She smiled as he approached. ‘Hallo, Jim.’
He was feeling physically very nervous. ‘Hallo’ he said with a half-cough. Fighting off temptations to see that his tie was straight, his pocket-flaps not tucked in, his flies buttoned, he sat down cautiously in front of her. Today she wore a jacket of the same material as her plum-coloured skirt, and these and the white blouse all seemed newly ironed. She looked unmanningly pretty, so much so that Dixon’s head began to spin with the effort of thinking of something to say, something different from what he’d come on purpose to say.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘All right, thanks; I’ve been working. You managed to get away without any fuss, I hope?’
‘I don’t know about without any fuss.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?’
‘I think Bertrand was rather suspicious. I told him there were one or two things I wanted to do in town. I didn’t mention anything in particular, because I thought that would have looked a bit . . .’
‘Quite. And how did he take that?’
‘Not too well. He came back with a lot of things about me being my own mistress, and I was to do what I wanted to do, and wasn’t to feel I was tied in any way. It made me feel rather mean.’
‘I can understand that all right.’
She leant forward and put her elbows on the low circular table between them. ‘You see, Jim, in a way I think it was rather a bad thing my coming to meet you at all. But I’d said I would and so I had to come. And, of course, I still wanted to, just as much as I did when you asked me. But I’ve been thinking it all over, and I’ve decided . . . Look, shall we have our tea first, and then talk about it?’
‘No, tell me now, whatever it is you want to say.’
‘All right, then. It’s this, Jim: I think I was a bit carried away by one thing and another then, when you asked me to come today, I mean. I think I wouldn’t have said I’d come if I’d had time to think what I was doing. I’d still have wanted to come just as much, though. I’m sorry to have got on to this straight away, we’ve hardly had time to say hallo to each other, but you can see what I’m leading up to, can’t you?’
Dixon didn’t reflect that this attitude would make his task an easy one. He said in a flat voice: ‘You mean you don’t want to go on with this?’
‘I don’t really see how we could go on with it, do you? I wish I’d left all this till later, but it’s been rather on my mind. You see, you’re sort of stuck up here, aren’t you? Or do you get to London fairly often?’
‘No, I hardly ever go there.’
‘Well then, the only chance we’d have to see each other would be when Bertrand asked me to come and stay with his parents, like now, and I wouldn’t feel right about sneaking off to see you the whole time. And in any case . . .’ She stopped and made a facial movement which caused Dixon to turn round in his chair.
A youthful waiter had approached, his footfalls silenced by the carpet, and was now shifting from one foot to the other close by, breathing through his mouth. Dixon thought he’d never seen a human frame radiating so much insolence without recourse to speech, gesture, or any contortion of the features. This figure swung a silver tray in an attempt at careless grace, and was looking past Dixon at Christine. When Dixon said ‘Tea for two, please’ the waiter smiled faintly at her, as if in lofty but sincere commiseration, then swung aside, allowing the tray to rebound from his kneecap as he walked off.
‘Sorry; what were you saying?’ Dixon said.
‘It’s just that I am, oh, tied up with Bertrand, that’s all. It’s not so much a question of having obligations towards him or anything like that. I just don’t want to behave foolishly. Not that I think there’s anything foolish about coming to see you. Oh, I just don’t seem to be able to put it in any way that sounds at all sensible.’ Little by little and intermittently, she was adopting her ‘dignant’ tone and physical attitude. ‘I’m afraid all I can ask you to do is try to understand. I know that’s what people always say, and I don’t feel I understand very well myself, so how I can expect you to I don’t know, but there it is.’
‘You’re going back on what you said about being rather fed-up with Bertrand, then?’
‘No, all that’s still quite true. What I’m trying to do now is take the rough with the smooth. The rough parts are still as rough as they were when we talked about it in the taxi. But I must make an effort; I mustn’t walk out of things just when I feel like it, I can’t go about expecting people to behave as I want them to the whole time. There’s bound to be a certain amount of up and down in a relationship like the one I’m having with Bertrand. It’s no use getting in a paddy about that, it’s got to be accepted, even if I don’t want to accept it. The trouble is I’ve got to push you around while I’m doing it.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Dixon said. ‘You must do as you think best.’
