The Great Pursuit

by Tom Sharpe

  ‘Ten dollars a day. Seven with prayers. Providence is extra.’

  ‘Yes, well I suppose it would be,’ said Piper.

  ‘Meaning?’ said Mrs Mathervitie.

  ‘That the good Lord will provide,’ interjected Baby before Piper’s slight hysteria could manifest itself again.

  ‘Amen,’ said Mrs Mathervitie. ‘Well which is it to be? With prayers or without?’

  ‘With,’ said Baby.

  ‘Fourteen dollars,’ said Mrs Mathervitie, ‘in advance.’

  ‘Pay now and pray later?’ said Piper hopefully.

  Mrs Mathervitie’s eyes gleamed coldly. ‘For a preacher …’ she began, but Baby intervened. ‘The Reverend means we should pray without ceasing.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Mrs Mathervitie and knelt on the linoleum.

  Baby followed her example. Piper looked down at them in astonishment.

  ‘Dear God,’ he muttered.

  ‘Amen,’ said Mrs Mathervitie and Baby in unison.

  ‘Say the good words, Reverend,’ said Baby.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Piper for inspiration. He didn’t know any prayers and as for good words … On the floor Mrs Mathervitie twitched dangerously. Piper found the good words. They came from The Moral Novel.

  ‘It is our duty not to enjoy but to appreciate,’ he intoned, ‘Not to be entertained but to be edified, not to read that we may escape the responsibilities of life but that, through reading we may more properly understand what it is that we are and do and that born anew in the vicarious experience of others we may extend our awareness and our sensibilities and so enriched by how we read we may be better human beings.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Mrs Mathervitie fervently.

  ‘Amen,’ said Baby.

  ‘Amen,’ said Piper and sat down on the bed. Mrs Mathervitie got to her feet.

  ‘I thank you for those good words, Reverend,’ she said and left the room.

  ‘What the hell was all that about?’ said Piper when her footsteps had faded. Baby stood up and raised a finger to her lips.

  ‘No cussing. No brownbagging.’

  ‘And that’s another thing …’ Piper began but Mrs Mathervitie’s footsteps came down the passage again.

  ‘Conventicle’s at eight,’ she said poking her head round the door. ‘Doesn’t do to be late.’

  Piper regarded her biliously. ‘Conventicle?’

  ‘Conventicle of the Seventh Day Church of The Servants of God,’ said Mrs Mathervitie. ‘You said you wanted prayers.’

  ‘The Reverend and I will be right with you,’ said Baby. Mrs Mathervitie removed her head. Baby took Piper’s arm and pushed him towards the door.

  ‘Good God, you’ve really landed us—’

  ‘Amen,’ said Baby as they went out into the passage. Mrs Mathervitie was waiting on the porch.

  ‘The Church is in the town square,’ she said as they climbed into the Ford and presently they were driving down the darkened street where the Spanish moss looked even more sinister to Piper. By the time they stopped outside a small wooden church in the square he was in a state of panic.

  ‘They won’t want me to pray again, will they?’ he whispered to Baby as they climbed the steps to the church. From inside there came the sound of a hymn.

  ‘We’re late,’ said Mrs Mathervitie and hurried them down the aisle. The church was crowded but a row of seats at the very front was empty. A moment later Piper found himself clutching a hymnbook and singing an extraordinary hymn called ‘Telephoning To Glory’.

  When the hymn ended there was a scuffling of feet and the congregation knelt and the preacher launched into prayer.

  ‘Oh Lord we is all sinners,’ he declared.

  ‘Oh Lord we is all sinners,’ bawled Mrs Mathervitie and the rest of the congregation.

  ‘Oh Lord we is all sinners waiting to be saved,’ continued the preacher.

  ‘Waiting to be saved. Waiting to be saved.’

  ‘From the fires of hell and the snares of Satan.’

  ‘From the fires of hell and the snares of Satan.’

  Beside Piper Mrs Mathervitie had begun to quiver. ‘Hallelujah,’ she cried.

