by Tom Sharpe
There was another thump as Piper crossed his legs. This time he managed to kick the microphone and spill a glass of water on the table at the same time.
‘I’m sorry,’ he shouted. Miss Beazley continued to smile expectantly as water dribbled down her leg. ‘Yes, it was a great shock.’
‘I wish to God he’d stop twitching like that,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Anyone would think he’d got St Vitus’s dance.’
Miss Beazley smiled solicitously. ‘I wonder if you’d care to tell us something about how you came to write the book in the first place?’ she asked.
Piper gazed stricken into a million homes. ‘I didn’t …’ he began, before jerking his leg forward galvanically and knocking the microphone on to the floor. Frensic shut his eyes. Muffled voices came from the set. When he looked again Miss Beazley’s insistent smile filled the screen.
‘Pause O Men is a most unusual book,’ she was saying. ‘It’s a love story about a young man who falls in love with a woman much older than himself. Was this something you had had in mind for a long time? I mean was it a theme that had occupied your attention?’
The face of Piper appeared again. Beads of perspiration were visible on his forehead and his mouth was working uncontrollably. ‘Yes,’ he bawled finally.
‘Christ, I don’t think I can stand much more of this,’ said Geoffrey. ‘The poor fellow looks as though he’s going to burst.’
‘And did it take you long to write?’ asked Miss Beazley.
Again Piper struggled for words, looking desperately round the studio as he did so. Finally he took a sip of water and said ‘Yes.’
Frensic mopped his brow with a handkerchief.
‘To change the subject,’ said the indefatigable Miss Beazley, whose smile had a positively demented gaiety about it now, ‘I understand that your working methods are very much your own. You were telling me earlier that you always write in longhand?’
‘Yes,’ said Piper.
‘And you grind your own ink?’
Piper ground his teeth and nodded.
‘This was an idea you got from Kipling?’
‘Yes. Something Of Myself. It’s in there,’ said Piper.
‘At least he’s warming up,’ said Geoffrey, only to have his hopes blighted by Miss Beazley’s ignorance of Kipling’s autobiography.
‘Something of yourself is in your novel?’ she asked hopefully. Piper glared at her. It was obvious he disliked the question.
‘The ink,’ he said, ‘it’s in Something Of Myself.’
Miss Beazley’s smile took on a bemused look. ‘Is it? The ink?’
‘He used to grind it himself,’ said Piper, ‘or rather he got a boy to grind it for him.’
‘A boy? How very interesting,’ said Miss Beazley, searching for some way out of the maze. Piper refused to help.
‘It’s blacker if you grind your own Indian ink.’
‘I suppose it must be. And you find that using a very black Indian ink helps you to write?’
‘No,’ said Piper, ‘it gums up the nib. I tried diluting it with ordinary ink but it still wouldn’t work. It got in the ducts and blocked them up.’ He stopped suddenly and stared at Miss Beazley.
‘Ducts? It blocks the ducts?’ she said, evidently supposing Piper to be referring to some strange conduit of inspiration. ‘You mean you found your …’ she groped for a less old-fashioned alternative but gave up the struggle to remain contemporary, ‘you found your muse wouldn’t …’
‘Daemon,’ said Piper abruptly, still in the role of Kipling.
Miss Beazley took the insult in her stride. ‘You were talking about ink,’ she said.
‘I said it blocked the ducts of the fountain pen. I couldn’t write more than one word at a time.’
‘That’s hardly surprising,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It would be bloody odd if he could.’
It was evidently a thought that had occurred to Piper too. ‘I mean I had to keep stopping and wiping the nib all the time,’ he explained. ‘So what I do now is I …’ He stopped. ‘It sounds silly.’
‘It sounds insane,’ said Geoffrey, but Miss Beazley would have none of it.
‘Go on,’ she said encouragingly.
‘Well, what I do now is I get a bottle of Midnight Black and let it dry out a bit and then when it’s sort of gooey if you see what I mean I dip my nib in and …’ Piper faltered to a stop.
‘How very interesting,’ said Miss Beazley.
