V. Naipaul - The nightwatchman's occurrence book - and other comic inventions

I pulled hard at his.

A voice said, ‘You better lend him yours before you hang yourself on it.’

The voice was Henry’s. Poor Henry, in a suit and with a tie; his eyes red and impotent with drink; thinner than I had remembered, his face more sour.

‘Henry, what have they done to you?’

‘I think,’ another voice said, ‘I think that is a question he might more properly put to you.’

It was Blackwhite. H. J. B. White, of the tormented winking writer’s-photograph face. Very ordinary now.

‘I have bought all your books.’

‘Hooray for you, as the saying was. Frank, it is awfully nice seeing you here again. But you frighten us a little.’

‘You frighten me too.’ I lifted my arms in mock terror. ‘Oh, I am frightened of you.’

Henry said, ‘Do that more often and they will get you up on the stage.’ He nodded towards the back of the room.

Blackwhite gave a swift, anxious look at the room. Some tourists, among them the happy team and the embittered team of the morning, were looking at me with alarm and shame. Letting down the side.

Blackwhite said, ‘I don’t think you only frighten us, you know.’

I was struggling with the tie the doorman had given me. Greasy.

‘Look,’ I said to Henry, pointing to the doorman. ‘This man hasn’t got a tie. Throw him out.’

‘You are in one of your moods,’ Blackwhite said. ‘I don’t think you can see that we have moved with the times.’

‘Oh, I am frightened of you.’

‘Drunkard,’ Blackwhite said.

‘It’s only sugar, remember?’

‘I believe, Frank, speaking as a friend, that you want another island. Another bunch of happy-go-lucky natives.’

‘So you went to Cambridge?’

‘A tedious place.’

‘Still, it shows.’

The band began to tune up. Blackwhite became restless, anxious to get back to his guests. ‘Come, Frankie, why don’t you go down to the kitchen with Henry and have a drink and talk over old times? You can see we have some very distinguished guests from various foundations tonight. Very important negotiations on hand, boy. And we mustn’t give them a wrong idea of the place, must we? Don’t waste your time. Take a tip. Start looking for another island.’ He looked at me; he softened. ‘Though I don’t think there is any place for you now except home. Take him down, Henry. And Henry, look, when Pablo and those other idlers come, clean them up a little bit in the kitchen first before you send them up, eh?’

Men and women in fancy costumes which were like the waiters’ costumes came out on to the stage and began doing a fancy folk dance. They symbolically picked cotton, symbolically cut cane, symbolically carried water. They squatted and swayed on the floor and moaned a dirge. From time to time a figure with a white mask over his face ran among them, cracking a whip; and they lifted their hands in pretty fear.

‘You see how us niggers suffered,’ Henry said, leading me to a door marked STAFF ONLY. ‘Is all Blackwhite doing, you know. He say it was you who give him the idea. You make him stop writing all those books about lords and ladies in England. You ask him to write about black people. You know, Frankie, come to think of it, you did interfere a damn lot, you know. Is a wonder you didn’t try to marry me off: Is a wonder? Is a pity. Remember what you did use to say about what you would do if you had a million dollars? What you would do for the island, for the street?’

‘A million dollars.’

Footsteps behind me. I turned.

‘Frankie.’

‘Leonard.’

‘Frankie, I am glad I found you. I was really worried about you. But goodness, isn’t this a terrific place? Did you see that last dance?’

From where we were we could hear the cracking of whips, orchestrated wails, the stamp and scuttling of feet. Then it came: muted, measured applause.

‘Leonard, you’d better get back,’ I said. ‘There are some people from various foundations upstairs who have seized Mr White. If you aren’t careful you will lose him.’

‘Oh, is that who they were? Thanks for telling me. I will run up straight away. I don’t know how I will make myself known to him. People just don’t believe me …’

‘You will think of something. Henry, where is the telephone?’

‘You still play this telephone game. One day the police are going to catch up with you.’

I dialled. The telephone rang. I waited. A booming male voice shouted, ‘Frankie. Stay away.’ So loud that even Henry could hear.

‘Priest,’ I said. ‘Gary Priestland. How do you think he knew?’

Henry said, ‘From the way you’ve been getting on, I don’t imagine there is a single person in town who doesn’t know. You know you broke up the British Council lecture on Shakespeare or something?’

‘My God.’ I remembered the room. Six people, a man in khaki trousers swinging jolly, friendly legs over a table.

‘You thought it was a bar.’

‘But, Henry, what’s happened to the place? You mean they’ve actually begun to give you culture now? Shakespeare and all the rest of it?’

‘They give we, we give them. A two-way process, as old Blackwhite always saying. And they always saying how much they have to learn from us. I don’t know how the thing catch on so sudden. You see the place is like a little New York now. I imagine that’s why they like it. Everybody feel at home. Ice-cubes in the fridge, and at the same time they getting the exotic old culture. The old Coconut Grove even have a board of governors. I think, you know, the next thing is they going to ask me to run for the City Council. They already make me a MBE, you know.’

‘MBE?’

‘Member of the Order of the British Empire. Something they give singers and people in culture. Frankie, you don’t even care about the MBE. Forget the telephone. Forget Selma. Sometimes you want the world to end. You can’t go back and do things again. They begin just like that, they get good. The only thing is you never know they good until they finish. I wish the hurricane would come and blow away all this. I feel the world need this sort of thing every now and then. A clean break, a fresh start. But the damn world don’t end. And we don’t dead at the right time.’

‘What about Selma?’

‘You really want to know?’

‘Tell me.’

‘I hear she buy a mixmaster the other day.’

‘Now this is what I really call news.’

‘I don’t know what else to tell you. I went the other day to the Hilton. Barbecue night. I see Selma there, picking and choosing with the rest. Everybody moving with the times, Frankie. Only you and me moving backwards.’

Mrs Henry came into the room. She didn’t have to say that she didn’t like me. Henry cringed.

She said, ‘I don’t know, Henry. Leave you in charge in front for five minutes, and the place start going to pieces. I just had to sack the doorman. He didn’t have no tie or anything. And Mr White did ask you to take special care this evening.’

I fingered the doorman’s tie. When Mrs Henry left Henry sprayed the door with an imaginary tommy gun. I was aware of the room. We were among flowers. Hundreds of plastic blooms.

‘You looking,’ Henry said. ‘Is not my doing. I like a flowers, but I don’t like a flowers so bad.’

The back door was pushed open again. Henry cringed, lowered his voice. But it wasn’t Mrs Henry.

‘I is Pablo,’ an angry man said. ‘What that fat woman mean, telling we to come round by the back?’

‘That was no woman,’ Henry said. ‘That was my wife.’

Pablo was one of three angry men. Three men of the people: freshly washed hair, freshly oiled, freshly suited. They looked like triplets.

Pablo said, ‘Mr White sent for us specially. He send for me. He send for he.’ He pointed to one of his friends.