'How old would you say I am?'

Dixon thought an honest answer would, for once, be appropriate. 'About twenty-four, I should say.'

'There you are, then,' she said triumphantly. 'Just what I thought. I'm twenty next month. The eighteenth.'

'I didn't mean of course you didn't look very young as far as just your actual face goes, I just...'

'No, I know; but it's the age I seem, isn't it? It's the way I look, isn't it?'

'Yes, I suppose it is. But it isn't just that on its own, is it?'

'Sorry: what isn't what on its own?'

'I mean it's not just your appearance that makes you seem older and more experienced and all that. It's the way you behave and talk, a lot of the time, too. Don't you think so?'

'Well, it's awfully hard for me to tell, isn't it?'

'Must be, naturally. It's... you seem to... keep getting on to your high horse all the time; hard to describe it exactly. But you have got a habit, every now and then, of talking and behaving like a governess, though I don't know much about them, I must admit.'

'Oh, have I?'

Though the tone of this question ill.u.s.trated just what he was talking about, Dixon, feeling it couldn't matter what he said, said: 'There, you're-doing it now. When you don't know what to do or say, you fall back on being starchy. And that all fits in with your face; that's probably what gave you the idea of being starchy in the first place, your face, I mean. And that makes a total effect of a prim kind of self-a.s.surance, and you don't want to be prim but you do want to be self-a.s.sured. Yes... But that's quite enough of Uncle Jim's Corner. We're getting off the point. How does all this tie up with being depressed? There's still nothing to be depressed about.'

She hesitated while Dixon sweated slightly, repenting of his burst of old-trouper confidence, then she said with a rush: 'It's all to do with men, you see. I hadn't had much to do with men till I got my job in London last year... Look, you don't mind talking about me all the time, do you? It seems so self-centred. You don't think...?'

'You can forget all that. I want to hear about this.'

'All right, then. Well... I hadn't been working in the bookshop very long, when a man got talking to me and asked me to come to a party. So I went, of course, and there were a lot of artist kind of people there, and one or two ones from the B.B.C. You know the sort of thing?'

'I can imagine.'

'So... then it all started. I kept being asked out by men, and of course I kept going, it was such marvellous fun. And I still do enjoy it a great deal. But they kept... trying to seduce me the whole time. And I didn't want to be seduced, you see, and as soon as I'd convinced them of that, they were off. Well, I didn't mind that much, because there always seemed to be another one ready to...'

I'll bet there did. Go on.'

'I'm afraid this sounds terribly...'

'Go on.'

'Well, if you're quite sure... Anyway, after a few months of that I met Bertrand, that was in March. He didn't seem quite like the others, chiefly because he didn't start trying to make me be his mistress the entire time. And he can be very nice, you know, though I don't suppose you... After a bit the thing was, I was starting to get rather fond of him, and at the same time this is the funny part I was getting a bit fed-up with him in other ways while I was still getting more fond of him. He's such a queer mixture, you see.'

Naming to himself the two substances of which he personally thought Bertrand a mixture, Dixon said: 'In what way?'

'He can be extremely understanding and kind one minute, and completely unreasonable and childish the next. I feel I never know where I am with him, or what he really wants. Sometimes I think it's all to do with how he's getting on with his painting. Anyhow, what with one thing and another we started having rows. And I can't bear rows, especially because he was always putting me in the wrong by them.'

'How do you mean?'

'You know, he'd start one with me when he could put me in the wrong by starting one, and force me to start one when starting one would put whoever started one in the wrong. There'll be one over tonight, of course, and he'll put me in the wrong, as usual. But he's in the wrong, he's the one who's wrong. All this business with Mrs Goldsmith it's all right, I'm not going to ask you about it but I know there's something going on there, but he won't tell me what it is. I don't suppose it's anything much; he just gets a bit excited when... But he won't tell me what's happening. He'll pretend there isn't anything, and he'll ask me if I really think he'd get up to anything behind my back, and I'll have to say No, otherwise...'

'This is none of my business, Christine, but in my opinion friend Bertrand's letting himself in for you giving him the air.'

'No, I can't do that, unless... I can't do that. I'm in too deep now to back out like that. It'll have to go on as it is. You've got to take people as you find them.'

Not wanting to speculate what 'it' was, and how it was going on, Dixon asked hurriedly: 'Have you and he got anything planned for the future?'

'Well, I haven't, but I think he may. I've got an idea he wants us to get married, though he's never actually mentioned it.'

