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

‘Very good dinner you gave us,’ Tomlinson said at last, in encouraging commendation.

‘Yes,’ the chief accountant said hurriedly. ‘Very good.’

They listened to the shuffle and contented babble of the women. Margaret’s voice was deep, Grace drawled. There was nothing to drink in the dining-room (there was none at the Tomlinsons’). Once, several Christmas-week dinners ago, Tomlinson had attempted to tell a dirty story. Everyone had dutifully prepared to listen, smile and perhaps even make laughter that would be heard outside the room. But Tomlinson had told his story so precisely, with such calculated pauses and smiles, yet with such evident distaste on his thin, tormented face, that the story had fallen flat, no one knowing when it had ended, no one laughing, everyone embarrassed and slightly shocked, for without wit the story had appeared only as a piece of wilful obscenity. Tomlinson had thereafter abandoned his role of male-amuser. So now they stood, waiting.

‘I think we can go outside now,’ Mr Stone said. He was unwilling to use the phrase about joining the ladies; he did not feel he could manage it with Tomlinson’s ease and conviction.

‘Not yet,’ Tomlinson said, as though his authority had been appealed to.

And indeed at that moment came the sound of the lavatory flush.

The chief accountant cleared his throat.

When at last they did go outside, Margaret greeted them with, ‘Well, what have you men been guffawing about?’

They seated themselves around the tigerskin like participants in some form of combat. Mr Stone submitted with outward good humour and inward fury to the badinage about his marriage, though he could not help contracting his brows in annoyance when Grace Tomlinson said, ‘I see you’ve already trained him well, Margaret.’

The entertainment was like that at the Tomlinsons’. There was singing. And, as at the Tomlinsons’, the women were expected to sing well and to be applauded seriously. Occasionally, very occasionally, there might be an acknowledged comedienne. But the men were supposed to clown, savage creatures who, presenting forbidding fronts to the world of business, relaxed thus in the privacy of their hearths for their mates and friends alone, revealing benignant or childish aspects of their character which the outside world never suspected. So he did ridiculous things to the lapels of his jacket, pulled his hair down his forehead, rolled up one trouser leg, and with the two other sad men did his comic song.

It was after this that Margaret asked Gwen to recite ‘something nice’. To Mr Stone’s surprise Gwen rose at once, the back of her flared skirt crumpled from the clumsy weight so recently on it, and took up her position on the tigerskin. She did a scene from The Importance of Being Earnest, affecting a deep voice not for the male role but, in imitation of the celebrated actress, for the female. Mr Stone looked on in wonder; up till that moment he had not thought Gwen capable of doing anything. Her sour expression had been replaced by one of blankness, as though she had removed herself from the room. With complete absorption she acted out the scene, turning her head abruptly this way and that to indicate the changing of roles. She never faltered or lost her composure, even when, attempting an excessive throatiness for In a Handbag, she emitted hand as a squeak. There was a good deal of approval, which Mr Stone shared.

It then occurred to him that it was perhaps indelicate of Gwen to imitate the actress whom Margaret imitated, in a circle which had for so long accepted Margaret’s imitation. He glanced at Margaret and saw that she was suffering slightly. The line that ran from nose to mouth had deepened; her lips had tautened over her false teeth. He was filled with sympathy for her. But when the performance came to an end it was Margaret who led the applause, crying ‘Bravo! Bravo!’

With a well-trained bow Gwen acknowledged the applause, not seeming, however, to see anyone in the room. And then to the general surprise she launched into a fresh recitation, the court scene from The Merchant of Venice. This was less successful. Whereas before she had spoken prose as though it were rhetoric, now she spoke rhetoric as though it were everyday speech. Mr Stone could hardly recognize Portia’s speech. Then, turning her head to indicate the new speaker, Gwen attempted Shylock, and attempted Shylock in a Jewish accent.

Something told Mr Stone this was wrong and, looking about the room, he saw proof on every face. Grace Tomlinson, whose lips were invariably slightly parted, now had her mouth clamped shut. Tomlinson looked stern. Margaret’s eyes held definite anger. Everyone shot brief covert glances at the chief accountant, whose eyes were fixed on Gwen.

The recitation went on, only Olive in her pride unaware of the currents of disapproval and embarrassment.

The recitation was over. Without waiting for applause, Gwen bowed and returned to her seat, smoothing her dress below her and then looking down at her lap like one annoyed, like one whose modesty had been violated, while shufflings and rustlings broke through the room.

‘Miss Banks,’ Margaret said coldly, ‘did you bring your music?’

The person addressed was the tall woman with the scrubbed face. Little attention had been paid to her, but she had remained all evening in her own pool of contentment. At the dining table she had shown herself a silent and steady eater. Now, without replying, she took out her music from her very large bag, rose, seated herself at the piano and began to play.

*

In the stillness that followed — Miss Banks’s music received exaggerated attention — Mr Stone had much time for thought. He thought about Miss Banks and he thought about his house. What changes had come to it! The neighbours could now hear piano music. Yet from the outside his house had not changed at all. What strange things must happen behind the blank front doors of so many houses! And just as sometimes when travelling on a train he had mentally stripped himself of train, seats and passengers and seen himself moving four or five feet above ground in a sitting posture at forty miles an hour, so now he was assailed by a vision of the city stripped of stone and concrete and timber and metal, stripped of all buildings, with people suspended next to and above and below one another, going through all the motions of human existence. And he had a realization, too upsetting to be more than momentarily examined, that all that was solid and immutable and enduring about the world, all to which man linked himself (The Monster watering her spring flowers, The Male expanding his nest), flattered only to deceive. For all that was not flesh was irrelevant to man, and all that was important was man’s own flesh, his weakness and corruptibility.

*

The dinner party had its ridiculous sequel two weeks later. Every four weeks or so Olive sent Mr Stone a fruit cake of her own making. The custom had survived Olive’s marriage, had survived Gwen. Mr Stone was glad that it had survived his own marriage as well and that Margaret, however much she might dislike this reminder of an additional claim on her husband’s manhood, had lent herself happily to the ritual of cutting Olive’s cake.

But this evening when, the cake cut, the coffee ready, they sat before the electric fire, Margaret did a strange thing. She speared a large piece of the cake with her knife and held it close to the guard of the fire.

‘You will electrocute yourself!’ Mr Stone cried.

The rich cake had already caught. Margaret jerked it off on to the reflector. It burned steadily and well, like good fuel. Even when completely charred it continued to burn, the metal around it turning brown from the oozing fat.