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

So impotently during these festive days he raged, and could tell Margaret nothing of what he felt. He feared to make himself ridiculous, and he feared Margaret’s impatience: he was sure that she would take the other side and make out quite a case for the Whympers and Sir Harrys. So at last the brilliance dimmed, and all that remained was this anxiety, anger and sense of loss. Any reference to his success reminded him of his present emptiness. ‘It has nothing to do with me at all,’ he said, the modesty, thought proper, concealing a bitterness that was already turning to sorrow.

And then late one evening, less than a week after the Tomlinsons’ party, the telephone rang, shattering the silence. Margaret took off her spectacles and went out to answer it. Her words, few and widely separated, came to him muffled.

When the door opened and Margaret reappeared, he knew.

‘That was Grace. Tony’s dead.’

He put his pipe down slowly, hearing the slight tap as it touched the table.

‘He was watching television at half past eight. At nine o’clock he was dead.’

Tony! So whole, so complete, so Tony-like, so live in the often recollected incidents of that evening!

Margaret came to the back of his chair and put her arms around his neck, her cheek on his head. It was a theatrical gesture. He appreciated it. But it did not console him.

He went to his study. It was very cold. He turned on the electric fire, sat down and watched its ever-brightening glow, saw the dust on the electric bars make its tiny flares and smelled its burning.

Downstairs Margaret was telephoning.

‘He was watching television at half past eight. At nine o’clock he was dead.’

*

The new year did not bring Mr Stone the reassurance he had been half expecting. There was nothing new to excite or absorb him, and much of the work he was called upon to do was simple routine. So, barring the discussions with Whymper about the Round Table dinner, it had been for many weeks past; but now, with his new eyes, he thought he saw his own position more clearly. He was in the office what he had been in the library, a gentle, endearing man nearing retirement, of no particular consequence. Now he saw how often in a crisis the instinct of the ‘staff’ was to turn to Whymper, for Whymper’s quick thinking, his ability to see his way out of a jam, was legendary—‘ladies in the bower’ had already become an office story — and though not liked, he was respected. He saw that he was entrusted with what might be considered safe: the supervision of lists, the overlooking of accounts. He had declined into ‘staff’ himself. To this assumption there was nothing with which he could reply. He did not have Whymper’s restless mind; he had no new idea to offer; he was unable to handle the public relations — and this aspect of the Unit’s work had grown more important since the publicity — with Whymper’s skill. He became snappish in the office; he became rude. And there occurred a row with Whymper over a typist of Polish origin.

Enraged by her inadequate grammar, sloppy dress and what he thought was her insolence, he had quarrelled with her in public and gone so far as to refer to her as ‘that D.P. girl’. He was in his office scourging himself for his behaviour when Whymper entered in a tremendous temper, his eyes narrow, his lips quivering, Whymper of all people, the man who during those lunchtime walks had spoken with so much feeling about ‘foreigners cluttering up the place’. His performance was melodramatic and self-appraising from start to finish, from ‘What’s this I hear, Stone?’ to ‘Don’t you dare talk to any of the staff like that again, do you hear?’ Mr Stone saw through it all but was none the less cowed. It occurred to him that the girl might be Whymper’s new mistress, and several replies to Whymper’s threat came into his head. But he had the lucidity to remain silent.

He thought, however, to revenge himself on them the following day. The girl had typed ‘artillery’ for ‘itinerary’ in a letter to a distinguished Knight Companion. He did not point out the error to her. Instead, he put an asterisk after the word and wrote a footnote: ‘I leave this in because I feel that this example of our typists’ literacy will amuse you. The word should, of course, be “itinery”.’ It was a heavy joke, made at the end of the day; perhaps the judgement of early morning might have shown him as much. Two days later the reply came: ‘It seems that typists’ literacy is catching. By “itinery” I imagine you mean “itinerary”.’ Now he knew very well how the word ought to be spelt; and in this swift rebuke he saw some sort of judgement, which made him desist from his war against the girl and made him less anxious to impose himself in the office.

His relationship with Whymper underwent a further change. Whymper’s attitude was now one of strict formality, and in view of their respective power in the office this formality was like indifference. The quarrel over the typist was scarcely the reason. It seemed, rather, that in the days since the Round Table dinner Whymper had progressively lost interest in the Knights Companion, and having lost interest in them, had lost interest in Mr Stone as well. And this to Mr Stone was additionally galling, that though Whymper’s interest in the Unit had declined, his power and fame as its representative steadily increased.

From the office, then, once the source of so much excitement, the source of his new vigour, he turned once more to his home. Here everything spoke of the status which he could not fully feel in the office: the re-decorated rooms, the organization of his household, Miss Millington’s banging of the dinner gong (a process that ever lengthened), Margaret’s dinner parties.

At these parties, to which Whymper continued to come, though less often than before, there was now a new fixture: Grace. Margaret was performing with zest for her what she had once performed for Margaret. And Grace was as radiant a widow as Margaret had been. From the first wan, teary-eyed appearance, with a brave sad smile, the gaunt creature had in spite of fogs and wintry drizzles visibly blossomed from week to week. The gradual attenuation which, as though to approximate to the appearance of her husband, she had been undergoing was abruptly arrested. The lined, thin face filled out; the neck lost some of its scragginess; the eyes brightened; the voice, always deep, grew deeper and more positive. Even in her movements there was freedom, as though some restraint had been removed. Whereas before she had been content to sit vaguely round-shouldered and apparently enervated in a chair, drawling out comments, often her husband’s, with an occasional baring of very white false teeth, now there was a liveliness, a pertness, an independence. Her hairstyle changed. And, at first noticed by Margaret alone, who did not think it fair to Grace to mention it or to betray her to Mr Stone, new clothes and new ornaments began appearing on the aged creature. This taste, once released, became an obsession. Margaret continued only to observe until, no longer able to bear the silence, Grace spoke. And it was at a display of recent acquisitions that Mr Stone surprised them one Sunday afternoon in a childish huddle, those two women who, meeting at the door, had been so world-weary, one brave, the other grave.

Then for ten whole days there was no visit from Grace. When she reappeared she looked fit but saddened. She had been, she said, to Paris; and she suggested that her action was partly the result of her distracted state. She was walking down Bond Street in the middle of the day and had seen the Air France building. Yielding to impulse, she had gone in and inquired whether there was a seat on any of the Paris planes that day, behaving as though the matter was one of urgency; had booked and paid; had raced home in a taxi to get passport, had raced in the taxi to the bank to get traveller’s cheques, and then, with minutes to spare, had made the West Kensington air terminal for the airport bus. Throughout she had had no control of herself and had acted as one crazed. The trip, not surprisingly, had given her little pleasure. But for Margaret she had a gift: a bottle of ‘Robe d’un Soir’ perfume by Carven (one of a set of three bottles bought on the BEA plane back). She had bought a number of other things as well: she had in her haste forgotten to pack all the clothes she needed. Some of the things she was wearing; a number of the smaller items she had brought with her; and Margaret, with an approval that diminished as the display lengthened, made approving comments.