A Week in December (42 page)

'Ah, go on, Evelina,' said Terry. 'Give the man a kiss.'

'Congratulations,' said Evelina, offering Gus a cheek. 'Are you an opera kinda guy?'

'No, I never 'eard of any of these people,' said Gus. 'I was just hoping to impress my date.'

'Well, good luck, honey,' said Evelina.

'And if your date won't put out for ninety-five grand,' said Terry, 'don't come crying to me!'

At 9.45 in the Sir Francis Drake Suite in the Park Lane Metropolitan, a man in a maroon nylon jacket with a black bow tie placed a microphone in front of the chief executive of Pizza Palace, Nigel Salisbury, and banged it a few times with his finger, making the noisy diners turn their heads and concentrate.

R. Tranter felt a tightening in his belly and a loosening in his bladder. His palms spurted moisture, while Penny McGuire laid a calming hand on his forearm.

Nigel Salisbury had originally voted against sponsoring a prize for books, as he couldn't see what it had to do with selling more pizza. Over the last few years, however, he had come round to thinking that the publicity was good value. Each year, his head chef devised a new topping somehow connected to the winner of the prize. A travel book about the Australian outback had naturally given birth to an 'Ozzie Hot', featuring slices of barbecue-seared meat (allegedly kangaroo) on a dark brown vegetable-extract base; a biography of Hitler had led to a vegetarian layer. Neither had sold well, but the publishers had been pleased.

From behind his raised glass, Tranter surveyed the room. Dinner had seemed never-ending, and he had long ago tired of explaining to Mrs Jones, the wife of Mr K. R. Jones (regional development), who Alfred Huntley Edgerton was. The collar of his shirt was too tight and he had become aware during the rack of lamb with over-reduced jus and string beans that his body heat was starting to call up the ghosts of banquets past from the serge of his hired jacket.

After a speech about the sales growth of Pizza Palace and the number of new outlets in the north-west, Nigel Salisbury handed over to the chairman of the judges, the former transport minister who allegedly read books.

After telling his audience how honoured he was, the Literate Politician went on to describe how extremely difficult the task faced by the panel had been.

Tranter dug his fingernails into his palms. Dear God, he had begun by thinking, please bring this to an end; but after a bit, he found to his surprise, that, mixed with the extended agony, there was a kind of exhilaration. It was as though everything in his life had been leading up to this moment and he didn't mind prolonging it. He knew now that he was going to win. His diligence as a schoolboy had been the start of it all; although they didn't rank the kids officially it was obvious that Tranter had been top of the class. Secondary school, Oxford, the early years ... He had stuck firmly to what he believed. His excoriating reviews in newspapers, magazines and in
The Toad
had served a high critical purpose: to purge the world of the 'higher bogus', to rip the scales from readers' eyes, to attack the lazy assumptions of the 'literary establishment'. He had sought neither fear nor favour - if that was the expression he wanted. It had taken real courage to write - albeit anonymously - and explain why this year's darling of the press was an empty hype, a hollow vessel; why that old fool, laden with honours, was just one of the old gang of mutual ... mutual ... Whatever. Tranter took another swig of the Metropolitan house Rioja.

And his critics said he had nothing to offer but derision. Well, he had shown them. He had found a real writer, examined his life and presented it to the public with a full commentary on the novels, explaining in detail how
Shropshire Towers
, for instance, was a work hugely superior to anything published in the last twenty years.

He heard a falling note in the Literate Politician's voice that suggested he was about to end his speech and name the winner. The man took an envelope from his pocket. Tranter looked down at the half-eaten creme caramel on his plate. There was a ringing in his ears, a pounding of blood. Every particle of his body was now straining and craving for the desired vowel-sounds that made the name of Alfred Huntley Edgerton. His inner ears were flaming with desire. 'And the winner is ...' And then, all at once, the longed-for vowels were his, laying their soft blessing on his ravenous hopes. He pushed his chair back and clambered modestly to his feet; he had gone no more than two paces when he felt his coat-tails being vigorously pulled by Penny McGuire, hissing, 'Sit down, you idiot.' Resuming the seat of his banqueting chair, open-mouthed, Tranter looked up towards the Literate Politician in time to see him hold out his hand to a flushed woman of a certain age, and in a moment of terrible clarity Tranter replayed the announcement in his mind and heard almost the same vowels form not the name of his subject, but of
Alfie the Humble Engine
, and gathered from the loud and standing ovation that Sally Higgs was the winner of the Pizza Palace Book of the Year prize and that the 400 people gathered in the Sir Francis Drake suite were mightily pleased for old Sally, a much-loved toiler in the garden of that humble genre, the children's picture book.

