Kingsley Amis - Lucky Jim

'Yes. Your attitude measures up to the two requirements of love. You want to go to bed with her and can't, and you don't know her very well. Ignorance of the other person topped up with deprivation, Jim. You fit the formula all right, and what's more you want to go on fitting it. The old hopeless passion, isn't it? There are no two doubts about that, as Cecil used to say before I broke him of it.'

'That's rather adolescent, isn't it? If you don't mind me saying so.'

'Yes, it is, isn't it? Have you got a cigarette, Jim? … Thanks. Yes, I was quite sure when I was about fifteen that that was the way things worked, only nobody could afford to admit it.'

'Well, there you are, then.'

'Yes, here I am now. I don't mind telling you, since I've been rather letting my hair down, that after the maturity of my twenties was over I began going back to that way of explaining things with a good deal of relief. And justification, I'd like to think, too. I'm rather keen on that formula these days, as a matter of fact.'

'Are you?'

'I certainly am, Jim. You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way, Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time.'

'Carol… perhaps if you hadn't got married…'

'I couldn't have done anything else, could I?'

'Couldn't you? Why not?'

'Christ, haven't you been listening? I was in love. Let's go back to the bar now, shall we? It's so noisy in here.' Her voice trembled a little, for the first time since they'd begun talking.

'Carol, I'm terribly sorry. I shouldn't have said that.'

'Now, don't be silly, Jim, there's nothing to apologize for. It was a perfectly natural thing to say. Don't forget, though; you've got a moral duty to perform. Get that girl away from Bertrand; she wouldn't enjoy an affair with him. It wouldn't be her kind of thing at all. Mind you remember that.'

Dixon found, when they got up, that he'd forgotten about the dancers and the band; he remembered them now, however, very vividly. A tune was being played, sparing of melodic invention, free too of any marked variation in volume, rhythm, harmony, expression, tempo, or tone-colour, and, more or less in time with it, groups of dancers were wheeling, plunging, and gesticulating while the ogre, more aphasic than before, mumbled at full strength:

'Ya parp the Hawky-Cawky arnd ya tarn parp-parp,Parp what it's parp parp-parp.'

They re-entered the bar. Dixon felt that he'd been doing this for weeks. The sight of their party still, or again, just where they'd been before made him want very much to pitch forward on to the floor and go to sleep. Bertrand was talking; Gore-Urquhart was listening; Margaret was laughing, only now she had a hand on Gore-Urquhart's nearest shoulder; Christine was also probably listening to somebody, only now she had her head in her hands. Beesley was standing at the counter, morosely and tremulously raising a full half-pint glass to his mouth. Dixon went over to him, in search of a break from routine, but Carol looked back and converged on him. Greetings were exchanged again.

'What's this, Alfred?' Dixon asked. 'A bender?'

Beesley nodded without stopping drinking; then, lowering his glass at last, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, making a face, and referring to the quality of the beer by a monosyllable not in decent use, he said: 'I wasn't getting anywhere in there, so I came in here and came over here.'

'And you're getting somewhere over here, are you, Alfred?' Carol asked.

'On the tenth half, just about,' Beesley said.

'Bloody but unbowed, eh? That's the spirit. Well, Jim, this is obviously the place for us two - agreed? Nobody wants either of us. What's the matter? What are you looking at?' To Dixon's slight irritation, the pseudo-drunken quality had again taken possession of her voice and demeanour.

Beesley leaned forward; 'Come on, Jim: beer or beer?'

'Here we are and here we stay till they throw us out,' Carol said with synthetic defiance.

'Yes, I'll just have one, thanks, but I mustn't stay,' Dixon said.

'Because you've got to go and see how dear Margaret's getting on, is that right?'

'Well, yes, I…'

'I thought I told you to let dear Margaret stew in her own juice. And how about just using your eyes? She's enjoying herself ever so much, thank you, Mr Dixon, and thank you, Mrs Goldsmith. And thank you, too. Now's your chance, Jim; remember your moral duty? Thank you, Alfred; here's to you, my boy.'

'What moral duty's this, Carol?'

'Jim knows, don't you, Jim?'

Dixon looked over at the group in the corner. Margaret had taken off her glasses, a certain sign of abandonment. Christine, her back to Dixon, was sitting as immobile as if she'd been mummified. Bertrand, still talking, was smoking a black cigar. Why was he doing that? A sudden douche of terror then squirted itself all over Dixon. After a moment he realized that this was because he had a plan and was about to carry it out. He panted a little with the enormity of it, then drained his glass and said quaveringly: 'Here goes, then. Good-bye for now.'

