The Festival Murders

by Mark McCrum

Conal let out a bitter chuckle. This was an idea that had been cooked up one drunken evening at the Frontline Club in Paddington, just after he’d returned from his long research trip to Somalia and was still in the stunned mullet stage of rejection. A tableful of friends had offered him suggestions as to what he should do to Bryce to make his point. Pouring a glass of wine on his head at a launch party was one option, but somewhat clichéd; in any case, Scarlett had already done that. ‘Kick him really hard on the shin,’ someone had suggested, ‘that’ll hurt like buggery but it won’t do him any damage.’ ‘But I want to do him damage!’ Conal had cried. ‘Seriously, I’d like to strangle the bastard.’

  ‘It’s still pending,’ he said now. ‘Maybe I’ll break his nose at one of the festival parties.’

  ‘D’you know what, mate? Leave it. The very best form of revenge is to be happy with someone new. Cruise past the pair of them with some cutie-pie on your arm –’

  ‘In fairness,’ Conal cut in, ‘it’s as much to do with me as anything else. It was hard core in Africa and I was eejit enough to keep Priya in my head like some feckin’ talisman. Something certain in an evil world. And then to come back and find …’

  ‘Yes, well, these things happen,’ Ranjit replied with a yawn. ‘There are plenty more fish in the sea. What d’you make of the Grace/Fleur combo?’

  ‘Lovely.’

  On Ranjit’s suggestion, Conal had given these two young women a lift from London the day before. By the time they had arrived in the long and beautiful valley that led down to Mold, the three of them had been laughing together like old friends. This was typical of Ranjit. He was forever trying to stir things up, get things going.

  ‘More than just lovely,’ Ranjit replied. ‘Has Fleur shown you any of her films?’

  ‘We talked about them. And Grace’s “novel-in-progress”.’ He made the quotes with his fingers.

  ‘Don’t be so patronising, you arsehole. The films are excellent. Quirky and funny.’

  Conal shrugged. ‘Grace has a boyfriend.’

  ‘Who’s in New York and on the way out, by all accounts.’

  ‘So I’m supposed to do to him what Bryce did to me?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Conal! Grow up. If you like her, go for it. You may find you’ve got competition.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Certainly not. I’m cool with Carly. No, strictly entre nous Rory McCarthy has the hots for her.’

  ‘Does he now? That’s OK, because strictly entre nous I prefer Fleur.’

  ‘What are you waiting for? Tasty as a very tasty thing and currently single. I can’t guarantee she’ll remain so all weekend.’

  But Conal’s eyes remained moodily on the floor. ‘I still love Priya. That’s the trouble. Can’t get the stupid creature out of my system.’

  THREE

  By a quarter to three that afternoon the Big Tent was buzzing. On the screen above the stage was a huge black and white photo of Dan Dickson in trademark pose. Facing sideways, but looking straight out at the audience, the ageing enfant terrible of English letters almost personified the word sardonic. A sneer curled on his lips; above that proud Roman nose, his dark eyes met yours with disdain. But there was insecurity there too. You are all scum, his look seemed to say, and yet, somewhere deep inside, I’m a teensy bit scared of you. The forehead was as long as one would expect from such an intellect; above it, the receding hair was cropped to a no. 2 – a good strategy, as otherwise he would have been in line for a disastrous comb-over. Below his short neck came surprisingly muscled shoulders, shown off to effect in a skin-tight black T-shirt; he looked more like a scaffolder or a squaddie than most people’s idea of an author. Over this portrait, in a chunky crimson typeface, was superimposed the single word:

  dickson

  Paradoxically, Bryce’s attack on him in the Sentinel had made Dan’s talk a sellout. The punters wanted to know how he’d react – if he reacted at all. And then of course there was the tantalising question: would Bryce himself appear?

  He did. Fantastic! At two minutes to three, up the creaking steps at the back of the marquee to take his place with Priya at the end of a row. The noise in the tent doubled. Heads turned to observe the famous critic, and then, embarrassed to be so naff, turned hurriedly back. ‘That’s him all right,’ they said. ‘The short guy in the pink jacket’ … ‘Next to the pretty Asian girl’ … ‘That’s his latest’ … ‘Can’t stop himself, it’s like a reflex’ … ‘She was his PA, apparently’.

