The Great Pursuit (3 page)

She gave it to him over lunch in a little Italian restaurant where Frensic entertained his
less important authors.

'A weird book,' she said.

'Quite,' said Frensic.

'But it's got something. Compassionate,' said Sonia, wanning to her task.

'I agree.'

'Deeply insightful.'

'Definitely.'

'Good story line.'

'Excellent.'

'Significant,' said Sonia.

Frensic sighed. It was the word he had been waiting for. 'You really think that?'

'I do. I mean it. I think it's really got something. It's good. I really do.'

'Well,' said Frensic doubtfully, 'I may be an anachronism but...'

'You're role-playing again. Be serious.'

'My dear,' said Frensic, 'I am being serious. If you say that stuff is significant I am
delighted. It's what I thought you'd say. It means it will appeal to those intellectual
flagellants who can't enjoy a book unless it hurts. That I happen to know that, from a genuinely
literary standpoint, it is an abomination is perhaps beside the point but I am entitled to
protect my instincts.'

'Instincts? No man had fewer.'

'Literary instincts,' said Frensic. 'And they tell me that this is a bad, pretentious book and
that it will sell. It combines a filthy story with an even filthier style.'

'I didn't see anything wrong with the style,' said Sonia.

'Of course you didn't. You're an American and Americans aren't burdened by our classical
inheritance. You can't see that there is a world of difference between Dreiser and Mencken or Tom
Wolfe and Bellow. That's your prerogative. I find such lack of discrimination invaluable and most
reassuring. If you accept sentences endlessly convoluted, spattered with commas and tied into
knots with parentheses, unrelated verbs and qualifications of qualifications, and which, to
parody, have, if they are to be at all comprehended, to be read at least four times with the aid
of a dictionary, who am I to quarrel with you? Your fellow-countrymen, whose rage for
self-improvement I have never appreciated, are going to love this book.'

'They may not go such a ball on the story line. I mean it's been done before you know. Harold
and Maude?

'But never in such exquisitely nauseating detail,' said Frensic and sipped his wine. 'And not
with Lawrentian overtones. Besides that's our trump. Seventeen loves eighty. The liberation of
the senile. What could be more significant than that? By the way when is Hutchmeyer due in
London?'

'Hutchmeyer? You've got to be kidding,' said Sonia. Frensic held up a piece of ravioli in
protest.

'Don't use that expression. I am not a goat.'

'And Hutchmeyer's not the Olympia Press. He's strictly middlebrow. He wouldn't touch this
book.'

'He would if we baited the trap right,' said Frensic.

'Trap?' said Sonia suspiciously. 'What trap?'

'I was thinking of a very distinguished London publisher to take the book first,' said
Frensic, 'and then you sell the American rights to Hutchmeyer.'

'Who?'

'Corkadales,' said Frensic.

Sonia shook her head. 'Corkadales are far too old and stodgy.'

'Precisely,' said Frensic. 'They are prestigious. They are also broke.'

'They should have dropped half their list years ago,' said Sonia.

They should have dropped Sir Clarence years ago. You read his obituary?' But Sonia hadn't.

'Most entertaining. And instructive. Tributes galore to his service to Literature, by which
they meant he had subsidized more unread poets and novelists than any other publisher in London.
The result: they are now broke.'

'In which case they can hardly afford to buy Pause O Men for the Virgin.'

'They can hardly afford not to,' said Frensic. 'I had a word with Geoffrey Corkadale at the
funeral. He is not following in his father's footsteps. Corkadales are about to emerge from the
eighteenth century. Geoffrey is looking for a bestseller. Corkadales will take Pause and we will
take Hutchmeyer.'

'You think Hutchmeyer is going to be impressed?' said Sonia. 'What the hell have Corkadales
got to offer?'

'Distinction,' said Frensic, 'a most distinguished past. The mantel-piece against which
Shelley leant, the chair Mrs Gaskell was pregnant in, the carpet Tennyson was sick on. The
incunabula of, if not The Great Tradition, at least a very important strand of literary history.
By accepting this novel for free Corkadales will confer cultural sanctity on it.'

'And you think the author will be satisfied with that? You don't think he'll want money
too?'

'He'll get the money from Hutchmeyer. We're going to sting Mr Hutchmeyer for a fortune.
Anyhow, this author is unique.'

'I got that from the book,' said Sonia. 'How else is he unique?'

