Inside Mr Enderby

"Nothing to do with me. He was drunk when I met him." Surlily he added, "Damn it all, I'm on my honeymoon." Two men bent over Rawcliffe and Enderby was afforded an intimate, non-tourist's, glimpse of the city, for one man had dandruff and the other boil-scars on his nape. Rawcliffe opened one eye and said, very clearly:

"Don't trust him. He's a spy pretending to be on his honeymoon. Made me drunk to shteal official shecretsh. Overthrow of Italian government plot dishcovered, alleged. Bombs shecreted in Foro Traiano and Tempio di Vesta."

"You leave my wife out of this," threatened Enderby.

"Ah, wife," said one of the men. "Capita." All was clear. Enderby had knocked Rawcliffe down in wronged husband's legitimate anger. A matter of honour. Rawcliffe now snored. The two men returned to their lobby to see about a taxi for him. Dante said to Enderby, tentatively: "Strega?"

"Si," said Enderby. He signed the chit and counted the number of other chits he had signed, all for Strega. Amazing. He would have to go easy, he hadn't all the money in the world. But, of course, he reflected, after this honeymoon he would start earning money. The capital was there to be spent; Vesta had said so.

Rawcliffe ceased snoring, smacked his lips, and said: "Thou hast wrongedst me, O Enderby." His eyes did not open. "I wished no harm. Merely desired to crown your nuptials in appropriate ma

Enderby said: "I know he's Inglese and I'm Inglese, but it bloody well stops there. I can't stand him, see? Io," he said, piecing the sentence together painfully, "non voglio aiutare." Everybody inclined, with smiles, to show that they appreciated this attempt on the part of an Englishman to use their beautiful language, but they ignored the meaning, perhaps having been well schooled by this snoring Rawcliffe. "I won't help," repeated Enderby, picking up Rawcliffe's feet. (There was a hole in the left sole.) "This is no way to be spending a bloody honeymoon," said Enderby, helping, very awkwardly, to carry Rawcliffe out. "Especially in Rome." As he passed, now panting, the ranked officials of the hotel, these bowed fully or gently inclined, all with smiles.

The Via Nazionale was afire with sun and brilliant with people. The taxi throbbed, waiting, by the kerb. Enderby and the driver sweated as they pushed their way, Rawcliffe still snoring. A sort of begging friar rattled his box at Enderby. "For cough," said Enderby. An American, not the John one, poised his camera to shoot. "For cough," snarled expiring Enderby. The driver, raising his knee to support the snoring body, freed his hand to open the passenger-door. Rawcliffe, like six months' laundry, was bundled in. "There," said Enderby. "All yours."

"Dove?" asked the driver.

"Oh, God, yes, where to?" Enderby manhandled, still panting, the loud, still Rawcliffe, trying to shout, "Where do you live, you bastard? Come on, tell us where."

Rawcliffe came awake with startling briskness, as though he had merely pretended to pass out so that he might be carried. His blue eyes, quite clear, flashed patches of Roman sky at Enderby. "Tiber, Father Tiber," he said, "on whom the Romans prey. The Via Mancini by the Ponte Matteotti."

The driver eagerly drank that in. "O world, O life, O time," intoned Rawcliffe. "Here lies one whose name was not writ in water. In all the anthologies." He returned to a heavy sleep with louder snores than before. Enderby hesitated, then, since the whole waiting world seemed to expect it of him, roughly made room next to Rawcliffe. They drove off. The driver honked down the Via Nazionale and turned abruptly into the Via IV Novembre. Then, as they sped north up the Via del Corso, Rawcliffe came quite alive again, sat up sedately, and said:

"Have you such a thing as a cigarette on you, my dear Enderby? An English cigarette, preferably."

"Are you all right now?" asked Enderby. "Can I get out here and let you go home on your own?"

"Over there on the left," pointed Rawcliffe, "you'll find the Pantheon if you look carefully. And there"-his hand swished right, striking Enderby-"down the street of humility, at the end, is the Fontana di Trevi. There you will throw your coin and be photographed by touts in berets. Do give me a cigarette, there's a good fellow." Enderby offered a single crushed Senior Service. Rawcliffe took it steadily without thanks, lighting up as firm as a rock. "We come now, Enderby, to the Piazza Colo

"I could get off here," suggested Enderby, "and go back to the hotel. My wife isn't too good, you know."

"Isn't she?" said Rawcliffe. "Not too good at what? A great admirer of poets, though. I'll say that for her. She always liked my little poem in the anthologies. It's quite likely, you know, Enderby, that you're going to be a great man. She likes to back wi

"What do you know about my wife?" asked Enderby. "Who told you I'd married Vesta Bainbridge?"

"It was in the popular papers," said Rawcliffie. "Didn't you see? Perhaps she kept them from you. Pete Bainbridge's widow to remarry, they said. The popular papers didn't seem to know very much about you. But when you're dead there'll be biographies, you know. There haven't been any biographies of Pete Bainbridge, so there's a lot to be said for not being known to the readers of the Daily Mirror. Ah, here is the Via Mancini." He banged the glass partition and made grotesque boxing gestures at the driver. The driver nodded, swerved madly, and came to rest before a small drinking-shop. "This is where I have my humble lodging," said Rawcliffe. "Above here."

"Do you really believe that?" asked Enderby. "I thought perhaps I appealed to a sort of protective instinct in her. And I'm very fond of her. Very, very fond. In love," said Enderby. Rawcliffe nodded and nodded, paying the driver. He seemed to have recovered completely from his Strega-bout. The two poets stood in the warm street, cooled by river air. Enderby let the taxi go and said, "Damn. I've let that taxi go. I ought to get back to my wife." He reminded himself that he disliked Rawcliffe because he was in all the anthologies. "It strikes me," said Enderby, "that you were swinging the bloody lead. I needn't have come with you at all."

"Strega," said Rawcliffe, nodding, "passes through my system very quickly. I think, now we're here, we'll have some more. Or perhaps a litre or so of Frascati."

"I must get back. She may be all right now. She may be wondering where I am."

"There's no hurry. The bride's supposed to wait, you know. Supposed to lie in cool sheets smelling of lavender while the bridegroom gets drunk and impotent. The Toby night, you know. That's what it used to be called. After Tobias in the Apocrypha. Come on, Enderby, I'm lonely. A brother poet is lonely. And I have things to tell you."

"About Vesta?"

"Oh, no. Much more interesting. About you and your poetic destiny."

They entered the little shop. It was dark and warm. On the walls were vulgar mosaics, pseudo-Etruscan, of prancing men and women in profile. There were glass jars of wine and cloudy tumblers. An old man from the age of Victor Emmanuel sucked an ample moustache; two sincere-eyed rogues, round-faced and, despite the heat, in overcoats, whispered roguery to each other. A champing old woman, each step an effort, brought a litre of urine to two English poets. "Salute," said Rawcliffe. He shuddered at the first draught, found the second blander. "Tell me, Enderby," he said, "how old would you say I am?"