Journey Into the Past Page 5

  ‘What are your main ideas so far, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?’ Michie asked as they turned downhill into College Road.

  Dixon did mind, but said only: ‘Well, I think the main emphasis of the thing will be social, you know.’ He was trying to stop himself from thinking directly about the official title of his subject, which was ‘Medieval Life and Culture’. ‘I thought I might start with a discussion of the university, for instance, in its social role.’ He comforted himself for having said this by the thought that at least he knew it didn’t mean anything.

  ‘You don’t propose to offer an analysis of scholasticism, then, I take it?’

  This question illustrated exactly why Dixon felt he had to keep Michie out of his subject. Michie knew a lot, or seemed to, which was as bad. One of the things he knew, or seemed to, was what scholasticism was. Dixon read, heard, and even used the word a dozen times a day without knowing, though he seemed to. But he saw clearly that he wouldn’t be able to go on seeming to know the meaning of this and a hundred such words while Michie was there questioning, discussing, and arguing about them. Michie was, or seemed, able to make a fool of him again and again without warning. Though it would have been easy enough to pick some technical quarrel with him, over an undelivered essay for example, Dixon was reluctant to do so because he felt superstitiously that Michie was capable of insisting on studying Medieval Life and Culture out of sheer spite and desire to do him down. Michie, then, must be kept out, but with smiles and regrets instead of the blows and kicks which were his due. This was why Dixon now said: ‘Oh no, I’m afraid there won’t be much meat in it from that point of view. I’m not qualified to pronounce on the learned Scotus or Aquinas, I’m afraid.’ Or should it have been Augustine?

  ‘It might be rather fascinating to study the effect on men’s lives of the various popular debasements and vulgarizations of the schoolmen’s doctrines.’

  ‘Oh, agreed, agreed,’ Dixon said, his lips beginning to shake, ‘but that’s a subject for a D.Phil. thesis, wouldn’t you say, rather than a fairly elementary course of lectures?’

  Michie gave at some length, but luckily without asking any questions, his views of the case for and against such an opinion. After Dixon had voiced his regret that so interesting a discussion must be broken off, they parted at the foot of College Road, Michie to his Hall of Residence, Dixon to his digs.

  Hurrying through the sidestreets, deserted at this hour before works and offices closed, Dixon thought of Welch. Would Welch have asked him to get up a special subject if he wasn’t going to keep him on as a lecturer? Substitute any human name for Welch’s and the answer must be No. But retain the original reading and no certainty was possible. As recently as last week, a month after the special subject had been first mentioned, he’d heard Welch talking to the Professor of Education about ‘the sort of new man’ he was after. Dixon had felt very ill for five minutes; then Welch had come up to him and begun discussing, in tones of complete honesty, what he wanted Dixon to do with the Pass people next year. At the memory, Dixon rolled his eyes together like marbles and sucked in his cheeks to give a consumptive or wasted appearance to his face, moaning loudly as he crossed the sunlit street to his front door.

  On the florid black hallstand were a couple of periodicals and some letters that had come by the second post. There was something in a typed envelope for Alfred Beesley, who was a member of the College’s English Department; a buff envelope containing football pool coupons and addressed to W. Atkinson, an insurance salesman some years older than Dixon; and another typed envelope addressed to ‘J. Dickinson’ with a London postmark. He hesitated, then opened it. Inside was a sheet hastily torn from a pad bearing a few ill-written lines in green ink. Without formality the writer announced that he’d liked the shipbuilding article and proposed to publish it ‘in due course’. He’d be writing again ‘before very long’ and signed himself ‘L. S. Caton’.

