Journey Into the Past

by Kingsley Amis

  Welch went on talking, his own face the perfect audience for his talk, laughing at its jokes, reflecting its puzzlement or earnestness, responding with tightened lips and narrowed eyes to its more important points. He went on talking even while he drove up the sandy path into the yard next to his house, grazed the shattered water-tap, nosed into the garage entrance, and, with a single frightful bound, brought the car to rest within a couple of inches of the inner wall. Then he got out.

  Casting about for means to leave the car, Dixon rejected the six-inch corridor left to him between the door and the side-wall nearest him, and, after some bad-tempered leg-play with the gear- and brake-levers, slid across the front seat to the other door. As he did this, something seemed to pluck at the seat of his trousers. When he’d emerged into the giddy heat of the garage, he felt behind him and found he could comfortably insert his first two fingers into a rent in the material. A glance at the driver’s seat showed the tip of what must have been a broken spring just emerging from the upholstery. He began slowly to follow Welch, his heart starting to pound and mist breaking out on his spectacles. He allowed a terrible grimace to dawn on his features, forcing his chin down as far as possible and trying to bring his nose up between his eyes. When this was nearing completion, he took off his glasses to rub them clear. His sight was good enough without their aid for him to observe that four witnesses of his actions were posted at the long window some yards away; they were (left to right) Christine, Bertrand, Mrs Welch, and Margaret. He quickly restored his nose to its normal position and began pensively fondling his dropped chin, in the hope of seeming assailed by imbecilic doubt; then, unable to think up any gesture or expression of greeting comprehensive enough to include all the members of such a quartet, pursued Welch’s retreating figure round the corner of the house.

  What was he going to do about his trousers? Which would be worst: mending them himself, which would involve finding, or more likely re-buying, the required materials, having them repaired at a shop, which meant remembering to ask someone where such a shop could be found, remembering to take the trousers to it and remembering to fetch and pay for them, or asking Miss Cutler to do them? Would the last be quickest? Yes; but it might carry with it the penalty of watching the operation and being talked to by Miss Cutler during it and for an incalculable time after it. Apart from a pair belonging to a suit much too dark for anything but interviews and funerals, his only other trousers were so stained with food and beer that they would, if worn on the stage to indicate squalor and penury, be considered ridiculously overdone. Welch should do the repairs. It was his horrible car, wasn’t it? Why hadn’t he torn his own vile trousers on the barbed seat? Perhaps he would soon. Or perhaps he had already without noticing.

  Passing under the thatched barbette over the front door, Dixon averted his eyes from a picture Welch had recently bought and talked about and which now hung in the hall. The work of some kindergarten oaf, it recalled in its technique the sort of drawing found in male lavatories, though its subject, an assortment of barrel-bodied animals debouching from the Ark, was of narrower appeal. On the other side was a high shelf with an array of copper and china utensils on it. Among them was Dixon’s special Toby jug, and, sneering, he now fixed this with his eye. He hated that Toby jug, with its open black hat, its blurred, startled face, its spindle-limbs coalesced with its torso, more strenuously than any other inanimate occupant of this house, not excepting Welch’s recorder. Its expression proved that it knew what he thought of it, and it could tell nobody. He put a thumb on each of his temples, waggled his hands at it, rolled his eyes, mouthed jeers and imprecations. A third Welch property now manifested itself, a young ginger cat called Id. It was the only survivor of a litter of three; the other two Mrs Welch had christened Ego and Super-Ego. Trying his best not to think of this, Dixon bent and tickled Id under the ear. He admired it for never allowing either of the senior Welches to pick it up. ‘Scratch ’em,’ he whispered to it; ‘pee on the carpets.’ It began to purr loudly.

  As soon as Dixon had joined the company within, the leisurely tempo of his day jerked abruptly into frenzy. Welch wheeled towards him; Christine, more apple-cheeked even than he remembered her, was grinning at him in the background; Mrs Welch and Bertrand moved in his direction; Margaret turned her back. Welch said energetically: ‘Oh, Faulkner.’

