by Tom Sharpe
Piper sat down limply in a chair.
‘Well?’ said Frensic, but Piper simply shook his head. Frensic took the letter from him and turned to the window. He had called the little sod’s bluff. There would be no more threats, no more manuscripts. Piper was broken. It was time to leave. Frensic stared out at the dark river and the forest beyond, a strange foreign landscape, dangerously lush, and far from the comfortable little world he had come to protect. He crossed to the door and went down the broad staircase and across the hall. All that was needed now was to get home as quickly as possible.
But when he got into his rented car and drove down the drive to the ferry it was to find the pontoon on the far side of the river and no one to bring it across. Frensic rang the bell but nobody answered. He stood in the bright sunlight and waited. There was a stillness in the air and only the sound of the black river slurping against the bank below him. Frensic got back into the car and drove into the square. Here too there was nobody in sight. Dark shadows under the tin roofs that served as awnings to the shop fronts, the white-painted church, a wooden bench at the foot of the statue in the middle of the square, blank windows. Frensic got out of his car and looked round. The clock on the courthouse stood at midday. Presumably everyone was at lunch, but there was still a sense of unnatural desolation which disturbed him and back beyond the river the forest, an undomesticated tangle of trees and underbush, made a close horizon above which the sky was an empty blue. Frensic walked round the square and then got back into the car. Perhaps if he tried the ferry again … But it was still there across the water and when Frensic tried to pull on the rope there was no movement. He rang the bell again. There was no echo and his sense of unease redoubled. Finally, leaving the car in the road, he walked along the bank of the river following a little path. He would wait a while until the lunch hour was over and then try again. But the path led under live oaks hung with Spanish moss and ended in the cemetery. Frensic looked for a moment at the gravestones and then turned back.
Perhaps if he drove west he would find a road out of town on that side which would lead him back to Route 80. Blood Alley had an almost cheerful ring to it now. But he had no map in the car and after driving down a number of side streets that ended in cul-de-sacs or uninviting tracks into the woods he turned back. Perhaps the ferry would be open now. He looked at his watch. It was two o’clock and people would be out and about again.
They were. As he drove into the little square a group of gaunt men standing on the sidewalk outside the courthouse moved across the road. Frensic stopped the car and stared unhappily through the windshield. The gaunt men had holsters on their belts and the gauntest of them all wore a star on his chest. He walked round the car to the side window and leant in. Frensic studied his yellow teeth.
‘Your name Frensic?’ he asked. Frensic nodded. ‘Judge wants to see you,’ continued the man. ‘You going to come quietly or …?’ Frensic came quietly and with the litttle group behind him climbed the steps to the courthouse. Inside it was cool and dark. Frensic hesitated but the tall man pointed to a door.
‘Judge is in chambers,’ he said. ‘Go on in.’
Frensic went in. Behind a large desk sat Baby Hutchmeyer. She was dressed in a long black robe and above it her face, always unnaturally taut, was now unpleasantly white. Frensic, staring down at her, had no doubt about her identity.
‘Mrs Hutchmeyer …’ he began, ‘the late Mrs Hutchmeyer?’
‘Judge Hutchmeyer to you,’ said Baby, ‘and we won’t have anything more about the late unless you want to end up the late Mr Frensic right soon.’
Frensic swallowed and glanced over his shoulder. The sheriff was standing with his back against the door and the gun on his belt glinted obtrusively.
‘May I ask what the meaning of this is?’ he asked after a moment’s significant silence. ‘Bringing me here like this and …’
The judge looked across at the sheriff. ‘What have you got on him so far?’ she asked.
‘Uttering threats and menaces,’ said the sheriff. ‘Possession of an unauthorized firearm. Spare tyre stashed with heroin. Blackmail. You name it, Judge, he’s got it.’
Frensic groped for a chair. ‘Heroin?’ he gasped. ‘What do you mean heroin? I haven’t a single grain of heroin.’
‘You think not?’ said Baby. ‘Herb’ll show you, won’t you, Herb?’
Behind Frensic the sheriff nodded. ‘Got the automobile round at the garage dismantling it right now,’ he said, ‘you want proof we’ll show it to you.’
But Frensic was in no need of proof. He sat stunned in the chair and stared at Baby’s white face. ‘What do you want?’ he asked finally.
