.'
'You don't sound as if you are very much.'
'Oh, I am, really.'
'I'm sure you're enjoying this part of it, anyway, better than the actual dancing part.'
'Oh, I'm enjoying both parts, honestly. Drink that up and we'll go back on the floor. I can do quick- steps.'
She looked earnestly at him and rested a hand on his arm. 'Dear James, do you think it's wise for us to go round together like this?' she asked him.
'Why ever not?' he said in alarm.
'Because you're so sweet to me and I'm getting much too fond of you.' She said this in a tone that combined the vibrant with the flat, like a great actress demonstrating the economical conveyance of strong emotion. This was her habit when making her avowals.
In the midst of his panic, Dixon managed to find the thought that this, if true, would indeed be grounds for their seeing less of each other; then he hit on a remark both honest and acceptable: 'You mustn't say things like that.'
She laughed lightly. 'Poor James,' she said. 'Keep my seat for me, will you, darling? I shan't be long.' She went out.
Poor James? Poor James? It was, in fact, a very just characterization, but hardly one for her to make, surely, her of all people. Then a sense of guilt sent him diving for his glass; guilt not only for this latest reflection, but for the unintentional irony of 'you're so sweet to me'. It was doubtful, he considered, whether he was capable of being at all sweet, much less 'so' sweet, to anybody at all. Whatever passably decent treatment Margaret had had from him was the result of a temporary victory of fear over irritation and/or pity over boredom. That behaviour of such origin could seem 'so sweet' to her might be taken as a reflection on her sensitivity, but it was also a terrible commentary on her frustration and loneliness. Poor old Margaret, he thought with a shudder. He must try harder. But what would be the consequences to her of treatment more consistently sweet, or of a higher level of sweetness? What would be the consequences to him? To drive away these speculations, he began listening to the conversation on his left.
'… I've the utmost respect for his opinion,' Bertrand was saying. The bay in his voice was well throttled back; perhaps someone had upbraided him about it. 'I always say he's the last of the old-fashioned professional critics, and so he knows what he's talking about, which is more than you can say for most of the fraternity
