The Great Pursuit

'Jesus,' said Hutchmeyer, 'how should I know?'

'That's a loyely yacht out there,' said Sonia to change the subject. 'I didn't know you were a sailing man, Hutch.'

'He isn't,' said Baby before Hutchmeyer could point out that his boat was the finest ocean racer money could buy and that he'd take on any man who said it wasn't. 'It's part of the props. Like the house and the neighbours and '

'Shut up,' said Hutchmeyer.

Piper left the room and went up to the Boudoir bedroom to confide some more dark thoughts about Hutchmeyer to his diary. When he came down to dinner Hutchmeyer's face was more flushed than usual and his belligerence index was up several points. He had particularly disliked listening to an exposé of his married life by Baby who had, woman-to-woman, discussed with Sonia the symbolic implications of truss-wearing by middle-aged husbands and its relevance to the male menopause. And for once his 'Shut up' hadn't worked. Baby hadn't shut up, she had opened out with further intimate details of his habits so that Hutchmeyer was in the process of telling her to go drown herself when Piper entered the room. Piper wasn't in a mood to put up with Hutchmeyer's lack of chivalry. His years as a bachelor and student of the great novels had infected him with a reverence for Womanhood and very firm views on husbands' attitudes to wives and these didn't include telling them to go drown themselves. Besides, Hutchmeyer's blatant commercialism and his credo that what readers wanted was a good fuck-fantasy had occupied his mind all day. In Piper's opinion what readers wanted was to have their sensibilities extended and fuck-fantasies didn't come into the category of things that extended sensibilities. He went in to dinner determined to make the point. The opportunity occurred early on when Sonia, to change the subject, mentioned Valley of The Dolls. Hutchmeyer, glad to escape from the distressing revelations about his private life, said it was a great book.

'I absolutely disagree with you,' said Piper. 'It panders to the public taste for the pornographic.'

Hutchmeyer choked on a piece of cold lobster. 'It does what?' he said when he had recovered.

'It panders to the public taste for pornography,' said Piper, who hadn't read the book but had seen the cover.

'It does, does it?' said Hutchmeyer.

'Yes.'

'And what's wrong with pandering to public taste?'

'It's debasing,' said Piper.

'Debasing?' said Hutchmeyer, eyeing him with mounting fury.

'Absolutely.'

'And what sort of books do you think the public are going to read if you don't give them what they want?'

'Well I think...' Piper began before being silenced by a kick under the table from Sonia.

'I think Mr Piper thinks ' said Baby.

'Never mind what you think he thinks,' snarled Hutchmeyer, 'I want to hear what Piper thinks he thinks.' He looked expectantly at Piper.

'I think it is wrong to expose readers to books that are lacking in intellectual content,' said Piper, 'and which are deliberately designed to inflame their imaginations with sexual fantasies that '

'Inflame their sexual fantasies?' yelled Hutchmeyer, interrupting this quotation from The Moral Novel. 'You sit there and tell me you don't hold with books that inflame their readers' sexual fantasies when you've written the filthiest book since Last Exit?'

Piper steeled himself. 'Yes, as a matter of fact I do. And as another matter of fact I...'

But Sonia had heard enough. With sudden presence of mind she reached for the salt and knocked the waterjug sideways into Piper's lap.

'You ever hear anything like that?' said Hutchmeyer as Baby left the room to fetch a cloth and Piper went upstairs to put on a fresh pair of trousers. 'The guy has the nerve to tell me I got no right to publish...'

'Don't listen to him,' said Sonia, 'he's not himself. He's upset. It was that riot yesterday. The blow he got on the head. It's affected him.'

'Affected him? I'll say it has and I'm going to affect the little asshole too. Telling me I'm a goddam pornographer. Why I'll show him...'

'Why don't you show me your yacht?' said Sonia putting her arms round his neck, a move designed at one and the same time to prevent Hutchmeyer from leaping out of his chair to pursue the retreating Piper and to indicate a new willingness on her part to listen to propositions of all kinds. 'Why don't you and me go out and take a cosy little sail around the bay?'

Hutchmeyer succumbed to the soothing influence. 'Who the hell does he think he is anyhow?' he asked with unconscious acumen. Sonia didn't answer. She clung to his arm and smiled seductively. They went out on to the terrace and down the path to the jetty.

Behind them from the piazza lounge Baby watched them thoughtfully. She knew now that in Piper she had found the man she had been waiting for, an author of real merit and one who, without a drink inside him, could stand up to Hutchmeyer and tell him to his face what he thought of him and his books. One too who appreciated her as a sensitive, intelligent and perceptive woman. She had learnt that from Piper's diary. Piper had expressed himself freely on the subject, just as he had given vent to his opinion that Hutchmeyer was a coarse, crass, stupid and commercially motivated moron. On the other hand there had been several references to Pause in the diary that had puzzled her and particularly his statement that it was a disgusting book. It seemed a strangely objective criticism for a novelist to make about his own work and while she didn't agree with him it raised him still further in her estimation. It showed he was never satisfied. He was a truly dedicated writer. And so, standing in the piazza lounge staring through limpid azure contact lenses at the yacht moving slowly away from the jetty, Baby Hutchmeyer was herself filled with a sense of dedication, a maternal dedication amounting to euphoria. The days of useless inactivity were over. From now on she would stand between Piper and the harsh insensitivity of Hutchmeyer and the world. She was happy.

Upstairs Piper was anything but. The first flush of his courage in challenging Hutchmeyer had ebbed away leaving him with the horrible feeling that he was in desperate trouble. He took his wet trousers off and sat on the bed wondering what on earth to do. He should never have left the Gleneagle Guest House in Exforth. He should never have listened to Frensic and Sonia. He should never have come to America. He should never have betrayed his literary principles. As the sunset faded Piper got up and was just looking for another pair of trousers when there was a knock at the door and Baby entered.

'You were wonderful,' she said, 'really wonderful.'

'Kind of you to say so,' said Piper interposing the furbelowed stool between his trouserless self and Mrs Hutchmeyer and conscious that if anything more was needed to infuriate Mr Hutchmeyer it was to find the two of them in this compromising situation.

'And I want you to know I appreciate what you have written about me,' continued Baby.

'Written about you?' said Piper groping in the cupboard.

'In your diary,' said Baby. 'I know I shouldn't have...'

'What?' squawked Piper from the depths of the cupboard. He found a pair of trousers and struggled into them.

'I just couldn't help it,' said Baby. 'It was lying open on the table and I...'

'Then you know,' said Piper emerging from the cupboard.

'Yes,' said Baby.

'Christ,' said Piper and slumped on to the stool. 'Are you going to tell him?'

Baby shook her head. 'It's between us two.'

Piper considered this and found it only faintly reassuring. 'It's been a terrible strain,' he said finally. 'I mean not being able to talk to anyone about it. Apart from Sonia of course but she's no help.'

'I don't suppose she is,' said Baby who didn't for one moment suppose that Miss Futtle appreciated being told what a deeply sensitive, intelligent and perceptive person another woman was.