Lost for Words: A Novel

by Edward St. Aubyn

  Alan decided to leave the intimidating volume in his room and take the intriguing typescripts with him to a cafe. He felt the visceral excitement that had kept him going as a publisher. Maybe these would turn out to be yet more disappointing and incompetent texts, but perhaps one of them was a masterpiece, or still better, something he could help turn into a masterpiece.

  23

  It was ironic, in Penny’s opinion, that her slavish devotion to the cause of literature was preventing her from writing any more of her own novel. She was determined to spend the last twenty-four hours before the feeding frenzy of the Short List announcement doing some of her own work for a change.

  Quite apart from their distracting quality, she was not at all pleased with the discourteous tone that had come to dominate the Elysian committee meetings. David Hampshire was taking her out to dinner that night and she was going to suggest a remedy. Last Sunday she had watched a thoroughly inspiring documentary about corporate bonding. It had followed two groups of colleagues, up a Norwegian fjord in one case, and across Dartmoor in the other, all being led by former SAS commandos. These young soldiers started out looking like strong silent types, but turned out to have thought long and hard about the value of getting back to basics and cultivating esprit de corps. Although there would not be time to spend a week on Dartmoor with three matches, a compass and a rabbit trap, or to go to Norway and enjoy the breath-taking natural scenery, howl at the moon, and gaze at the aurora borealis, she did intend to ask David to have a word with the Elysian Board and see if they would finance a trip to Paris with an overnight stay in a nice hotel.

  Most people went to Paris to look at Impressionist paintings of holidaymakers lying around on a riverbank. What Penny had in mind was altogether more challenging: a good hard look at the infrastructure of the city. A limited public tour of the Paris sewers had been on offer for years, but Penny intended to use her Foreign Office contacts to get the committee taken through the entire system, led by a real expert, with a map of Paris showing them exactly what they were underneath at the time. The Louvre, the Opera House, the Comédie Française, whatever it might be, they would be seeing it from a point of view that very few people indeed had ever had the chance to enjoy.

  That was tonight’s task, but right now, it was time to get on with some writing.

  Jane took a moment to assess her situation. It didn’t look good. In fact, it couldn’t have been much worse. She was in an isolated castle on the west coast of Sicily, without her mobile phone, hiding in an old oak cupboard with far from silent hinges, while the world’s most dangerous terrorist took a shower in his en suite bathroom next door. It defied belief, but all the evidence pointed to the fact that the Russian oligarch and owner of the Villa Concerta, Vladimir Rhazin, was bankrolling Ibrahim al-Shukra’s international terrorist network. The old Soviet cold-war game of destabilizing the West was clearly still part of Russia’s foreign-policy agenda, even if the perpetrators were now disguised as some of the world’s most avid consumers of Western decadence.

  It was a distinctly odd feeling, Jane reflected grimly, to be in possession of such stunning intelligence, without knowing whether she would live long enough to pass it on to Thames House. One person she would certainly not be telling was Richard Lane. He would somehow claim all the glory for himself, while managing to reprimand her for burning the rulebook. She had to admit that hiding in the freezing luggage hold of Rhazin’s Falconer T 300, the most expensive executive jet on the market, with a price tag of forty-five million dollars, had been insanely risky, but if ever the motto ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained’ had any meaning at all, it was now. If only she hadn’t forgotten her BlackBerry in the glove compartment of her Audi 3.0 TDI, she could have sent a text to Peggy Fields right now, and got her to transfer it to her computer with a time code, so that Lane couldn’t get his thieving hands on her intelligence.

  Penny sank back into her button leather swivel chair. That was as far as she had got. What was going to happen next?

  Jane winced as she opened the creaky old cupboard door.

  Penny paused; she wanted to really give the reader a sense of how dramatic this moment was, really get the atmosphere across. She typed the word ‘atmosphere’ in the Gold Ghost Plus search box, and then changed it to ‘air’, which seemed to her more subtle and suggestive. Immediately, dozens of alternatives rippled on to the page.

