Lucky Jim

'I can't start making promises to have your article out next week,' the voice said in a nettled tone, as if Dixon had been stupidly insisting on this one point, 'with things as difficult as they are. Surely you must see that. You don't seem to realize the amount of planning that goes into each number, especially a first number. It's not like drawing up a railway timetable, what? what?' he finished, loudly and suspiciously. »93 Dixon wondered if, without knowing it, he'd allowed an imprecation to pass his lips. A hollow, metallic tapping had begun on the line, like galvanized iron being hammered in a cathedral. In a louder voice he said: 'I'm sure it isn't, and I'm quite resigned to the delay. But to be quite frank, Dr Caton, I want rather urgently to improve my standing in the Department here, and if I could just quote you, if you could give me a…'

' I'm sorry to hear of your difficulties, Mr Dickinson, but I'm afraid things are too difficult here for me to be very seriously concerned about your difficulties. There are plenty of people in your position, you know; I don't know what I should do if they all started demanding promises from me in this fashion.'

'But Dr Caton, I haven't been asking you for a promise. All I want is an estimate, and even the vaguest estimate would help me - "the second half of next year" for example. You won't be committing yourself in the least by just giving me an estimate.' There was a silence which Dixon interpreted as one of maturing rage. 'Could I have your permission to say "the second half of next year" when I'm asked?'

Though Dixon waited for ten seconds or more, nothing answered him except the metallic tapping, which had increased in volume and pace.

"Things are very difficult, things are very difficult, things are very difficult,' Dixon gabbled into the phone, then mentioned a few difficult things which occurred to him as suitable tasks for Dr Caton to have a go at. Still devising variations of this theme, he went out muttering to himself, wagging his head and shoulders like a puppet. A rival to Welch had appeared in the field of evasion-technique, verbal division, and in the physical division of the same field this chap had Welch whacked at the start: self-removal to South America was the traditional climax of an evasive career. Up in his room, Dixon filled his lungs to their utmost and groaned for half a minute or more without drawing breath. He got out the notes for his lecture and went on working them up into a script.

Five hours kter, he had what he estimated as forty-four minutes' worth of lecture. It seemed by then as if there were no facts anywhere in the universe, in his own brain or anyone else's or just lying about loose, which could possibly be brought within his present scope. And even so, he'd been travelling for a large part of his forty-four minutes along the knife-edge dividing the conceivably-just-about-relevant from the irreducibly, immitigably irrelevant. The fifteen minutes needed to top the thing up to the fifty-nine minutes he'd set himself would have to be occupied by a presumably rather extensive conclusion, and he didn't want to write one of those. Something on the lines of 'Finally, thank God for the twentieth century' would satisfy him, but it wouldn't satisfy Welch.

Then he seized his pencil again, gave a happy laugh, and wrote: 'This survey, brief as it is, would have no purpose if left as a mere' - he crossed out 'mere' -'historical record. There are valuable lessons here for us, living in an age of prefabricated amusements as we do. One wonders how one of the men or women I have tried to describe would react to such typically modern phenomena as the cinema, the radio, the television. What would he think, accustomed as he was (had been? would have been? is?) to making his own music (must look at Welch at this point), of a society where people like himself are regarded as oddities, where to play an instrument himself, oneself, instead of paying others to do so, to sing a madrigal instead of a cheap dance-lyric, is to incur the dreaded title of " crank ", where…'

He stopped writing and ran out into the bathroom. He started washing with frenzied speed. He'd left it just late enough; with luck he'd have time to get ready and rush along to the hotel for tea with Christine, but no time to think about tea with Christine. Nevertheless, for all the energy of his movements, he began to feel a little queasy with apprehension.

He arrived at the hotel two minutes late. On turning into the lounge where tea was served, he felt a pang of fear, or whatever emotion it was, kicking at his diaphragm when he saw Christine already sitting waiting for him. He'd counted on a few minutes' grace to think of things to say to her; if it had been Margaret, he'd have had them and more.

She smiled as he approached. ' Hallo, Jim.'