‘Whatever I do can’t be very satisfactory,’ she said. ‘I feel I’ve been very stupid the whole way through.’ Though her pose was now complete, Dixon barely noticed it. ‘What I want to stop you thinking is that I was being frivolous about, you know, letting you kiss me and saying I’d come today, and all that. And I meant everything I said; I wouldn’t have said it otherwise. And I don’t want you to think that I was doing it just for fun or that I’ve decided since I don’t like you enough, or anything like that. It’s not like that and you’re not to think it is.’
‘That’s all right, Christine. You can forget about that part of it. Oh . . . here we are.’
The waiter reappeared at Dixon’s side with a loaded tray. This he half-lowered, half-dropped to within an inch of the table; then, with an offensive exaggeration of care, he laid it soundlessly to rest. Straightening up, he gave another smile, this time at Dixon, paused, as if to emphasize his non-intention of setting out any of the tea-things, and moved off counterfeiting a heavy limp.
Christine began moving crockery about and pouring tea. When she gave him his cup she said: ‘I’m sorry, Jim. I didn’t want to be like this about it. Have a sandwich?’
‘No thanks, I don’t want anything to eat.’
She nodded and began eating with every appearance of appetite. Dixon was interested by this conventional absence of conventional sensitivity; for almost the first time in his life a woman was behaving in a way alleged to be typical of women. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘you’ve got your commitments with Margaret, haven’t you?’
He sighed rather tremulously; although the worst part of the encounter was theoretically over, without yet having had on him the numbing effect he knew it soon would have, he still felt nervous. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘That was what I was going to tell you about this afternoon, only you got in first. I came here to tell you that I thought we shouldn’t see any more of each other from my own point of view, because of my business with Margaret.’
‘I see.’ She began eating another sandwich.
‘Things have all rather come to a head in the last few days, as a matter of fact. Since the Ball, really.’
She looked at him quickly. ‘There was a row over that, was there?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose you could say that. A good deal more than a row, actually.’
‘There you are, you see. I was causing all sorts of trouble by sneaking off with you like that.’
‘Don’t be silly, Christine,’ Dixon said irritably. ‘You’re talking as if you were the one who initiated everything. If anybody was responsible for all sorts of trouble, as you call it, it was me. Not that I think I’m much to blame for anything, any more than you were. It was all perfectly natural. All this self-reproach strikes me as a bit forced.’
‘I’m sorry; I must have put it badly. I wasn’t forcing anything as far as I knew.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you were for a moment. I didn’t mean to sound hot under the collar. The Margaret business has been getting me down rather.’
‘How bad was it? What did she say to you?’
/> ‘Oh, she said all sorts of things. There wasn’t much she could have said she didn’t say.’
‘You make it sound pretty formidable. What actually went on?’
Dixon sighed again and drank some tea. ‘It’s all so . . . complicated. I don’t want to bore you with it.’
‘You won’t bore me. I’d like to hear, if you feel you want to tell me. It’s your turn, after all.’
The grin she gave with this remark nearly put Dixon right off his stroke. Was she really finding this funny? ‘That’s right,’ he said heavily. ‘Well, there’s a lot of past history that’s all mixed up with it, you see. She’s a decent girl really, and I like her a lot, at least I would if she’d only let me. But I’ve got tied up with her without really meaning to, though I know that sounds ridiculous. When I first met her, last October some time, she was going round with a fellow called Catchpole . . .’ He gave a compressed, but otherwise only slightly edited, account of his past relations with Margaret, finishing with their visit to the pictures the previous evening. He gave a cigarette to Christine, who’d eaten all the food the waiter had brought, took one himself, and said: ‘So now it’s all more or less on again, though I shouldn’t like to have to explain just what it is that’s more or less on again, and on’s a bit vague too. I don’t think she knows quite how interested I’ve been in you, by the way, and I don’t imagine she’d thank me for telling her.’
