Free The Great Pursuit by Tom Sharpe Page A

it's good publicity,' she said. 'Statements like that will get his name before the

public.'
    'Get his name before the courts more like,' said Frensic. 'And what about this bit about The

French Lieutenant's Woman... Piper hasn't even written one single publishable word and here he is

castigating half a dozen eminent novelists. Look what he says about Waugh. Quote a very limited

imagination and an overrated style unquote. Waugh just happens to have been one of the finest

stylists of the century. And "limited imagination" coming from a blithering idiot who hasn't got

any imagination at all. I tell you Pandora's box will be a teaparty by comparison with Piper on

the loose.'
    'He's entitled to his opinions,' said Sonia.
    'He isn't entitled to have opinions like these,' said Frensic. 'God knows what Cadwalladine's

client will say when he reads what he's supposed to have said, and I shouldn't think Geoffrey

Corkadale is too pleased to know he's got an author on his list who thinks Graham Greene is a

second-rate hack.' He went into his office and sat miserably wondering what new storm was going

to break. His nose was playing all hell with him.
    But the storm when it did break came from an unexpected direction. From Piper himself. He

returned to the Gleneagle Guest House in Exforth madly in love with Sonia, life, his own newly

established reputation as a novelist and his future happiness to find a parcel waiting for him.

It contained the proofs of Pause O Men for the Virgin and a letter from Geoffrey Corkadale asking

him if he would mind correcting them as soon as possible. Piper took the parcel up to his room

and settled down to read. He started at nine o'clock at night. By midnight he was wide awake and

half-way through. By two o'clock he had finished and had begun a letter to Geoffrey Corkadale

stating very precisely what he thought of Pause O Men for the Virgin as a novel, as pornography,

as an attack on established values both sexual and human. It was a long letter. By six o'clock he

had posted it. Only then did he go to bed, exhausted by his own fluent disgust and harbouring

feelings for Miss Futtle that were the exact reverse of those he had held for her nine hours

earlier. Even then he couldn't sleep but lay awake for several hours before finally dozing off.

He woke again after lunch and went for a haggard walk along the beach in a state bordering on the

suicidal. He had been tricked, conned, deceived by a woman he had loved and trusted. She had

deliberately bribed him into accepting the authorship of a vile, nauseating, pornographic...He

ran out of adjectives. He would never forgive her. After contemplating the ocean bleakly for an

hour he returned to the boarding-house, his mind made up. He composed a terse telegram stating

that he had no intention of going through with the charade and had no wish to see Miss Futtle

ever again. That done he confided his darkest thoughts to his diary, had supper and went to

bed.
    The following morning the storm broke in London. Frensic arrived in a good mood. Piper's

absence from his flat had relieved him of the obligation to play host to a man whose conversation

had consisted of the need for a serious approach to fiction and Sonia Futtle's attractions as a

woman. Neither topic had been at all to Frensic's taste and Piper's habit at breakfast of reading

aloud passages from Doctor Faustus to illustrate what he meant by symbolic counterpoint as a

literary device had driven Frensic from his own home even earlier than was his custom. With Piper

in Exforth he had been spared that particular ordeal but on his arrival at the office he was

confronted with fresh horrors. He found Sonia, whitefaced and almost tearful, clutching a

telegram, and had been about to ask her what the matter was when the phone rang. Frensic answered

it. It was Geoffrey Corkadale. 'I suppose this is your idea of a joke,' he said

angrily.
    'What is?'