Lucky Jim

'I know I've behaved very badly, Mrs Welch, but please don't ask me to explain that. I've apologized and promised to pay for the damage; won't you let me keep the explanation to myself? It's nothing very terrible, I can assure you of that.'

'Then why do you refuse to say what it is?'

'I don't refuse; I'm only asking you to spare me a lot of embarrassment that wouldn't help you at all.'

Bertrand now joined in. Putting his shaggy face on one side, he brought it nearer, saying:' We can put up with that, Dixon. It won't hurt us to put up with your embarrassment. It'll be some kind of small return for the way you've behaved.'

His mother put a hand on his arm. 'No, don't interfere, darling. It won't do any good. Mr Dixon is used to being talked to like that, I'm sure. We can leave this; it doesn't alter the main facts of the situation. I want to get on to the next thing. I'm now fairly firmly convinced, Mr Dixon, that it was you who rang me up recently and pretended, in fact you lied when I asked you, pretended both to myself and to my son to be a newspaper reporter. It was you, wasn't it? It'll be much better if you admit it, you know. I haven't mentioned any of this to my husband, because I don't want to worry him, but I warn you that unless I get a satisfactory…'

Like a criminal who, having begun to confess, sees no reason for not going on, Dixon was about to admit it, but remembered in time that this would incriminate Christine. (How much, if anything, had Bertrand got out of her?) 'You're quite wrong there, Mrs Welch. I can't imagine why you should think any such thing. Your husband'll tell you I haven't been away once this term.'

'Haven't been away? I don't see how that affects matters.'

'Well, simply that I couldn't have been here and in London at the same time, could I?'

Restraining Bertrand, Mrs Welch said in puzzlement: 'What's that got to do with it?'

'How could I have phoned through from London if I was here all the time?

I take it it was a London call?'

Bertrand looked questioningly at his mother. She shook her head and said quietly, hardly moving her mouth: 'No, it was a local call all right.

Whoever it was spoke right away. You always get the operator first if it's a London call.'

'I told you you were wrong,' Bertrand said peevishly. 'I told you old David West was behind all this. Damn it, Christine was certain it was him on the phone to her, calling himself Atkinson. It was some pal of bis who spoke to us, not…' His eye fell on Dixon and he stopped speaking.

Dixon was savouring his defensive triumph. He'd remember the advantages of pretending misunderstanding in this situation. And it was now clear, too, that Bertrand had got nothing out of Christine. 'Has that cleared things up at all?' he asked the others politely.

Mrs Welch began to go red again. 'I think I'll just go and see how your father's getting on, darling,' she said.' There are one or two things I want him to…' Leaving the sentence in the air, she went out.

Bertrand moved a pace closer. ' We'll forget all about that business,' he said generously. 'Now, I've been wanting us to have a little get-together for quite some time, old boy. Ever since that Ball affair, in fact. Now look here: here's a question for you, and I don't mind telling you I mean to get a straight answer. What precisely was your game the other evening when you induced Christine to skip out of the dance with you? A straight answer, mind.'

This must all have been clearly audible to Christine, who now came down the room with Margaret. Both girls avoided Dixon's eye while they went out, leaving him alone with Bertrand. When the door was shut, Dixon said: 'I can't give any sort of answer, straight or crooked, to a meaningless question. What do you mean, what was my game? I wasn't playing any sort of game.'

' You know what I mean as well as I do. What were you up to?'

'You'd better ask Christine that.'

'We'll leave her out of this, if you don't mind.'

' Why should I mind?' Dixon, in spite of the thought of how Mrs Welch's bill would gobble up his bank-balance, suddenly began to exult. The preliminary manoeuvrings, the cold war between himself and Bertrand, were over at least. This was the whiff of grapeshot.

' Don't be funny, Dixon. Just tell me what was going on, will you? or I shall have to try something a little more forcible.'

'Don't you be funny, either. What do you want to know?'

Bertrand clenched his fist; then, when Dixon took off his glasses and squared his shoulders, unclenched it again. Dixon put his glasses back on. 'I want to know…' Bertrand said, then hesitated.

'What my game was? We've been into that.' ' Shut up. What did you intend doing with Christine, that's what I want to know.'

'I intended doing exactly what I did do. I intended to go away from that place with Christine, to bring her back here in a taxi, and finally to return to my digs in the same taxi. That's what I did do.'