Free The Complete Enderby by Anthony Burgess

bad, is it? It’s short and sweet, and it sounds Frenchified and a bit naughty, wouldn’t you agree?’
    Enderby eyed her warily. Frenchified and a bit naughty, eh? ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And where would I come in with something like that?’ Not very good, she’d said, and not too bad – both in the same breath. Perhaps not a very sincere sort of woman. Before she could answer his question the tea arrived. The Roman waiter laid it down gently on the fretted claw-footed low table – silver dishcovers steaming, tiny cakes oozing cream. He rose, bowing with sneering jowls, retiring. Vesta Bainbridge poured. She said:
    ‘I thought somehow you’d prefer your tea like this – sugarless, milkless, lemony. Your poems are a little, shall we say, astringent, if that’s the right word.’ Enderby looked down sourly at the sour cup. He preferred stepmother’s tea really, but she’d ordered without consulting him. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Just right.’ Vesta Bainbridge began to eat with great appetite, showing fine small teeth as she bit into her anchovy toast. Enderby’s heart warmed to this: he liked to see women eat, and this gusto mitigated, somehow, her lean perfection. But, he thought, she had no right, with such a figure, to have such an appetite. He felt a desire to invite her out to dinner, that same evening, to see how she would tuck into minestrone and pork chops. He feared her.
    ‘Now,’ said Vesta Bainbridge, and a rosy tongue-point darted out, picked up a toast-crumb, then darted in again. ‘I want you to know that I admire your work, and what I propose now is entirely my own idea. It’s met with some opposition, mind you, because
Fem
is essentially a popular magazine. And your poetry, as you’ll be proud to admit, is not exactly popular. It’s not unpopular either, of course; it’s just not known. Pop-singers are known and TV interviewers are known and disc-jockeys are known, but you’re not known.’
    ‘What,’ asked Enderby, ‘are these things? Pop-singers and so on?’ She looked askance at him and noticed that his bewilderment was genuine. ‘I’m afraid,’ said Enderby, ‘that since the war I’ve rather shut myself off from things.’
    ‘Don’t you have a radio or a television set?’ said Vesta Bainbridge, her green eyes wide. He shook his head. ‘Don’t you read newspapers?’
    ‘I used to read certain Sunday papers,’ said Enderby, ‘for the sake of the book reviews. But it made me so very depressed that I had to stop. The reviewers seemed so,’ he frowned, ‘so very
big
, if you see what I mean. They seemed to
enclose
us writers, so to speak. They seemed to know all about us, and we knew nothing about them. There was one very kind and very knowledgeable review of a volume of mine, I remember, by a man who, I suppose, is a very good man, but it was evident that he could have written my poems so much better if only he’d had the time. Those things make one feel very insignificant. Oh, I know one
is
insignificant, really, but you’ve got to ignore that if you’re to get any work done at all. And so I’ve tended to cut myself off a bit, for the sake of the work. Everybody seems to be so
clever
, somehow, if you see what I mean.’
    ‘I do and I don’t,’ said Vesta Bainbridge, smartly. So far she had eaten all the anchovy toast, five egg sandwiches, a couple of pikelets and one squelchy little pastry, and yet contrived to look ethereal, mountain-cool. Enderby, on the other hand, who, because of his heartburn, had only nibbled mouse-like at a square inch of damp bread and an egg-ring, was aware of himself as gross, sweating, halitotic, his viscera loaded like a nightsoil-collector’s bucket. ‘
I
don’t feel insignificant,’ said Vesta Bainbridge, and ‘I’m just nothing compared with you.’
    ‘But you don’t
have
to feel insignificant, do you?’ said Enderby. ‘I mean, you’ve only to look at yourself, haven’t you?’ He said this dispassionately,