  Dixon’s nose twitched his glasses up. ‘Yes, Professor.’

  ‘At least, Dixon.’ He hesitated, then went on with unprecedented fluency: ‘I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a mix-up, Dixon. I’d forgotten that we’d all promised to go to the theatre this evening with the Goldsmiths. We shall have to dine early, so I shall just have time to change and freshen up and drive us into town. There’ll be room for you if you want a lift, you see. I’m sorry about it, of course, but I shall have to rush off now. We must have you over another time.’

  Before he was out of the room, Mrs Welch moved up like an actress dead on her cue. Bertrand was at her side. Rather red in the face, she said: ‘Oh, Mr Dixon, I’ve been wondering when I should see you again. I’ve one or two points I want to take up with you. First of all, I’d like you to explain, if you can, just what happened to the sheet and blankets on your bed when you were our guest here recently.’ While Dixon was still trying to moisten his mouth enough to speak, she added: ‘I’m waiting for an answer, Mr Dixon.’ The Englishwoman in her seemed, for the moment, to have forged well ahead of the Western European.

  Dixon noticed that Christine and Margaret had moved down the room together, talking quietly. ‘I don’t quite know what . . .’ he mumbled. ‘I didn’t see . . .’ How could he have forgotten what she’d said over the phone on the occasion of the Beesley-Evening Post impersonation? It hadn’t crossed his mind once in the meantime.

  ‘Am I to understand that you deny having had anything to do with the matter? If so, the only other possible culprit’s my maid, in which case I shall have to . . .’

  ‘No,’ Dixon broke in, ‘I don’t deny it. Please, Mrs Welch, I’m desperately sorry about it all. I know I should have come to you and told you about it, but I’d done so much damage I was afraid to. It was silly, I hoped you somehow wouldn’t find out, but I really knew you would, of course. Will you send me the bill for what it costs you to replace it? Blankets as well, I mean. I must make it good.’ Thank God they still didn’t know about the table.

  ‘Of course you must, Mr Dixon. Before we discuss that, though, I want to hear how the damage was caused. Exactly what happened, please?’

  ‘I know I’ve behaved very badly, Mrs Welch, but please don’t ask me to explain that. I’ve apologized and promised to pay for the damage; won’t you let me keep the explanation to myself? It’s nothing very terrible, I can assure you of that.’

  ‘Then why do you refuse to say what it is?’

  ‘I don’t refuse; I’m only asking you to spare me a lot of embarrassment that wouldn’t help you at all.’

  Bertrand now joined in. Putting his shaggy face on one side, he brought it nearer, saying: ‘We can put up with that, Dixon. It won’t hurt us to put up with your embarrassment. It’ll be some kind of small return for the way you’ve behaved.’

  His mother put a hand on his arm. ‘No, don’t interfere, darling. It won’t do any good. Mr Dixon is used to being talked to like that, I’m sure. We can leave this; it doesn’t alter the main facts of the situation. I want to get on to the next thing. I’m now fairly firmly convinced, Mr Dixon, that it was you who rang me up recently and pretended, in fact you lied when I asked you, pretended both to myself and to my son to be a newspaper reporter. It was you, wasn’t it? It’ll be much better if you admit it, you know. I haven’t mentioned any of this to my husband, because I don’t want to worry him, but I warn you that unless I get a satisfactory . . .’

  Like a criminal who, having begun to confess, sees no reason for not going on, Dixon was about to admit it, but remembered in time that this would incriminate Christine. (How much, if anything, had Bertrand got o
ut of her?) ‘You’re quite wrong there, Mrs Welch. I can’t imagine why you should think any such thing. Your husband’ll tell you I haven’t been away once this term.’

  ‘Haven’t been away? I don’t see how that affects matters.’

  ‘Well, simply that I couldn’t have been here and in London at the same time, could I?’

