Lost for Words: A Novel (7 page)

He sat upright and rested his eyes contemplatively on the empty fireplace. She must be feeling miserable about
Consequences
, after five years of work. It can’t have been simple to throw Alan out, after he had left his wife for her. Sam’s empathy ground into action, and as he imagined the details of Katherine’s personality, it started to take on subtlety and depth. He gradually filtered out his private relationship with the emotions he imagined she was having. His whole state of mind became sharper and more generous. This still wasn’t love, but it was an environment in which love could prosper, unlike the self-centred misery of the last few days. If only she were with him now and could see how much love he had to give, surely she would be asking for his forgiveness, as she unbuttoned his shirt, right here on the blue sofa.

Sam keeled over and sprawled among the cushions, groaning.

12

Although the hostile response to the Elysian Long List had exceeded his expectations, Malcolm still felt that a certain amount of media indignation was not only inevitable but desirable. It showed that his committee had the courage to choose fresh, original and exciting new voices and not just hand out free tickets to the darlings of the literary establishment. Vanessa Shaw was the exception, doing her best to promote the interests of the old guard. Although her three choices were now the favourites at Ladbrokes, Malcolm had no intention of being dictated to by writers, academics, publishers, readers, journalists, booksellers, literary critics or, least of all, betting shops.
The Greasy Pole
was languishing at 25–1, which was a gross distortion of its artistic value as well as its standing among members of the committee.

In politics he spoke in paragraphs he had been using for decades, or deployed old arguments that could effortlessly be adapted to modern occasions, but at the announcement of the Long List, he suddenly had a feeling of being publicly exposed and vulnerable in a way he hadn’t experienced since the first time he represented Aberdeen Grammar School in a debating contest. He was supposed to be arguing in favour of Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence. He was told that by arguing for a cause he vehemently opposed, he would hone his pure debating skills. Instead, it left him feeling blank and fraudulent, just as he had at the press conference. The journalists asked questions about books he hadn’t read that were on the List, as well as about books he hadn’t read that weren’t on the List. In the end, which was not far from the beginning, he just snapped.

‘That’s our List – like it or not.’

The press enjoyed pretending that the selection process took place in an atmosphere of antagonism and incompetence, whereas in fact the meetings had been perfectly friendly so far, thanks partly to Penny’s obliging nature, to some skilful deal-making between Jo and himself, and to Tobias’s total absence. Vanessa’s pedantic championing of literary tradition and her undergraduate lectures on the art of the novel did no real harm, although she was going to be in for a rude awakening when it came to carrying her three candidates forward to the next stage. He would let her keep one, preferably
The Frozen Torrent
, whose author was the least well established.

Right from the start, Malcolm had laid down some ground rules with a speech he made about ‘social responsibility’.

‘We have eighty thousand pounds at our disposal, as well as the promise of several hundred thousand pounds which the winner can expect to earn over the next few years, and to me it’s of paramount importance that the money goes to someone who really needs it.’

‘It’s lucky Proust or Nabokov aren’t competing this year,’ said Vanessa, ‘or Henry James, or Tolstoy, or anyone who ever sold a novel because word got out that it was worth reading, like Dickens, or Thackeray, or…’

‘All right, all right,’ said Jo, ‘we all know that you’ve read every book under the sun, but I think Malcolm has a very good point. If I had my way I would add, “no pseuds and no aristos”.’

‘Gosh,’ said Vanessa, ‘in the bad old days of hatred and prejudice, you might have said, “no yids, no niggers and no women”, but thank God we live in a more enlightened age, and we’ve finally got the list right.’

‘And no gays,’ said Penny. ‘I mean, in the bad old days,’ she added hastily.

‘We want to take the marginalized, and the politically repressed voices from the periphery,’ said Malcolm, ignoring the spat between the ladies, ‘from what we might call the Outer Hebrides of the literary scene, and bring them centre stage. Now, as we know, there are a lot of vested interests that have got used to the idea that the literary scene belongs to them, and when we reclaim it for the ordinary readers of this country, let’s not pretend they’re going to thank us for it.’

