Lucky Jim

Dixon felt a deep respect for this man because of his impiessive exterior, his rumbling bass voice, and his unsurpassable stock of information about the Royal Family. At that moment two rather pretty girls stopped at a pillar-box a few yards away. The barber, his hands cksped behind his back, turned and stared at them. An unmistakable look of furtive lust came over his face; then, like a courtly shopwalker, he moved slowly towards the two girls. Welch now accelerated again and Dixon, a good deal shaken, hurriedly switched his attention to the other side of the road, where a cricket match was being played and the bowler was just running up to bowl. The batsman, another big fat man, swiped at the ball, missed it, and was violently hit by it in the stomach. Dixon had time to see him double up and the wicket-keeper begin to run forward before a tall hedge hid the scene.

Uncertain whether this pair of /vigiettes /was.designed to illustrate the swiftness of divine retribution or its tendency to mistake its target, Dixon was quite sure that he felt in some way overwhelmed, so much so that he listened to what Welch was saying. He was saying' Most impressive', and for a second Dixon felt like picking up the spanner he could see in the dashboard pocket and hitting him on the back of the neck with it. He knew the sort of thing Welch found impressive.

The rest of the journey passed uneventfully. Welch's driving seemed to have improved slightly; at any rate, the only death Dixon felt himself threatened by was death from exposure to boredom. Even this danger receded for a couple of minutes while Welch disclosed a few facts about the recent history of the effeminate writing Michel, a character always waiting in the wings of Dixon's life but apparently destined never to enter its stage. This Michel, as indefatigably Gallic as his mother, had been cooking for himself in his small London flat, and had in the last few days made himself ill by stuffing himself with filthy foreign food of his own preparation, in particular, Dixon gathered, spaghetti and dishes cooked in olive oil. This seemed fit punishment for one so devoted to coagulated flour-and-water and peasants' butter-substitute, washed down, no doubt, by' real' black coffee of high viscosity. Anyway, Michel was evidently coming down in a day or two to recuperate on his parents' English fare. Dixon turned his head to laugh out of the window at this last stroke. This time he experienced nothing worse than a small rage at the thought of a little louse like that having a flat in London.

Why hadn't he himself had parents whose money so far exceeded their sense as to install their son in London? The very thought of it was a torment. If he'd had that chance, things would be very different for him now. For a moment he thought he couldn't think what things; then he found he could conceive the things exactly, and exactly how they'd differ from the things he'd got, too.

Welch went on talking, his own face the perfect audience for his talk, laughing at its jokes, reflecting its puzzlement or earnestness, responding with tightened lips and narrowed eyes to its more important points. He went on talking even while he drove up the sandy path into the yard next to his house, grazed the shattered water-tap, nosed into the garage entrance, and, with a single frightful bound, brought the car to rest within a couple of inches of the inner wall. Then he got out.

Casting about for means to leave the car, Dixon rejected the six-inch corridor left to him between the door and the side-wall nearest him, and, after some bad-tempered leg-play with the gear- and brake-levers, slid across the front seat to the other door. As he did this, something seemed to pluck at the seat of his trousers. When he'd emerged into the giddy heat of the garage, he felt behind him and found he could comfortably insert his first two fingers into a rent in the material A glance at the driver's seat showed the tip of what must have been a broken spring just emerging from the upholstery. He began slowly to follow Welch, his heart starting to pound and mist breaking out on his spectacles. He allowed a terrible grimace to dawn on his features, forcing his chin down as far as possible and trying to bring his nose up between his eyes. When this was nearing completion, he took off his glasses to rub them clear. His sight was good enough without their aid for him to observe that four witnesses of his actions were posted at the long window some yards away; they were (left to right) Christine, Bertrand, Mrs Welch, and Margaret. He quickly restored his nose to its normal position and began pensively fondling his dropped chin, in the hope of seeming assailed by imbecilic doubt; then, unable to think up any gesture or expression of greeting comprehensive enough to include all the members of such a quartet, pursued Welch's retreating figure round the corner of the house.