"You'd better," said Enderby, "get into bed."
"Yes," she shuddered, "yes. Into bed." And she pulled him towards bed, her grip on him unrelaxed, so that they shambled to it as though clumsily dancing. As soon as they were in it, a skein of lightning lay an instant against the sky, like a stunned man against a cliff, and then the drums whammed out from hi-fi loudspeakers all over the heavens. She again seemed to try to enter him in fear, a rather soft rock of ages, and he smelt her terror, as familiar a smell as that faintly oily one of the coverlet.
"There," he said again, clasping her, stroking and soothing. It was a very narrow bed. This, he kept reminding himself, was his bride, an intelligent and desirable young woman and it was time, under the thunder and rain, to be thinking of performing, that is to say consummating, that is to say. He stealthily felt his way down to find out what was his body's view of this constatation, but all was quiet there, as though he were calmly reading Jane Austen.
The rain eased and the thunder was trundled, grumbling, off. Enderby felt her body relax and seem, somehow, to grow moister and more expectant. She gripped him still, though there was no more thunder to fear. Enderby's engines, rusty and sluggish, tried to wake up and respond to various quite unoriginal ganglionic stimuli, but there were certain difficulties which were secret and shameful. Enderby had been spoiled by too many pictures; it was a long time since he had held a real woman in his arms like this; he had possessed in imagination houri after houri of a beauty, passivity, voluptuousness no real woman could ever touch. Perhaps, he now felt, if this body he held could become-just for twenty or thirty seconds-one of those harem dreams of his, pampered, pouting, perfumed, steatopygous, he could, he was sure, achieve what it was a plain duty, apart from all questions of gratification, to achieve. But the body of his bride was spare, barely cushioned. With a desperate effort he conjured a gross tit-swinging image, saw whose image it was, then, making the retching noises of a child trying to disgust, he swung out of the bed with unwonted agility and stood shivering on the worn mat. "What's the matter?" she called. "What is it? Don't you feel well?" Forgetting that he was naked, Enderby dashed out of the room without replying. Two doors down the corridor was the sign Gabinetto, and Enderby, re-living the past, entered it and locked its door. To his horror he found that the lavatory was not a sane comfortable English WC but a Continental crouch-hole with a right-hand hand-rail and a toilet-roll-fitting on the same side. Once, many years ago, he had fallen into one of these holes. He almost cried for the security of his old seaside lavatory but, unlocking the door to leave, the tears froze as he heard two female Italian voices on the corridor. One of these, saying loud passing greetings to the other, was now right up against the gabinetto door and trying the handle. Enderby swiftly re-locked himself in. The voice spoke urgently, saying, for all Enderby knew, that its owner was in a bad way, desperate, and couldn't wait too long. Enderby seated himself on the edge of the low crouch-hole dais, saying, "Go away. Go away," and, as an afterthought, "Io sono nudo, completamente nudo", wondering if that was correct Italian. Correct or not, the voice was silenced and apparently carried back down the corridor. Enderby the completely naked sat on, in thinking pose, feeling at his lowest ebb.
5
Like an Arab thief, though not so slippery, Enderby darted back to the bedroom. Vesta was sitting up in the bed, smoking a ship's (or export) Woodbine through a holder and, because of that, looking more naked than she was, though this, reflected Enderby, was not really possible. "Now then," she said. "We're going to have this whole thing out."
"No," mumbled Enderby. "Not like this." He sat shamefacedly down on the cane chair in the corner, wriggling and wincing as odd prickly cane thorns assaulted his bottom. "Not," said Enderby, "with no clothes on. It's not right." He joined his hands as for prayer and, with this frail cage of fingers, hid his genitals from the smoking woman in the bed. "I mean," said Enderby, "one can't really talk about anything naked."
"Who are you to say that?" she said fiercely. "What do you know about the world? My first husband and I once belonged to a nudist camp -" (Enderby whimpered at the sudden formality of "first husband")"-and there used to be really prominent men and women there, and they didn't have any pudeur about talking. And they, I might add," she added acidly, "could talk about rather more than lavatories and stomachs and how rotten the Roman Empire must have been." Enderby gazed glumly out of the window, seeing that the rain had stopped and the June warmth, encouraged, was creeping back into the Italian evening. Then he was granted a brief image of a fat sack-bellied middle-aged female nudist don, breasts hanging like tripe, discoursing on aesthetic values. This cheered him up a little, so he turned boldly on Vesta, to say:
"All right then. Let's have it out, the whole damned thing. What exactly do you think you're playing at?"
"I don't understand you," she said. "I'm playing at nothing. I'm working hard, with absolutely no co-operation from you, to try and build a marriage."
"And your idea of building a marriage is to try to drag me back into the Church, is that it?" said Enderby, half-uncovering his genitals so as to gesticulate with one hand. "And in a nasty sly way too. Not saying anything about being a Catholic yourself, and even being quite ready to have a registry office wedding, even though you know that that sort of wedding means nothing at all."
"Oh," she said, "you admit that, do you? You admit that it means nothing at all? In other words, you admit that a Catholic wedding is the only valid one?"
"I don't admit anything," cried Enderby. "All I'm saying is that I'm confused, completely confused about what's supposed to be going on. What I mean is, we've only been married a couple of days, and everything seems to have changed. You weren't like this before, were you? You weren't like this when we were living in your flat in London, were you? Everything was all right then. You were on my side, and you were getting on with your job and I was getting on with mine, and it was all nice and pleasant and not a care in the world. But now look at things. Since we got married, and that's only a couple of days ago, mind you, only a couple of days -" (two fingers held up, five on his genitals)"-you've been doing your damnedest to turn into my stepmother."
Vesta's mouth opened and smoke wandered out. "To what, did you say? To turn into what?"
"My stepmother, bitch as she was. You're not fat yet, but I suppose you soon will be. You keep belching away all the time and saying "Och" and going on at me-natter and nag, nag and natter-and you're scared of the bloody thunder and you're trying to get me to go back into the Church. Why? That's what I want to know. Why? What's your motive? What are you getting at? What are you trying to do?"
"This," she said heavily, "is fantastic. This is the most incredible-this is the most incredible fantastic -" She started to get out of bed. Enderby, seeing this, saw that there would be too much visible nakedness about the room, so he lunged across from the cane chair, genitals swinging, and pushed her back into bed and pulled the clothes over her. He said:
"We'll have less frivolity, if you don't mind, and less nonsense. Before we got married-listen to me, I'm talking-before we got married you were what I'd dreamed of, ever since I was a boy. You were everything she wasn't; you were a release; you were a way out. You were something that would kill her for good and all. And now look at you." He pointed sternly. She, as though he were a stranger who had just broken in, pulled the grey sheet over her bosom and looked fearful. "You're trying to drag me back into that old world, aren't you? Back to the bloody Church and female smells all over the place -"