the past he'd distrusted, stingily held on to until the chance of losing his initial gain was safely past. It was time to stop doing that.
Dixon paid the garage-man and the taxi moved off. 'You haven't any reason to be depressed, I was saying,' he said.
'I don't see how you can know that,' she said, severely again.
'No, of course I can't know it, but I shouldn't think you have too bad a time on the whole,' he said with an ease that surprised him. He could see that she needed time and encouragement to work back to her more open manner, and reflected that this sort of perception was as unfamiliar in him as all the other things he was feeling. 'I'd have put you down as somebody reasonably successful in most things.'
'I didn't mean to sound like a martyr. You're right, of course, I do have a good time and I've been very lucky in all sorts of ways. But, you know, I do find some things awfully difficult. I don't really know my way around, you know.'
Dixon wanted to laugh. He couldn't imagine any woman of her age less in need of such lore. He said as much.
'No, it's perfectly true,' she insisted. 'I haven't had a chance to find out yet.'
'You mustn't mind me saying this, but I should have thought there'd be plenty of people only too willing to show you.'
'I know, I see what you mean exactly, but they don't try to. They assume I know already, you see.' She was talking animatedly now.
'Oh, they do, do they? How's that, would you say?'
'I think it must just be because I look as if I'm full of poise and that sort of thing. I look as if I know all about how to behave, and all that. Two or three people have told me that, so it must be right. But it's only the way I look.'
'Well, it is true you look fairly sophisticated, if that's the right word. Even a bit upstage sometimes. But it…'
'How old would you say I am?'
Dixon thought an honest answer would, for once, be appropriate. 'About twenty-four, I should say.'
'There you are, then,' she said triumphantly. 'Just what I thought. I'm twenty next month. The eighteenth.'
'I didn't mean of course you didn't look very young as far as just your actual face goes, I just…'
'No, I know; but it's the age I seem, isn't it? It's the way I look, isn't it?'
'Yes, I suppose it is. But it isn't just that on its own, is it?'
'Sorry: what isn't what on its own?'
'I mean it's not just your appearance that makes you seem older and more experienced and all that. It's the way you behave and talk, a lot of the time, too. Don't you think so?'
'Well, it's awfully hard for me to tell, isn't it?'
'Must be, naturally. It's… you seem to… keep getting on to your high horse all the time; hard to describe it exactly. But you have got a habit, every now and then, of talking and behaving like a governess, though I don't know much about them, I must admit.'
'Oh, have I?'
Though the tone of this question illustrated just what he was talking about, Dixon, feeling it couldn't matter what he said, said: 'There, you're-doing it now. When you don't know what to do or say, you fall back on being starchy. And that all fits in with your face; that's probably what gave you the idea of being starchy in the first place, your face, I mean. And that makes a total effect of a prim kind of self-assurance, and you don't want to be prim but you do want to be self-assured. Yes… But that's quite enough of Uncle Jim's Corner. We're getting off the point. How does all this tie up with being depressed? There's still nothing to be depressed about.'
She hesitated while Dixon sweated slightly, repenting of his burst of old-trouper confidence, then she said with a rush: 'It's all to do with men, you see. I hadn't had much to do with men till I got my job in London last year… Look, you don't mind talking about me all the time, do you? It seems so self-centred. You don't think…?'
'You can forget all that. I want to hear about this.'
'All right, then. Well… I hadn't been working in the bookshop very long, when a man got talking to me and asked me to come to a party. So I went, of course, and there were a lot of artist kind of people there, and one or two ones from the B.B.C. You know the sort of thing?'
'I can imagine.'
'So… then it all started. I kept being asked out by men, and of course I kept going, it was such marvellous fun. And I still do enjoy it a great deal. But they kept… trying to seduce me the whole time. And I didn't want to be seduced, you see, and as soon as I'd convinced them of that, they were off. Well, I didn't mind that much, because there always seemed to be another one ready to…'
I'll bet there did. Go on.'
'I'm afraid this sounds terribly…'
'Go on.'
'Well, if you're quite sure… Anyway, after a few months of that I met Bertrand, that was in March. He didn't seem quite like the others, chiefly because he didn't start trying to make me be his mistress the entire time. And he can be very nice, you know, though I don't suppose you… After a bit the thing was, I was starting to get rather fond of him, and at the same time - this is the funny part - I was getting a bit fed-up with him in other ways while I was still getting more fond of him. He's such a queer mixture, you see.'
Naming to himself the two substances of which he personally thought Bertrand a mixture, Dixon said: 'In what way?'
'He can be extremely understanding and kind one minute, and completely unreasonable and childish the next. I feel I never know where I am with him, or what he really wants. Sometimes I think it's all to do with how he's getting on with his painting. Anyhow, what with one thing and another we started having rows. And I can't bear rows, especially because he was always putting me in the wrong by them.'
'How do you mean?'
'You know, he'd start one with me when he could put me in the wrong by starting one, and force me to start one when starting one would put whoever started one in the wrong. There'll be one over tonight, of course, and he'll put me in the wrong, as usual. But he's in the wrong, he's the one who's wrong. All this business with Mrs Goldsmith - it's all right, I'm not going to ask you about it - but I know there's something going on there, but he won't tell me what it is. I don't suppose it's anything much; he just gets a bit excited when… But he won't tell me what's happening. He'll pretend there isn't anything, and he'll ask me if I really think he'd get up to anything behind my back, and I'll have to say No, otherwise…'
'This is none of my business, Christine, but in my opinion friend Bertrand's letting himself in for you giving him the air.'
'No, I can't do that, unless… I can't do that. I'm in too deep now to back out like that. It'll have to go on as it is. You've got to take people as you find them.'
Not wanting to speculate what 'it' was, and how it was going on, Dixon asked hurriedly: 'Have you and he got anything planned for the future?'
'Well, I haven't, but I think he may. I've got an idea he wants us to get married, though he's never actually mentioned it.'
'And what do you feel about that?'
'I haven't decided yet.'
This seemed all for the moment. It crossed Dixon's mind that apart from her voice he'd no evidence that she was beside him at all. When he turned to his right he saw only the darkest and most anonymous shape, she held herself so still that there was no sound of movement from clothing or upholstery, she seemed to use no scent, or anyway he couldn't smell any, and he was a long way from being able to think of touching her. The shoulders and hatted head of the taxi-driver, outlined against the glow of the car's lights, and whose movements controlled their course, were in a way much more real to him. Dixon looked out of the side window, and his spirits rose at once at the sight of the darkened countryside moving past him. This ride, unlike most of the things that happened to him, was something he'd rather have than not have. He'd got something he wanted, and whatever the cost in future
