Enderby`s Dark Lady

5

The coming of April Elgar was harbingered by Enderby's coming onto the top sheet of his Holiday Inn bed. So, at least, he was to surmise. The lavish ejaculation was unwonted. It woke him at the useless hour of 4 a.m. Remarkable in man of your age, Enderby. He had not been dreaming of anything very specific. Later he was to see this as confirmation of the power of a woman he had not even seen and knew to be, which was pretty far away, in Miami, Florida. But she was having her bags packed for Terrebasse, Indiana, or rather for the Sheraton Hotel in Indianapolis, she being above Holiday Inns. And she was shooting out powerful erotic rays.

Holiday Inn bedrooms always had two beds, a thoughtful provision. Before getting into the so far untouched dry one, Enderby tugged the wet sheet free of its anchorage and then wondered what to do with it. Leave it to dry naturally and it would dry crinkled, announcing to the world of gossipy chambermaids the poverty of Enderby's sexual life. So he soaked the defiled patch in hot water and stretched it over a flat matt heat source. Then, naked as he was, he put on his glasses to examine himself with some care. There was no prevision in this: it was the marginal response to a marginally erotic situation, to wit an unpurposed seminal discharge. But there was also the matter of a long bathroom mirror. In Tangiers he had only a round shaving glass. Here you were cordially invited to look at yourself all over, no extra charge. He looked with interest at a naked man with spectacles on and no teeth in. This latter deficiency he fumblingly rectified. Better, but how much better?

There was fat there, but it was not slugwhite fat. He had got brown in Tangiers. Occasionally he climbed to the roof of La Belle Mer to sun himself. The sun was there and might as well be used. Bronzedness had a flattening effect: the Enderby that looked with interest and even faint approval out of the mirror was a less three-dimensional Enderby than the one he had occasionally seen before in the old days, that was to say, in other bathrooms. The encroaching baldness he did not approve. There were one or two members of the troupe who wore cowboy hats all the time, and one who wore a kind of Balaclava helmet of leather with earflaps. But they all had ample uncombed hair beneath. There was a shop near to the hotel with toupees in it. There was also, in Enderby's suitcase, a flat tout's cap with a peak that went back a long way and whose provenance was now very vague. The cook Arry he had known so long ago? Cut out a art shairped croutong with a art cootter. For piling on damson jelly as an accompaniment to joogged air. Enderby removed his spectacles and dug the cap out. Naked, he squinted at himself with the cap on. Anything went down all right in this mad America.

Enderby turned up at the theater next morning but one in the tout's cap and an overcoat of faded plum. He removed the overcoat to reveal blue linen trousers, an open yellow shirt with crimson foulard and a seagreen cardigan. He wore no spectacles. He could see enough, and some things he did not wish to see – the face of Toplady in full definition, for instance. He had to read a new scene to Toplady. There was no music in it really, so Silversmith did not have to be there. Before Will's sexual triumph following Richard III it had been decided to bring in brief homosexuality, espionage, violence and frightful death, in other words Christopher Marlowe. This was to scare Will and make him pack his and Hamnet's traps and ride back to Stratford, but then the Earl of Southampton was to appear and tell him not to. That would lead to Dark Lady and Southampton taking her from Will and her getting mixed up with the revolutionary party led by Essex. Toplady sat behind his desk apparently wondering at Enderby's new appearance while Enderby read aloud. First, though, Enderby sort of sang.

"There will we sit upon the rocks

And see the shepherds feed their flocks

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals."

"Oh, good that, you must admit," says Marlowe. "Will Shakespeare here could not do as well."

"Give me time."

"Give us all time," says Frizer.

"Amen," says Skeres. "But for some the time is ordained to be short."

"Ah," says Marlowe, "very mystical and occult."

"All may be clarified in time," says Poley. "Though not, of course, to everyone. You have worn a good cloak, Kit."

"From the best tailor," says Marlowe.

"I mean," says Poley, "the figurative cloak of your pretty songs about shepherds, and your loud brawling stageplays and your even louder atheism that the Privy Council chooses to ignore."

"Ignore?" says Marlowe. "I have been up before the Privy Council but recently. A matter of some blasphemous papers found in Tom Kyd's rooms. You know Tom Kyd, Will?"

"He wrote one good play," says Will. "The Spanish Tragedy."

The three men titter, and Will wonders why. Skeres says:

"That is not too apt. Much depends on what happens in the last scene. It is too soon to talk of the Spanish tragedy."

"Come, come," says Frizer, "this is intended to be a merry meeting. Give me the lute and I will sing you a song, though not about passionate shepherds." He takes the lute that Marlowe has been absently plucking and sings:

"As you came from the holy land of Walsingham,

Met you not my true love by the way as you came?"