‘Justice,’ said Baby succinctly.
‘Justice,’ muttered Frensic, ‘you talk about justice and …’
‘You want to make a statement now or reserve your defence for court tomorrow?’ said Baby.
Frensic glanced over his shoulder again. ‘I’d like to make a statement now. In private,’ he said.
Baby nodded to the sheriff. ‘Wait outside, Herb,’ she said, ‘and stay close. Any trouble in here and …’
‘There won’t be any trouble in here,’ said Frensic hastily, ‘I can assure you of that.’
Baby waved his assurances and Herb aside. As the door closed Frensic took out his handkerchief and mopped his face.
‘Right,’ said Baby, ‘so you want to make a statement.’
Frensic leant forward. It was in his mind to say ‘You can’t do this to me,’ but the cliché culled from so many of his authors didn’t seem appropriate. She could do this to him. He was in Bibliopolis and Bibliopolis was off the map of civilization.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked faintly.
Judge Baby swung her chair and leant back. ‘Coming from you, Mr Frensic, that’s an interesting question,’ she said. ‘You come into this little town and you start uttering threats and menaces against one of our citizens and you want me to tell you what I want you to do.’
‘I didn’t utter threats and menaces,’ said Frensic, ‘I came to tell Piper to stop sending me his manuscripts. And if anyone’s been uttering threats it’s him, not me.’
Baby shook her head. ‘If that’s your defence I can tell you right off nobody in Bibliopolis is going to believe you. Mr Piper is the most peaceful non-violent citizen around these parts.’
‘Well, he may be around these parts,’ said Frensic, ‘but from where I’m sitting in London …’
‘You ain’t sitting in London now,’ said Baby, ‘you’re sitting right here in my chambers and shaking like a hound-dog pissing peach pits.’
Frensic considered the simile and found it disagreeable. ‘You’d be shaking if you’d been accused of having a spare tyre filled with heroin,’ he said.
Baby nodded. ‘You could be right at that,’ she said. ‘I can give you life for that. Throw in the threats and menaces, the firearm and the blackmail and it could all add up to life plus ninety-nine years. You had better consider that before you say anything more.’
Frensic considered it and found he was shaking even harder. Hound-dogs having problems with peach pits were no comparison. ‘You can’t mean it,’ he gasped.
Baby smiled. ‘You’d better believe I mean it. The warden of the penitentiary’s a deacon in my church. You wouldn’t have to do the ninety-nine years. Like life would be three months and you wouldn’t last in the chain gang. They got snakes and things to make it natural death. You’ve seen our little cemetery?’
Frensic nodded, ‘So we’ve got a little plot marked out already,’ said Baby. ‘It wouldn’t have no headstone. No name like Frensic. Just a little mound and nobody would ever know. So that’s your choice.’
‘What is?’ said Frensic when he could find his voice.
‘Like life plus ninety-nine or you do what I tell you.’
‘I think I’ll do what you tell me,’ said Frensic, for whom this was no choice at all.
‘Right,’ said Baby, ‘so first you m
ake a full confession.’
‘Confession?’ said Frensic. ‘What sort of confession?’
‘Just that you wrote Pause O Men for the Virgin and palmed it off on Mr Piper and hoodwinked Hutch and instigated Miss Futtle to arsonize the house and—’
‘No,’ cried Frensic, ‘never. I’d rather …’ He stopped. He wouldn’t rather. There was a look on Baby’s face that told him that. ‘I don’t see why I’ve got to confess to all those things,’ he said.
Baby relaxed. ‘You took his good name away from him. Now you’re going to give it back to him.’
‘His good name?’ said Frensic.
‘By putting it on the cover of that dirty novel,’ said Baby.
‘He didn’t have any sort of name till we did that,’ said Frensic, ‘he never published anything and now he’s so-called dead he isn’t going to.’
‘Oh yes, he is,’ said Baby leaning forward. ‘You’re going to give him your name. Like Search for a Lost Childhood by Frederick Frensic.’
Frensic stared at her. The woman was mad as a March hare. ‘Search by me?’ he said. ‘You don’t understand. I’ve hawked that blasted book around every publisher in London and no one wants to know. It’s unreadable.’