‘Well at least he’s said something even if it wasn’t very edifying,’ said Geoffrey. Beside him Frensic stared at the set forlornly. He could see now that he should never have allowed himself to be persuaded to agree to the scheme. It was bound to end in disaster. So was the programme. Miss Beazley tried to get back to the book.
‘When I read your novel,’ she said, ‘I was struck by your understanding of the need for a mature woman’s sexuality to find expression physically. Would I be wrong to suppose that there is an autobiographical element in your writing?’
Piper goggled at her vindictively. That he should be supposed to have written Pause O Men for the beastly Virgin was bad enough, to be taken for the main protagonist in the drama of perversion was more than he could bear. Frensic felt for him and cringed in his chair.
‘What did you say?’ yelled Piper, reverting to his earlier explosive mode of expression. This time he combined it with fluency. ‘Do you really think I approve of the filthy book?’
‘Well naturally I thought …’ Miss Beazley began but Piper swept her objections aside.
‘The whole thing’s disgusting. A boy and an eighty-year-old woman. It debases the very foundations of English literature. It’s a vile monstrous degenerate book and it should never have been published and if you think—’
But viewers of the Books To Be Read programme were never to hear what Piper supposed Miss Beazley to have thought. A figure interposed itself between the camera and the couple in the chairs, a large figure and clearly a very disturbed one that shouted ‘Cut! Cut!’ and waved its hands horribly in the air.
‘God Almighty,’ gasped Geoffrey, ‘what the hell’s going on?’
Frensic said nothing. He shut his eyes to avoid the sight of Sonia Futtle hurling herself about the studio in a frantic attempt to prevent Piper’s terrible confession from reaching its enormous audience. There was an even more startling crackle from the TV set. Frensic opened his eyes again in time to catch a glimpse of the microphone in mid-air and then in the silence that followed watched the ensuing chaos. In the understandable belief that a lunatic had somehow got into the studio and was about to attack her, Miss Beazley shot out of her chair and dived for the door. Piper stared wildly round while Sonia, catching her foot in a cable, crashed forward across the glass-topped table and sprawled revealingly on the floor. For a moment she lay there kicking and then the screen went blank and a sign appeared. It said OWING TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND OUR CONTROL TRANSMISSION HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED. Frensic regarded it balefully. It seemed gratuitous. That circumstances were now beyond anyone’s control was perfectly obvious. Thanks to Piper’s high-mindedness and Sonia Futtle’s ghastly intervention his career as a literary agent was done for. The morning papers would be filled with the exposé of The Author Who Wasn’t. Hutchmeyer would cancel the contract and almost certainly sue for damages. The possibilities were endless and all of them awful. Frensic turned to find Geoffrey looking at him curiously.
‘That was Miss Futtle, wasn’t it?’ he said.
Frensic nodded dumbly.
‘What on earth was she doing hurling herself about like that for? I’ve never seen anything so extraordinary in my life. A bloody author starts lambasting his own novel. What did he say it was? A vile monstrous degenerate book debasing the very foundations of English literature. And the next thing you know is his own agent behaving like a gargantuan banshee, yelling “Cut!” and hurling mikes about the place. Something out of a nightmare.’
Frensic sought frantically for an explanation. ‘I suppose yo
u could call it a happening,’ he muttered.
‘A happening?’
‘You know, a sort of random, inconsequential occurrence,’ said Frensic lamely.
‘A random … inconsequential …?’ said Geoffrey. ‘If you think there aren’t going to be any consequences …’
Frensic tried not to think of them. ‘It certainly made it a memorable interview,’ he said.
Geoffrey goggled at him. ‘Memorable? I should think it will go down in history.’ He stopped and regarded Frensic open mouthed. ‘A happening? You said a happening. Good Lord, you mean to say you put them up to it?’
‘I what?’ said Frensic.
‘Put them up to it. You deliberately stage-managed that shambles. You got Piper to say all those extraordinary things about his own novel and then Miss Futtle bursts in and goes berserk and you’ve pulled the biggest publicity stunt …’
Frensic considered this explanation and found it better than the truth. ‘I suppose it was rather good publicity,’ he said modestly. ‘I mean most of those interviews are rather tame.’
