The Complete Enderby (15 page)

‘Who are you from?’ asked Enderby sharply.

‘From?’ repeated the man. ‘From nobody except me. Me being the name of Walpole. And coming to see you on a question of poetry. It’s cold here in the hall,’ he said. Enderby led the way into the flat.

Walpole sniffed the warm dry air, the lingering sour stew-smell, the raised dust, and then noticed Enderby’s packed bags. ‘Leaving, eh?’ he said. ‘Well, I only just got you in time, didn’t I?’

‘I’ve got to catch a train,’ said Enderby, ‘any minute now. Would you –?’

‘Oh, I’ll be quick,’ said Walpole, ‘very quick. What I want to say is that I won’t have you writing poetry to my wife.’

Enderby saw rush and then fade a quite unreasonable possibility. Then he smiled and said, ‘I don’t write poetry to anybody’s wife.’

Walpole drew from his raincoat pocket a carefully folded and smoothed sheaf of sheets. ‘This poetry,’ he said. ‘Look at it carefully and then tell me whether or not you wrote it.’

Enderby looked at it quickly. His handwriting. The Thelma poems. ‘I wrote these, yes,’ he said, ‘but not on my own behalf. I wrote them at the request of another man. I suppose you could call him a client, really. You see, poetry is my profession.’

‘If it’s a profession,’ said Walpole in all seriousness, ‘does it have what you might call rules of professional etty kwett? More important than that, in a way of speaking, does it have a union?’

Enderby suddenly saw that he had been made a party to a proposed bed-breach. He said that he saw, ignoring Walpole’s questions, saying, ‘I see, I see. I’m really very sorry about all this. I knew nothing about it. I’m even more innocent than Arry. It just never crossed my mind – and I take it that it never crossed Arry’s – that Thelma was a married woman.’

‘Mrs Walpole,’ said Walpole tautologically, ‘is my wife. Thelma may or may not be her name, all according to whether she is on duty or not. At the moment she is not on duty. And this question of
Harry’
– he stressed the aitch pedantically – ‘is a question that brings you in as a hypocrite and a liar, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ Walpole held up his hand as if taking the oath. ‘I make use of those terms,’ he said, ‘out of reference to the conventionalities you yourself, as a boor Joyce, probably uphold. To me, in one manner of speaking, they have no proper relevance, being relics of boor Joyce morality.’

‘I,’ said Enderby warmly, ‘object very strongly to being called a hypocrite and a liar, especially in my own house.’

‘Clear your mind of cant,’ said Walpole, whose reading was evidently wide. He straddled comfortably, raincoat-tails spread, in front of the electric fire. ‘You are just leaving this place which is not a house and not, I presume, your property, and, moreover, what difference should it make to the effect of certain words on the individual brain whether those words are spoke in a church or in a lavatory, if you’ll pardon the term, or, as it might be, here?’ He made the knees-bend gesture of freeing a trouser-seat stuck in a rump-cleft.

The mention of church and lavatory went straight to Enderby’s heart, also the invocation of logic. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘In what way am I a hypocrite and a liar?’

‘A fair question,’ admitted Walpole. ‘You are a hypocrite and a liar’ – he pointed a
j’accuse
finger with forensic suddenness – ‘because you hid your own desires under another man’s cloak. Ah, yes. I have spoke to this man Harry. He admits to having sent up to Mrs Walpole plates of stewed tripe and, on one occasion, eels – both dishes to which she is not partial – but it was clear that that was in the way of colleagual friendliness, them both working in the same establishment. Both are workers, even though the place of their work is boor Joyce. Can you say the same for yourself?’

‘Yes,’ said Enderby, ‘no.’

‘Well, then,’ continued Walpole, ‘I have it on the word of Harry, who is a worker, that he had no adulterating intention in mind. To him it came as a shock, and I was there and I saw the shock
as
it came, that another man should be sending poetry to a married woman and signing it with another man’s name, the name of a man who, still living in a capitalist society, is not in the same position to hit back as what
you
are.’ Again the accusatory finger darted out like a chameleon’s tongue.

‘Why,’ said stunned Enderby, aghast at such treachery on Arry’s part, ‘should not
he
be the liar and hypocrite? Why should you not believe me? Damn it all, I’ve only seen this woman once, and that was only to order a single whisky.’