  When the prayer ended a large black woman who was standing beside the piano began ‘Washed In The Blood Of The Lamb’ and from there it was but a short step to ‘Jericho’ and finally a hymn which went ‘Servants of the Lord we Pledge our Faith in Thee’ with a chorus of ‘Faith, Faith, Faith in The Lord, Faith in Jesus is Mightier than the Sword’. Much to his own amazement Piper sang as loudly as anyone and the enthusiasm began to get to him. By this time Mrs Mathervitie was stomping her foot while several other women were clapping their hands. They sang the hymn twice and then went straight into another about Eve and The Apple. As the reverberations died away the preacher raised his hands.

  ‘Brothers and sisters …’ he began, only to be interrupted.

  ‘Bring on the serpents,’ shouted someone at the back.

  The preacher lowered his hands. ‘Serpents night’s Saturday,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

  But the cry ‘Bring on the serpents,’ was taken up and the large black lady struck up ‘Faith in The Lord and the Snakes won’t Bite, Them’s has Faith is Saved all Right.’

  ‘Snakes?’ said Piper to Mrs Mathervitie, ‘I thought you said this was Servants of The Lord.’

  ‘Snakes is Saturday,’ said Mrs Mathervitie looking decidedly alarmed herself. ‘I only come Thursdays. I don’t hold with serpentizing.’

  ‘Serpentizing?’ said Piper suddenly alive to what was about to happen, ‘Jesus wept.’ Beside him Baby was already weeping but Piper was too concerned for his own safety to bother about her. A sack was brought down the aisle by a tall gaunt man. It was a large sack, a large sack which writhed. So did Piper. A moment later he had shot out of his seat and was heading for the door only to find his way blocked by a number of other people who evidently shared his lack of enthusiasm for being confined in a small church with a sackful of poisonous snakes. A hand shoved him aside and Piper fell back into his seat again, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ he shouted to Baby but she was looking with rapt attention at the pianist, a small thin man who was thumping away on the keys with a fervour that was possibly due to what looked like a small boa constrictor which had twined itself round his neck. Behind the piano the large black lady was using two rattlesnakes as maracas and singing ‘Bibliopolis we hold Thee Dear, Snakes Infest us we don’t Fear’ – which certainly didn’t apply to Piper. He was about to make another dash for the door when something slithered across his feet. It was Mrs Mathervitie. Piper sat petrified and moaned. Beside him Baby was moaning too. There was a strange seraphic look on her face. At that moment the man with the sack lifted from it a snake with red and yellow bands across its body.

  ‘The Coral,’ someone hissed. The strains of ‘Bibliopolis we hold Thee Dear’ faded abruptly. In the silence that followed Baby got to her feet and moved hypnotically forward. By the dim light of the candles she looked majestic and beautiful. She took the snake from the man and held it aloft and her arm became a caduceus, the symbol of medicine. Then, turning to face the congregation, she tore her blouse to the waist and exposed two voluptuously pointed breasts. There was another gasp of horror. Naked breasts were out in Bibliopolis. On the other hand the coral snake was in. As Baby lowered her arm the outraged snake sent its fangs into six inches of plastic silicone. For ten seconds it writhed there before Baby detached it and offered it the other breast. But the coral had had enough. So had Piper. With a groan he joined Mrs Mathervitie on the floor. Baby, triumphantly topless, tossed the coral into the sack and turned to the pianist.

  ‘Launch into the deep, brother,’ she cried.

  And once again the little church reverberated to strains of ‘Bibliopolis we hold Thee Dear, Snakes Infest us we don’t Fear.’

  21

  In his Hampstead flat Frensic lay in his morning bath and twiddled the hot tap with his big toe to maintain an even temperature. A
good night’s sleep had helped to undo the ravages of Cynthia Bogden’s passion and he was in no hurry to go to the office. He had things to think about. It was all very well congratulating himself for his subtlety in unearthing the genuine author of Pause and forcing her to renounce all rights in the book but there were still problems to be faced. The first of these concerned the continuing existence of Piper and his inordinate claim to be paid for a novel he hadn’t written. On the face of it this seemed a minor problem. Frensic could now go ahead and deposit the two million dollars less his own and Corkadales’ commissions in account number 478776 in the First National Bank of New York. This seemed at first sight the sensible thing to do. Pay Piper and be rid of the rogue. On the other hand it was succumbing to blackmail and blackmailers tended to renew their demands. Give in once and he would have to give in again and again and in any case transferring the money to New York would necessitate explaining to Sonia that Piper wasn’t dead. One whiff of that and she’d be off after him like a scalded cat. Perhaps he might be able to fudge the issue and tell her that Mr Cadwalladine’s client had given instructions for the royalties to be paid in this way.

