The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [118]
‘Most extraordinary,’ the small man said.
I felt uncomfortable. I asked, ‘What sort of thing did he say?’
Lord Stockwell’s forehead twitched, as his daughter’s had done. ‘Certain things are simple, banal. Some people make you live them, though.’ He smiled; it did not become him. ‘It’s like the Highway Code. No good until you are on the road. Then it’s a little bit more than logic.’ He was disappointed in me; that I could feel.
I tried to look solemn. I said, ‘I saw little of my father in those days.’
‘Naturally. I will tell you something else about him. The second time I saw him he was just wearing a yellow dhoti. His chest was bare. His skin had a shine.’
We sat in silence for a little. The conversation turned to other things. I excused myself and went to the lavatory. I thought I was going to be sick. But it was just a momentary faintness. In that small room, coming to myself again, I could have wept for my solitude.
Just before I left Lady Stella said, ‘Just a minute.’ She ran out of the room and returned with The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book. ‘Have a look at this. I would like to know what you think.’ I made some objection to taking the book; my stay was short and it might be difficult to return it. She said, ‘Are you very busy? Couldn’t you return it tomorrow or the day after?’ It was not at all what I was expecting. I was tremendously flattered. A link with the past, with the city of magical light. We agreed on lunch. She had a flat of her own; she gave me the telephone number.
I walked back to the hotel. I smelled the cold sooty air. The sky was low; for just a little way above street level there was light, from street lamps and shop windows. The city was as if canopied; I had no feeling of being exposed. Around me the sky glowed. Well, it probably glowed in Isabella too, for different reasons. It was past midnight. In the past to which my present mood was linked the city would have been still at such an hour; now the streets hummed with motorcars whose red tail-lights were like warnings in the dark. It made no difference.
Holding The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book, oddly solid and scholarly in its bulk and feel, I entered the fairyland of the hotel. I had a hot bath; and, sipping the hot milk which awaited me every evening in a vacuum flask, I began to read. I read, as I had been directed, as a child. It was no effort. Who comes here? A Grenadier. What does he want? A pot of beer. My mood was soft. And soon I was saddened, but pleasurably, not only by the loss, in this roaring red city, of village greens and riders on horseback and milkmaids and fairs and eggs in baskets and journeys by country folk to London town, but also by that limpid, direct vision of the world, neither of which had been mine, neither vision, of delight, nor world, of order.
But when they are clean.
And fit to be seen,
She’ll dress like a lady,
And dance on the green.
‘Winnie the Pooh?’ I said, passing the book back. ‘I’ve often seen it in bookshops and I’ve often seen it referred to. But I must confess I’ve never read it. I suppose the title has always put me off.’
‘Ther Pooh,’ Stella said.
‘Ther Pooh?’
‘Don’t you understand? I see this is something else I’ll have to read to you.’ She sat up and pulled the sheet above her breasts. ‘Are you ready? Then I’ll begin.’
The delegation had gone back to Isabella. I stayed on in London. I no longer seek to explain; I merely record. For eight days, during which whatever reputation I had left was being destroyed, I stayed on in London, held by what I had detected in Stella’s manner at our first meeting. Frenzy was what I had first thought it to be; and frenzy it was, of a sort. It was a capacity for delight, such as I had found in Sandra, but without Sandra’s anguish. It was a coolness. It was more, much more, than Sandra’s feeling for an occasion. It was a way of looking at the city and being in it, a way of appearing to manage it