'And what do you feel about that?'

'I haven't decided yet.'

This seemed all for the moment. It crossed Dixon's mind that apart from her voice he'd no evidence that she was beside him at all. When he turned to his right he saw only the darkest and most anonymous shape, she held herself so still that there was no sound of movement from clothing or upholstery, she seemed to use no scent, or anyway he couldn't smell any, and he was a long way from being able to think of touching her. The shoulders and hatted head of the taxi-driver, outlined against the glow of the car's lights, and whose movements controlled their course, were in a way much more real to him. Dixon looked out of the side window, and his spirits rose at once at the sight of the darkened countryside moving past him. This ride, unlike most of the things that happened to him, was something he'd rather have than not have. He'd got something he wanted, and whatever the cost in future embarra.s.sment he was ready to meet it. He reflected that the Arab proverb urging this kind of policy was incomplete: to 'take what you want and pay for it' it should add 'which is better than being forced to take what you don't want and paying for that'. It was one more argument to support his theory that nice things are nicer than nasty ones. Christine's unshared presence was a very nice thing, so nice that his feelings seemed overloaded by it like a glutton's stomach. How splendid her voice was; to hear more of it he asked: 'What are Bertrand's pictures like?'

'Oh, he hasn't shown me any of them. He says he doesn't want me to think of him as a painter until he can think of himself as one. But people have told me they think they're pretty good. They were all friends of his, though, I suppose.'

Whatever aureole of choking nonsense surrounded this view of Bertrand's, Dixon thought the view itself worthy of some respect, or at least of some surprise. What a temptation it must be to produce proofs of one's status as an artist, to flatter people and at the same time show one was rather a good chap by asking for and seeming to act on criticism, above all to let people know how much more there was in one than met the eye. Dixon himself had sometimes wished he wrote poetry or something as a claim to developed character.

Christine had continued: 'I must say it's something to meet a man who's got some sort of ambition. I don't mean an ambition like wanting to have a date with a film-star or something like that. It sounds a funny thing to say, but I look up to Bertrand because he's got something to arrange his life around, something that isn't just material, or self-interested. So it doesn't really matter from that point of view what his work's like. It doesn't matter if what he paints doesn't give any pleasure to a soul apart from himself.'

'But if a man spends his life doing work that only appeals to him, isn't that being self-interested just as much?'

'Well, in a way everyone's self-interested, aren't they? but you must admit there are degrees of it.'

'I suppose I must. But doesn't this ambition of his rather leave you out?'

'What?'

'I mean, don't you find he's painting and so on when you want him to take you out?'

'Sometimes, but I try not to mind that.'

'Why?'

'And of course I wouldn't dream of letting him see it. It's not an easy situation. Having a relationship with an artist's a very different kettle of fish to having a relationship with an ordinary man.'

Dixon, feeling as he now seemed to have begun to feel about Christine, was bound to think this last remark unwelcome, but he found it objectively nasty as well. Had it been a line from a film he'd have reacted much as he did now, namely by making his lemon-sucking face in the darkness. But in a way it was a relief to find a loophole of adolescent vulgarity somewhere in that impressively mature and refined facade. 'I don't quite see that,' he had to say.

'Well, perhaps I didn't put it too well, but I should have thought that the work an artist does takes so much out of him, in the way of feeling and emotion and so on, that he hasn't got much left over for other people, not if he's any good as an artist, that is. I think he's sort of got special needs, you know, and it's up to others to supply them when they can, without too many questions asked.'

Dixon didn't trust himself to speak. Quite apart from his own convictions in the matter, his experience of Margaret had been more than enough to render repugnant to him any notion of anyone having any special needs for anything at any time, except for such needs as could be readily gratified with a tattoo of kicks on the bottom. Then he realized that Christine must, perhaps unconsciously, be quoting her boy-friend, or some horrible book lent by her boy-friend, whose desire to range himself with children, neurotics, and invalids by thus specializing his needs was not, at the moment, worth attacking. Dixon frowned. Until a minute ago she'd been behaving and talking so reasonably that it was hard to believe she was the same girl as had helped Bertrand to bait him at Welch's arty week-end. It was queer how much colour women seemed to absorb from their men-friends, or even from the man they were with for the time being. That was only bad when the man in question was bad; it was good when the man was good. It should be possible for the right man to stop, or at least hinder, her from being a refined gracious-liver and arty-rubbish-talker. Did he think he was the right man for that task? Ha, ha, ha, if he did.

