Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis

He realized at once that his mind had been made up as soon as he decided to make this journey. For the first time he really felt that it was no use trying to save those who fundamentally would rather not be saved. To go on trying would not merely be to yield to pity and sentimentality, but wrong and, to pursue it to its conclusion, inhumane. It was all very bad luck on Margaret, and probably derived, as he'd thought before, from the anterior bad luck of being sexually unattractive. Christine's more normal, i.e. less unworkable, character no doubt resulted, in part at any rate, from having been lucky with her face and figure. But that was simply that. To write things down as luck wasn't the same as writing them off as non-existent or in some way beneath consideration. Christine was still nicer and prettier than Margaret, and all the deductions that could be drawn from that fact should be drawn: there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones. It had been luck, too, that had freed him from pity's adhesive plaster; if Catchpole had been a different sort of man, he, Dixon, would still be wrapped up as firmly as ever. And now he badly needed another dose of luck. If it came, he might yet prove to be of use to somebody.

The conductor now appeared and negotiated with Dixon about his ticket. When this was over, he said: 'One forty-three we're due at the station. I looked it up.'

'Oh. Shall we be on time, do you think?'

'Couldn't say, I'm sorry. Not if we keep crawling behind this Raf contraption we shan't, I shouldn't think. Train to catch?'

'Well, I want to see someone who's getting the one-fifty.'

'Shouldn't build on it if I were you.' He lingered, no doubt to examine Dixon's black eye.

'Thanks,' Dixon said dismissively.

They entered a long stretch of straight road, with a slight dip in the middle so that every yard of its empty surface was visible. Far ahead an emaciated brown hand appeared from the lorry's cab and made a writhing, beckoning movement. The driver of the bus ignored this invitation in favour of drawing to a gradual halt by a bus-stop outside a row of thatched cottages. The foreshortened bulks of two old women dressed in black waited until the bus was quenched of all motion before clutching each other and edging with sidelong caution out of Dixon's view towards the platform. In a moment he heard their voices crying unintelligibly to the conductor, then activity seemed to cease. At least five seconds passed; Dixon stirred elaborately at his post, then twisted himself about looking for anything that might have had a share in causing this caesura in his journey. He could detect nothing of this kind. Was the driver slumped in his seat, the victim of syncope, or had he suddenly got an idea for a poem? For a moment longer the pose prolonged itself; then the picture of sleepy rustic calm was modified by the fairly sudden emergence from a cottage some yards beyond of a third woman in a like costume. She looked keenly towards the bus and identified it without any obvious difficulty, then approached with a kind of bowed shuffle that suggested the movements of a serviceman towards the pay-table. This image was considerably reinforced by her hat, which resembled a Guardsman's peaked cap that had been strenuously run over and then dyed cerise. Indeed, it was possible that the old bitch - a metallic noise came from the back of Dixon's throat when he saw her smile of self-admiration at having caught her bus - had actually found what was to become her hat lying in the road outside her nasty little cottage after a military exercise, the legacy of some skylarking lout in the carrier platoon, from whose head it had fallen under the tracks and wheels of an entire battalion.

The bus nosed its prudential way on to the crown of the road, and the gap between it and the lorry began to diminish. Dixon found that his whole being had become centred in the matter of the bus's progress; he couldn't be bothered any longer to wonder what Christine would say to him if he got there in time, nor what he'd do if he didn't. He just sat there on the dusty cushions, galvanized by the pitchings of the bus into the appearance of seismic laughter, sweating stealthily in the heat and the apprehension - thank God he hadn't been drinking - stretching his face in a fresh direction at each overtaking car, each bend, each motiveless circumspection of the driver.

The bus was now resolutely secured again behind the trailer, which soon began to reduce speed even further. Before Dixon could cry out, before he'd time to guess what was to happen, the lorry and trailer had moved off to the side into a lay-by and the bus was travelling on alone. Now was the time, he thought with reviving hope, for the driver to start making up some of the time he must have lost. The driver, however, was clearly unable to assent to this diagnosis. Dixon lit another small cigarette, jabbing with the match at the sandpaper as if it were the driver's eye. He had, of course, no idea of the time, but estimated that they must, by now, have covered five of the eight or so miles to their destination. Just then the bus rounded a corner and slowed abruptly, then stopped. Making a lot of noise, a farm tractor was laboriously pulling, at right angles across the road, something that looked like the springs of a giant's bed, caked in places with earth and decked with ribbon-like grasses. Dixon thought he really would have to run downstairs and knife the drivers of both vehicles; what next? what next? What actually would be next: a masked holdup, a smash, floods, a burst tyre, an electric storm with falling trees and meteorites, a diversion, a low-level attack by Communist aircraft, sheep, the driver stung by a hornet? He'd choose the last of these, if consulted. Hawking its gears, the bus crept on, while every few yards troupes of old men waited to make their quivering way aboard.