  But beyond all these technical problems there lay the suspicion that Piper hadn’t come up with this conspiracy to defraud on his own initiative. Ten years of the recurrent Search for a Lost Childhood was proof enough that Piper lacked any imagination at all and whoever had dreamt this devious plot up had a remarkably powerful imagination. Frensic’s suspicions centred on Mrs Baby Hutchmeyer. If Piper, who was supposed to have died with her, was still alive there was every reason to believe that Baby Hutchmeyer had survived with him. Frensic tried to analyse the psychology of Hutchmeyer’s wife. To have endured forty years of marriage to that monster argued either masochism or resilience beyond the ordinary. And then to burn an enormous house to the ground, blow up a cruiser and sink a yacht, all of them belonging to her husband and all in a matter of twenty minutes … Clearly the woman was insane and couldn’t be relied upon. At any moment she might resurrect herself and drag from his temporary grave the wretched Piper. What would follow this momentous event blew Frensic’s mind. Hutchmeyer would go litigiously berserk and sue everyone in sight. Piper would be dragged through the courts and the entire story of his substitution for the real author would be announced to the world. Frensic got out of the bath and dried himself to ward off the spectre of Piper in the witness box.

  And as he dressed the problem became more and more complicated. Even if Baby Hutchmeyer didn’t decide to go in for self-exhumation there was every chance that she would be discovered by some nosey reporter who might at this very moment be hungrily tracking her down. What the hell would happen if Piper told the truth? Frensic tried to foresee the outcome of his revelations, and was just making himself some coffee when he remembered the manuscript. The manuscript in Piper’s handwriting. Or at least the copy. That was the way out. He could always deny Piper’s allegation that he hadn’t written Pause and produce that manuscript copy as proof. And even if the psychotic Baby backed Piper up, nobody would believe her. Frensic sighed with relief. He had found a way out of the dilemma. After breakfast he walked up the hill to the tube station and caught a train in a thoroughly good mood. He was a clever fellow and it would take more than the benighted Piper and Baby Hutchmeyer to put one across him.

  He arrived at Lanyard Lane to find the office locked. That was odd. Sonia Futtle should have been back from Bernie the Beaver the previous day. Frensic unlocked the door and went in. No sign of Sonia. He crossed to his desk and there lying neatly separated from the rest of the mail was an envelope. It was addressed in Sonia’s handwriting to him. Frensic sat down and opened it. Inside was a long letter which began ‘Dearest Frenzy’ and ended, ‘Your loving Sonia.’ In between these endearments Sonia explained with a wealth of nauseating sentimentality and self-deception how Hutchmeyer had asked her to marry him and why she had accepted. Frensic was flabbergasted. And only a week before the girl had been crying her eyes out over Piper. Frensic took out his snuff box and red spotted handkerchief and thanked God he was still a bachelor. The ways and wiles of women were quite beyond him.

  *

  They were quite beyond Geoffrey Corkadale too. He was still in a state of nervous agitation over the threatened libel suit of Professor Facit versus the author, publisher and printer of Pause O Men for the Virgin when he received a telehone call from Miss Bogden.

  ‘I did what?’ he asked with a mixture of total incredulity and disgust. ‘And stop calling me darling. I don’t know you from a bar of soap.’

  ‘But Geoffrey sweetheart,’ said Miss Bogden, ‘you were so passionate, so manly …’

  ‘I was not!’ shouted Geoffrey. ‘You’ve got the wrong number. You can’t say these things.’

  Miss Bogden could and did. In detail. Geoffrey Corkadale curdled.

  ‘Stop,’ he yelled, ‘I don’t know what the hell has been going on but if you think for one moment that I spent the night before last in your beastly arms … dear God … you must be out of your bloody mind.’

  ‘And I suppose you didn’t ask me to marry you,’ screamed Miss Bogden, ‘and buy me an engagement ring and …’

  Geoffrey slammed the phone down to shut out this appalling catalogue. The situation was sufficiently desperate on the legal front without demented women claiming he had asked them to marry him. Then, to forestall any resumption of Miss Bogden’s accusations, he left the office and made his way to his solicitors to discuss a possible defence in the libel action.

