The Neptune was the sort of pub in which any of the three parts-saloon, public, outdoor-is visible from any other. Enderby spilt whisky on his tie. An old man who had not previously spoken pointed at Enderby with shaky care and said, "You've spilt whisky on your tie." Enderby felt that fear would possibly make worse happen. The outer world was not safe. He must go back home and closet himself, work at his poem. He finished the driblet in his glass, buttoned himself up and donned his Basque beret. The major-general said, "I don't believe you, sir."

"You must please yourself, General," said Ex-lieutenant Enderby. And, with a general salute, he left.

"He's a liar," said the major-general. "I always knew he wasn't to be trusted. I don't believe he's a poet, either. A very shifty look about him this morning."

"I read about him in the public library," said the salami-mottled man. "There was a photograph, too. It was an article, and it seemed to think quite a lot of him."

"What is he? Where does he come from?" asked another.

"He keeps himself very much to himself," said the mottled man and, just in time, he snuffed up a perilous dewdrop.

"He's a liar, anyway," said the major-general. "I shall look up the Army List this afternoon."

He never did. A motorist, irritable and jumpy with a seasonal hangover, knocked him down as he was crossing Nollekens Avenue. Long before spring, the major-general was promoted to glory.

4

Out in the gull-clawed air, New-Year blue, the tide crawling creamily in, Enderby felt better. In this sharp light there was no room for ghosts. But the imagined visitation had acted as an injunction to honour the past before looking, as at every year's beginning, to the future.

Enderby first thought of his mother, dead at his birth, of whom there had seemed to be no record.