'He doesn't have a name, for one thing,' said Frensic and explained his instructions from Mr
Cadwalladine. 'Which leaves us with an entirely free hand,' he said when he finished.

'And the little matter of a pseudonym,' said Sonia. 'I suppose we could kill two birds with
one stone and say it was by Peter Piper. That way he'd see his name on the cover of a novel.'

'True,' said Frensic sadly, 'I'm afraid poor Piper is never going to make it any other
way.'

'Besides, it would save the expense of his annual lunch and you wouldn't have to go through
yet another version of his Search for a Lost Childhood. By the way, who is the model this
year?'

'Thomas Mann,' said Frensic. 'One dreads the thought of sentences two pages long. You really
think it would put an end to his illusions of literary grandeur?'

'Who knows?' said Sonia. 'The very fact of seeing his name on the cover of a novel and being
taken for the author...'

'It's the only way he's ever going to get into print, I'll stake my reputation on that,' said
Frensic.

'So we'll be doing him a favour.'

That afternoon Frensic took the manuscript to Corkadales. On the front under the title Sonia
had added 'by Peter Piper'. Frensic spoke long and persuasively to Geoffrey Corkadale and left
the office that night well pleased with himself.

A week later the editorial board of Corkadales considered Pause O Men for the Virgin in the
presence of that past upon which the vestige of their reputation depended. Portraits of dead
authors lined the panelled walls of the editorial room. Shelley was not there, nor Mrs Gaskell,
but there were lesser notables to take their place. Ranged in glass-covered bookshelves there
were first editions, and in some exhibition cases relics of the trade. Quills, Waverley pens,
pocket-knives, an ink-bottle Trollope was said to have left in a train, a sandbox used by
Southey, and even a scrap of blotting paper which, held up to a mirror, revealed that Henry James
had once inexplicably written 'darling'.

In the centre of this museum the Literary Director, Mr Wilberforce, and the Senior Editor, Mr
Tate, sat at an oval walnut table observing the weekly rite. They sipped Madeira and nibbled
seedcake and looked disapprovingly at the manuscript before them and then at Geoffrey Corkadale.
It was difficult to tell which they disliked most. Certainly Geoffrey's suede suit and floral
shirt did not fit the atmosphere. Sir Clarence would not have approved. Mr Wilberforce helped
himself to some more Madeira and shook his head.

'I cannot agree,' he said. 'I find it wholly incomprehensible that we should even consider
lending our name, our great name, to the publication of this...thing.'

'You didn't like the book?' said Geoffrey.

'Like it? I could hardly bring myself to finish it.'

'Well, we can't hope to please everyone.'

'But we've never touched a book like this before. We have our reputation to consider.'

'Not to mention our overdraft,' said Geoffrey. 'And to be brutally frank, we have to choose
between our reputation and bankruptcy.'

'But does it have to be this awful book?' said Mr Tate. 'I mean have you read it?'

Geoffrey nodded. 'As a matter of fact I have. I know that my father didn't make a habit of
reading anything later than Meredith but...'

'Your poor father,' said Mr Wilberforce with feeling, 'must be turning in his grave at the
very thought '

'Where, with any luck, he will shortly be joined by the so-called heroine of this disgusting
novel,' said Mr Tate.

Geoffrey rearranged a stray lock of hair. 'Considering that papa was cremated I shouldn't have
thought that his turning or her joining him would be very easy,' he murmured. Mr Wilberborce and
Mr Tate looked grim. Geoffrey adjusted his smile. 'Your objection then I take it is based on the
fact that the romance in this novel is between a seventeen-year-old boy and an eighty-year-old
woman?' he said.

'Yes,' said Mr Wilberforce more loudly than was his wont, 'it is. Though how you can bring
yourself to use the word "romance"...'

'The relationship then. The term doesn't matter.'

'It's not the term I'm worried about,' said Mr Tate. 'It's not even the relationship. If it
simply stuck to that it wouldn't be so bad. It's the bits in between that get me. I had no
idea...oh well never mind. The whole thing is so awful.'

'It's the bits in between,' said Geoffrey, 'that will sell the book.'

Mr Wilberforce shook his head. 'Personally I'm inclined to think we would run the risk, the
gravest risk of being prosecuted for obscenity,' he said, 'and in my view quite rightly.'

'I agree,' said Mr Tate. 'I mean, take the episode where they use the rocking horse and the
douche '

'For God's sake,' squawked Mr Wilberforce. 'It was bad enough having to read it. Do we have to
hold a post-mortem?'

