'Sonia baby,' he bawled and hugged her to his Hawaiian shirt, 'and this must be Mr Piper.' He crunched Piper's hand and stared fiercely into his face. 'This is a great honour, Mr Piper, a very great honour to have you with us,' and still holding Piper's hand he propelled him up the steps and through the door. Inside, the house was as remarkable as the exterior. A vast hall incorporated a thirteenth-century fireplace, a Renaissance staircase, a minstrels' gallery, an excruciatingly ferocious portrait of Hutchmeyer in the pose of J. P. Morgan as photographed by Steichner, and underfoot a mosaic floor depicting a great many stages in the manufacture of paper. Piper stepped cautiously across falling trees, a log jam and a vat of boiling wood pulp and up several more steps at the top of which stood a woman of breathtaking shape.
'Baby,' said Hutchmeyer, 'I want you to meet Mr Peter Piper. Mr Piper, my wife, Baby.'
'Dear Mr Piper,' murmured Baby huskily, taking his hand and smiling as far as the surgeons had permitted, 'I've been just dying to meet you. I think your novel is just the loveliest book I've been privileged to read.'
Piper gazed into the limpid azure contact lenses of Miss Penobscot 1935 and simpered. 'You're too kind,' he murmured. Baby tucked his hand under her arm and together they went into the piazza lounge.
'Does he always wear a turban?' Hutchmeyer asked Sonia as they followed.
'Only when he gets hit with a frisbee,' said Sonia coldly.
'Only when he gets hit with a frisbee,' bawled Hutchmeyer roaring with laughter. 'You hear that, Baby. Mr Piper only wears a turban when he gets hit with a frisbee. Isn't that the greatest?'
'Edged with razor blades, Hutch. With goddam razor blades!' said Sonia.
'Yeah, well that's different of course,' said Hutchmeyer deflating. 'With razor blades is different.'
Inside the piazza lounge stood a hundred people. They clutched glasses and were talking at the tops of their voices.
'Folks,' bawled Hutchmeyer and stilled the din, 'I want you all to meet Mr Peter Piper, the greatest novelist to come out of England since Frederick Forsyth.'
Piper smiled inanely and shook his head with unaffected modesty. He was not the greatest novelist to come out of England. Not yet. His greatness lay in the future and it was on the point of his tongue to state this clearly when the crowd closed round him eager to make his acquaintance. Baby had chosen her guests with care. Against their geriatric backdrop her own reconstituted charms would stand out all the more alluringly. Cataracts and fallen arches abounded. So did bosoms, as opposed to breasts, dentures, girdles, surgical stockings and the protuberant tracery of varicose veins. And strung round every puckered neck and blotchy wrist were jewels, an armoury of pearls and diamonds and gold that hung and wobbled and glistened to detract the eye from the lost battle with time.
'Oh, Mr Piper, I just want to say how much pleasure...'
'I can't tell you how much it means to me to...'
'I think it's fascinating to meet a real...'
'If you would just sign my copy...'
'You've done so much to bring people together...'
With Baby on his arm Piper was swallowed up in the adulating crowd.
'Boy, he's really going over big,' said Hutchmeyer, 'and this is Maine. What's he going to do to the cities?'
'I hate to think,' said Sonia watching anxiously as Piper's turban bobbed among the hairdos.
'Wow them. Zap them. We'll sell two million copies if this is anything to indicate. I got a computer forecast after the welcome he got in New York and '
'Welcome? You call that riot a welcome?' said Sonia bitterly. 'You could have got us killed.'
'Great copy,' said Hutchmeyer, 'I'm going to give MacMordie a bonus. That boy's got talent. And while we're on the subject let me say I've got a proposition to make to you.'
'I've heard your propositions, Hutch, and the answer is still no.'
'Sure but this is different.' He steered Sonia over to the bar.
By the time he had signed fifty copies of Pause O Men for the Virgin and drunk, unthinkingly, four Martinis, Piper's earlier apprehensions had entirely vanished. The enthusiasm with which he was being greeted had the merit that it didn't require him to say anything. He was bombarded from all sides by compliments and opinions. They seemed to come in two sizes. The thin women were intense, the ones with obesity problems cooed. No one expected Piper to contribute more than the favour of his smile. Only one woman broached the subject of his novel and Baby immediately intervened.
'Knock you up, Chloe?' she said. 'Now why should Mr Piper want to do that? He's got a very tight schedule to meet.'
'So not everyone's had the benefit of a pussy lift,' said Chloe with a hideous wink at Piper. 'Now the way I read it Mr Piper's book is about going into the natural in a big way...'
But Baby dragged Piper away before he could hear what Chloe had to say about going into the natural in a big way.
'What's a pussy lift?' he asked.
'That Chloe's just a cat,' said Baby, leaving Piper under the happy illusion that pussy lifts were things cats went up and down in. By the time the party broke up Piper was exhausted.
'I've put you in the Boudoir bedroom,' said Baby as she and Sonia escorted him up the Renaissance staircase. 'It's got a wonderful view of the bay.'
Piper went into the Boudoir bedroom and looked around. Originally designed to combine convenience with medieval simplicity, it had been refurbished by Baby with an eye to the supposedly sensual. A heart-shaped bed stood on a carpet of intermingled rainbows which competed for radiance with a furbelowed stool and an Art Deco dressing-table. To complete the ensemble a large and evidently demented Spanish gypsy supported a tasselled lampshade on a bedside table while a black glass chest of drawers gleamed darkly against the Wedgwood blue walls. Piper sat down on the bed and looked up at the great timber rafters. There was a solid craftsmanship about them that contrasted with the ephemeral brilliance of the furnishings. He undressed and brushed his teeth and climbed into bed. Five minutes later he was asleep.
An hour later he was wide awake again. There were voices coming through the wall behind his quilted bedhead. For a moment Piper wondered where on earth he was. The voices soon told him. The Hutchmeyers' bedroom was evidently next to his and their bathroom had a connecting door. During the next half an hour Piper learnt to his disgust that Hutchmeyer wore a truss, that Baby objected to his use of the washbasin as a urinal, that Hutchmeyer didn't give a damn what she objected to, that Baby's late and unlamented mother, Mrs Sugg, would have done the world a service by having an abortion before Baby was born, and finally that on one traumatic occasion Baby had washed down a sleeping pill with Dentaclene from a glass containing Hutchmeyer's false teeth so would he kindly not leave the things in the medicine cabinet. From these distressing domestic details the conversation veered to personalities. Hutchmeyer thought Sonia mighty attractive. Baby didn't. All Sonia Futtle had got were her hooks into a cute little innocent. It took Piper a moment or two to recognize himself in this description and he was just wondering if he liked being called little and cute when Hutchmeyer riposted by saying he was an asslicking motherfucking Limey who just happened to have written a book that would sell. Piper most definitely didn't like that. He sat up in bed, fumbled with the anatomy of the Spanish Gipsy and switched the light on. But the Hutchmeyers had warred themselves to sleep.