Sonia reached for a sheet of paper and put it in the typewriter. Frenzy would have to be told. Poor old Frenzy, she would miss him but wedlock called and she must respond. She would explain her reasons and then leave. It seemed the best thing to do. There would be no recriminations and in a way she was sacrificing herself for him. But where on earth had he got to, and why?
Chapter 20
Frensic was in Blackwell's bookshop. Half hidden among the stacks of English literary criticism he stood with a copy of The Great Pursuit in his hand and Pause propped up on the shelf in front of him. The Great Pursuit was Dr Sydney Louth's latest, a collection of essays dedicated to F. R. Leavis and a monument to a lifetime's execration of the shallow, the obscene, the immature and the non-significant in English literature. Generations of undergraduates had sat mesmerized by the turgid inelegance of her style while she denounced the modern novel, the contemporary world and the values of a sick and dying civilization. Frensic had been among those undergraduates and had imbibed the truisms on which Dr Louth's reputation as a scholar and a critic had been founded. She had praised the obviously great and cursed the rest and for that simple formula she was known as a great scholar. And all this in language which was the antithesis of the stylistic brilliance of the writers she praised. But it was her anathema which had stuck in Frensic's mind, those bitter graceless curses she had heaped on other critics and those who disagreed with her. By her denunciations she had implanted the inhibitions which had spoilt Frensic and so many others like him who had wanted to write. To appease her he had adopted the grotesque syntax of her lectures and essays. By their style Louthians were instantly recognizable. And by their sterility.
For three decades her influence on English literature had been malignant. And all her imprecations on the present had been hallowed by the great past which had she been a living influence at the time would never have existed. Like some religious fanatic she had consecrated the already sacred and had bred an intellectual intolerance that denied a living to the less than best. There were only saints in Dr Louth's calendar, saints and devils who failed the test of greatness. Hardy, Forster, Galsworthy, Moore and Meredith, even Peacock, consigned to outer darkness and oblivion because they did not measure up to Conrad or Henry James. And what about poor Trollope and Thackeray? More devils. The less than best. And Fielding...The list was endless. And for the present generation the only hope of salvation was to genuflect to her opinions and learn by rote the answers to her literary catechism. And this arid bitch had written Pause O Men for the Virgin. Frensic inverted the title and found it wholly appropriate. Dr Louth had given birth to nothing. The stillborn opinions in The Moral Novel and now The Great Pursuit would moulder and decompose upon the shelves a few more years and be forgotten. And she had known it and had written Pause to seek an anonymous immortality. The clues were there to be seen. Frensic wondered how he could have missed them. On page 269 of Pause: 'And so inexorably their livingness became lovingness, a rhythmic lovingness that placed them within a new dimension of feeling so that the really real became an...' Frensic shut the book before he came to 'apprehended totality'. How many times in his youth had he heard her use those fearful words? And used them himself in his essays for her. That 'placed' too was proof enough but followed by so many meaningless abstractions and a 'really real' it was conclusive. He thrust both books under his arm and went to the counter to pay for them. There were no doubts left, and everything was explained, the obsessive precautions to preserve the author's anonymity, the readiness to allow Piper to act as substitute...But now Piper was claiming to have written Pause.
Frensic walked more slowly across the Parks deep in thought. Two authors for the same book? And Piper had been a devotee of Dr Louth. The Moral Novel was his scripture. In which case he could well have...No. Miss Bogden had not been lying. Frensic increased his pace and strode beside the river towards Cowpasture Gardens. Dr Louth was going to learn that she had made a bad mistake in sending her manuscript to one of her former pupils. Because that was what it was all about. In her conceit she had chosen Frensic out of a hundred other agents. The irony of her gesture would have appealed to her. She had never had much time for him. 'A mediocre mind' she had once written at the end of one of his essays. Frensic had never forgiven her. He was going to get his revenge.
He left the parks and entered Cowpasture Gardens. Dr Louth's house stood at the far end, a large Victorian mansion with an air of deliberate desuetude as if the inhabitants were too committed intellectually to notice overgrown borders and untended lawns. And there had been, Frensic recalled, cats.
There were still cats. Two sat on a window-ledge and watched as Frensic walked to the front door and rang the bell. He stood waiting and looked around. If anything the garden had regressed still further towards the pastoral which Dr Louth had so extolled in literature. And the Monkey Puzzle tree stood there as unclimbable as ever. How often had he looked out of the window at that Monkey Puzzle tree while Dr Louth intoned the need for a mature moral purpose in all art. Frensic was about to fall into a nostalgic reverie when the door opened and Miss Christian peered out at him uncertainly.
'If you're from the telephone people...' she began but Frensic shook his head.
'My name is...' he hesitated as he tried to recall a favoured pupil. 'Bartlett. I was a student of hers in 1955.'
Miss Christian pursed her lips. 'She isn't seeing anyone,' she said.
Frensic smiled. 'I just wanted to pay my respects. I've always regarded her as the greatest influence in my development. Seminal you know.'
Miss Christian savoured 'seminal'. It was the password. 'In 1955?'
'The year she published The Intuitive Felicity,' said Frensic to bring out the bouquet of that vintage.
'So it was. It seems so long ago now,' said Miss Christian and opened the door wider. Frensic stepped into the dark hall where the stained-glass windows on the stairs added to the air of sanctity. Two more cats sat on chairs.
'What did you say your name was?' said Miss Christian.
'Bartlett,' said Frensic. (Bartlett had got a First.)
'Ah, yes, Bartlett,' said Miss Christian. 'I'll just go and ask her if she will see you.'
She went away down a threadworn passage to the study. Frensic stood and gritted his teeth against the odour of cats and the almost palpable atmosphere of intellectual high-mindedness and moral intensity. On the whole he preferred the cats.
Miss Christian shuffled back. 'She will see you,' she said. 'She seldom sees visitors now but she will see you. You know the way.'
Frensic nodded. He knew the way. He went down the length of worn carpet and opened the door.
Inside the study it was 1955. In twenty years nothing had changed. Dr Sydney Louth sat in an armchair beside a small fire, a pile of papers on her lap, a cigarette tilted on the lip of an ashtray and a cup of cold half-finished tea on the table at her elbow. She did not look up as Frensic entered. That was an old habit too, the mark of an inner concentration so profound that to disturb it was the highest privilege. A red ballpen wriggled illegibly in the margin of the essay. Frensic took his seat opposite her and waited. There were advantages to be gained from her arrogance. He laid the copy of Pause, still in its Blackwell's wrapping, on his knees and studied the bowed head and busy hand. It was all exactly as he had remembered it. Then the hand stopped writing, dropped the ballpen and reached for the cigarette.