He went over and sat down in a vacant chair next to Christine, who turned to him with a smile; rather a rueful smile, he thought. 'Oh, hallo,' she said; 'I thought you must have gone home.'

'Not quite yet. You look as if you're being rather left out of things here.'

'Yes, Bertrand's always the same when he gets talking like this. But I mean, of course he did really come here to meet Uncle.'

'I can see that.' Just at that moment Bertrand got up from his seat and, without looking in Christine's direction, walked across to where Carol was standing with Beesley; a faint bay of salutation could be heard. Glancing at Christine, Dixon was favoured with the rare sight of somebody engaged in the act of flushing. He said quickly: 'Now, listen to me, Christine. I'm going to go out and order a taxi now. It should be here in about a quarter of an hour. You come outside then and I'll take you back to the Welches' in it. There'll be no funny business; I can guarantee that. Straight home to the Welches'.'

Her immediate reaction looked like anger. 'Why? Why should I?'

'Because you're fed-up, and no wonder either, that's why.'

'That's not the point. It's a ridiculous idea. Absolutely mad.'

'Will you come? I'm ordering the taxi in any case.'

'Don't ask me that. I don't want to be asked that.'

'But I am asking you. What about it? I'll give you twenty minutes.' He looked her in the eyes and laid his hand on her elbow. He must be out of his mind to be talking to a girl like this like this. 'Please come,' he said.

She snatched her arm away. 'Oh don't,' she said, as if he'd been telling her that she had the dentist to go to in the morning.

'I'll wait for you,' he said in an urgent undertone. 'In the porch. Twenty minutes. Don't forget.'

He turned and left by a route that gave a view of part of the dance-floor and band. She wouldn't come, of course, but at any rate he'd made his gesture. In other words, he'd thought of a way of hurting himself more severely than usual, and in public. He stopped for a moment to wave good-bye to the band, then, receiving no response, went off to find a phone.

XIII

DIXON paused in the portico to light the cigarette which, according to his schedule, he ought to be lighting after breakfast on the next day but one. The taxi he'd ordered was due any minute. If by the time he'd finished his cigarette Christine bad still not appeared, he'd just ask the taximan to take him to his digs, so whatever happened he'd be in a car soon. That was good, because total inability to move was almost upon him. Ten minutes to go; he tried not to think about it.

The darkness of the street was uneven. The daylight lamps above a nearby main road were glowing pallidly; the cars parked along the kerb had their sidelights burning; the windows of the building behind him were full of light. A train moved slowly and with great steadiness up the incline from the station. Feeling less hot, Dixon heard the band break into a tune he knew and liked; he had the notion that the tune was going to help out this scene and fix it permanently in his memory; he felt romantically excited. But he'd got no business to feel that, had he? What was he doing here, after all? Where was it all going to lead? Whatever it was leading towards, it was certainly leading away from the course his life had been pursuing for the last eight months, and this thought justified his excitement and filled him with reassurance and hope. All positive change was good; standing still, growing to the spot, was always bad. He remembered somebody once showing him a poem which ended something like 'Accepting dearth, the shadow of death'. That was right; not 'experiencing dearth', which happened to everybody. The one indispensable answer to an environment bristling with people and things one thought were bad was to go on finding out new ways in which one could think they were bad. The reason why Prometheus couldn't get away from his vulture was that he was keen on it, and not the other way round.

Dixon abruptly made his head vibrate; without tilting it, he moved his lower jaw as far over to-one side as he could. His cigarette was smoked right down, so that, after about twenty-five minutes, he not only had no Christine, but no taxi. At that moment a car rounded the corner from the main road and stopped near him where he stood at a lower corner by a side-street. It was a taxi. A voice from the driver's seat said: 'Barker?'

'How do you mean, barker?'

'Taxi for Barker?'

'What?'

'Taxi for name of Barker?'

'Barker? Oh, you must mean Barclay, don't you?'

'Ah, that's it: Barclay.'

'Good. We're nearly ready now. Just back into that side turning, will you? and I'll be back in a couple of minutes. I may be taking a friend back with me. Don't let anyone else hire you, mind. I'll be back.'

'That'll be all right, Mr Barclay.'

