The Complete Enderby (8 page)

The party broke up at once. Two men turned bitterly on Enderby. ‘If,’ said Shem Macnamara, ‘you didn’t want the bloody money you might at least have remembered that there’s others as do. Myself included,’ he mocked. He breathed, bafflingly, onions on Enderby, for onions had not formed any part of the meal. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ said Enderby, near crying. ‘I didn’t know what I was saying.’ Enderby’s publisher said, ‘Want to ruin us you do?’ in a sharp rising intonation. He was a young bright man from Newport. ‘Put your foot in it you have bloody nicely, man, make no mistake about it.’ A small man moustached like Kipling, with the same beetle-spectacles and a heavy watch-chain, came up to Enderby and took him firmly by Arry’s lapels. ‘I’m Rawcliffe,’ he announced. He dragged Enderby away from the table in short dance-steps, lapels still held hard. Rawcliffe nodded many times, stopped nodding, cocked an ear, nodded in satisfaction, then just nodded, chewing. ‘Very fibrous duck,’ said Rawcliffe. ‘You know me. I’m in all the anthologies. Now then, Enderby, tell me, tell me in all sincerity what you’re doing at the present time.’

‘Just writing, you know,’ said Enderby. He was trying to think who Rawcliffe was. Uneasily he heard behind him debates in small groups on his speech and its consequences for the retail book trade.

‘One would have supposed,’ said Rawcliffe, tugging Arry’s lapels like cow-teats, ‘mildly supposed, I suppose, that you would be writing.’ He chuckled, swallowed, and nodded. ‘Now then, Enderby, what? What are you writing? Tell me, elm,’ he laughed. ‘Tale told of stem or stone, eh? James Joyce, that is. Myth-maker, what?’

‘Well,’ said Enderby, and, with babbling nerves, he blurted out a detailed synopsis of
The Pet Beast
.

‘And the beast is really Original Sin, eh?’ saw Rawcliffe. ‘Without Original Sin there is no civilization, is that it? Good, good. And the title, let’s have that title again.’ He released the lapels, found a short pencil in a waistcoat pocket, licked the point, took out a cigarette-packet, shook it ruefully, then block-lettered Enderby’s
title
on its bottom flap. ‘Good,’ he said again. ‘Infinitely obleeged.’ And he made off nodding. Enderby sadly watched him join a group of important poets who had not been above cynically taking a free meal – P.S. ffolliott, Peter Pitts, Albert Death-Stabbes, Rupert Tombs, or some such names. They had mostly murmured ‘Well done’ to him at the preprandial sherry-bibbing. Now he was left alone with his wind, companionless. Medalless also, and chequeless. Rather a wasted trip, really.

‘Mr Enderby?’ The lady panted slightly and very prettily. ‘Oh, thank goodness I was in time.’

‘I knew,’ said Enderby, ‘that Sir George would realize it was all a joke. Do, please, convey my apologies to him.’

‘Sir George? Oh yes, I know who you mean. Apologize? I don’t understand.’ She was perhaps thirty, with fashionable stallion-flared nostrils and a model-girl’s swan-neck. She wore with grace a Cardin sugar-scoop hat of beige velours, and, from the same master, a loose-jacketed suit with only a hint of flare to the peplum. An ocelot coat swung open over this. Chic shone from her demurely. Such cleanness and fragrance (
Miss Dior
), thought Enderby with deep regret, such slender and sheer-hosed glamour. A face, he decided, devoid of all obvious sensuality – no lusciousness of the underlip, the cat-green eyes very cool and intelligent, a calm high forehead shaded by the sugar-scoop brim. Enderby tightened his tie-knot and smoothed his side-pockets, saying: ‘I’m sorry.’ And then, ‘I thought. That is to say.’ She said:

‘Oh.’ They stood looking at each other under the glowing glass-slab signs of the hotel passage, their feet sunk in burgundy carpet. ‘Well. I would like, before anything else, to tell you that I genuinely admire your work.’ She spoke with the intonation of one expecting an incredulous snort. The voice was quiet, though the consonants had the sharpness of some speaker too close to a microphone, and there was the faintest tang of educated Scots. ‘I wrote to you care of your publishers, ages ago. I don’t think the letter could ever
have
reached you. If it had reached you I’m sure you would have replied.’

‘Yes,’ said flustered Enderby. ‘Oh yes, I would. But perhaps that was forwarded by them to my old address because I’d forgotten to tell them about my new address and also, for that matter, the Post Office. Cheques,’ said blabbing Enderby, ‘are normally paid straight into my bank. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.’ She stood in a model pose, listening coolly with lips parted, handbag hanging from right forearm, gloved left hand’s thumb and index-finger lightly ringing ungloved right hand’s ring-finger. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said humble Enderby. ‘That may explain why I never got it.’

