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?' said Frensic thinking of the Guardian article about Graham Greene.
'This bloody letter,' shouted Geoffrey.
'What letter?'
'This letter from Piper. I suppose you think it's funny to get him to write abusive filth about his own beastly book.'
It was Frensic's turn to shout. 'What about his book?' he yelled.
'What do you mean 'What about it?' You know damned well what I mean.'
'I've no idea,' said Frensic.
'He says here he considers it one of the most repulsive pieces of writing it's ever been his misfortune to have to read '
'Shit,' said Frensic frantically wondering how Piper had got hold of a copy of Pause.
'Yes, that too,' said Geoffrey. 'Now where does he say that? Here we are. 'If you imagine even momentarily that for motives of commercial cupidity I am prepared to prostitute my albeit so far unknown but not I think inconsiderable talent by assuming even remotely and as it were by proxy responsibility for what in my view and that of any right-minded person can only be described as the pornographic outpourings of verbal excreta...' There! I knew it was embedded somewhere. Now what do you say to that?'
Frensic stared venomously at Sonia and tried to think of something to say. 'I don't know,' he muttered, 'it sounds odd. How did he get the blasted book?'
'What do you mean 'How did he get the book'?' yelled Geoffrey. 'He wrote the thing, didn't