Baby smiled. Unpleasantly.
‘That’s your problem. You’re going to get it published and you’re going to get all his future books published under your own name. It’s that or the chain gang.’
She glanced significantly out of the window at the horizon of trees and the empty sky and Frensic following her glance gazed into a terrible future and an early death. He’d have to humour her. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘You’ll do better than that. You’ll do exactly what I say.’ She took a sheet of paper from a drawer and handed him a pen. ‘Now write,’ she said.
Frensic hitched his chair foward and began to write very shakily. By the time he had finished he had confessed to having evaded British income tax by paying two million dollars plus royalties into account number 478776 in the First National Bank of New York and to having incited his partner, the former Miss Futtle, to arsonize the Hutchmeyer residence. The whole statement was such an amalgam of things he had done and things he hadn’t that, cross-examined by a competent lawyer, he would never be able to disentangle himself. Baby read it through and witnessed his signature. Then she called Herb in and he witnessed it too.
‘That should keep you on the straight and narrow,’ she said as the sheriff left the room. ‘One squeak out of you and one attempt to evade your obligation to publish Mr Piper’s novels and this goes straight to Hutchmeyer, the insurance company, the FBI and the tax authorities, and you can wipe that smile off your face.’ But Frensic wasn’t smiling. He had developed a nervous tic. ‘Because if you think you can worm your way out of this by going to the authorities yourself and telling them to look me up in Bibliopolis you can forget it. I’ve got friends round here and no one talks if I say no. You understand that?’
Frensic nodded. ‘I quite understand,’ he said.
Baby stood up and took off her robe. ‘Well just in case you don’t, you’re going to be saved,’ she said. They went out into the hall where the group of gaunt men waited.
‘We’ve got a convert, boys,’ she said. ‘See you all in Church.’
*
Frensic sat in the front row of the little Church of The Servants of The Lord. Before him, radiant and serene, Baby conducted the service. The church was packed and Herb sat next to Frensic and shared his hymnbook with him. They sang ‘Telephoning to Glory’ and ‘Rock of Ages’ and ‘Shall we Gather by the River’, and with Herb’s nudging Frensic sang as loudly as the rest. Finally Baby delivered a virulent sermon on the text ‘Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publishers and sinners,’ her gaze fixed pointedly on Frensic throughout, and the congregation launched into ‘Bibliopolis we hold Thee Dear’. It was time for Frensic to be saved. He moved shakily forward and knelt. Snakes might no longer infest Bibliopolis, but Frensic was still petrified. Above him Baby’s face was radiant. She had triumphed once again.
‘Swear by the Lord to keep the covenant,’ she said. And Frensic swore.
*
He was still swearing an hour later as he sat in his car and the ferry crossed the river. Frensic glanced across at Pellagra. The light was burning on the upper floor. Piper was doubtless at work on some terrible novel that Frensic would have to sell under his own name. He drove off the ferry recklessly and the hired car bucketed down the dirt road and the headlights picked out the dark water gleaming beneath the entwined trees. After Bibliopolis the grim landscape held no menace for him. It was a natural world full of natural dangers and Frensic could cope with them. With Baby Hutchmeyer there had been no coping. Frensic swore again.
*
In his study in Pellagra Piper sat silently at his desk. He was not writing. He was looking at the guarantee Frensic had written promising to publish Search for a Lost Childhood even at his own expense. Piper was going to be published at long last. Never mind that the name on the cover would be Frensic. One day the world would learn the truth. Or better still perhaps, it would be an unanswered question. After all who knew who Shakespeare was or who had written Hamlet? No one.
23
Nine months later Search for a Lost Childhood by Frederick Frensic, published by Corkadales, price £3.90, came out in Britain. In America it was published by Hutchmeyer Press. Frensic had had to apply some direct pressure in both directions and it was only the threat of exposure that had persuaded Geoffrey to accept the book. Sonia had been influenced by feelings of loyalty, and Hutchmeyer had needed no urging. The sound of a familiar female voice on the telephone had sufficed. And so the review copies had gone out with Frensic’s name on the title-page and the dust jacket. A short biography at the back said he had once been a literary agent. He was one no longer. The name on the door of the office in Lanyard Lane still lingered but the office was empty and Frensic had moved from Glass Walk to a cottage in Sussex without a telephone.
