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

I saw the Knitmaster on the landing that evening and told him about Mr Dakin’s recovery.

‘Complications couldn’t have been serious,’ he said. ‘But it’s a nervous thing. A nervous thing.’

The Knitmistress opened the kitchen door.

‘He’s coming back tomorrow,’ the Knitmaster said.

The Knitmistress gave me one of her terrible smiles.

‘Five hundred pounds for falling off a ladder,’ Mr Cooksey said. ‘Ha! It’s as easy as falling off a log, ain’t it, Bess?’

Mrs Cooksey sighed. ‘That’s what the Labour has done to this country. They didn’t do a thing for the middle class.’

‘Bent arm! Can’t go to the seaside! Pamperin’, that’s what it is. You wouldn’t’ve found’Itler pampering that lot.’

A motorbike lacerated the silence.

‘Our happy honeymooners,’ Mr Cooksey said.

‘They’ll soon be leaving,’ Mrs Cooksey said, and went out to meet them in the hall.

‘Whose key are you using?’

‘Eva’s,’ the footballer said, running up the stairs.

‘We’ll see about that,’ Mrs Cooksey called.

*

Mrs Dakin said: ‘I went down to Mrs Cooksey and I said, “Mrs Cooksey, what do you mean by insulting my guests? It’s bad enough for them having their honeymoon spoilt without being insulted.” And she said she’d let the flat to me and my ‘usband and not to my brother and his wife and they’d have to go. And I told her that they were leaving tomorrow anyway because my husband’s coming back tomorrow. And I told her I hoped she was satisfied that she’d spoiled their honeymoon, which comes only once in a lifetime. And she said some people managed to have two, which I took as a reference to myself because, as you know, my first husband died during the war. And then I told her that if that was the way she was going to behave then I could have nothing more to say to her. And she said she hoped I would have the oil from my brother’s bike cleaned up. And I said that if it wasn’t for my husband being so ill I would’ve given notice then and there. And she said it was because my husband was ill that she didn’t give me notice, which any other landlady would’ve done.’

*

Three things happened the next day. The footballer and his wife left. Mrs Dakin told me that the firm had given her husband four hundred pounds. And Mr Dakin returned from hospital, no more noticed by the rest of the house than if he had returned from a day’s work. No sounds came from the Dakins’ flat that evening except for the whine and rumble of conversation.

Two days later I heard Mrs Dakin racing down to my flat. She knocked and entered at the same time. ‘The telly’s coming today,’ she said.

Mr Dakin was going to put up the aerial himself. I wondered whether he was as yet strong enough to go climbing about the roof.

‘They wanted ten pounds to do it. But my husband’s an electrician and he can do it himself. You must come up tonight. We’re going to celebrate.’

I went up. A chromium-plated aeroplane and a white doily had been placed on the television set. It looked startlingly new.

Mrs Dakin emptied a bottle of Tio Pepe into three tumblers.

‘To good ‘ealth,’ she said, and we drank to that.

Mr Dakin looked thin and fatigued. But his fatigue was tinged with a certain quiet contentment. We watched a play about a 400-year-old man who took certain drugs and looked no more than twenty. From time to time Mrs Dakin gave little cries of pleasure, at the play, the television set, and the quality of the sherry.

Mr Dakin languidly took up the empty bottle and studied the label. ‘Spanish sherry,’ he said.

Mr Cooksey waylaid me the following day. ‘Big telly they’ve got.’

‘Eighteen inch.’

‘Those big ones hurt the eyes, don’t you find?’

‘They do.’

‘Come in and have a drink. BBC and Commercial?’

I nodded.

‘Never did hold with those commercials. Ruining the country. We’re not going to have ours adapted.’

‘We’re waiting for the colour,’ Mrs Cooksey said.

Mrs Cooksey loved a battle. She lived for her house alone. She had no relations or friends, and little happened to her or her husband. Once, shortly after Hess had landed in Scotland, Mr Cooksey had been mistaken by a hostile crowd at Victoria Station for Mussolini, but for the most part Mrs Cooksey’s conversation was about her victories over tenants. In her battles with them she stuck to the rules. The Law of Landlord and Tenant was one of the few books among the many china animals in the large bookcase in her sittingroom. And Mrs Cooksey had her own idea of victory. She never gave anyone notice. That was almost an admission of defeat. Mrs Cooksey asked me, ‘You didn’t throw a loaf of stale bread into the garden, did you?’

I said I hadn’t.

‘I didn’t think you had. That’s what the other people in this street do, you know. It’s a fight to keep this house the way it is, I can tell you. There’s the mice, d’you see. You haven’t any mice up here, have you?’

‘As a matter of fact I had one yesterday.’

‘I knew it. The moment you let up these things start happening. All the other houses in this street have mice. That’s what the sanitary inspector told me. He said this was the cleanest house in the whole street. But the moment you start throwing food about you’re bound to get mice.’

That evening I heard Mrs Dakin complaining loudly. She was doing it the way the Knitmistress did: talking loudly to her husband through an open door.

‘Coming up here and asking if I had thrown a loaf of bread into ’er ’orrible little garden. And talking about people having too much to eat these days. Well, if it’s one thing I like, it is a warm room. I don’t wrap myself up in a blanket and ’uddle in front of cinders and then come and say that somebody else’s room is like an oven.’

Mrs Dakin left her kitchen door open and did the washing up with many bangs, jangles, and clatters. The television sound was turned up and in my room I could hear every commercial, every song, every scrap of dialogue. The carpetsweeper was brought into action; I heard it banging against walls and furniture.

The next day Mrs Cooksey continued her mice hunt. She went into all the flats and took up the linoleum and put wads of newspaper in the gaps between the floorboards. She also emptied Mrs Dakin’s dustbin. ‘To keep away the mice,’ she told us.

I heard the Dakins’ television again that night.

The next morning there was a large notice in the hall. I recognized Mr Cooksey’s handwriting and style: WILL THE PERSON OR PERSONS RESPONSIBLE SEE ABOUT THE IMMEDIATE REMOVAL OF THE OIL STAINS ON THE FRONT STEPS. In the bathroom there was a notice tied to the pipe that led to the geyser: WILL THE PERSON OR PERSONS WHO HAVE BEEN TAMPERING WITH THIS TAP PLEASE STOP IT. And in the lavatory: WE NEVER THOUGHT WE WOULD HAVE TO MAKE THIS REQUEST BUT WILL THE PERSON OR PERSONS RESPONSIBLE PLEASE LEAVE THESE OFFICES AS THEY WOULD LIKE TO FIND THEM.

The Dakins retaliated at once. Four unwashed milk bottles were placed on the stains on the steps. An empty whisky bottle was placed, label outwards, next to the dustbin.

I felt the Dakins had won that round.

‘Liquor and football pools,’ Mr Cooksey said. ‘That’s all that class spends its money on. Pamperin’! You mustn’t upset yourself, Bess. We’re giving them enough rope to hang themselves.’

The television boomed through the house that evening. The washing-up was done noisily, the carpet-sweeper banged against walls and furniture, and Mrs Dakin sang loudly. Presently I heard scuffling sounds and shrieks. The Dakins were dancing. This went on for a short time. Then I heard a bath being run.