Lucky Jim

On the floor of the cupboard were the empty beer-flagons which represented his only sure method of saving money. There were nine of these, but two of them belonged to an impossibly distant pub; he'd bought them to drink in the bus on the way back from the Toynbee Society dinner in February. He'd hoped, by their aid, to efface the memory of a traumati-cally embarrassing speech Margaret had made at the dinner, but, sitting next to him throughout the journey back, she'd vetoed his project on disciplinary grounds (there'd been a lot of students in the bus, most of them drinking beer from flagons). He shivered at this memory, tried to drive it away by totting up the exchange value of the other seven bottles. Two and eight altogether; much less than he'd counted on. He decided not to review his financial position, and was just getting out his Merrie England notes when there was a knock at his door and Margaret came in. She was wearing the green Paisley frock and the quasi-velvet shoes.

'Hallo, Margaret/ he said with a heartiness which originated, he realized, in a guilty conscience. But why had he got a guilty conscience? Leaving her with Gore-Urquhart at the Ball had been 'tactful', hadn't it?

She looked at him with her air of not being quite sure who he was which had more than once entirely, and unaided, discomposed him. 'Oh, hallo,' she said.

'How are you?' he asked, keeping up the gimcrack friendliness. 'Have a seat.' He pushed forward the immense crippled armchair, of Pall Mall smoking-room size and design, that took up almost half the space left unoccupied by the bed. 'Qgarette?' He took out his packet to show that this was a sincere offer.

Still looking at him, she shook her head slowly, like a doctor indicating that there is no hope. Her face had a yellowish tinge, and hex nostrils seemed pinched. She remained standing and not saying anything.

'Well, how are things?' Dixon said, tugging a smile on to his mouth.

She shook her head again, a little more slowly, and sat down on the arm of the chair, which creaked sharply. Dixon threw his pyjamas on to his bed and sat down on a cane-bottomed chair with his back to the window.

'Do you hate me, James?' she said.

Dixon wanted to rush at her and tip her backwards in the chair, to make a deafening rude noise in her face, to push a bead up her nose. 'How do you mean?' he asked.

It took her a quarter of an hour to make clear how she meant. She talked fast and fluently, moving about a lot on the chair-arm, her legs kicking straight as if hammered on the knee, her head jerking to restore invisible strands of hair, her thumbs bending and straightening. Why had he deserted her at the Ball like that? or rather, since she and he and everyone else knew why, what did he think he was up to? or rather, again, how could he do this to her? In exchange for such information on these and allied problems as he could give, she offered the news that all three Welches were 'out for his blood' and that Christine had referred slightingly to him at breakfast that morning. No mention of Gore-Urquhart was made, beyond a parenthetical attack on Dixon's' rudeness' in leaving the dance without saying good night to him. Dixon knew from experience that to counter-attack Margaret was invariably mistaken, but he was too angry to bother about that. When he was sure that she was going to say no more about Gore-Urquhart, he said, his heart pounding a little: 'I don't see why you're kicking up all this fuss. You looked as if you were doing all right for yourself when I left' 'What the hell do you mean by that?' 'You were all over that Gore-Itchbag character, hadn't got time to say a single word to me, had you? If you didn't do yourself any good it wasn't for want of trying.

I've never seen such an exhibition in my life…' His voice tailed off; he couldn't synthesize enough of the required righteous indignation.

She stared at him wide-eyed. 'But you can't mean…?' 'Oh yes I bloody well can; of course I can mean.' 'James… you don't know… what you're talking about,' she said, slowly and painfully, like a foreigner reading out of a phrase-book. ' Really, I'm so surprised; I just… don't know what to say.' She began to tremble. 'I talk to a man, just for a few minutes, that's all it was… and now you start accusing me of making up to him. That's what you mean. Isn't that what you mean?' Her voice quavered grotesquely.

"That's what I mean all right,' Dixon said, trying to squeeze anger into his tone. 'It's no use denying it.' He could only manage to sound a little nettled and out of sorts.