Lucky Jim

by Kingsley Amis

And yet we like him. We are on his side. Why? Perhaps the wealthy benefactor Gore-Urquhart gets it right when he says near the end that Jim may not have the qualifications, but he hasn’t the disqualifications. He isn’t Bertrand, for one thing; he isn’t a snob or a fake; he isn’t a suck-up. He is somewhat left wing (see his famous brief speech about the just distribution of buns), but above all he is staunchly, instinctively opposed to authority. And he has scruples.

Larkin would memorialize the decade with his famous poem about sexual liberation: Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me)— Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban And the Beatles’ first LP.

‘Now a recorder, you know, isn’t like a flute, though it’s the flute’s immediate ancestor, of course. To begin with, it’s played, that’s the recorder, what they call à bec, that’s to say you blow into a shaped mouthpiece like that of an oboe or a clarinet, you see. A present-day flute’s played what’s known as traverso, in other words you blow across a hole instead of . . .’

‘You’re taking me home for tea,’ Dixon enunciated. ‘We arranged it on Monday, at coffee-time, in the Common Room.’ He caught sight of his own face in the wall-mirror and was surprised to see that it wore an expression of eager friendliness.

Bertrand whom Margaret had described to him. But whatever the subject for discussion might be, Dixon knew that before the journey ended he’d find his face becoming creased and flabby, like an old bag, with the strain of making it smile and show interest and speak its few permitted words, of steering it between a collapse into helpless fatigue and a tautening with anarchic fury.

Dixon felt that, on the contrary, he had a good idea of what his article was worth from several points of view. From one of these, the thing’s worth could be expressed in one short hyphenated indecency; from another, it was worth the amount of frenzied fact-grubbing and fanatical boredom that had gone into it; from yet another, it was worthy of its aim, the removal of the ‘bad impression’ he’d so far made in the College and in his Department.

He looked back once and saw the Professor of English huddled up on one leg and looking at him. As always on such occasions, he’d wanted to apologize but had found, when it came to it, that he was too frightened to.

These facts had been there for all to read in the Acknowledgements, but Dixon, whose policy it was to read as little as possible of any given book, never bothered with these, and it had been Margaret who’d told him. That had been, as near as he could remember, on the morning before the evening when Margaret had tried to kill herself with sleeping-pills.

‘And then, just before I went under, I suddenly stopped caring. I’d been clutching the empty bottle like grim death, I remember, as if I were holding on to life, in a way. But quite soon I didn’t in the least mind going; I felt too tired, somehow. And yet if someone had shaken me and said, “Come on, you’re not going, you’re coming back,” I really believe I should have started trying to make the effort, trying to get back. But nobody did and so I just thought Oh well, here we go, it doesn’t matter all that much. Curious sensation.’

While he was securing the barmaid’s attention and getting the drinks, Dixon wondered first how many more rounds of blue-label he might be expected to pay for, and then why Margaret, with her full lecturer’s salary uninterrupted by her absence from work, so rarely volunteered to stand him a drink.

But don’t let’s talk about it any more. Can’t we talk about ourselves? We’ve got so much to say to each other, haven’t we?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, trying to stuff comradeliness into his tone. He brought out his cigarettes and, while lighting two of these and getting more drinks, he meditated on Margaret’s capacity of talking like this at no notice. He wanted to give an inarticulate shout and run out of the bar, not stopping until he was on board a city bus.

There was a long pause while Atkinson looked censoriously round the room, a familiar exercise. Dixon liked and revered him for his air of detesting everything that presented itself to his senses, and of not meaning to let this detestation become staled by custom.

The sight of her seemed an irresistible attack on his own habits, standards, and ambitions: something designed to put him in his place for good. The notion that women like this were never on view except as the property of men like Bertrand was so familiar to him that it had long since ceased to appear an injustice.

Margaret laughed, so that he could see a large number of her teeth, one canine flecked with lipstick. She always made up just a little too heavily. ‘Oh, James, you’re incorrigible,’ she said. ‘Whatever next? Of course we can’t go out; what do you suppose the Neddies would think? Just as their brilliant son’s arrived? You’d get a week’s notice like a shot.’

‘Pretty girl, that Christine Whatshername,’ Margaret said. ‘Yes, isn’t she?’ ‘Wonderful figure she’s got, hasn’t she?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Not often you get a figure as good as that with a good-looking face.’ ‘No.’ Dixon tensed himself for the inevitable qualification. ‘Pity she’s so refained, though.’ Margaret hesitated, then decided to gloss this epithet. ‘I don’t like women of that age who try to act the gracious lady. Bit of a prig, too.’ Dixon, who’d arrived at similar conclusions already, found he didn’t much want to have them confirmed in this way. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Can’t really tell at this stage.’ This was greeted with the tinkle of tiny bells. ‘Ah, you always were one for a pretty face, weren’t you? Covers a multitude is what I always say.’

Any measure short of, or not necessitating too much, violence would be justified. But there seemed to be no field of endeavour where he could employ a measure of that sort. For a moment he felt like devoting the next ten years to working his way to a position as art critic on purpose to review Bertrand’s work unfavourably. He thought of a sentence in a book he’d once read: ‘And with that he picked up the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck, and, by Jesus, he near throttled him.’

Had he really wanted what his actions had implied? As before, the only answer was Yes, in a way. But he wouldn’t have tried, would he? or not so hard, anyway, if she hadn’t seemed so keen. And why had she decided to seem so keen, after so many weeks of seeming so not keen? Most likely because of some new novelist she’d been reading. But of course she ought to be keen anyway. It’s what she really wants, he thought, scowling with the emphasis with which he put this to himself. She doesn’t know it, but it’s what she really wants, what her nature really demands. And, God, it was his due, wasn’t it? After all he’d put up with.