"Ah," says Poley, "he knows the name Walsingham. It was, after all, his master's. His ears pricked like a dog's."

"Sir Francis Walsingham," says Skeres. "Dead these two years, but once head of Her Majesty's Secret Service. He recruited you, Kit."

"Sing him more," says Poley, so Frizer sings:

"I sing of a spy, of a spy sing I,

That under the cloak of tobacco smoke

And drink and boys and blasphemous noise

Had sharp enough eyes for other spies.

"Meaning that he was, or is, a counter-spy, matching the Counter-Reformation."

"Will," says Marlowe, frightened, "go and call in those men. The Privy Council men we told to wait in the garden." Will tries to get up, quick enough on the uptake, but finds Skere's drawn sword at his chest. Skeres says:

"Nay, stay, we beg you, Mr Shakejelly. Play stuff, Kit," he says to Marlowe, "apt for the stage but not for real life."

"I admit," says Marlowe, "real life has more surprises. I had no idea my three friends were creatures of King Philip of Spain."

"You still have no idea, Kit," says Frizer. "You have no idea who we are working for, or, if thou wishest, para quien nosotros estamos trabajando. Why, we may also be working for Her Majesty's Secret Service, and that organization may deem it desirable to be rid of unreliability."

"Look," says Poley, his eyes stern on Will, "this one here. Must he not too -?"

"He is not quite a gentleman," says Skeres. "He carries no sword. He may freely report what he is about to see. The judgement of God on an atheistical roarer." They all have their swords drawn. Will remains rigid in his seat. Frizer says:

"Draw your dagger, Kit. Let us have some little argument about the honour of a wench or who shall pay the reckoning." He lunges at Marlowe. Marlowe draws his dagger. Frizer laughs, keeping at a sword's length's distance. He says:

"Ah, Mr Shakeshoes, are you not now in the great world? Did you not dream of all the glory of this London life when you wiped your snotty country nose on your sleeve?"

"Tell them, Will," says Marlowe. "Tell them what you have seen."

"He may tell them," says Poley. "He shall corroborate all." So all three now have their swords out, but they clatter them to the floor. "Strike, Kit," says Poley, "strike, you passionate shepherd." Marlowe holds his dagger indecisively. "Now," says Poley. All three seize Marlowe's dagger hand and drive the dagger into his frontal lobes. Marlowe screams. Will is petrified.

"I still think," says Skeres, "we should dispatch this one too. A quarrel of drunken poets."

"No, no," says Frizer. "It is a little man. Leave him." And Will runs away.

Enderby looked up at the blur of Toplady, pleased. He could not tell from his look whether Toplady was pleased or not, but he took it that he was not, since he never was.

"Well," Toplady began, and got no further. For his door flew open and in swam or sailed or flew April Elgar, saying:

"Hi."

"Sweetie, marshmallow pie, angelcake" and so on went Toplady, half-rising and making a cold sketch of embracing her in hungry arms. Enderby not merely got up to give her his chair but retreated to the wall. "This," Toplady said with dramatic lack of enthusiasm, "is er," meaning Enderby.

"Hi."

Enderby stood openmouthed underneath a poster for Mother Courage. He had never seen anything or body like this woman before. In Tangiers, true, he had presided, as owner of a perch of sunning ground windtrapped, over comely enough bodies and acceptable enough, if usually chronically dissatisfied, faces above them or, if they were lying down, at one end or other of them. These had been all white, meaning unwholesomely rich in greens and blues and carmines, and very pallid to begin with, earning slow increments of honey and ultimate toffee as the sun slowly chewed them. The women of darker hue he had been unable to judge of, since they showed only ankles under robes and kohled eyes over yashmaks. He had never really had standards for the assessing of black American beauty. This April Elgar was a revelation to his awed eyes, and would be even more so when he got his glasses on. She glowed in deep content with her Blue Mountain glow and exact sculpted line of feature. Quadroon? Octoroon? Blasphemous terms, obsolete musical instruments squeaking in accompaniment to a celestial choir. Denoting coldblooded blood apportionments apt only for damnable race laws. Doubloon was more like it: hot gold, also cool. The divine sinuous body was skirted in cinnamon, ensilked shins and ankles and feet shod frivolously on frail plinths that were really artful engineering made Enderby groan with their frightful perfection. She had had pasted upon her a matching jumper of fairy chain metal. Her delicate breasts appeared unsupported. The hair, obligatorily raven, flowed a satin river, to whose blackness all blacks were chalk, scrawling their own reproach. She sat, well pleased with herself, by God, and no wonder, by Christ. She said, in a voice of cassia honey or an Elgarian string section:

"Has that fucking fag schlepped his ass here yet?"

"Don't be like that, Ape," whined Toplady. "You like Pete, you know you'll be great together."

