The Complete Enderby Read Free Page A

and convicted pederast). Converted to flats, humbled as guest-houses, all were owned by foreigners from north and west of the downs, bemused by an image of the glamour of the south coast: France winked at night across the water; here the air had a fancied mildness. Not today, thought Enderby, smacking his woolly bear-paw palms together. He wore a scarf coloured like a Neapolitan ice; his overcoat was a tightly-belted Melton; he was shielded from heaven by a Basque beret. The house wherein he had a flat was, he thanked that same heaven, nameless. Number 81, Fitzherbert Avenue. Would there ever, some day, be a plaque to mark that he had lived there? He was quite sure not. He was one of a dying race, unregarded by the world. Hurray.
    Enderby turned on to the Esplanade, joined a queue of old women in a cake-shop, and came out with a seven-penny loaf. He crossed over to the sea-rail and leaned on it, tearing the loaf. The gulls wheeled screaming for the thrown bread, beady-eyed greedy creatures, while the sea whooped in, the green-grey winter Channel, then grumbled back, as at the lion-tamer’s whip, grudgingly rattling many tambourines. Enderby tossed the last crumbs to the bitter air and its grey planing birds, then turned from the sea. He looked back on it before he entered the Neptune, seeing in it, as so often from a distance, the clever naughty green child which had learned to draw a straight line free-hand.
    The saloon-bar of the Neptune was already half-filled with old people, mainly widows. ‘Morning,’ said a dying major-general, ‘and a happy New Year to you.’ Two male ancients compared arthritis over baby stouts. A bearded lady drank off her port and slowly, toothlessly, chewed the mouthful. ‘And to you too,’ said Enderby. ‘If I can live to see the spring,’ said the general, ‘that’s all. That’s as much as I can hope for.’ Enderby sat down with his whisky. He was at home with the aged, accepted as one of them, despite his ridiculous youth. Still, his recorded age was a mere actuarial cipher; his gullet burning as the whisky descended, his aches and pains, his lack of interest in action – these made him as old as the crocks among whom he sat.
    ‘How,’ asked a gentle tremulous man made of parchment, ‘how,’ his hand shaking his drink like a dicebox, ‘how is the stomach?’
    ‘Some quite remarkable twinges,’ said Enderby. ‘Almost visible, you know. And flatulence.’
    ‘Flatulence,’ said the major-general, ‘ah, yes, flatulence.’ He spoke of it as though it were a rare old vintage. ‘Many years since I’ve had that. Now, of course, I eat nothing. A little bread soaked in warm milk, morning and evening. I swear it’s this rum that’s keeping me alive. I told you, did I, about that contretemps over the rum ration at Bruderstroom?’
    ‘Several times,’ said Enderby. ‘A very good story.’
    ‘Isn’t it?’ said the general, painfully animated. ‘Isn’t it a good story? And true. Incredible, but true.’
    A plebeian crone in dirty black spoke from a bar-stool. ‘I,’ she said, ‘have had part of my stomach removed.’ There was a silence. The aged males ruminated this gratuitous revelation, wondering whether, coming from a female and a comparative stranger, it was really in the best of taste. Enderby said kindly: ‘That must have been quite an experience.’ The old woman looked crafty, gripped the counter’s edge with papery hands that grew chalky at the knuckles, canted her stool towards Enderby and said, very loudly, ‘Pardon?’
    ‘An experience,’ said Enderby, ‘never to be forgotten.’
    ‘Six hours on the table,’ said the woman. ‘Nobody here can’t beat that.’
    ‘Crump,’ called the major-general in an etiolated martinet’s voice. ‘Crump. Crump.’ He was not reminiscing about the first World War; he wanted the barman to replenish his rum-glass. Crump came from behind the bar, seventyish, in a waiter’s white jacket, with a false smile both