Paul Theroux - Sir Vidia's Shadow - A Friendship Across Five Continents

If Pat was dismayed to be left out of Vidia’s trips and Vidia’s writing, she never spoke about it to anyone except Vidia. She covered for him. She was the Lady Naipaul the newspapers mentioned. She stuck by him like the steadfast wife of a prominent politician, fulfilling her role as the loyal helpmate, letting no criticism show. Vidia often told me about their quarrels, and I imagined floods of tears, but in spite of that friction, and considering the circumstances, they seemed to get on remarkably well.

Pat was well educated and extremely well read. She did little but read books. She had had an ambition to write, but the few finished pieces I saw — a visit to Trinidad, an account of a political meeting in London — were not very effective. They were like her, bloodless and a bit pedestrian and terribly nice; she had no guile, not much humor, she was shy. Vidia was the shouter and the prima donna. She was not as weak as she seemed, however, nor was he as strong as he pretended to be. They were mutually dependent. Perhaps he needed her to be at home in the way that some men can be sexual only if they are unfaithful: it was the need to betray Mommy and, in a larger sense, the need for Mommy to know it and permit it.

Pat loved him — loved him without condition — praised him, lived for him, delighted in his success in the most unselfish way. She had lived through each book, and even when Vidia was traveling with Margaret — in the Islamic world and in the American South — she took pride in the books that resulted, Among the Believers and A Turn in the South . She stayed home, she read, she tended to the household — hired painters, oversaw renovations, did donkey work, paid bills — and prepared for Vidia’s return. She awaited him in a way that suggested all the quaint and comforting props of the hearthside: roomy slippers, the favorite cushion, the pipe and hand-knitted comforter, the kettle of vegetable soup simmering on the hob.

In Africa years before, in his disarming fashion, relying on his shocking candor to do the job, Vidia volunteered the fact to me that there was no sex in the marriage. I knew they slept in separate rooms. I did not want to know more than that. But how was it that, knowing what she knew, she still spoke of his books in terms of great praise, and that the marriage had worked for so many years — indeed was still working?

The answer was that she adored him. Possibly there was an element of fear in it — the fear of losing him, the fear of her own futility and her being rejected. More than that, she was unselfish; love sustained her, which was why anyone who pitied her was misled. Pat had strength — that was evident in her ability to be alone. She was discreet. She was kind, she was generous, she was restrained and magnanimous; she was the soul of politeness, she was grateful; she was all the things Vidia was not. It was no accident that they had been married for forty years, but the marriage was a great strain on her health.

Death does not discriminate, but as the most efficient predators demonstrate — the lion, the hyena, and, most successful of all, the wild dogs of central Africa — victims are chosen for their weakness. Death shadows the innocent, the ones who stumble or look the wrong way. Death, the opportunist, skips past the strong to pounce on the feeble and the unwary.

A death watch began, and soon after that letter sending news of Pat’s illness, Vidia wrote again: “Now just five days on, her brain has gone. It can focus on only the most immediate thing.” Though she was almost a corpse, she seemed to Vidia almost youthful — there was still a brightness in her face. He was remorseful. He said, “I took her too much for granted. I am surprised [by] my own grief — even while she is silent and alive in her room.”

That was all it took to make me hurry my piece. Her brain has gone . I wrote and faxed my memory of Pat and told Vidia to give her my love.

Two days later it happened. I read it on the paper headed Dairy Cottage scrolling through my chattering fax machine: Pat had died just a matter of hours before. Vidia had been summoned by the nurse to witness Pat’s final moment of life. “It was shattering.” After that, the funereal functionaries took over — the night nurse, the day nurse, the doctor, and very soon the undertaker’s assistant, who seemed to Vidia “Dickensian.” Vidia did not watch, not even when Pat’s body was taken from the house in the coffin. Only a week before, Pat and he had visited the doctor in Southampton.

“I felt relieved when she left,” Vidia wrote. “I telephoned some people. I even thought I would start working. But then I felt very tired, and it occurred to me to send this note to you.”

My obituary appeared in the Daily Telegraph , under the heading “Lady Naipaul.”

In the many books that V.S. Naipaul has published, Pat Naipaul is mentioned only once, and obliquely (the prologue to An Area of Darkness , where she is referred to as “my companion”). But her intelligence, her encouragement, her love and her discernment are behind every book that Naipaul has written.

“She is my heart,” he told me once. She was also that most valued person in any writer’s life, the first reader.

In Uganda, 30 years ago, in what I considered to be highly unusual circumstances, I met Pat Naipaul and was immediately impressed. The Naipauls had been given a house in the grounds of Makerere University in Kampala, and Vidia was asked by the Building Department how he wished his name to read on the sign. He said he did not want his name on any sign. He was told he had to have something. He said, “All right then, letter it ‘TEAS.’”

As he told me the story, Pat burst out in appreciative isn’t-he-awful? laughter. And then — this is the unusual part — Vidia continued to do what I had interrupted. He was reading to Pat from the last chapter of The Mimic Men , a novel he was just finishing.

I felt privileged to be a part of this intimate ritual. He read about two pages — a marvellous account of a bitter-sweet celebratory dinner shared by the guests in a hotel in south London. Brilliant, I was thinking, when the reading was over.

“Patsy?” Vidia said, inquiring because she had said nothing in response. Pat was thinking hard.

Finally she said, “I’m not sure about all those tears.”

She was tough-minded and she was tender. For more than 40 years, in spite of delicate health and in latter years serious illness, she remained a devoted companion. It is a better description than wife. (In The Mimic Men , the narrator says that wife is “an awful word.”) The Naipauls made a practice of not reminiscing, at least in front of me, but I knew from casual remarks that in those early years they had to put up with the serious inconvenience of a small and uncertain income and no capital; Vidia used to laugh about the only job he had ever held as a salaried employee lasting just six weeks. Pat laughed too, but she had worked for a number of years as a history mistress at a girls’ school.

While she was still in her thirties, she resigned from her teaching post to spend more time with Vidia, which she did as a householder in Muswell Hill, in Stockwell, and in Wiltshire; as a traveler in India, in Africa, in Trinidad, and America. She helped in the research for The Loss of El Dorado , and she became involved in the complex issue that Vidia described in The Killings in Trinidad .

As the first reader, highly intelligent, strong-willed and profoundly moral, Pat played an active part in Vidia’s work. She understood that a writer needs a loyal opposition as much as praise. She enjoyed intellectual combat and used to say, when Vidia and I were engaged on a topic, “I love to see you two sparring.” She always said it in a maternal way, and it touched me.