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The babe's first breath
Is: Elizabeth.
The soldier's death
Is for Elizabeth.
Hail Gloriana, keep England our home
Safe from her enemies: Scotland and Ireland and France and Spain
and Muscovy and the Holy Roman Empire and, it goes totally
without saying, Rome.
Delivering it in an envelope (let them bloody well process that into something singable, the bastards) to the secretarial concourse, he had seen for the first time the presswet posters. ACTOR ON HIS ASS. Clever in a way. It could not be, though it was now being, considered obscene, since it was a citation from Hamlet, but its implication was totally vulgar. On a notice board he had read that the final dress rehearsal would be in the nature of a free performance for the schoolkids of Indianapolis and environs, three in the afternoon of 6 January, Twelfth Night if anyone was interested, and that in the evening there would be an obligatory party at the mansion of Mrs Schoenbaum. That party was in progress now. Enderby was having it out about the title with one of the board of governors of the theater trust, a hardware magnate named, it seemed, Humrig, retired and now, apparently, a full time churchwarden. He drank teetotal punch, which few others there did. Enderby said:
"Anyway, it's not my responsibility – either the title or your own wretched squeamishness. Ass is asinus, a donkey."
"You wrote the ah play."
"I wrote something. Whether that something is still there I can't say. I did not go to the dress rehearsal, though I heard lots of ill-behaved schoolchildren. They seemed to enjoy it. On their level."
Enderby turned his back on Mr Humrig and went to the improvised bar, which the mad son Philip and the grey black retainer were ru
"I got this stuff spiked."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Smell it." A jug of murky orange liquid was raised to Enderby's nose and he got a whiff of surgical spirit.
"That," Enderby said, "could be dangerous."
"Shit to them. That guy there plays piano like shit."
He meant the haired répétiteur Coppola, who was crashing out what sounded like an atonal cancan, to which Toplady's ginger mistress and another girl pranced with raised skirts. "Gin," Enderby insisted. He observed April Elgar in a blazing scarlet directoire, from the look of it, nightdress talking earnestly to the black lad of the company, Sir Walter Raleigh for all Enderby knew, who counted points off on his fingers. Toplady sat glumly with talking elders on or in the deep couch. Enderby heard something about renewal of contract, probably nonrenewal. Toplady was perhaps for the chop for some reason, probably unco
"Leave the Irish alone."
"Only too glad," Enderby said, "to leave the murderous bastards alone. It's not my concern anyway. If you're so concerned get over to Belfast and have your kneecaps converted to Quaker Oats."
Mrs Schoenbaum did not seem happy about her party. She stood at an end of the room with the lawyer Elvin or Alvin or something, clad in black silk pyjamas with a gold caftan over, her hair, as previously, glued to a snapshot wuthering. She seemed ready for a cardiac arrest when two genuine Elizabethans entered, late and tanked up elsewhere – William Shakespeare and the Earl of Essex, both bearded, wigged, ruffed, jerkined, slashtrunked, hosed. Enderby too had a profound tremor until William Shakespeare spoke in the accent of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He cried:
"Greetings to ye all, let the nutbrown ale floweth, or, marry and egad, the iciclebythewalled martini." He noticed Enderby and added: "And all that sort of heyno
"Learn your Elizabethan grammar before you start mocking it. The accusative of ye is you. And a profound heyno
"Do not," said Humrig the churchwarden, "use language of that sort in the presence of Mrs Schoenbaum."
"Shit," said the mad son Philip. "Shit shit shit."
"Philip," his mother said, "please."
"I wa
"Welcome," haired Coppola said, banging three Scriabinesque cacophonies and getting up with a low bow and an arm stretched in proffer. Philip drooled his way over and began to play something manic and unrecognizable. He cried:
"Dance! Dance!" Some obeyed. Enderby asked the grey black for more gin. Oldfellow Shakespeare was on to him now, saying:
"And what the fuck do you know about acting?"
"Enough to know that you're as much like Shakespeare as my arse or ass. And," he added, "your breath smells horrible." It did too. Perhaps that was the origin of sodomy: avoiding partner's halitosis. Enderby got away and over to a corner where Mrs Schoenbaum's daughter was leasing her bedroom for half an hour for five dollars. Toplady and the conferrers got up with difficulty from the deep boat of a couch. Toplady cried:
"Stop that row for a minute."
"Okay." Oldfellow had followed Enderby. "You try it, buster, that's all, you just try it."
"I speak English anyway," Enderby said, "and I know the lines."
The hands of Philip had been forcibly removed from the piano keys. Toplady cried: "A few words, friends. You've worked hard. We've all worked hard. Some not so hard as others, but let that pass. Tomorrow we open. Or rather tomorrow you open. My contract as Artistic Director of the Peter Brook Theater was due to end in March. By mutual agreement it ends as of now. Certain elements do not like the way I have been doing things. There's a feeling that I should have concentrated on ordure like Abie's Irish Rose or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I have not made the Peter Brook Theater a centre of entertainment. It is wrong apparently to take the drama seriously. Until my successor has been chosen things will be in the incapable hands of my sleeping assistant director Jed Tilbury. Bless some of you and fuck others. I go." He went. Some watched him go, others turned to look at this Jed Tilbury, who was the black lad enumerating points, though now no longer, to April Elgar. He cried:
"Hey, man -"
"De party over, I guess," said the grey black retainer. "An a gud ting too," in the ma
"More gin," Enderby said. "And then call me a taxi."
"You call you own taxi, man. I don't call no taxis for no one no how."
Toplady's mistress was meanwhile looking for her left shoe and calling: "Gus, Gus, wait for me, Gus." The shoe found, she stopped on her way out to fix hatefilled eyes on Enderby. "It's you," she said. "You brought bad luck, you bastard."
"Not me, kid or baby or whatever it is," Enderby said heavily. "Somebody bigger than me. Leave well alone is what I say. And don't call me bastard."
"Bastard," she said and was off, crying "Gus." Enderby said to the grey black:
"You're a servant. Call me a taxi. But first more gin."
"You not call me servant, man. I ain't no servant."
Mrs Allegramente was now there, saying: "Is he giving trouble, Edwin? Is he being racist?"
"You keep out of this," Enderby said. And then: "Ah, please yourself. Protestant Ulster for ever. God bless King Henry the Eighth." Before going to the hallway to call himself a taxi, he went over to April Elgar and the black now revealed as Jed Tilbury. To him he said: "Congratulations are probably in order." To her: "I'm going back to the hotel. Will you come?"
"Why?" she said with a new pertness.
"Because the party seems to be over and it was a terrible party anyhow and we stay at the same hotel and I'm calling a -"
"Jed'll take me home," she said.
From the tail of his right eye Enderby saw Dick Corcoran as Earl of Essex swill thirstily from an orange juice jug. Very sensible, do him good, all those vitamins. "Right," Enderby said. And then: "A queer sort of time we've had when you come to think about it. Meddling with Shakespeare. All right on the night, though. As they say." He saw now, coming in too late, Bodiman, Pip Wesel and Silversmith, all drunk and leering. The grey black retainer or hired man or whatever he was supposed to be called let out a great wail of distress. "If," Enderby said, "those three start insulting you, let me know."