The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book (32 page)

Yet, communing with his tree, he could not help contrasting its serenity with his disturbance. It would shed its leaves in time; but this would lead to a renewal which would bring greater strength. Responsibility had come too late to him. He had broken the pattern of his life, and this break could at best be only healed. It would not lead to renewal. So the tree no longer comforted. It reproached.

This summer the Male was busier than ever, building an outhouse. More fervently than before, Mr Stone wished for some accident that would put an end to the man’s never-ending improvements to his nest, which improvements were watched with unabating admiration by the man’s numerous brood.

He was a man, then. Bravely every morning he ventured forth into the rigorous world of business. And now he learned that Margaret was a woman. She attached the greatest importance to her functions as a woman and a wife. These were to feed, dress, humour, encourage, occasionally to seduce and never to let down. She rested in the mornings to recover from her exertions in seeing him off; she rested in the afternoons before getting ready for his return; she was concerned about getting her sleep at night so that she did not look a fright in the morning. Many creams and skin-foods supplemented her rest. And he was not grateful. He refused to notice. He began to think her idle, lazy, vain. When he thought of the responsibility she had imposed on him, when he thought of her pulling the blankets up to her neck on their first night, he could not help feeling that in the division of their functions she had got the better bargain.

The emphasis on the separateness of their functions as man and woman was a standing irritation. He would have liked her to relieve him of the garden, but she was unwilling to do so. Not only because she didn’t care for gardening—the pre-marriage statement turned out to have a grain of truth—but also because she thought it suitable that a man should have a hobby and that gardening should be the hobby of Mr Stone, who had no other aptitude. Twice a day (thrice on Sundays) he faced her across the dining table; and these moments, which in no consideration of marriage he had envisaged, were moments
of the greatest strain. She, the feeder, ate with voracious appetite, continually apologizing for being slow. He could see the powder on the hairs of her taut cheeks. Her lipstick became oily; then, as it grew fainter, spread over areas not originally painted. Reflecting at the dining table on her idleness and frivolity, the hours she spent preparing herself for him, he feared he might say something offensive. But their first quarrel occurred for another, ridiculous reason.

*

At Margaret’s suggestion, and against his wishes, they gave a dinner party, which to a large extent recreated one of the Tomlinsons’ dinner parties. It was, inevitably, somewhat shabbier, even Margaret’s improving zeal having failed to make any great impression on the house which had been so carefully neglected for so long. The Tomlinsons themselves came, radiating patronage and benevolence, their manner suggesting that they regarded themselves as creators of the new establishment. There were various friends of Margaret’s, some picked up from the Tomlinsons’, one or two from the Earl’s Court hotel. (How little he knew of her!) Among the friends was a tall, heavy woman of forty or fifty with a face scrubbed of all attraction and expression; she didn’t speak, little attention was paid to her, and yet, sitting primly where she was put, she appeared content.

Mr Stone had been urged to get some of his business colleagues. But he could think of no one. Evans, Keenan, Wilkinson, none of them was really suitable. Evans might have done, but he would have accepted, if he had accepted, as one doing a favour. With his colleagues Mr Stone had only an office relationship, of the utmost cordiality, but over the years of his bachelorhood the relationship had hardened in this way, so that any visiting now would have appeared an intrusion; such visiting in any case seemed more in evidence among the young. Nor did Mr Stone relish meeting his colleagues outside the office. After the initial boisterous greeting, which suggested that there was so much in common, so much to say, after the cracking of the current office joke, conversation faded, having little
to feed on, until one of them said with brisk joviality, ‘Well, see you at the office.’ It was only at the office that such relationships could flourish; they were like hothouse plants, needing the protection of their artificial setting.

From Mr Stone’s side, then, the only persons who came were Olive and Gwen. He was outnumbered. He couldn’t count Miss Millington as one of his allies. She, donning hair net and scarf, and panting and sighing and breaking into cold sweat, had zestfully worked all day long under Margaret’s directions. And then, to her own gasping delight, she had been dressed for the dinner by Margaret in a new apron and new cap which, tilting sharply back from her low brow, had given a touch of rakishness to her aged baby-face. Nor could Mr Stone count Gwen on his side. Pallid and pimply and sour, the fat creature sought to convey her impatient contempt for everyone. She deeply disturbed Mr Stone, already vulnerable in his new role as husband and host.