She finished her quiet listening and suddenly became brisk. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I had an invitation to that luncheon-party but I couldn’t make it. Could we, do you think,’ she suggested, with a kind of movement on the fringe of non-movement which was a sort of apotheosis of a working-girl’s jigging up and down in a winter-day bus-queue, infinitely feminine, ‘sit down somewhere for a few minutes, if you can spare the time, that is? Oh,’ she said, ‘I’m so stupid,’ the gloved hand striking the lips in
mea culpa
, ‘not telling you who I am. I’m Vesta Bainbridge. From
Fem
.’

‘From what?’

‘
Fem
.’

‘What,’ asked Enderby, with great and suspicious care, ‘is that?’ He had heard it as, though hardly believing it possible, something like
Phlegm
, and wondered what could be the purpose of an organization (if it was an organization) so named.

‘Yes, of course, I see, of course you probably wouldn’t know about that, would you? It’s a magazine for women. And I,’ said Vesta Bainbridge, ‘am the Features Editress. Could we then, do you think? I suppose it’s too early to have tea, isn’t it, or is it?’

‘If you would care for some tea,’ said gallant Enderby, ‘I should be only too happy, I should be only too delighted.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Vesta Bainbridge, ‘you have to have it with me, you see, because it goes on my expense account. And this is a business thing, you see, connected with
Fem
.’

Enderby had once, as a poor soldier, been treated to a tea of poached egg on haddock and shortbread by a kind old lady in an Edinburgh restaurant. But by anyone so glamorous, so alluring as
this
, he had never thought, never dreamed. He was both shocked and awed. ‘Do you, by any chance, come from Edinburgh?’ he asked. ‘Something in your voice –’

‘Eskbank,’ said Vesta Bainbridge. ‘How remarkable! But, of course, you’re a poet. Poets can always dig out things like that, can’t they?’

‘If,’ said Enderby, ‘you really like my poetry, which you said you did, I should really ask you to have tea with me, not you me with you. The least I could do,’ said generous Enderby, fingering a half-crown in Arry’s trouser-pocket.

‘Come,’ said Vesta Bainbridge, and she made the wraith of a gesture of taking Enderby by the arm. ‘I
do
admire your work, really,’ she insisted. She led him on sure high heels past the dainty boutiques that sold flowers and jewellery, the air-travel kiosk where there was busy telephoning about flights to New York and Bermuda, past the ugly and rich cocooned in an enchantment of wine-coloured snow underfoot, perfumed air all about, light drifting, dust-soft, from unseen sources in the delicate golds of fine white bordeaux. Here every breath, every footfall, thought thrifty Enderby, must cost at least a tanner. Vesta Bainbridge and he entered a vast room of huge scooped cubes of biscuit-coloured softness in which people lounged warmly cushioned. Laughter tinkled, teatrays tinkled. Enderby felt with horror his bowels prepare to comment on the scene. He looked up at a baroque ceiling with many fat-arsed cherubim in evidence. This did not help. They sank down, Vesta Bainbridge exhibiting the delicacy of exquisite shinlines, a fine moulding of ankle. A Roman waiter, lantern-jawed, took her order. Scots, she asked for a substantial spread: anchovy toast, egg sandwiches, pikelets, cakes, China tea with lemon. ‘And,’ said Enderby, ‘do you manage to eat dinner after a tea like that?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Vesta Bainbridge. ‘I can’t put on weight, however hard I try. The lemon tea’s because that’s the way I like tea, not for slimming reasons. Obviously,’ she added.

‘But,’ said Enderby, drawn to the obvious weary compliment, ‘you’re surely perfect as you are.’ Suddenly he saw himself, boulevardier Enderby, witty with women, graceful in flattery, roguish eyes atwinkle, taking tea. At the same time wind fought, as a picked-up naughty kitten fights, to be free. Tea free. A free tea. ‘And,’ he said, ‘if I may ask, what precisely is this business with
Phlegm
?’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘isn’t that funny? That’s what Godfrey Wainwright calls it. He does covers, you know.
Fem
. Not, perhaps, a very good choice of name. But, you know, the market’s saturated with magazines for women –
Feminocrat, Goodwife, Lilith, Glamourpuss
. The straightforward names with Woman in them were worked out long ago. It’s so difficult for them to think of anything new, as you’ll appreciate. But
Fem
isn’t too bad, is it? It’s short and sweet, and it sounds Frenchified and a bit naughty, wouldn’t you agree?’

