'Well I'd start with how I was approached by Frensic to come to the States and then work my way forward day by day with the voyage across and everything. That way it would look authentic.'
Baby slowed the car and pulled into a rest area. 'Let's just get this straight. You write the diary backwards...'
'Yes, I think it was April the 10th Frensic sent me the telegram...'
'Go on. You start 10 April and then what?'
'Well then I'd write how I didn't want to do it and how they persuaded me and promised to get Search published and everything.'
'And where would you finish?'
'Finish?' said Piper. 'I wasn't thinking of finishing. I'd just go on and...'
'So what about the fire and all?' said Baby.
'Well I would put that in too. I'd have to.'
'And how it started by accident, I suppose?'
'Well, no I wouldn't say that. I mean it didn't did it?'
Baby looked at him and shook her head. 'So you'd put in how I started it and sent the cruiser out to blow up Hutchmeyer and the Futtle? Is that it?'
'I suppose so,' said Piper. 'I mean that's what did happen and...'
'And that's what you call vindication. Well you can forget it. No way. You want to vindicate yourself that's fine with me but you don't implicate me at the same time. Dual destiny I said and dual destiny I meant.'
'It's all very well for you to talk,' said Piper morosely, 'you're not lumbered with the reputation of having written that filthy novel and I am...'
'I'm just lumbered with a genius is all,' said Baby and started the car again. Piper sat slumped in his seat and sulked.
'The only thing I know how to do is write,' he grumbled, 'and you won't let me.'
'I didn't say that,' said Baby, 'I just said no retrospective diaries. Dead men tell no tales. Not in diaries they don't and anyhow I don't see why you feel so strongly about Pause. I thought it was a great book.'
'You would,' said Piper.
'The thing that really has me puzzled is who did write it. I mean they had to have some real good reason for staying under cover.'
'You've only got to read the beastly book to see that,' said Piper. 'All that sex for one thing. And now everyone's going to think I did it.'
'And if you had written the book you would have cut out all the sex?' said Baby.
'Of course. That would be the first thing and then...'
'Without the sex the book wouldn't have sold. That much I do know about the book trade.'
'So much the better,' said Piper. 'It debases human values. That is what that book does.'
'In that case you should rewrite it the way you think it ought to have been written...' and amazed at this sudden inspiration she lapsed into thoughtful silence.
Twenty miles farther on they entered a small town. Baby parked the car and went into a supermarket. When she returned she was holding a copy of Pause O Men for the Virgin.
'They're selling like wild-fire,' she said and handed him the book.
Piper looked at his photograph on the back cover. It had been taken in those halcyon days in London when he had been in love with Sonia and the inane face that smiled up at him seemed to be that of a stranger. 'What am I supposed to do with this?' he asked. Baby smiled.
'Write it.'
'Write it?' said Piper. 'But it's already been '
'Not the way you would have written it, and you're the author.'
'I'm bloody well not.'
