Part 8 (1/2)

'Well, what goes forward, people?' Bertrand asked. He was holding Christine's wrist between finger and thumb, perhaps taking her pulse. He glanced at Dixon, to whom he'd so far been fairly amiable.

'Well, I thought we might go and have a drink,' Dixon said.

'Oh, do be quiet, James; anybody'd think you'd die if you went an hour without one.'

'He probably would,' Bertrand said. 'Anyway, it's sensible of him not to want to take the risk. What about it, darling? I'm afraid there's only beer and cider, unless you want to fare forth to an adjacent hostelram.'

'Yes, all right, but where's Uncle Julius and Mrs Goldsmith? We can't go off and leave them.'

While it was being agreed that these two were probably already in the bar, Dixon grinned to himself at 'Uncle Julius'. How marvellous it was that there should be somebody called that and somebody else to call him that, and that he himself should be present to hear one calling the other that. As he drifted off at Margaret's side between the talking groups on one side and the mutes lining the walls on the other, he caught sight of Alfred Beesley standing rather miserably among the last-named. Beesley, notorious for his inability to get to know women, always came to functions of this sort, but since every woman here tonight had come with a partner (except for women like the s.e.xagenarian Professor of Philosophy or the fifteen-stone Senior Lecturer in Economics) he must know he was wasting his time. Dixon exchanged greetings with him, and fancied he caught a gleam of envy in Beesley's eye. Dixon reflected firstly how inefficient a bar to wasting one's time was the knowledge that one was wasting it (and especially in what Welch called 'matters of the heart'); secondly how narrow a gap there really was between Beesley's status and his own in such matters; and thirdly how little there was to envy in what established him as on the far side of the gap from Beesley the privileges of being able to speak to one woman and of being in the same party as another. But, fourthly, the possession of the signs of s.e.xual privilege is the important thing, not the quality nor the enjoyment of them. Dixon felt he ought to feel calmed and liberated at reaching this conclusion, but he didn't, any more than unease in the stomach is alleviated by discovery of its technical name.

They reached the bar, a small room not designed for the purpose. The still recent tradition of a 'wet' Summer Ball had been inst.i.tuted, though few could of course bring themselves to believe it, by the College authorities, on the argument that the amount of drunkenness among student patrons, alarming at one time, could be reduced by providing cheap non-spirituous liquors on the premises, and by thus rendering less acutely attractive the costly and injurious gulping of horses' necks or of inferior gin and synthetic lime-juice in the city's pubs. More oddly still, perhaps, this argument had shown itself to be sound, so that in the room now visited by Dixon and the rest three minor College employees were toiling at barrels of beer and cider under panels representing, similarly to the larger ones in the Ballroom, swarthy potentates about to be danced upon by troupes of midget Circa.s.sians, or caravans of Chinese merchants being sucked up into the air by whirlwinds. The pallid pillars were here replaced by potted and tubbed palms of an almost macabre luxuriance. Among these last lurked Maconochie, the t.i.tular supervisor of the three barmen, adding to the effect in some indefinable way by wearing a starched white coat over his olive-green trousers.

Gore-Urquhart and Carol were sitting in one of the further palm-groves, talking fairly hard. When he saw the others coming towards them, Gore-Urquhart rose to his feet. This formality was so unfamiliar in the circles Dixon normally moved in that for a moment he wondered whether the other meant to oppose their approach by physical force. He was younger than Dixon had expected any distinguished man, and an uncle of Christine's, to be: somewhere in the middle forties. His evening suit, too, was not nearly as spectacularly 'faultless' as might have been predicted. His large smooth face, surmounting a short thin body, was the least symmetrical, short of actual deformity, that Dixon had ever seen, giving him the look of a drunken sage trying to collect his wits, a look intensified by slightly protruding lips and a single black eyebrow running from temple to temple. Before the party was finally seated Maconochie, no doubt well tipped already, loped forward to see what drinks were wanted. Dixon watched his servility with enjoyment.

'I've managed to keep out of your Princ.i.p.al's way so far,' Gore-Urquhart said with his strong Lowland-Scottish accent.

'That's no mean achievement, Mr Gore-Urquhart,' Margaret said with a laugh. 'I'm sure he's got all his spies out for you.'

'Do you think so, now? Will I be able to get away again if he catches me?'

'Most unlikely, sir,' Bertrand said. 'You know what they're like in this part of the world. Throw them a celebrity and they'll fight over him like dogs over a bone. Why, even in my small way I've had a good deal of that sort of thing to endure, especially from academic so-called society. Just because my father happens to be a professor, they think I must want to talk to the Vice-Chancellor's wife about the difficulties her wretched grandson's having at his school. But, of course, it must be a thousand times worse for you, sir, am I right?'

