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

He was going through a difficult time. He appeared to cling to Mr Stone. One day, when they were having lunch, Whymper said with sudden passion, ‘I wish I were like you, Stone. I wish my life was over. I wish everything had already happened.’

‘How do you know my life is over?’

‘I can’t bear the thought of having to go on. It must be so nice to look back, to be what one is. To have done it all, to know that one had done it all. To be calm, blissfully calm, day after day, having tea on a fresh clean tablecloth on a green lawn.’

His words pierced Mr Stone, rousing him out of his concern for Whymper, recalling a past that was so near and now so inaccessible. How right Whymper was, and how wrong! And these words of Whymper’s, which he thought almost poetic, remained with him like the words of a song, with the power always to move.

Day by day, then, Whymper’s confidences became disquieting.

‘I am a changed man,’ he said one lunchtime. ‘As from today. How can I signalize this change, Stone?’

‘I can’t really think.’

‘A hat, Stone. A man needs a hat. A hat makes a man. Look at you. Look at the people wearing hats. Where can I buy one?’

‘I buy mine at Dunn’s. There’s a branch at the end of Oxford Street.’

‘Good. We’ll go to Dunn’s.’

They hustled through the lunchtime crowd, Whymper chanting, ‘A hat, a hat. Must get a hat.’

And when they got to the Dunn’s window Whymper stopped dead and gaped, his determination abruptly gone, his new character abandoned.

‘I didn’t know,’ he said softly, ‘that hats were so expensive.’

For some time they stood, their back to the window, studying the crowded street, until Mr Stone said they had better be getting on.

Whymper had not been looking well, his eyes sunken, his face sallow; and one morning he came into the office looking ravaged and ill.

‘I was in her garden all night,’ he said to Mr Stone at lunch.

This was the first reference to his mistress since the meeting in the pub.

‘I saw them have dinner’—remembering the effect of food on Whymper’s mistress, Mr Stone prepared to smile, but Whymper was telling it as no joke—‘and I watched until they drew the curtains. Then I stayed until he left. I couldn’t leave. It was hell.’

‘Who was this other — chap?’

Whymper gave the name of a minor and declining television personality, speaking it with the casualness he used for the word ‘mistress’.

Mr Stone permitted himself to be impressed. But Whymper’s pride had already vanished in his distress, and Mr Stone very much wanted to comfort him.

‘I should think,’ he said, ‘that that settles that. She sounds a most unreliable person, and if I were you I shouldn’t see her again.’

‘Very well!’ Whymper said angrily. ‘I will see that you don’t meet her again. Ever.’

And that was the end not only of Whymper’s stories about his mistress, but also of his confidences and their lunchtime outings. With Mr Stone in the office Whymper was again the efficient hard man of action, and there was nothing in his manner to indicate that he had once damagingly revealed himself to Mr Stone.

*

The crisis or crises in Whymper’s personal life in no way affected his work for the Knights Companion. His mind continued as restless and inventive as ever. He established a competition for Knights Companion. It was difficult to work out a basis for awarding points and in the end they decided that the prize should go to someone of his and Mr Stone’s choice. Oyez! Oyez! continued to encourage the belief that a carefully marked competition was afoot, and late in November announced that the prize was to be presented by Sir Harry at a Christmas Round Table dinner.

This dinner greatly exercised and stimulated Whymper, and he had continually to be restrained by Mr Stone. His first idea was that the Knights Companion should appear in antique costume of some sort. When this was rejected he suggested that the toastmaster should wear chainmail, real or imitation, that the waiters should wear Elizabethan dress (Whymper’s feeling for period was romantic and inexact), and that there should be musicians, also in Elizabethan dress, playing Elizabethan music.

‘The music would be just right,’ he said. ‘You know it? Tinkle, tinkle, scrape and tinkle. The old boys being bowed to their seats. Tinkle, tinkle. We could hire the costumes from the Old Vic.’

Mr Stone said he didn’t think any self-respecting restaurant or waiter would care for that.

‘Hire costumes from the Old Vic?’ Whymper said, growing light-headed. ‘We’ll hire the Old Vic.’

Calmer, he pleaded for the toastmaster in chainmail, then for a doorman in armour, and finally for a suit of armour in the doorway. He settled for archaically worded invitations in gothic lettering on parchment-like paper.

On the night nearly all of those who had promised to attend turned up, many bearing their scroll-like invitations. Among the earliest was the former department head of whom nothing had been heard since his acknowledgement of the cheque for £249 17s 5½d. He entered with the appearance of someone deeply offended. But his name aroused no recognition in Whymper or Mr Stone, who, though passingly puzzled by his frown and two-finger handshake, were more interested in his companion. It seemed that a fresh humiliation awaited the former department head, for contrary to the explicit men-only instructions of the invitation and the Round Table publicity, he had brought his wife, who was even now, having shaken hands with Whymper and Mr Stone, penetrating deeper into the chamber where elderly men, variously dressed in lounge suits and dinner jackets, were standing in subdued, embarrassed groups. Whymper acted quickly.

‘Ladies in the bower,’ he said, catching up with her and blocking her progress.

A few words to the head-waiter had their effect. The lady was led, surprised but unprotesting, to another room on the same floor, where for some little time she sat in solitude.

Whymper’s action proved a blessing. For a number of Knights Companion (‘What can you do with the bastards?’ Whymper muttered) brought their ladies, and the bower gradually filled.

Sir Harry arrived. His presence gave depth and meaning to the silence. Such a small man, though, to be so important!

Names were looked for on charts, places found and the dinner began. Now and again camera bulbs flashed and the diners blinked. The Press was represented in force and their effect on the waiters was profound.

The meal over, the Queen toasted (‘God bless her,’ Whymper said with a straight face), it was time for Sir Harry to make his speech. He pulled out some typewritten sheets from his breast pocket and the room was hushed. It was known that he prepared his speeches carefully, writing down every word, and it was an article of faith in Excal that his English could not be bettered.

They were meeting, Sir Harry said, to celebrate their fellowship and to do honour to one of their number. That they had gathered together to do this had, however, a deeper significance. He thought it proved three things. It proved in the first place that Excal did not consider its obligations to an employee ended when the employee’s own responsibilities were over. In the second place it proved that in Excal it was possible for anyone with drive and determination to rise, regardless of his age. Mr Stone was an example of this. (At this there was applause and Mr Stone didn’t know where to look.) It also proved that teamwork was of the essence in an organization like Excal. That the Unit was a success could not be denied. That it had been successful was due to the effort and faith of three persons. If congratulations were in order, and he thought they were, then congratulations, like Gaul, ought to be divided into three parts. Congratulations to Mr Stone. Congratulations to Mr Whymper.