Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess

Making you hand over your birthday like that. It was on your behalf really. Got irritated, got pissed."
           "Well, it obviously can't go on, can it? I obviously can't afford to let it go on."
           "You mean peace in your declining years, tranquil twilit fulfilment and the rest of the bloody crap. Honour and fucking dignity. You mean I've got to go."
           "You're not happy here." I was being very reasonable. "And I've no intention of making another move. This one was shattering enough."
           "You're bloody well telling me it was bloody shattering. So I have to go."
           "Oh, I don't really want you to go, you must know that. But it's a matter of it's a matter of self-preservation."
           "Very cold words, sir, after all those former hot avowals. Right right right. Go. Pack my pitiful possessions and go. London first, I think, sort myself out from there. And then Percy in the Bahamas or that epileptic snuffling sod in Lausanne. Good good good. I shall need some money."
           "Three months' salary. That seems to me just and reasonable."
           "Yes," he said quietly. He took off his mirrors to eye me coldly. "A just and reasonable bastard, that's what you are. And when you've snuffed it I'll be just and reasonable too. Ten thousand quid's what I want, dear."
           "You're joking."
           "No, not really. As a matter of fact, you foresaw all this. You set it all down in that stupid bloody sentimental shitbag of a novel called The Affairs 0f Men, fucking silly pretentious bloody title. You know, this just and reasonable writer bastard who's getting old but has the O. M. and the Nobel and his best friend goes in for the term as I remember is posthumous blackmail. And there's all this guff about when the writer's dead he's finished with and it doesn't matter a monkey's ballock what anybody writes about him so up your arse Jack and publish and be damned. Then he bethinks himself that he's a Great Writer and doesn't want to go down in history as a Right Bastard so he pays up in return for a Solemn Promise in Writing to produce nothing of a haha Biographical Nature after the great writer sod has snuffed it. And the great big subtle marvellous point is that he knows there's nothing to stop this shit of a best friend spewing all the muck up when he's kicked but at least he'll go to his tomb in Westminster Abbey knowing that if the shit is shovelled out at least it is Unjust."
           The nightcap was spilling. I sat on the edge of the armchair and tried to drink it but could not. I could see Geoffrey grinning with a film gangster's laziness at the tremolo of teeth and glass. I put the glass down on the fretted Indian table with care and difficulty. "Bastard," I choked. "Bastard bastard."
           "A bastard who's read your books," he said. "And a prissy old-fashioned load of fucking codswallop they are. Things have changed, my old darling. Now we're allowed to set it all down stark and bare, not in ah ah elegant periphrases, your term I think. About a dirty old man trying to get it up and in and crying because he can't come. And snuffling about darling boy oh this is such ecstasy. You just and reasonable bastard, you."
           "Go on," I said, rising. "Out. Get out now. Before I put you out."
           "You and whose fucking army?"
           "I'm ordering you to go, Geoffrey. You can spend the night at a hotel and have the bill sent here. You can pack your bags tomorrow. I shall not be around. A check will be waiting for you on the hall table. Three months' salary and enough for your air fare to London. Now get out." I had to sit down again.
           "Ten thousand nicker here and now and I'll be on my merry way. Didn't you write some fearful shitty nonsense called On Our Merry Way or was it that bloody twerp Beverley? Never mind." He grimaced and painfully belched. "Christ, that bloody muck. Alum and cat piss. Cheeseparing