A House for Mr. Biswas (66 page)

He walked light-heartedly down St Vincent Street back to the office. What had just happened was unexpected in every way. He had stopped thinking of a new job. He had paid no more than a journalist’s attention to all the talk of postwar development, since he did not see how it involved him and his family. And now, on a Monday morning, he had walked into a new job, and his job made him part of the new era. And it was a job with the government! He thought with pleasure of all the jokes he had heard about civil servants, and felt the full weight of the fears that had been with him since Mr Burnett had left. He could have been sacked from the
Sentinel
at any moment; there was nothing or no one to protect him. But in the Service no one could be sacked just like that. There were things like Whitley Councils, he believed. The matter would have to go through all sorts of channels – that was the delicious word – and this, he understood, was such a complicated proceeding that few civil servants ever did get the sack. What was that story about the messenger who had stolen and sold all a department’s typewriters? Didn’t they just say, ‘Put that man in a department where there are no typewriters’?

How many letters of resignation he had mentally addressed to the
Sentinel
! Yet when, letters having passed between the Secretariat and himself, the moment came and he sat up in the
Slumberking to write to the
Sentinel,
he used none of the phrases and sentences he had polished over the years. Instead, to his surprise, he found himself grateful to the paper for employing him for so long, for giving him a start in the city, equipping him for the Service.

He felt a fool when he received the editor’s reply. In five lines he was thanked for his letter, his services were acknowledged, regret was expressed, and he was wished luck in his new job. The letter was typed by a secretary, whose smart lowercase initials were in the bottom left corner.

Working out his notice, he let the Destees slide, and prepared zestfully for his new job. He borrowed books from the Central Library and from the department’s small collection. He began with books on sociology and immediately came to grief: he could not understand their charts or their language. He moved on to simpler paperbacked books about village reconstruction in India. These were more amusing: they gave pictures of village drains before and after, showed how chimneys could be built at no cost, how wells could be dug. They stimulated Mr Biswas to such a degree that for a few days he wondered whether he oughtn’t to practise on the little community in his own house. A number of books laid a puzzling stress on the need for folk dances and folk singing during the carrying out of cooperative undertakings; some gave examples of songs. Mr Biswas saw himself leading a singing village as they cooperatively mended roads, cooperatively put up superhuts, cooperatively dug wells; singing, they harvested one another’s fields. The picture didn’t convince: he knew Indian villagers too well. Govind, for instance, sang, and W. C. Tuttle liked music; but Mr Biswas couldn’t see himself leading them and the singing readers and learners to re-concrete the floor under the house, to plaster the half-walls, to build another bathroom or lavatory. He doubted whether he could even get them to sing. He read of cottage industries: romantic words, suggesting neatly clad peasants with grave classical features sitting at spinning wheels in cooperatively built superhuts and turning out yards and yards of cloth before going on to the folk singing and dancing under the village tree in the evening, by the light of flambeaux. But he knew
what the villages were by night, when the rumshop emptied. He saw himself instead in a large timbered hall, walking up and down between lines of disciplined peasants making baskets. From cottage industries he was diverted by juvenile delinquency, which he found more appealing than adult delinquency. He particularly liked the photographs of the hardened delinquents: stunted, smoking, supercilious, and very attractive. He saw himself winning their confidence and then their eternal devotion. He read books on psychology and learned some technical words for the behaviour of Chinta when she flogged Vidiadhar.

Miss Logie, who had at first encouraged his enthusiasm, now attempted to control it. He saw her often during the month, and their relationship grew even better. Whenever she introduced him to anyone she spoke of him as her colleague, a graciousness he had never before experienced; and from being relaxed with her he became debonair.

Then he had a fright.

Miss Logie said she would like to meet his family.

Readers! Learners! Govind! Chinta! The Slumberking bed and the destitute’s diningtable! And perhaps some widow might want to try again, and there would be a little tray of oranges or avocado pears outside the gate.

‘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. Your father is not in any position to take
you
for excursion, you hear. He not drawing money regular from the government, let me tell you.’ The readers and learners stood around Shama while she packed the hamper. Shama, uncharacteristically stern and preoccupied, ignored them. Her manner suggested that the whole affair – as indeed she said to Basdai, the widow, who had come to watch and offer advice – was very troublesome, and she was going through with it simply to please the children and their father.