He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse.

‘Yes, I did go to the pub.’ ‘You had a lot, did you?’ In her interest she stopped eating, but still gripped her knife and fork, her fists resting on the cloth. He noticed that her fingers were square-tipped, with the nails cut quite close. ‘I suppose I must have done, yes,’ he replied. ‘How much did you have?’ ‘Oh, I never count them. It’s a bad habit, is counting them.’ ‘Yes, I dare say, but how many do you think it was? Roughly.’ ‘Ooh . . . seven or eight, possibly.’ ‘Beers, that is, is it?’ ‘Good Lord, yes. Do I look as if I can afford spirits?’ ‘Pints of beer?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Well, I thought we might go and have a drink,’ Dixon said. ‘Oh, do be quiet, James; anybody’d think you’d die if you went an hour without one.’ ‘He probably would,’ Bertrand said. ‘Anyway, it’s sensible of him not to want to take the risk. What about it, darling? I’m afraid there’s only beer and cider, unless you want to fare forth to an adjacent hostelram.’

But where was Carol? Just then she reappeared, walking up to them with a kind of deliberate carelessness that made Dixon suspect her of having a bottle of something, now no doubt much depleted, hidden in the ladies’ cloakroom. The expression on her face boded ill for somebody, or perhaps everybody.

Dixon had been studying her face during this speech. The movements of her mouth were beautifully decisive, and her voice, abandoning its synthetic fuzziness, had returned to its usual clarity. These things helped to give her presence a solidity and emphasis that impressed him; he felt not so much her sexual attraction as the power of her femaleness. It was just as well that her married status put her beyond his ambition, since even their friendship demanded reserves of an attention, of a sort of mental and emotional integrity he wasn’t sure he really possessed.

‘Yes. Your attitude measures up to the two requirements of love. You want to go to bed with her and can’t, and you don’t know her very well. Ignorance of the other person topped up with deprivation, Jim. You fit the formula all right, and what’s more you want to go on fitting it. The old hopeless passion, isn’t it? There are no two doubts about that, as Cecil used to say before I broke him of it.’

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.’

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.

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.

‘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.’

‘I’m very fond of you,’ he said. He caught a glimpse of the starchier manner as she replied: ‘How can you be? You hardly know me.’ ‘I know enough to be sure of that, thanks.’ ‘It’s nice of you to say that, but the trouble is, there isn’t much more to know than you know already. I’m the sort of person you soon get to the end of.’ ‘I don’t believe you. But even if it were true I shouldn’t care. There’s more than enough to keep me going in what I’ve seen up to now.’ ‘I warn you it wouldn’t do you any good.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘To start with, I can’t get on with men.’

‘Good-night, Jim.’ She pressed herself to him and they kissed for a moment; then she broke away with ‘Wait a minute’ and rushed over to where her bag lay on a chair. ‘What’s all this?’ She came back and thrust a pound note at him. ‘For the taxi.’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous, I . . .’ ‘Come on, don’t argue; they’ll be here in a second. It must have cost the earth.’ ‘But . . .’ She pushed the money into his outside breast-pocket, frowning, pursing her lips, and waggling her left hand to silence him in a gesture that reminded him of one of his aunts forcing sweets or an apple on him in his childhood. ‘I’ve probably got more than you have,’ she said.

What a pity it was, he thought, that she wasn’t better-looking, that she didn’t read the articles in the three-halfpenny Press that told you which colour lipstick went with which natural colouring. With twenty per cent more of what she lacked in these ways, she’d never have run into any of her appalling difficulties: the vices and morbidities bred of loneliness would have remained safely dormant until old age.

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.’

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?’ ‘Change?’ ‘Yes, change. Can I have it, please?’ ‘Five shillings you give me.’ ‘Yes. The bill was four shillings. I want a shilling back.’ ‘Wasn’t that for my tip?’ ‘It might have been, but it isn’t now. Give it to me.’ ‘The whole shilling?’ ‘Yes. All of it. Now. Give it to me.’ The waiter made no attempt to produce any money. In his half-choked voice he said: ‘Most people give me a tip.’ ‘Most people would have kicked your arse for you by now. If you don’t give me my change in the next five seconds I shall call the Manager.’ Four seconds later Dixon was on the way out of the hotel into the sunlight, his shilling in his pocket.

If you really want to know—and I hope it’ll give you a kick—it was one of your so-called pals in this house who told my mother about it. You ought to enjoy thinking about that. Everybody hates you, Dixon, and my God I can see why.

‘You’re getting a bit too old for that to work any more, Welch,’ he said quickly. ‘People aren’t going to skip out of your path indefinitely. You think that just because you’re tall and can put paint on canvas you’re a sort of demigod. It wouldn’t be so bad if you really were. But you’re not: you’re a twister and a snob and a bully and a fool. You think you’re sensitive, but you’re not: your sensitivity only works for things that people do to you. Touchy and vain, yes, but not sensitive.’ He

‘Why do you stand it?’ ‘I want to influence people so they’ll do what I think it’s important they should do. I can’t get ’em to do that unless I let ’em bore me first, you understand. Then just as they’re delighting in having got me punch-drunk with talk I come back at ’em and make ’em do what I’ve got lined up for ’em.’ ‘I wish I could do that,’ Dixon said enviously. ‘When I’m punchdrunk with talk, which is what I am most of the time, that’s when they come at me and make me do what they want me to do.’

It’s not that you’ve got the qualifications, for this or any other work, but there are plenty who have. You haven’t got the disqualifications, though, and that’s much rarer.