‘Carol, I’m terribly sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Now, don’t be silly, Jim, there’s nothing to apologize for. It was a perfectly natural thing to say. Don’t forget, though; you’ve got a moral duty to perform. Get that girl away from Bertrand; she wouldn’t enjoy an affair with him. It wouldn’t be her kind of thing at all. Mind you remember that.’
Dixon found, when they got up, that he’d forgotten about the dancers and the band; he remembered them now, however, very vividly. A tune was being played, sparing of melodic invention, free too of any marked variation in volume, rhythm, harmony, expression, tempo, or tone-colour, and, more or less in time with it, groups of dancers were wheeling, plunging, and gesticulating while the ogre, more aphasic than before, mumbled at full strength:
Ya parp the Hawky-Cawky arnd ya tarn parp-parp,
Parp what it’s parp parp-parp.
They re-entered the bar. Dixon felt that he’d been doing this for weeks. The sight of their party still, or again, just where they’d been before made him want very much to pitch forward on to the floor and go to sleep. Bertrand was talking; Gore-Urquhart was listening; Margaret was laughing, only now she had a hand on Gore-Urquhart’s nearest shoulder; Christine was also probably listening to somebody, only now she had her head in her hands. Beesley was standing at the counter, morosely and tremulously raising a full half-pint glass to his mouth. Dixon went over to him, in search of a break from routine, but Carol looked back and converged on him. Greetings were exchanged again.
‘What’s this, Alfred?’ Dixon asked. ‘A bender?’
Beesley nodded without stopping drinking; then, lowering his glass at last, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, making a face, and referring to the quality of the beer by a monosyllable not in decent use, he said: ‘I wasn’t getting anywhere in there, so I came in here and came over here.’
‘And you’re getting somewhere over here, are you, Alfred?’ Carol asked.
‘On the tenth half, just about,’ Beesley said.
‘Bloody but unbowed, eh? That’s the spirit. Well, Jim, this is obviously the place for us two—agreed? Nobody wants either of us. What’s the matter? What are you looking at?’ To Dixon’s slight irritation, the pseudo-drunken quality had again taken possession of her voice and demeanour.
Beesley leaned forward; ‘Come on, Jim: beer or beer?’
‘Here we are and here we stay till they throw us out,’ Carol said with synthetic defiance.
‘Yes, I’ll just have one, thanks, but I mustn’t stay,’ Dixon said.
‘Because you’ve got to go and see how dear Margaret’s getting on, is that right?’
‘Well, yes, I . . .’
‘I thought I told you to let dear Margaret stew in her own juice. And how about just using your eyes? She’s enjoying herself ever so much, thank you, Mr Dixon, and thank you, Mrs Goldsmith. And thank you, too. Now’s your chance, Jim; remember your moral duty? Thank you, Alfred; here’s to you, my boy.’
‘What moral duty’s this, Carol?’
‘Jim knows, don’t you, Jim?’
Dixon looked over at the group in the corner. Margaret had taken off her glasses, a certain sign of abandonment. Christine, her back to Dixon, was sitting as immobile as if she’d been mummified. Bertrand, still talking, was smoking a black cigar. Why was he doing that? A sudden douche of terror then squirted itself all over Dixon. After a moment he realized that this was because he had a plan and was about to carry it out. He panted a little with the enormity of it, then drained his glass and said quaveringly: ‘Here goes, then. Good-bye for now.’
He went over and sat down in a vacant chair next to Christine, who turned to him with a smile; rather a rueful smile, he thought. ‘Oh, hallo,’ she said; ‘I thought you must have gone home.’
‘Not quite yet. You look as if you’re being rather left out of things here.’
‘Yes, Bertrand’s always the same when he gets talking like this. But I mean, of course he did really come here to meet Uncle.’
‘I can see that.’ Just at that moment Bertrand got up from his seat and, without looking in Christine’s direction, walked across to where Carol was standing with Beesley; a faint bay of salutation could be heard. Glancing at Christine, Dixon was favoured with the rare sight of somebody engaged in the act of flushing. He said quickly: ‘Now, listen to me, Christine. I’m going to go out and order a taxi now. It should be here in about a quarter of an hour. You come outside then and I’ll take you back to the Welches’ in it. There’ll be no funny business; I can guarantee that. Straight home to the Welches’.’