Dixon walked briskly back to the portico and looked up the lighted corridor, nerving himself to contemplate going back and trying Christine again. A bend hid all but the first couple of yards of the corridor from his view. Without delay Professor Barclay appeared round this bend, squirming into his overcoat and followed by his wife. Dixon had the sense of having heard him referred to recently in some connexion. Then he glanced up the street; the taxi, in mid-road, was just beginning to reverse cautiously into the side turning, where it would be hidden by an office block. As Barclay came up, it still had several yards to go.

Dixon barred his path. 'Oh, good evening, Professor Barclay,' he said in measured tones, as if dealing with a hypnotic subject.

'Hallo, Dixon. Haven't seen a taxi wailing for me, have you?'

'Good evening, Mrs Barclay… No, I'm afraid I haven't, Professor.'

'Oh dear,' he said pleasantly. 'Well, we shall just have to wait, then.' As he spoke, a loud brassy chord rang down the corridor, almost obscuring the sound of a handbrake ratchet from the side-street. 'Was that a car I heard then?' he asked, raising his head like an old cob disturbed at grass.

Dixon put on a listening attitude. 'I can't hear anything,' he said regretfully.

'I must have been mistaken.'

'All the same, Simon, I think I should walk along a bit, just in case he arrived and parked before Mr Dixon came out.'

'Yes, dear, that is a possibility.'

'He couldn't have done that, Mrs Barclay. I've been out here for nearly half an hour, and I can assure you quite certainly that no taxi has driven up here.'

'Well, it's most odd,' she said with a glandered movement of her jaws. 'My husband ordered the taxi half an hour ago at least, and City Taxis are usually so punctual.'

'Half an hour; oh well, he couldn't have made it before I came out,' Dixon said, as one making calculations. 'The City Taxis garage is over the other side of town, behind the bus station.'

'Are you waiting for a taxi too, Mr Dixon?' Mrs Barclay asked.

'No, I… I just came out to get a breath of fresh air.'

'You've had time for several lungfuls,' the Professor said, smiling.

His amiability made Dixon a good deal ashamed of having stolen the taxi, but it was too late to withdraw. 'Yes, I have,' he said, trying to sound casual. 'I'm waiting for a friend as well, actually.'

'Oh, really? We might as well walk along a little way, Simon; it's getting rather chilly, standing here.'

'Yes, dear, we could do that.'

I'll stroll along with you,' Dixon said. He hated leaving his post, but not to leave it seemed the worse alternative. But what was he going to do to prevent the Barclays finding their taxi?

When the three were within ten yards of the relevant corner, a car swept round the corner above it. Dixon knew at once it wasn't his proper taxi, because all City Taxis taxis had a little illuminated sign over the windscreen, and this one hadn't. Nevertheless, a diversion was now possible. When they were right at the comer, Dixon stepped into the road and raised his hand, shouting urgently: 'Taxi. Taxi.'

'Taxi yourself,' a shrill voice called from the back seat.

'Ah, taxi off, Jack,' the driver snarled, accelerating past him.

He went back to the Barclays, who'd had their backs to the corner to watch. 'No good, I'm afraid,' he said. But it was good for him; the incident made it seem natural to turn back towards the portico. What would happen at the next outward journey? A regular service of private cars past that corner was too much to hope for. He hoped fervently that his own taxi, the one he'd ordered, wouldn't take it into its head to turn up; he'd have to go away in it and leave the Barclays to find the one he'd taken from them. Or could he persuade them to have his?

They stood about for a minute or two at the portico, while nobody came and nobody went. Another walk to the corner became imminent. Dixon glanced desperately up the corridor. Two people appeared round the bend in it almost together. The first one wasn't Christine, but a drunken man clicking frenziedly at a cigarette lighter. The second one, on the other hand, was.

The manner of her appearance was so ordinary that Dixon was almost shocked. He didn't know what he'd expected, but it wasn't this look of recognition on her face, this purposeful walk towards him, this matter-of-fact sound of her shoes on cloth, on wood, on stone. Glancing over at the line of cars, she said abruptly: 'Did you manage to get one?'

Dixon knew that the Barclays, or Mrs Barclay at any rate, would be listening. He hesitated a second, then said 'Yes' and patted his pocket. 'I've got it here.'

He tried to get her to walk off with him, but she stayed where she was in the doorway, the lights from the corridor throwing her face into shadow. 'I meant a taxi.'