The Complete Enderby (29 page)

‘No,’ said Enderby promptly.

‘Oh, well,’ said Dr Greenslade sarcastically, ‘you, of course, are the big expert on logic.’

‘I don’t pretend to be anything,’ said Enderby loudly, ‘except a poet whose inspiration has departed. I’m an empty eggshell.’

‘You are,’ said Dr Greenslade sternly, ‘a man of education and culture who can be of great value to the community. When you’re made fit again, that is. Empty eggshells, indeed,’ he poohed. ‘Poets,’ he near-sneered. ‘Those days are past, those wide-eyed romantic days. We’re living in a realistic age now,’ he said. ‘Science is making giant strides. And as for poets,’ he said, with sudden bubbling intimacy, ‘I met a poet once. He was a nice decent fellow with no big ideas about himself. He wrote very nice poetry, too, which was not too difficult to understand.’ He looked at Enderby as though Enderby’s poetry was both not nice and not intelligible. ‘This man,’ said Dr Greenslade, ‘didn’t have your advantages. No private income for him, no cosy little flat in a seaside resort. He had a wife and family, and he wasn’t ashamed of working for them. He wrote his poetry at week-ends.’ He nodded at Enderby, week-day poet. ‘And there was nothing abnormal about him, nothing at all. He didn’t go about with a lobster on a string or marry his own sister or eat pepper before drinking claret. He was a decent family man whom nobody would have taken for a poet at all.’ Enderby groaned frightfully. ‘And,’ added Dr Greenslade, ‘he had a poem in all the anthologies.’ Enderby held back a loud howl. Then he said:

‘If he was so normal, why did you have anything to do with him?’

‘This,’ smiled Dr Greenslade in large triumph, ‘was a purely social acquaintance. Now,’ he said, looking at the clock above Enderby’s head, ‘you’d better get back to your ward.’ Enderby stood up. He was in hospital pyjamas, dressing-gown, slippers, and felt grey, shrunken, a pauper. He shambled out of the electro-cardiogram room into the corridor, hesitated at the stairs with their WAY OUT notice, remembered that they had locked his clothes away, and then, resigned, shuffled into the Medical Ward. He had been brought here to sleep it off after the stomach-pumping in the Emergency Ward, had lain for two days starved in a sort of big cot with iron bars at the sides, and now was allowed to pout about the ward in his dressing-gown. If a fellow-patient said, ‘What’s
wrong
with you, mate?’ he replied, on the ward sister’s instructions, ‘Acetylsalicylic poisoning.’ But these rough men, all with impressively visible illnesses, knew better than that. This here one had had a go at doing himself in. As Enderby, hands in dressing-gown pockets, bowed towards his bed (ring-worm to the left of it, to the right a broken femur), a dwarf of a working-man hopped towards him on crutches. ‘’Ere,’ said the dwarf.

‘Yes?’ said Enderby. The dwarf cleared his nasopharynx via his oesophagus and said, conspiratorially:

‘Trick cyclist been ’avin a go at you, eh? I seen ’im come in. Ridin’ all over you, eh?’

‘That’s right,’ said Enderby.

‘Should be a law against that, I reckon. Draggin’ out secrets from the back of your mind, like. Not decent, way I see it. ’Ad a go at me once. Know what that was for?’

‘No,’ said Enderby. The dwarf hopped nearer, his eyes ashine. He said, low:

‘Wife and kids was out at the pictures, see. I ’ad nowt to do, not bein’ much on the telly, and I’d washed up after my supper and put the kitchen straight. I’d read the paper too, see, and there wasn’t much in that, all murders and suchlike and these ’ere summit conferences. Anyway, know what I’d got in my overall pocket?’

‘No,’ said Enderby.

‘One of these big nuts,’ said the dwarf. ‘Don’t know ’ow it got there, but there it was. Big one,’ he insisted, making an illustrative ring with thumb and finger. ‘A nut, you know. Not a nut you can eat, but one of these nuts you put a bolt through.’ He showed, with the index-finger of his other hand, how exactly this was done. ‘Do you see my meaning?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Enderby.

‘Well,’ said the dwarf, ‘I got to lookin’ at it and thinkin’ about it, and then an idea come into me ’ead. Know what the idea was?’

‘No,’ said Enderby.

The dwarf came very close, awkward on his crutches, and seemed about to eat Enderby’s ear. ‘Put it in,’ he said. ‘Wife was out, see, and there was nowt else to do. It fitted real snug, too, you’d be surprised. Anyway, there it was, and you know what ’appened then?’