  Five rows from the front, Conal felt sick at the sight of his ex with her new man. Priya was wearing a tight purple top that set off her deep brown skin perfectly. The last time they’d spoken he had been on his knees in front of her, begging her to rethink. She had looked down at him with an indifference that had seemed heartless, but surely on reflection masked more turbulent feelings within. Now, watching her chatting with Bryce, he felt a rush of hope. She was showing her teeth in that familiar nervy laugh, but it was hardly, he decided, the look of love. With that he felt calm again. Maybe there was room for a few Ranjit-style tactics after all. Just in case Priya might notice him, he leaned forward and engaged Fleur on his other side – launching into a loud and visibly entertaining riff on the subject of the ‘dickson’ image.

  Priya hadn’t, in fact, seen Conal. But Bryce had spotted Anna’s dark bob, ten rows in front of him at the bottom of the raised section of seating. Beside her sat a brawny-looking black guy with a missing arm. This was presumably Marvin the Marine, wounded in action, whose book about operations in Afghanistan and Iraq Anna had been ghosting and was up at the festival to help publicise; the gossip was that they were now an item. Seeing him with her, Bryce was surprised at how little jealousy he felt. Good on you, girl, he thought, for not sitting around moping about the might-have-beens; and double good on you for not dating someone from your social comfort zone. In a funny kind of way her choice reflected well on him too. He was the kind of guy that Anna Copeland dated: cool, contemporary, possibly a bit dangerous.

  Bryce ran his eyes on over the crowd, looking out for his other ex, Scarlett. He couldn’t see her anywhere. Perhaps she’d decided to stay in London after all. Absolutely bloody typical. Make a huge fuss about having sole access to the cottage, ‘the twins’ first week of holiday’, etc., etc. Then not turn up at all.

  The crowd hushed. Out from the wings came Dan in person, dwarfed by his photo. Behind him, auburn hair flowing loose, gleeful in a cream and blue dirndl skirt, was Laetitia Humble, the director of the festival. Bryce had known her since the earliest days of Mold, when the whole shebang had been run by her dad Henry. At that point Laetitia had still been trying to make it as an actor, settling for ever dimmer parts in ever grimmer fringe shows. Bryce remembered one particularly dire performance Scarlett had dragged him along to at the Man in the Moon pub theatre in Chelsea: Laetitia as Titania in a five-woman Midsummer Night’s Dream with an ‘alien theme’. But she’d seen sense eventually. She wasn’t Kate Winslet, and once over thirty the statistics were against her. As Henry Humble became increasingly frail she promoted herself from assistant to organiser. Since his death she had made the festival her full-time job. She had moved to the area, shacked up with the drummer of a once famous punk band, and was now indisputably the Queen of Mold.

  ‘Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen,’ she shouted over the gathering hush. ‘We are very privileged to have with us in the Big Tent today one of the country’s leading writers …’

  And off she went, overdoing it as usual. Absurd and ghastly though she was in many ways, you couldn’t help but admire her PR skills. Finally Dan was allowed to approach the microphone and greet his fans. Four minutes into a reading from his new novel Otherworld Bryce squeezed Priya’s arm.

  ‘Can you stand it?’ he whispered loudly.

  ‘Oh Bryce! It’s interesting.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Since we’ve come, we might as well stay.’

  So he sat, patiently, through the sesquipedalian p
rose, wondering why people liked this kind of wilful obscurity. Because it made them feel clever? Because it made them feel stupid? Probably a bit of both. If even he were stumped for some of these definitions, what chance the rest of these dutifully nodding heads?

  At the end of the reading there was the usual applause, totally over the top for the passage ‘dickson’ had treated them to. Now he moved on to discourse on why he’d wanted to create his futuristic dystopia and the issues he hoped he might be tackling. Climate change, yawn. Overpopulation, double yawn. The fight for dwindling resources, treble yawn. The man was as modish as he was unoriginal.

