The Complete Enderby (41 page)

‘Of course it’s mine. Give me some from that bottle.’ And she glugged some out for him gladly, handmaiden to a poet. ‘That’s from my early volume,
Fish and Heroes
. Which you haven’t read. Which nobody’s read. But, by God,’ said Enderby, ‘I’ll show them all. I’m not finished yet, not by a long chalk.’

‘That’s right. Don’t you think you’d be more comfortable with your shoes off? Don’t bother – leave it to me.’ Enderby closed his eyes. ‘And your jacket too?’ Enderby soon lay on one half of the bed in shirt and trousers; she had had his socks off too and also his tie, which was in the hotel colours of red, white, and blue. The hot wind was still there, but he felt cooler. She lay next to him. They had a cigarette apiece.

‘Associations,’ Enderby found himself saying. ‘Mind you, everybody’s done it, from that Spanish priest right up to Albert Camus, with Kierkegaard somewhere in the middle.’

‘Who’s Kierk-whatever-it-is?’

‘This philosopher who made out it was really like God and the soul. Don Juan using women and God using man. Anyway, this is his town. And I was going to write a poetic drama about Don Juan who bribed women to pretend that he’d done it to them because really he couldn’t do it, not with anybody. And then poetic drama went out of fashion.’ His toenails, he decided, could really do with cutting. The big toenails, however, would have to be attacked with a chisel or something. Very hard. He had not changed all that much, after all. A bath, after all, was a tank for poetic drafts. He felt a new poem twitching inside him like a sneeze. A poem about a statue. He looked rather warmly on Miss Boland.
The final kiss and final
– if only he could get that one finished first.

‘And who was this barber of Seville?’

‘Oh, a Frenchman invented that one, and there’s a French newspaper named after him. A sort of general factotum, getting things for people and so on.’ Enderby nodded off.

‘Wake up.’ She was quite rough with him; that would be the Fundador. ‘You could have a play in which this barber was really Don Juan, and he did horrible things with his razor. In revenge, you know.’

‘What do you mean? What revenge?’

‘I said nothing about revenge. You dropped off again. Wake up! I don’t see why the moon couldn’t be a proper
scientific
subject for a poem instead of what it is for most poets – you know, a sort of lamp, or a what-do-you-call-it aphrodisiac like the sun in your poem. Then you could have as many nice long words as you wanted. Apogee and perigee and the sidereal day and ectocraters and the ejecta hypothesis.’

‘What did you say about ejectors?’

She hadn’t heard him. Or perhaps he’d said nothing. ‘And the months,’ she was now saying. ‘Synodic and nodical and sidereal and anomalistic. And isostasy. And grabens and horsts. And the lunar maria, not seas at all but huge plains of lava covered in dust. Your body is a horst and mine a graben, because horst is the opposite of graben. Come on, let’s get out of here and wander the streets of Seville as we are, in our night clothes I mean. But your night clothes are the altogether, aren’t they? Still, it’s a lovely night though the moon’s setting now. Feel that warm wind on your flesh?’ That was not true about the moon setting. When they were walking down the
calle
outside the hotel, Enderby totally bare, his little bags aswing, the moon was full and huge and very near. It was so near that an odour came off it – like the odour of cachous from old evening bags, of yellowing dance-programmes, of fox-fur long lain in mothballs. Miss Boland said: ‘Mare Tranquillitatis. Fracastorius. Hipparchus. Mare Nectaris.’ She had brought the moon right down to the Seville housetops so that she could go burrowing into its maria. She disappeared temporarily into one of those, and then her head, its mousy hair become golden Berenice’s and flying about, popped through the northern polar membrane. She seemed to be agitating this hollow moon from the inside, impelling it towards
Enderby
. He ran from her and it down the
calle
, back into the hotel. The old hall-porter yawned out of his
hidalgo
lantern jaws at Enderby’s twinkling nakedness. Enderby panted up the stairs, once getting his toe caught in a carpet-hole, then cursing as a tack lodged in his calloused left heel. He found his room blindly and fell flat on the bed, desperate for air. There was not much coming from the open window. What was coming in by that window was the moon, much shrunken but evidently of considerable mass, for the window-frame creaked, four unwilling tangents to the straining globe, bits of lunar substance flaking off like plaster at the four points of engagement. Miss Boland’s head now protruded at a pole which had become a navel, her hair still flying in fire. Enderby was stuck to that bed. With one lunge she and the moon were on him.

