Lucky Jim

Welch seemed quite cheered by this ready acceptance. 'That's fine,' he said with apparent feeling. 'Now there's something on the academic side I'd like to discuss with you. I've been talking to the Principal about the College Open Week at the end of term. He wants the History Department to throw something into the pool, you see, and I've been wondering about you.'

'Oh, really?' Surely there were others better qualified to be thrown into the pool? ' Yes, I thought you might care to tackle the evening lecture the Department's going to provide, if you could.'

'Well, I would rather like to have a crack at a public lecture, if you think I'm capable of it,' Dixon managed to say.

'I thought something like "Merrie England" might do as a subject. Not too academic, and not too… not too… Do you think you could get something together along those sort of lines?'

'AND then, just before I went under, I suddenly stopped caring. I'd been clutching the empty bottle like grim death, I remember, as if I were holding on to life, in a way. But quite soon I didn't in the least mind going; I felt too tired, somehow. And yet if someone had shaken me and said," /Come /on, you're not going, you're coming back," I really believe I should have started trying to make the effort, trying to get back. But nobody did and so I just thought Oh well, here we go, it doesn't matter all that much. Curious sensation.' Margaret Peel, small, thin, and bespectacled, with bright make-up, glanced at Dixon with a half-smile. Around them was the grumble of half a dozen conversations.

'It's a good sign that you're able to talk about it like this,' he said.

Since she made no reply, he went on:' What happened afterwards, or can't you remember? Don't tell me if you'd rather not, of course.'

' No, I don't mind telling you if it won't bore you.' Her smile broadened a little. 'But didn't Wilson tell you about how he found me?' •'Wilson? Oh, the chap in the room underneath. Yes, he said about hearing your wireless booming away and coming up to complain. What made you leave it on like that?' The feelings aroused in him by the first part of Margaret's story had almost subsided now, and he was able to think more clearly.

She looked away across the half-empty bar. 'I don't really know, James,' she said. 'I think I had some idea about wanting to have some sort of noise going on while I was… going off. It seemed so horribly quiet in that room.' She gave a little shiver and said quickly: 'Bit chilly in here, isn't it?'

'We'll move if you like.'

'No, it's all right; just a bit of a draught with that chap coming in…

Oh yes; afterwards. I think I grasped quite soon what was going on and where I was and all that. And what they were doing to me. I thought, Oh God, hours and hours of feeling ill and wretched, can I bear it? But of course I was passing out all the time, on and off; good thing, really, in the end. By the time I was fully, er, /compos mentis /again the worst was over, as far as feeling awful was concerned. I was terribly weak, naturally; well, you remember … But everybody was awfully sweet to me. I should have thought they'd got enough to deal with with people who were ill through no fault of their own. I remember being terrified they'd tell the police and get me carted off to a police hospital - are there such things, James? - but they were just angelic; they couldn't have been nicer. And then you came to see me and the horrible part all began to seem unreal. But you looked so terrible…' She leaned sideways on her bar-stool in kughter, her hands clasped round one knee, the quasi-velvet shoe falling away from her heel. ' You looked as if you'd been watching some frightful gruesome operation, white as a sheet and all… hollow-eyed…' She shook her head, still laughing quietly, and pulled her cardigan up over the shoulders of the green Paisley frock.

' Did I really?' Dixon asked her. He was relieved at this piece of news, to find that he'd looked as bad as he'd felt that morning; then he felt bad again now as he nerved himself to ask the last compulsory question.

He half-listened for a minute or so while Margaret described how good Mrs Welch had been to her in fetching her from the hospital and installing her at the Welches' home to convalesce. She had undoubtedly been very kind to Margaret, even though at other times, when publicly disagreeing with her husband for example, she was the only living being capable of making Dixon sympathize with him. It was rather annoying to hear how kind she'd been; it entailed putting tiresome qualifications on his dislike for her. Finally, Dixon said in a low voice, having first drunk freely from his glass: 'You needn't say anything if you don't want to, but… you are over this business now, aren't you? You wouldn't think of having another shot at it, I mean?'