Lucky Jim

'I've got her address, but I don't see why I should give it to you, of all people.'

'Mr Dixon, I can't understand why you're taking that tone. All I want to know is how Margaret is. There can't be anything objectionable about that, can there?'

'I warn you that if you're thinking of making a come-back with her, you're wasting your time, see?'

'I don't know what you mean by that. Are you sure you haven't got me confused with someone else?'

'Your name's Catchpole, isn't it?'

'Yes. Please…'

'Well, I know who you are all right, then. And all about you.'

'Please give me a hearing, Mr Dixon.' The voice at the other end shook slightly. 'I just wanted to know whether Margaret is all right or not. Won't you even tell me that?'

Dixon calmed down at this appeal. 'All right, I will. She's in quite good health physically. Mentally, she's about as well as can be expected.'

' Thanks very much. I'm glad to hear that. Do you mind if I ask you one more question?'

'What is it?'

'Why were you so angry with me a moment ago when I asked you about her?'

'That's pretty obvious, isn't it?'

'Not to me, I'm afraid. I think we're talking rather at cross-purposes, aren't we? I can't think of any reason why you should have a grudge against me. No real reason, that is.'

It sounded remarkably sincere. 'Well, I can,' Dixon said, unable to keep the puzzlement out of his voice.

'There's some kind of mix-up here, I can see that. I'd like to meet you some time, if I may, and try to straighten things out. We can't do it over the phone. What about it?'

Dixon hesitated. 'All right. What do you suggest?'

They arranged to meet for a pre-lunch drink in a pub at the foot of College Road the next day but one, Thursday. When Catchpole had rung off, Dixon sat for some minutes smoking. It was worrying, but then most of the things that had happened to him recently were that, and a good deal more besides. Anyway, he'd turn up and see what was what. Keep quiet about it to Margaret, of course. With a sigh he referred to the pocket diary for 1943 in which he wrote down telephone numbers, pulled the phone towards him again, and gave a London number. In a little while he said: 'Is Dr Caton there, please?'

There was another brief delay, then a rich confident voice came clearly over the line: 'This is Caton.'

Dixon gave his name and that of his College.

For some reason, the richness and confidence of the other voice waned sharply. 'What do you want?' it asked snappishly 'I read about your appointment, Dr Caton - incidentally may I offer my congratulations? - and I was wondering what was going to happen to that article of mine you were good enough to accept for your journal. Can you tell me when it'll come out?'

'Ah, now, Mr Dickerson, things are very difficult these days, you know.'

The voice was confident again, as if reciting a saying-lesson it knew it knew. 'There's quite a lot of stuff waiting to go in, as you can imagine. You really mustn't expect your article - which I liked very much, I may say - to go in in five minutes, you know.'

'I appreciate that, Dr Caton; I can quite understand there must be a long queue. I was just wondering if you could give me some sort of tentative date, that's all.'

'I wish you knew how difficult things are here, Mr Dicker-son. Setting up our kind of stuff in type is a job which only an exceptionally highly-skilled compositor can tackle. Have you ever thought what slow work it must be getting even half a page of footnotes set up?'

'No, but I can quite see it must be a very complicated matter. All I wanted to know, actually, is a rough idea of when you think you could manage to get my article out.'

' Well, as to that, Mr Dickerson, things aren't by any means as simple as they may look to you. You probably know Hardy of Trinity; I've had a thing of his at the printers for weeks now, and two or three times a day, or even more, I get them coming through on the phone with some query or other. Very often, of course, I just have to refer diem to him, when it's a question of a foreign document or something of that kind. I know chaps in your position think an editor's job's all beer and skittles; it's very far from being that, believe me.'

'I'm sure it must be most exacting, Dr Caton, and of course I wouldn't dream of trying to pin you down to anything definite, but it's rather important to me to have some estimate of when you'll be able to publish my article.'