Lost for Words: A Novel (2 page)

At first Sam had wanted to purge himself of these psychological contracts through a meticulous negativity. Like a man walking backwards along a path, erasing his footsteps with a broom, he had tried, through contradiction, negation, paradox, unreliable narration and every other method he could devise, to cancel the tracks left by his words and to release his writing from the wretched positivity of affirming anything at all. He hoped that by stripping all forms of belief from his sentences, he could evacuate his cluttered mind, leaving it empty and clear. Appearances were disappearances in the making – not that disappearances weren’t appearances as well, otherwise the disappearance would have the retroactive effect of solidifying what disappeared, an obvious mistake. Nothing could hold him or trap him – except his belief that freedom could be achieved by simply refusing to be held or trapped.

When his sceptical texts could find no publisher, he was frustrated. He wanted to achieve enough to know, and not just to assume, that achievement was an alluring and arduous dead end. And so Sam put the typescript of
False Notes
in a box on top of the cupboard in his bedroom, and submitted to the grim rule of Faustus, Orpheus and Hephaestus, writing his first published novel, a
bildungsroman
of impeccable anguish and undisguised autobiographical origin. He knew that his publishers had high hopes for
The Frozen Torrent
, and he joined them in hoping that it would make it to the Elysian Short List so that he could re-submit
False Notes
and finally win his freedom from the tyranny of pain-based art.

These grave considerations were not the only things distracting Sam from his work. He also found it impossible to let more than a few seconds elapse without thinking of Katherine Burns. She was famously easy to fall in love with. He had been waiting throughout February for her return from India. Today she had finally written to him from Delhi, saying that when she got back she would be working flat out to make the Elysian deadline, but inviting him for a drink the week after Easter.

If only she didn’t live with her publisher. Sam disliked having his passion tainted by jealousy. He had nothing against Alan Oaks personally – he hardly knew him, and in any case Alan was relentlessly friendly – it was more of a geographical objection: how dare he lie next to her in bed?

There was something rather French about the way Katherine surrounded herself with artists, thinkers, scientists and writers, like an old-fashioned
salonnière
, if not in an
enfilade
of double-doored white and gold rooms in the rue du Bac, at least in her Bayswater flat, with books in the window sill and books on the floor. She only seemed to have affairs with men who were twenty years older than her (although she liked women of her own age) and he worried that without a sex change, he might simply be too young. She commanded unwavering devotion from her lovers, in a way that reminded him of a certain species of wasp that paralysed its prey without killing it, so as to assure its offspring a supply of living flesh; but he knew that he was just defending himself from rejection with these dark fantasies. The truth was she was utterly wonderful and he adored her.

3

‘I enjoyed my time at the University in Delhi,’ said Sonny, over the rattle of the ineffective air conditioning. ‘We used to loll about in any sort of costume, ragging each other and making plans for pleasure trips.’

His eyelids, which had been drooping from the recollection of those languid days, suddenly shot open.

‘And then,’ he said, leaning towards Katherine with a troubled look, ‘the vimin arrived.’

‘The what?’ said Katherine.

‘The vimin,’ repeated Sonny. He sank back again, trying to dismiss the painful memory with a swipe of his wrist. ‘Everyone started rushing about – brushing their teeth.’

Sonny closed his eyes, shutting out that rush of fools, and the rush of years that now separated him from those days. He was immediately consoled by the knowledge that he had redeemed all that seemingly wasted time with his magnum opus,
The Mulberry Elephant
. He was also enjoying the delicious irony that Katherine Burns, who was considered to be a tip-top novelist, had no idea that she was in the presence of a literary genius who outweighed her in every respect.

Mum was the word for the moment. When
Mulberry
appeared on the Elysian Long List, he would fly over to England. The interviews would begin when he was Short Listed, and after his inevitable triumph was announced at the Elysian Dinner, he would deliver the witty and magnanimous acceptance speech he had already sketched out a dozen times. ‘I want to thank the judges for their enlightened decision. Enlightenment is something we Indians know a thing or two about, but tonight it’s England’s turn…’ He imagined the shudder of laughter breaking out in the Banqueting Room of the illustrious Fishmongers’ Hall. He would be encouraging to the lesser talents, and humble in the face of greatness.

