Lucky Jim

He wanted to scream. His dilated eyes fell on a copy of the local paper that lay nearby. Without stopping to think, he said, distorting his voice by protruding his lips into an O: 'No, Mrs Welch, there must be some mistake. This is the /Evening Post /speaking. There's no Mr Dixon with us, I'm quite sure.'

'Oh, I'm most awfully sorry; you sounded at first just like… How ridiculous of me.'

'Quite all right, Mrs Welch, quite all right.'

'I'll get my husband for you straight away.'

'Well, actually it was Mr Bertrand Welch I wanted to speak to really,'

Dixon said, smiling at his own cunning as best he could with a distorted mouth; in a few seconds this horror would be over.

'I'm not sure whether he's… Just a minute.' She put the phone down.

Better hang on, Dixon thought, and the information, which Mrs Welch had obviously gone to get, about where Bertrand could be reached was just what he wanted for the Callaghan girl. He'd be able to ring her up and tell her, too. Yes, hang on at all costs.

One of the costs was immediately presented in the form of a well-remembered voice baying directly into his ear "This is Bertrand Welch', so directly, indeed, that Dixon could have fancied that Bertrand was actually in the room with Him and had by some sorcery substituted for the receiver those rosy, bearded lips. /'Evening Post /here,' he managed to quaver through his snout.

'And what can I do for you, sir?'

Dixon recovered slightly. 'Er… we'd like to do a little paragraph about you for our, for our Saturday page,' he said, beginning to plan. "That's if you've no objection.'

'Objection? Objection? What objection could a humble painter have to a little harmless publicity? At least, I take it it's harmless?'

Dixon got out a laugh, the Dickensian' Ho ho ho' which was all his mouth could manage.' Oh, quite harmless, I assure you, sir. We have a few facts about you already, naturally. But we would just like to know what you're engaged on at the moment, you see.'

' Of course, of course, most reasonable. Well, I've got two or three things in hand just now. There's a rather splendid nude, actually, though I don't know whether your readers would want to know about that, would they?'

' Oh, very much so, Mr Welch, I assure you, as long as we tell them in the proper way. I take it there'd be no objection to calling it "an undraped female figure", would there, sir? I imagine it is a female?'

Bertrand laughed like a leading hound announcing the end of a check.

'Oh, she's female all right, you can bet your bottom dollar on that. And "bottom" is the exact word.'

Dixon joined in this with his own laughter. What a story for Beesley and Atkinson this was going to make. 'Anything about what I believe's called the treatment, sir?' he asked when he might have been supposed to be calm again.

' Pretty bold, you know. Fairly modern, but not too much so. These modern chaps jigger up the detail so much, and we don't want that, do warn?'

'Indeed we don't, sir, as you say. I suppose this would be an oil painting, sir?'

'Oh God, yes; no expense spared. She's about eight feet by six, by the way, or will be when she's framed. A real smasher.'

'Any particular title for it, sir?'

' Well, yes, I thought of calling her /Amateur Model. /The girl who sat for it's certainly an amateur of a sort, and she acts as a model, at least while she's being painted, so there you are. I shouldn't put in that little explanation of the title if I were you.'

'Wouldn't dream of it,' Dixon said in something like his ordinary voice; his mouth had tightened involuntarily during the last few seconds and had temporarily abandoned its O. What a lad this Bertrand was, eh? He remembered the insinuations about the week-end with the Callaghan girl that Bertrand had made at their first meeting. God, if it ever came to a fight, he'd…

'What did you say?' Bertrand asked, a little tinge of suspicion in his tone.

'I was talking to someone in the office here, Mr Welch,' Dixon said, through the O this time. 'I've got all that, sir, thank you. Now what about the other things you're working on?'

' Well, there's a self-portrait, an outdoor one against a brick wall.

More wall than Welch, as a matter of fact The real idea is the pallor and sort of crumpledness of the clothing against the great, red, smooth wall. A painter's picture, more or less.'

'Ah, just so, sir; thank you. Anything else?' "There's a little one of three workmen looking at a newspaper in a pub, but that's hardly started yet'

'I see; well, that'll do us nicely, Mr Welch,' Dixon said. Now was the moment for a daring switch. "The young lady said something about an exhibition, sir; would that be right?'

'Yes, I am having a little show locally in the autumn; but what young lady is this?'

Dixon laughed silently with relief through his O. 'A Miss Callaghan, sir,' he said. 'I gather you know her.'

' Yes, I know her,' Bertrand said in a slightly hardened voice. 'Why, where does she fit into this?'