  Restraining Bertrand, Mrs Welch said in puzzlement: ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘How could I have phoned through from London if I was here all the time? I take it it was a London call?’

  Bertrand looked questioningly at his mother. She shook her head and said quietly, hardly moving her mouth: ‘No, it was a local call all right. Whoever it was spoke right away. You always get the operator first if it’s a London call.’

  ‘I told you you were wrong,’ Bertrand said peevishly. ‘I told you old David West was behind all this. Damn it, Christine was certain it was him on the phone to her, calling himself Atkinson. It was some pal of his who spoke to us, not . . .’ His eye fell on Dixon and he stopped speaking.

  Dixon was savouring his defensive triumph. He’d remember the advantages of pretending misunderstanding in this situation. And it was now clear, too, that Bertrand had got nothing out of Christine. ‘Has that cleared things up at all?’ he asked the others politely.

  Mrs Welch began to go red again. ‘I think I’ll just go and see how your father’s getting on, darling,’ she said. ‘There are one or two things I want him to . . .’ Leaving the sentence in the air, she went out.

  Bertrand moved a pace closer. ‘We’ll forget all about that business,’ he said generously. ‘Now, I’ve been wanting us to have a little get-together for quite some time, old boy. Ever since that Ball affair, in fact. Now look here: here’s a question for you, and I don’t mind telling you I mean to get a straight answer. What precisely was your game the other evening when you induced Christine to skip out of the dance with you? A straight answer, mind.’

  This must all have been clearly audible to Christine, who now came down the room with Margaret. Both girls avoided Dixon’s eye while they went out, leaving him alone with Bertrand. When the door was shut, Dixon said: ‘I can’t give any sort of answer, straight or crooked, to a meaningless question. What do you mean, what was my game? I wasn’t playing any sort of game.’

  ‘You know what I mean as well as I do. What were you up to?’

  ‘You’d better ask Christine that.’

  ‘We’ll leave her out of this, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Why should I mind?’ Dixon, in spite of the thought of how Mrs Welch’s bill would gobble up his bank-balance, suddenly began to exult. The preliminary manoeuvrings, the cold war between himself and Bertrand, were over at least. This was the whiff of grapeshot.

  ‘Don’t be funny, Dixon. Just tell me what was going on, will you? Or I shall have to try something a little more forcible.’

  ‘Don’t you be funny, either. What do you want to know?’

  Bertrand clenched his fist; then, when Dixon took off his glasses and squared his shoulders, unclenched it again. Dixon put his glasses back on. ‘I want to know . . .’ Bertrand said, then hesitated.

  ‘What my game was? We’ve been into that.’

  ‘Shut up. What did you intend doing with Christine, that’s what I want to know.’

  ‘I intended doing exactly what I did do. I intended to go away from that place with Christine, to bring her back here in a taxi, and finally to return to my digs in the same taxi. That’s what I did do.’

  ‘Well, I’m not having that, do you understand?’

  ‘It’s too late not to have it. You’ve had it already.’

  ‘Now just you get this straight in your head, Dixon. I’ve had enough of your merry little quips. Christine is my girl and she stays my girl, got mam?’

  ‘If you mean do I follow your line of thought, I do.’

  ‘That’s splendid. Well, if I find you playing this sort of trick again, or any sort of bloody clever trick, I’ll break your horrible neck for you and get you dismissed from your job as well. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, I understand all right, but you’re wrong if you think I’ll let you break my neck for me, and if you think they chuck people out of academic jobs for taking their professors’ sons’ girl-friends home in taxis, then you’re even more wrong, if possible.’

  Bertrand’s reply reassured Dixon that Bertrand hadn’t so far found out from his father about Dixon’s present standing in the eyes of College authority. The reply was: ‘Don’t think you can defy me and get away with it, Dixon. People never do.’