Katherine watched Sonny murmuring to himself. He was reclining on silk cushions in the corner of a frantically carved daybed, his legs tucked towards him, a slender hand clasping one of his ankles. She could see his eyes swivelling under their lids in a way that reminded her of the rapid eye movement of a dreamer, as well as the ceaseless vigilance of the blind. A pair of yellow slippers idled on the carpet. Two turbaned servants were placing dozens of silver pots onto the engraved silver table in the middle of the room. Her throne of castellated mahogany, too deep to sit back in and too jagged to lean against, made her long to leave.

She wished she hadn’t asked Didier to call Sonny before she left England. Like all her ex-lovers, except for the occasional Spartacus who would lead a gallant but futile revolt, easily crushed by a friendly email or a chance encounter, Didier remained her slave. If only he had been a little more reluctant to get in touch with his grand Indian acquaintance. He hadn’t seen Sonny for ten years and he warned Katherine that she would find him ‘
exotique
, but totally crazy’. Before leaving England ‘totally crazy’ seemed a fair price for ‘
exotique
’, but after three weeks of travelling in India she felt the opposite. Tonight, thank God, she was flying back to the welcome dullness of London in early March.

Sonny’s head turned as if synchronized with the arrival of the elderly woman in a maroon and gold sari who now stood in the doorway.

‘Auntie!’ said Sonny, rising from the daybed. ‘May I present Katherine Burns, she’s a lady novelist from London.’

‘Oh, how delightful,’ said Auntie and then, noticing that Katherine hadn’t moved, she added, ‘Don’t get up, my dear, nobody curtsies any more these days; or only the old stick in the muds,’ her voice filled with mock-horror at the mention of this category. ‘We’re just having a cosy little lunch, nothing formal.’

She sat on the edge of the daybed and toyed with the folds of her sari.

‘You’re just the person I need,’ she began, conscious of the favour she was doing Katherine. ‘I’ve written the most marvellous cookery book – full of family portraits – and, of course, recipes that have been handed down from generation to generation by the cooks at the old palace.’ She hurried over this detail as if it were hardly worth mentioning. ‘You’re in the publishing world, could you take one of the manuscripts back with you and place it with a London publisher for me? We used to know the great English writers, Somerset Maugham and dear old Paddy Leigh Fermor, but they all seem to be dead now, or out of commission. So, you see, my dear, I’m relying on you.’

‘Of course,’ said Katherine, trying to assemble a smile.

4

Over the last few weeks, Penny had been so preoccupied by becoming a member of the Elysian Prize committee that she had neglected her own writing, but she was determined to get back to work on her current thriller,
Roger and Out
. She clicked, a little nervously, on its icon and found herself confronted by sentences she hadn’t looked at for ages. To give herself a running jump, she re-read the beginning of the latest chapter.

It was evening in St James’s Park and the sun, sinking in a westerly direction, had turned the clouds into pink balls of cotton wool. Meanwhile, at ground level, the puddles had already turned into dark pools of glossy chocolate.

Sitting in her battered grey Audi A6 3.0 litre TDI with all leather seats, Jane Street was ready to call it a day. That was the surveillance game for you, waiting and watching, watching and waiting, but often ending up with nothing to show for it. Then, just as Jane’s hand came to rest on the ignition key, Grove’s voice blasted into her earpiece.

‘I have an eyeball. I have an eyeball.’

The words shot through Jane’s body like an electric current. She reached instinctively into the Audi’s generous glove compartment and felt for her weapon. The IPX370 packed the punch of a Colt .38, but its magazine carried that one extra bullet that could make all the difference if things turned nasty. Six grams shy of its American counterpart, its lighter weight also made a real difference if you had to carry it round in your handbag all day.

