The nightwatchman's occurrence book_ and other comic inventions - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,93

said.

He would willingly have had her precede him down the steps, but his new responsibility did not permit this. Arming himself with a bent poker, dusty to the touch, he tiptoed down the stairs ahead of her, expecting a blow from every dark corner of his once familiar house. Arriving at the hall, he telephoned, poker in hand, regretting his action as soon as he heard the cool, unhurried inquiries.

They went upstairs to wait, turning on all lights on the way and recovering their teeth from the bathroom. Except for their own movements there was now silence.

When the bell rang Mr Stone went down to the door with the poker in his hand. The officer, armed only with an electric torch, gave the poker an amused look, and Mr Stone began to apologize for it.

The officer cut him short. ‘I’ve sent my man round to the back,’ he said, and proceeded, expertly and reassuringly, to dive into all the corners that had held such threat.

They found no one.

The constable who had been sent round to the back came in through the front door; and they all sat in the still warm sitting-room.

‘With some of these semi-detached houses noises next door often sound as though they’re coming from this side,’ the officer said.

The constable smiled, playing with his torch.

‘There was a man in the house,’ Margaret said argumentatively.

‘Is there any door or entrance in the back he could get in by?’ the officer asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I only came to the house tonight.’

There was a silence. Mr Stone looked away.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ he asked. From the films he had seen he believed that police officers always drank tea in such circumstances.

‘Yes,’ Margaret said, ‘do have a cup of tea.’

The tea was declined, their apologies politely brushed aside.

But the house blazed with lights, and the police car attracted attention. So that on the following day, far from attempting to hide his marriage, Mr Stone was compelled to proclaim it and to endure the furtive glances, the raised curtains of the street.

Even Miss Millington, used to curious happenings in the house during her absence, could not hide her excitement at the police visit.

*

One thing relieved him. They had come to one another as wits. And when, towards the end of their pre-marriage acquaintance (the word ‘courtship’ did not appeal to him), his efforts grew febrile, he had sought to establish himself as someone with a rich sense of humour and an eye for the ridiculous in ‘life’. He feared, then, that marriage might mean a lifelong and exhausting violation of his personality. But to his surprise he found that Margaret required no high spirits from him, no jocularity, no wit; and again to his surprise he discovered that her party manner, which he had thought part of her personality, was something she discarded almost at once, reserving it for those of her friends who knew her reputation. And often during their after-dinner silence (he reading the paper, Margaret writing letters or knitting, thin-rimmed spectacles low down her nose, ageing her considerably) he would think with embarrassment for both their sakes of the brightness of her first remark to him, its needle-sharp enunciation (‘Do you … like cats?’), and of the unexpected brilliance of his last remark at that meeting (‘I imagine that’s why they’re called nuts’). For never again was she so impressively abrupt or ‘brittle’ (a word whose meaning he thought he fully understood only after meeting Margaret), and never again was he so brilliant.

Of Margaret’s history he never inquired, and she volunteered little. The thought sometimes arose, though he suppressed it, for Margaret by her behaviour had signalled that what they had said during their ‘courtship’ was to be discounted, that she was not as grand as she had made out. Neither was he; and this was more painful. For his own secrets, which had never been secrets until the night of their meeting, had to be revealed. His head librarianship, for example, and his £1,000 a year. Margaret asked no questions. But secrets were burdensome; he lacked the patience or the energy to conceal or deceive. Neither his position nor salary was negligible, but he felt that Margaret had expected more and that secretly she mocked at him, as he secretly mocked at her, though his own mockery he considered harmless.

Secretly she might mock, but of this nothing escaped her in speech or expression. And it was astonishing to what degree he was able