Her immediate reaction looked like anger. ‘Why ?Why should I?’
‘Because you’re fed-up, and no wonder either, that’s why.’
‘That’s not the point. It’s a ridiculous idea. Absolutely mad.’
‘Will you come? I’m ordering the taxi in any case.’
‘Don’t ask me that. I don’t want to be asked that.’
‘But I am asking you. What about it? I’ll give you twenty minutes.’ He looked her in the eyes and laid his hand on her elbow. He must be out of his mind to be talking to a girl like this like this. ‘Please come,’ he said.
She snatched her arm away. ‘Oh don’t,’ she said, as if he’d been telling her that she had the dentist to go to in the morning.
‘I’ll wait for you,’ he said in an urgent undertone. ‘In the porch. Twenty minutes. Don’t forget.’
He turned and left by a route that gave a view of part of the dance-floor and band. She wouldn’t come, of course, but at any rate he’d made his gesture. In other words, he’d thought of a way of hurting himself more severely than usual, and in public. He stopped for a moment to wave good-bye to the band, then, receiving no response, went off to find a phone.
13
Dixon paused in the portico to light the cigarette which, according to his schedule, he ought to be lighting after breakfast on the next day but one. The taxi he’d ordered was due any minute. If by the time he’d finished his cigarette Christine had still not appeared, he’d just ask the taximan to take him to his digs, so whatever happened he’d be in a car soon. That was good, because total inability to move was almost upon him. Ten minutes to go; he tried not to think about it.
The darkness of the street was uneven. The daylight lamps above a nearby main road were glowing pallidly; the cars parked along the kerb had their sidelights burning; the windows of the building behind him were full of light. A train moved slowly and with great steadiness up the incline from the station. Feeling less hot, Dixon heard the band break into a tune he knew and liked; he had the notion that the tune was going to help out this scene and fix it permanently in his memory; he felt romantically excited. But he’d got no business to feel that, had he? What was he doing here, after all? Where was it all going to lead? Whatever it was leading towards, it was certainly leading away from the course his life had been pursuing for the last eight months, and this thought justified his excitement and filled him with reassurance and hope. All positive change was good; standing still, growing to the spot, was always bad. He remembered somebody once showing him a poem which ended something like ‘Accepting dearth, the shadow of death’. That was right; not ‘experiencing dearth’, which happened to everybody. The one indispensable answer to an environment bristling with people and things one thought were bad was to go on finding out new ways in which one could think they were bad. The reason why Prometheus couldn’t get away from his vulture was that he was keen on it, and not the other way round.
Dixon abruptly made his head vibrate; without tilting it, he moved his lower jaw as far over to one side as he could. His cigarette was smoked right down, so that, after about twenty-five minutes, he not only had no Christine, but no taxi. At that moment a car rounded the corner from the main road and stopped near him where he stood at a lower corner by a side-street. It was a taxi. A voice from the driver’s seat said: ‘Barker?’
‘How do you mean, barker?’
‘Taxi for Barker?’
‘What?’
‘Taxi for name of Barker?’
‘Barker? Oh, you must mean Barclay, don’t you?’
‘Ah, that’s it: Barclay.’
‘Good. We’re nearly ready now. Just back into that side turning, will you? and I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. I may be taking a friend back with me. Don’t let anyone else hire you, mind. I’ll be back.’
‘That’ll be all right, Mr Barclay.’
Dixon walked briskly back to the portico and looked up the lighted corridor, nerving himself to contemplate going back and trying Christine again. A bend hid all but the first couple of yards of the corridor from his view. Without delay Professor Barclay appeared round this bend, squirming into his overcoat and followed by his wife. Dixon had the sense of having heard him referred to recently in some connexion. Then he glanced up the street; the taxi, in mid-road, was just beginning to reverse cautiously into the side turning, where it would be hidden by an office block. As Barclay came up, it still had several yards to go.
Dixon barred his path. ‘Oh, good evening, Professor Barclay,’ he said in measured tones, as if dealing with a hypnotic subject.