‘Who’s “they”?’ said Vanessa. ‘The readers?’

‘The vested interests of course.’

‘Oh, I see. It wasn’t grammatically clear.’

‘I think it was perfectly clear from the context,’ said Malcolm, refusing to be provoked.

‘The vested interests are certainly not going to thank us,’ said Jo. ‘And all I can say is that if they want a fight, we’re ready for them.’

‘They think it’s some kind of scandal,’ said Malcolm, ‘if we don’t agree with their judgements, but the real scandal is that they’re trying to dictate to the duly appointed Elysian Prize committee.’

‘Before we all stand up and sing “The Internationale”,’ said Vanessa, ‘do you think we could take a glance at what we’ve been “duly appointed” to do?’

And then she launched into one of her patronizing tutorials on the true nature of literature.

The only committee member with whom Malcolm was on absolutely perfect terms was Tobias Benedict, whose stream of charming postcards, apologizing for his unavoidable absence, arrived every few days from Leeds and Sheffield, Manchester and Brighton, as he toured the country playing Estragon in a hip-hop adaptation of
Waiting for Godot
.

For Malcolm, Tobias was the key to a majority vote. It was increasingly clear that Vanessa was Malcolm’s opponent and although he had formed a working coalition with Jo, she was far too fond of having her own way for their alliance to hold in the closing phases of the competition. Penny Feathers, on the other hand, was all eagerness and obedience and had a natural inclination to follow authority. As long as she stayed on side, it all depended on Tobias. Malcolm had given him the impression that he was Tobias’s only friend on the committee and that he had carefully steered
All the World’s a Stage
onto the Long List, out of respect for his views and admiration for an ‘astonishing achievement’. Tobias had written back saying that he found
wot u starin at
‘terrifyingly vivid’ and that it made ‘a welcome change from a novel about a failing marriage in Hampstead – not that I seem to have ever read one, but you know what I mean!’ Meanwhile, Malcolm was inviting Penny to dinner at the House of Commons at least once a fortnight, a brush with the corridors of power that she clearly valued. In other words, Malcolm was taking care of what really mattered: running the committee.

13

Nothing was quite so complicated, Sonny decided, as trying to find exactly the right costume for an assassination. One could neither delegate, nor consult, nor show off one’s sartorial authority.

‘Only a flunky would wear that sort of costume to a murder,’ was exactly the sort of remark he had been forced to suppress again and again, as he trailed despondently past rows of suits made from materials he could scarcely bear to look at, let alone touch.

He had started out thinking that he would go with the timeless classicism of black: black balaclava, black polo-neck sweater, black trousers, black shoes with (alas the day) rubber soles, and some sort of short black jacket, possibly (or rather, impossibly!) with a zip. When the Harrods mirror revealed a figure who could easily have been mistaken for a bouncer on the door of a low dive in the East End, Sonny rebelled against the dreary modern uniform he had been assembling, and stormed back to his waiting car. Only the balaclava and the polo neck survived, while the rest of his repulsively slippery shopping bags were deposited by his driver into the arms of a far from grateful gypsy woman who beat on the window of the Bentley demanding cash, while her daughter, wearing an identical headscarf, pointed vigorously at her mouth, as if trying to make herself sick. It astonished Sonny to reflect that in India a beggar would be prepared to drag his trolley along half a mile of filthy ground with only the use of his chin, praising all the generations of his benefactor’s family if a small coin was tossed in his direction, whereas here, against the backdrop of this monumental department store, its rusty facade pimpled with wasteful light bulbs, a thousand pounds of untouched Italian menswear elicited only fury and resentment!

With the impatience of a man who is being rushed by ambulance to an accident and emergency ward, Sonny ordered his driver to take him to Savile Row. He was guided by a new vision of how to remain in black without taking on the appearance of a proletarian thug: a dinner jacket. Why had he not thought of it before?

By noon he was in a soothingly large, panelled changing room, surrounded by framed bills made out to royal personages and legendary actors, as well as brief letters of condescending satisfaction signed by similar persons. He immediately felt at home. As luck would have it, a proper bespoke dinner jacket, of slimming double-breasted cut, made for a mysterious customer, perhaps dead or ruined, who had never bothered to pick it up, had been languishing in a cupboard reserved for that purgatorial category of half paid but uncollected garments, and was now being brought to him by an assiduous tailor in whose opinion it would suit Sonny very well.

