Lucky Jim

by Kingsley Amis
Welch was talking yet again about his concert. How had he become Professor of History,
even at a place like this? By published work? No. By extra good teaching? No. Then how?
As usual, Dixon shelved this question, telling himself that what mattered was that this man
had decisive power over his future, at any rate until the next four or five weeks were up.
Until then he must try to make Welch like him, and one way of doing that was, he
supposed, to be present and conscious while Welch talked about concerts.

He was hoping that when Welch had made the second of the two maladroit gear-changes
which lay ahead of him, the conversation would turn in some other direction than the
academic. He even thought he'd rather hear some more about music or the doings of
Welch's sons, the effeminate writing Michel and the bearded pacifist painting 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.

' Look, Margaret, you know as well as I do that I can't sing, I can't act, I can hardly read,
and thank God I can't read music. No, I know what it is. Good sign in a way. He wants to
test my reactions to culture, see whether I'm a fit person to teach in a university, see?
Nobody who can't tell a flute from a recorder can be worth hearing on the price of bloody
cows under Edward the Third.' He put seven or eight onions into his mouth and began
crunching them.
'But he's exposed you to culture before now, surely.'
' Not such a heavy concentration as this looks like being. My God, what the hell
does he think he's playing at? What's it all in aid of? I mean it can hardly be all just for my
benefit.

The other brooded, his slab-like hands on the back of a ludicrously low chair that
resembled an inefficiently converted hassock. In a moment he disclosed that the local
composer and the amateur violinist were going to 'tackle' a violin sonata by some Teutonic
bore, that an unstated number of recorders would then perform some suitable item, and
that at some later time Johns might be expected to produce music from his oboe. Dixon
nodded as if pleased.

Much later Dixon had found out that the book in question had been written at Welch's
suggestion and, in part, under his advice. 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.

Clearly, the more students, within reason, Dixon could get 'interested' in his subject, the
better for him; equally clearly, too large a number of 'interested' students would mean that
the number studying Welch's own special subject would fall to a degree that Welch might
be expected to resent. With an Honours class of nineteen and a Department of six, three
students seemed a safe number to try for. So far, Dixon's efforts on behalf of his special
subject, apart from thinking how much he hated it, had been confined to aiming to secure
for it the three prettiest girls in the class, one of whom was Michie's girl, while excluding
from it Michie himself.
When he'd spoken about half a dozen sentences, Dixon realized that something was still
very wrong. The murmuring in the gallery had grown a little louder. Then he realized what it
was that was so wrong: he'd gone on using Welch's manner of address. In an effort to
make his script sound spontaneous, he'd inserted an 'of course' here, a 'you see' there, an
'as you might call it* somewhere else; nothing so firmly recalled Welch as that sort of thing.
Further, in a partly unconscious attempt to make the stuff sound right, i.e. acceptable to
Welch, he'd brought in a number of favourite Welch tags: 'integration of the social
consciousness', 'identification of work with craft', and so on. And now, as this flashed into
his labouring mind, he began to trip up on one or two phrases, to hesitate, and to repeat
words, even to lose his place once so that a ten-second pause supervened. The mounting
murmur from the gallery indicated that these effects were not passing unappreciated.
Sweating and flushing, he struggled on a little further, hearing Welch's intonation dinging
tightly round his voice, powerless for the moment to strip it away. A surge of drunkenness
across his brain informed him of the arrival there of the advance-guard of Gore-Urquhart's
whisky - or was it only that last sherry? And how hot it was. He stopped speaking, poised
his mouth for a tone as different from Welch's as possible, and started off afresh.
Everything seemed all right for the moment.