The Complete Enderby

by Anthony Burgess

  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.

  She wailed from the bed. Enderby dashed into the bathroom, inspired, and came out swathed in toilet-paper. ‘This will do fine,’ he smiled. ‘Shan’t be long. Darling.’ he added. Then he sat at the dressing-table, horridly undressed, and began to write.

  Pulling up blinds and lifting every ban.

  The galaxies revolving to their plan,

  They made the coin, the couch, the cortex yield

  Their keys

  ‘You’re hateful, you’re disgusting. I’ve never in my whole
life been so insulted. No wonder she –’

  ‘Look,’ said Enderby, without turning round, ‘this is important. The gift’s definitely come back, thank God. I knew it would. Just give me a couple of minutes. Then I’ll be in there again.’ In the bed, he meant, raising his eyes to the dressing-table mirror as to make them tell her, if she was in that mirror, precisely that. He saw her all right. He ought, he knew, to be shocked by what he saw, but there was no time for that now. Hell has no fury. Better not let other poems get in the way. Besides, that quotation was wrong, everybody always got it wrong.

  And in a garden, once a field,

  They hoisted up a statue of a man.

  ‘Finished the octave,’ he sang out. ‘Shan’t be long now.’

  ‘You filthy thing. You sexless rotter.’

  ‘Really. Such language.’ Mirror, terror, error. Pity there was no true rhyme for mirror, except that bloody Sir Launcelot thing Tennyson had pinched from Autolycus. ‘And you a seleno-what-ever-it-is.’

  ‘You won’t get away with this. You wait.’ And, dressing-gown decently about her, she was out through that door to Enderby’s mild surprise, and was gone, slamming it.

  ‘Look here,’ Enderby said feebly. And then the mirror, holding out its English name, told him to get on with the sestet.

  4

  The sestet. It was all right, he thought. He told the Spanish dawn he thought it was all right. Then he had a swig of Fundador. Not all that much left. She’d put her name into it, that one, Miss whoever-it-was, moon-woman. He told the sestet to his reflection like an elocutionist:

  ‘Of man, rather. To most it seemed a mirror:

  They strained their necks with gazing in the air,

  Proud of those stony eyes unglazed by terror.

  Though marble is not glass, why should they care?

  There would be time for coughing up the error.

  Someone was bound to find his portrait there.’

  And the meaning? It seemed pretty clear, really. This was what happened in a humanist society. The Garden of Eden (and that was in the other sonnet, the one that had rendered bloody Wapenshaw violent) was turned into a field where men built or fought or ploughed or something. They worshipped themselves for being so clever, but then they were all personified in an autocratic leader like this Franco up there in Madrid. Humanism always led to totalitarianism. Something like that, anyway.

  Enderby was moderately pleased with the poem, but he was more pleased with the prospect of a bigger structure, a sequence. Some years before he had published the volume called Revolutionary Sonnets. The book had contained other than sonnets, but the title had derived from that opening group of twenty, each of which had tried to encapsulate – exploiting the theme and counter-theme paradigm of the Petrarchan form – some phase of history in which a revolution had taken place. He felt now that it might be possible to wrest those twenty sonnets from that volume and, by adding twenty more, build, with the cooperation of the Muse, a sizeable sequence which would make a book on its own. A new title would be needed – something more imaginative than the old one, something like Conch and Cortex or something. So far he had these two sonnets – the Garden of Eden one and the new one about man building his own world outside the Garden. Somewhere at the back of his mind there pricked the memory of his having started and then abandoned, in a very rough state, another sonnet that, nicely worked up and carefully polished, would make a third. It was, he thought, really an anterior sonnet to these two, an image of the primal revolution in heaven – Satan revolting, that sort of thing. Lucifer, Adam, Adam’s children. Those would make the first three. He felt that, with a certain amount of drunkenness followed by crapulous meditation, that sonnet could be teased back to life. He was pretty sure that the rhymes, at least, would come marching back, in U.S. Army soft-soled boots, if he left the gate open. Octave: Lucifer fed up with the dead order and unity of heaven. Wants action, so has to conceive idea of duality. Sestet: he dives, creates hell to oppose heaven. Enderby saw him diving. An eagle dropping from a mountain-top in sunlight. Out of Tennyson, that. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls. Alls, balls, calls. Was that one of the sestet rhymes?

  He felt excited. He toasted himself in the last of the Fundador. That bloody woman. But there was time for shame now and for the desire to make amends. He thought he better go now to her room and apologize. He saw that it was not perhaps really all that polite to get out of bed and so on with a woman in order to write down a poem. Especially on toilet-paper brought in like triumphal streamers. Women had their own peculiar notion of priorities, and this had to be respected. But he had no doubt that she would see his point if properly explained. Suppose, he might say, she had suddenly spotted a new lunar crater while so engaged, would she not herself have leapt up as he had done? And then he could read his sonnet to her. He wondered whether it was worth while to dress properly for his visit. The dawn was mounting and soon the hotel would stir with insolent waiters coming to bedrooms with most inadequate breakfasts. But she might, thoroughly mollified by the sonnet, bid him back to bed again, her bed now, to resume what had, so to speak, that is to say. He blushed. He would go, as a film Don Juan he had once seen had gone, in open-necked shirt and trousers.