  Finally it was time for questions. ‘I always enjoy interaction with my readers,’ Dan said, ‘so I’ve left a good twenty minutes for us to chat.’ With some fumbling, and accompanying laughter from the tent, he replaced the mic on its stand. Then he sat down on his chair and leant forward in a matey way. ‘There is,’ he went on, ‘at one level, something rather hideous about these festivals.’ Across the stage, perched on her chair, the director tittered a bit too loudly. ‘Sorry Laetitia, nothing personal. What I mean by that is this making of writers into public figures, into stars, if you like, when what writers should really do is to keep things as normal as possible, to insinuate themselves seamlessly into the warp and weft of ordinary life …’

  ‘Pretentious arsehole,’ muttered Bryce. ‘If he really wants to insinuate himself into the warp and weft of life, what’s he doing at an event like this?’

  Beside him Priya giggled.

  ‘As those who’ve heard me talk before know,’ Dan was saying, ‘there are three questions I don’t allow at festivals.’

  ‘Time to go?’ said Bryce.

  ‘Bryce! Come on. We’re here now.’

  In the row in front of them a woman with a face that looked as if it had been scrubbed pink by a Brillo pad turned round and glared. ‘Shsh!’ she hissed, eyes like gobstoppers through her thick specs.

  ‘Question one,’ said Dickson, ‘“Where do you get your ideas?” From my frigging head, of course. That’s why I’m a writer.’

  ‘God, he’s smug,’ said Bryce.

  ‘Question two: “What is your routine?” Answer: My routine is irrelevant. And let me tell you a secret. Even if you followed my routine to the minute, you wouldn’t be me. So make up your own routine. Whatever works for you.’

  ‘So arrogant too. Under that man of the people pose.’

  ‘Shsh!’ The Brillo pad woman glared again; Bryce was amused that she was taking notes. He couldn’t see whether she’d written down ‘from my frigging head of course’.

  ‘Question three: “Do you use a pen or a word processor?” Answer: Never you mind. Sometimes I even use a pencil.’

  From the back of the tent came the sound of some female who seemed to be approaching orgasm as she laughed, so thrilled was she at every word that dropped from Dan’s lips.

  ‘OK,’ Dan continued, ‘with those strictures in mind, let’s begin. The first question please.’

  Four hands shot up. ‘Girl, young woman I should say, five rows in. With the short blonde hair.’

  ‘Whoops,’ muttered Bryce with a chuckle. ‘Not quite as PC as you’d like to be, eh Dan?’

  ‘I’d like to ask a question about reviews,’ asked the blonde. ‘Do you read them? And if you do, and you get a really awful one, how does that feel?’

  There was a collective intake of breath across the tent. In the magnified image on the screen, Bryce could see the cogs of Dan’s mind whirring, wondering how to play this.

  ‘I imagine you’re talking about the pasting I got in the Sentinel this morning,’ he said.

  ‘Well, yes. I suppose I am.’

  ‘Here we go,’ said Bryce. He was aware of heads turning.

  ‘You know,’ said Dan, ‘there are always two quotes I remember when it comes to reviews. The first is Somerset Maugham’s. “Don’t read your reviews, dear boy, measure them.” The second is Evelyn Waugh’s. “You may let a bad review spoil your breakfast, but don’t let it spoil your lunch.”’

  ‘Ya-a-awn,’ said Bryce. ‘Such old hat.’ But he was drowned out by the laughter that rang through the tent.

  ‘So no, you’ll be glad to hear that I ate a hearty ploughman’s for lunch today. And also, when I receive a pointless stinker like that, I always think: At least I’m trying. While what is he doing?’

  There was sporadic clapping; presumably, Bryce thought, from all the sad wannabe creatives in the place.

  ‘You wonder what motivates these people,’ Dan went on. ‘Professional critics.’ He spat out the word. ‘Is it because they have little or no talent themselves that they need to keep savaging the efforts of others? The funny thing about reviewers, if you get to know them, is that they know exactly how hard a road it is writing fiction. D’you know why? Because most of them have had a crack at it themselves. And failed.’

  On the screen, Bryce could see Dan pause, wondering whether to hammer home this tired point. He knew him well enough to know that he would. He remembered the first time he’d met him, at a squat in Belsize Park, way back in 1983. Dickson, just down from Oxford, lying on the floor cradling a bottle of Bulgarian red, a huge Camberwell carrot of a spliff in his mouth, sounding off about the newly published list of Twenty Young British Novelists. ‘What the frig is Adam Mars-Jones doing there? He’s not even a novelist. Three short stories, that’s all he’s done.’ No, Dickson could be as vicious as any of his critics when it suited him.