Their destination and length of the holiday had been disclosed. The manner of transportation was still kept secret: it was to be the final surprise. It also caused Mr Biswas much anxiety. All week he had been dreading the arrival of Miss Logie in her brand-new Buick. He intended the gap between her arrival and their departure to be as brief as possible. Under
no circumstances was she to be allowed to get out of the car. For then she might go through the gate and get a glimpse of what went on below the house; she might even go there. Or she might go up the steps and knock on the front door; W. C. Tuttle would come out, and heaven knows what pose he would be in that morning: yogi, weight-lifter, pundit, lorry-driver at rest. At all costs she had to be prevented from entering the front room and seeing the Slumberking where Mr Biswas had lain and written his formal acceptance of the post of Community Welfare Officer, seeing the destitute’s diningtable still stacked with books on sociology, village reconstruction in India, cottage industries and juvenile delinquency.

Accordingly, although Miss Logie had said she would arrive at nine, the children were fed and dressed by eight, and set up as sentinels by the gate. From time to time they deserted their posts; then, after agitated search, they were extricated from groups of readers and learners or hurried out of the lavatory. Shama was finding she had forgotten all sorts of things: toothbrushes, towels, bottle-opener. Mr Biswas himself could not decide what book to take, and was in and out of the front room. Eventually all was ready and they stood strung out on the front steps, waiting to pounce. Mr Biswas was dressed as for holiday: tieless, with Saturday’s shirt bearing the impress of Saturday’s tie, his coat over his arm and his book in his hand. Shama was in her ornate visiting clothes; she might have been going to a wedding.

Waiting, they were infiltrated by readers and learners. ‘Haul your little tail,’ Mr Biswas whispered savagely. ‘Get back inside. Go and comb your hair. And you, go and put on some shoes.’ A few of the younger were cowed; the older, knowing that Mr Biswas had no rights, flogging or ordering, over them, were openly contemptuous and, to Mr Biswas’s dismay, some went out on to the pavement, where they stood like storks, jamming the sole of one foot against the smudged and streaked pink-washed wall. The gramophone was playing an Indian film song; Govind was whining out the
Ramayana;
Chinta’s scraping voice was raised querulously; Basdai was shrilling after some of her girls to come and help with the lunch.

Then the cries came. A green Buick had turned the corner. Mr Biswas and his family were down the steps with suitcases and hampers, Mr Biswas shouting angrily now to the readers and learners to get away.

When the car stopped, Mr Biswas and his family were standing right on the edge of the pavement. Miss Logie, sitting next to the chauffeur, smiled and gave a little wave, using fingers alone. She appeared to recognize what was required of her and did not get out of the car. Expressionlessly the chauffeur opened doors and stowed away suitcases and hampers in the boot.

W. C. Tuttle came out to the verandah, the lorry-driver at rest. His khaki shorts revealed round sturdy legs, and his white vest showed off a broad chest and large flabby arms. Leaning over the half-wall of the verandah, under the hanging ferns, he put a long finger delicately to one quivering nostril and, with a brief explosive noise, emitted some snot from the other nostril.

Mr Biswas chattered on in a daze, to divert attention from the readers and learners and W. C. Tuttle, to drown the noises from the house, the sudden piercing cry from Chinta, as from someone in agony: ‘Vidiadhar and Shivadhar! Come back here this minute, if you don’t want me to break your foot.’

Shy, interested readers and learners streamed steadily through the gate.

‘There’s lots of room,’ Miss Logie said, smiling. ‘It won’t be a squeeze for long. I shan’t be going all the way to Sans Souci. I don’t feel very well and a day at the beach would be too much for me.’

Mr Biswas understood. ‘Only these four,’ he said. ‘Only these four.’ He kicked backwards in the direction of the readers and learners. The circle merely widened.

‘Orphans,’ Mr Biswas said.

Then mercifully they were off, some of the orphans racing the Buick a little way down the street.

They commiserated with Miss Logie on her indisposition and begged her to change her mind; there would be no pleasure for them if she did not come. She said she hadn’t intended to go bathing at all; she had intended to come with
them only for the ride. But presently, when it was established without doubt that there were only four children in the car and that there would be no stops for more, her resolution weakened and she said the fresh air had revived her a little and she would come with them after all.