‘Hallo, Dixon. Haven’t seen a taxi waiting for me, have you?’
‘Good evening, Mrs Barclay . . . No, I’m afraid I haven’t, Professor.’
‘Oh dear,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Well, we shall just have to wait, then.’ As he spoke, a loud brassy chord rang down the corridor, almost obscuring the sound of a handbrake ratchet from the side-street. ‘Was that a car I heard then?’ he asked, raising his head like an old cob disturbed at grass.
Dixon put on a listening attitude. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ he said regretfully.
‘I must have been mistaken.’
‘All the same, Simon, I think I should walk along a bit, just in case he arrived and parked before Mr Dixon came out.’
‘Yes, dear, that is a possibility.’
‘He couldn’t have done that, Mrs Barclay. I’ve been out here for nearly half an hour, and I can assure you quite certainly that no taxi has driven up here.’
‘Well, it’s most odd,’ she said with a glandered movement of her jaws. ‘My husband ordered the taxi half an hour ago at least, and City Taxis are usually so punctual.’
‘Half an hour; oh well, he couldn’t have made it before I came out,’ Dixon said, as one making calculations. ‘The City Taxis garage is over the other side of town, behind the bus station.’
‘Are you waiting for a taxi too, Mr Dixon?’ Mrs Barclay asked.
‘No, I . . . I just came out to get a breath of fresh air.’
‘You’ve had time for several lungfuls,’ the Professor said, smiling.
His amiability made Dixon a good deal ashamed of having stolen the taxi, but it was too late to withdraw. ‘Yes, I have,’ he said, trying to sound casual. ‘I’m waiting for a friend as well, actually.’
‘Oh, really? We might as well walk along a little way, Simon; it’s getting rather chilly, standing here.’
‘Yes, dear, we could do that.’
‘I’ll stroll along with you,’ Dixon said. He hated leaving his post, but not to leave it seemed the worse alternative. But what was he going to do to prevent the Barclays finding their taxi?
When the three were within ten yards of the relevant corner, a car swept round the corner above it. Dixon knew at once it wasn’t his proper taxi, because all City Taxis taxis had a little illuminated sign over the windscreen, and this one hadn’t. Nevertheless, a diversion was now possible. When they were right at the corner, Dixon stepped into the road and raised his hand, shouting urgently: ‘Taxi. Taxi.’
‘Taxi yourself,’ a shrill voice called from the back seat.
‘Ah, taxi off, Jack,’ the driver snarled, accelerating past him.
He went back to the Barclays, who’d had their backs to the corner to watch. ‘No good, I’m afraid,’ he said. But it was good for him; the incident made it seem natural to turn back towards the portico. What would happen at the next outward journey? A regular service of private cars past that corner was too much to hope for. He hoped fervently that his own taxi, the one he’d ordered, wouldn’t take it into its head to turn up; he’d have to go away in it and leave the Barclays to find the one he’d taken from them. Or could he persuade them to have his?
They stood about for a minute or two at the portico, while nobody came and nobody went. Another walk to the corner became imminent. Dixon glanced desperately up the corridor. Two people appeared round the bend in it almost together. The first one wasn’t Christine, but a drunken man clicking frenziedly at a cigarette lighter. The second one, on the other hand, was.
The manner of her appearance was so ordinary that Dixon was almost shocked. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this look of recognition on her face, this purposeful walk towards him, this matter-of-fact sound of her shoes on cloth, on wood, on stone. Glancing over at the line of cars, she said abruptly: ‘Did you manage to get one?’
Dixon knew that the Barclays, or Mrs Barclay at any rate, would be listening. He hesitated a second, then said ‘Yes’ and patted his pocket. ‘I’ve got it here.’
He tried to get her to walk off with him, but she stayed where she was in the doorway, the lights from the corridor throwing her face into shadow. ‘I meant a taxi.’
‘A taxi? a taxi? Just for three or four hundred yards?’ He gave a shuddering laugh. ‘I’ll have you back with Mum in less time than it’d take to phone. Good-night, Professor; good-night, Mrs Barclay. Well, it’s a good thing we haven’t far to go; rather chilly. Did you say good-bye to the others for me?’ They were far enough away by now for him to be able to add: ‘Good. That’s fine. Well done.’ Nearby a car started up. Behind him he heard Mrs Barclay say something to her husband.
