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

‘We write to our pensioners,’ Mr Stone said. ‘We invite those who want to do so to become Visitors or Companions. In this way we sort out the active from the inactive. We send our Visitors or Companions or whatever we call them details of the people they have to visit. The inactive. Age, department, date of retirement, length of service and so on.’

‘That’s where we’ll need staff,’ Whymper said.

‘Our Visitors report cases of special need. We investigate those. But for the normal visit nothing more is required than the Visitor’s travelling expenses and a refund for the small gift — flowers or chocolate — that he takes. In this way we organize our pensioners into a self-sufficient, self-help unit. All we provide is the administration.’

Always they came back like this to Mr Stone’s original points, so that it seemed that by ‘licking into shape’ Whymper meant only wandering away from a point before returning to it.

This perversity of Whymper’s encouraged Mr Stone to speak with increasing enthusiasm. Fear of being too explicit about his motives led him to vagueness. But he steadily revealed more of what he truly felt, and to his surprise Whymper neither derided nor looked puzzled.

‘This is interesting,’ Whymper would say intently; his eyes narrowing. ‘You are holding me. This is what I want.’

Mr Stone expanded. He had solved some of the problems of old age. He rescued men from inactivity; he protected them from cruelty. He preserved for men the comradeship of the office, which released them from the confinement of family relationships. He kept alive loyalty to the company. And he did all this at almost no cost: his scheme would cost Excal no more than £20,000 a year.

‘A society,’ Whymper said, ‘for the protection of the impotent male.’

Whymper’s talk was full of sexual references like this. Mr Stone had learned to ignore them, but at this remark he could not hide his embarrassment and disgust.

Whymper was delighted. ‘This is what I want,’ he said. ‘You’ve got me interested. Go on.’

More and more, in the process of licking into shape, Whymper placed Mr Stone in the position of the defender, the explainer, until at length, passion exhausted, Mr Stone was driven to make easy statements which were like insincerities. But these impressed Whymper no less.

Once, towards the end of the week, Mr Stone heard himself saying, ‘It is a way, you see, of helping the poor old people.’

It was ridiculous and cheap, and far from what he felt. But Whymper only said in an earnest, matter-of-fact way, ‘The treatment of the old in this country is scandalous.’

And it was at this level that their discussions remained, as though they had both decided not to open their minds fully and had tacitly agreed not to point this out to one another.

They came to discuss the name of the project.

‘We want something really inspiring,’ Whymper said. ‘Something that will actually get the old boys out on the road and up to the various front doors.’

Mr Stone had not thought of a name at all. And now, sitting at the desk with Whymper, Whymper tapping his cigarette and rolling it between his lips, he felt he did not want to think of a name. He feared a further cheapening of his idea.

‘Luncheon Vouchers are big business,’ Whymper said. ‘And you know why? The name. Luncheon voucher. In those words you have lunch, crunch, munch, mouth, rich. You even have belch. Why, the words are like a rich meal. That’s what we want. Something that would explain. Something that would inspire. Something memorable.’

‘Veterans,’ Mr Stone said.

Whymper shook his head tolerantly. ‘Just what we don’t want. The name we want will suggest youth. Youth and comradeship and the protection of the male.’

Mr Stone thought he saw how Whymper processed his raw material.

‘Something like Knights,’ Whymper said.

‘Scarcely for the protection of the male.’

Whymper paid no attention. ‘Knights of the something. Knights of the open road. Knights-errant. That’s just what they’re going to be, aren’t they? Knights-errant.’

Mr Stone thought the suggestion ridiculous. He felt like sweeping the Heal’s table clear of memoranda and paper, saying something offensive to Whymper, and returning to the peace of his library desk.

There was silence, while Mr Stone inwardly raged and Whymper thought. Then, as sometimes happened when he thought, Whymper grew lightheaded.

‘Door-knockers,’ he said. ‘The Company’s Door-Knockers. The Most Worshipful Company of Door-Knockers.’

Mr Stone lit a cigarette, tapping it in his own way and rather hard. But the suggestion went home. He stripped his pensioners of their red uniforms and gave them elaborate ones in dark brown with yellow stripes; they wore knee breeches and black stockings and knocked on doors with poles carved with some meaningful ancient design.

‘The Knight Visitors,’ Whymper said.

‘That’s another sort of night.’

‘I am not a child, Stone.’

‘You’re behaving like one.’

Whymper’s uncertain eyes went appealing. ‘The Good Companions.’

‘Knight Companions,’ Mr Stone said wearily.

‘Scarcely at their age.’ Whymper gave a little titter.

Mr Stone looked at the window.

‘Knights Companion,’ Whymper said.

Mr Stone was silent.

‘Right in every way,’ Whymper said. ‘Youth in the Knight. The Company in Companion. And then the association with those titles. KCVO and something else. Knight Companion of the something. Suggesting age and dignity. So we have youth and age, dignity and good companionship. And the Company. Knights Companion. God! The thing is full of possibilities. Your Knights Companion can form a Knights’ Circle. A Round Table. They can have a dinner every year. They can have competitions. You know, Stone, I believe we’ve licked this thing into shape.’

*

And now Margaret took on a new role, and took it on as easily as she had always taken on new roles. She ceased to be merely the wife who waited for her husband at home; she became the wife who encouraged and inspired her husband in his work. Whereas before the nature of Mr Stone’s employment was scarcely mentioned, a little of the fraudulence of the designation of ‘head librarian’ remaining to remind them both of their spurious attitudes at their first meeting, now they talked about his work incessantly, and the subject of his retirement receded. Her dress subtly changed: when she welcomed Mr Stone in the evenings she might also without disgrace have received visitors. (And what affection he had begun to feel for her clothes, for the garnets and the red dress of watered silk, once the arresting attributes of a new person, now the familiar, carefully looked-after parts of a limited wardrobe.) She still moulded herself around him, but she expanded, regaining something of her earlier manner. She saw, before Mr Stone did, that her responsibilities had widened, and she spoke of these responsibilities as of a bother which yet had to be squarely faced. She spoke of ‘entertaining’ as of an imminent and awful possibility; and she became graver and more insistent as the references to Mr Stone and the Knights Companion became more frequent, longer and self-congratulatory in the house magazine. Duty called her, called them both; and duty must not be shirked.

So then, like any young couple (as Margaret herself said, laughing to counter ridicule and destroy embarrassment), they discussed the changes that had to be made in the house. They needed new carpets, new pictures, new wallpaper, and Margaret was full of suggestions. Mr Stone listened with only half a mind, saying little, savouring Margaret’s feminine talk in that room with the tigerskin as part of his new situation. His gestures became more leisured; he exaggerated them, acting them out for his own pleasure. The reading of the evening paper was no longer the exercise of a habit which solaced and without which the evening was incomplete. It was with a delicious sense of patronage that he read about the rest of the wonderful world. He was more easily amused and more easily touched. He often read items out to Margaret; and it was a relief, so tight were they with emotion, to laugh or be moved. Every sensation was heightened. They even fabricated little quarrels, which they never, however, allowed to develop into one of their silences.