The Complete Enderby (12 page)

I have raised and poised a fiddle

Which, will you lend it ears,

Will utter music’s model:

The music of the spheres.

By God, I think not Purcell

Nor Arne could match my airs.

Perfect beyond rehearsal

My music of the spheres.

Not that its virtue’s vastness –

The terror of drift of stars.

For subtlety and softness

My music of the spheres.

The spheres that feed its working,

Their melody swells and soars

On thinking of your marking

My music of the spheres.

This musing and this fear’s

Work of your maiden years.

Why shut longer your ears?

Look, how the live earth flowers!

The land speaks my intent:

Bear me accompaniment.

That, addressed to a supposed virgin, was manifestly absurd for Thelma. And was not that spherical imagery perhaps too gross for a barmaid brought up, one presumed, respectably? Dirty jokes in the bar were one thing, but dirty literature, even the most factitious
suggestion
of its presence, was another. His stomach, still sore, attested this.

Seventeen. The date of composition was at the foot of the manuscript. To whom had he written that? He brooded, scratching. To nobody, he decided glumly. But had he not dreamed, at that romantic age, of some willow-wand creature who, though of infinite refinement and smelling sweet as May, would not be offended by this all too decipherable symbolism of importunacy? He had shaped this girl in his heart, as mystics shape God, in terms of what she should not be, namely his stepmother; then her positive image had arisen by dint of long brooding on her negative attributes. She had come in a dream then, slender and laughing and, above all,
clean. Not
a widow: he refused to allow this re-issue of the image to take on the colours and scents of Mrs Bainbridge.

He sighed, then began, very deliberately and coldly, as a pure poetic exercise, to write a very erotic poem from Arry to Thelma, full of breasts and thighs and panting longing. When he had finished he set it aside to cool, then he went on with his building of the labyrinth, home of the Pet Beast.

This was the order of a usual Enderby day: he would rise at dawn or just after, winter and summer alike; he would breakfast, defecate, and then work, sometimes beginning his work while actually defecating; at ten-fifteen he would shave and prepare to go out, sometimes with a shopping-reticule; at ten-thirty he would leave the flat, walk seawards, buy a loaf, feed the gulls; immediately after that he would take his morning whisky with the aged and dying or, if Arry were not at work, with Arry in the Freemason’s Arms; sometimes he would visit Arry in his kitchens, and Arry would give him scraps for his larder – a turkey-carcass, a few slices of fat pork, a bit of scrag-end for Sunday’s meal; Enderby would then do such shopping as was needed – a loaf for himself, potatoes, ten cigarettes, pickles, a small meat-pie, a fourpenny custard; back home he would prepare his meal, or, if something cold was left over from the day before, eat at once, working while he ate; he would then
loll
somnolent in a chair or even, rolling dressed into bed, deliberately sleep. Then back to the lavatory for the last long stint of the day; after that the remains of his earlier meal, or bread with some cheap relish; stepmother’s tea as a nightcap; bed. A way of life which harmed no one. Sometimes the caprices of the Muse would disrupt this pattern by hurling poems – fragmentary or fully-formed – at Enderby; then, in mid-whisky, in bed, cooking, toiling at the structures of non-lyrical works, he would have to write down at once to her hysterical or coldly vatic or telegraphic dictation. He respected his Muse but was frightened of her whims: she could be playful kitten or tiger fully-clawed, finger-sucking idiot child or haughty goddess in Regency ball-gown; her moods, like her visits, were unpredictable. More predictable were his other visitants – dyspepsia in its various forms, wind, hiccoughs. Between dispensations of celestial and visceral afflation he lived his quiet days, a solitary man, harmless. Letters and visitors rarely disturbed his door, news from the dangerous world never intruded. His dividends and tiny royalties were paid straight into the bank; the bank he visited once a month only, humbly waiting with his cash cheque made out neatly for twenty-odd pounds behind bull-necked publicans and ascetic-faced butchers who paid in, inexplicably, dull mounds of copper that took long to count. He envied nobody except the great proved dead.

