Anthony Burgess
SOMEBODY'S GOT TO PAY THE RENT
"There they go then," said Eustace Deschamps. "The
first of the English visitors." He stood at the bar of the Cafe Trini–
dad (where, strangely, everything could be drunk except rum), finger–
ing his glass of Byrrh, looking out, a day or so before Easter, at the
sedate life of the street. Marot, the postman, stood with him, cheap
white wine his tipple. He said:
"Yes. Drinking their bottled Bass at a great price. Smoking their
Gold Flake cigarettes. They never come in here."
"Oh, but once one did," said Deschamps. A small rentier, he
had leisure to observe. "But no, it was not an Englishman, it was a
Scotsman in a skirt. He brought in his own bottle of whisky, as I
remember, and sat at that table over there drinking it. He was silent
and morose, most unsociable. A miserable sort of a holiday he must
have had."
"And," said Desportes the ruc, "there was the English lady that
time."
"Ah, yes." Deschamps laughed. "Jean-Baptiste's English lady.
His great love."
Jean-Baptiste, polishing glasses behind the bar, blushed deeply.
He was a lantern-jawed man of thirty-odd, gentle in manner, with
very bright eyes. He blushed, but said nothing.
"His great love," repeated Deschamps, "that his father stopped
from coming to fruition. And she was not the only great love, if
I remember rightly. Therc were others, but his father got in the
way of those, too."
"I would thank you," said Jean-Baptiste gently, "not to talk
about my father."
