Enderby's Dark Lady

Monetary source

Safe and steady.

Now see me here in London,

Ready for revenge -

All England will be undone

From Carlisle to Stonehenge

On the dayyyyyyyy

I get my wayyyyyy.

But here, by God, was corruption. You cease to celebrate the greatest poet in the world's history and e

I'll screw some sex into Essex,

I'll scourge Walter Raleigh's raw hide.

I'll make Francis Drake

Chase a duck on a lake

And eat Francis Bacon fried.

I'll inject the shakes into Shakespeare

And stick in the spear as well,

Wrench out Queen Bess's

Carroty tresses

And make her bald as a bell.

Right under your gaze

I'm going to raise

Elizabethan hell.

Enderby groaned, but not now with lust, that foul fundamental whose harmonics were admiration, awe and even the most dangerous word in the language. He had been drawn into the celebration of America, not Shakespeare. What voice from the dead had condoned the travesty to come? Robert Greene, perhaps, putting on the tame tiger's hide in his cu

To be or not to be

Smitten by you

Bitten by you

Teased as a ball of wool is teased by a kitten by you:

That is the question

Which harms my digestion

Marry, à propos. He swallowed six Whoosh tablets with chlorinated water and got ready for troubled slumber.

The next day Enderby left them all to it. Let the bastards get on with it. He tried to work in the hotel lounge, but perpetual sedative music got in the way of his rhythms. He went to see the bell bald manager about it, but the manager did not easily comprehend his complaint. Anaesthetization of the ear or something. Offwhite noise. He returned to his room to find the bed yet unmade, but he was used to unmade beds. He stuck the DO NOT DISTURB notice up outside and made himself more tea. Fed up, fucked up and far from home. He dragged Ben Jonson grumbling from his long sleep and made him sing:

Ale and Anacreon,

Beer and Boethius,

Sack and Sophocles, these

Please my heart

More than the farting littleness,

Borborygmic brittleness,

Jokes and japes

Of the apes and jackanapes

One sees

Courting the great

At court, on estate -

Fleas!

He foreheard the bemerding response to that and crumpled the yellow legal paper up. Yet he needed Ben Jonson to sneak in a few extra blank verse lines to make the revival of Richard II relevant to the Essex rebellion which immediately followed and thus have poor Will bemerded. Keep out of the great world, sirrah, stick to your word games. I, your Queen, tell you so. Lucky for you your head rolleth not like his, that runagate traitorous earl, on Tower Hill. Get you gone from my royal sight. Will was turning out to be a very bemerdable character.

Then he wrote lines to April Elgar:

Edwardian brass, O enigmatic kingdom,

Apostolic musicmaker, nobilmente

Clashes the green roots, outyells returning swifts,

Derides the cuckoocall. I ca

Ca

Ca

Enderby

He folded them into a Sheraton envelope, scrawled her name on, went downstairs overcoated, told the reception clerk to put it into her box. Surely surely. Then he went out to get drunk. He settled at length into a low bar behind the Board of Trade building. An old man whined to the bartender, who consoled him surely surely. Enderby ordered Scotch linked and beer to pursue it. Workmen came in in hard hats. They heard Enderby's accent on his third ordering of the same again and derided his Britishry with what what and all that son of rot jolly good eh old chap. They seemed to have watched a fair quantity of old films on television. Enderby gri

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war -" Then he took a drink. The workmen looked solemn, as in church: Lincoln 's speech was a powerful cantrip. They bought Enderby the same again. He was told that it was only kidding about the Queen of England being a whore. He said: "Her circumstances hardly allow it. Of course, your President Ke

"Give the world a kiss

Although it rates a kick

Get in double quick

And give the world a kiss"

"Ah God," he said. There, said somebody, is another one that screws. All dinges screw, they got no morality. She's here right now in Indianapolis, screwing. Screw a dog, screw a beer bottle, bottom end. "Oh God," moaned Enderby.

"There may be roars

But there are roses

A fiddle and a flute

There may be wars

But underneath your nose is

Juicy fruit still unpolluted"

Juicy fruit, I'll say. Give the world a fuck, I'll say. Enderby had to get out. You tell the Queen of England from me, fella, she ain't no whore. Enderby was surprised to find it dark without, street lamps on, hail spi

He was awakened by knocking. He got up with considerable difficulty and groaned his way to the bathroom door. It was not at that that the knocking was proceeding. He opened another door and blinked painfully. She, paper in hand, dispossession notice. She wore scarlet tailored slacks and matching jumper, heavy beaten bronze earrings, scarfed montage of European cathedrals about her throat. Enderby's heart thumped from drink. He bowed her shakily in. She sat down on the one chair with arms and looked at him. He said:

"I heard you singing. In some low place. Not you personally, of course. I must take something. Heartburn. If you'll excuse me." He went to the bathroom for Whoosh and water. He came back with a foul headache. He sat on the edge of the bed. That in your hand," he said. "I see what it is now. Doesn't make much sense. Nominal fantasy. Had to go out. Drank a little. My apologies."