  ‘People are beginning to, Welch. You must realize that it’s up to Christine whether she sees any more of me. If you feel you must threaten someone, go and threaten her.’

  Bertrand suddenly yelled out in a near-falsetto bay: ‘I’ve had about enough of you, you little bastard. I won’t stand any more of it, do you hear? To think of a lousy little philistine like you coming and monkeying about in my affairs, it’s enough to . . . Get out and stay out, before you get hurt. Leave my girl alone, you’re wasting your time, you’re wasting her time, you’re wasting my time. What the hell do you mean by buggering about like this? You’re big enough and old enough and ugly enough to know better.’

  Dixon was saved from replying by the sudden re-entry of Christine and Margaret. The scene broke up: Christine, who seemed to be trying to flash Dixon a message he couldn’t read, took Bertrand by the arm and led him, still loudly protesting, out of the room; Margaret silently offered Dixon a cigarette, which he took. Neither spoke while they sat down side by side on a couch, nor for some moments afterwards. Dixon found himself trembling a good deal. He looked at Margaret and an intolerable weight fell upon him.

  He knew now what he’d been trying to conceal from himself ever since the previous morning, what the row with Bertrand had made him temporarily disbelieve: he and Christine would not, after all, be able to eat tea together the following afternoon. If he was going to eat that meal with any female apart from Miss Cutler, it would be not Christine, but Margaret. He remembered a character in a modern novel Beesley had lent him who was always feeling pity moving in him like sickness, or some such jargon. The parallel was apt: he felt very ill.

  ‘That was about the dance business, was it?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘Yes. He seemed to resent it all rather.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. What was he shouting?’

  ‘He was trying to persuade me to keep off the grass.’

  ‘As far as she’s concerned?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Are you going to?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Are you going to keep off the grass?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why, James?’

  ‘Because of you.’

  He’d been expecting a demonstration of some strong feeling or other here, but she only said ‘I think that’s rather silly of you’ in a neutral tone that wasn’t ostentatiously neutral, but simply neutral.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I thought we got all that settled yesterday. I don’t see the point of starting the whole thing over again.’

  ‘It can’t be helped. We’d have started it again some time; it might just as well be now.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’d have much more fun with her than you ever had with me.’

  ‘That’s as may be. The point is that I’ve got to stick to you.’ He said this without bitterness, nor did he feel any.

  There was a short silence before she replied: ‘I don’t hold with these renunciations. You’re throwing her away for a scruple. That’s the action of a fool.’

  This time, a minute or more went by before either spoke. Dixon felt that his role in this conversation, as indeed in the whole of his relations with Margaret, had been directed by something outside himself and yet not directly present in her. He felt more than ever before that what he said and did arose not out of any willing on his part, nor even out
of boredom, but out of a kind of sense of situation. And where did that sense come from if, as it seemed, he took no share in willing it? With disquiet, he found that words were forming in his mind, words which, because he could think of no others, he’d very soon hear himself uttering. He got up, thinking that he might go to the window and somehow derive alternative speech from what he saw out of it, but before reaching it he turned and said: ‘It isn’t a matter of scruples; it’s a matter of seeing what you’ve got to do.’

  She said clearly: ‘You’re faking this up because you’re frightened of me.’

  He looked at her closely for the first time since she’d come back into the room. She was sitting there with her feet drawn up on the couch and her arms round her knees; her expression was one of intentness. She might have been discussing some academic point on which she was both informed and interested. He noticed that she was wearing much less make-up than usual. ‘Not after yesterday,’ he said. Again he wasn’t conscious of having decided what to say.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Never mind. Stop objecting like this. The whole thing’s perfectly straightforward.’

  ‘Not as far as I’m concerned, James. I can’t understand you at all.’

  ‘Yes you can.’ He went and sat beside her again. ‘Let’s go to the pictures tonight. You can get out of the theatre. Carol won’t mind, I know.’

  ‘I wasn’t going, anyway.’

  ‘That’s all right, then.’