While he read, things began slowly to go wrong for the third time, but not, as before, with what he was saying or how he was saying it. These things had to do with the inside of his head. A feeling, not so much of drunkenness, but of immense depression and fatigue, was taking almost tangible shape there. While he spoke one sentence, sadness at the thought of Christine seemed to be trying to grip his tongue at the root and reduce him to an elegiac silence; while he spoke another, cries of irritated horror fumbled for admission at his larynx so as to make public what he felt about the Margaret situation; while he spoke the next, anger and fear threatened to twist his mouth, tongue, and lips into the right position for a hysterical denunciation of Bertrand, Mrs Welch, the Principal, the Registrar, the College Council, the College. He began to lose all consciousness of the audience before him; the only member of it he cared about had left and was presumably not going to come back. Well, if this was going to be his last public appearance here, he'd see to it that people didn't forget it in a hurry. He'd do some good, however small, to some of those present, however few. No more imitations, they frightened him too much, but he could suggest by his intonation, very subtly of course, what he thought of his subject and the worth of the statements he was making.

Gradually, but not as gradually as it seemed to some parts of his brain, he began to infuse his tones with a sarcastic, wounding bitterness. Nobody outside a madhouse, he tried to imply, could take seriously a single phrase of this conjectural, nugatory, deluded, tedious rubbish. Within quite a short time he was contriving to sound like an unusually fanatical Nazi trooper in charge of a book-burning reading out to the crowd excerpts from a pamphlet written by a pacifist, Jewish, literate Communist. A growing mutter, half-amused, half-indignant, arose about him, but he closed his ears to it and read on. Almost unconsciously he began to adopt an unnameable foreign accent and to read faster and faster, his head spinning. As if in a dream he heard Welch stirring, then whispering, then talking at his side. He began punctuating his discourse with smothered snorts of derision. He read on, spitting out the syllables like curses, leaving mispronunciations, omissions, spoonerisms uncorrected, turning over the pages of his script like a score-reader following a presto movement, raising his voice higher and higher. At last he found his final paragraph confronting him, stopped, and looked at his audience.

Below him, the local worthies were staring at him with frozen astonishment and protest. Of the Staff contingent, the senior members looked up with similar expressions, the junior wouldn't look up at all. The only person in the main body of the Hall who was actually producing sounds was Gore-Urquhart, and the sounds he was producing were of loud skirling laughter. Shouts, whistles, and applause came from the gallery. Dixon raised his hand for silence, but the noise continued. It was too much; he felt faint again, and put his hands over his ears. Through all the noise a louder noise became audible, something between a groan and a bellow. Half-way down the Hall Bill Atkinson, unable at that distance, or unwilling, to distinguish between the scratching and the covering of ears, collapsed full length in the aisle. The Principal rose to his feet, opening and shutting his mouth, but without any quietening effect. He bent and began urgently whispering with the alderman at his side. The people near Atkinson started trying to lift him up, but in vain. Welch began calling Dixon's name. A stream of students entered and made towards the recumbent Atkinson. There were perhaps twenty or thirty of them. Shouting directions and advice to one another, they picked him up and bore him through the doors. Dixon came round in front of the lectern and the uproar died away. 'That'll do, Dixon,' the Principal said loudly, signalling to Welch, but too late.

'What, finally, is the practical application of all this?' Dixon said in his normal voice. He felt he was in the grip of some vertigo, hearing himself talking without consciously willing any words. 'Listen and I'll tell you. The point about Merrie England is that it was about the most un-Merrie period in our history. It's only the home-made pottery crowd, the organic husbandry crowd, the recorder-playing crowd, the Esperanto…' He paused and swayed; the heat, the drink, the nervousness, the guilt at last joined forces in him. His head seemed to be swelling and growing lighter at the same time; his body felt as if it were being ground out into its constituent granules; his ears hummed and the sides, top, and bottom of his vision were becoming invaded by a smoky, greasy darkness. Chairs scraped at either side of him; a hand caught at his shoulder and made him stumble. With Welch's arm round his shoulders he sank to his knees, half-hearing the Principal's voice saying above a tumult: '… from finishing his lecture through sudden indisposition. I'm sure you'll all…'

I've done it now, he managed to think. And without even telling them… He drew air into his lungs; if he could push it out again he'd be all right, but he couldn't, and everything faded out in a great roar of wordless voices.

XXIII

'THAT'S all it was,' Beesley said the next morning. 'Quite understandable. But it was that whisky he gave you that really finished you, wasn't it?'

'Yes, I suppose I should have been all right without that. I can't tell Welch that, though.'

'No, of course you can't, Jim. But you can plead nervousness and the heat and so on. After all, you did pass out.'

'They'll never forgive me for wrecking a public lecture, though. And nervousness wouldn't make me imitate Neddy and the Principal, would it?'

They went in through the College gates. Three students hanging about there fell silent and nudged each other as Dixon passed. Beesley said: 'I don't know. You could try it, couldn't you? You've got nothing to lose.'

'No, you're right there, Alfred. Oh, it doesn't matter. I've had it anyway. There's the Christine business too. Welch'll know about that by now.'

'You mustn't be so gloomy. I don't think Welch would take any notice of what Bertram or whatever his bloody name is says to him. It's nothing to do with him what you do to his son's girl-friend, is it?'

There's the Margaret angle, you see. There's no doubt he'd look at it as letting her down. Which it was, of course, however you look at it.'

Beesley glanced at him without replying; then, as they went into the Common Room, said: 'Don't let it get you down, Jim. See you coffee-time?'

'Yes,' Dixon said absently. His stomach turned over as he recognized Welch's handwriting on a note in his pigeon-hole. He went out and upstairs reading it. Welch felt he ought to let him know, unofficially, that when the Council met next week, he would be unable to recommend Dixon's retention on the staff. He advised Dixon, also unofficially, to wind up his affairs in the district and leave as soon as possible. He would furnish what testimonials he could for any application Dixon might make for a new job, provided it were outside the city. He himself was sorry Dixon had got to leave, because he'd enjoyed working with him. There was a ps. telling Dixon he needn't worry about 'the matter of the bedclothes'; for his part, Welch was prepared to 'consider it settled'. Well, that was when Dixon felt a sharp stab of conscience at having let Welch down over the lecture, and a less slight one at having spent so much of his time and energy in hating Welch.

He went into the room he shared with Cecil Goldsmith and stood at the window. The sultriness of the previous few days had passed without thunder and the sky promised hours of sunshine. Alterations were being made to the Physics Laboratory; a lorry had drawn up by the wall, bricks and cement were being unloaded, and the sound of hammering could be heard. He could easily get a schoolteaching job; his old headmaster had told him at Christmas that a senior history post in the school wouldn't be filled until September. He'd write to him and say he'd decided he wasn't cut out for University teaching. But he wouldn't write today, not today.