  Dixon took a felt hat of Atkinson’s from the hallstand, put it on his head, and did a little dance in the narrow hall. Welch would find it harder to sack him now. It was good news apart from that; it was generally encouraging; perhaps the article had had some merit after all. No, that was going too far; but it did mean it was the right sort of stuff, and a man who’d written one lot of the right sort of stuff could presumably write more. He’d enjoy telling Margaret about it. He replaced the hat, glancing idly at the periodicals, which were destined for Evan Johns, office worker at the College and amateur oboist. The front page of one of them bore a large and well-produced photograph of a contemporary composer Johns might reasonably be supposed to admire. An idea came into Dixon’s mind, which was the more ready to receive it in this mood of exultation. He stood still and listened for a moment, then crept into the dining-room where the table was laid for high tea. Working quickly but carefully, he began altering the composer’s face with a soft black pencil. The lower lip he turned into a set of discoloured snaggle-teeth, adding another lower lip, thicker and looser than the original, underneath. Duelling-scars appeared on the cheeks, hairs as thick as tooth-picks sprang from the widened nostrils, the eyes, enlarged and converging, spilled out on to the nose. After crenellating the jaw-line and hiding the forehead in a luxuriant fringe, he added a Chinese moustache and pirate’s earrings, and had just replaced the papers on the hallstand when somebody began to come in by the front door. He sprang into the dining-room and listened again. After a few seconds he smiled as a voice called out ‘Miss Cutler’ in an accent northern like his own, but eastern where his own was western. He came out and said: ‘Hallo, Alfred.’

  ‘Uh, hallo, Jim.’ Beesley was tearing his letter open with some haste. The kitchen door opened behind Dixon and the head of Miss Cutler, their landlady, emerged to see who and how many they were. Satisfied on these points, she smiled and withdrew. Dixon turned back to Beesley, who was now reading his letter, scowling as he did so.

  ‘Coming in to tea?’

  Beesley nodded and handed Dixon the cyclostyled sheet. ‘Spot of good news to take home with me for the week-end.’

  Dixon read that Beesley was thanked for his application, but that Mr P. Oldham had been appointed to the post. ‘Oh, bad luck, Alfred. Still, there’ll be others to go for, won’t there?’

  ‘Doubt it, for October. Time’s running pretty short now.’

  They took their seats at the tea-table. ‘Were you very set on it?’ Dixon asked.

  ‘Only in so far as it would have been a way of getting away from Fred Karno.’ This was how Beesley was accustomed to refer to his professor.

  ‘I suppose you were quite set on it, then.’

  ‘That’s right. Anything new from Neddy about your chances?’

  ‘No, nothing direct, but I’ve just had a bit of good news. That chap Caton’s taken my article, the thing about shipbuilding.’

  ‘That’s a comfort, eh? When’s it coming out?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘Oh? Got the letter there?’ Dixon passed it to him. ‘Mm, not too fussy about stationery and so on, is he? I see . . . Well, you’ll be wanting more definite information than that, won’t you?’

  Dixon’s nose twitched his glasses up into position, a habit of his. ‘Will I?’

  ‘Well, Christ, Jim, of course you will, old man. A vague acceptance of that kind isn’t much use to anyone. Might be a couple of years before it comes out, if then. No, you pin him down to a date, then you’ll have got some real evidence to give Neddy. Take my advice.’

  Uncertain whether the advice was sound, or whether it arose out of Beesley’s disappointment, Dixon was about to temporize when Miss Cutler came into the room with a tray of tea and food. One of the oldest of her many black dresses shone softly at several points of her stout frame. The emphatic quietness of her tread, the quick, trained movements of her large purple hands, the little grimace and puff of breath with which she enjoined silence upon each article she laid on the table, her modestly lowered glance, combined to make it impossible to
talk in her presence, except to her. It was many years now since her retirement from domestic service and entry into the lodging-house trade, but although she sometimes showed an impressive set of landlady-characteristics, her deportment when serving meals would still have satisfied the most exacting lady-housekeeper. Dixon and Beesley said something to her, receiving, as usual, no reply beyond a nod until the tray was unloaded; then a conversation followed, only to be abruptly broken off at the entry of the insurance salesman and ex-Army major, Bill Atkinson.

  This man, who was tall and very dark, sat weightily down at his place at the foot of the table while Miss Cutler, whom he terrified by his demands for what he called the correct thing, ran out of the room. He studied Dixon closely when the latter said: ‘You’re early today, Bill,’ as if the remark might have carried some challenge to his physical strength or endurance; then, seemingly reassured, nodded twenty or thirty times. His centre-parted black hair and rectangular moustache gave him an air of archaic ferocity.