There, safe from Mrs Bogden, he was Piper’s amanuesis. Day after day he typed out the manuscripts Piper sent him and night after night lurked in the corner of the village pub and drowned his sorrows. His friends in London saw him seldom. From necessity he visited Geoffrey and occasionally went out to lunch with him. But for the most part he spent his days at his typewriter, cultivated his garden and went for long walks sunk in melancholy thought.
Not that his thoughts were always depressed. There remained a deep core of deviousness in Frensic which nagged at the problem of his predicament and sought ways to escape. But none came to mind. His imagination had been anaesthetized by his terrible experience and each day Piper’s dreary prose reinforced the effect. Distilled from so many sources, it acted on Frensic’s literary nerve and kept him in a state of disorientation so that he had no sooner recognized a sentence from Mann than he was flung a chunk of Faulkner to be followed by a mot from Proust or a slice of Middlemarch. After such a paragraph Frensic would get up and reel into the garden to escape his associations by mowing the lawn. At night before going to sleep he would excise the memory of Bibliopolis by reading a page or two of The Wind in the Willows and wish he could potter about in boats like the Water Rat. Anything to escape the ordeal he had been set.
And now it was Sunday and the reviews of Search would be in the papers. In spite of himself Frensic was drawn to the little shop in the village to buy the Sunday Times and the Observer. He bought them both and didn’t wait until he got home to read the worst. It was best to get the agony over and done with. He stood in the lane and opened the Sunday Times Review and turned to the book page and there it was. At the top of the list. Frensic leant against a gatepost and read the review. As he read his world turned topsy-turvy once again. Frieda Gormley ‘loved’ the book and devoted two columns to its praise. She called it ‘the most honest and original appraisal of the adolescent trauma I have read for a very long time’. Frensic stared
at the words in disbelief. Then he rummaged in the Observer. It was the same there. ‘For a first novel it has not only freshness but a deeply intuitive insight into family relationships … a masterpiece …’ Frensic shut the paper hurriedly. A masterpiece? He looked again. The word was still there, and further down there was even worse. ‘If one can say of a novel that it is a great work of genius …’ Frensic clutched the gatepost. He felt weak. Search for a Lost Childhood was being acclaimed. He staggered on up the lane with a fresh sense of loss. His nose, his infallible nose, had betrayed him. Piper had been right all along. Either that or the plague of The Moral Novel had spread and the days of the novel of entertainment were over, supplanted by the religion of literature. People no longer read for pleasure. If they liked Search they couldn’t. There wasn’t an ounce of enjoyment to be got from the book. Frensic had painstakingly (and the word was precise) typed the manuscript out page by ghastly page and from those pages there had emanated a whining self-pity, an arrogantly self-directed sycophancy that had sickened him. And this wretched puke of words was what the reviewers called originality and freshness and a work of genius. Genius! Frensic spat the word. It had lost all meaning.
And as he lumbered up the lane the full portent of the book’s success hit him. He would have to go through life bearing the stigma of being known as the author of a book he hadn’t written. His friends would congratulate him … For one awful moment Frensic contemplated suicide but his sense of irony saved him. He knew now how Piper had felt when he had discovered what Frensic had foisted on him with Pause. ‘Hoist with his own petard’ sprang to mind and he acknowledged Piper’s triumphant revenge. The thought brought Frensic to a standstill. He had been made to look a fool and if the world now considered him a genius, one day they would learn the truth and the laughter would never cease. It was a threat he had used against Dr Louth and it had been turned against him. Frensic’s fury at the thought spurred his deviousness to work. Standing in the lane between the hedgerows he saw his escape. He would turn the tables on them yet. Out of the accumulated experience of the thousand commercially successful novels he had sold he could surely concoct a story that would contain every ingredient Piper and his mentor, Dr Louth, would most detest. It would have sex, violence, sentimentality, romance – and all this without an ounce of significance. It would be a rattling good yarn, a successor to Pause, and on the dust jacket in bold type there would be Peter Piper’s name. No, that was wrong. Piper was a mere pawn in the game. Behind him there lay a far deadlier enemy to literature. Dr Sydney Louth.