As the traffic thickened slightly towards the town, the driver added to his hypertrophied caution a psychopathic devotion to the interests of other road-users; the sight of anything between a removal-van and a junior bicycle halved his speed to four miles an hour and sent his hand, Dixon guessed, flapping in a slow-motion St Vitus' dance of beckonings and wavings-on. Learners practised reversing across his path; gossiping knots of loungers parted leisuredly at the touch of his reluctant bonnet; toddlers reeled to retrieve toys from under his just-revolving wheels. Dixon's head switched angrily to and fro in vain search for a clock; the inhabitants of this mental, moral, and physical backwater, devoting as they had done for years their few waking moments to the pursuit of offences against chastity, were too poor, and were also too mean… Dixon, seeing the hulk of the railway station thirty yards off, returned painfully to reality and rattled along the aisle to the stairs. Before the bus had reached the station stop he plunged down, out, across the road, and into the booking-hall. The clock over the ticket-office pointed to one forty-seven. At once the minute hand stepped one pace onward. Dixon flung himself at the barrier. A hard-faced man confronted him.

'Which platform for London, please?'

The man looked at him appraisingly, as if trying to gauge in advance his fitness to hear a more than usually improper joke. 'Bit early, aren't you?'

'Eh?'

'Next to London's eight-seventeen.'

'Eight-seventeen?'

'No restaurant car.'

'What about the one-fifty?'

'No one-fifty. Haven't got it mixed up with the one-forty, by any chance?'

Dixon swallowed. 'I think I must have done,' he said. 'Thanks.'

'Sorry, George.'

Nodding mechanically, Dixon turned away. Bill Atkinson must have made a mistake in taking down Christine's message. But it wasn't like Atkinson to make mistakes of that sort. Perhaps it had been Christine who'd made the mistake. It didn't really matter. He walked slowly to the entrance and stood looking out from the shadows at the little sunlit square. He still had his job. And it wouldn't be very difficult to get in touch with Christine. It was only that he felt it would be too late when he did. But, anyway, he'd met her and talked to her a few times. Thank God for that.

As he watched, wondering what to do next, he caught sight of a car with a damaged wing moving uncertainly round a Post Office van. Something about this car held Dixon's attention. It began to crawl towards him, roaring like a bull-dozer. The roar was cut off by a spine-tingling snort of cogs and the car froze in its tracks. A tallish blonde girl wearing a wine-coloured costume and carrying a mackintosh and a large suitcase got out and began hurrying towards the spot where Dixon stood.

Dixon skipped out of sight behind a pillar, as best he could under the impact of what must surely be a lesion of the diaphragm. How could he, of all people, have ignored the importance of Welch's car-driving habits?

XXV

ANOTHER frenzy of mechanical rage outside told him that Welch was still at the wheel. Good; perhaps he was under orders to return without delay. Dixon had no feelings or thoughts beyond the immediate situation. He heard Christine's steps approaching and tried to press himself back into the pillar. Her feet took a few paces on the boards of the entrance-hall; she came into view four or five feet away, turned her head, and saw him at once. Her face broke into a smile of what seemed to him pure affection. 'You got my message, then,' she said. She looked ridiculously pretty.

'Come here, Christine, quickly.' He drew her into the shelter of his pillar. 'Just a minute.'

She stared about her and then at him. 'But we ought to be running up on to the platform. My train's nearly due.'

'Your train's gone. You'll have to wait for the next. At least the next.'

'That clock says I've got one more minute. I can just…'

'No, it's gone, I tell you. It went at one-forty.'

'It couldn't have done.'

'It could and did. I asked the man.'

'But Mr Welch said it went at one-fifty.'

'Oh, he did, did he? That explains everything. He was wrong about that, you see.'

'Are you sure? Why are we hiding? Are we hiding?'