'The term is applicable,' said Mr Tate. 'Even the title...'

'All right,' said Geoffrey, 'I grant you that it's a bit tasteless but '

'Tasteless? What about the part where he '

'Don't, Tate, don't, there's a good fellow,' said Mr Wilberforce feebly.

'As I was saying,' continued Geoffrey, 'I'm prepared to admit that that sort of thing isn't
everyone's cup of tea...oh for goodness sake, Wilberforce...well anyway I can think of half a
dozen books like it...'

'I can't, thank God,' said Mr Tate.

'...which in their time were considered objectionable but '

'Name me one,' shouted Mr Wilberforce. 'Just name me one to equal this!' His hand shook at the
manuscript.

'Lady Chatterley,' said Geoffrey.

'Pah,' said Mr Tate. 'By comparison Chatterley was pure as the driven snow.'

'Anyway Chatterley's banned,' said Mr Wilberforce.

Geoffrey Corkadale heaved a sigh. 'Oh God,' he muttered, 'someone tell him that the Georgians
aren't around any longer.'

'More's the pity,' said Mr Tate. 'We did rather well with some of them. The rot set in with
The Well of Loneliness.

'And there's another filthy book,' said Mr Wilberforce, 'but we didn't publish it.'

'The rot set in,' Geoffrey interrupted, 'when Uncle Cuthbert took it into his woolly head to
pulp Wilkie's Ballroom Dancing Made Perfect and published Fashoda's Guide to the Edible Fungi in
its place.'

'Fashoda was a bad choice,' Mr Tate agreed. 'I remember the coroner was most
uncomplimentary.'

'Let's get back to our present position,' said Geoffrey, 'which from a financial point of view
is just as deadly. Now Frensic has offered us this novel and in my view we ought to accept
it.'

'We've never had dealings with Frensic before,' said Mr Tate. 'They tell me he drives a hard
bargain. How much is he demanding this time?'

'A purely nominal sum.'

'A nominal sum? Frensic? That doesn't sound like him. He usually asks the earth. There must be
a snag.'

'The damned book's the snag. Any fool can see that,' said Mr Wilberforce.

'Frensic has wider views,' said Geoffrey. 'He foresees a Transatlantic purchase.'

There was an audible sigh from the two old men.

'Ah,' said Mr Tate, 'an American sale. That could make a considerable difference.'

'Exactly,' said Geoffrey, 'and Frensic is convinced that the book has merits the Americans
might well appreciate. After all it's not all sex and there are passages with Lawrentian
overtones, not to mention references to many important literary figures. The Bloomsbury group for
instance, Virginia Woolf and Middleton Murry. And then there's the philosophy.'

Mr Tate nodded. 'True. True,' he said. 'It's the sort of pot of message Americans might fall
for but I don't see what good that is going to do us.'

'Ten per cent of the American royalties,' said Geoffrey. 'That's what good it's going to do
us.'

'The author agrees to this?'

'Mr Frensic seems to think so and if the book makes the bestseller lists in the States it will
consequently sell wildly over here.'

'If,' said Mr Tate. 'A very big if. Who has he in mind as the American publisher?'

'Hutchmeyer.'

'Ah,' said Mr Tate, 'one begins to see his drift.'

'Hutchmeyer,' said Mr Wilberforce, 'is a rogue and a thief.'

'He is also one of the most successful promoters in American publishing,' said Geoffrey. 'If
he decides to buy a book it will sell. And he pays enormous advances.'

Mr Tate nodded. 'I must say I have never understood the workings of the American market but
it's true they often pay enormous advances and Hutchmeyer is flamboyant. Frensic could well be
right. It's a chance I suppose.'

'Our only chance,' said Geoffrey. 'The alternative is to put the firm up for auction.'

Mr Wilberforce poured some more Madeira. 'It seems a terrible comedown,' he said. 'To think
that we should have sunk to this...this pseudo-intellectual pornography.'

'If it keeps us financially solvent...' said Mr Tate. 'Who is this man Piper anyway?'

'A pervert,' said Mr Wilberforce firmly.

'Frensic tells me he's a young man who has been writing for some time,' said Geoffrey. 'This
is his first novel.'

'And hopefully his last,' said Mr Wilberforce. 'Still I suppose it could have been worse. Who
was that dreadful creature who had herself castrated and then wrote a book advertising the
fact?'