"What did you call her then?" cried Enderby in outrage. "Did you call her what I think you called her?" She turned and looked Enderby up and down, as to appraise his fag properties, if any, and said:

"Ape he said, short for April, that's my name, honey."

"Well, I won't have it," Enderby cried. "It's a bloody disgrace. To have so exquisite a name apocopized into the libellously simian. And you too with your bloody Goats and Monkeys," he told Toplady loudly.

"Wow," she said, "you better write that down big so I can frame it and stick it on my wall. Good for the lip muscles. What's this," she then said, "about goats and monkeys?" She took a gold étui from her Bayeux tapestry bag. Enderby shook for his lighter and shook out a flame as she gave a white tube to her lips. She held his hand steady with long cool brown fingers. Toplady said:

"Our title. Right out of Othello. I knew you'd like it."

"I get it. I'm the monkey and that screaming fag is the goat. Or is it the other way round? It's a lousy title. And in future you can quit calling me Ape."

"Not dignified enough for its ah protagonist," Enderby said. "I think now that Will might be better. Will the name and the drive, sexual and social, you know, and even the final testament with the second best bed. With an exclamation point possibly. Will! Or two, if you like – Will!!"

"Dark Lady," she said. She'd done some homework, then.

"With respect," Enderby said, "there's a play by Bernard Shaw called The Dark Lady of the Sonnets. Of course, she's not really dark in your exquisite and overwhelming manner. Darkhaired only. Well, eyes too. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun. How about," inspired, "A Dark Lady's Will?"

"When do I start work?" she asked Toplady.

"Reading after lunch. I booked a table at the Escoffier. Silversmith will be back with some great songs day after tomorrow."

"That fag," she said. Enderby liked all this very much. But, of course, he, being British, had to be the final repository of faghood. "Lousy British fag," she would tell Toplady over luncheon, to which, Enderby did not have to be told, Enderby was not invited. She now ignored Enderby till she had finished her fag, which she had handled elegantly but on which she had drunk deep, discussing with hard impersonality the while various contractual rights which Toplady said could be clarified when the wife, Ms Grace Hope, of the screaming fag Oldfellow arrived with the screaming fag along with the other fag, screaming or not, Silversmith. Enderby was quick to wrest the exhausted lipsticked butt from her and grind it out in the concave plinth of some trophy, elongated humanoid, which stood on Toplady's desk. She stood and smoothed herself down laterally and said now to Enderby:

"What was that shit about exquisite apocalypse of the something something?"

"Not shit," Enderby reproved. "I don't wish to hear that word in your connection. It harms your beauty and elegance."

"My my," she said, with an oeillade meant to be comic. "Okay, Gus, we go and all that sort of nonsense."

"A fair warning," stern Enderby said. She glided out and Toplady looked acidly on Enderby as he followed. Enderby lighted himself a Robert Burns cigar and coughed in a sort of delirium round the office. Her perfume, a complication of something expensively distilled in the town of Grasse and her own salt animal emanation, rode over the foul reek of non-tobacco ingredients. Enderby went out, past the girl and women typists, and took the stairs down to the greenroom, where he gave himself lunch from the vending machine – yoghurt with boysenberries and coffee that went on wasting itself on the sugar-encrusted grill beneath. A dirty business. Later he went to the sort of classroom where, floor today unencumbered by the fag Silversmith, the troupe would assemble for the reading of Act One entire. He would have to read Will again. Soon he must surrender his lines to this screaming fag Oldfellow. It struck him with horror now that he must – The incongruity. God, they would laugh their heads off.

She was late, stardom's privilege. Toplady, being with her, also had to be late. Enderby filled in some of the waiting time by telling the lounging troupe about the kind of English they had, properly, to employ in their rôles. "Remember," he said, "the Mayflower."

"We ain't old enough, man," said a black boy Enderby had not seen before. What the hell part was he to play? Henslowe? Sir Walter Raleigh?

"I mean, remember that the Mayflower brought over to America a kind of English very close to what Shakespeare and his ah contemporaries spoke. Do not attempt Sir John Gielgud accents, even if you know how. Speak the tongue of Boston, Massachusetts. It will be good enough." He nodded kindly at them, who looked fuzzily, he being spectacleless, but unkindly back. Then April Elgar entered, followed by Toplady, and she looked at the men as if they were all fags, and at the others, which they were, frowsty frumpish sluts. She said, seated:

"Me."

"I beg your pardon?" Enderby said.

"Me, me. Take it from where I come in, okay?"

"I," Enderby apologetically said, "have to read Will. Shakespeare, that is."

"Okay. You wrote it. What page?" There was a fluttering of already soiled typescripts.

"Your name is Lucy," Enderby said. "There is a room with a pair of virginals in it."

"A pair of who?"

"A musical instrument," Enderby explained. "Like a harpsichord. The Dark Lady plays it well. It says so in the Sonnets."