It was 10.30 by the time Gabriel and Jenni boarded the train back to Victoria, having eaten at the local Pizza Palace. It was either that or the Everest Nepalese, and they had had Indian the night before. Jenni insisted on paying, though since she drank water because she was driving the next day and Gabriel tactfully had only one glass of wine, it was not expensive.

Jenni was shocked by what she'd seen in Glendale, but was wary of upsetting Gabriel by asking him too much. He seemed very resigned, she thought. If this tragedy had come to her brother, she would have been outraged, appalled, distraught. It intrigued her that Gabriel could seem so detached.

'Don't you find it depressing?' she'd asked over her pizza.

'The institution? Yes, I do. But there are things that you can't understand in life. There are things where your sympathy, however passionate, is not going to make a difference. It's terribly frustrating because I feel that Adam, the Adam I knew, is still somewhere inside that body. Occasionally I catch a glimpse of him, but I can't reach him. And then he's gone again.'

'I've never met anyone like him before. What was he like when ... Before it all happened?'

'Just a normal kid. He had a bit of a temper. He could be quite intense. But he was good at work, good at games. We had fun together.'

'Was it just the two of you?'

'Yes. We grew up in a village in Hampshire. My father had a farm. He was the tenant at any rate. Then he entered into some crazy scheme to buy the farm and breed racehorses. It didn't work out. But it was all right. There was a good school in the town and a teacher there pushed me on towards university.'

'Were you, like, a geek then?'

'No, Jenni, I was not a geek. I was just naturally brilliant.'

'Oh yeah, tell me about it!'

'And you?'

'I grew up in a tower block in Leyton with my mum.'

'Shit. As you would say.'

'Yeah. But it wasn't that bad. I didn't know anything else. Mum was nice. It was OK till the lift broke down.'

'What did you do for money?'

'Mum worked at the post office sorting depot. I was left to myself.'

'That's how you became so independent.'

'I s'pose it is. I never thought of it like that. But with Adam ... I'm just curious. Of course I knew there were people who were like, mad. But not, you know, ordinary people.'

Gabriel finished the rough Italian wine. 'That's the trouble with psychosis. It picks on ordinary people. One in a hundred. No other animal has it, so far as we know. When the horse stands alone in the field he doesn't hear the neighing of three horses who aren't there. He doesn't believe he's being hunted down by other horses. Actually, it's stronger than that. It's not a question of believing. Adam doesn't "believe" that Axia and the gang are broadcasting his thoughts on Channel 7 at prime time. He
knows
they are.'

'One in a hundred,' said Jenni. 'That's unbelievable.'

'But true. No one wants to know. It's shameful, it's hard to take in. It's as though one in a hundred eagles was blind from birth. Or one in a hundred kangaroos had no hop. It's that weird.'

'And why does no one want to know?' said Jenni. 'I want to know. I care about Adam. And ... you know, people like him.'

Gabriel looked at Jenni. Her eyes were shining, with tears or with excitement or with indignation - he didn't know her well enough to say. There was something about this girl, though ... She had touched a susceptibility very deep in him.

'I think it's just too shaming for humans to admit that we are basically fucked,' he said. 'Sorry, Jenni. Sorry about the language.'

'I drive a train, Gabriel. I work with men. You can swear about it, you're allowed to be angry. Why are we fucked?'

'Genetically.'

'Go on.'

'Do you understand natural selection?'

'I think I was off school the week we did that one.'