The tailor’s eye had not deceived him. Sonny gazed in awe at the perfection of the fit. The trousers were six inches too long, but that was the most trifling of alterations. In his excitement, he telephoned his driver and asked him to bring the sweater and the balaclava, specifying that they should be taken out of their plastic bags. Once they arrived, he wriggled into the polo-neck sweater, and after replacing the jacket and doing up its inner and outer buttons, pulled the balaclava over his head. He then turned towards the slightly tilted full-length mirror and looked with admiration, and a touch of foreboding, at the elegant and menacing figure staring back at him. He extended his right arm, clasping it with his left hand to support the weight of an imaginary pistol, and spinning around as best he could in such a long pair of trousers, fired round after round with deadly accuracy into the chests and foreheads of the five Elysian Prize judges.

With the balaclava covering his ears and his mind filled with scenes of daring and stylish revenge, Sonny didn’t notice the tailor until he caught sight of him standing respectfully at the back of the changing room. What had he seen? Could Sonny count on his silence?

‘I did knock, sir…’ the tailor began.

‘No, no,’ said Sonny, removing his balaclava and tossing it onto a nearby chair, ‘come in. I, er,’ he struggled for an explanation, ‘sometimes like to ski in just such a costume.’

‘I imagine there’s a good deal of formal wear at some of the better resorts,’ said the tailor.

‘Absolutely!’ said Sonny, regaining his momentum. ‘One often, you know,
schusses
to a big party already changed for dinner!’

‘Of course, sir,’ said the tailor, turning Sonny gently towards the mirror and running his hands appreciatively down the sides of the dinner jacket. ‘Just as I thought, sir, it might have been made for you.’

Sonny was so elated by his new purchase that he decided to walk the length of Savile Row, telling the driver to wait for him on the far corner. He strolled down the street, glancing into the broad windows of renowned tailors, each with its trio of headless mannequins, displaying a variety of such alluring costumes that by the time he reached Burlington Gardens, Sonny found his imagination was already drifting towards an alternative costume. Why not take a week’s deer stalking in Scotland? On the day ordained for his revenge, he would have a plane waiting to take him to Inverness. Under the circumstances it would be eminently plausible for him to be wearing a pale green tweed such as he’d seen a few windows down, with a faint sky blue over-check, a cream silk shirt with a simple dark green or golden brown knitted tie. If the police questioned him about wearing these emphatically country clothes in the middle of Mayfair, he need only mention the shooting lodge he had taken in the Highlands and show them evidence of his imminent plane flight, and their suspicions would dissolve. They wouldn’t bother to open the boot of his car, and if they did, what could be more natural than to find a deer-stalking rifle lying innocently in its case?

A gun! Of course, he needed a gun! Sonny pressed a steadying hand on the roof of his car. He felt like a traveller who arrives at the check-in desk, only to realize that he has left his passport on the dressing table at home. How could he have forgotten? Back in Badanpur he had a splendid hunting rifle: the very weapon with which his grandfather had shot over two hundred tigers. One couldn’t shoot two hundred tigers nowadays without buying them first from several city zoos. There wouldn’t be much sport in releasing a bewildered urban tiger into the wild and magnificent, if somewhat shrunken, forests of Badanpur. The wretched tiger would probably be mobbed by gazelles, like an eligible schoolboy surrounded by insatiable women at his first big dance!

The red tape involved in trying to get his grandfather’s rifle sent over from India would no doubt outweigh the atavistic pleasure and lyrical beauty of using it to destroy his detractors. Sonny got into his car and ordered the driver to return him to the hotel.

He was soon beached on a pink sofa in the Arnold Bennett suite, among the wreckage of a Full English tea. Suddenly feeling the melancholy of those empty plates, he pinched the last few strands of watercress and placed them listlessly in his mouth. Planning a murder was such a lonely business and such a strain on the nerves.