‘No,’ he grunted, waking up. ‘No, you can’t do that, it isn’t right.’ But she and her heavy lunar body held him down. That left heel was fluked by one of her toenails; the staircarpet-hole turned out to be a minute gap between the fabric of her dressing-gown and its lacy border. There was no real nakedness, then: only exposure, things riding up and pulled down.

‘Show me then, show me what’s right.
You
do it.’

He rolled her off, so that she lay expectant on her back now and with desperate agility he trampolined his buttocks away from the punished mattress. This was springier than he had thought, for he found himself on his feet looking sternly down at her. ‘If,’ he said, ‘you want that sort of a holiday there’ll be plenty to provide it. Gigolos and what-not. Little dark-skinned boys and so on. Why pick on me?’

She started to whimper. ‘I thought we were going to be friends. You’re unnatural, that’s what you are.’

‘I’m
not
unnatural. Just very very tired. It’s been a terrible day.’

‘Yes.’ She wrapped her dressing-gown round her body and looked up at him, hard but tearfully. ‘Yes, I’m sure it has. There’s something not quite right about you. You’ve got things on your mind. You’ve done something you shouldn’t have done. You’ve got away in a hurry from something or other, I can tell that.’

This wouldn’t do at all. ‘Darling,’ creaked Enderby, holding out his arms and advancing, smirking.

‘You can’t get round me that way.’

‘Darling.’ Enderby frowned now, but with his arms still out.

‘Oh, take your non-pyjamas out of your non-suitcase and get to bed after your terrible terrible day. There’s something very fishy about you,’ said Miss Boland. And she started to get up from the bed.

Enderby advanced and pushed her back again somewhat roughly, saying: ‘You’re right. I
have
run away. From her. From that woman. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I got out. Just like that. She was horrible to me.’ A back cinder in Enderby’s raked-out brain spurted up an instant to ask what was truth and niggle a bit about situation contexts and so on. Enderby deferred to it and made an emendation: ‘I ran away.’

‘What woman? Which woman?’ Woman’s curiosity had dried her tears.

‘It was never really a marriage. Oh, let me get to bed. Make room there. I’m so desperately tired.’

‘Tell me all about it first. I want to know what happened. Come on, wake up. Have some more of this brandy stuff here.’

‘No no no no. Tell you in the morning.’ He was flat on his back again, ready to drop off. Desperately.

‘I want to know.’ She jerked him roughly as he had pushed her. ‘Whose fault was it? Why was it never really a marriage? Oh,
do come on
.’

‘Hex,’ said Enderby
in extremis
. And then he was merrily driving the rear car of the three, a red sports job, and arms waving jollily from the Mercedes in front. It was a long way to this roadhouse-type pub they were all going to, but they were all well tanked-up already though the men drove with steely concentration and insolent speed. The girls were awfully pretty and full of fun. Brenda had red hair and Lucy was dark and small and Bunty was pleasantly plump and wore a turquoise-coloured twin-set. Enderby had a college scarf flying from his neck and a pipe clenched in his strong white smiling teeth. ‘You wait, Bunty old girl,’ he gritted indistinctly. ‘You’ll get what’s coming to you.’ The girls yelled with mirth. Urged on by them hilariously, he fed ever greater speed with his highly-polished toecap to the growling road-eating red job, and he passed with ease the other two. Waves of mock rage and mock
contempt
, laughter on the spring English wind. And so he got to the pub first. It was a nice little pub with a bald smiling barman presiding in a cocktail bar smelling of furniture polish. He wore a white bum-freezer with claret lapels. Enderby ordered for everybody, telling the barman, called Jack, to put a wiggle on so that the drinks could be all lined up and waiting when the laggards arrived. Bitter in tankards, gin and things, and advocaat for Bunty. ‘That’ll make you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, old girl,’ winked Enderby. And then the watery signal from within. As Frank and Nigel and Betty and Ethel and the others roared into the bar, Enderby at once had to say: ‘Sorry all. Got to see a man about a dog.’ Bunty giggled: ‘Wet your boots, you mean.’ At once the urgency roared in his bladder, drowning the roaring of his pals, but he did not run to the gents: he walked confidently, though he had never been in this pub before. But, seeing it at the end of the corridor, he had to run. Damn, he would only just make it.