His routine, already disturbed by the disastrous London trip, was further disturbed by a consequence of that trip, namely the arrival of a big parcel. The address-panel had
Fem
printed on it and the picture of a well-groomed though moronic-faced young woman, evidently a typical
Fem
-reader. Enderby, who had been deep in his poem, received the parcel trouserless and open-mouthed, then ran into the living-room with a thudding heart to open it up. There was a contract for him to sign and a brief letter from Mrs Bainbridge telling him that here was a contract to sign and here were copies of past issues of
Fem
. She wrote in thick long-strokes, was formal and business-like, but had allowed her scent to inspissate, most delicately, the writing-paper. Enderby had little nose, but he caught her very feminine image very clearly. So.

Enderby knew little of magazines. As a boy he had read
Film Fun
and
Funny Wonder
. As a young man he had known poetry
periodicals
and waspish left-wing week-end reviews. In the Army he had seen such things as the troops read. In professional waiting-rooms he had sat stony-faced over
Punch
. He was aware of a post-war rash of cheap journals and wondered at their range of specialization and at the number of cults they seemed to serve. There were two or three, he knew, wholly devoted to some dead filmstar who had become a sort of corn-god; he had seen others which, severally, glorified young living louts with guitars – presumably what Mrs Bainbridge had called pop-singers. There was evidently a strong religious hunger among young girls which these poor simulacra and their press-priests alone seemed available to feed. There was also, among these same young girls, money crying to be spent, for it seemed that in this age of specialists only the unskilled and witless were at a premuim. But the dreaming wives had money also.
Fem
fought screaming for their sixpences, trying to elbow out
Womanly
, kick
Lovely
in the teeth, rip the corsets off
Wifey
and tear out the hair of
Blondie
by its black roots.

He sat down eagerly to read
Fem
. Time passed, lost for ever, never to be redeemed, as he snorted adenoidally over its contents. The cover had a girl’s face, generically and boringly lovely. The cover of each issue, he noted, flicking through the pile on his knees, had a young woman’s face, probably always the same one, though he could not be certain. The covers of magazines for men, he fancied, preferred to exploit woman from the neck down. A fair division. Enderby read readers’ letters: somebody’s little girl asked if God lived in an aeroplane; how to turn an old jam-jar into an elegant vase by using four different shades of nail-varnish (total cost 8
s
. 6
d
.); that sweet grateful smile was all the reward she could ask for her act of charity; the budgerigar of Mrs F. (Rotherham) could say ‘Dolly loves Mummy’; how stupid men could be, couldn’t they, wanting to keep potatoes in a kitchen-drawer! (Enderby read this gravely puzzled: why was that stupid?) There was a serial story called ‘For Ever and a Day’, illustrated opulently with a ravishing but doubtful bride. A five-page article demonstrated that it did not cost
very
much more to make your own disc-cabinet (or to get husband or boyfriend to make it) than to buy it in a shop. There were short stories called ‘Heart Afire’, ‘Why Did You Leave Me?’, ‘I Thee Wed’, ‘Hello, Romance’, mostly garnished with pictures of
couples
glued together, upright. A vital-warming religious column by a popular young pop-singing parson was followed by a feature on ‘Our Queen’s Dogs’. There was a chilling clinical chat on tumours, there were articles on stiletto heels, marmalade-making, being a radiant bride. Enderby sat absorbed for a long time in a Special Cookery Supplement, seeing at last a means of improving his diet (he would try Orange Goody tomorrow). He was shocked and touched by letters sent to Millicent Goodheart, a blue-haired lady with sharp red talons and a gentle smile: ‘He said it was artificial respiration, but now I find I am to have his child’; ‘I have only been married three months but I have fallen in love with my husband’s father’. Enderby nodded approvingly at the good sense of the replies. She should not have done it; I’m terribly sorry for you, my dear, but you must remember marriage is for keeps.

