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

He observed the cats of the street more closely, seeking the lady-cats among which the black cat had done such damage. Perhaps they were those creatures that sat so sedately on the window-ledges of front rooms, on the tops of fence-posts, on steps, the very creatures that in back gardens became so frivolous and unrestrained, for these animals, as he now saw, had one set of manners for the street and another for back gardens. He sought, too, for possible offspring. One he thought he did see, prowling about in the school grounds, a creature like its sire, black, but furrier and more restless.

Taking over Mrs Midgeley’s pride, he saw, at the centre of all the cat activity of the street, his own black cat, which every morning waited for him in attitudes of repose and longing. And gradually, what he had at first thought with such anger and pity—‘You will soon be dead’—became mere words, whose import he had to struggle fully to feel, for they released only a pure sweet emotion of sadness in which the object of his thoughts was forgotten, a short-lived emotion that he sought to stimulate by additional words, which he at first rejected but later came to accept with sad satisfaction: ‘You will soon be dead. Like me.’ For now the leaves of the spring had hardened and the year would soon be racing to its summer height, and he was left out of this cycle, with which just a year ago he had felt himself so happily in tune.

Thus absorbed, he paid little attention to the preparations of the Midgeleys for departure. There was, indeed, little to see. Shortly after Margaret’s announcement the Midgeley’s front room had been dismantled and had since shown itself curtainless and bare, with a few desolate-looking sticks of furniture and one stained and tattered mattress. This front room gave the house an abandoned air, as did the front garden, where the non-gardening Midgeleys had a single, untended rose tree that continued dutifully to bear its annual white blooms, pure and startling in their isolated beauty. In this garden there was now always to be seen a collection of cats in the late afternoon. It was as if they had already sensed the neglect of the house and its coming emptiness. They were always on their best front-of-house behaviour, but their number, their silent fellowship in the midst of dereliction, and their seeming vigilance unsettled Mr Stone; and they ignored all his muted attempts to frighten them away.

The uncharacteristic behaviour of one of these cats struck him one afternoon as he came down the street, swinging his new briefcase. The cat, white with brown patches, was restlessly pacing about the garden. Its belly was heavy, and from time to time it did a veritable dance of anguish, throwing itself up in the air. The frenzy of the animal alarmed Mr Stone. He made a threatening gesture, in such a way that an onlooker might have thought he was only changing his briefcase from one hand to another with an unnecessarily large action. The cat’s frenzy was stilled; then, surprisingly, it leapt up the fence and fled.

He did not think of this incident again until the following morning, when there was no cat on the outhouse roof, when nothing answered his call, and he knew that the black cat, so whole until the morning before, had been destroyed.

No sweet emotion came to him. He was struck with horror. He was filled with self-disgust and, what he had never expected, fear. Fear made the hair on his arms stand on end. Every familiar gesture of the bathroom ritual became meaningless, a mockery of himself. There was reproach and fear in every reminder of his ability to feel, in the touch of the razor on his chin, the chafing of the towel. He feared to touch or be touched.

‘Hurry up, Doggie. You’ll miss the news headlines.’

He had been holding the towel in his hands and staring at the mirror.

At breakfast Margaret spoke of her plan. Now that the Midgeleys had gone she intended to break down the collapsing fence before the new people arrived. It wouldn’t take much to break it down, and the new people would then be compelled to repair it.

*

They were in the garden some four weeks later, on a Sunday afternoon. Mr Stone was doing his gardening. Margaret was supervising and encouraging the exercise of this passion, which — men being what they are — had caused a cessation of all other activity in the house. Miss Millington was holding a box of petunia seedlings which Margaret had bought the previous morning, less for Mr Stone’s benefit than for that of the very old and despairing man who offered them at the door. Squatting, and advancing with a crab-like motion along the bed, Mr Stone was followed step by step by Miss Millington, who held out the seedling box like a nurse offering instruments to a surgeon. She, poor soul, would not see the flowers that might come: she had not yet been told, but she was leaving in a fortnight. Their conversation while they gardened was mainly about the recent depredations of the young black cat, the offspring of that which had been destroyed. He had, it appeared, inherited the habits of his sire. Miss Millington expressed herself fiercely on the subject, and Margaret looked at her with distant approval and encouragement, in which surprise, amusement and regret were all mingled.

It was a restricted, unnatural conversation, with Miss Millington doing most of the talking. It was made so partly by the presence of Miss Millington herself, and partly by their awareness of the new people next door, whose strangeness had not yet worn off and was still a strain. For Mr Stone the arrival of the new people had at once converted the house next door into enemy territory. From the security of his bathroom window he stared with disapproval at everything that went on. And it was, it seemed, with a similar disapproval of his neighbours that the new owner went frowningly about his tasks. He was short, fat and bald. He smoked a pipe and strutted about his property in his waistcoat with his sleeves rolled up. Mr Stone found him as offensive as his dog, a short, corgi-type mongrel that was as round as a sausage and appeared to sleep all day, his white, excessively washed body dazzling in the sunlight. The animal’s reaction to noise was negligently to raise its head, then let it drop down again: the cats remained in possession of the front garden. And as much as Margaret had regretted the unmasculine inactivity of Mr Midgeley, so she now regretted the improving zeal of the new owner. Within days of his arrival Eddie and Charley, traitors, had been called in, and had busied themselves with apparent pleasure about the property. They put up a fence so new, so straight, so well-built, that their own now looked shabby and weathered. The back fence in particular, twisted by the spreading roots of the tree in the school grounds, was almost disgraceful.

So in the back garden, which felt so strange, Mr Stone bedded out his petunias, Miss Millington talked about the black cat, and Margaret occasionally made a whispered comment about the folly of the neighbour in not creosoting his fence. Then in the gathering darkness, still squatting beside the bed, Mr Stone began to speak, negligently. He spoke of the lengthening days. He spoke of the tree in whose shade on hot summer afternoons they would soon be sitting. He spoke of flowers.

The aqueous light deepened to darkness. Lights went on about them, in the neighbour’s, and across the school grounds in the Monster’s and the Male’s.

‘Doesn’t it make you think, though?’ he said. ‘Just the other day the tree was so bare. And that dahlia bush. Like dead grass all winter. I mean, don’t you think it’s just the same with us? That we too will have our spring?’

He stopped. And there was silence. About them outlines blurred, windows brightened. The words he had just spoken lingered in his head. They embarrassed him. The silence of the women embarrassed him. Miss Millington was still holding out the empty box. He stood up, dusted his hands, said he was going to have a wash, and walked through the back door into the dark house.