The Complete Enderby Read Free Page B

imbecilic and ingratiating, his grey head cocked permanently to one side like that of a listening parrot. ‘Yes, General,’ he said. ‘Similar, sir? Very good, sir.’
    ‘I’m always telling him,’ said an ancient with the humpty-dumpty head of Sibelius, ‘about that use of the word. It’s common among barmen and landlords. They say you can’t have the
same
again. But it is, in fact, precisely the same again that one wants. One doesn’t want anything
similar
. You deal in words, Enderby. You’re a writer. What’s your view of the matter?’
    ‘It
is
the same,’ agreed Enderby. ‘It’s from the same bottle. Something similar is something different.’
    ‘Professor Taylor used to argue that out very persuasively,’ said an old man mottled like salami, a dewdrop on the hook of his nose.
    ‘What’s happened to Taylor?’ asked the major-general. ‘We haven’t seen him for quite some time.’
    ‘He died,’ said the mottled man. ‘Last week. While drawing a cork. Cardiac failure.’
    ‘He’d just turned eighty,’ said a man just turned eighty. ‘Not all that old.’
    ‘Taylor gone,’ said the general. ‘I didn’t know.’ He accepted rum from obsequious Crump. Crump accepted silver with an obsequious inclination of a broken and mended torso. ‘I thought I’d go before him,’ said the general, ‘but I’m still here.’
    ‘You’re not all that old yourself,’ said the tremulous parchment man.
    ‘I’m eighty-five,’ said the general in puffy indignation. ‘I call that
very
old.’
    Higher bids came from the corners. One woman confessed coyly to ninety. As if somehow to prove this, she performed a few waltz-twirls, humming from
The Merry Widow
. She sat down again to genteel shocked applause, her lips blue, her heart almost audibly thumping. ‘And,’ asked the Sibelius-man, ‘how old might you be, Enderby?’
    ‘Forty-five.’
    There were snorts of both contempt and amusement. One man in a corner piped, ‘If that’s meant to be funny, I don’t think it’s in very good taste.’
    The major-general turned sternly and deliberately towards Enderby, both hands resting on the ivory bulldog-head of his malacca. ‘And what is it you do for a living?’ he asked.
    ‘You know that,’ said Enderby. ‘I’m a poet.’
    ‘Yes, yes, but what do you do for a living? Only Sir Walter made a living out of poetry. And perhaps that Anglo-Indian man who lived at Burwash.’
    ‘A few investments,’ said Enderby.
    ‘What investments precisely?’
    ‘I.C.I. and B.M.C. and Butlin’s. And local government loans.’
    The major-general grunted, as though none of Enderby’s replies was above suspicion. ‘What was your rank in the last war?’ he asked, a last throw.
    Before Enderby could give a lying answer, a widow in antique tweeds, a long thin woman with black-rimmed spectacles, fell from a low stool by a wicker table. Old men reached trembling for their sticks, that they might lever themselves up and help. But Enderby was there first. ‘Sho kind,’ said the woman genteelly. ‘Sho shorry to cauzhe all thish trouble.’ She had evidently been tanking up at home before opening-time. Enderby lifted her from the floor, as light and as stiff as a bundle of celery. ‘Thezhe thingzh,’ she said, ‘happen in the besht of familiezh.’
    His hands still hooked in her armpits, Enderby was shocked to see the image of his stepmother in the big Gilbey’s Port mirror on the wall opposite. Shaken, he nearly dropped his burden to the floor again. The image nodded to him, as out of some animated painting in a TV commercial, raised its glass in New Year salutation, then seemed to hobble out of the picture, into the wings, thus disappearing.
    ‘Get on with it, Enderby,’ said the peevish major-general. ‘Put her back on her seat.’
    ‘Sho very kind,’ said the woman, trying hard to focus on her gin-glass. Enderby looked in the room for a source of that mirror-image, but saw only a bent back hobbling to