Dusk fell while he was still reading, with much more reading still to do. He stole to the light-switch, feeling guilty, excusing himself for this long soaking: after all, he was going to write for them, he had to know their tastes. His belly growled its neglect. Enderby had nothing in the flat except bread, jam, pickles; he must go out and buy something. He rather fancied a dish concocted by Gillian Frobisher, Head of
Fem’
s Cookery Department: Spaghetti Fromaggio Surprise.

Enderby went out with his shopping-net and returned with a pound of spaghetti, a quarter of cheese, and a large garlic for fourpence. (The recipe gave the alternative of two large onions, but Enderby had an obscure repugnance to entering a green-grocer’s just to ask for two onions; garlic was a different matter, being exotic.) Panting with excitement, he took the relevant issue of
Fem
into the kitchen and followed the instructions slavishly. ‘Enough for four’, he read. He was but one man alone, himself, he, hungry Enderby. He must divide everything, then, by four. He took the pound of spaghetti and broke the brittle sticks into small pieces. He took his frying pan (pity that the recipe asked for a large deep one; still, never mind) and poured one tablespoonful of olive oil. (He had about a cupful of this in his cupboard, saved from sardine tins.) He threw in about a quarter of the spaghetti, lit the gas, and cooked it slowly, turning and stirring. He then added two cupfuls of water, remembering that he was to divide by four, so threw some of the water out again. He
turned
, breathing heavily, to
Fem
, while the pan gently simmered. Grated cheese. He grated some with Mrs Meldrum’s nutmeg-grater and threw it into the mixture. Now this question of onion or garlic. ‘Two large onions chopped’, said Gillian Frobisher, or ‘garlic to taste’. Enderby looked at his garlic, stronger, he knew, than onions; perhaps this one would be equivalent to two of those. Should he skin it? No. The goodness was in the skin: potatoes, for instance. He sliced the garlic warpwise, then woofwise, then threw the bits into the simmering pan. And now. A greased dish. He found a cloudy Pyrex on the shelf, and he liberally coated its inside with margarine. He now had to transfer the stuff from the pan into the Pyrex. He had some difficulty in turning it out: it had stuck to the pan for some reason, and he had to gouge vigorously to detach what was willing to be detached. He flopped the mixture into the dish. ‘Top with sour cream’, said Gillian. There was no sour cream, but plenty of sour milk, greenish on top. He crowned the dish with generous curds, then lit the oven. It had to cook to a slow heat therein, about twenty minutes. Groaning, he placed the dish on the oven shelf, kicked the black door shut, wiped one hand on the other. There.

Damn. He had not, he realized, consistently divided by four. Never mind. And perhaps the spaghetti was meant to turn black. He had heard of smart restaurants where things were deliberately burned before one’s eyes, as one sat cool and well-dressed at table. He went back to the electric fire to continue his reading of yet another issue of
Fem
. After gazing transfixed at a soup advertisement showing a cup of cold blood, and an egg advertisement in which a pallid yolk hung over the edge of the fish-slice that lifted it aslant from the pan, ready to flop in pale yellow, Enderby settled to a story called ‘You’re Not My Darling’. This was about an air-hostess who fell in love with the captain of her aircraft, a theme new to Enderby. He gawped on long past Gillian Frobisher’s twenty minutes of cooking time, came to with a hiccoughing start, then drew his Spaghetti Fromaggio Surprise out of the oven. Its name was not inept. He sat down to it, and savoured mingled hues of burnt farinacity and shouting brutal garlic, loud and hot as an acetylene blast; the tone of these hues was a tired tepidity. He had not quite expected this; still presumably Gillian Frobisher knew
what
she was doing. He ate dutifully, with many draughts of cold water. He must learn the tastes of his prospective readers.

Enderby awoke in the middle of the night, jerked with sergeant’s roughness out of an odd dream about pokers. The pain was ghastly though it did not feel dangerous. Enderby’s head was clear enough as he crawled out; he even remembered the name of the bloody woman. Gillian Frobisher. There was a photograph of her in one of the Cookery Supplements: a crisp handsome Jewish girl with an impossibly clean frying-pan. If he ever got hold of her, Enderby vowed, he would dirty that frying-pan and no mistake. He had been taken advantage of.