The Great Pursuit (8 page)

'I believe in craftsmanship,' he said, 'the old-fashioned virtues of clarity and legibility.'
He told a story about Palmerston's insistence on fine writing by the clerks in the Foreign Office
and dismissed the ball-pen with contempt. So obsessive was his concern with calligraphy that Mr
Fossie had ended the interview before he realized that no mention had been made of the novel he
had come to discuss.

'He's certainly different from any other author I've ever met,' he told Sonia as she saw him
out. 'All that stuff about Kipling's note-paper, for God's sake!'

'What do you expect from genius?' said Sonia. 'Some spiel about how brilliant his novel
is?'

'And how brilliant is this genius's novel?'

'Two million dollars worth. That's the reality value.'

'Some reality,' said Mr Fossie with more percipience than he knew.

Even Frensic, who had anticipated disaster, was impressed. 'If he keeps that up we'll be all
right,' he said. 'We're going to be fine,' said Sonia.

After lunch the Daily Telegraph photographer insisted, thanks to a chance remark by Piper that
he had once lived near the scene of the explosion in The Secret Agent in Greenwich Park, on
taking his photographs as it were on location.

'It adds dramatic interest,' he said evidently supposing the explosion to have been a real
one. They went down on the river boat from Charing Cross, Piper explaining to the interviewer,
Miss Pamela Wildgrove, that Conrad had been a major influence on his work. Miss Wildgrove made a
note of the fact. Piper said Dickens had also been an influence. Miss Wildgrove made a note of
that fact too. By the time they reached Greenwich her notebook was crammed with influences but
Piper's own work had hardly been mentioned.

'I understand Pause O Men for the Virgin deals with the love affair between a
seventeen-year-old boy and...' Miss Wildgrove began but Sonia intervened.

'Mr Piper doesn't wish to discuss the content of his novel,' she said hurriedly. 'We're
keeping the book under wraps.'

'But surely he's prepared to say...'

'Let's just say it is a work of major importance and opens new ground in the area of age
differentials,' said Sonia and hurried Piper away to be photographed incongruously on the deck of
the Cutty Sark, in the grounds of the Maritime Museum and by the Observatory. Miss Wildgrove
followed disconsolately.

'On the way back stick to ink and your ledgers,' Sonia told Piper and Piper followed her
advice. In the end Miss Wildgrove returned to her office to compose an article with a distinctly
nautical flavour while Sonia shepherded her charge back to the office.

'You did very well,' she told him.

'Yes, but hadn't I better read this book I'm supposed to have written? I mean, I don't even
know what it's about.'

'You can do that on the boat going over to the States.'

'Boat?' said Piper.

'Much nicer than flying,' said Sonia. 'Hutchmeyer is arranging some big reception for you in
New York and it will draw bigger crowds at the dockside. Anyway we've done the interviews and the
TV programme isn't till next Wednesday. You can go back to Exforth and pack. Get back here
Tuesday afternoon and I'll brief you for the programme. We're leaving from Southampton
Thursday.'

'You're wonderful,' said Piper fervently, 'I want you to know that.' He left the office and
caught the evening train to Exeter. Sonia sat on in her office and thought wistfully about him.
Nobody had ever told her she was wonderful before.

Certainly Frensic didn't next morning. He arrived at the office in a towering rage carrying a
copy of the Guardian.

'I thought you told me all he was going to talk about was inks and pens,' he shouted at the
startled Sonia.

'That's right. He was quite fascinating.'

'Well then kindly explain all this about Graham Greene being a second-rate hack,' Frensic
yelled and thrust the article under her nose. 'That's right. Hack. Graham Greene. A hack. The
man's insane!'

Sonia read the article and had to admit that it was a bit extreme.

'Still, it's good publicity,' she said. 'Statements like that will get his name before the
public.'

'Get his name before the courts more like,' said Frensic. 'And what about this bit about The
French Lieutenant's Woman... Piper hasn't even written one single publishable word and here he is
castigating half a dozen eminent novelists. Look what he says about Waugh. Quote a very limited
imagination and an overrated style unquote. Waugh just happens to have been one of the finest
stylists of the century. And "limited imagination" coming from a blithering idiot who hasn't got
any imagination at all. I tell you Pandora's box will be a teaparty by comparison with Piper on
the loose.'

