The Great Pursuit

by Tom Sharpe

  ‘Put the bags aboard,’ said Baby, ‘I’ve got to go back for something.’

  Piper hesitated for a moment and stared with mixed feelings out across the bay. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted Sonia and Hutchmeyer to heave in sight now or not. But there was no sign of them. In the end he dropped the bags down into the cruiser and waited. Baby returned with a briefcase.

  ‘My alimony,’ she explained, ‘from the safe.’ Clutching her mink to her, she clambered down into the cruiser and went to the controls. Piper followed her unsteadily.

  ‘Low on fuel,’ she said. ‘We’ll need some more.’ Presently Piper was trudging back and forth between the cruiser and the fuel store at the far side of the courtyard behind the house. It was dark and occasionally he stumbled.

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’ he asked after the fifth journey as he handed the cans down to Baby in the cruiser.

  ‘We can’t afford to make mistakes,’ she replied. ‘You wouldn’t want us to run out of gas in the middle of the bay.’

  Piper set off for the store again. There was no doubt in his mind that he had already made a terrible mistake. He should have listened to Sonia. She had said the woman was a ghoul and she was right. A demented ghoul. And what on earth was he doing in the middle of the night filling a cruiser with cans of petrol? It wasn’t an activity even vaguely related with being a novelist. Thomas Mann wouldn’t have been found dead doing it. Nor would D. H. Lawrence. Conrad might have, just. Even then it was highly unlikely. Piper consulted Lord Jim and found nothing reassuring in it, nothing to justify this insane activity. Yes, insane was the word. Standing in the fuel store with two more cans Piper hesitated. There wasn’t a single novelist of any merit who would have done what he was doing. They would all have refused to be party to such a scheme. Which was all very well but then none of them had been in the awful predicament he was in. True, D. H. Lawrence had run off with Mr Somebody-or-other’s wife, Frieda, but presumably of his own accord and because he was in love with the woman. Piper was most certainly not in love with Baby and he wasn’t doing this of his own accord. Definitely not. Having consulted these precedents Piper tried to think how to live up to them. After all, he hadn’t spent the last ten years of his life being the great novelist for nothing. He would take a moral stand. Which was rather easier said than done. Baby Hutchmeyer wasn’t the sort of woman who would understand taking a moral stand. Besides, there wasn’t time to explain. The best thing to do would be to stay where he was and not go down to the boat again. That would put her in a spot when Hutchmeyer and Sonia got back. She’d have her work cut out explaining what she was doing on board the cruiser with her bags packed and ten five-gallon cans of gasolene stashed around the cabin. At least she wouldn’t be able to argue that he had forced her to elope with him – if elope was the right word for running away with another man’s wife. Not if he wasn’t there. On the other hand there was his suitcase on board too. He would have to get that off. But how? Well of course if he didn’t go back down there she would come looking for him and in that case … Piper peered out of the store and seeing that the courtyard was clear, stole across it to the front door and into the house. Presently he was looking out from behind the lattice of the piazza lounge at the boat. Around him the great wooden house creaked. Piper looked at his watch. It was one o’clock. Where had Sonia and Hutchmeyer got to? They should have been back hours ago.

  On board the cruiser Baby was having the same thought about Piper. What was keeping him? She had started the engine and checked the fuel gauge and was ready to go now and he was holding everything up. After ten minutes she became genuinely alarmed.

  And with each succeeding minute her alarm grew. The sea was calm now and if he didn’t come soon …

  ‘Genius is so unpredictable,’ she muttered finally and climbed back on to the jetty. She went round the house and across the yard to the fuel store and switched on the light. Empty. Two jerry-cans standing in the middle of the floor were mute testimony to Piper’s change of heart. Baby went to the door.

  ‘Peter,’ she called, her thin voice dying in the night air. Thrice she called and thrice there was no reply.

  ‘Oh heartless boy!’ she cried and this time it seemed there was an answer. It came faintly from the house in the form of a crash and a muffled shout. Piper had tripped over an ornamental vase. Baby headed across the court and up the steps to the door. Once inside she called again. In vain. Standing in the centre of the great hall Baby looked up at the portrait of her detested husband and it seemed to her overwrought imagination that a smile played about those gross arrogant lips. He had won again. He would always win and she would always remain the plaything of his idle hours.

