"Darling. Would you care for a glass of this, darling?" He gulped some thirstily. A very nice little wine. "Help you to sleep if you're going to sleep." She nodded tiredly. Enderby poured another glass, the urine-gold flashing in the clear light, belching as it left the bottle. He gave the glass to her and she sat up to sip it. Fair down on her upper lip, Enderby noticed in love and pity, his arm round her shoulders to support her sitting up. She drank half a glassful and at once, to Enderby's shock and horror, reacted violently. Pushing him and the glass away, she fought to leave the bed, her cheeks bulging. She ran on bare feet to the washbowl, gripped its sides, groaned and started to vomit. Enderby, much concerned, followed and stood by her, slender, defenceless in her minimal unalluring summer underwear. "That's your lunch coming up," said Enderby, watching."A bit fatty, wasn't it?" With a roar more came up. Enderby poured water from the water-bottle.
"Oh God," she groaned. "Oh Jesus." She turned on both taps and began to retch again.
"Drink this," said Enderby. "Water." She gulped from the proffered glass and vomited again, but this time mostly water, groaning between spasms blasphemously. "There," said Enderby, "you'll be better now. That was a nasty sort of pudding they served up. All jammy."
"Oh Jesus Christ," retched Vesta (All jammy). Enderby watched kindly, a past master on visceral dysfunctions, as she got it all up. Then weak, wet, limp, spent, she staggered back to the bed. "A good start," she gasped. "Oh God."
"That's the worst of meals on aircraft," said Enderby, sage after his first flight. "They warm things up, you see. Have some more wine. That'll settle your stomach." Fascinated by the near-rhymes, he began softly to repeat. "That'll settle, that'll settle," pacing the room softly, one hand in pocket, the other holding wine.
"Oh, shut up," moaned Vesta. "Leave me alone."
"Yes, darling," said Enderby, accommodating. "Certainly, darling. You have a little sleep, darling." He heard himself wheedling like a foreign whore, so he straightened up and said more gruffly, "I'll go and see about traveller's cheques." Saying that, he was standing up against the door, as if challenging it or measuring himself against it. When a knock came he was able to open it at once. The long-faced boy looked startled. His arms were full of roses, red and white. "Fiori," he said, "per la signora."
"Who from?" frowned Enderby, feeling for an accompanying card. "Good God," he said, finding it. "Rawcliffe. And Rawcliffe's in the bar. Darling," he called, turning. But she was asleep.
3
"Ah," said Rawcliffe. "You got the message, got the flowers? Good. Where," he asked, "is Mrs Enderby?" He was dressed as when Enderby had last seen him, in an old-fashioned heavy suit with a gold watch-chain, Kipling-moustached, beetle-goggled, drunk.
"Mrs Enderby," said Enderby, "is dead."
"I beg your pardon," said Rawcliffe. "Already? Roman fever? How very Jamesian!"
"Oh, I see what you mean," said Enderby. "Sorry. She only became Mrs Enderby today, you see. It takes some getting used to. I thought you meant my stepmother."
"I see, I see. And your stepmother's dead, is she? How very interesting!" Enderby shyly examined the bar, the shelves massed with liquors of all countries, the silver tea-urn, the espresso apparatus. Behind the bar a short fat man kept bowing. "Have some of this Strega," said Rawcliffe. "Dante," he said, and the fat un-Dantesque man came to attention. Rawcliffe then spoke most intricate Italian, full, as far as Enderby could judge, of subjunctives, but with a most English accent. "Strega," said Dante. "Are you," said Enderby nastily, "in all the Italian anthologies, too?" He was given, with flourishes, a glass of Strega..
"Ha, ha," said Rawcliffe, without much mirth. "As a matter of fact, there's a very good Italian translation of that little poem of mine, you know. It goes well into Italian. Now, tell me, tell me, Enderby, what are you writing at the moment?"
"Nothing," said Enderby. "I finished my long poem, The Pet Beast. I told you about that."
"You most certainly did," said Rawcliffe, bowing. Dante bowed too. "A very good idea, that was. I look forward to reading it."
"What I'd like to know," said Enderby, "is what you're doing here. You don't look as though you're on holiday, not in those clothes you don't."
Rawcliffe did something Enderby had read about but never before seen: he placed a finger against his nose. "You're right," he said. "Most certainly not on holiday. At work. Always at work. Some more Strega?"
"With me," said Enderby. Dante bowed and bowed, filling their glasses. "And one for you, too," said Enderby, expansive, on his honeymoon. Dante bowed and said to Rawcliffe, "Americano?"
"Inglese," said Rawcliffe.
"Americani," said Dante, leaning forward, confidential, "fack you. Mezzo mezzo."
"Un poeta," said Rawcliffe, "that's what he is. Poeta. Feminine in form, masculine in gender."
"I beg your pardon," said Enderby. "Did you by any chance mean anything by that?"
"As a matter of fact," said Rawcliffe, "it's my belief that all we poets are really a sort of a blooming hermaphrodite. Like Tiresias, you know. And you're on your honeymoon, eh? Have some more Strega."
"What exactly do you mean by that?" said Enderby, wary.
"Mean? You are a one for meaning, aren't you? The meaning of meaning. I. A. Richards and the Cambridge school. A lot of twaddle, if you ask my opinion. All right, if you won't have more Strega with me I'll have more Strega with you."
"Strega," said Enderby.
"Your Italian's coming along very nicely," said Rawcliffe. "A couple of nice vowels there. A couple of nice Stregas," he said, as these appeared. "God bless, all." He drank. He sang, "Who would an ender be, let him come hither."
"How did you know we were here?" asked Enderby.
"Air terminal," said Rawcliffe. "Today's arrivals from London. Always interesting. Here, they said honeymoon. Remarkable, Enderby, in a man of your age."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Enderby.
"You gentlemen ave Strega on the ouse," said Dante, pouring.
"Tante grazie," said Rawcliffe. "There you go, Enderby, worrying about meaning all the time." He sang, standing to attention. "Would you a spender be, would you a mender be, God save the Queen. No meaning there, is there? Would you a fender be. That's better still. Too much meaning in your poetry, Enderby. Always has been." His words rode over a few drinker's belches. "Pardon, as they say." He drank.
"Strega," said Enderby. "E uno per Lei, Dante."
"You can't say that," said Rawcliffe, hiccoughing. "What bloody awful Italian you speak, Enderby! Bad as your poetry. Pardon. Fair criticism. But I will say that the monster idea of yours was a bloody good one. Too good to make a poem out of it. Ah, Rome," he said, lyrically, "fair, fair Rome. Remarkable place, Enderby, no place like it. Listen, Enderby. I'm going to a party tonight. At the house of the Principessa Somebody-or-other. Would you like to come? You and your missus? Or does it behove you to retire early this fair nuptial night?" He shook his head. "La Rochefoucauld, or some other bloody scoundrel, said you mustn't do it on the first night. What did he know about it, eh? Homosexuals, the lot of them. All writers are homosexuals. They have to be. Stands to reason. To hell with writing." He poured his last few drops of Strega on to the floor. "That," he said, "is for the Lares and Penates to come and lap up. A potation, that is to say a libation. They come to lap it up like bloody big dogs. More Strega."