Synopses

THWARTED AMBITIONS: This, the first of three loosely-related novels written in 1980 and dealing with art and artists, is the tragic and, in some sense, pathetic account of a young artist by name of Robert Harding who is so obsessed with advancing his career ... that he becomes blind to the sexual machinations of one Henry Grace, a wealthy and influential art critic, to seduce him whilst ostensibly posing as his admiring patron. For Grace seems to be just the answer to Harding's professional ambitions, and the artist allows himself to be led from commission to commission by the older man without the slightest suspicion of what the latter is really all about. But it is Carol, Harding's modelling girlfriend, whose suspicions are first aroused and, together with both the writer Andrew Doyle, who is Harding's next-door neighbour, and a professional acquaintance of hers by name of Donald Prescott, she plots to thwart Grace's sexual ambitions - with tragic consequences for the critic, as things turn out in this far from implausible narrative!

SECRET EXCHANGES: An artist is invited by his girlfriend to visit her parents in the provinces and, failing to get on with her father, duly finds himself inviting her mother to his London studio where, to his shame, he allows himself to be seduced by her whilst apparently teaching her to meditate. Thereafter things go from bad to worse for Matthew Pearce, not to mention his girlfriend's mother, whose tetchy and ailing husband has discovered what he believes to be concrete evidence of her infidelity. Yet Deirdre Evans is determined to capitalize on Matthew's previous hospitality, just as the latter is having serious doubts not only about her but, thanks in part to their affair, about his relationship with her daughter, Gwendolyn, as well! Then, one evening, a female acquaintance of Gwen's turns up at his place and, before long, she precipitates him into a new and more passionate affair - in fact, the kind of affair he had been hoping for all along! So now it seems he can dispense with both Gwen and her mother and take up with Linda instead - provided, however, that she can secure a divorce from her husband on grounds of incompatibility. For Linda Daniels is also a married woman, and, like Mrs Evans, the man to whom she is married proves himself to be no friend of Matthew Pearce! Could that be the main motive for Pearce's willingness, bordering on recklessness, to enter into affairs with both women? The reader is left to decide this and so much else for himself in what is, by any account, an ironic commentary on human relationships and their social and ideological interactions!

LOGAN'S INFLUENCE: Invited to a party by his friend Martin Thurber, the avant-garde writer Keith Logan quickly begins to turn their host against him by his radical views on God, evolution, religion, literature, etc., with a result that he quite spoils the party atmosphere for Edward Hurst, and unwittingly puts the future of Thurber's employment as an ‘in house’ art critic for Hurst's magazine in jeopardy ... when, under duress of a hangover the following morning, the publisher decides to dispense with his art reviews partly in revenge for the intellectual humiliations inflicted upon him by Logan the previous night. Yet Hurst has a crush on Thurber's girlfriend, who was also at the party, and, bumping into him in the street one afternoon, Greta Ryan elects to place her body at Hurst's disposal if only he will agree not to take any disciplinary action against Thurber. Reluctantly, Hurst agrees to her proposal and it looks as though, thanks to her influence, Thurber's future as an art critic is assured. In the meantime, however, the latter has invited Keith Logan to accompany him to a West End gallery in order to view an avant-garde artist whom he had been commissioned to review for Hurst, and before long he falls under the writer's radical influence and ends-up penning quite the most eulogistic review of such an artist ever! Hurst, however, is less than impressed, and, under pressure from his sub-editor, he finds himself in the unenviable position of having to reject Thurber's review and effectively break his promise to Greta. Naturally when the latter hears about this from her boyfriend, who now faces dismissal, she is incensed, and secretly vows to take her revenge on Hurst. Unable to confide in Thurber, who knows nothing of her sexual accommodation with his boss, she visits Keith Logan and together they decide to contact Hurst's brother-in-law to see if he can be persuaded to publish the review instead, since he also runs an arts magazine. Happily for Thurber, Colin Patmore agrees to publish it, though only on condition that Greta befriends him on terms similar to those earlier secured by Hurst - or so one is led to infer from the dénouement, in which Logan witnesses Greta and Patmore getting into a taxi together and heading along the Charing Cross Road.