Geoffrey helped himself to some more whisky. ‘Well I must take my hat off to you,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have had the nerve to dream of a thing like that. Mind you, that Eleanor Beazley has had it coming to her for years.’
Frensic began to relax. If only he could get hold of Sonia before she was arrested or whatever they did to people who burst into TV studios and disrupted programmes, and before Piper could do any more damage with his literary high-mindedness, he might be able to save something from the catastrophe.
*
In the event there was no need. Sonia and Piper had already left the studio in a hurry followed by Eleanor Beazley’s shrill voice uttering threats and imprecations and the programme producer’s still shriller promise to take legal action. They fled down the corridor and into a lift and shut the door.
‘What did you mean by—’ Piper began as they descended.
‘Drop dead,’ said Sonia. ‘If it hadn’t been for me you’d have landed us all in it up to the eyeballs, shooting your mouth off like that.’
‘Well, she said—’
‘The hell with what she said,’ shouted Sonia, ‘it was what you were saying that got to me. Looks great, an author telling half a million viewers that his own novel stinks.’
‘But it isn’t my own novel,’ said Piper.
‘Oh yes it is. It is now. Wait till you see tomorrow’s papers. They’re going to have headlines to make you famous. AUTHOR SLAMS OWN NOVEL ON TV. You may not have written Pause but you’re going to have a hard time proving it.’
‘Oh God,’ said Piper. ‘What are we to do?’
‘Get the hell out of here fast,’ said Sonia as the lift doors opened. They crossed the foyer and went out to the car. Sonia drove and twenty minutes later they were back at her flat.
‘Now pack,’ she said. ‘We’re moving out of here before the press get on to us.’
Piper packed, his mind racing with conflicting emotions. He was saddled with the authorship of a dreadful book, there was no backing out, he was committed to a promotional tour of the States and he was in love with Sonia. When he had finished he made one last attempt at resistance.
‘Look, I really don’t think I can go on with this,’ he said as Sonia lugged her suitcase to the door. ‘I mean my nerves can’t stand it.’
‘You think mine are any better – and what about Frenzy? A shock like that could have killed him. He’s got a heart condition.’
‘A heart condition?’ said Piper. ‘I had no idea.’
*
Nor had Frensic when she phoned him from a call box an hour later.
‘I have a what?’ he said. ‘You wake me in the middle of the night to tell me I’ve got a heart condition?’
‘It was the only way to stop him backing out. That Beazley woman blew his mind.’
‘The whole programme blew mine,’ said Frensic, ‘and to make matters worse I had Geoffrey gibbering beside me all the time too. It’s fine experience for a reputable publisher to watch one of his authors describe his own book as a vile degenerate thing. It does something to the soul. And to cap it all Geoffrey thought I’d put you up to rushing on like that screaming “Cut”.’
‘Put me up to it?’ said Sonia. ‘I had to do that to stop—’
‘I know all that but he didn’t. He thinks it’s some sort of publicity stunt.’
‘But that’s great,’ said Sonia. ‘Gets us off the hook.’
‘Get us on it if you ask me,’ said Frensic grimly. ‘Anyway, where are you? Why the call box?’
‘We’re going down to Southampton,’ said Sonia. ‘Now, before he changes his mind again. There’s a spare berth on the QE2 and she’s sailing tomorrow. I’m not taking any more chances. We’re sailing with her if I have to bribe my way on board. And if that doesn’t work I’m going to keep him holed up in a hotel where the press can’t get at him until we have him word-perfect on what he’s to say about Pause.’
‘Word-perfect? You make him sound like a performing parrot—’
But Sonia had rung off and was back in the car driving down the road to Southampton.
*
The next morning a bemused and weary Piper walked unsteadily up the gangway and down to his cabin. Sonia stopped at the Purser’s Office. She had a telegram to send to Hutchmeyer.
8
In New York MacMordie, Hutchmeyer’s Senior Executive Assistant, brought him the telegram.
‘So they’re coming early,’ said Hutchmeyer. ‘Makes no difference. Just got to get this ball moving a bit quicker is all. Now then, MacMordie, I want you to organize the biggest demonstration you can. And I mean the biggest. You got any angles?’