‘Single or double makes no difference,’ said Walpole sagely. ‘And there have been occasions when men, especially poets, have only seen a woman once (and I will thank you not to use that term in connexion with Mrs Walpole) or even not at all, and yet they have written reams and reams of poetry to her. There was the Italian poet who you may have heard of who wrote about Hell, and there again it was a married woman. He wrote about Hell, Mr Enderby, and not what you wrote in those shameful verses you have there and I would trouble you to hand back. There you have wrote about buttocks and breasts, which is not decent. I spent some time reading those poems, putting aside my other reading work to do so.’ Enderby now detected, surfacing from the thin starved East Midland accent, the stronger tones of Anglo-Welsh. ‘Indecencies,’ said Walpole, ‘that any man using to a married woman should be heartily ashamed of and should fear a judgement for.’

‘This is absurd,’ said Enderby. ‘This is bloody nonsense. I wrote those poems at Arry’s request. I wrote them in exchange for the loan of a suit and a few gifts of chicken and turkey carcasses. Does that not sound reasonable?’

‘No,’ said Walpole reasonably. ‘It does not. You wrote these poems. You wrote of breasts and buttocks and even navels in connection with Mrs Walpole and nobody else. And there the sin lies.’

‘But damn it,’ said angry Enderby, ‘she’s got them, hasn’t she? She’s the same as any other woman in that respect, isn’t she?’

‘I do not know,’ said Walpole, stilling Enderby’s rage with a choir-conductor’s hand. ‘I am no womanizer. I have had to work. I have had no time for the fripperies and dalliances of poetry. I have had to work. I have had no time for the flippancies and insincerities of women. I have had to work, night after night, after
the
labours of the day, reading and studying Marx and Lenin and the other writers who would lead me to a position to help my fellow-workers. Can you say as much? Where has your poetry led you? To this.’ He swept a hand round Enderby’s dusty living-room. ‘Where have my studies led me?’ He did not answer his own question; Enderby waited, but the question was definitely established as rhetorical.

‘Look,’ said Enderby, ‘I’ve got to catch a train. I’m sorry that this has happened, but you can see it was all a misunderstanding. And you must take my assurance that I’ve had nothing to do socially with Mrs Walpole and very little more professionally. By “professionally”,’ added Enderby carefully, spying a possible misinterpretation, ‘I mean, of course, in connection with her profession as a barmaid.’

‘That,’ said Walpole, shaking his head, ‘is not salaried, it is not a profession. Well,’ he said, ‘the question of a punishment arises. I think, to some extent, that should be a matter to let rest between you and your Maker.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Enderby, too eagerly, with too much relief, ‘I agree.’

‘You agree, do you?’ said Walpole. ‘A more intelligent and more well-read man and who follows political theories would there be tempted to ask a certain simple question. What would that certain simple question be, Comrade Enderby?’

The chill honorific, with its suggestion of brain-washing and salt-mines, made Enderby’s bowels react strongly: they seemed to liquefy; at the same time a solid blast prepared itself for utterance. Nevertheless he said bravely, ‘People who accept dialectical materialism don’t usually accept the proposition of a divine first cause.’

‘And very well put, too,’ said Walpole, ‘though a bit old-fashioned in its circumloquaciousness. God is what you mean, Comrade Enderby, God, God, God.’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling, his mouth opening and shutting on the divine name as though he were eating it. ‘God, God, God,’ said Walpole. As in response to a summons there was a knock on the flat-door. ‘Ignore it,’ said Walpole sharply. ‘Here we have important things on hand and not the fripperies of visitors. I have done it,’ said Walpole, with sudden craftiness.
‘I
have achieved it,’ he said more softly, his eyes shining with bright dementedness. ‘I have discovered the sin thesis.’ The knock came again. ‘Ignore it,’ said Walpole. ‘Now then, Comrade Enderby, you should now by rights ask the question “What sin thesis?” Go on,’ he said, with clenched fierceness, ‘
ask it
.’

‘Why aren’t you at work?’ asked Enderby. Again the knock.

‘Because,’ said Walpole, ‘today is Saturday. Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The seventh day is the Lord thy God’s. The sixth day is for football and spreading the word and punishing and suchlike. Go on.
Ask it
.’

‘What sin thesis?’ asked Enderby.

