Half a Life by V. S. Naipaul

by Roger. Roger was a young lawyer whose career had hardly started. Willie sat through a hilarious script of Roger's about working on the government's legal-aid scheme, representing people who were too poor to pay lawyers' fees. The poor people Roger had to deal with turned out to be querulous and crooked, and great lovers of the law. The script began and ended with the same fat old working woman coming to Roger's office and saying, “Are you the poor lawyer?” The first time Roger had been solicitous. The second time he had sighed and said, “Yes, that's me.”
    Willie made his admiration plain during the recording and afterwards, and Roger took him to the BBC Club. When they were seated Roger said, “I'm not actually a member. But it's convenient.”
    Roger asked Willie about himself and Willie told him about the college of education.
    Roger said, “So you're going to be a teacher?”
    Willie said, “Not really.” And that was true. He had never intended to be a teacher. A phrase came to him: “I'm marking time.”
    Roger said, “I'm like that, too.”
    They became friends. Roger was tall and wore doublebreasted dark suits. His manner, his style, his speech (easily veering into a curious formality, with complete, balanced sentences, creating for Willie an effect of wit)—all of this came to Roger from his family, his school, his university, his friends, his profession. But Willie saw it all as personal to Roger.
    He saw one day that Roger wore trouser-braces. He was surprised. Roger said, when Willie asked him, “No waist, no hips. Not like you, Willie. I just drop straight down.”
    They met about once a week. Sometimes they had lunch at the Law Courts; Roger liked the puddings there. Sometimes they went to the theatre: Roger did a weekly “London Letter” for a provincial paper and could get tickets for plays he wanted to write about. Sometimes they went to see the renovation work that was being done on a very small house, flat-fronted and low, that Roger had bought in a shabby street near Marble Arch. Roger, explaining the house, said, “I had a little capital. Something under four thousand pounds. I thought the best thing was to put it in London property.” Roger was stressing the modesty of his means, explaining the very small house, but Willie was dazzled, not only by the four thousand pounds, but by Roger's confidence and knowledge, and by the words he had used, “capital,” “property.” And just as, when he had walked down Kingsway to Bush House to record his talk about being an Indian Christian, there had come to Willie for the first time some idea of the wealth and power of pre-war England, so, gradually, out of his friendship with Roger, Willie felt he was seeing behind many blank doors, and there came to him the beginnings of an idea of England far removed from the boys in the college of education and the sensation-seekers of the immigrant-bohemian life of Notting Hill.
    Percy Cato said one day, in an exaggerated Jamaican accent, “Wha' happen, Willie-boy? Like somebody out there sweeten you up and you forgetting your old friend Percy” Then in his normal voice he said, “June's been asking about you.”
    Willie thought about the room where she had taken him. She and Percy had no doubt often met there. He remembered the toilet, and the black man they had excited afterwards, fresh from the islands, the black man, still with the wide-brimmed Jamaican hat and his going-away tropical zoot-suit trousers. He saw it all from a distance now. In Roger's company it was more than ever like a secret.
    Roger said, “I still have no idea what you intend to do. Is there a family business? Are you one of the idle rich?”
    Willie had learned to keep a straight face when embarrassing things were said and to walk round the embarrassment. He said, “I want to write.” It wasn't true. The idea hadn't occurred to him until that moment, and it had occurred to him because Roger, embarrassing him, had made him