  He went out on to the corridor, his sonnet wrapped round his wrist and one end secured with his thumb. Her room was just down there, on the same side as his own. When they had all, with Mr Mercer leading and Mr Guthkelch crying: ‘Keep in step there, you horrible lot’, marched up together, he had definitely seen her allotted that room there. He went up to it now and stood before it, taking deep breaths, and trying out a plenidental smile. Then he grasped the door-handle and boldly entered. Dawn light, the curtains drawn back, a room much like his own though containing luggage. She was lying in bed, possibly asleep, possibly – for every woman was supposed to be able to tell at once when there was an intruder, something to do with the protection of honour – pretending to be asleep. Enderby coughed loudly and said:

  ‘I came to tell you I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. It just came over me, as I said.’

  She started awake at once, more surprised, it seemed, than angry. She had changed her nightdress to demure cotton, also the colour of her hair. It was the aircraft’s stewardess. Miss Kelly was the name. Enderby frowned on her. She had no right – But perhaps he had entered the wrong room. She said:

  ‘Did you want something? I’m not really supposed to be available to passengers, you know, except on the flight.’

  ‘No, no,’ frowned Enderby. ‘Sorry. I was after that other woman. The moon one. Miss Boolan.’

  ‘Miss Boland. Oh, I see. It’s your wrist, is it? You’ve got that thing round your wrist. You’ve cut your wrist, is that it? All the first-aid stuff ’s on the aircraft. The hotel people might be able to help you.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ Enderby laughed now. ‘This is a poem, not an improvised bandage. I had to get up and write this poem, you understand, and I fear I annoyed Miss Boland, as you say her name is. I was going to apologize to her and perhaps read out this poem as a kind of peace-offering, so to speak. It’s what is known as a sonnet.’

  ‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it?’ She slid down into her bed again, leaving just her head and eyes showing. ‘I mean, everybody’s supposed to be still asleep.’

  ‘Oh,’ Enderby smiled kindly, ‘it’s not that sort of poem, you know. You’re thinking of an aubade – a good-morning song. The Elizabethans were very fond of those. Hark hark the lark, and so on. When all the birds have matins said, and so forth. A sonnet is a poem in fourteen lines. For any occasion, I suppose.’

  ‘I know what a sonnet is,’ her voice said, muffled but sharp. ‘There’s a sonnet in that book by Yod Crewsy.’

  Enderby stood paralysed, his own sonnet held forward like a knuckle-duster. ‘Eh?’ Thoughts fell in at a great distance and, in British tommies’ clodhoppers, advanced steadily at a light infantry pace.

  ‘You know. You were asking about pop-singers on the plane. Vest
a Wittgenstein you were asking about too, remember. Yod Crewsy did this book of poems that won the prize. There’s one in it he calls a sonnet. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it really, but one of the BOAC ground-hostesses, educated you see, she said it was very clever.’

  ‘Can you,’ faltered Enderby, ‘can you remember anything about it?’ Like Macbeth, he began to see that it might be necessary to kill everybody

  ‘Oh, it’s so early. And,’ she said, a girl slow on the uptake, sitting up again, things dawning on her, ‘you shouldn’t be in here really at this hour. Not at any hour you shouldn’t. Nobody asked you to come in here. I’ll call Captain O’Shaughnessy.’ Her voice was growing louder.

  ‘One line, one word,’ begged Enderby. ‘Just tell me what it was about.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to be in here. It’s taking advantage of being a passenger. I’m not supposed to be rude to passengers. Oh, why don’t you go?’

  ‘About the devil and hell and so on? Was that it?’

  ‘I’ve had enough. I’m going to call Captain O’Shaughnessy.’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother,’ groaned Enderby. ‘I’m just going. But it’s liberty after liberty.’

  ‘You’re telling me it’s taking a liberty.’

  ‘First one thing and then another. If he’s dead I’m glad he’s dead. But there’ll be other heads rolling, I can tell you that. Did it have something about an eagle in it? You know, dropping from a great height?’

  Miss Kelly seemed to be taking a very deep breath, as though in preparation for shouting. Enderby went, nodding balefully, closing the door. In the circumstances, he did not much feel like calling on Miss Boland. Women were highly unpredictable creatures. No, that was stupid. You could predict them all right. He had thought he would never have to see blasted treacherous Vesta again, but he obviously had to confront her before he did her in. The future was filling itself up horribly. Things both monstrously necessary and sickeningly irrelevant. He wanted to get on with his poetry again.