  ‘The bracing seaside air … the air, heavy with the scent of roses … the air was crackling with tension…’

  That was it. She highlighted the last phrase, clicked, and Bob’s your uncle.

  The air was crackling with tension. Every nerve in her body was straining to hear the shower. While the water was still running she was safe. If it stopped, she would have to run back to the cupboard

  The situation reminded Penny of something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Then she got it, and finished the sentence triumphantly.

  in the most lethal game of Grandmother’s Footsteps ever played.

  She climbed carefully out of the cupboard and started to tiptoe her way across the vast room. When she was halfway across, the sound of running water suddenly stopped. Jane froze; she was as far from the cupboard as the door. What should she do? Using her woman’s intuition, and her memories of a parachute-training course she’d been sent on when she had first joined the Service, she threw herself onto the floor and rolled smoothly under the giant Jacobean four poster bed recently purchased by Rhazin for a six-figure sum at Christie’s, Geneva. She was panting like

  Penny paused and closed her eyes waiting for inspiration.

  a schoolgirl after a hockey match, but she had to force herself to breathe more quietly so she could concentrate on what was happening.

  The shower door opening. Al-Shukra’s singing growing louder. The last splashes of water from the showerhead. A sudden cry of alarm. A thud. A groan. Silence. Jane lay on the floor under the musty mattress for what seemed like an eternity. Then she lifted the velvet valence and peered across the room. Nothing stirred. Her heart was beating like a jackhammer in her chest. She wriggled out from under the bed, got to her feet and moved gingerly towards the bathroom door. The sight that greeted her was both horrifying and highly satisfactory. Al-Shukra was lying on the white Carrera marble floor, a red stain spreading slowly from the back of his head.

  Gaining in confidence, Jane walked into the bathroom. In the corner of the room she saw the glistening bar of Bulgari’s Liaisons Dangereuses bath soap that had quite literally caused al-Shukra’s downfall.

  ‘You think you’re so clever,’ said Jane, standing mockingly over al-Shukra’s fallen body, ‘sending suicide bombers out to make cowardly attacks on innocent members of the public, but you don’t look so clever now, do you?’

  The phone rang, making Penny jump. She had been so deeply engaged in her creation that she had completely lost any sense of the outside world. She answered the call reluctantly, feeling that her chapter might be imperilled by this untimely interruption.

  ‘Hi, Mum, it’s Nicola.’

  ‘Oh, hello, darling,’ said Penny, disguising her attempted shift of tone with a little coughing fit. She had been meaning to take a very preoccupied, Genius at Work attitude to the call, but since it was from Nicola she made an effort to sound pleased. Besides, Nicola hadn’t called her ‘Mum’ for years and Penny felt a sharp tug on the old heartstrings.

  ‘Listen, Mum, I’ll cut to the chase,’ said Nicola. ‘I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but I just want to say that Nigel and I, and the children of course, although they don’t know the details obviously, are really grateful for the “hot tip” you’ve given us on wot u starin at. We’ve bet all our savings on it and we’re going to use the money to redo the roof, which is seriously needed – there’s a huge stain in Lucy’s ceiling and I wake in the middle of the night thinking the whole thing is going to collapse on her! Anyway, my point is, that I know it can’t have been easy for you, being in a position of respon
sibility and everything, but as far as I’m concerned, it really helps to see you put family first.’

  Penny had completely forgotten about the bet.

  ‘You’re welcome, darling,’ she managed to blurt out, her mind swimming with the horrendous implications of Nicola’s gratitude, as she put the phone back on the cradle.

  She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of dwelling on the bet. She pulled herself out of her trance, bustling about her flat, running a bath and laying out the dress she was planning to wear that evening. Worried as she had been about Nicola’s call, it couldn’t destroy the sense of ancient excitement that still clung to a rendezvous with David. He might be ninety-two (in fact he was ninety-two) but she could still feel the man behind the disintegrating human being. She would never forget the shock of being asked out by him for the first time and realizing that his interest in her was more than purely professional. Their first dinner took place during a long summer’s evening at the end of the Falklands war, and David’s comments had stayed with her ever since.