‘With a book like that the only angle I’ve got is Senior Citizens mobbing him like he’s the Beatles.’
‘Senior Citizens don’t mob the Beatles.’
‘Okay, so he’s Valentino come to life. Whoever. Some great star of the twenties.’
Hutchmeyer nodded. ‘That’s more like it,’ he said. ‘The nostalgia angle. But that’s not enough. Senior Citizens you don’t get much impact.’
‘Absolutely none,’ said MacMordie. ‘Now if this guy Piper was a gay liberationist Jew-baiter with a nigger boyfriend from Cuba called O’Hara I could really call up some muscle. But with a product that screws old women …’
‘MacMordie, how often have I got to tell you what the product is and what the action is are two separate things? There doesn’t have to be any connection. You’ve got to get coverage any way you can.’
‘Yes, but with a British author nobody’s ever heard of and a first-timer who wants to know?’
‘I do,’ said Hutchmeyer. ‘I do and I want a hundred million TV viewers to know too. And I mean know. This guy Piper has to be famous this time next week and I don’t care how. You can do what you like just so long as when he steps ashore it’s like Lindbergh’s flown the Atlantic first time. So you get yourself a pussy posse and every pressure group and lobby you can find and see he gets charisma.’
‘Charisma?’ said MacMordie doubtfully. ‘With the picture we’ve got of him for the cover you want charisma too? He looks sick or something.’
‘So he’s sick! Who cares what he looks like? All that matters is he becomes the spinster’s prayer overnight. Get Women’s Lib involved, and that’s a good idea of yours about the fags.’
‘We get a lot of little old ladies and the Ms brigade and the gays down on the docks, could be we’d have a riot on out hands.’
‘That’s right,’ said Hutchmeyer, ‘a riot. Throw the lot at him. A cop gets hurt is good. And some old lady has a coronary, that’s good too. She gets pushed in the drink is better still. By the time we’ve finished with his image this Piper’s going to be like he was pied.’
‘Pied?’ said MacMordie.
‘With rats for Chrissake.’
‘Rats? You want rats too?’
Hutchmeyer looked at him dolefully. ‘Sometimes, Mac
Mordie, I think you’ve just got to be goddam illiterate,’ he snarled. ‘Anyone would think you’d never heard of Edgar Allan Poe. And another thing. When Piper’s finished stirring the shit publicitywise down here I want him put on the plane up to Maine. Baby wants to meet him.’
‘Mrs Hutchmeyer wants to meet this jerk?’ said MacMordie.
Hutchmeyer nodded helplessly. ‘Right. Like she was crazy for me to get her that guy who wrote about cracking his whip all the time. What the fuck was his name?’
‘Portnoy,’ said MacMordie. ‘We couldn’t get him. He wouldn’t come.’
‘Was that surprising? It was a wonder he could walk after what he’d done to himself. That stuff saps you.’
‘We didn’t publish him either,’ said MacMordie.
‘Well there’s that too,’ Hutchmeyer agreed, ‘but we publish this Piper and if Baby wants him she’s going to have him. You know something, MacMordie, you’d think at her age and all the operations she’s had and being on a diet and all she’d have laid off a bit. I mean, can you do it twice a day every goddam day of the year? Well, me neither. But that woman is insatiable. She’s going to eat this cuntlapper Piper alive.’
MacMordie made a note to book the company plane for Piper.
‘Could be there won’t be so much of him to eat by the time the reception committee down here is finished with him,’ he said morosely. ‘The way you want it things could get rough.’
‘The rougher the better. By the time my fucking wife is through with him he’s going to know just how rough things can get. You know what that woman’s been into now?’
‘No,’ said MacMordie.
‘Bears,’ said Hutchmeyer.
‘Bears?’ said MacMordie. ‘You don’t mean it. Isn’t that a little dangerous? I’d have to be fucking desperate to even think of bears. I knew a woman once who had this German Shepherd but—’
‘Not that way,’ shouted Hutchmeyer, ‘Jesus, MacMordie, we’re talking about my wife, not some crazy bitch dog lover. Have some respect please.’