  ‘I happen to know,’ Dan went on, looking straight at Bryce, ‘that the Sentinel’s reviewer wrote a couple of truly shocking novels a couple of decades ago. Which never even saw the light of day.’

  This was a bit below the belt. Bryce hadn’t published his early fiction; to his knowledge, Dan had never seen it. As the heads of the audience turned towards him, Priya squeezed his arm and looked supportively up at him.

  ‘So who do you like, Bryce?’ Dan taunted, in the grating, cynical tone that was his trademark. ‘I sometimes get the feeling, reading your reviews –’

  Bryce had had enough. ‘So you do read them?’ he yelled back across the crowd.

  ‘Wait, please, Bryce,’ came Laetitia’s voice. ‘We can’t quite hear you up here. Just let Holly get to you with the roving mic. For any of you who don’t know, this is Bryce Peabody, ladies and gentlemen, literary editor of the Sentinel.’

  The work-experience was now at Bryce’s side, holding out the bulbous microphone. ‘I said,’ he said softly, taking it, enjoying the sudden power of his amplified voice, ‘“So you do read them?” Your reviews. From the quotes you just gave us, Dan, I imagined you’d be out there with your ruler.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Dickson, ‘I read them all right. And some of them aren’t bad, for what they are.’

  ‘Very gracious.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about yours. D’you know what your problem is, Bryce? You don’t inhabit the modern world. From the endless historical comparisons you make, I get the feeling that, deep down, you don’t like anything written after about 1950. Correct that, 1850. You’re always banging on about Tolstoy and Conrad and Proust. I mean, who do you like from now?’

  ‘Tolstoy died in 1910, Conrad in, I think, 1924. The last volume of À La Recherche wasn’t even published until 1927 …’

  ‘My point exactly.’

  ‘What’s sixty years between friends? But they were better, don’t you think? Than most of the stuff we’re forced to read now.’

  ‘No one’s forcing you to read anything, Bryce.’

  ‘Oh, but they are.’

  ‘OK then, Bryce, tell us. Who do you like from this century? That we happen to live in? The twenty-first. As opposed to the nineteenth.’

  ‘Anybody who reads my column knows that I regularly applaud contemporary authors,’ Bryce fired back. ‘But yes, I’m not ashamed to say I like writers who give me a story, who present me with characters I can at least half-recognise from this twenty-first century that you treasure
so much, a few real-life human dilemmas I can start to try and empathise with …’

  Dan was laughing, but you could feel the anger vibrating in his voice. ‘So what precisely do you know about real-life dilemmas then, Bryce? What do you actually see of the world outside the Sentinel offices and your cosy little launch party circuit?’

  ‘Let’s make this ad hominem, shall we?’

  ‘La di dah, bring on the Latin tags, mate. Seriously, what do you know about what it’s like to be … I don’t know … a farmer in Mold or … a … a dustman in Warrington.’

  Bryce’s amplified gurgles of amusement rang through the hall. ‘A bit more than you, apparently,’ he replied. ‘I think the word “dustman” went out about twenty years ago. The refuse in Warrington is probably collected by women these days. Romanian women most likely. If someone wrote me a good story about a feisty female garbage disposal operative from Bucharest I would be the first to give it the thumbs up. I’m longing to be transported from the parochial world I live in, to feel the impact of something powerful from elsewhere. Just so long as it’s convincing. Unpretentious. Dare I suggest well-written.

  ‘Look Dan, nobody likes criticism. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t valid for a critic to express his opinion. He must be honest to what he feels, otherwise what is the point? Can you imagine a world in which writers received non-stop adulation? Their egotistic bonces would be even more like watermelons than they are already. Sometimes, if someone produces a piece of shit, it has to be said. It is said, by most of the people reading it. You just don’t hear those conversations in kitchens at parties, see those paperbacks being hurled across bedrooms. Someone has to have the courage to express these feelings publicly. To help the ordinary reader discriminate in the face of the tidal wave of manure that appears every week in print. To say nothing of the tsunami of e-crap out there. And that’s my job. For which I get paid, I might add, a lot less than Dan Dickson. As for my own attempts at fiction, which were, by my own choice, never published, I long ago accepted I didn’t have that particular talent.’ Bryce paused for a second, to give heft to his final punch. ‘Unlike some people I was sensible enough to admit it.’