'He's entitled to his opinions,' said Sonia.

'He isn't entitled to have opinions like these,' said Frensic. 'God knows what Cadwalladine's
client will say when he reads what he's supposed to have said, and I shouldn't think Geoffrey
Corkadale is too pleased to know he's got an author on his list who thinks Graham Greene is a
second-rate hack.' He went into his office and sat miserably wondering what new storm was going
to break. His nose was playing all hell with him.

But the storm when it did break came from an unexpected direction. From Piper himself. He
returned to the Gleneagle Guest House in Exforth madly in love with Sonia, life, his own newly
established reputation as a novelist and his future happiness to find a parcel waiting for him.
It contained the proofs of Pause O Men for the Virgin and a letter from Geoffrey Corkadale asking
him if he would mind correcting them as soon as possible. Piper took the parcel up to his room
and settled down to read. He started at nine o'clock at night. By midnight he was wide awake and
half-way through. By two o'clock he had finished and had begun a letter to Geoffrey Corkadale
stating very precisely what he thought of Pause O Men for the Virgin as a novel, as pornography,
as an attack on established values both sexual and human. It was a long letter. By six o'clock he
had posted it. Only then did he go to bed, exhausted by his own fluent disgust and harbouring
feelings for Miss Futtle that were the exact reverse of those he had held for her nine hours
earlier. Even then he couldn't sleep but lay awake for several hours before finally dozing off.
He woke again after lunch and went for a haggard walk along the beach in a state bordering on the
suicidal. He had been tricked, conned, deceived by a woman he had loved and trusted. She had
deliberately bribed him into accepting the authorship of a vile, nauseating, pornographic...He
ran out of adjectives. He would never forgive her. After contemplating the ocean bleakly for an
hour he returned to the boarding-house, his mind made up. He composed a terse telegram stating
that he had no intention of going through with the charade and had no wish to see Miss Futtle
ever again. That done he confided his darkest thoughts to his diary, had supper and went to
bed.

The following morning the storm broke in London. Frensic arrived in a good mood. Piper's
absence from his flat had relieved him of the obligation to play host to a man whose conversation
had consisted of the need for a serious approach to fiction and Sonia Futtle's attractions as a
woman. Neither topic had been at all to Frensic's taste and Piper's habit at breakfast of reading
aloud passages from Doctor Faustus to illustrate what he meant by symbolic counterpoint as a
literary device had driven Frensic from his own home even earlier than was his custom. With Piper
in Exforth he had been spared that particular ordeal but on his arrival at the office he was
confronted with fresh horrors. He found Sonia, whitefaced and almost tearful, clutching a
telegram, and had been about to ask her what the matter was when the phone rang. Frensic answered
it. It was Geoffrey Corkadale. 'I suppose this is your idea of a joke,' he said
angrily.

'What is?' said Frensic thinking of the Guardian article about Graham Greene.

'This bloody letter,' shouted Geoffrey.

'What letter?'

'This letter from Piper. I suppose you think it's funny to get him to write abusive filth
about his own beastly book.'

It was Frensic's turn to shout. 'What about his book?' he yelled.

'What do you mean "What about it?" You know damned well what I mean.'

'I've no idea,' said Frensic.

'He says here he considers it one of the most repulsive pieces of writing it's ever been his
misfortune to have to read '

'Shit,' said Frensic frantically wondering how Piper had got hold of a copy of Pause.

'Yes, that too,' said Geoffrey. 'Now where does he say that? Here we are. "If you imagine even
momentarily that for motives of commercial cupidity I am prepared to prostitute my albeit so far
unknown but not I think inconsiderable talent by assuming even remotely and as it were by proxy
responsibility for what in my view and that of any right-minded person can only be described as
the pornographic outpourings of verbal excreta..." There! I knew it was embedded somewhere. Now
what do you say to that?'

Frensic stared venomously at Sonia and tried to think of something to say. 'I don't know,' he
muttered, 'it sounds odd. How did he get the blasted book?'

'What do you mean "How did he get the book"?' yelled Geoffrey. 'He wrote the thing, didn't
he?'