'Jim,' Christine said.

Dixon's scalp p.r.i.c.ked sharply at this, the first, use of his Christian name. 'Yes?' he said warily. He shrugged his bottom along the seat a little way.

'You've been very decent to me tonight, letting me ramble on about myself. And you seem to have your head screwed on the right way. Would you mind if I asked your advice on something?'

'No, not at all.'

'You must realize, though, that I'm asking you just because I want to hear your advice, not for any other reason.' She paused, then added: 'Have you got that?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Well, it's this. From what you've seen of us both, do you think it would be a good thing if I got married to Bertrand?'

Dixon felt a slight twinge of distaste he couldn't quite account for. 'Isn't that rather up to you?'

'Of course it's up to me; I'm the one who's going to marry him or not marry him. I want to know what you think. I'm not asking to be told what to do. Now, what do you think?'

This was clearly the moment for a burst of accurate sh.e.l.ling from Dixon in his Bertrand-war, but he found himself reluctant to fire. A reasoned denunciation of the foe, followed up by a short account of his recent conversation with Carol, would stand a good chance of bringing total victory in this phase, or at least inflicting heavy losses. He felt, however, that he didn't want to do it like that, and only said slowly: 'I don't think I know either of you well enough.'

'Ah, to h.e.l.l, man' had she picked that up from Uncle Julius? Dixon wondered 'you're not being asked to do a thesis on it for your doctorate.' As Carol might have done, she pinched his arm too hard, making him cry out, saying to him in vocal italics: 'What do you think?'

'Well, it's... I must say what I think, you know.'

'Yes, yes, of course, that's what I asked for, isn't it? Do get on with it.'

'Well, then, I should say No.'

'I see. Why not?'

'Because I like you and I don't like him.'

'Is that all?'

'It's quite enough. It means each of you belongs to the two great cla.s.ses of mankind, people I like and people I don't.'

'It sounds a bit thin to me.'

'All right, if you want reasons, remember they're my reasons, though that doesn't mean to say they oughtn't to be yours as well. Bertrand's a bore, he's like his dad, the only thing that interests him is him. On any issue you care to mention he can't do otherwise than ignore your side of things, just can't do otherwise, see? It's not just him first and you second, he's the only b.l.o.o.d.y runner. My G.o.d, what you said about him putting you in the wrong by starting rows shows you've got his number. I don't see why you have to have someone else to say it for you.'

She said nothing for a moment, then spoke rather in her censorious manner: 'Even if that were true, it needn't prevent me from marrying him.'

'Yes, I know women are all dead keen on marrying men they don't much like. But I'm saying why you oughtn't to marry him, not whether you want to or are going to or not. I think that once the things that are supposed to wear off wear off, you'll have a h.e.l.l of a time. You couldn't trust the fellow with your best... I mean, he'd always be having rows, and you say you don't like rows. Are you in love with him?'

'I don't much care for that word,' she said, as if rebuking a foul-mouthed tradesman.

'Why not?'

'Because I don't know what it means.'

He gave a quiet yell. 'Oh, don't say that; no, don't say that. It's a word you must often have come across in conversation and literature. Are you going to tell me it sends you flying to the dictionary each time? Of course you're not I suppose you mean it's purely personal sorry, got to get the jargon right purely subjective.'

'Well, it is, isn't it?'

'Yes, that's right. You talk as if it's the only thing that is. If you can tell me whether you like greengages or not, you can tell me whether you're in love with Bertrand or not, if you want to tell me, that is.'

'You're still making it much too simple. All I can really say is that I'm pretty sure I was in love with Bertrand a little while ago, and now I'm rather less sure. That up-and-down business doesn't happen with greengages; that's the difference.'

'Not with greengages, agreed. But what about rhubarb, eh? What about rhubarb? Ever since my mother stopped forcing me to eat it, rhubarb and I have been conducting a relationship that can swing between love and hatred every time we meet.'

'That's all very well, Jim. The trouble with love is it gets you in such a state you can't look at your own feelings dispa.s.sionately.'

'That would be a good thing if you could do it, would it?'

'Why, of course.'