‘What’s going on?’ Christine asked with undisguised curiosity. ‘What’s all this about?’
‘We’ve pinched their taxi, that’s one of the things that’s going on. It’s parked just round this corner.’
As if answering its name, the taxi, tired of waiting, emerged from the side-street and turned up towards the main road. He ran furiously off in pursuit, calling loudly: ‘Taxi. Taxi.’
It drew to a stop and he went up to the driver’s window. After a brief conversation, the taxi moved off again and disappeared into the main road. Dixon ran back to Christine, whom the Barclays had now rejoined. ‘Sorry I couldn’t get him for you,’ he said to them. ‘He’d got someone to pick up at the station in five minutes. What a nuisance.’
‘Well, thank you very much, Dixon, for trying,’ Barclay said.
‘Yes, thank you all the same,’ his wife said.
He took Christine’s arm and walked her round into the side-street, calling good-night. They started to cross over.
‘Does that mean we’ve lost the taxi? It was ours, was it?’
‘Ours after it was theirs. No, I told the driver to drive round the corner and wait for us a hundred yards along the road. We can cut up through this alley, be there in a couple of minutes.’
‘What would you have done if he hadn’t driven out just then? We couldn’t have driven off under the noses of those people.’
‘I’d already worked out we’d have to do something like that. We’d got to establish that we and the taxi were leaving separately. That’s why I was quick off the mark.’
‘You were, very.’
With no more said they reached the taxi, parked outside the lighted windows of a dress-shop. Dixon opened a rear door for Christine, then said to the driver: ‘Our friend isn’t coming. We’ll make a start, if you’re ready.’
‘Right, sir. Just by the Corn Exchange, isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s further than the Corn Exchange.’ He named the small town where the Welches lived.
‘Oh, can’t make it there, I’m sorry, sir.’
‘It’s all right, I know the way.’
‘So do I, but they told me at
the garage the Corn Exchange.’
‘Did they really? Well, they told you wrong, then. We’re not going to the Corn Exchange.’
‘Not enough petrol.’
‘Bateson’s at the foot of College Road doesn’t shut till twelve.’ He peered at the dashboard. ‘Ten to. We’ll do it on our heads.’
‘Not allowed to draw petrol except at our own garage.’
‘We are tonight. I’ll write to the company explaining. It’s their fault for telling you you were only going to the Corn Exchange. Now let’s go, or you’ll find yourself eight miles out without any petrol to get you back.’
He got in beside Christine and the car started.
14
‘That was all very efficient,’ Christine said. ‘You’re getting good at this sort of thing, aren’t you? First the table, then the Evening Post thing, and now this.’
‘I didn’t use to be. By the way, I hope you don’t object too much to the way I got hold of this taxi.’
‘I’ve got into it, haven’t I?’
‘Yes, I know, but I should have thought the method would strike you as unethical.’
‘It does, at least it would in the ordinary way, but it was more important for us to get a taxi than for them, wasn’t it?’
‘I’m glad you look at it like that.’ He brooded on her use of the word ‘important’ for a moment, then realized that he didn’t much care for her easy acquiescence in his piratical treatment of the Barclays’ taxi. Even he now felt it had been a bit thick, and she presumably hadn’t his excuse for wanting a taxi very badly. Like both the pretty women he’d known, and many that he’d only read about, she thought it was no more than fair that one man should cheat and another be cheated to serve her convenience. She ought to have objected, refused to go with him, insisted on returning and handing the taxi over to the Barclays, walked back, revolted by his unscrupulousness, into the dance. Yes, he’d have liked that, wouldn’t he? Ay, proper champion that would have been, lad. His hand flew to his mouth in the darkness to stifle his laughter; to sidetrack it, he began distilling alarm from the thought that he’d have to find something to talk to this girl about all the way back to the Welches’. The only thing he felt at all clear about was the fact that this abduction of her was a blow struck against Bertrand, but it seemed less than prudent to begin there. Why had she consented to ditch her boy-friend in this emphatic way? There were several possible answers. Perhaps he could start with that.