Gore-Urquhart, who'd been listening to this with attention, said briskly 'In some ways', and drank from his gla.s.s.

'Anyway, Mr Gore-Urquhart,' Margaret said, 'you're quite safe for the moment. The Princ.i.p.al holds court on these occasions in a room at the other end of the dance-floor he doesn't mix with the rabble in here.'

'So while I'm with the rabble I'm fairly safe, you mean, Miss Peel? Good, I'll stay with the rabble.'

Dixon had been expecting a silver-bells laugh from Margaret to follow this remark, but it was still hard to bear when it came. At that moment Maconochie arrived with the drinks Gore-Urquhart had ordered. To Dixon's surprise and delight, the beer was in pint gla.s.ses and, after waiting for Gore-Urquhart's 'Find me some cigarettes, laddie,' to Maconochie, he leaned forward and said: 'How on earth did you manage to get pints? I haven't seen anything but halves in here the whole evening. I thought it must be a rule of the place. They wouldn't give me pints when I asked for them. How on earth did you get round it?' While he said this he saw irritably that Margaret was looking from him to Gore-Urquhart and back again and smiling deprecatingly, as if to a.s.sure Gore-Urquhart that, despite all evidence to the contrary, this speech betokened no real mental derangement. Bertrand, too, was watching and grinning.

Gore-Urquhart, who didn't seem to have noticed Margaret's smiles, jerked a short, nicotined thumb towards the departing Maconochie. 'A fellow Scottish Nationalist,' he said.

All the people facing Dixon and to his left Gore-Urquhart himself, Bertrand, and Margaret laughed at this, and so did Dixon, who looked to his right and saw Christine, seated next to him with her elbows on the table, smiling in a controlled fas.h.i.+on, and beyond her Carol, at Gore-Urquhart's left, staring rather grimly at Bertrand. Before the laughter cleared, Dixon noticed Bertrand becoming aware of this scrutiny and looking away. Perturbed by the small tension in the company, and finding now that Gore-Urquhart's eyes were fixed on him from under the black eyebrow, Dixon twitched his gla.s.ses on to the right part of his nose and said at a venture: 'Well, it's an unexpected pleasure to be drinking pints at a do like this.'

'You're in luck, Dixon,' Gore-Urquhart said sharply, handing round cigarettes.

Dixon felt himself blus.h.i.+ng slightly, and resolved to say no more for a time. None the less he was pleased that Gore-Urquhart had caught his name. With a braying flourish of trumpets, the music started up in the Ballroom, and people began to move out of the bar. Bertrand, who'd settled himself next to Gore-Urquhart, began talking to him in a low voice, and almost at once Christine addressed some remark to Carol. Margaret said to Dixon: 'It is sweet of you to have brought me here, James.'

'Glad you're enjoying yourself.'

'You don't sound as if you are very much.'

'Oh, I am, really.'

'I'm sure you're enjoying this part of it, anyway, better than the actual dancing part.'

'Oh, I'm enjoying both parts, honestly. Drink that up and we'll go back on the floor. I can do quick-steps.'

She looked earnestly at him and rested a hand on his arm. 'Dear James, do you think it's wise for us to go round together like this?' she asked him.

'Why ever not?' he said in alarm.

'Because you're so sweet to me and I'm getting much too fond of you.' She said this in a tone that combined the vibrant with the flat, like a great actress demonstrating the economical conveyance of strong emotion. This was her habit when making her avowals.

In the midst of his panic, Dixon managed to find the thought that this, if true, would indeed be grounds for their seeing less of each other; then he hit on a remark both honest and acceptable: 'You mustn't say things like that.'

She laughed lightly. 'Poor James,' she said. 'Keep my seat for me, will you, darling? I shan't be long.' She went out.

Poor James? Poor James? It was, in fact, a very just characterization, but hardly one for her to make, surely, her of all people. Then a sense of guilt sent him diving for his gla.s.s; guilt not only for this latest reflection, but for the unintentional irony of 'you're so sweet to me'. It was doubtful, he considered, whether he was capable of being at all sweet, much less 'so' sweet, to anybody at all. Whatever pa.s.sably decent treatment Margaret had had from him was the result of a temporary victory of fear over irritation and/or pity over boredom. That behaviour of such origin could seem 'so sweet' to her might be taken as a reflection on her sensitivity, but it was also a terrible commentary on her frustration and loneliness. Poor old Margaret, he thought with a shudder. He must try harder. But what would be the consequences to her of treatment more consistently sweet, or of a higher level of sweetness? What would be the consequences to him? To drive away these speculations, he began listening to the conversation on his left.

