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.