He gave another quiet yell, this time some distance above middle C. 'You've got a long way to go, if you don't mind me saying so, even though you are nice. By all means view your own feelings dispa.s.sionately, if you feel you ought to, but that's nothing to do with deciding whether (Christ) you're in love. Deciding that's no more difficult than the greengages business. What is difficult, and the time you really need this dispa.s.sionate rubbish, is deciding what to do about being in love if you are, whether you can stick the person you love enough to marry them, and so on.'

'Why, that's exactly what I've been saying, in different words.'

'Words change the thing, and anyway the whole procedure's different. People get themselves all steamed up about whether they're in love or not, and can't work it out, and their decisions go all to pot. It's happening every day. They ought to realize that the love part's perfectly easy; the hard part is the working-out, not about love, but about what they're going to do. The difference is that they can get their brains going on that, instead of taking the sound of the word "love" as a signal for switching them off. They can get somewhere, instead of indulging in a sort of orgy of emotional self-catechising about how you know you're in love, and what love is anyway, and all the rest of it. You don't ask yourself what greengages are, or how you know whether you like them or not, do you? Right?'

Outside his lectures, this was the longest speech Dixon had made for what seemed to him years, and, not excluding his lectures, by far the most fluent. How had he managed it? Drink? No: he was dangerously sober. s.e.xual excitement? No in italic capitals: visitations of that feeling reduced him punctually to silence and, as a rule, petrifaction. Then how? It was a mystery, but one he felt too contented to bother about solving. He looked idly at the ribbon of road ahead of them, unsteadily unreeling itself beneath the wheels. Hedges, bleached to a sandy pallor by the headlights, swung, past, dipping and mounting. The isolation of the car's interior seemed comforting and natural.

A movement of Christine's, the first he'd noticed since the journey began, made him glance in her direction. He could see that she was leaning forward and looking out of the window. She said in a m.u.f.fled voice: 'And the same applies to not liking greengages, of course.'

'Eh? Yes, I suppose so.'

He heard her yawn. 'Where are we now, do you know?'

'Oh, just over half-way, I should think.'

'I feel awfully sleepy. It is wretched; I don't want to be.'

'Have a cigarette, that'll do you a power of good.'

'No thanks. Look, would you mind if I had a nap for a few minutes? It'll make me feel much less tired, I know.'

'Of course, by all means.'

While she snuggled herself together in her corner, Dixon fought his disappointment at this device of hers for quitting his company. He'd thought he was getting on so well; his usual policy of not talking at length was the right one after all. Just then she laid her head on his shoulder and all his senses grew alert. 'You don't mind, do you?' she asked. 'The back of this seat's like iron.'

'You go ahead.' Forcing himself to act before he could think, he slid his arm beneath her shoulders. She moved her head experimentally to and fro against him, then settled herself and seemed to go to sleep at once.

Dixon's heart began to pound a little. He now had all the evidence he wanted that she was there; he could sense her breathing, her temple against his jaw and her shoulder under his hand were warm, her hair smelt of well-brushed hair, he could feel the presence of her body. It was a pity it wasn't set off by the presence of her mind. It occurred to him that she'd done this merely as a manoeuvre to arouse his desire, and arouse it for no purpose beyond that of somehow feeding her vanity. Then he rejected so familiar and contemptible a notion: she was too trustworthy for that, she'd just been tired. That was all. The taxi swung round a bend and he braced himself with his foot to maintain his position and hers. He couldn't go to sleep himself, but he could see to it that she stayed asleep.

Cautiously and contortedly he got hold of matches and cigarettes and lit one of each in succession. More than ever he felt secure: here he was, quite able to fulfil his role, and, as with other roles, the longer you played it the better chance you had of playing it again. Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do. Next time he saw Michie he'd be much less respectful to him; next time he saw Atkinson he'd talk to him more; he'd get some sense out of that Caton fellow about his article. Gingerly, he moved a little closer to Christine.

Presently the driver slid the gla.s.s aside and asked in a servile tone for more instructions, which Dixon gave. At last the taxi stopped at the end of the track that led up to the Welch house. Christine woke up and said after a moment: 'Are you coming up? I wish you would, because I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get in. The maid lives out, I think.'

'Of course I'll come up,' Dixon said. He settled a brief exchange with the taxi-driver by refusing to discuss the question of payment until the taxi should be standing outside his, Dixon's, digs, then went off into the darkness with Christine holding on to his arm like a staff.

XV.

'I THINK we'd better look for a window first,' Dixon said as they stood in front of the darkened house. 'We don't want to ring the bell, just in case the Welches have got back before us. I don't suppose they'd want to be home very late.'