'No, but I can quite see it must be a very complicated matter. All I wanted to know, actually, is a rough idea of when you think you could manage to get my article out.'
'Well, as to that, Mr Dickerson, things aren't by any means as simple as they may look to you. You probably know Hardy of Trinity; I've had a thing of his at the printers for weeks now, and two or three times a day, or even more, I get them coming through on the phone with some query or other. Very often, of course, I just have to refer them to him, when it's a question of a foreign document or something of that kind. I know chaps in your position think an editor's job's all beer and skittles; it's very far from being that, believe me.'
'I'm sure it must be most exacting, Dr Caton, and of course I wouldn't dream of trying to pin you down to anything definite, but it's rather important to me to have some estimate of when you'll be able to publish my article.'
'I can't start making promises to have your article out next week,' the voice said in a nettled tone, as if Dixon had been stupidly insisting on this one point, 'with things as difficult as they are. Surely you must see that. You don't seem to realize the amount of planning that goes into each number, especially a first number. It's not like drawing up a railway timetable, what? what?' he finished, loudly and suspiciously.
Dixon wondered if, without knowing it, he'd allowed an imprecation to pass his lips. A hollow, metallic tapping had begun on the line, like galvanized iron being hammered in a cathedral. In a louder voice he said: 'I'm sure it isn't, and I'm quite resigned to the delay. But to be quite frank, Dr Caton, I want rather urgently to improve my standing in the Department here, and if I could just quote you, if you could give me a…'
'I'm sorry to hear of your difficulties, Mr Dickinson, but I'm afraid things are too difficult here for me to be very seriously concerned about your difficulties. There are plenty of people in your position, you know; I don't know what I should do if they all started demanding promises from me in this fashion.'
'But Dr Caton, I haven't been asking you for a promise. All I want is an estimate, and even the vaguest estimate would help me - "the second half of next year" for example. You won't be committing yourself in the least by just giving me an estimate.' There was a silence which Dixon interpreted as one of maturing rage. 'Could I have your permission to say "the second half of next year" when I'm asked?'
Though Dixon waited for ten seconds or more, nothing answered him except the metallic tapping, which had increased in volume and pace.
'Things are very difficult, things are very difficult, things are very difficult,' Dixon gabbled into the phone, then mentioned a few difficult things which occurred to him as suitable tasks for Dr Caton to have a go at. Still devising variations of this theme, he went out muttering to himself, wagging his head and shoulders like a puppet. A rival to Welch had appeared in the field of evasion-technique, verbal division, and in the physical division of the same field this chap had Welch whacked at the start: self-removal to South America was the traditional climax of an evasive career. Up in his room, Dixon filled his lungs to their utmost and groaned for half a minute or more without drawing breath. He got out the notes for his lecture and went on working them up into a script.
Five hours later, he had what he estimated as forty-four minutes' worth of lecture. It seemed by then as if there were no facts anywhere in the universe, in his own brain or anyone else's or just lying about loose, which could possibly be brought within his present scope. And even so, he'd been travelling for a large part of his forty-four minutes along the knife-edge dividing the conceivably-just-about-relevant from the irreducibly, immitigably irrelevant. The fifteen minutes needed to top the thing up to the fifty-nine minutes he'd set himself would have to be occupied by a presumably rather extensive conclusion, and he didn't want to write one of those. Something on the lines of 'Finally, thank God for the twentieth century' would satisfy him, but it wouldn't satisfy Welch. Then he seized his pencil again, gave a happy laugh, and wrote: 'This survey, brief as it is, would have no purpose if left as a mere' - he crossed out 'mere' -'historical record. There are valuable lessons here for us, living in an age of prefabricated amusements as we do. One wonders how one of the men or women I have tried to describe would react to such typically modern phenomena as the cinema, the radio, the television. What would he think, accustomed as he was (had been? would have been? is?) to making his own music (must look at Welch at this point), of a society where people like himself are regarded as oddities, where to play an instrument himself, oneself, instead of paying others to do so, to sing a madrigal instead of a cheap dance-lyric, is to incur the dreaded title of "crank", where…'
He stopped writing and ran out into the bathroom. He started washing with frenzied speed. He'd left it just late enough; with luck he'd have time to get ready and rush along to the hotel for tea with Christine, but no time to think about tea with Christine. Nevertheless, for all the energy of his movements, he began to feel a little queasy with apprehension.
He arrived at the hotel two minutes late. On turning into the lounge where tea was served, he felt a pang of fear, or whatever emotion it was, kicking at his diaphragm when he saw Christine already sitting waiting for him. He'd counted on a few minutes' grace to think of things to say to her; if it had been Margaret, he'd have had them and more.
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 straightaway, we've hardly had time to say hallo to each other, but you can see what I'm leading up to, can't you?'