Jane’s hand padded around the glove compartment, but apart from the service manual and a spare packet of Handy Andies, she could feel nothing there. Where the hell was her weapon? Then it all came back with a cold sickening thud. The shooting range. That morning. Richard Lane. Lane was a classic yes-man and pen-pusher, with no more idea of the reality of life at the sharp end of things than she had of how to dance the lead role in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Probably less. She had been avoiding Lane like the plague, but he had finally tracked her down at the shooting range and delivered his usual lecture about her ‘cavalier disregard for the proper rules of procedure’, her ‘run-away expenses’ and her ‘attitude generally’. It had made her so angry that she had left her weapon behind. She had spent the whole afternoon fuming and hadn’t had a chance to discover her mistake. Now it was too late.

Well, damn Lane, damn all the Lanes, sitting behind their desks in Thames House, watching the shafts of sunlight turn the river lapis lazuli, while their love-sick secretaries made bookings for lunch at Quo Vadis in Soho’s Dean Street. What did they know about putting your life on the line for your country?

Penny was torn between thinking that the pages were rather good – pacey, well researched, vivid – and thinking that she was not really a writer at all. Perhaps it had been a huge mistake to retire early from the Foreign Office to pursue her lifelong ambition of becoming an author. It was true that there had been other reasons to leave. Her career had stagnated after its dazzlingly rapid rise during David Hampshire’s last years as Permanent Secretary, over twenty-five years ago. His favouritism had generated so much resentment that she remained stuck at the same level ever after, often moving sideways but never up. Her affair with David not only ruined her marriage, but arguably ruined her prospects as well. He was still her greatest friend, but the glory days were over, when he used to call her ‘my very own Anna Ford’, at a time when the nation’s favourite newscaster was considered the most desirable woman on Earth. Unlike the delicious Miss Ford, who had confidently allowed her hair to go white, Penny’s remained resolutely mahogany, matching her eyes, but increasingly at odds with the sad story told by the sags and creases of her loosening skin. Penny sighed. Nicola had never really forgiven her for the divorce – or, if it came to that, for the career – but she wasn’t going to think about that now; she must press on, if only to get away from the old feelings of hollow sacrifice that she fought against every day.

‘Damascus is on the bridge. Damascus is crossing the bridge,’ said Grove’s audibly tense voice. ‘Where the hell are you, Street?’

Jane closed the glove compartment. She was about to face Ibrahim al-Shukra, one of the world’s most dangerous and ruthless men, responsible for the horrific, cowardly, tragic and completely uncalled for deaths of countless innocent members of the public, and she was unarmed.

‘Damascus has stopped on the bridge.’ Grove was audibly relieved. ‘Damascus is feeding the ducks.’

‘I’m on my way,’ said Jane.

‘Roger that,’ said Grove.

Well, Jane reflected philosophically, she may not have the reassuring weight of the IPX370 in her hand, but she still had her handbag (it wouldn’t be the first time she’d used that as a weapon), her common sense and, above all, her professionalism.

*   *   *

The word ‘professionalism’ stung Penny with guilt about the previous night. She was meant to be baby-sitting for Nicola, but had quite simply forgotten until it was too late. Nicola had always reproached Penny for being a neglectful mother, and now she was going to have ‘neglectful grandmother’ added to the list of her crimes. Whatever her daughter might think, when push came to shove, she had a strong maternal side. Nevertheless, she was the first to admit that public service had taken the lion’s share of her attention. Nicola had become a latchkey kid, travelling on the Underground to school at an early age, letting herself in and making her own tea, putting herself to bed, booking her own holidays and going off with other families to unknown foreign destinations. It hadn’t been ideal, but at least it had helped to make the her independent.

The night before Nicola had been planning to see
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
, a ritual she repeated on the anniversary of the occasion that Penny had promised to take her but had been forced to let her down. President Reagan had just invaded Grenada, or at least sent some Marines to invade Grenada, and Penny had felt that she simply had to stay at her desk to help draft the Foreign Office response. Even then she had been a writer, although a team of specialists handled the actual wording.

Penny couldn’t help wincing from the memory of last night’s telephone call to Nicola.