He would only just make it. He jumped out of bed and made for the toilet, fumbling cursing for the light-switch. Pounding his stream out, he grumbled at the prodigality of dreams, which could go to all this trouble – characters, décor, and all, even an advertisement for a beer (Jason’s Golden Fleece) which didn’t exist – just so that he would get out of bed and micturate in the proper place. He pulled the chain, went back to bed, and saw, by the bathroom light he had not bothered to put out, that there was a woman lying in it. He remembered roughly who it was, that lunar woman he’d been flying with (why flying?) and also that this was some foreign town, and then the whole lot came back. He was somewhat frightened that he wasn’t as frightened as he should be.

‘What, eh, who?’ she said. And then: ‘Oh. I must have dropped off. Come on, get in. It’s a bit chilly now.’

‘What time is it?’ Enderby wondered. His wrist-watch had stopped, he noticed, squinting in the light from the bathroom. Somewhere outside a big bell banged a single stroke. ‘That’s a lot of help,’ said Enderby. Funny, he hadn’t noticed that bell before. They must be near a cathedral or town hall or something. Seville, that was where they were. Don Juan’s town. A strange woman in bed.

‘So,’ she said. ‘Her name was Bunty, was it? And she let you
down
. Never mind, everybody gets let down sometime or other. I got let down by Toby. And that was a silly name, too.’

‘We were in this car, you see. I was driving.’

‘Come back to bed.
I
won’t let you down. Come and cuddle up a bit. It’s chilly. There aren’t many clothes on the bed.’

It was quite pleasant cuddling up.
I’ve been so cold at night
. Who was it who had said that? That blasted Vesta, bloody evil woman. ‘Bloody evil woman,’ muttered Enderby.

‘Yes, yes, but it’s all over now. You’re a bit wet.’

‘Sorry,’ Enderby said. ‘Careless of me.’ He wiped himself with the sheet. ‘I wonder what the time is.’

‘Why? Why are you so eager to know what the time is? Do you want to be up and about so soon? A night in Seville. We both ought to have something to remember about a night in Seville.’

‘They lit the sun,’ said Enderby, ‘and then their day began.’

‘What do you mean? Why did you say that?’

‘It just came to me. Out of the blue.’ It seemed as though rhymes were going to start lining up. Began, plan, man, scan, ban. But this other thing had to be done now. She was not a bit like that blasted Vesta, spare-fleshed in bed so that she could be elegant out of it. There was plenty to get hold of here. He saw one of his bar-customers leering, saying that. Very vulgar. Enderby started to summon up old memories of what to do (it had been a long time). The Don himself seemed to hover over the bed, picking his teeth for some reason, nodding, pointing. Moderately satisfied, he flew off on an insubstantial hell-horse and, not far from the hotel, waved a greeting with a doffed insolent feathered
sombrero
at a statue of a man.

‘They hoisted up a statue of a man,’ mumbled Enderby.

‘Yes, yes, darling, I love you too.’

Enderby now gently, shyly, and with some blushing, began to insinuate, that is to say squashily attempt to insert, that is to say. A long time. And now. Quite pleasant, really. He paused after five. And again. Pentameters. And now came an ejaculation of words.

What prodigies that eye of light revealed!

What dusty parchment statutes they repealed,

Pulling up blinds and lifting every

A sonnet, a sonnet, one for a new set of
Revolutionary Sonnets
, the first of which was the one that bloody Wapenshaw had raged at. The words began to flood. He drew the thing out, excited.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get this thing down. I’ve got to get some paper. A sonnet, that’s what it is.’ There was, he thought, a hanging bulby switch-thing over the bed-head. He felt for it, trembling. Seville’s velvet night was jeered out by a sudden coming of light. She was incredulous. She lay there with her mouth open, shocked and staring. ‘I’ll just get it down on paper,’ promised Enderby, ‘and then back on the job again. What I mean is –’ He was out of bed, searching. Barman’s pencil in his jacket-pocket. Paper? Damn. He dragged open drawers, looking for that white lining-stuff. It was all old Spanish newspaper, bull-fighters or something. Damn.