“Why, haven’t you ever met him at all?” Philippa was astonished.
“Leppy is not the kind of critic who frequents publication-day cocktail parties at Toots Shor’s,” said Tony.
“Haven’t you ever seen Amos on TV?” demanded Philippa.
“I do not own a TV set,” answered Lepton firmly. “I avoid TV whenever I can.”
“Amos has had his own weekly program for the last six months,” explained Tony. “He interviews other authors about their books. He doesn’t criticize. Just draws the other guy out and gets him to talk about what he was trying to do when he wrote the book in question.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t criticize,” said Lepton a little bitterly. “I’ve been told many times that there is no place for real criticism on TV.”
Philippa had an inspiration. “If you really want to meet Amos, we could arrange it for this week end. We were just planning a small supper party for Amos when you came by. Sunday at our house at six o’clock. We’d love to have you come and bring the Shadbolts.”
“That’s very kind of you indeed.” Lepton made another graceful little bow and Philippa wondered: why did critics always have much more charming manners than the wild, rough lot who called themselves creative writers?
“I’m sure the Shadbolts would appreciate it, too,” went on Lepton. “But I’ve already told them I would have to leave Sunday afternoon, and they may have made other arrangements for the evening. Why don’t I just get a taxi to run me over to your place around six?”
“I can run over to the Shadbolts in the Austin and pick you up,” said Philippa. “If you’re really coming.”
“Of course I’m coming.” He smiled. “I’ve never been able to live up to the standard of that English critic who made a point of never meeting a writer in the flesh throughout his long and acidulous career.”
The smile transmuted his monkey face into something Philippa found fascinating. She was reminded of an old story—an Edwardian rake who boasted: “I am considered the ugliest man in Europe, but give me half an hour alone with any woman and I can win her away from the handsomest man in the world.” What would half an hour alone with Maurice Lepton be like?
The thought was pleasantly disturbing. She began to plan what she would wear tomorrow when she went over to the Shadbolts. Of course Maurice Lepton wasn’t really her type. Indeed she wasn’t sure she even liked him, but…
Something feline in her nature enjoyed hunting for the sake of the hunt itself, without feeling either desire or hostility toward the quarry. Like a domestic cat, she managed her life so that she could enjoy both the civilized satisfactions of peaceful luxury at home and the savage excitements of the chase abroad. It was an ideal life, she thought—a life where all the prizes of a policed society were enjoyed without the repression of a single feral impulse. Philippa might have her faults, but she was entirely free of repressions. Sometimes she wondered if Tony had ever suspected the fact.
When Lepton left the train at Norwalk, Philippa allowed her ungloved hand to linger a moment in his. Their eyes met and for an instant that feeling of sweet disturbance swept over her again more strongly than before. She was a little frightened. Pleasure she understood, but she had always avoided passion. She had always been mistress of herself.
“Well, what do you think of Leppy?” asked Tony as the train rumbled on toward Westport.
“I don’t know.” Philippa was as puzzled as she was fascinated by the unplumbed depths in those eyes. Out of sheer intuition she plucked a curious phrase. “I think he’s unscrupulous and dangerous.”
“Dangerous? That poor little bookworm who hasn’t seen the sun for twenty years?” Tony laughed.
CHAPTER THREE
Sunlight woke Amos Cottle Sunday at noon. It streamed through the uncurtained picture window onto the vast double bed where he sprawled in a sweaty tangle of sheets and blankets. He rubbed his gummy eyelids and lay passive, half-awake, listening to the stillness of the empty house. A general uneasiness possessed him. For a few moments he could not particularize its source. Then he remembered: Vera. He had to meet her at the airport this afternoon.
He rose wearily and groped for slippers and dressing gown. His eye caught his own movement in the wall mirror. He paused to survey his face coldly as if it were the mask of a stranger.
The eyes were wide and lost. The eyes of a stray cur, he thought bitterly. The morbid mouth was a mute expression of pain. The weakly tapered jaw was mercifully veiled by the thin straggle of brindled beard. No wonder Meg Vesey mothered him. She was the sort who would mother any forlorn creature. But would a stranger, who didn’t know his name, ever suspect that he was considered one of the three or four most distinguished novelists of his period? Were his fans disappointed when they discovered that the author whose virile characters took rape, incest and torture in their stride looked as if he couldn’t say boo to a goose? A sudden inspiration consoled him: Van Gogh. The self-portrait. That was how he looked. Genius housed in a frail vessel. The idea of genius brought a wry smile to his lips.
With a sigh he ambled into the kitchen, got out a can of frozen orange juice, and made coffee. He sipped the cold drink and the hot one alone at the kitchen table. I’m always alone. I’ll be more alone than ever if Vera comes to live here. But she shan’t. I won’t let her.
Abruptly he was overwhelmed by a great distaste for his whole situation in life. What am I doing here? How did I ever get into all this? His feeling of being trapped had grown with the success of each new book. What would Gus and Tony say if he told them this evening that he had decided to retire? What could they do to stop him?
Still in gown and slippers he retrieved the Sunday Times and Tribune from the front door mat. No neighbors could see him. The house stood in its own five acres of woodland. In summer he took his sun bath naked beside the swimming pool.
The house itself was modern, all on one floor, with many glass walls. Tony had chosen it for him. The fireplace, without a mantel, was set flush in a wall of whitewashed brick. The invisible chimney was divided into two branches so that an apparently impossible window could be set directly above the grate. This illogical window had always bothered him as something too surrealistic for comfort, and the glass walls made him feel exposed and unprotected. But Tony had insisted that it was the sort of house that people expected a man like Amos Cottle to live in and it was going cheap just at the time Amos got the money from his first movie sale, so—here he was, a prisoner in a house he didn’t like, close to Tony’s beautiful estate, where Tony could keep an eye on him.
His own face greeted him from the first page of the Times Book Review section. A cleverly composed portrait. That guy really did look like an author. Amos relaxed as he read the Lepton review. The stuff must be pretty good after all or an egghead like Lepton wouldn’t take it so seriously. What was more, other people took Lepton seriously. This lush praise should be good for a second printing of forty thousand.
He dropped the Times and picked up the Tribune. They had put that sickeningly romantic bilge of Shadbolt’s on the first page of their Book Review section with a photo of Shad that must have been taken at least twenty years ago.
Amos turned the pages, but it was not until, he came to the fourth inside page that he saw a woefully smudged and diminished cut of his own picture, flanking a single column review.