Christine avoided his eyes, puffing amateurishly at her cigarette. She asked in a disinterested tone: ‘How do you think she seemed when you left her?’
‘Just the same as she’d been all the evening, quite quiet and apparently sensible. Oh, I know that sounds pretty offensive; I don’t quite mean that, I mean she . . . well, she wasn’t so excitable, there wasn’t any of the nervous tension about her that there usually is.’
‘Do you think she’ll go on being like that, now that she feels things are more settled?’
‘Well, I must admit I have been beginning to hope . . .’ Now that the hope was voiced, it seemed ludicrously naïve. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It doesn’t make much difference anyway.’
‘You sound pretty miserable about the whole business.’
‘Do I? It hasn’t been easy, certainly.’
‘No, and it’s not going to get any easier, is it?’ When Dixon, irritated by this question, said nothing, she went on, tapping ash into a saucer: ‘I don’t suppose you want me to say this, but you must realize it yourself, I should think. I don’t see how either of you can be very happy with the other one.’
Dixon tried to suppress his irritation. ‘No, I don’t suppose we can, but there’s nothing to be done about it. It’s just that we can’t split up, that’s all.’
‘Well, what are you going to do, then? Are you going to get engaged to her or anything?’
It was the same curiosity as she’d shown some weeks ago about his drinking habits. ‘I don’t know,’ he said coldly, trying not to think about getting engaged to Margaret. ‘I suppose it’s possible, if things carry on as they are for a time.’
She didn’t seem to notice his unfriendly tone. Shifting in her seat, she glanced round the room, then said didactically: ‘Well, it looks as if we’re both taken care of, doesn’t it? It’s just as well.’
The authoritative vapidity of this reacted with Dixon’s general feeling of peevish regret and made him begin to talk fast. ‘Yes, there’s not really much to choose between us when you look into it. You’re keeping up your little affair with Bertrand because you think that on the whole it’s safer to do that, in spite of the risks attached to that kind of thing, than to chance your arm with me. You know the snags about him, but you don’t know what snags there might be about me. And I’m sticking to Margaret because I haven’t got the guts to turn her loose and let her look after herself, so I do that instead of doing what I want to do, because I’m afraid to. It’s just a sort of stodgy, stingy caution that’s the matter with us; you can’t even call it looking after number one.’ He looked at her with faint contempt, and was hurt to see the same feeling in the way she looked at him. ‘That’s all there is to it; and the worst of it is I shall go on doing exactly what I was going to do in the first place. It just shows how little it helps you to know where you stand.’ For some reason, this last remark brought into his mind the thought that a few words from him could dispose of Christine’s attachment to Bertrand; he’d only to tell her what Carol had told him. But she probably knew, perhaps she was so devoted to Bertrand that she wouldn’t break with him even over a thing like that, would rather have half of him than nothing at all. And, anyway, what would she think of him if he came out with it at this point? No, he might as well forget about that. It seemed there’d never be a valid opportunity to make that disclosure to anyone, which was cruelly unfair, considering how loyally he’d kept his mouth shut and how long he’d waited for the right moment.
Christine had bowed her head—how well-brushed her hair was—over the saucer where she was stubbing out her cigarette. ‘I think you’re making a bit of a fuss, more than you need, don’t you? Nothing’s happened between us to speak of, has it?’ She still kept her face down.
‘Agreed, but that’s not the way to judge . . .’
