The Gropes by Tom Sharpe Read Free Book Online Page A

stuff.
    ‘Yes,’ said Horace. ‘I know all right.’
    ‘Not the pox, is it?’ Albert enquired. His mind ran along sordid lines.
    ‘The pox?’ said Horace whose mind didn’t.
    ‘Yeah, you know. The old tertiary. Syph or gonorrhoea.’
    ‘Certainly not,’ said Horace indignantly, momentarily startled out of his discomfort. ‘What the hell do you think I am?’
    ‘All right, all right. No need to get toffee-nosed about it. Only asking. Could happen to anyone.’
    ‘Well, it couldn’t happen to me,’ said Horace, and subsided onto the pillow only slightly mollified.
    Albert Ponson’s next remark did him no good at all.
    ‘All I’m saying is you look like you ought to book in with a good undertaker. I’ve seen blokes look better when they’ve turned off the life-support machine.’
    Horace stared at him venomously.
    ‘Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘You’re a great comfort, you are. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d be grateful if you’d go back downstairs and let me get some rest.’
    But Albert wasn’t to be budged so easily.
    ‘Can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Vera wants to know what’s been going on, like. You’re getting up early and coming home late stinking of booze – you got a piece on the side or something?’
    ‘A piece? What do you mean by that?’
    ‘A bird, a lover. You know, a floozy.’
    ‘Well, you can go down and tell her I haven’t,’ said Horace. ‘It’s nothing like that.’
    Albert looked at him doubtfully.
    ‘All right, I’ll believe you, though millions wouldn’t. It’s not the big C, is it?’
    ‘No, it isn’t. It isn’t anything physical. It’s much worse than that.’
    He stopped. Albert Ponson wasn’t the sort of person he wanted to confide in. When it came to understanding the problems of having a son like Esmond lurking around the place and looking exactly like you and behaving exactly like you, then Albert would be no help at all. A man who went around giving drums to tone-deaf nephews had to be wholly lacking in sensibility.
    On the other hand, Horace couldn’t bring himself to explain his feelings to Vera. Her combination of devotion to Esmond and horrible sentimentality, which Horace had come to recognise as another form of sadism, or at least violence, made his confession impossible. Anything might be better than the appalling scene that would result from even the hint that Horace couldn’t stand the sight of his son. Albert was sufficiently cowed by his sister to understand that. Horace came to a sudden decision.
    ‘It’s Esmond. That’s what’s the matter with me. He’s doing terrible things to my psyche.’
    Albert Ponson tried to come to grips with the statement. Being in the pre-used car business he knew about psychology, but psyche was a new one to him.
    ‘You mean with those drums? Yeah, well, Vera told me about that and all, but –’
    ‘Not the drums,’ said Horace. ‘And not the piano practice either. It’s him …’ He sighed miserably. ‘You don’t have a family so you wouldn’t know.’
    ‘No, Belinda and me haven’t been blessed with kids,’ Albert said stiffly. It was evidently a sore point.
    ‘Blessed? Blessed? You don’t know how lucky you are.’
    ‘I wouldn’t put it like that myself. I mean, we’ve been trying for years. Something has to be wrong with Belinda’s insides because it sure as hell isn’t me … Anyway, what’s wrong with Esmond? Seems a fine strapping lad to me.’
    Horace momentarily forgot his hangover. It had never occurred to him that anyone could regard Esmond as a fine strapping anything, and that ‘lad’ was definitely suspicious.
    ‘You’re lying,’ he said. ‘Fine he isn’t, and strapping he’s certainly not. He’s the spitting image of me at his age and that’s not something I’d wish on my own worst enemy. I can’t stand him and never want to have to look at his pathetic face again.’
    Albert Ponson stared at Horace and tried to come to terms with this extraordinary