‘No,’ said Enderby.

‘Wouldn’t come out,’ said the dwarf, reliving the horror in his eyes. ‘There it was, stuck in, and it wouldn’t come out. Right bloody fool I must ’ave looked to the cat when it come in through the window. A ’ot night, see, and the window was open. There I was, with this thing of mine stuck in this nut, and it wouldn’t come out. I tries all sort of things – puttin’ it under the cold water tap and gettin’ a file at it, but it wasn’t no good. Then the wife comes back from the pictures and she sees what I’ve done and she sends the kids straight upstairs. Bad enough the cat seein’ it, but it wasn’t right the kids should know what was goin’ on. So you know what she does?’

‘No,’ said Enderby.

‘She sends for the ambulance and they takes me to ’ospital. Not this one, though. We was livin’ somewhere else at the time. Well, they tries and tries, but it’s no good. All sorts of things they tries. Know what they ’as to do at the finish?’

‘No,’ said Enderby.

‘Send for the fire brigade. I’m not tellin’ you a word of a lie, but they ’as to do that. On my God’s honour, they send for the fire brigade, and you know what the fire brigade ’as to do?’

‘No,’ said Enderby.

‘They gets one of their special saws to saw through metal and they as a ’ose-pipe playin’ on it all the time. Know why that was?’

‘To keep it cool,’ said Enderby.

‘You’ve got it,’ said the dwarf. ‘There’s not many as would give the right answer like you done. To keep it cool. Anyway, they gets it off, and that’s when they ask me to see this trick cyclist like what you’ve seen. Didn’t do no good though.’ He looked gloomy.

‘Is that why you’re back in again?’ said Enderby.

‘Naw,’ said the working-dwarf with scorn. ‘Broke my leg at work this time. Always somethin’ though, int there?’

From this moment Enderby thought that, with a certain measure of help and encouragement, he might conceivably decide that it might be possible for him to want, with certain inevitable reservations, to go on living. He woke up in the middle of the night laughing at some dream-joke. The sister had to give him a sedative.

Flitchley, surrounded by the pink snow of apple-blossom, cuckoo-(appropriately)-echoing, green, quiet with a quiet that the clack and clock of table-tennis only emphasized the more, Flitchley was all that Dr Greenslade had said it would be. Several weeks later Enderby sat on a bird-loud terrace reading a harmless boy’s book of violence (‘… The Chink, with a sinister Oriental smile on his inscrutable yellow countenance, wrenched the knife from the back of his dead companion and threw it straight at Colonel Bill. Bill ducked, hearing the evil weapon twang in the door. He had ducked only just in time. “Now,” he said, a cold smile on his clean-cut features, “I think I’ve had more than enough of your treachery for one day, Mr John Chinaman.” He advanced on the Chink, who now gibbered in his own outlandish language what was evidently a prayer for mercy …’). In the day-room was the cheerful music of the table being set for luncheon. Beyond the haha a gardener bent at work. Fellow-patients of Enderby walked the grounds or, like himself, sat at rest with sedative literature. Occasionally Enderby would lower his book to his lap, close his eyes, and say softly to himself, many times over, ‘My name is Enderby-Hogg, my name is Enderby-Hogg.’ It was part of the process of his cure; a gently contrived change of identity. Hogg had been his mother’s maiden name; soon, the Enderby silenced, it would be altogether his.

The bell rang for luncheon and, from the day-room radio, news refinedly boomed. Enderby-Hogg sat down, one of a mess of six, having first shaken hands with a Mr Barnaby. Mr Barnaby, like a dog, insisted on shaking hands with everybody at all hours of the day and sometimes, waking everybody gently up for the purpose, in the night. He had a sweet wrinkled face and, like that Enderby soon to disappear, was something of a poet. He had written verses on the Medical Superintendent beginning:

You have certainly got it in for me and no

Question about that, you fierce-eyed man.

Your wife no more loves you than that black crow

Up in the tree loves you, or that can

Which whilom held baked beans of the brand of Heinz,

Or that dog belonging to the lodge-keeper which so sorely whines

At the same table was Mr Trill, one of the symptoms of whose derangement was an ability to name the winner of any major horse-race run in the last sixty years. He was a man of venerable appearance who, he swore, hated racing. Enderby-Hogg now said to him, in automatic greeting, ‘Thousand Guineas, 1910.’ Mr Trill looked up mournfully from his soup and said, ‘Winkipop, owned Astor, trained W. Waugh, ridden Lynham. Starting price five to two.’ There was Mr Beecham, a master plumber who, on psychiatric instructions, spent all his day painting pictures: black snakes, red murder, his wife with three heads. Mr Shap, insurance agent, with dark glasses and a black hole for a mouth, said nothing, did nothing, but at times would scream one word: PASTE. Finally there was Mr Killick who preached, in an undertone, to the birds. He had the look of a successful butcher.