  ‘I think this small war is a very good thing,’ he said, looking out from the dining room of the Savoy Hotel onto the dark flood of the Thames, flecked with golden evening light. ‘The young people of this country have had a taste of blood, and now they know what we went through during the War.’

  The ‘we’ had particularly gratified her. He seemed to know instinctively that although she may not have been zigzagging across Normandy beaches under heavy enemy fire, or thundering through the streets of Berlin while SS suicide squadrons stuffed grenades down the muzzle of her Churchill tank, she had seen her favourite doll’s house disappear in pretty hair-raising circumstances.

  When David had touched her forearm, that first dinner, to emphasize a point he was making about the importance of Gibraltar remaining in British hands, she felt her body answer with a resounding Yes. It was the power of her boss, the recently knighted Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office, of course, and of his brilliant intelligence, but it was also the power of a lonely and frustrated widower whose wife had died tragically the year before; above all, it was a power that would soon tear down the frail defences of her marriage and what she had imagined until then to be her moral code.

  24

  It was a long time since Sonny could remember being in such a good mood. John Elton had sent Auntie a letter of rejection that went far beyond the formal regret that usually characterized such documents and came sublimely close to insolence. On the other hand, his own persistent enquiries had revealed that The Mulberry Elephant was being treated with the greatest respect by IPG and had been passed on to a leading editor. To celebrate this delightful shift in relative prestige, Sonny was throwing a tea party in the Arnold Bennett Suite. He had got hold of his old acquaintance Didier Leroux and also left half a dozen unanswered messages for Katherine Burns.

  What better time to give a literary tea party than during the announcement of the Elysian Short List? He would be the witness of Auntie’s inevitable exclusion from the last stages of the competition, and at the same time surround himself with witnesses to his own innocent socializing at the moment when a fatal accident befell Malcolm Craig MP – if only he had got round to asking Mansur. Occurring only minutes after he announced the list of undeserving authors, his death would have struck the world as the very pattern of divine retribution. If the police became involved, Auntie and Didier would remember fondly being entertained by Sonny, not only with lashings of fruitcake but with favourite family anecdotes on literary topics, such as Somerset Maugham’s visit to Badanpur, his famously acid remarks about his fellow guests, and his infatuation with one of the palace servants, whom he tried to press into his service, forcing the wretched fellow to beg Sonny’s grandfather for protection from the great English story-teller!

  Mansur, whose intelligence it was all too easy to question, but whose loyalty and propensity for violence could never be doubted, would follow his master’s instructions slavishly, once he had been given them, steal a small unassuming car and run down the impudent chairman like a rabid dog. Without revealing his motives, Sonny had taken the precaution of sending Mansur to Oxford Street to buy a short zip-up jacket and a pair of common blue jeans. In London these days an embroidered frockcoat and a silk turban would not go unremarked, and since the escape plan consisted of Mansur melting into the crowd, the provision of a dreary modern costume was the least Sonny could do. The poor fool had turned up that morning in his new uniform, but still wearing a pair of beautiful Indian slippers. Sonny quite lost his temper, tossed him a small bundle of fifty-pound notes and ordered him to go and buy himself a pair of lime-green trainers! Mansur looked so crestfallen that Sonny actually apologized for scolding him. Truly, there was something magnificent about a man in Sonny’s position humbling himself before a servant. Once he was alone again, staring dreamily over the roofs of Mayfair, picturing Mr Craig crushed against a bollard or a lamp-post, the thought of that exquisite courtesy had brought tears to his eyes and, in an act of further contrition, he went on to imagine Mansur slipping into the Underground and getting away without any unpleasant consequences.

  Auntie was the first to arrive.

  ‘What’s that wireless doing in the middle of the table?’ she asked. ‘I thought we were having a tea party.’