With the wine—‘I think a good Beaujolais would do,’ Margaret had said, trespassing on the role of her husband after he had shown no wish to take it on—there were toasts. Not many, for only one bottle of Beaujolais had been bought and this was poured out like a liqueur, one small glass per guest, as was the custom at the Tomlinsons’. Then, as was also customary at the Tomlinsons’, the men and women separated. With all the delight of a fulfilled woman in the segregation of the sexes, Margaret shooed the women away from the dining-room, leaving Mr Stone, Tomlinson and one other man (the party was unbalanced, many of the women being widows) in silence, Mr Stone not knowing what to say, Tomlinson looking anguished, clearing his throat, the other man (an accountant, a chief accountant) beginning to speak but only a squeak issuing from a throat clogged after a long silence.

‘Very good dinner you gave us,’ Tomlinson said at last, in encouraging commendation.

‘Yes,’ the chief accountant said hurriedly. ‘Very good.’

They listened to the shuffle and contented babble of the women.
Margaret’s voice was deep, Grace drawled. There was nothing to drink in the dining-room (there was none at the Tomlinsons’). Once, several Christmas-week dinners ago, Tomlinson had attempted to tell a dirty story. Everyone had dutifully prepared to listen, smile and perhaps even make laughter that would be heard outside the room. But Tomlinson had told his story so precisely, with such calculated pauses and smiles, yet with such evident distaste on his thin, tormented face, that the story had fallen flat, no one knowing when it had ended, no one laughing, everyone embarrassed and slightly shocked, for without wit the story had appeared only as a piece of wilful obscenity. Tomlinson had thereafter abandoned his role of male-amuser. So now they stood, waiting.

‘I think we can go outside now,’ Mr Stone said. He was unwilling to use the phrase about joining the ladies; he did not feel he could manage it with Tomlinson’s ease and conviction.

‘Not yet,’ Tomlinson said, as though his authority had been appealed to.

And indeed at that moment came the sound of the lavatory flush.

The chief accountant cleared his throat.

When at last they did go outside, Margaret greeted them with, ‘Well, what have you men been guffawing about?’

They seated themselves around the tigerskin like participants in some form of combat. Mr Stone submitted with outward good humour and inward fury to the badinage about his marriage, though he could not help contracting his brows in annoyance when Grace Tomlinson said, ‘I see you’ve already trained him well, Margaret.’

The entertainment was like that at the Tomlinsons’. There was singing. And, as at the Tomlinsons’, the women were expected to sing well and to be applauded seriously. Occasionally, very occasionally, there might be an acknowledged comedienne. But the men were supposed to clown, savage creatures who, presenting forbidding fronts to the world of business, relaxed thus in the privacy of their hearths for their mates and friends alone, revealing benignant or childish aspects of their character which the outside world never
suspected. So he did ridiculous things to the lapels of his jacket, pulled his hair down his forehead, rolled up one trouser leg, and with the two other sad men did his comic song.

It was after this that Margaret asked Gwen to recite ‘something nice’. To Mr Stone’s surprise Gwen rose at once, the back of her flared skirt crumpled from the clumsy weight so recently on it, and took up her position on the tigerskin. She did a scene from
The Importance of Being Earnest,
affecting a deep voice not for the male role but, in imitation of the celebrated actress, for the female. Mr Stone looked on in wonder; up till that moment he had not thought Gwen capable of doing anything. Her sour expression had been replaced by one of blankness, as though she had removed herself from the room. With complete absorption she acted out the scene, turning her head abruptly this way and that to indicate the changing of roles. She never faltered or lost her composure, even when, attempting an excessive throatiness for
In a Handbag,
she emitted
hand
as a squeak. There was a good deal of approval, which Mr Stone shared.

It then occurred to him that it was perhaps indelicate of Gwen to imitate the actress whom Margaret imitated, in a circle which had for so long accepted Margaret’s imitation. He glanced at Margaret and saw that she was suffering slightly. The line that ran from nose to mouth had deepened; her lips had tautened over her false teeth. He was filled with sympathy for her. But when the performance came to an end it was Margaret who led the applause, crying ‘Bravo! Bravo!’

