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.
PASSIONATE PILGRIM. By Amos Cottle. 450 pp. New York: Sutton, Kane and Co. $3.75. Reviewed by Emmett Avery.
And, farther down the column: “Mr. Avery is best known for his recent book, A Mess of Pottage, a provocative attack on current trends in the contemporary novel.”
That was warning enough. The rattlesnake’s rattle. Amos didn’t want to read further, but he couldn’t help it. His gaze was glued to the page hypnotically.
A conscientious reviewer hardly knows what to say when he is confronted with another book by the industrious, nay, indefatigable Mr. Cottle. All that is jejune and meretricious in contemporary letters is embodied in the verbose, pretentious prose of this incredibly popular novelist, overlaid with a slick-magazine varnish sticky enough to act as flypaper for book club subscribers. The appalling thing is that Cottle gets away with it. People actually buy and read these books. Yet Cottle’s characters are merely types, his principles are prejudices in fancy dress and his whole narrative creaks woodenly from the first contrived scene to the last musty artifice—a thing of lath and plaster made to look like steel.
The only amusing thing about this sorry performance is the number of gross typographical errors, some as hilarious as “these Untied States.” The house of Sutton, Kane and Company needs some new proofreaders and, in the opinion of at least one reviewer, some new authors as well….
Amos angrily threw the paper across the floor. It was absurd to care. Let Gus and Tony do the worrying. They never worried much about things like this. Gus always said that book club subscribers didn’t pay any attention to reviews. Besides, Amos had never had the slightest sense of personal identification with these books, and yet—and yet…
He could not rid himself of the unpleasant feeling that his livelihood was being threatened. He was astonished at the strength of his own rage. At that moment he would have liked to get his hands around Emmett Avery’s throat and…
A faint sound from the terrace startled him. That aloneness that was so important to his inner sense of security was about to be disturbed. He waited uncomfortably, listening.
A light step came across the flagstones to the glass door. Through the glass he saw a lissome figure in gray slacks and a green sweater with green shoes. The pale, oval face smiled and the russet lips moved, but he couldn’t hear anything through the soundproof glass. Reluctantly he went to the door and pulled it open.
“Amos!” She threw her arms around his neck. He had to hold her. Their lips met. After a decent interval, he drew back.
“Phil, does Tony know you’re here?”
“Of course not. I’m supposed to be walking his boxer. I left the brute tied up outside.”
“Gosh, you’ve used that dodge for the last two years—almost every time you come over here. Doesn’t Tony have any idea what’s going on?”
“I’m sure he hasn’t. …Oh, Mos, what are we going to do about Vera?”
“I don’t know.” He sat down heavily on the edge of the sofa. The affair with Philippa had bothered him from the beginning. He had been afraid to refuse her. There was no knowing what tale she might have carried to Tony if he had. Now he was afraid to break with her. But his sense of guilt was intensified every time he saw Tony and as he saw Tony a great deal, the whole thing was becoming intolerable, for guilt bred fear.
“Tell me, Phil. Are you quite sure Tony doesn’t suspect us?”
“Of course not. Every time he mentions you now I tell him I think you’re an awful little man and I hate your writing. He believes it. He’s actually afraid you’ll find out I don’t like you. He just begs me to be nice to you.”
Amos sighed. “Not very subtle, are we?”
Philippa laughed. “Subtlety is wasted on Tony. He’s as bothered about Vera as we are. He’s afraid she’ll drive you to drink.”
“If anyone could, it’s Vera.”
She sat beside him, leaning her shoulder against his. “Amos, is it true you used to be an alcoholic?”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Tony told me Friday night. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Why should I?”