  ‘Of course there will be tea and cakes,’ said Sonny, ‘but we will all be huddled around the wireless for the five o’clock broadcast of Inkwell on Radio Four. Don’t touch the dials – they’ve already been set! Malcolm Craig will be announcing the Elysian Short List live from a press conference in Somerset House.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Auntie, ‘I don’t think my nerves could take it after that vile letter from Mr Elton. I told him it was a cookery book, but he simply wouldn’t listen, and then…’

  ‘Don’t torture yourself by thinking about that letter,’ said Sonny angrily. ‘You can only do yourself harm by dwelling on those insults: “no trace of literature or any hint of imagination” – how dare he say such a thing? Hopefully, he will be proved wrong by this afternoon’s broadcast.’

  ‘Of course he won’t,’ said Auntie, clicking her tongue. ‘Whoever made the mistake in the first place, there’s no question of my little book being a finalist for the world’s most famous fiction prize. It’s really too ridiculous. I wish I hadn’t been put on any list at all.’

  ‘There, there,’ said Sonny. ‘You’ll drive yourself mad by thinking about that letter.’

  Auntie suddenly withdrew her attention. With her back straight, her hands folded in her lap and her gaze resting on a midpoint in the carpet, she seemed to have taken refuge in the heights of an invincible aloofness. Sonny grew nervous, feeling that he had gone too far with his patronizing reassurance.

  After a few minutes, the painful silence was alleviated and amplified by the rattle of pots, jugs and plates, and the clink of heavy silver on a table wheeled in by the waiter to whose solicitous enquiries Sonny gave sullen and abrupt replies.

  ‘Over there, over there … not that chair … don’t bother, we’ll help ourselves.’

  When Didier eventually arrived, only ten minutes before the Inkwell broadcast, Auntie had still not surrendered to Sonny’s offer of tea, and only gave a cold, vague greeting to his friend.

  Sonny threw himself on Didier and started to describe Auntie’s book in the most flattering terms, hoping to melt her resistance with an overheard eulogy.

  ‘Of course, we’re hoping to see The Palace Cookbook move from the Long List to the Short List in just a few minutes,’ Sonny concluded, his hypocrisy made sincere by his panic-stricken desire to win Auntie back.

  ‘Oh, honestly,’ said Auntie, ‘it’s just a few recipes and some family portraits. There’s been some sort of mistake…’

  ‘Evidently,’ said Didier, before Auntie could complete her self-deprecation, ‘the intention of the author is not the measure of the text. We are not living in the nineteenth century! We are not going to sit here, even in the Arnold Bennett
Suite, pretending that Roland Barthes never wrote The Death of the Author.’

  ‘Perhaps we could take up that interesting point,’ said Sonny, ‘after the broadcast.’ He leant over to switch on the radio.

  ‘Oh, please,’ said Auntie, restraining his hand, ‘I really don’t see the point.’

  ‘Shhh,’ said Sonny, ‘we’ll miss the beginning.’

  ‘Frankly, I’d rather miss the whole thing,’ said Auntie. ‘You’re just doing this to torment me.’

  ‘Auntie! How could you say such a thing?’

  ‘Oh, very well…’ said Auntie.

  By the time Sonny was allowed to switch on the radio, Malcolm was already nearing the end of his introductory remarks.

  ‘As to the selection process, all I can say is that if we had been asked to draw up a list of the six worst books we’d read this year, our task would have been a great deal easier – believe me, there was no shortage of candidates for that prize! But, of course, what we were in fact asked to do was to make a list of the six best books of the year, and that is, without doubt, a far stiffer challenge. Rather than attempt to describe the critical framework of our decisions, or the forces that we have tried to hold in balance, I shall simply read out the Short List. The press are free to criticize our decisions, but there should be no doubt that they were made by a team of thoroughly responsible, highly intelligent and passionate readers.

  The Frozen Torrent by Sam Black

  The Enigma Conundrum by Tim Wentworth

  All the World’s a Stage by Hermione Fade

  wot u starin at by Hugh Macdonald

  The Palace Cookbook by…’

  Auntie’s name was drowned out by a cry of astonishment emanating from the author herself.

  ‘Bravo,’ said Didier, ‘et bravo pour Sam.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Sonny, extorting a smile from his drooping features.