The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [116]
The taxi-driver was not devious. We parted in silence. I rang at the door. It was opened by a Southern European of some sort, slum-faced, pallid, grave. I noticed little else just then. I felt I had spent my life in interiors like these. It wiped out, what at that moment it should have sharpened, memories of black mud and red-and-ochre overseers’ compounds. The man took my overcoat, folded it and put it on a chair, below a Kalighat painting, momentarily disturbing because so unexpected: Krishna, the blue god, upright, left leg crossed in front of right, flute at his lips, wooing a white milkmaid. A door opened, my name was announced. Women, from whose faces I averted my gaze: the sudden reassertion of childhood training; a small man; a very big man moving towards me, very tall, a large paunch emphasized by a buttoned jacket, a heavy curving lower lip. I had expected someone much smaller and neater.
The introductions were made. A woman’s voice rumbled. Something about the weather, perhaps; a query about what I thought of London; something about the sunshine of Isabella. I couldn’t say. At the sound of the voice I closed my mind to what was being said; my mood tightened, dangerously, inside me. This time the enemy was going to be killed, and swiftly.
Then Lord Stockwell said: ‘You’ll never grow bald, that’s for sure.’ And the room became real again. I was impressed; I was pleased; I was relieved. This balm I sorely needed. I was foolishly grateful. Then Lord Stockwell added: ‘Your father never did.’ And left me to ponder afresh the name I carried. For a long time after that he said nothing at all.
The women took over. There were three women: Lady Stockwell, her daughter Stella, and a woman of about forty-five whose name I didn’t pick up throughout the evening. Much care had been expended on her characterless features; she was attached to the small man, whose name and functions equally eluded me. Mine, happily, also appeared to elude them. They intermittently showed me a courteous, incurious interest and sometimes asked a question – was I in London on business? – which in the circumstances was tactless; but generally they spoke to Lady Stockwell of common acquaintances and private interests.
At dinner I sat next to Lady Stella. I put her in her early twenties. When her father went silent she appeared to regard it as her duty to entertain me. She was very bright. I must have been a strain. It took me some time to get used to her chirruping voice, so different from her mother’s, which was harsh but clear; so that, while looking earnestly at Stella and acknowledging the fact of her speech, I was in reajity, for relief rather than interest, listening to her mother. Stella seemed slightly frantic, but I did not feel I was in a position to assess anything; the evening was being conducted in a mode which was unfamiliar to me. I concentrated on her voice, trying to disentangle words from the ceaseless tinkling; and it was only when we were at the dinner table that I realized she was a beauty. Then I was disturbed and could no longer fix my eyes on her. It was a beauty of transparence, of transparent skin, colourless hair and transparent eyes. Perhaps it was her eyes that unsettled me; bright blue eyes are to me empty and unreadable; when