With a well-trained bow Gwen acknowledged the applause, not seeming, however, to see anyone in the room. And then to the general surprise she launched into a fresh recitation, the court scene from
The Merchant of Venice.
This was less successful. Whereas before she had spoken prose as though it were rhetoric, now she spoke rhetoric as though it were everyday speech. Mr Stone could hardly recognize Portia’s speech. Then, turning her head to indicate the new speaker, Gwen attempted Shylock, and attempted Shylock in a Jewish accent.

Something told Mr Stone this was wrong and, looking about the room, he saw proof on every face. Grace Tomlinson, whose lips were invariably slightly parted, now had her mouth clamped shut. Tomlinson looked stern. Margaret’s eyes held definite anger. Everyone shot brief covert glances at the chief accountant, whose eyes were fixed on Gwen.

The recitation went on, only Olive in her pride unaware of the currents of disapproval and embarrassment.

The recitation was over. Without waiting for applause, Gwen bowed and returned to her seat, smoothing her dress below her and then looking down at her lap like one annoyed, like one whose modesty had been violated, while shufflings and rustlings broke through the room.

‘Miss Banks,’ Margaret said coldly, ‘did you bring your music?’

The person addressed was the tall woman with the scrubbed face. Little attention had been paid to her, but she had remained all evening in her own pool of contentment. At the dining table she had shown herself a silent and steady eater. Now, without replying, she took out her music from her very large bag, rose, seated herself at the piano and began to play.

*

In the stillness that followed—Miss Banks’s music received exaggerated attention—Mr Stone had much time for thought. He thought about Miss Banks and he thought about his house. What changes had come to it! The neighbours could now hear piano music. Yet from the outside his house had not changed at all. What strange things must happen behind the blank front doors of so many houses! And just as sometimes when travelling on a train he had mentally stripped himself of train, seats and passengers and seen himself moving four or five feet above ground in a sitting posture at forty miles an hour, so now he was assailed by a vision of the city stripped of stone and concrete and timber and metal, stripped of all buildings, with people suspended next to and above and below one another, going through
all the motions of human existence. And he had a realization, too upsetting to be more than momentarily examined, that all that was solid and immutable and enduring about the world, all to which man linked himself (The Monster watering her spring flowers, The Male expanding his nest), flattered only to deceive. For all that was not flesh was irrelevant to man, and all that was important was man’s own flesh, his weakness and corruptibility.

*

The dinner party had its ridiculous sequel two weeks later. Every four weeks or so Olive sent Mr Stone a fruit cake of her own making. The custom had survived Olive’s marriage, had survived Gwen. Mr Stone was glad that it had survived his own marriage as well and that Margaret, however much she might dislike this reminder of an additional claim on her husband’s manhood, had lent herself happily to the ritual of cutting Olive’s cake.

But this evening when, the cake cut, the coffee ready, they sat before the electric fire, Margaret did a strange thing. She speared a large piece of the cake with her knife and held it close to the guard of the fire.

‘You will electrocute yourself!’ Mr Stone cried.

The rich cake had already caught. Margaret jerked it off on to the reflector. It burned steadily and well, like good fuel. Even when completely charred it continued to burn, the metal around it turning brown from the oozing fat.

‘In India,’ Margaret said, gazing at the cake, ‘they always offer little bits like this to the fire before they cook or eat anything.’

Mr Stone was outraged. Starting to put down his plate gently, as he always did, but changing his mind right at the last moment and setting it down hard, he got up and made for the door, kicking at the tiger’s head, against which he had nearly tripped.

‘Doggie!’

He held the door open. ‘I—I don’t believe you’ve ever been to India.’

‘Doggie!’

He locked himself in the former junk room, which Margaret had furnished with some of her furniture and presented to him as a ‘study’, a place for male solitude. And there, despite Margaret’s knocks and calls and coos, he remained, thinking in the dark of the past, of Olive, himself, childhood. He beheld a boy of seventeen walking back alone from school on a winter’s day, past the shops of the High Street. The boy was going home, unaware of what awaited him there. Whether the picture was true or composite he no longer knew; whether there was a reason for remembering this stretch of the way home he couldn’t say. But it was what he saw when he wished to think of his childhood in a tender way. This boy didn’t know that his life would unroll without disturbance, the years flow evenly; and for him Mr Stone felt an ache of pity.