The Great Pursuit

'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...'

'Pornography? You've got to be kidding. So you haven't read anything later than Hemingway you've got this idea any book deals with sex is pornographic.'

'No I don't,' protested Piper, 'what I meant was it undermines the foundations of English literature...'

'Don't give me that crap. You took advantage of Frenzy's faith in you as a writer. Ten years he's been trying to get you published and now when we finally come up with this deal you throw it back at us.'

'That's not true. I didn't know the book was that bad. I've got my reputation to think of and if my name is on '

'Your reputation? What about our reputation?' said Sonia as they skirmished past a bus queue on the front. 'You ever thought what you're doing to that?'

Piper shook his head.

'So where's your reputation? As what?'

'As a writer,' said Piper.

Sonia appealed to the bus queue. 'Whoever heard of you?'

Clearly no one had. Piper fled down on to the beach.

'And what is more no one ever will,' shouted Sonia. 'You think Corkadales are going to publish Search now? Think again. They'll take you through the courts and break you moneywise and then they'll blacklist you.'

'Blacklist me?' said Piper.

'The blacklist of authors who are never to be published.'

'Corkadales aren't the only publishers,' said Piper now thoroughly confused.

'If you're on the blacklist no one will publish you,' said Sonia inventively. 'You'll be finished. As a writer finito.'

Piper stared out at the sea and thought about being finito as a writer. It was a terrible prospect.

'You really think...' he began but Sonia had already changed her tactics.

'You told me you loved me,' she sobbed sinking on to the sand close to a middle-aged couple. 'You said we would...'

'Oh Lord,' said Piper, 'don't go on like that. Not here.'

But Sonia went on, there and elsewhere, combining a public display of private anguish with the threat of legal action if Piper didn't fulfil his part of the bargain and the promise of fame as a writer of genius if he did. Gradually his resolve weakened. The blacklist had hit him hard.

'I suppose I could always write under another name,' he said as they stood at the end of the pier. But Sonia shook her head.

'Darling, you're so naïve,' she said. 'Don't you see that what you write is instantly recognizable. You can't escape your own uniqueness, your own original brilliance...'

'I suppose not,' said Piper modestly, 'I suppose that's true.'

'Of course it's true. You're not some hack turning books out to order. You're you, Peter Piper. Frenzy has always said there's only one you.'

'He has?' said Piper.

'He's spent more time on you than any other author we handle. He's had faith in you and this is your big opportunity, the chance to break through into fame...'

'With someone else's awful book,' Piper pointed out.

'So it's someone else's, it might have had to be your own. Like Faulkner with Sanctuary and the rape with the corncob.'

'You mean Faulkner didn't write that?' said Piper aghast.

'I mean he did. He had to so he'd get noticed and have the breakthrough. Nobody'd bought him before Sanctuary and afterwards he was famous. With Pause you don't have to do that. You keep your artistic integrity intact.'

'I hadn't thought of it like that,' said Piper.

'And later when you're known as a great novelist you can write your autobiography and set the world straight about Pause,' said Sonia.

'So I can,' said Piper.

'Then you'll come?'

'Yes. Yes, I will.'

'Oh, darling.'

They kissed on the end of the pier and the tide, rising gently under the moon, lapped below their feet.

Chapter 7

Two days later a triumphant if exhausted Sonia walked into the office to announce that she had persuaded Piper to change his mind.

'Brought him back with you?' said Frensic incredulously. 'After that telegram? Good Lord, you must have positively Circean charms for the poor brute. How on earth did you do it?'

'Made a scene and quoted Faulkner,' said Sonia simply.

Frensic was appalled. 'Not Faulkner again. We had him last summer. Even Mann's easier to move to East Finchley. Every time I see a pylon now I...'

'This was Sanctuary.'

Frensic sighed. 'That's better I suppose. Still the thought of Mrs Piper ending up in some brothel in Memphis-cum-Golders Green...And you mean to say he's prepared to go on with the tour? That's incredible.'

'You forget I'm a salesperson,' said Sonia. 'I could sell sunlamps in the Sahara.'

'I believe you. After that letter he wrote Geoffrey I thought we were done for. And he is quite reconciled to being the author of what he chose to call the most repulsive piece of writing it had ever been his misfortune to have to read?'

'He sees it as a necessary step on the road to recognition,' said Sonia. 'I managed to persuade him it was his duty to suppress his own critical awareness in order to achieve '

'Critical awareness my foot,' said Frensic, 'he hasn't got any. Just so long as I don't have to put him up again.'

'He's staying with me,' said Sonia, 'and don't smirk. I just want him where I can reach him.'

Frensic stopped smirking. 'And what is the next event on the agenda?'

'The "Books To Be Read" programme. It will help get him ready for the TV appearances in the States.'

'Quite so,' said Frensic. 'Added to which it has the advantage of getting him committed to the authorship of Pause with what is termed the maximum exposure. One can hardly see him backing out after that.'