embarrassment he was ready to meet it. He reflected that the Arab proverb urging this kind of policy was incomplete: to 'take what you want and pay for it' it should add 'which is better than being forced to take what you don't want and paying for that'. It was one more argument to support his theory that nice things are nicer than nasty ones. Christine's unshared presence was a very nice thing, so nice that his feelings seemed overloaded by it like a glutton's stomach. How splendid her voice was; to hear more of it he asked: 'What are Bertrand's pictures like?'
'Oh, he hasn't shown me any of them. He says he doesn't want me to think of him as a painter until he can think of himself as one. But people have told me they think they're pretty good. They were all friends of his, though, I suppose.'
Whatever aureole of choking nonsense surrounded this view of Bertrand's, Dixon thought the view itself worthy of some respect, or at least of some surprise. What a temptation it must be to produce proofs of one's status as an artist, to flatter people and at the same time show one was rather a good chap by asking for and seeming to act on criticism, above all to let people know how much more there was in one than met the eye. Dixon himself had sometimes wished he wrote poetry or something as a claim to developed character.
Christine had continued: 'I must say it's something to meet a man who's got some sort of ambition. I don't mean an ambition like wanting to have a date with a film-star or something like that. It sounds a funny thing to say, but I look up to Bertrand because he's got something to arrange his life around, something that isn't just material, or self-interested. So it doesn't really matter from that point of view what his work's like. It doesn't matter if what he paints doesn't give any pleasure to a soul apart from himself.'
'But if a man spends his life doing work that only appeals to him, isn't that being self-interested just as much?'
'Well, in a way everyone's self-interested, aren't they? but you must admit there are degrees of it.'
'I suppose I must. But doesn't this ambition of his rather leave you out?'
'What?'
'I mean, don't you find he's painting and so on when you want him to take you out?'
'Sometimes, but I try not to mind that.'
'Why?'
'And of course I wouldn't dream of letting him see it. It's not an easy situation. Having a relationship with an artist's a very different kettle of fish to having a relationship with an ordinary man.'
Dixon, feeling as he now seemed to have begun to feel about Christine, was bound to think this last remark unwelcome, but he found it objectively nasty as well. Had it been a line from a film he'd have reacted much as he did now, namely by making his lemon-sucking face in the darkness. But in a way it was a relief to find a loophole of adolescent vulgarity somewhere in that impressively mature and refined facade. 'I don't quite see that,' he had to say.
'Well, perhaps I didn't put it too well, but I should have thought that the work an artist does takes so much out of him, in the way of feeling and emotion and so on, that he hasn't got much left over for other people, not if he's any good as an artist, that is. I think he's sort of got special needs, you know, and it's up to others to supply them when they can, without too many questions asked.'
Dixon didn't trust himself to speak. Quite apart from his own convictions in the matter, his experience of Margaret had been more than enough to render repugnant to him any notion of anyone having any special needs for anything at any time, except for such needs as could be readily gratified with a tattoo of kicks on the bottom. Then he realized that Christine must, perhaps unconsciously, be quoting her boy-friend, or some horrible book lent by her boy-friend, whose desire to range himself with children, neurotics, and invalids by thus specializing his needs was not, at the moment, worth attacking. Dixon frowned. Until a minute ago she'd been behaving and talking so reasonably that it was hard to believe she was the same girl as had helped Bertrand to bait him at Welch's arty week-end. It was queer how much colour women seemed to absorb from their men-friends, or even from the man they were with for the time being. That was only bad when the man in question was bad; it was good when the man was good. It should be possible for the right man to stop, or at least hinder, her from being a refined gracious-liver and arty-rubbish-talker. Did he think he was the right man for that task? Ha, ha, ha, if he did.
'Jim,' Christine said.
Dixon's scalp pricked sharply at this, the first, use of his Christian name. 'Yes?' he said warily. He shrugged his bottom along the seat a little way.
'You've been very decent to me tonight, letting me ramble on about myself. And you seem to have your head screwed on the right way. Would you mind if I asked your advice on something?'
'No, not at all.'
'You must realize, though, that I'm asking you just because I want to hear your advice, not for any other reason.' She paused, then added: 'Have you got that?'
'Yes, of course.'
'Well, it's this. From what you've seen of us both, do you think it would be a good thing if I got married to Bertrand?'
Dixon felt a slight twinge of distaste he couldn't quite account for. 'Isn't that rather up to you?'
'Of course it's up to me; I'm the one who's going to marry him or not marry him. I want to know what you think. I'm not asking to be told what to do. Now, what do you think?'
This was clearly the moment for a burst of accurate shelling from Dixon in his Bertrand-war, but he found himself reluctant to fire. A reasoned denunciation of the foe, followed up by a short account of his recent conversation with Carol, would stand a good chance of bringing total victory in this phase, or at least inflicting heavy losses. He felt, however, that he didn't want to do it like that, and only said slowly: 'I don't think I know either of you well enough.'
'Ah, to hell, man' - had she picked that up from Uncle Julius? Dixon wondered - 'you're not being asked to do a thesis on it for your doctorate.' As Carol might have done, she pinched his arm too hard, making him cry out, saying to him in vocal italics: 'What do you think?'
'Well, it's… I must say what I think, you know.'
'Yes, yes, of course, that's what I asked for, isn't it? Do get on with it.'
'Well, then, I should say No.'
'I see. Why not?'
'Because I like you and I don't like him.'
'Is that all?'
'It's quite enough. It means each of you belongs to the two great classes of mankind, people I like and people I don't.'
'It sounds a bit thin to me.'
'All right, if you want reasons, remember they're my reasons, though that doesn't mean to say they oughtn't to be yours as well. Bertrand's a bore, he's like his dad, the only thing that interests him is him. On any issue you care to mention he can't do otherwise than ignore your side of things, just can't do otherwise, see? It's not just him first and you second, he's the only bloody runner. My God, what you said about him putting you in the wrong by starting rows shows you've got his number. I don't see why you have to have someone else to say it for you.'
She said nothing for a moment, then spoke rather in her censorious manner: 'Even if that were true, it needn't prevent me from marrying him.'
'Yes, I know women are all dead keen on marrying men they don't much like. But I'm saying why you oughtn't to marry him, not whether you want to or are going to or not. I think that once the things that are supposed to wear off wear off, you'll have a hell of a time. You couldn't trust the fellow with your best… I mean, he'd always be having rows, and you say you don't like rows. Are you in love with him?'
'I don't much care for that word,' she said, as if rebuking a foul-mouthed tradesman.
'Why not?'
'Because I don't know what it means.'
He gave a quiet yell. 'Oh, don't say that; no, don't say that. It's a word you must often have come across in conversation and literature. Are you going to tell me it sends you flying to the dictionary each time? Of course you're not - I suppose you mean it's purely personal - sorry, got to get the jargon right - purely subjective.'
