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 naive. '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.'
'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?'