The Complete Enderby (13 page)

Bicarb shattered the pain and sent its fragments flying on the wind. Enderby sat down in his living-room and switched on the electric fire. It was, said his watch, three-ten. A ghastly hour. There was noise upstairs, a woman’s voice shouting as through a muslin strainer, ‘Get out, do you hear? Get out, you pig.’ Then the rumble of a man’s voice and the tread of heavy shoes. Jack was, apparently, back. Soon the woman’s abuse grew fainter and was curiously articulated, as though from the side of the mouth, in brief bursts. Later the springs began to bounce. Enderby picked up the contract from the sofa, wondering whether he ought to sign or not. To produce a block of rhymed clichés weekly, sententious vapourings about the stars so far away, the feel of chubby baby arms round mummy’s neck, being kind to those in trouble – was not this prostitution? The poems he was writing to Thelma from Arry were not that, whatever they were. Where they were not straight-forwardly sensual they were gently ironical: he needn’t be ashamed of them. But this proposal of Mrs Bainbridge – was it not the fiend luring him away from proper art with the chink of guineas that, anyway, would be all for Mrs Meldrum? Enderby walked into the bathroom to survey all the tumbled years’ work in the bath. He had moved, over the last decade and a half, from town to town and flat to flat, but he had thought that here he could settle it. It was not good to change one’s workshop in the
middle
of a major creation. The mood altered under the subtle influence of a new place, the continuity was broken. And then the thought of packing all this bathful into suitcases – mice, breadcrusts and all. One lost things, one was tempted to throw things away. But Enderby, standing in bare feet, thinking hard, wondered whether perhaps he ought to make the sacrifice, move on up or down the coast, away from Mrs Meldrum and – a much more dangerous person, the widow to be enjoyed in the meadow – Mrs Bainbridge, coolly elegant, self-confessed admirer of his poems.

He saw that to some extent he was rationalizing his fear of a relationship with a woman, the possibility that what was now finishing upstairs might soon start downstairs. And yet a worry that had often nagged him – especially after scurrying away from the verge of other relationships – was that this very desire to remain uncommitted might impair his work. Love of woman had always, traditionally, played a large part in the lives of the poets. Look at Goethe, for instance, who had to have a new love affair before he could begin a new lyric. Enderby, in so far as German culture had played any part in his development, had chosen to be influenced by a much dourer personality – Schopenhauer. Spengler, too, with his promise of the undergoing of evening lands, had had something to say to him. He had needed to invoke both philosophers before writing a poem about sex and other people. He remembered the typical evening of wartime, blackout in the garrison town, horny hands groping for giggling bodies in the dark.

Nymphs and satyrs, come away.

Faunus, laughing from the hill,

Rips the blanket of the day

From the paunch of dirty Will.

Each projector downs its snout,

Truffling the blackened scene,

Till the
Wille’s
lights gush out

Vorstellungen
on the screen.

Doxies blanch to silverwhite;

All their trappings of the sport,

Lax and scattered, in this light

Merge and lock to smooth and taut.

See! The rockets shoot afar!

Ah! The screen was tautest then.

Tragic the parabola

When the sticks reel down again.

That was no romantic attitude to sex. Love, Schopenhauer had seemed to say, was one of the perpetual cinema performances or
Vorstellungen
organized by the evil Will, projectionist as well as manager, and these slack bodies of gum-chewing gigglers were made into stiff shining screens for the projection of what looked like reality, value. But the deflation, the reeling to earth after coitus, was frightful, and one saw the inflated words of desire – so soon after their utterance – for what they really were. The casual images of onanism could not be hurt, could not be lied to.

Enderby went back to the living-room. Heartburn, like labour pains, had started again. There was plenty of bicarbonate solution still in the glass, so, in less than half a minute, Enderby was able to growl it away hollowly:

Grerrrbrogharrrgawwwwwpfffffh.

