Last Things Read Online Free PDF

becoming preoccupied with a future birth, with the child my nephew’s wife was expecting in four months’ time. Margaret had not previously given any sign of special interest in Muriel, and so far as she had a special interest in Pat it was negative, or at least ambivalent. Sometimes she found him good company, but when he had gone away she thought him worthless. And yet Margaret took to visiting them in their flat, and then invited them to dinner at our own, together with Muriel’s mother and stepfather.
    That was a surprise in itself, a surprise, that is, that Azik Schiff should come. He was himself inordinately hospitable and in his own expansive fashion seemed to like us all. But he was also very rich: and, like other rich men, did not welcome hospitality unless he was providing it himself. However, he had accepted, and as we waited for them all I was saying to Margaret that one of the advantages of being rich was that everyone tended to entertain you according to your own standards. Just as all gourmets were treated as though the rest of us were gourmets. It seemed like a natural law, a curiously unjust one. Certainly the food and drink which had been set up for that night we shouldn’t have produced for anyone less sumptuous than Azik.
    The young couple arrived a few minutes before the other two, but as soon as Azik entered the drawing-room he took charge. None of us had dressed, but he was wearing, as though in competition with Lester Ince, a cherry-coloured smoking jacket. He gave Margaret not a peck but a whacking kiss, and then stood on massive legs evaluating the room, in which he had never been before. In fact, he was more cultivated than any of us: the pictures he understood and approved of: but he was puzzled that, apart from the pictures, the furniture was so ramshackle. He had guessed our financial position – that was one of his gifts – and knew it as well as I did. Why did we live so modestly? He didn’t ask that question, but he did enquire about the flat. Yes, we had a lot of rooms, having joined two flats together. How much did we pay? I told him. He whistled. It was cheaper than he could have reckoned. He couldn’t help admiring a bargain: and yet, as he proceeded to explain, living like that was good tactics, but bad strategy.
    ‘You should buy a house, my friends,’ he said paternally (he was several years younger than I was) as at last he settled down on the sofa, his chest expanded, looking like a benevolent, ugly and highly intelligent frog.
    Rosalind, his wife, braceleted, necklaced, bejewelled with each anniversary’s present, was looking at me with something like an apprehensive wink. She had known me when she was Roy Calvert’s mistress and later his wife: that was years before Margaret and I first met. Rosalind had known me when I was cagey and secretive, and it was a continual surprise to her that I didn’t mind, or even encouraged, Azik to interfere in my affairs. She was always ready to help me evade his questions, even after all the times when she had seen him and me get on so easily.
    No, I said to Azik, if one has been born without a penny, one never learned to spend money. Azik shook his great head. ‘No, Lewis,’ he said, ‘there I must take issue with you. That excuse is not satisfactory. It doesn’t do credit to your intellect. First, I have to remind you that your lady bride’ (he beamed at Margaret: Azik spoke a good many languages imperfectly, and one of those was American business-English) ‘was not born without a penny. So there should be a corrective influence in this family. Second, I have to remind you that I also was born without a penny. I have to say that I have never found it difficult to spend money.’ With which Azik expounded on a ‘certain little difference’ between the tailor’s shop near the old Alexanderplatz where he was born, and his present home in Eaton Square.
    Someone said (when Azik was projecting himself, he filled the room, and it