  The meal continued and Atkinson soon partook in it, though remaining aloof from the conversation, which ran for a few minutes on the subject of Dixon’s article and its possible date of publication. ‘Is it a good article?’ Beesley asked finally.

  Dixon looked up in surprise. ‘Good? How do you mean, good? Good?’

  ‘Well, is it any more than accurate and the sort of thing that gets turned out? Anything beyond the sort of thing that’ll help you to keep your job?’

  ‘Good God, no. You don’t think I take that sort of stuff seriously, do you?’ Dixon noticed that Atkinson’s thickly-lashed eyes were fixed on him.

  ‘I just wondered,’ Beesley said, bringing out the curved nickel-banded pipe round which he was trying to train his personality, like a creeper up a trellis. ‘I thought I was probably right.’

  ‘But look here, Alfred, you don’t mean I ought to take it seriously, do you? What are you getting at?’

  ‘I don’t mean anything. I’ve just been wondering what led you to take up this racket in the first place.’

  Dixon hesitated. ‘But I explained all that to you months ago, about feeling I’d be no use in a school and so on.’

  ‘No, I mean why you’re a medievalist.’ Beesley struck a match, his small vole-like face set in a frown. ‘Don’t mind, Bill, do you?’ Receiving no reply, he went on between sucks at his pipe: ‘You don’t seem to have any special interest in it, do you?’

  Dixon tried to laugh. ‘No, I don’t, do I? No, the reason why I’m a medievalist, as you call it, is that the medieval papers were a soft option in the Leicester course, so I specialized in them. Then when I applied for the job here, I naturally made a big point of that, because it looked better to seem interested in something specific. It’s why I got the job instead of that clever boy from Oxford who mucked himself up at the interview by chewing the fat about modern theories of interpretation. But I never guessed I’d be landed with all the medieval stuff and nothing but medieval stuff.’ He repressed a desire to smoke, having finished his five o’clock cigarette at a quarter past three.

  ‘I see,’ Beesley said, sniffing. ‘I didn’t know that before.’

  ‘Haven’t you noticed how we all specialize in what we hate most?’ Dixon asked, but Beesley, puffing away at his pipe, had already got up. Dixon’s views on the Middle Ages themselves would have to wait until another time.

  ‘Oh well, I’m off now,’ Beesley said. ‘Have a good time with the artists, Jim. Don’t get drunk and start telling Neddy what you’ve just been telling me, will you? Cheero, Bill,’ he added unanswered to Atkinson, and went out leaving the door open.

  Dixon said good-bye, then waited a moment before saying: ‘Oh, Bill, I wonder if you could do me a favour.’

  The reply was unexpectedly prompt. ‘Depends what it is,’ Atkinson said scornfully.

  ‘Could you ring me at this number about eleven on Sunday morning? I’ll be there all right and we’ll just have a little chat about the weather, but if by any chance I can’t be got at . . .’ He paused at a small unidentifiable sound from outside the room, but heard nothing further and continued: ‘If you can’t get hold of me tell whoever answers that my parents have turned up here out of the blue and will I please get back as soon as I can. There, I’ve written everything down.’

  Atkinson raised his dense eyebrows and studied the envelope-back as if it bore the wrong answer to a chess problem. He gave a barbaric laugh and stared into Dixon’s face. ‘Afraid you won’t be able to last out, or what?’

  ‘It’s one of my professor’s arty week-ends. I’ve got to turn up, but I can’t face the whole of Sunday there.’

  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.

  He said finally: ‘I see. I’ll enjoy doing that.’ As he said this, yet another man came into the room. It was Johns, carrying his periodicals, and at the sight of him Dixon felt a twinge of disquiet: Johns was a silent mover, a potential eavesdropper, and a friend of the Welches, especially Mrs Welch. Asking himself whether Johns had in fact overheard enough of the task just assigned to Atkinson, Dixon nodded anxiously at Johns, whose tallow-textured features made no movement. This immobility was prolonged when Atkinson spoke his greeting: ‘Hallo, sonny boy.’

  Dixon had resolved to travel to the Welches’ by bus to avoid Johns’s company, so he now got up, thinking he ought to impart some specific warning to Atkinson. Unable to fix on anything, however, he left the room. Behind him he heard Atkinson speaking to Johns again: ‘Sit down and tell me about your oboe.’