'... I've the utmost respect for his opinion,' Bertrand was saying. The bay in his voice was well throttled back; perhaps someone had upbraided him about it. 'I always say he's the last of the old-fas.h.i.+oned professional critics, and so he knows what he's talking about, which is more than you can say for most of the fraternity nowadays. Well, we kept running into each other at the same exhibitions, and funnily enough in front of the same pictures.' Here he laughed, momentarily raising one shoulder. 'One day he said to me: ”I want to see your work. People tell me it's good.” So I packed up an a.s.sortment of small stuff and took it round to his house it's a lovely place, isn't it? You must know it, of course; one might really be back in the dix-huitieme. dix-huitieme. Wonder how long before the Rubber Goods Workers' Union takes it over and I must say that one or two pastels seemed to fetch him...' Wonder how long before the Rubber Goods Workers' Union takes it over and I must say that one or two pastels seemed to fetch him...'

Fetch him a vomiting-basin, Dixon thought; then horror overcame him at the thought of a man who 'knows what he's talking about' not only not talking about how nasty Bertrand's pictures were, not only not putting his boot through them, but actually seeming to be fetched by one or two of them. Bertrand must not be a good painter; he, Dixon, would not permit it. And yet here was the Gore-Itchbag fellow, not on the face of it a moron, listening to this frenzy of self-advertis.e.m.e.nt without overt protest, even with some attention. Yes, Dixon saw, with very close attention. Gore-Urquhart had tilted his large dark head over towards Bertrand; his face, half-averted, eyes on the ground, wore a small intent frown, as if he were hard of hearing and couldn't bear to miss a word. Dixon couldn't bear not missing any more of it Bertrand was now using the phrase 'contrapuntal tone-values' and switched to his right, where for some moments he'd been half-conscious of a silence.

As he did so, Christine turned towards him. 'Look, do join in this, will you?' she said in an undertone. 'I can't get her to say anything.'

He looked over at Carol, whose eye met his without apparent recognition, but before he could start working on what to say Margaret returned.

'What, still hanging over the drink?' she said vivaciously to the whole party. 'I thought you'd all be on the floor by now. Now, Mr Gore-Urquhart, I'm not going to permit any more of this sulking about in here, Princ.i.p.al or no Princ.i.p.al. It's the light fantastic for you; come along.'

Gore-Urquhart, smiling politely, had risen to his feet and, with a word to the others, let himself be led away out of the bar. Bertrand looked across at Carol. 'Don't let's waste the band, my dear,' he said. 'I've paid twenty-five s.h.i.+llings for them, after all.'

'So you have, my dear,' Carol said, stressing the appellation, and for a moment Dixon was afraid she meant to refuse and so bring the situation, whatever it was, to a crisis, but after that moment she got to her feet and began to move towards the dance-floor.

'Look after Christine for me, Dixon,' Bertrand bayed. 'Don't drop her; she's fragile. Good-bye for a little, my sweet,' he fluted to Christine; 'I'll be back soon. Blow your whistle if the man gets rough.'

'Care for a dance?' Dixon said to Christine. 'I'm not much good, as I told you, but I don't mind having a crack if you don't.'

She smiled. 'Nor do I, if you don't.'

XI.

AS he left the bar with Christine at his side, Dixon felt like a special agent, a picaroon, a Chicago war-lord, a hidalgo, an oil baron, a mohock. He kept careful control over his features to stop them doing what they wanted to do and breaking out into an imbecile smirk of excitement and pride. When she turned and faced him at the edge of the floor, he found it hard to believe that she was really going to let him touch her, or that the men near them wouldn't spontaneously intervene to prevent him. But in a moment there they were in the conventional pseudo-embrace, actually fencing together, not very skilfully, but without doubt dancing. Dixon looked past her face in silence, afraid of any distraction from the task of not leading her into a collision, for the floor was a good deal more thickly populated than a quarter of an hour earlier. Among the dancers he recognized Barclay, the Professor of Music, dancing with his wife. She permanently resembled a horse, he only when he laughed, which he did suddenly and seldom, but was momentarily to be seen doing now.

'What was the matter with Mrs Goldsmith, do you know?' Christine asked.

This inquisitiveness surprised him. 'She did look rather fed-up, didn't she?' he fenced.

'Was it because she was expecting Bertrand to bring her here tonight instead of me?'

Did that mean she knew about the switch of partners? It needn't, but it might. 'I don't know,' he said in a m.u.f.fled voice.

'I think you do know.' She sounded quite angry. 'I wish you'd tell me.'

'I know nothing at all about it, I'm afraid. And in any case it's nothing to do with me.'

'If that's your att.i.tude, then there's nothing more to be said.'