  ‘Never!’ she shouted in answer to the clichés that fluttered hysterically about her mind and to the portrait’s unspoken scorn. She hadn’t come this far to be deprived of her right to freedom and romance and significance by a pusillanimous literary genius. She would do something, something symbolic that would stand as a testimony to her independence. From the ashes of the past she would arise anew like some wild phoenix from the … Flames? Ashes? The symbolism drew her on. It would be an act from which there could be no going back. She would burn her boats. Baby, urged on by heroines of several hundred novels, flew back across the courtyard, opened a jerry-can and a moment later was trailing gasolene back to the house. She sloshed it up the steps, over the threshold, across the manifold activities of the mosaic floor, up more steps into the piazza lounge and across the carpet to the study. Then with the reckless abandon that so became her in her new role she seized a table lighter from the desk and lit it. A sheet of flames engulfed the room, scurried into the lounge, hurtled across the hall and out into the night. Then and only then did Baby turn and open the door to the terrace.

  Meanwhile Piper, after his brief contretemps with the ornamental vase, was busy on the cruiser. He had heard her call and had seized his opportunity to retrieve his suitcase. He ran down the path to the jetty and clambered aboard. Above him the huge house loomed dark with derived menace. Its towers and turrets, culled from Ruskin and Morris and distilled into shingle through the architectural extravagance of Peabody and Stearns, merged with the lowering sky. Only behind the lattice of the piazza were there lights and these were dim. So was the interior of the cruiser. Piper fumbled about among the travel bags and jerry-cans for his suitcase. Where the hell had it got to? He found it finally under the mink coat and was just disentangling it when he was stopped by a sudden roar from the house and the flicker of flames. Dropping the coat he stumbled to the cabin door and looked out dumbfounded.

  The Hutchmeyer Residence was ablaze. Flames shot up across the windows of Hutchmeyer’s study. More flames danced behind the latticework. There was a crash of breaking glass as windows shattered in the heat and almost simultaneously from behind the house a mushroom of flame billowed up into the sky followed by the most appalling explosion. Piper gaped, transfixed by the enormity of what was happening. And as he gaped a slim figure detached itself from the shadows of the house and ran across the terrace towards him. It was Baby. The bloody woman must have … but Piper had no time to follow this obvious train of thought to its conclusion. As Baby ran towards him another train appeared round the side of the house, a train of flames that danced and skipped, held for a moment and then flickered on along the trail of gasolene Piper had left from the fuel store. Piper watched it coming and then, with a presence of mind that was wholly his own and owed nothing to The Moral Novel, he clambered on to the jetty and wrestled with the ropes that held the cruiser.

  ‘We’ve got to get away before that fire …’ he yelled to Baby as she rushed along the jetty towards him. Baby looked over her shoulder at the fuse.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she shrieked. The dancing flames were scurrying closer. She leapt down into the boat and into the cabin.

  ‘It’s too late,’ shouted Piper. The flames were licking along the jetty now. They would reach the boat with its cargo of gas and then … Piper drop
ped the line and ran. In the cabin of the cruiser, Baby struggled to find her alimony, grabbed the mink, dropped it again, and finally found the case she was looking for. She turned back towards the door but the flames had reached the end of the jetty and as she looked they leapt the gap. There was no hope. Baby turned to the controls, put the throttle full on, and as the cruiser surged forward, she scrambled out of the cabin and, still clutching the briefcase, dived over the side. Behind her the cruiser gathered speed. Flames flickered somewhere inside to mark its progress and then seemed to die down. Finally it disappeared into the darkness of the bay, the roar of its motor drowned by the much more powerful roar of the blazing house. Baby swam ashore and stumbled up the rocky beach. Piper was standing on the lawn staring in horror at the house. The flames had reached the upper storeys now, they glowed behind windows briefly, there was the crash of breaking glass as more windows splintered and then great gusts of flame shot out to lick up the sides of the shingle. Within minutes the entire façade was ablaze. Baby stood beside Piper proudly.

