'Bartlett, dear Bartlett,' she said and looked up. She stared at him dimly and Frensic stared back. He had been wrong. Things had changed. The face he looked at was not the face he remembered. Then it had been smooth and slightly plump. Now it was swollen and corrugated. A plexus of dropsical wrinkles bagged under the eyes and scored her cheeks, and from the lip of this reticulated mask there hung the cigarette. Only the expression in the eyes remained the same, dimmer but burning with the certainty of her own rightness.
The conviction faded as Frensic watched. 'I thought...' she began and looked at him more closely, 'Miss Christian precisely said...'
'Frensic. You were my supervisor in 1955,' said Frensic.
'Frensic?' The eyes filled with conjecture now. 'But you said Bartlett...'
'A little deceit,' said Frensic, 'to guarantee this interview. I'm a literary agent now. Frensic & Futtle. You won't have heard of us.'
But Dr Louth had. The eyes flickered. 'No. I'm afraid I haven't.'
Frensic hesitated and chose a circuitous approach. 'And since...well...since you were my supervisor I was wondering, well, if you would consider...I mean it would be a great favour to ask...' Frensic paraded deference.
'What do you want?' said Dr Louth.
Frensic unwrapped the packet on his lap. 'You see we have a novel and if you would write a piece...'
'A novel?' The eyes behind the wrinkles glinted at the wrapping paper. 'What novel?'
'This,' said Frensic, and passed her Pause O Men for the Virgin. For a moment Dr Louth stared at the book and the cigarette slouched on her lip. Then she cringed in her chair.
'That?' she whispered. The cigarette dropped from her lip and smouldered on the essay on her lap. 'That?'
Frensic nodded and leaning forward removed the cigarette and put the book down. 'It seemed your sort of book,' he said.
'My sort of book?'
Frensic sat back in his chair. The centre of power had passed to him. 'Since you wrote it,' he said, 'I thought it only fair...'
'How did you know?' She was staring at him with a new intensity. There was no high moral purpose in that intensity now. Only fear and hatred. Frensic basked in it. He crossed his legs and looked out at the Monkey Puzzle tree. He had climbed it.
'Mainly through the style,' he said, 'and to be perfectly frank, by critical analysis. You used the same words too often in your books and I placed them. You taught me that, you see.'
There was a long pause while Dr Louth lit another cigarette. 'And you expect me to review it?' she said at last.
'Not really,' said Frensic, 'it's unethical for an author to review her own work. I just wanted to discuss how best we could announce the news to the world.'
'What news?'
'That Dr Sydney Louth, the eminent critic, had written both Pause and The Great Pursuit. I thought an article in the Times Literary Supplement would do to start the controversy raging. After all, it's not every day that a scholar produces a bestseller, particularly the sort of book she has spent her life denouncing as obscene...'
'I forbid it,' Dr Louth gasped. 'As my agent...'
'As your agent it is my business to see that the book sells. And I can assure you that the literary scandal the announcement will provoke in circles where your name has previously been revered...'
'No,' said Dr Louth, 'that must never happen.'
'You're thinking of your reputation?' enquired Frensic gently. Dr Louth did not reply.
'You should have thought of that before. As it is you have placed me in a very awkward