Lucky Jim

Dixon looked over and saw that the two performers, tuning evidently completed, music set up, and bow resined. were hanging about smoking and chatting. Welch was nowhere to be seen; he must be displaying his rather terrifying expertise as an evader. At the other end of the long, low, softly-lit room the door opened and the Callaghan woman came in. For so well-built a girl Dixon thought she moved awkwardly.

'Ah, my dear,' Bertrand said with a gallant bow, 'we were wondering what had become of you.'

She seemed disconcerted.' Oh, I've only been…'

'We've been discussing Mr Gore-Urquhart, and wondering whether he'll be available the week-end after next, there being a species of dancing festivity at the College during that time. Can you enlighten us, I wonder?'

'Well, his secretary said he'd probably be in Paris till the middle of next month, which would be too late for that, wouldn't it?'

'Yes, 1 think it would. Yes, it would. Oh well, it'll have to be another time, won't it?' He didn't appear at all put out by this news.

' I've written to Uncle asking him to let me know when he's coming back.'

Dixon wanted to laugh at this. It always amused him to heat girls (men never did it) refer to 'Uncle', 'Daddy*, and so on, as if there were only one uncle or daddy in the world, or as if this particular uncle or daddy were the uncle or daddy of all those present.

' What's the joke, Jim?' Carol asked. Bertrand stared at him.

'Oh, nothing.' He returned Bertrand's stare. He wished there were some issue on which he could defeat Bertrand, even at the risk of alienating his father. Any measure short of, or not necessitating too much, violence would be justified. But there seemed to be no field of endeavour where he could employ a measure of that sort. For a moment he felt like devoting the next ten years to working his way to a position as art critic on purpose to review Bertrand's work unfavourably. He thought of a sentence in a book he'd once read: 'And with that he picked up the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck, and, by Jesus, he near throttled him.' This too made him smile, and Bertrand's beard twitched, but he said nothing to break the pause.

As ever, Margaret had thought of something to say: 'I was reading about your uncle only recently, Miss Callaghan. There was a piece about him in the local paper. He was presenting some water-colours to our Gallery here. I don't know what we should do without someone like him to keep things going.'

This remark, in itself virtually unanswerable, had the effect, familiar to Margaret's acquaintances, of dumbfounding its audience by the obviousness of its intention - namely, the intention of forcing them to talk. Some feet away the amateur violinist could be heard laughing huskily at something the local composer was telling him. Where was Welch? 'Yes, he is very generous,' the Callaghan girl said.

'It's a good job there are some people still about who can afford to be, in that way,' Margaret said. Dixon looked up to catch Carol's eye, but she was exchanging a glance with her husband.

'Well, there won't be much longer, I fear, if the kds at Transport House go on running our lives for us,' Bertrand said. jo 'Oh, I don't think this crowd have done too badly,' Goldsmith put in.

'After all, you can't…' "Their foreign policy might, I agree, have been a good deal worse, with the exception of their spectacular inability to pour water on troubled oil.' Bertrand looked quickly round the group, then went on: 'But their home policy… soak the rich… I mean…' He seemed to be hesitating. 'Well, it is that, pure and simple, isn't it? I'm just asking for information, that's all. I mean that's what it seems to be, don't we all agree? I take it that it is just that and no more, isn't it? or am I wrong?'

Pretending not to notice Margaret's warning frown and Carol's expectant grin, Dixon said quietly: 'Well, what's wrong with it, even if it is that and no more? If one man's got ten buns and another's got two, and a bun has got to be given up by one of them, then surely you take it from the man with ten buns.'

Bertrand and his girl were looking at each other with identical expressions, shaking their heads, smiling, raising their eyebrows, sighing. It was as if Dixon had just said that he didn't know anything about art, but he did know what he liked. 'But we don't think anybody need give up a bun, Mr Dixon,' the girl said. 'That's the whole point.'

'Hardly the whole point, I should have thought,' Dixon said at the moment when Margaret said 'Don't let's get involved in a set-to about …' and Bertrand said 'The whole point of this is that the rich…'

It was Bertrand who won the little contest. "The point is that the rich play an essential role in modern society,' he said, his voice baying a little more noticeably. ' More than ever in days like these. That's all;