A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [229]
‘Mumps,’ he said.
It was partly true. The contagion had struck down Basdai’s readers and learners wholesale, had attacked a little Tuttle; but it had not yet got to Mr Biswas’s children.
‘They are all down with mumps, I fear.’
And when later Miss Logie asked after the children, Mr Biswas had to say they had recovered, though they had in fact just succumbed.
Promptly at the end of the month the free delivery of the Sentinel stopped.
‘Don’t you think a little holiday before you begin would be refreshing?’ Miss Logie said.
‘I was thinking of that.’ The words came out easily; they were in keeping with his new manner. And he saw himself condemned to a pay-less week among the readers and learners. ‘Yes, a little holiday would be most refreshing.’
‘Sans Souci would be very nice.’
Sans Souci was in the northeast of the island. Miss Logie, a newcomer, had been there; he had not.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sans Souci would be nice. Or Mayaro,’ he added, trying to take an independent line by mentioning a resort in the southeast.
‘I am sure your family would enjoy it.’
‘You know, I believe they would.’ Family again! He waited. And it came. She still wanted to meet them.
Poise deserted him. What could he suggest? Bringing them to the Red House one by one?
Miss Logie came to his rescue. She wondered whether they couldn’t all go to Sans Souci on Sunday.
That at least was safer. ‘Of course, of course,’ he said. ‘My wife can cook something. Where shall we meet?’
‘I’ll come and pick you up.’
He was caught.
‘As a matter of fact I have taken a house in Sans Souci,’ Miss Logie said. And then her plan came out. She wanted Mr Biswas to take his family there for a week. Transport was difficult, but the car would come for them at the end of the week. If Mr Biswas didn’t go, the house would be empty, and that would be a waste.
He was overwhelmed. He had regarded his holidays simply as days on which he did not go to work; he had never thought that he might use the time to take his family to some resort: the thing was beyond ambition. Few people went on such holidays. There were no boarding-houses or hotels, only beach houses, and these he had always imagined to be expensive. And now this! After all those letters to destitutes beginning, Dear Sir, Your letter awaited me on my return from holiday …
He made objections, but Miss Logie was firm. He thought it better not to make a fuss, for he did not wish to give the impression that he was making the thing bigger than it was. Miss Logie had made the offer out of friendship; he would accept as a friend. He warned her, however, that he would have to consult Shama, and Miss Logie said she understood.
But he felt that he had been found out, that he had revealed more of himself to Miss Logie than he had thought; and this feeling was especially oppressive on the following morning when, after his bath in the outdoor bathroom, he stood before Shama’s dressingtable in the inner room. In moods of self-disgust he hated dressing, and this morning he saw that his comb, which he had repeatedly insisted was his and his alone, was webbed with woman’s hair. He broke the comb, broke another, and used language which went neither with his clothes nor with the manner he assumed when he put them on.
He reported to Miss Logie that Shama was delighted, and self-reproach was quickly forgotten when he and Shama began to prepare for the holiday. They were like conspirators. They had decided on secrecy. There was no reason for this except that it was one of the rules of the house: the Tuttles, for instance, had been unusually aloof just before the arrival of the naked torchbearer, and Chinta had been almost mournful before Govind had gone into threepiece suits.
On Saturday Shama began packing a hamper.
The secret could no longer be kept from the children. The laden hamper, the car, the drive to the seaside: it was something they knew too well. ‘Vidiadhar and Shivadhar!’ Chinta called. ‘You just keep your little tails here, eh, and read your books, you hear.