She met his eyes now, her face flushed, and this silenced him. ‘I think it’s silly to talk the way you were talking,’ she said, with a faint cockney intonation about her voice that he’d half-noticed before. ‘You seemed to think you’d proved something by saying all that. Of course that’s what we’re doing; you talk as if that’s all we’re doing. Don’t you think people ever do things because they want to do them, because they want to do what’s for the best? I don’t see how it helps to call trying to do the right thing caution and lack of guts. Doing what you know you’ve got to do’s horrible sometimes, but that doesn’t mean to say it isn’t worth doing. There was something you said, it made me think you’ve got the idea I sleep with Bertrand. You can’t know much about women if you think that. No wonder you’re having a rough time if that’s the sort of thing you think. You’re the sort of man who’d never be happy whatever you did. I think I’ll go now, Jim; there’s not much point in . . .’
‘No, don’t go,’ Dixon said in agitation. Things were happening much too fast for him. ‘Don’t be angry. Stay a little longer.’
‘I’m not angry. I’m just fed-up with it all.’
‘So am I.’
‘Four shillings,’ the waiter said at Dixon’s side. His voice, heard now for the first time, suggested that he had a half-eaten sweet at the back of his throat.
Dixon searched his pockets and gave him two half-crowns. He was glad of the interruption, which allowed him time to recover something of his emotional balance. When they were alone, he said: ‘Are we ever going to see each other again, then?’
‘Once more, anyway. I’m coming to your lecture, and to the sherry-party at the Principal’s before it.’
‘Oh, God, Christine, you don’t want to come to that, you’ll be bored stiff. How have you let yourself in for that?’
‘Uncle Julius has been asked by the Principal, and it seems he said he’d come in a weak moment, and now he insists on me coming to keep him company.’
‘Rather queer.’
‘He said he was looking forward to meeting you again.’
‘Why the hell did he say that? I’ve hardly said two words to the man.’
‘Well, that’s what he said. Don’t ask me what he meant.’
‘I shall see you at a distance, then, anyway. Good thing, really.’
Christine suddenly said in a different voice: ‘No it isn’t a good thing really. How can it be? It’ll be wonderful fun, won’t it? Standing there chatting away to Bertrand and Uncle Julius and the rest of them like a good little girl. Oh yes, I shall be having a fine time, thanks very much. It’s all so . . . It’s intolerable.’ She stood up and so did Dixon, who could find nothing to say. ‘That’s about enough of that. This time I really am going. Thank you for the tea.’
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‘Give me your address, Christine.’
She looked at him scornfully, her brown eyes dilated under the dark eyebrows. ‘That’ll do no good at all. What on earth would be the point?’
‘It would make me feel we hadn’t seen the last of each other.’
‘Well, there’s no point in feeling that, is there?’ She went quickly past him and out of the room without looking back.
Dixon sat down again and smoked another cigarette with an almost-cold half-cup of tea. He wouldn’t have thought it possible that a man who’d done so exactly what he’d set out to do could feel so violent a sense of failure and general uselessness. He reflected for a moment that if Christine looked like Margaret and Margaret looked like Christine his spirits would now be very much higher. But that was to speculate about nonentities: Margaret with Christine’s face and body could never have turned into Margaret. All that could logically be said was that Christine was lucky to look so nice. It was luck you needed all along; with just a little more luck he’d have been able to switch his life on to a momentarily adjoining track, a track destined to swing aside at once away from his own. He gave a start and jumped up; it must be nearly time for the examiners’ meeting. Averting his attention from the thought that Margaret would be there, he went out, then came back again and approached the waiter, who was leaning against the wall. ‘Can I have my change, please?’
‘Change?’
‘Yes, change. Can I have it, please?’
‘Five shillings you give me.’
‘Yes. The bill was four shillings. I want a shilling back.’
‘Wasn’t that for my tip?’
‘It might have been, but it isn’t now. Give it to me.’
‘The whole shilling?’
‘Yes. All of it. Now. Give it to me.’
The waiter made no attempt to produce any money. In his half-choked voice he said: ‘Most people give me a tip.’
‘Most people would have kicked your arse for you by now. If you don’t give me my change in the next five seconds I shall call the Manager.’
Journey Into the Past Page 24
