"Get this straight. I was brought up an English Catholic. I've no time for those bloody Orangemen there. They say an Orangeman's dinner consists of roast spuds, boiled spuds, chips and croquettes."
"Is that so."
"Pudgy bastards who discharge their carbohydrated energy in gross tribalism. No time for the sods. So hand the place over to the IRA for all I care. But it's no business of the Yanks."
Mrs Schoenbaum was a polite hostess. She ignored her British guest's snarl and said: "I hear great things of our project. I understand that things are going really well."
"Conflicts," Enderby said, and spat a bit of shell onto his fork end. "They will all be resolved. This was your idea, or so I'm credibly informed."
"It was the idea," Mrs Schoenbaum said, "of the Bard himself. Ask Mrs Allegramente." Enderby choked. "He spoke from the Happy House and said he was delighted that America had achieved two hundred years of free nationhood. He wished to be associated in song and dance with our celebrations." Enderby looked darkly, in the dark, at Mrs Allegramente, who looked, though chewing something unchewable, darkly back. "After dinner we shall tune in to him again. It's a great privilege," said Mrs Schoenbaum.
"He will not speak to the sceptical," Mrs Allegramente said.
"What," Enderby asked, "is this Happy House you spoke of?"
"The mansion of the blessed," Mrs Schoenbaum said. "He is with his fellow writers. He sent greetings from John Steinbeck, who would not speak for himself."
"I met Steinbeck," Enderby said, "when he was given, unjustly I thought and still think, the Nobel, oh I don't know though when you consider some of these dago scribblers who get it, think it was an unjust bestowal. There was a party for him given by Heinemann in London. I asked him what he was going to do with the prize money and he said: Fuck off." Before he could apologize, the academic said:
"Don't apologize. Oratio recta. Such a response I find deeply interesting. The private sector of a man's life."
"This was in public," Enderby said. "I apologize for what he said," he said to Mrs Schoenbaum. Mrs Schoenbaum, who evidently heard worse from her children, inclined queenlily. "I trust," he said with swimming brain, "the er bard keeps his language clean."
"He will not speak to sceptics," Mrs Allegramente said.
"What kind of sceptics do you have in mind? People who believe his works were written by the gonorrheal Earl of Rutland?"
"People who do not believe in the open line to the beyond," she said. "I don't think there's any use proceeding tonight," she told her hostess, who moaned in distress:
"Oh, Mrs Allegramente."
"You must flout the sceptic," the academic said. "You do not preach to the converted."
"I don't like," Enderby said, seeing in gloom a big cake like an Edwardian lady's hat swim from darkness to light and hearing coffee cups arattle, "the assumption that I don't believe. I am, after all, a poet. There are more things, et cetera. Horatio," he added to the lawyer. "My stepmother," he prepared to say.
"Perhaps you would prefer tea," Mrs Schoenbaum said. Enderby heard a black whine from the darkness.
"No, no, no. I shall have tea when I get back to my room. Along with the Late Late Show."
"The Late," the academic, "Late," tasting every word, "Show," said. It was clear he had never heard of it. "That is an amusing locution."
"It's on television every night," Enderby informed him. "An ancient ah movie interspersed with commercials for cutprice ah discs." He accepted a plate of white and bloody goo. The lawyer now began to disclose his madness. He said:
"Don't knock free enterprise. Free enterprise made this country what it is."
"I'm not ah er knocking anything -"
"We don't need smartass, pardon me Laura, Europeans coming over here to knock American institootions. This next year we have our bicentennial."
"As I am certainly well aware. My heartiest felicitations."
"We don't need smartass sarcasm, pardon me Laura and Mrs Allegramente, from smartass knockers of American traditions. We celebrate two centuries of American knowhow. Also liberty of conscience and expression."
"I most heartfeltly congratulate you."
"Don't give us that. There's a tone of voice that grates on me, pardon me Laura. We're your one bastion against the communist takeover. So don't knock."
"I certainly will not," Enderby promised.
There you are again," the lawyer cried. "It's the tone of voice."
"I can't help my bloody tone of voice," Enderby countered with truculence. "I can't help being a bloody Englishman."
"Who," said Mrs Allegramente, "is oppressing the Irish."
"Ah, hell," Enderby said. He would have said more, but at that moment the son Philip lurched in, probably stoned. He clearly reserved articulacy to his pianoplaying, for what he said, though long and partially structured, made no sense. But his mother understood him, for she said:
"I've no intention of marrying him, do you hear me, Philip? I've no intention of dishonouring your dear father's memory." Enderby nodded at this apparent Hamlet situation. He did not however understand why this Philip, his gaunt stoned face encandled and dramatically shadowed, should look menacingly at him, Enderby. "He takes you for someone else, Mr Elderly," the mother explained. Tell him that you are not who he thinks you are."
"I am not," Enderby said loudly, "who he thinks I am." And then, in Duchess of Malfi tones, "I am Enderby, not Elderly. I am Enderby the poet."
This quietened the son down somewhat. He grabbed himself a hunk of the carved goo from the table centre and left noisily ingesting it. "Good boy, good boy," the academic said in relief.
"I think I'd better go now," Enderby said, getting up.
"Oh no, oh no," Mrs Schoenbaum cried in new distress. "Mrs Allegramente has to convince you."
"I'm already convinced," Enderby said. "There is a Happy House far far away."
"Not far away," Mrs Schoenbaum cried. "Let's start, Mrs Allegramente."
"Nothing will come through. Too much British scepticism around."
"Let's have him telling us to get out of Northern Ireland," Enderby suggested nastily.
"You see?" Mrs Allegramente said to Mrs Schoenbaum.
"Be good," pleaded Mrs Schoenbaum. "Promise to be good, Mr Elderly." And she got up. Enderby muttered something about Mrs Allegramente's better being good, but this was not heard in the chairleg skirring. He followed his hostess and the others out. Their hostess led them to a small chamber off the hallway. The son was to be heard back at his piano, playing a single monodic line, one hand evidently busy with his goo. The black servant in the white coat nodded balefully at everybody, not specifically Enderby. He too seemed stoned. The small chamber was brilliantly lighted. There was a round table in the middle, four chairs of a dining order, a kind of throne for, presumed Enderby, Mrs Allegramente. "No chicanery," the academic said to Enderby. "All above board. I have participated in previous sessions."
"Is that so?" Enderby said. "What is your ah specialization?"
"Pardon me?"
"You do what?"
"I run a course in theosophy. Saul Bellow is visiting us at the moment. He is deeply interested."
"My kind of town."
"Pardon me?"
"Be seated, all," Mrs Schoenbaum invited. "You will have the small lamp, Mrs Allegramente?" There was such a lamp on the table, a bulb of low wattage with a parchment shade. Enderby asked the theosophist in a low tone:
"Is that human skin?"
"Pardon me?" But Mrs Allegramente was already on her throne, breathing from the diaphragm. Look at the bloody man filling himself up with air. That had been said of AE, George Russell, prototheosophist, in sceptical Dublin. High on a throne like this, ready to speak of the maharishivantatattarara or some such bloody thing. Mrs Schoenbaum, very eager, turned out the bright main light. Shadows, shadows and shadows. She put Enderby as far away as possible from Mrs Allegramente or whatever her bloody name was. She said: