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?'

'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.

XX

'WHAT, finally, is the practical application of all this? Can anything be done to halt, or even to hinder, the process I have described? I say to you that something can be done by each one of us here tonight. Each of us can resolve to do something, every day, to resist the application of manufactured standards, to protest against ugly articles of furniture and table-ware, to speak out against sham architecture, to resist the importation into more and more public places of loudspeakers relaying the Light Programme, to say one word against the Yellow Press, against the best-seller, against the theatre-organ, to say one word for the instinctive culture of the integrated village-type community. In that way we shall be saying a word, however small in its individual effect, for our native tradition, for our common heritage, in short, for what we once had and may, some day, have again - Merrie England.'

With a long, jabbering belch, Dixon got up from the chair where he'd been writing this and did his ape imitation all round the room. With one arm bent at the elbow so that the fingers brushed the armpit, the other crooked in the air so that the inside of the forearm lay across the top of his head, he wove with bent knees and hunched, rocking shoulders across to the bed, upon which he jumped up and down a few times, gibbering to himself. A knock at his door was followed so quickly by the entry of Bertrand that he only had time to stop gibbering and straighten his body.

Bertrand, who was wearing his blue beret, looked at him. 'What are you doing up there?'

'I like it up here, thanks. Any objection?'

'Come down and stop clowning. I've got a few things to say to you, and you'd better listen.' He seemed in a controlled rage, and was breathing heavily, though this might well have been the result of running up two flights of stairs.

Dixon jumped lightly down to the floor; he, too, was panting a little. 'What do you want to say?'

'Just this. The last time I saw you, I told you to stay away from Christine. I now discover you haven't done so. What have you got to say about that, to start with?'

'What do you mean, I haven't stayed away from her?'

'Don't try that on with me, Dixon. I know all about your surreptitious little cup of tea with her on the sly yesterday. I'm on to you all right.'

'Oh, she told you about that, did she?'

Bertrand tightened his lips behind the beard, which looked as if it could do with a comb-out. 'No no, of course she didn't,' he said violently. 'If you knew her at all, you'd know she didn't do things like that. She's not like you. 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. Anyway, the point is I want an explanation of your conduct.'