Anthony Burgess - Enderby's Dark Lady

"What do you want of me, sir?"

"To see closer your beauty," Enderby proclaimed, "and to," declaimed, "admire it." He heard a donnish querulousness in his tones and subdued it with a not too proper gruffness. "It is a special and translunary loveliness not much seen, alack, in our pale and shivering clime that enthroned Sol disdains to visit. A sore lack, alack. But how do we define beauty? As that special property in woman, and in man too for such as are so given, that ah generates love. Seeing your beauty, I love it. And must I not love the possessor of that beauty? Ah, madam, I long to take you in mine arms. Love, aye, love, love. Love."

That was her cue for song, but Pip Wesel the MD was slow to pick it up. Only when Enderby growled the word once more, frowning at the orchestra and, while his hand was in, the audience too, did the jazzy chords of exordium thump. She sang. Enderby blinked at her, still and watching. That lower denture, damn it, felt loose. He wondered whether he should go downstage and talk to the audience in good A-Effekt manner, explain that in point of biographical fact what they were now observing, except for the song, probably truly happened, but, in fact or true truth, she played on the virginals, so called because, and there was a sonnet about it, though Shakespeare got the meaning of the term jacks wrong. But then the song ended, and he beamed as she got her due meed of applause. No doubt about it, she swung both voice and d.v.a. to remarkable effect. He forgot his line, beaming. She fed it to him.

"Do I sing to your satisfaction, sirrah?"

He could see the spit of her sibilants in the spot beam. He shook his head and said: "Not sirrah, no. That's by way of insult. Sir will do nicely. Aye, madam, you sing prettily. Can you dance as well?"

"I can dance the galliard and the high lavolta and eke the heels-in-the-air."

"I thank you for that eke, more expressive than also, however much it may be taken for a mouse stirring." By God, now it was coming. "Can you dance the dance called the Beginning of the World?"

"Nay, sir, I know it not."

"Then, madam, I will teach you." And he, kicking out the Enderby as unworthy and becoming solely, though with a loose lower denture, Shakespeare, advanced upon her, upstage as she already was and near to that day bed. He clipped her in Shakespeare's arms and did buss her rouged lips. His or Shakespeare's heart beat hard and hot. Had having and in quest to have. All was justified; this was, by God, no more than aesthetic duty. He had her on that daybed and lay upon her. For Christ's sake her occluded mouth tried to utter. He mouthed juicily the smooth brown of her wholly exposed shoulders and then, obeying Shakespeare's own Venus, Anne Hathaway really, strayed lower where the. By God, madam, I have thee, I love, I love. He was aware of the sturdy filling of his codpiece, really inside now, Mercutio, Benvolio, the codpieced lot of them. Then he heard a voice saying:

"Madam, Richard the Third is here."

He tried to get his line out but could not. There were certain necessities that obliterated the obligations of art. Nay, more – was it not said that if a man made love on a railway line with an express train fast approaching he must say to himself that the driver had brakes and he not? Enderby was brakeless. But his panting succuba thrust him away and called:

"Tell him William the Conqueror came before -"

Then a whistle shrilled. That was the express coming. Bugger it, it had brakes, had it not? But it sounded like a police whistle. The watch had caught him at it, towsing in public, hale him before the Puritan magistrates for foul fornication. But the man who, to Enderby's surprise and Shakespeare's disgust, had just walked on the stage was in the costume of the twentieth century, that was to say a drab raincoat. He blew, as he had evidently blown before, his whistle, and then he addressed the audience. Enderby could not clearly hear what he said; he disdained the forward tone projection of the actor, though he said something about the actors' union. He pointed at Enderby, or Shakespeare, apparently to indicate that here was a foul fault and a sinful wight, to wit a non union member. Performance discontinued. Union regulation. Enderby, still clipping April Elgar, though looking towards the little expostulator with open mouth, now leapt off her and strode down, aware dimly of intercrucial wetness, to the edge of the apron and tried to push the man off. The man, who wore glasses that were filled with stage light, hit back. Enderby cried to the audience:

"I'm not acting now so this bastard here has no right to shove at me like that. Can you imagine such a monstrosity occurring at a stage performance in Shakespeare's own day? Shakespeare looks down from the heavens in disgust. Union rules, quotha. Devices of protection have become devices for dealing the death of the drama. Only one performance ever failed to reach its conclusion in Shakespeare's time, and that was in the Globe playhouse in 1613 when Henry VIII was being for the first time presented and the thatch caught fire." From nowhere, though it might have been the flies, the word fire was, with a howl, repeated. The house lights came swiftly up. Enderby now saw, very rawly revealed, real seated people ready to unseat themselves, a lot of them, uneasily looking for the source of the cry or the source of the referent of the cry. Fire. "Stay where you are, damn it," Enderby yelled, as people began to panic their way into the aisles. "There's no fire, I just said fire, that's all." Fire came again. There was already the beginning of a dangerous pushing out, that woman there looked as if she expected to be trampled. "Come back," Enderby called, "blast it. Back, you stupid buggers." And, to the gawping orchestra, "Play, damn it." Shakespeare on the Titanic. They began to play, though not all the same thing. The audience, which had seen on films audiences tumbling out from fires, ready to trample, tumbled out none the less, ready to trample. Bloody Americans, no discipline, too prone to panic.

"My last number," April Elgar called to Pip Wesel. She got a lumpish four bars in and began:

"Love, you say love.

What you talking about

Is filthy philandering,

Goosing and gandering -"

Some of the audience turned, some even considered reoccupying their seats. Most left. A man lay in an aisle, not dead. A woman whimpered, looking for probably a child or a handbag or something. Enderby said:

"A pity. It wasn't going too badly."

"Yeah," April Elgar said, "not too badly. Ah, let's go." The stage was filling with stagehands and members of cast. No fucking fire, someone said. Enderby saw the union man in hot colloquy with Jed Tilbury. He pushed the union man in the small of the back with his, or Shakespeare's, nief. The man counted things, probably rules, off on his fingers.

"Some of this?" the fag Oldfellow's dresser suggested, proffering the fluted bottle. Enderby nodded: some of that. April Elgar nodded too. "I only got the one glass," the dresser said. Enderby now saw that he was wearing, had been all the time, the computer wristwatch she had given him for Christmas. He said:

"Never noticed. Nobody noticed. God curse everybody. First man to wear a wristwatch was Blaise Pascal. After Shakespeare's time. Stupid bugger that I am. Uncyclical future. Time a straight line. Domine non sum dignus. Domina too, for that matter. Got to get away. The shame of it all. The bastards owe me money. Where are the bastards?"

"That," she said, pointing. She was pointing at the letter she had herself delivered. "Better open it. Felt to me like more than a letter."

Enderby sliced the envelope open with what had recently been Shakespeare's right index finger. Dollar bills, each of a hundred. Five in all. He frowned, puzzled. He read the note. It was from Dr R. F. Grigson and addressed Enderby as Dear Brother. Distressed to see how service in the Lord's name had brought to a stage of nervous breakdown, not uncommon in the vocation of pastor. Perhaps a brief vocation (crossed out and vacation substituted) might help to restore to health and renewed vigour in the preaching of the Word. The congregation had been glad to help. The widow's mite even. No mighty sum but still. God's blessings and much sympathy and affection. Enderby showed her the letter. She had already seen the money. "Now," she said, "you better go home. I said they were good people."