There was an immediate response from upstairs: a shoe of admonition was banged three times. Enderby looked up to the noise meekly, as to chiding God. It was time that he left. He heard what sounded like, ‘Shut up, Enderby,’ and then the woman’s voice said, ‘Leave him alone. He can’t help it.’ A row of indistinguishable words then began, ending with Jack shouting, ‘Oh, he did, did he? And whose idea was that? False little bitch, aren’t you?’ The sadness, see, after coition. Enderby shook his head sadly and went back to bed. He would give a week’s notice to Mrs Meldrum; he would sign no contract with Mrs Bainbridge. Mrs Meldrum could have her smiling bald bath-taking young man on an expense account; if there was no weekly poem from Enderby it was not likely that the strong-stomached readers of
Fem
would pine away.

That settled it. Morning brought a letter from Vesta Bainbridge:

Dear Mr Enderby,

Well, you do seem to have been beating it up pretty tidily on your visit to London. I have only now managed to get hold of an evening paper of that memorable day which, albeit briefly, makes it reasonably clear that you went out of your way to antagonize a certain knightly patron of your art. I must confess that, in some ways, I admire your independent attitude, though God knows how any poet nowadays can afford that Byronic luxury. Sir George, I hear, is very angry and hurt. What came over you? I just don’t understand, but then I’m only a very ordinary person with no great claim to intellect, and I would never be so presumptuous as to think myself capable of fathoming a poet’s brain. The fact is, and I daresay you’ll hear this from your own publisher fairly soon, that your name smells to heaven with Goodby’s for Good Books, so watch out.

In the circumstances, I think it would be a good plan to print your weekly effusion under or over a pseudonym. This would also give us a chance to prettify the feature with a photograph of some long-haired male model with a quill in his hand and his dreamy eyes up to heaven – you know what I mean:
The Poet
: what every housewife thinks a poet ought to look like. Can you suggest a pseudonym? Do sign that contract and return it. I
did
enjoy our tea together.

Yours,
Vesta Bainbridge

Enderby trembled with rage as he crushed the good quality writing-paper. He hurled the letter into the lavatory-pan and then pulled the chain, but the thing was too thick to flush down. He had to pick it out wet and then take it into the kitchen and put it in an old cardboard rubbish-box along with condensed-milk tins, fishbones, potato peelings and tea leaves. After an hour of brooding and trying to carry on with his work, he felt a compulsion to read
it
again and did so, all smothered with tea-leaves as it was. Beating pretty tidily London memorable day albeit briefly independent attitude Byronic what every housewife thinks Vesta Bainbridge. He stood frowning, reading it in the tiny hallway, squinting at the words because it was dark there. There was a sudden double-beating on the door, as on a gorilla’s chest, and Enderby looked up, surprised. ‘Come out, Enderby,’ cried the voice of Jack. ‘I want a word with you, Enderby, you bloody poet.’

‘For cough,’ snarled Enderby, with much of his stepmother’s spirit and intonation.

‘Come out of there, Enderby. Come out and fight like a man. Open that door and let me bash you, you bastard.’

‘No,’ said Enderby, ‘I won’t. If I opened that door I’d regret it. I know I would. I don’t want your blood on my hands.’

‘Enderby,’ shouted Jack, ‘I’m giving you fair warning. Open up there and let me do you in, you fornicating poet. I’ll give you sleeping with my wife, you false sod.’

‘It’s not your wife,’ said Enderby. ‘And I slept on the couch. Somebody’s been telling lies about me. Now you clear off before I get angry.’

‘Open that door, Enderby, please,’ pleaded Jack’s voice. ‘I want to do you in, it’s only right and fair as I should, you bastard, and I’m already late for work. Open up and let’s get it over.’ And he thumped with both hands on the door. From above the woman’s voice could be heard, and there was something about it to show clearly the image of a woman in nightdress and curlers. ‘Stop it, Jack,’ she cried. ‘You’re only making a fool of yourself.’