  ‘There goes my past,’ she murmured. Piper turned to look at her. Her hair straggled down her head and her face was naked of its pancake mask. Only her eyes seemed real and in the reflected glow Piper could see that they shone with a demented joy.

  ‘You’re out of your tiny mind,’ he said with uncharacteristic frankness. Baby’s fingers tightened on his arm.

  ‘I did it all for you,’ she said. ‘You understand that, don’t you? We have to plunge into the future unfettered by the past. We have to commit ourselves irrevocably by some free act and make an existential choice.’

  ‘Existential choice?’ shrieked Piper. The flames had reached the decorative dovecotes now and the heat was intense. ‘You call setting fire to your own house an existential choice? That’s not an existential choice, that’s a bloody crime, that is.’

  Baby smiled happily at him. ‘You must read Genet, darling,’ she murmured and still gripping his arm pulled him away across the lawn towards the trees. In the distance there came the wail of sirens. Piper hurried. They had just reached the edge of the forest when the night air was split by another series of explosions. Far out across the bay the cruiser had exploded twice. And silhouetted against the second ball of flame Piper seemed to glimpse the mast of a yacht.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he muttered.

  ‘Oh my darling,’ murmured Baby in response, and turned her face to his.

  13

  Hutchmeyer was in a foul temper. He had been insulted by an author, he had proved himself an inept yachtsman, had lost his sails, and finally his virility had been put in doubt by Sonia Futtle’s refusal to take his overtures seriously.

  ‘Oh, come on now, Hutch baby,’ she had said, ‘put it away. This is no time to be proving your manhood. Okay, so you’re a man and I’m a woman. I heard you. And I don’t doubt you. I really don’t. You’ve got to believe me, I don’t. Now you just put your clothes back on again and …’

  ‘They’re wet,’ said Hutchmeyer. ‘They’re soaking wet. You want me to catch my death of pneumonia or something?’

  Sonia shook her head. ‘Let’s just get on back to the house and you can be nice and dry in no time at all.’

  ‘Yeah, well you just tell me how I’m going to get us back home with the mainsail in the water. So all we do is go round in circles. That’s what we do. Aw come on, honey …’

  But Sonia wouldn’t. She went up on deck and looked across the water. In the cabin doorway Hutchmeyer, pinkly naked and shivering, made one last plea. ‘You’re all woman,’ he said, ‘you know that. All woman. I got a real respect for you. I mean we’ve got …’

  ‘A wife,’ said Sonia bluntly, ‘that’s what you’ve got. And I’ve got a fiancé.’

  ‘You’ve got a what?’ said Hutchmeyer.

  ‘You heard me. A fiancé. Name of Peter Piper.’

  ‘That little—’ but Hutchmeyer got no further. His attention had been drawn to the shoreline. He could see it now quite clearly. By the light of a blazing house.

  ‘Look at that,’ said Sonia, ‘somebody’s having one hell of a house-warming.’

  Hutchmeyer grabbed the binoculars and peered through them. ‘What do you mean “somebody”?’ he yelled a moment later. ‘That’s no somebody. That’s my house!’

  ‘That was your house,’ said Sonia practically, before the full implications of the blaze dawned on her, ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘You’re damn right,’ Hutchmeyer snarled and hurled himself at the starter. The marine engine turned over and the yacht began to move. Hutchmeyer wrestled with the wheel and tried to maintain course for the holocaust that had been his home. Over the port gunwale the mainsail acted as a trawl and the Romain du Roy veered to the left. Naked and panting, Hutchmeyer fought to compensate but it was no good.

  ‘I’ll have to ditch the sail,’ he shouted and at that moment a dark shape appeared silhouetted against the blaze. It was the cruiser. Travelling at speed towards them she too had begun to burn. ‘My God, the bastard’s going to ram us,’ he yelled but the next moment the cruiser proved him wrong. She exploded. First the jerry-cans in the cabin blew up and portions of the cruiser cavorted into the air; second what remained of the hull careered towards them and the main fuel tanks blew. A ball of flame ballooned out and from it there appeared a dark oblong lump which arced through the air and fell with a terrible crash through the foredeck of the yacht. The Romain du Roy lifted her stern out of the water, slumped back and began to settle. Sonia, clinging to the rail, stared around her. The hull of the cruiser was sinking with a hissing noise. Hutchmeyer had disappeared and a second later Sonia was in the water as the yacht keeled over, tilted and sank. Sonia swam away from the wreckage. Fifty yards away the sea was alight with flaming fuel from the cruiser and by this eerie light she saw Hutchmeyer in the water behind her. He was clinging to a piece of wood.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she called.

