Inside Mr Enderby

Enderby looked through Poetry Now, A Tiny Garner of Modern Verse, Best Poets of Today, They Sing for You, Soldier's Solace (an anthology of verse by Lieutenant-General Phipps, V.C., D.S.O., etc., sixtieth, thousand), Voices Within, and other volumes, and found that in all of them Rawcliffe was represented by the following artless lyrics:

"Perhaps I am not wanted then," he said.

"Perhaps I'd better go,"

He said. Motionless her eyes, her head,

Saying not yes, not no.

"I will go then, and aim my gun of grief

At any man's or country's enemies."

He said. "Slaughter will wreak a red relief."

She said not no, not yes.

And so he went to marry mud and toil,

Swallow in general hell his private hell.

His salts have long drained into alien soil,

And she says nothing still.

Enderby looked up bitterly from the tenth selected anthology, his tenth reading of the poem. And in none of these books was there anything by Enderby.

Enderby pulled out a spilling palmful of coin from Arry's right trouser-pocket. Snorting, he counted it: twelve and ninepence. In his wallet there was, he knew, one pound note. He muttered to himself as he moved door-wards, head down to count again. He bumped into a young salesman who said, "Whoops, sir. See nothing you fancy, sir?"

"Books," said Enderby, with proleptic drunken thickness. "Waste of time and bloody money." He left, saying a soldier's goodbye to Goodby's, not one of Goodby's good boys. There was a pub almost directly opposite, shedding cosy Christmas-card lights through its old-time bottle-glass windows. Enderby entered the public bar and ordered whisky.

4

Enderby entered the public bar and ordered whisky. This was some hours later, a different pub. Not the second or third pub, but somewhere well on in the series, the xth pub or something. On the whole, benevolent and swaying Enderby decided, he had had not too bad an evening. He had met two very fat Nigerians with wide cu

Enderby, paying fumblingly for his whisky, saw that he had very little money left. He estimated that he had managed to consume this evening a good dozen whiskies and a draught beer or so. His return ticket was snug in Arry's left-hand inside jacket-pocket. He had cigarettes. One more drink and he would be right for home. He looked round the public bar smiling. Good honest British working-men, salt of the earth, bloodying and buggering their meagre dole of speech, horny-handed but delicate with darts. And, on a high-backed settle at right angles to the bar counter, two British working-women sat, made placid with the fumes of stout. One said:

"Starting next week, it is, in Fem. With free gift picture in full colour. Smashing, he is." Enderby listened jealously. The other woman said:

"Never take it, myself. Silly sort of name it is. Makes you wonder how they think of them sometimes, really it does."

"If," said Enderby, "you are referring to the magazine to which I myself am to be a contributor, I would say that that name is meant to be Frenchified and naughty." He smiled down at them with a whiskified smirk, right elbow on the counter, left fingers on right forearm. The two women looked up doubtfully. They were probably about the same age as Vesta Bainbridge, but they had an aura of back kitchens about them, tea served to shirt-sleeved men doing their pools, the telly flicking and shouting in the corner.

"Pardon?" said one, loudly.

"Naughty," said Enderby, with great clarity. "Frenchified."

"What's French frieds to do with it?" said the other. "My friend and me was just talking, do you mind?"

"Poetry is what I shall write for it," said Enderby, "every week." He nodded several times, just like Rawcliffe.

"You keep your poetry to yourself, do you mind?" and she took a sharp draught of Gui

"You all right, Edie?" He wore a decently cut suit of poor serge, but no collar or tie. His gold-headed collar-stud caught the light and dazzled Enderby. He had a gaunt quick face and was as small and supple as a miner. He inspected Enderby as if invited to give an estimate on him. "You saying something to her that you shouldn't?" he said. "Mate?" he added, provocatively.

"He was saying," said Edie, "about naughty poetry. French, too."

"Was you saying naughty poetry to my wife here?" said the man. Like Milton's Death, he shook a dreadful dart.

"I was just saying," said smirking Enderby, "that I was going to write for it. What they read, I mean. That is to say, Edie here, your wife, as I take it to be, doesn't read, but the other one does, you see."

"We'll have less of that about doesn't read, do you mind?" said Edie. "And less of using my name familiar, do you mind?"

"Look here," said Edie's husband. "You want to keep that for the saloon bar, where they pay a pe

"Doing no harm," said Enderby huffily. He then poured over the huff a trickle of sweet sauce of ingratiation. "I mean, I was just talking." He leered. "Just passing the time of day, if you see what I mean."

"Well," said the dart-man, "don't you try to pass the time with my missis, do you mind?"

"Do you mind?" said Edie, in near-unison.

"I wouldn't want to pass the time with her," said Enderby, proudly. "I've other things to do, thank you very much."

"I'll have to do you," said the man, sincerely. "Too much bloody hoot altogether, mate, to my way of thinking, that's what you've got. You'd better get out of here before I get really nasty. Been smelling the barmaid's apron, that's your trouble."

Prrrfffp.

"Look," said Enderby, "that wasn't intended, I really had no intention, that was not meant in any way to be a comment, I assure you that is the sort of thing that could happen to any man, or woman too, for that matter, even Edie here, your wife, that is to say, yourself included." Prrrfffp.

"Do you mind?" said Edie.

"This here's my fist," said the man, pocketing his dart. The other customers quietened and looked interested. "You'll get it straight in the moosh, straight up you will, if you don't get out of my bleeding sight this instant, do you mind?"