  A few minutes later Dixon, carrying a small suitcase, was hurrying through the streets to his bus stop. At the corner of the main road he had a view downhill to where the last few terraced houses and small provision shops began to give place to office blocks, the more fashionable dress-shops and tailors, the public library, the telephone exchange, and a modern cinema. Beyond these again were the taller buildings of the city centre with its tapering cathedral spire. Trolley-buses and buses hummed or ground their way towards it and away from it, with columns of cars winding, straightening, contracting, and thinning out. The pavements were crowded. As Dixon crossed the road, the sight of all this energy made his spirits lift, and somewhere behind his thoughts an inexplicable excitement stirred. There was no reason to suppose that the week-end would contain anything better than the familiar mixture of predicted boredom with unpredicted boredom, but for the moment he was unable to believe this. The acceptance of his article might be the prelude to a run of badly-needed luck. He was going to meet some people who might well prove interesting and amusing. If not, then he and Margaret could relish talking about them. He must see that she enjoyed herself as far as possible, and doing this would be easier in the presence of others. In his case was a small book of verse, by a contemporary poet he privately thought very nasty, which he’d bought that morning as a completely unprovoked gift to Margaret. The surprise would combine nicely with the evidence of affection and the flattery implied in the choice. A routine qualm gave him trouble at the thought of what he’d written on the fly-leaf, but his mood enabled him to suppress it.

  4

  ‘Of course, this sort of music’s not intended for an audience, you see,’ Welch said as he handed the copies round. ‘The fun’s all in the singing. Everybody’s got a real tune to sing—a real tune,’ he repeated violently. ‘You could say, really, that polyphony got to its highest point, its peak, at that period, and has been on the decline ever since. You’ve only got to look at the part-writing in things like, well, Onward, Christian Soldiers, the hymn, which is a typical . . . a typical . . .’

  ‘We’re all waiting, Ned,’ Mrs Welch said from the piano. She played a slow arpeggio, sustaining it with the pedal. ‘All right, everybody?’

  A soporific droning filled the air round Dixon as the singers h
ummed their notes to one another. Mrs Welch rejoined them on the low platform that had been built at one end of the music-room, taking up her stand by Margaret, the other soprano. A small bullied-looking woman with unabundant brown hair was the only contralto. Next to Dixon was Cecil Goldsmith, a colleague of his in the College History Department, whose tenor voice held enough savage power, especially above middle C, to obliterate whatever noises Dixon might feel himself impelled to make. Behind him and to one side were three basses, one a local composer, another an amateur violinist occasionally summoned at need by the city orchestra, the third Evan Johns.

  Dixon ran his eye along the lines of black dots, which seemed to go up and down a good deal, and was able to assure himself that everyone was going to have to sing all the time. He’d had a bad setback twenty minutes ago in some Brahms rubbish which began with ten seconds or so of unsupported tenor—more accurately, of unsupported Goldsmith, who’d twice dried up in face of a tricky interval and left him opening and shutting his mouth in silence. He now cautiously reproduced the note Goldsmith was humming and found the effect pleasing rather than the reverse. Why hadn’t they had the decency to ask him if he’d like to join in, instead of driving him up on to this platform arrangement and forcing sheets of paper into his hand?

  The madrigal began at the bidding of Welch’s arthritic forefinger. Dixon kept his head down, moved his mouth as little as possible consistent with being unmistakably seen to move it, and looked through the words the others were singing. ‘When from my love I looked for love, and kind affections due,’ he read, ‘too well I found her vows to prove most faithless and untrue. But when I did ask her why . . .’ He looked over at Margaret, who was singing away happily enough—she turned out regularly during the winter with the choir of the local Conservative Association—and wondered what changes in their circumstances and temperaments would be necessary to make the words of the madrigal apply, however remotely, to himself and her. She’d made vows to him, or avowals anyway, which was perhaps all the writer had meant. But if he’d meant what he seemed to mean by ‘kind affections due’, then Dixon had never ‘looked for’ any of these from Margaret. Perhaps he should: after all, people were doing it all the time. It was a pity she wasn’t a bit better-looking. One of these days, though, he would try, and see what happened.