  They were singularly unhelpful. ‘It isn’t as if the defamation of Professor Facit was accidental,’ they told him. ‘This man Piper evidently set out with deliberate malice to ruin the reputation of the Professor. There can be no other explanation. In our opinion the author is entirely culpable.’

  ‘He also happens to be dead,’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘In that case it rather looks as though you are going to have to bear the entire costs of this action and, frankly, we would advise you to settle.’

  Geoffrey Corkadale left the solicitors’ office in despair. It was all that bloody man Frensic’s fault. He should have known better than to have dealt with a literary agent who had already been involved in one disastrous libel action. Frensic was libel-prone. There was no other way of looking at it. Geoffrey took a cab to Lanyard Lane. He was going to tell Frensic what he thought of him. He found Frensic in an unusually affable mood.

  ‘My dear Geoffrey, how very nice to see you,’ he said.

  ‘I haven’t come to exchange compliments,’ said Geoffrey, ‘I’ve come to tell you that you’ve landed me in the most appalling mess and …’

  Frensic raised a hand.

  ‘You mean Professor Facit? Oh I shouldn’t worry too much …’

  ‘Worry too much? I’ve got every right to worry and as for too much, with bankruptcy staring me in the face just how much is too much?’

  ‘I’ve been making some private inquiries,’ said Frensic, ‘in Oxford.’

  ‘You have?’ said Geoffrey. ‘You don’t mean to say he actually did do all those frightful things? That ghastly Pekinese for instance?’

  ‘I mean,’ said Frensic pontifically, ‘that no one in Oxford has ever heard of a Professor Facit. I’ve checked with the Lodging House Syndicate and the university library and they had no records of any Professor Facit ever having applied for a ticket to use the library. And as for his statement that he once lived in De Frytville Avenue, it’s quite untrue.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Geoffrey, ‘if nobody up there has ever heard of him …’

  ‘It rather looks as if Messrs Ridley, Coverup, Makeweight and Jones have just tried to ambulance-chase once too often and are hoist with their own petard.’

  ‘My dear fellow, this calls for a celebration,’ said Geoffrey. ‘And you mean to say you went up there and found all this out.’

  But Frensic was modesty itself. ‘You see, I knew Piper pretty well. After all, he had been sending me stuff for years,�
�� he said as they went downstairs, ‘and he wasn’t the sort of fellow to set out to libel someone deliberately.’

  ‘But I thought you told me that Pause was his first book,’ said Geoffrey.

  Frensic regretted his indiscretion. ‘His first real book,’ he said. ‘The rest was just … well, a bit derivative. Not the sort of stuff I could ever have sold.’

  They strolled across to Wheelers for lunch. ‘Talking of Oxford,’ said Geoffrey when they had ordered, ‘I had the most extraordinary phone call this morning from some lunatic woman called Bogden.’

  ‘Really?’ said Frensic, spilling dry Martini down his shirt front. ‘What did she want?’

  ‘She claimed I’d asked her to marry me. It was absolutely awful.’

  ‘It must have been,’ said Frensic, finishing his drink and ordering another kind. ‘Mind you, some women will go to any lengths …’

  ‘From what I could gather I was the one to have gone to any lengths. Said I’d bought her an engagement ring.’

  ‘I hope you told her to go to hell,’ said Frensic, ‘and talking of marriages I’ve got some news too. Sonia Futtle is going to marry Hutchmeyer.’

  ‘Marry Hutchmeyer?’ said Geoffrey. ‘But the man’s only just lost his wife. You’d think he’d have the decency to wait a bit before sticking his head in the noose again.’

  ‘An apt metaphor,’ said Frensic with a smile, and raised his glass.

  His worries were over. He had just realized that in marrying Hutchmeyer Sonia had acted more wisely than she knew. She had effectively spiked the enemy’s guns. A bigamous Hutchmeyer was no threat, and besides, a man who could find Sonia physically attractive must be besotted and a besotted Hutch would never believe his new wife had once been party to a conspiracy to deceive him. All that remained was to implicate Piper financially. After an excellent lunch Frensic walked back to Lanyard Lane and thence to the bank. There he subtracted Corkadales’ ten per cent and his own commission and despatched one million four hundred thousand dollars to account number 478776 in the First National Bank of New York. He had honoured his side of the contract. Frensic went home by taxi. He was a rich and happy man.