The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [26]
As yet, though, it was a scene of peace: cranes at rest, the violent dockers in attitudes of repose, everything awaiting the heat and dust of the rapidly approaching working day. But then, even before that came, there arose the most fearful clamour.
I hadn’t, I must confess, informed my mother of my marriage; nervousness had always been converted into fatigue whenever I sat down to write that letter. Sandra believed that my mother knew; and the mutual dismay of the two women – precipitated by my easy remark to Sandra: ‘Oh, look, there’s my mother’ – might easily be imagined. Yet not easily: we are a melodramatic race and do not let pass occasions for public display. Picture, then, Sandra in her carefully chosen disembarkation outfit coming face to face with a conventionally attired Hindu widow. Picture her mistaking the raised arms and the first wail for a ritual of welcome and, out of a determination to meet strange and ancient customs half-way, concealing whatever surprise and bewilderment she might have felt; then, with the wail broken only to be heightened, the gestures of distress converted explicitly into gestures of rejection, realizing the nature of her reception, hesitating in her already tentative approach to the frenzied figure of my mother, and finally standing still, the centre now of a scene which was beginning to draw a fair audience of dockworkers roused from their languor, passengers, visitors, officials, the crews of ships of various nations.
I was very calm myself. I paid no attention to my mother’s interjections that I had killed her and went about the business of looking after luggage, nodding to customs officials whom I recognized, exchanging words with the newspaper reporters who interviewed every returning student. Poor old Eden, whom I had known at Isabella Imperial College, was the Inquirer’s man. (He played: fair his story stated simply that my wife and I had been met at the docks by my mother.) I was calm because I felt that the situation was not important. The suspicion – later confirmed – had come early to me that with the steady traffic between London and Isabella my mother had some idea of my marriage and had prepared for the scene she was now so successfully making. It was a grand scene, perhaps the grandest that had been granted her, and was recompense of a sort for the ridicule I had exposed her to, particularly from those families with marriageable daughters by whom, during my absence, she must have been courted. I say it myself, but I was a catch! Not only one of the heirs to the Bella Bella Bottling Works fortune but also – unlike the common run of our business people – educated, degreed, travelled. In the circumstances I had given my mother a blow. But I also knew that silence and passivity on her part would have been the true danger signs. They would have betokened a lingering rebuke; and this might have taken the form of suicide by slow, secret starvation. This dockside scene, on the other hand, was pure self-indulgence; it augured well.
Complicated: Sandra could not have been expected to make my swift assessment, nor could it be transmitted to her in a few whispered words. She came and stood next to the gathered luggage. She looked quite bad-tempered, and I thought that this meant she was in control of herself and the situation; I expected nothing less of her. I told her that I thought it would be unwise if we went to my mother’s house. She said snappishly, in university jargon, ‘That’s an interesting approach to the subject. You don’t happen to have such a thing as a hotel on this damned island?’ I misinterpreted her mood; I thought she was being decisive. It was only later, when regret was valueless, that I saw that the greater callousness of my placidity that day was to Sandra rather than my mother. I relied on her forthrightness and what I thought was her vision; but to her this reliance must have seemed like abandonment at a moment