Ignoring her, his hand unnoticed on her arm, Dixon leant carefully past her. Welch was now broadside-on across the main exit from the square. 'Right, well we'll just give the bloody old fool time to get clear, and then we'll go and have a drink.' He would begin with an octuple whisky. 'You've had lunch, I suppose?'

'Yes, but I could hardly eat a thing.'

'Not like you, that. Well, I haven't had any, so we'll have some together. I know a hotel not far from here. I used to go there with Margaret in the old days.'

They left Christine's case in the luggage-office and walked out into the square. 'A good thing old Welch didn't insist on putting you on the train,' Dixon said.

'Yes… Actually I was the one who insisted.'

'I don't blame you.' Dixon's physical discomfort grew steadily at the thought of Christine's 'news', now nearing revelation. He wanted to bet himself it would be bad so that he might stand a chance of its being good. His head, and an inaccessible part of his back, itched.

'I wanted to get away as quickly as I could from the whole bunch of them. I couldn't bear any of them for another moment. A fresh one arrived last night.'

'A fresh one?'

'Yes. Mitchell or some such name.'

'Oh, I know. You mean Michel.'

'Do I? I picked the first train I could get.'

'What's happened? That you wanted to tell me.' He tried to force his spirits down, to expect nothing but unexpected and very nasty nastiness.

She looked at him, and he again noticed that the whites of her eyes were a very light blue. 'I've finished with Bertrand.' She spoke as if of a household detergent that had proved unsatisfactory.

'Why? For good?'

'Yes. Do you want to hear about it?'

'Come on.'

'You remember me and Carol Goldsmith leaving your lecture in the middle yesterday?'

Dixon understood, and felt breathless. 'I know. She told you something, didn't she? I know what she told you.'

They stopped walking involuntarily. Dixon put out his tongue at an old woman who was staring at them. Christine said: 'You knew about Bertrand and her all the time, didn't you? I knew you did.' She looked as if she were going to laugh.

'Yes. What made her tell you?'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'I couldn't. It wouldn't have done me any good. What made Carol tell you?'

'She hated him for taking her for granted. I didn't mind what he'd done before he started going about with me, but it was wrong of him to try to keep us both on a string, Carol and me. She said he asked her to come away with him the night we all went to the theatre. He was quite sure she would. She said she began by hating me and then she saw the way he was treating me, things like the way be behaved at the sherry thing. Then she saw he was the one to blame, not me.'

She stood with her shoulders a little hunched, saying all this quickly and with embarrassment, her back to a shop-window full of brassieres, corsets, and suspender-belts. The lowered blind shadowed her face as she looked almost slyly at him, possibly to see whether she'd said enough to satisfy his curiosity.

'A bit noble of her, wasn't it? Bertrand won't look at her after this.'

'Oh, she doesn't want him to. I gather…'

'Well?'

'I sort of gathered from what she said that there's someone else in the background now. I don't know who.'

Dixon was pretty sure he did; the last thread was untangled. He took Christine's arm and walked off with her. 'That's enough,' he said.

'There's a lot more about what he told her about…'

'Later.' A leer of happiness suffused Dixon's face. He said: 'I think you might like to hear this. I am going to have nothing more to do with Margaret. Something's come up - never mind what for now - which means I needn't bother with her any more.'

'What, you mean you're absolutely…?'

'I'll tell you all about it later, I promise. Don't let's think about it now.'

'All right. But it is genuine, isn't it?'

'Of course, perfectly genuine.'

'Well then, in that case…'

'That's right. Tell me: what are you going to do this afternoon?'

'I suppose I shall have to go back to London, shan't I?'

'Do you mind if I come with you?'

'What's all this?' She pulled at his arm until he looked at her. 'What's going on? There's something else, isn't there? What is it?'

'I've got to find somewhere to live.'

'Why? I thought you lived somewhere in this part of the world.'

'Didn't Uncle Julius tell you about my new job?'

'For goodness' sake tell me about this properly, Jim. Don't tease me.'

While he explained, he pronounced the names to himself: Bayswater, Knightsbridge, Netting Hill Gate, Pimlico, Belgrave Square, Wapping, Chelsea. No, not Chelsea.

'I knew he had something up that sleeve of his,' Christine was saying. 'I didn't know that'd be it, though. I hope you'll be able to put up with him. Couldn't be better, could it? I say, there won't be any difficulty about you leaving your job with the University here, will there?'

'No, I don't think so.'

'What job is it, by the way? The one he's given you?'