'Yes, I suppose so,' said Frensic edging towards the safety of admitting he didn't know who
had written it and that he had been hoodwinked by Piper. It didn't seem a very safe position to
adopt.

'What do you mean "You suppose so"? I send him proofs of his own book to correct and I get
this abusive letter back. Anyone would think he'd never read the damned thing before. Is the man
mad or something?'

'Yes,' said Frensic for whom the suggestion came as a God-send, 'the strain of the past few
weeks...nervous breakdown. Very highly strung you know. He gets into these states.'

Geoffrey Corkadale's fury abated a little. 'I can't say I'm at all surprised,' he admitted.
'Anyone who can go to bed with an eighty-year-old woman must have something mentally wrong with
him. What do you want me to do with these proofs?'

'Send them round to me and I'll see he corrects them,' said Frensic. 'And in future I suggest
you deal with Piper through me here. I think I understand him.'

'I'm glad someone does,' said Geoffrey. 'I don't want any more letters like this one.'

Frensic put the phone down and turned on Sonia. 'Right,' he yelled, 'I knew it. I just knew it
would happen. You heard what he said?'

Sonia nodded sadly. 'It was our mistake,' she said. 'We should have told them to send the
proofs here.'

'Never mind the bloody proofs,' snarled Frensic, 'our mistake was coming up with Piper in the
first place. Why Piper? The world is full of normal, sane, financially motivated, healthily
commercial authors who would be glad to stick their name to any old trash, and you had to come up
with Piper.'

'There's no need to go on about it,' said Sonia, 'look what he's said in this telegram.'

Frensic looked and slumped into a chair. '"Yours ineluctably Piper"? In a telegram? I wouldn't
have believed it...Well at least he's put us out of our misery though how the hell we're going to
explain to Geoffrey that the Hutchmeyer deal is off...'

'It isn't off,' said Sonia.

'But Piper says '

'Screw what he says. He's going to the States if I have to carry him. We've paid him good
money, we've sold his lousy book and he's under obligation to go. He's not going to back out on
that contract now. I'm going down to Exforth to talk with him.'

'Leave well alone,' said Frensic, 'that's my advice. That young man can ' but the phone rang
and by the time he had spent ten minutes discussing the new ending of Final Fling with Miss Gold,
Sonia had left.

'Hell hath no fury...' he muttered, and returned to his own office.

Piper took his afternoon walk along the promenade like some late migrating bird whose
biological clock had let it down. It was summer and he should have gone inland to cheaper climes
but the atmosphere of Exforth held him. The little resort was nicely Edwardian and rather prim
and served in its old-fashioned way to help bridge the gap between Davos and East Finchley.
Thomas Mann, he felt, would have appreciated Exforth with its botanical gardens, its clock golf,
its pier and tesselated toilets, its bandstand and its rows of balustraded boarding houses
staring south towards France. There were even some palm trees in the little park that separated
the Gleneagle Guest House from the promenade. Piper strolled beneath them and climbed the steps
in time for tea.

Instead he found Sonia Futtle waiting for him in the hall. She had driven down at high speed
from London, had rehearsed her tactics on the way and a brief encounter with Mrs Oakley on the
question of coffee for non-residents had whetted her temper. Besides, Piper had rejected her not
only as an agent but as a woman, and as a woman she wasn't to be trifled with.

'Now you just listen to me,' she said in decibels that made it certain that everyone in the
guest-house would. 'You can't get out of this so easily. You accepted money and you '

'For God's sake,' spluttered Piper, 'don't shout like that. What will people think?'

It was a stupid question. In the lounge the residents were staring. It was clear what they
thought.

'That you're a man no woman can trust,' bawled Sonia pursuing her advantage, 'that you break
your word, that you...'

But Piper was in flight. As he went down the steps and into the street Sonia followed in full
cry.

'You deliberately deceived me. You took advantage of my inexperience to make me believe '

Piper plunged wildly across the road into the park. 'I deceived you?' he counter-attacked
under the palms. 'You told me that book was '

'No I didn't. I said it was a bestseller. I never said it was good.'

'Good? It's disgusting. It's pure pornography. It debases...'