"Well, this Dark Lady don't play nothing. Except a little stud poker." Then she said very woodenly: "Who are you, sir? Who sent you? You take a liberty, sir."

"You summoned Richard the Third to your house," Will Enderby said. "You set your sights too low, madam. You should have asked for Richard the Third's creator."

A pudgy ginger girl as duenna said, very woodenly: "I knew he was not the man. Shall I have him thrown out, madam?"

Enderspeare said: "The person of William Shakespeare is not handled by kitchen ruffians. I come as a gentleman to pay my respects to a lady. Get you gone, woman, and learn your place."

"Very well, Marion. I will hear his message," went April Elgar. "Stay close and listen for my bell. Now, sir."

"Your beauty," Shakeserby said earnestly, "deserves better than the homage of a mere player. You need a poet. A poet is what I am."

"You are very forward, sir."

"Come, none of this. I glory in your beauty. I have here a sonnet."

"You have writ a sonnet? For me?"

"I have writ them for only one man – my near friend whom I love with all my heart, the Earl of Southampton."

"So," said April Elgar as herself, which was no different from as Lucy, speaking to Toplady, "he's faggy."

"Not at all," said nonWill Enderby stoutly. "He was omnifutuant. It was the way things were then."

"Yeah, faggy."

"Read," commanded Toplady. Willerby read:

"But for one woman I have this:"

"So he takes out his shlong?"

"A sonnet. A sonnet. He takes out a sonnet. Shakespeare didn't write this sonnet. I did." Enderby enWilled himself again. "Hear, madam.

All other beauty's light I lightly rate.

My love is as my love is, for the dark.

In night enthroned, I ask no better state

Than thus to range, nor seek a guiding spark -"

"It is forward, to write of love so. You are very impertinent. I'll say he is."

"I wrote this long ago to another lady, one I saw only in dreams. Now I see reality in your true and rich midnight darkness. I have always been seeking one such as you – goddess, genius, poetic pharos."

"Poetic what?"

"Pharos, pharos. Greek for a lighthouse."

"Okay, why can't he say lighthouse. Then it says that I play."

"Where did you learn so delicate a touch? Surely not in your own country," said Shakesby.

"I left my own country as a small child. I was torn away as a slave. I was brought up by a family in Bristol. It was a holy work to them to bring light to what they called the heathen. But then they freed me and made me into the lady you see, and when the father died he left me money."

"Sing," said Enderwill. "A song in exchange for my sonnet."

"Ah Jesus. You mean this?" And she minced out the words like a Moody and Sankey hymn:

"What doth it mean, to love?.

It is to plumb the seas and scale the skies.

It is to wear the day away with sighs

Or mount the moon above.

Thus doth it mean, to love,

So wouldst thou seek the truth of this to prove,

And love?"

The entire troupe smirked at that. April Elgar gaped incredulous. "It is," Enderby stoutly said, "in the Elizabethan manner. The sort of thing you'd sing to the virginals."

"Sweetie," she said, and then, in a kind of slave whine, "ah doan want none of dem lil old virginals, whatever de shit dey are. Dey doan fit mah personality no way no how."

"I've warned you before," Enderby cried, "about that sort of language. There's too much of this shit," he told the whole troupe, "going on. She there," jerking his shoulder towards her, "blasphemes against her exquisite beauty by bemerding her speech in that manner. For Christ's sake cut out the shit and let's be serious." And he blazed his way back into the role, crying like a threat: "You sing prettily, madam. Can you dance as well?"

"Some dances I can dance," April Elgar said, first grinning and then not. "The pavane – the galliard -"

"Canst," Shenderspeare said, with a cunning change to the familiar mode, "dance the Beginning of the World?"

"I know not such a dance."

"I," Spearesby said, "will show thee." And he beamed in embarrassment as pure Enderby.

"Well," she said, in her proper person, "we're waiting."

"Oh, that. Well – he takes her in his arms and covers her with kisses. He imposes his will upon her, pun intended, he strips her of her taffeta elegance and carries her over to a gorgeous daybed. He untrusses himself and dances the dance called the Beginning of the World. A nice conceit," he explained. "The Elizabethans saw the sexual act in cosmic terms. It began with an image of creation and ended with death. To die meant to experience the ah orgasm."

For the first time the assembled company responded to words of Enderby with something approaching attention and even respect. It evidently surprised some of the younger ones to learn that people who had been dead a thousand or a hundred years, same thing, knew about copulation and even had expressive figurative speech to decorate it in or with. "Beginnin o the World," the black lad said, drawing out World into something unglobular. "I like that, man." Before or after that night's Brecht nonsense some of them would be trying it out for the sake of the nomenclature. Baby, ah just died. Then a man in overalls entered to say that the Holiday Inn was on fire.