The Tailor of Panama Read Online Free PDF Page A

name again.
    A smile got into Pendel’s voice when he spoke into the telephone. Total strangers had an immediate feeling of talking to somebody they liked. But Osnard was possessed of the same infectious gift, apparently, because a merriment quickly developed between them which afterwards accounted for the length and ease of their very English conversation.
    â€œIt’s O-S-N at the beginning and A-R-D at the end,” said Osnard, and something in the way he said it must have struck Pendel as particularly witty, because he wrote the name down as Osnard dictated it, in three-letter groups of capitals with an ampersand between.
    â€œYou Pendel or Braithwaite, by the by?” Osnard asked.
    To which Pendel, as often when faced with this question, replied, with a lavishness appropriate to both identities: “Well, sir, in a manner of speaking, I’m the two in one. My partner Braithwaite, I’m sad to tell you, has been dead and gone these many years. However, I can assure you that his standards are very much alive and well and observed by the house to this day, which is a joy to all who knew him.”
    Pendel’s sentences when he was pulling out the stops of his professional identity had the vigour of a man returning to the known world after long exile. Also they possessed more bits than you expected, particularly at the tail end, rather like a passage of concert music which the audience keeps expecting to finish and it won’t.
    â€œSorry to hear that,” Osnard replied, dropping his tone respectfully after a little pause. “What d’he die of?”
    And Pendel said to himself: Funny how many ask that, but it’s natural when you remember that it comes to all of us sooner or later.
    â€œWell, they did call it a stroke, Mr. Osnard,” he replied in the bold tone that healthy men adopt for talking of such matters. “But myself, if I’m honest, I tend to call it a broken heart brought on by the tragic closing down of our Savile Row premises as a consequence of the punitive taxation. Are we resident here in Panama, Mr. Osnard, may I ask without being impertinent, or are we merely passing through?”
    â€œHit town couple o’ days ago. Expect to be here quite a while.”
    â€œThen welcome to Panama, sir, and may I possibly have a contact number for you in case we get cut off, which I’m afraid is quite a usual event in these parts?”
    Both men, as Englishmen, were branded on the tongue. To an Osnard, Pendel’s origins were as unmistakable as his aspirations to escape them. His voice for all its mellowness had never lost the stain of Leman Street in the East End of London. If he got his vowels right, cadence and hiatus let him down. And even if everything was right, he could be a mite ambitious with his vocabulary. To a Pendel, on the other hand, Osnard had the slur of the rude and privileged who ignored Uncle Benny’s bills. But as the two men talked and listened to each other, it seemed to Pendel that an agreeable complicity formed between them, as between two exiles, whereby each man gladly set aside his prejudices in favour of a common bond.
    â€œStaying at the El Panama till my apartment’s ready,” Osnard explained. “Place was supposed to have been ready a month ago.”
    â€œAlways the way, Mr. Osnard. Builders the world over. I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again. You can be in Timbuktu or New York City, I don’t care where you are. There’s no worse trade for inefficiency than a builder’s.”
    â€œAnd you’re quietish round five, are you? Not going to be a big stampede around five?”
    â€œFive o’clock is our happy hour, Mr. Osnard. My lunchtime gentlemen are safely back at work and what I call my preprandials have not yet come out to play.” He checked himself with a selfdeprecating laugh. “There you are. I’m a liar. It’s a Friday, so my preprandials