This company of six drank its soup and then was served, by two cheerful nurses of radiant complexion, with slabs of meat pie and scooped spuds. There were spoons and forks, but no knives. The meal chewed itself by pleasantly and quietly, except that at one point a dressing-gowned man at another table cried to the ceiling:

‘Sink her, Number One!’

He was soothed quickly by one of the nurses, a homely Lancashire lass with a strong sense of humour. She said, ‘You sink that meat pie quick, my lad. Treacle duff’s coming alongside.’ Enderby-Hogg laughed with the rest at this typical bit of Lancashire badinage. The treacle duff, with liberal custard, was then wheeled in, and Mr Killick, hungry after a morning preaching to the birds, had three helpings. After the meal some went back to bed, while Enderby-Hogg and others sat in the solarium. Enderby-Hogg had no money, but some obscure charitable fund invoked by the almoner supplied him with a sufficiency of cigarettes. A nurse came round with matches to light up for the smokers: no patient was allowed matches of his own, not since one Jehovah-minded G.P.I. sufferer had called Flitchley Sodom and set fire to it.

After a quiet smoke and lazy rambling chat, Enderby-Hogg went
to
the lavatory. The little cabinets, without doors, could be looked in on from the corridor through a thick glass wall: even here there was no sense of aloneness. After an ample healthy movement, Enderby-Hogg went to the ward he shared with eleven others, there to lie on his bed till summoned for his afternoon session with Dr Wapenshaw. He finished his boy’s book (‘… “And,” grinned Colonel Bill, “despite all the dangers and hazards, it was a jolly good adventure which I’d be happy to undertake again.” But, as he pulled the throttle and the mixture exploded sweet and strong, little did he think that adventure of an even more thrilling kind awaited him. That adventure, chaps, we shall learn about in our next story – the ninety-seventh! – of Colonel Bill and the faithful Spike.’). Enderby-Hogg looked forward, without undue excitement, to reading that story.

At three o’clock a smiling nurse summoned him to Dr Wapenshaw. Dr Wapenshaw said, ‘Ah, hallo there, old man. Things going all right, eh? Jolly good, jolly good,’ for all the world like Colonel Bill or his creator. Dr Wapenshaw was a big man whose superfluous fat proclaimed, like medals, his former Rugby football triumphs. He had large feet and a moustache and a voice like Christmas pudding. But he was a clever and original psychiatrist. ‘Sit down,’ he invited. ‘Smoke if you want to.’ Enderby-Hogg sat down, smiling shyly. He adored Dr Wapenshaw.

‘Enderby-Hogg, Enderby-Hogg,’ said Dr Wapenshaw, as though beginning a nursery rhyme. A thick file was open on the desk before him. ‘Enderby-Hogg. Bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? I think we might drop the Enderby, don’t you? Keep it, of course, in the background as an optional extra if you like. How do you feel about the Hogg?’

‘Oh, fine,’ said Hogg. ‘Perfectly all right.’

‘What do you associate the name with? Pigs? Filth?’ smiling. ‘Gluttony?’ Humorously, Dr Wapenshaw pig-snorted.

‘Of course not,’ said Hogg, smiling too. ‘Roses. A lawn in summer. A sweet-smelling woman at the piano. A silver voice. The smoke from a Passing Cloud.’

‘Excellent,’ said Dr Wapenshaw. ‘That will do very well indeed.’ He sat back in his swivel-chair, swivelling boyishly from side to side, looking kindly at Hogg. ‘That beard’s coming along all right,’
he
said. ‘You should have a pretty good one in a couple of weeks. Oh, yes, I’ve made a note about glasses. We’re sending you to the oculist on Thursday.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Hogg.

‘Don’t thank me, my dear fellow,’ said Dr Wapenshaw. ‘After all, it’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? To help.’ Tears came into Hogg’s eyes. ‘Now,’ said Dr Wapenshaw, ‘I’ve explained to you already just what it is we’re trying to do and why we’re trying to do it. Could you recap’ – he smiled – ‘in your own words?’