  Hutchmeyer whimpered. It was obvious that he was not okay. Sonia swam over to him and trod water.

  ‘Help, help,’ squawked Hutchmeyer.

  ‘Take it easy,’ said Sonia, ‘just don’t panic. You can swim, can’t you?’

  Hutchmeyer’s eyes goggled in his head. ‘Swim? What do you mean “swim”? Of course I can swim. What do you think I’m doing?’

  ‘So you’re okay,’ said Sonia. ‘Now all we got to do is swim ashore …’

  But Hutchmeyer was gurgling again. ‘Swim ashore? I can’t swim that far. I’ll drown. I’ll never make it. I’ll …’

  Sonia left him and headed towards the floating wreckage. Maybe she could find a lifejacket. Instead she found a number of empty jerry-cans. She swam back with one to Hutchmeyer.

  ‘Hang on to this,’ she told him. Hutchmeyer exchanged his piece of wood for the can and clung to it. Sonia swam off again and collected two more jerry-cans. She also found a piece of rope. Tying the cans together she looped the rope round Hutchmeyer’s waist and knotted it.

  ‘That way you can’t drown,’ she said. ‘Now you just stay right here and everything is going to be just fine.’

  Hutchmeyer, balancing on his raft of cans, stared at her maniacally. ‘Fine?’ he shrieked. ‘Fine? My house is being burnt, some crazy swine tries to murder me with a fireboat, my beautiful yacht is sunk underneath me and everything is just fine?’

  *

  But Sonia was already out of earshot, swimming for the shore with a steady sidestroke that would not tire her. All her thoughts were centred on Piper. He had been in the house when she left and now all that was left of the house … She turned over and looked across the water. The house still bulked large upon the horizon, a yellow, ruddy mass from which sparks flew continually upwards, and as she watched a great flame leapt up. The roof had evidently collapsed. Sonia turned on her side and swam on. She had to get back to find out what had happened. Perhaps poor darling Peter had had another of his accidents. She prepared herself for the worst while taking refuge in the maternal excuse that he was accident-prone b
efore recognizing that Piper’s accidents had not after all been of his making. It had been MacMordie who had arranged the riot on their arrival in New York. She could hardly blame Piper for that. If anyone was to blame it had been …

  Sonia shut out the thought of her own culpability by wondering about the boat that had careered out of the darkness at them and exploded. Hutchmeyer had said someone had tried to murder him. It seemed an extraordinary notion but then again it was extraordinary that his house had caught fire. Put these two events together and it argued an organized and premeditated action. In that case Piper was not responsible. Nothing he had ever done had been organized and premeditated. He was plain accident-prone. With this reassuring thought Sonia reached the beach and clambered ashore. For several minutes she lay on the ground to get her strength back and as she lay there another dreadful possibility crossed her mind. If Hutchmeyer had been right and someone had really tried to murder him it was all too likely that finding Piper and Baby alone in the house they had first … Sonia staggered to her feet and set off through the trees towards the fire. She had to find out what had happened. And supposing it had been an accident there was still the chance that the shock of being present when the great house ignited had caused Piper to blurt out to someone that he wasn’t the real author of Pause. In which case the fat would really be in the fire. If the fat wasn’t already. It was the first question she put to a fireman she found dousing a blazing bush in the garden.

  ‘Well if there was he’s roasted to a cinder,’ he said. ‘Some crazy guy loosed off a whole lot of shots when we got here but the roof fell in and he hasn’t fired since.’

  ‘Shots?’ said Sonia. ‘You did say shots?’

  ‘With a machine-gun,’ said the fireman, ‘from the basement. But like I said the roof fell in and he hasn’t fired no more.’