'It's like this. Species change because, as they breed, minute errors occur in cell duplication which give minor variations to the offspring. Usually the change dies with the individual. But once in a million times this tiny change gives the individual an advantage in his world, so he's favoured in breeding. The change is passed on and becomes embedded. The species has evolved. To survive better than your competitors, you need only minute advantages. But some freak change happened in human ancestors. It was not microscopic, it was gigantic. We needed only to keep half a step ahead of other primates and carnivorous land mammals with strong incisors. But instead of that, we produced Shakespeare, Mozart, Newton, Einstein. We only needed a slightly more agile gibbon and we ended up with Sophocles. And the flip side of this colossal and totally unnecessary advantage was that the human genome was, to use our favourite technical term, fucked. It's unstable, it's flawed, because it's so ahead of itself. One in a hundred pays the price for everyone else to live their weirdly hyper-advanced lives. They're the scapegoats. Poor, poor bastards.'

Jenni said, 'So it's passed on, this problem? Schizophrenia. It's, like, hereditary?'

'Yes. Well, mostly. If one of your parents has it, you're much more likely to. It runs in families. But it's not completely hereditary. You have identical twins with identical genomes and one will develop the illness and the other one won't. So they figure there's something else too, what they call an "environmental factor".'

'So it's part hard-wired and part not? That's really strange.'

'I know. But this is what Adam's doctors have told me. Sometimes the wiring's such that you just get it. When your brain circuits finish growing and the last connection's made, that's it. You're psychotic. Others are delicately balanced. The circuitry's complete but it still needs a push.'

'And what pushes it?'

'Drugs are the commonest cause. Skunk, acid, amphetamines. LSD was actually synthesised in a lab by chemists asked by psychiatric researchers to come up with a drug that would induce temporary psychosis. So acid can work pretty well. Or alcohol. Or extreme stress, which can release similar chemicals in the brain.'

'And the chemicals cause the electrical circuit to join up?' said Jenni.

'Pretty much.'

'I guess it's like when they throw the switch on the Circle Line.'

They didn't talk much on the train. Jenni was puzzling over what Gabriel had told her and was hoping that, however much she sympathised with Adam, the evening wouldn't make Gabriel forget about her. But he was looking out of the window, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

'Tell me something from your childhood,' said Jenni, determined not to let him drift away from her. 'Tell me the best thing that happened. Maybe before Adam got ill.'

Gabriel turned his head, rather wearily she thought, towards her. 'The best thing? Well, I think we were happy most of the time. But I do remember once, a summer evening. A tiny thing, just a moment really. I suppose I wasn't a child, though, because I could drive a car. Maybe I was eighteen. I'd worked all summer to save up to buy this old deathtrap. It cost PS200. I was working on a farm on the other side of the county. And I'd got up at seven on a Sunday to drive miles and play cricket somewhere and I'd persuaded this girl to come with me. She was someone I'd met at a party. She was so pretty, she was really out of my league. Luckily I was out first ball so I could sit and talk to her, so she didn't get too bored. And when we were fielding I was worried she'd just disappear. But she didn't. She stuck it out. And we all went to this pub afterwards and drank beer, and I had this thought that I hadn't been home for a long time, a month or so, because I'd been working, and I telephoned from the pub and my mother said if I could get there within the hour, she'd keep supper. And I knew there'd be all these fresh vegetables from the farm garden. And this girl said she'd like to come and although it was nearly nine it was still light. And I just remember driving down these narrow lanes with the windows open and the overpowering smell of hawthorn and cow parsley coming in and seeing the sun go down and driving a bit too fast and eventually I recognised where we were and told her to put the map away. And we arrived in the village and the headlights picked out all the moths and midges in the air. And nothing had happened. I hadn't even kissed her. And that was what was so wonderful. Everything was just beginning. Everything was in perfect equilibrium, it was unimprovable. My father was alive. Nothing had gone wrong.'

Jenni smiled. 'I can see that.'

'And you?'

'When my father came back once and said he'd stay for ever.'

'But he didn't.'

'No.'

'How old were you?'

'Five.'

Gabriel sighed. 'I'm sorry.'

At Victoria, Jenni said she would take the Circle Line to Paddington for Drayton Green.

'I'll see you home,' said Gabriel. 'It's late.'

'Don't be daft. I'm not sixteen.'