‘A sin thesis of
everything
,’ said Walpole. ‘The others left God out, but I put Him in. I found a place for Him in the universe.’

‘What place?’ asked Enderby, fascinated despite his bowels, his fear, the knock at the door.

‘What place could it be,’ said Walpole, ‘except
His own place
? God’s place is God’s place, and you can’t say fairer than that. Now,’ he said, ‘on your knees, Comrade Enderby. We’re going to pray together to this same God, and you’re going to ask for forgiveness for all sins of fornication.’ The knock came again, louder. ‘
QUIET
,’ bawled Walpole.

‘I won’t pray,’ said Enderby. ‘I’ve committed no fornication.’

‘Who hasn’t,’ said Walpole, ‘in his heart?’ And, like Enderby’s boyhood picture of the Saviour, he pointed to his own. ‘On your knees,’ he said, ‘and I shall pray with you.’

‘No,’ said Enderby. ‘I don’t accept the same God as you. I’m a Catholic.’

‘All the more reason,’ said Walpole. ‘
THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD, COMRADE
!’ he suddenly bawled. ‘On your knees and pray and you will be let off by me, if not by the Comrade Almighty. If you don’t pray I shall be the Hound of Heaven and get some of the lads from the works on the job, and bloody quick, too, even if you do think you’re going off this morning.
ON YOUR KNEES
! he ordered.

Enderby sighed and obeyed. His knees were stiff. Walpole knelt with the stage-fall ease of more practice. He did not close his eyes; he kept them full on Enderby. Enderby faced the electric fire’s tabernacular gold. Walpole prayed:

‘Comrade God, forgive the boor Joyce transgressions of Comrade Enderby here, who has been led astray by the lusts of his own body into writing phonographic poetry to Mrs Walpole, who You know, though she is stiff-necked and not one of Thy chosen. Let Your light shine upon him to make him a decent worker and good member of his union, when, him being a poet, such shall be formed. Better still, make him stop writing filthy poetry altogether and take up some decent trade at correct union rates and live in Godly righteousness, if that be Thy holy will, with some decent woman of Thy choosing in the state of holy matrimony, till such time as this boor Joyce institution is replaced by something better and more in keeping with what the proletariat will require.’ Enderby now saw Walpole smile winningly at some apparition to his left, behind Enderby, at about picture-rail level. Enderby, presuming that this was God, felt no new fear. ‘Just a tick,’ said Walpole. ‘Marvellous what prayer can do, innit? A bloody miracle, that’s what it is. To finish up with, then,’ he prayed, eyes now back on Enderby, ‘stop this Thy comrade servant womanizing and messing about and bring him back to Your holy ways in the service of the classless society which Thou hast promisedest in the fullness of the workers’ time. Thank you, Comrade God,’ he said finally. ‘Amen.’

Enderby, with much groaning and a posterior blast or two, got creaking to his feet. At that moment the electric fire, like some Zoroastrian deity now, having been prayed at, done with, went out. Enderby, standing, turned, blowing, and saw Mrs Bainbridge. She dangled Enderby’s key in explanation of her entrance without Enderby’s more direct agency, saying, ‘Well, I never in all my life knew a man more capable of surprises.’ She was a dream of winter bourgeois elegance: little black town suit with tiny white jabot of lace-froth; pencil skirt; three-quarter-length coat with lynx collar; long green gloves of suède; suède shoes of dull green; two shades of green in her leafy velvet hat: slim, clean, lithe-looking, delicately painted. Walpole, Marx-man of God, was clearly entranced. He handed her a small yellow throwaway poster and then, as a second thought, gave one to Enderby as well. ‘
GOD OR CAPITALISM
?’ it read. ‘You Can’t Have Both. H. Walpole will speak on this
VITAL
topic at the Lord Geldon Memorial Hall, Thursday, February 11th. All Welcome.’

‘You come to that, lady,’ said Walpole, ‘and bring him along. There’s good in him if only we can get at it, as you yourself will know well enough. Work on him hard, make him a decent man and stop him sending poetry to women, that’s your job, I would say, and you look to me capable of tackling it.’

‘Poetry to women?’ said Vesta Bainbridge. ‘He makes a habit of that, does he?’ She gave Enderby a hard-soft green womanly look, holding her large shovel handbag in front of her, legs, as in a model pose, slightly astride.