Enderby eyed her warily. Frenchified and a bit naughty, eh? ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And where would I come in with something like that?’ Not very good, she’d said, and not too bad – both in the same breath. Perhaps not a very sincere sort of woman. Before she could answer his question the tea arrived. The Roman waiter laid it down gently on the fretted claw-footed low table – silver dishcovers steaming, tiny cakes oozing cream. He rose, bowing with sneering jowls, retiring. Vesta Bainbridge poured. She said:

‘I thought somehow you’d prefer your tea like this – sugarless, milkless, lemony. Your poems are a little, shall we say, astringent, if that’s the right word.’ Enderby looked down sourly at the sour cup. He preferred stepmother’s tea really, but she’d ordered without consulting him. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Just right.’ Vesta Bainbridge began to eat with great appetite, showing fine small teeth as she bit into her anchovy toast. Enderby’s heart warmed to this: he liked to see women eat, and this gusto mitigated, somehow, her lean perfection. But, he thought, she had no right, with such a figure, to have such an appetite. He felt a desire to invite her out to dinner, that same evening, to see how she would tuck into minestrone and pork chops. He feared her.

‘Now,’ said Vesta Bainbridge, and a rosy tongue-point darted out, picked up a toast-crumb, then darted in again. ‘I want you to know that I admire your work, and what I propose now is entirely my own idea. It’s met with some opposition, mind you, because
Fem
is essentially a popular magazine. And your poetry, as you’ll be proud to admit, is not exactly popular. It’s not unpopular either, of course; it’s just not known. Pop-singers are known and TV interviewers are known and disc-jockeys are known, but you’re not known.’

‘What,’ asked Enderby, ‘are these things? Pop-singers and so on?’ She looked askance at him and noticed that his bewilderment was genuine. ‘I’m afraid,’ said Enderby, ‘that since the war I’ve rather shut myself off from things.’

‘Don’t you have a radio or a television set?’ said Vesta Bainbridge, her green eyes wide. He shook his head. ‘Don’t you read newspapers?’

‘I used to read certain Sunday papers,’ said Enderby, ‘for the sake of the book reviews. But it made me so very depressed that I had to stop. The reviewers seemed so,’ he frowned, ‘so very
big
, if you see what I mean. They seemed to
enclose
us writers, so to speak. They seemed to know all about us, and we knew nothing about them. There was one very kind and very knowledgeable review of a volume of mine, I remember, by a man who, I suppose, is a very good man, but it was evident that he could have written my poems so much better if only he’d had the time. Those things make one feel very insignificant. Oh, I know one
is
insignificant, really, but you’ve got to ignore that if you’re to get any work done at all. And so I’ve tended to cut myself off a bit, for the sake of the work. Everybody seems to be so
clever
, somehow, if you see what I mean.’

‘I do and I don’t,’ said Vesta Bainbridge, smartly. So far she had eaten all the anchovy toast, five egg sandwiches, a couple of pikelets and one squelchy little pastry, and yet contrived to look ethereal, mountain-cool. Enderby, on the other hand, who, because of his heartburn, had only nibbled mouse-like at a square inch of damp bread and an egg-ring, was aware of himself as gross, sweating, halitotic, his viscera loaded like a nightsoil-collector’s bucket. ‘
I
don’t feel insignificant,’ said Vesta Bainbridge, and ‘I’m just nothing compared with you.’

‘But you don’t
have
to feel insignificant, do you?’ said Enderby. ‘I mean, you’ve only to look at yourself, haven’t you?’ He said this dispassionately, frowning.

‘For a man,’ said Vesta Bainbridge, ‘who’s cut himself from the world, you’re not doing too badly. I should have thought,’ she said, pouring more tea, ‘that it was very unwise for a poet to do that. After all, you need images, themes, and so on, don’t you? You’ve got to get those from the outside world.’

‘There are quite enough images,’ said Enderby, speaking with
firm
authority, ‘in half a pound of New Zealand cheddar. Or in the washing-up water. Or,’ he added, with even greater authority, ‘in a new toilet-roll.’

‘You poor man,’ said Vesta Bainbridge. ‘Is that how you live?’

‘Everybody,’ said Enderby, with perhaps diminishing dogmatism, ‘uses toilet-paper.’ A man in spectacles, very tall and with an open mouth, looked across from his chair as if to dispute this assertion, thought better of it, then returned to his evening paper.
Poet Refuses Medal
, said a tiny headline which Enderby caught sight of. Some other bloody fool shooting his mouth off, some other toy trumpet singing to battle.