‘Fool of myself, eh? We’ll soon see. Now you shut up. You’ve had your turn and now it’s going to be Enderby’s turn.’ He renewed the thundering. Enderby went to the kitchen and came back with his hare-eviscerating knife. ‘Open up, Enderby. Time’s getting on, you bastard.’ Enderby opened up.

Jack was a youngish tough man with lined cheeks and eyes the colour of urine. If hairs be wires, black wires grew in his head. He had both fists ready, with the thumbs pitiably tucked inside. Enderby had been punched in London; he was not going to be punched here. He raised his knife. ‘For cough,’ he said.

‘That’s playing unfair,’ said Jack. ‘I meant clean bashing. That’s
not
right when you get on to that stabbing lark. All I’m saying is, you leave her upstairs alone, see, and one bloody good bash in the chops and call it a day. You’ve no call to go fornicating with what’s mine, as you ought to be first to admit. Now put that knife down like a man and take what’s coming to you.’

‘For cough,’ said Enderby, in a murderer’s stance. ‘I hadn’t got my key, that was all, and she let me sleep on the sofa. If you don’t believe that you’ll never believe anything.’

‘I’ll believe what I want to believe,’ said Jack with great candour. ‘I’m coming back to see you again. Don’t think you’ve got away with this, because you haven’t, Enderby, poet or no poet. I tell you that straight. I’m off to work now and late too, which is your fault and makes things worse.’ With a sudden brisk jerk and stylish follow-through he wrested the knife from the grasp of Enderby. ‘There,’ he said proudly. ‘Now you’ve had it.’ Enderby swiftly slammed the door. ‘I’ll be back, Enderby,’ called Jack. ‘Make no mistake about it. You’ll be done, no two ways about that, as you’ll see.’ He kicked Enderby’s door and then thumped out of the house, crashing the great outer portal shut.

Enderby locked himself in the lavatory, trembling.
Canaille, canaglia
, with their bloody sex and blasted jealousy. Well, the time had come; all things pointed to it: out, out, out. Where to now? He sat on the seat and began to scribble: (a) Draw cash from bank; (b) Get map of south coast; (c) Send cheque and week’s notice Mrs M.; (d) Write to Mrs B.; (e) see Arry. With this need to plan and the thought of the nightmare of packing still to come, he grew flustered. He tried to calm himself by writing a final consummatory poem for Arry, the end of the whole cycle. It reeked with hot hands, white flesh, hoarse desire, love, love, love. It had a certain cathartic effect on Enderby, like loud blasphemous obscenities.

… And in that last delirium of lust

Your image glows. Love is a blinding rain,

Love crow all the cocks, love lays the dust

Of this cracked crying throat whose thirst is pain …

He wrote out a cheque for Mrs Meldrum, composed the curtest of farewells: ‘Thank you for your unwanted solicitude. Take a week’s
notice
. Yours etc.’ To Mrs Bainbridge he wrote a courteous acknowledgement of her communications and regretted that, on maturer consideration, he found himself unable to find it in himself to meet the meagre poetic needs, if even these existed, of the readers of
Fem
. His compliments to Miss or Mrs Frobisher, if Mrs Bainbridge would be good enough to pass them on, and congratulations on possessing so tough-stomached a gang of followers of her culinary columns. He, Enderby, had, if it was of any interest to anyone, suffered greatly from her Spaghetti Fromaggio Surprise. He proposed to destroy the contract and distribute the copies of
Fem
to the poor. He was hers sincerely. P.S. He was moving from the above address forthwith, whither he knew not yet. No point in her replying. Calmer now, Enderby shaved and prepared to go out. He would be safe so long as that shouter Jack was still at work.

Arry, in grubby cook’s white, complete with white necktie and white mushroom hat, stood at the bar of the Freemason’s Arms, taking time off from his kitchens. He greeted Enderby with no enthusiasm but, without asking or being asked, ordered a double whisky for him. ‘That suit,’ he said, ‘were a right bloody mess. Ad to send it tert cleaner’s.’ He drank off a good three-quarters of a pint of brown ale mixed with bitter.