Malcolm Bradbury: Doctor Criminale

Nor would I have seen the pictures the viewers didn’t – glimpses of the gritty real life of your everyday Booker ban­quet. Distinguished diners sat beneath distinguished portraits, scoffing what looked like a distinguished dinner. A cabinet minister yawned in boredom as he listened to the advice of his lady companion. A loose hand slid under a tablecloth, then up a nearby velvet skirt. ‘I suppose you know the win­ner already,’ I said, taken by a sudden cunning journalistic thought. ‘We have to, to get the cameras to position,’ said Ros. ‘Fine, why not tell me, one journo to another,’ I said, ‘Then I can rush back and grab the first interview.’ ‘No way,’ said Ros, ‘Knowledge is power.’ ‘I thought journos liked to help each other,’ I said. ‘The way the countries in the Balkans like to help each other,’ said Ros, ‘You’re kid­ding. News isn’t a sweetheart business. Of course if you were really smart you could work it out from the camera set-up.’

I looked along the bank of monitors. On one a scatter-haired writer, mouth open and full, stopped short as she stared into a camera that must have seemed to jump out of the beef Wellington. ‘That one,’ I said. ‘No,’ said Ros, as the cam­era panned away towards a waitress tripping over a cable, ‘Five more to go.’ There was a shot of a woman slipping a microphone down between her breasts; ‘Her,’ I said. ‘Germaine Greer getting ready for the studio discussion,’ said Ros, ‘You know your problem? You’re tele-dumb. Pass the bottle.’ ‘This interview,’ I said, ‘If it’s so bad, why not just drop it? Or let’s do it again.’ ‘Would you?’ she asked. ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘One journo should always help another.’ ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Ros, ‘And don’t call me a journo, I’m a film-maker.’ ‘Isn’t it the same?’ ‘No,’ said Ros, ‘You write stories, I make art. And don’t think this stuff is my usual work, I’m just here helping a friend. I’m really an independent.’

‘I know all about independents,’ I said, ‘My Islington terrace is full of them. They set up little companies with five-pound bank loans and then work up series costing eight million. They send a treatment to Channel 4 and sod-all happens. You see them every night begging drinks down the local pub.’ ‘Those are the wankers,’ said Ros, ‘I prefer the real thing. When I want something to happen, it happens. Oh look, something’s happening.’ And so, onscreen, it was. At the instructions of the Booker chairman, the guests had all suddenly risen as one from their eating, and were heading full speed for the lavatories. ‘Must be five minutes to go,’ said Ros, ‘Are you comfortable?’ ‘Yes, not bad,’ I said. ‘Make the most of it,’ said Ros, ‘You won’t be.’ Soon the guests were resuming their seats, and putting on strange plastic expressions. The writers closed their mouths, the Fionas adjusted their vast hats, the agents hid the bottles of wine, the cabinet ministers sat upright. Suddenly the lighting changed, somewhere a wolf started howling, the screen credits rolled, and then the presenter smiled through the monitor and welcomed our presence at an historic occasion, which, given what odd things history proved it could do lately, was probably true.

Ros nudged me in the upper thigh. ‘Ready, steady, here he is,’ she said. And there – right in the middle of the main monitor – I was, just like Mrs Dalloway at her party. Except somehow I seemed to be not quite I, but some terrible yet oddly accurate simulacrum. Thanks to modern technology I had become a long green banana, rocking on my heels and talking interminable tosh. My body was transformed, my thoughts rendered outrageous, my manner-gross; nothing was quite as I understood it to be in so-called real life. ‘Well, what did you think?’ asked Ros, when the vision had passed away. ‘It’s a stand-in,’ I said. ‘No, it’s you,’ said Ros. ‘You were right then,’ I said, ‘I was worse than Howard Jacobson.’ More interviews followed: John Mortimer, Ben Elton, Gore Vidal. I was worse than all of them. Whatever came on over the next half-hour, I was worse than. ‘Why use it?’ I asked, ‘Why not leave it on the cutting-room floor?’ ‘Because tomorrow you’ll be the one thing people remember,’ said Ros, ‘Who was that little prick at the Booker?’ ‘I don’t want to go down in history as the little prick at the Booker,’ I said. ‘Then you shouldn’t have been such a little prick in the first place,’ said Ros kindly.

Onscreen the greatest night in the life of modern literature continued. There were dramatized extracts from the six chosen novels, all shot in the same children’s sandpit off Shepherd’s Bush Green which, decked out with a beach umbrella or two, easily stood in for Deauville in belle époque 1913. There was a studio discussion with Germaine Greer and others, all of whom I was decidedly worse than. The Chairman of the Booker company rose and introduced the Chairman of the Booker judges. He took the microphone, briefly dismissed the state of the novel (though more effectively than I had), then went on to discuss the works of Tom Paine, the celebrated Thetford staymaker and political radical. This led him to some long reflections on the American War of Independence, on which he was plainly an expert. It was as I sat there, hoping that some crisis would occur that would drive my own contribution into insignificance, that I realized there was deep tension in the scanner. ‘Come on, for Christ’s sake,’ Ros was saying, ‘Only three seconds of this programme is worth anything, and we’re going to miss it.’ ‘Which three seconds?’ I asked. ‘The name of the winner,’ said Ros. ‘Fifty seconds left,’ said the engineer. ‘The silly twat, the silly twat, he’s not going to get it in,’ cried Ros. ‘Say it, say it, you great fat dickhead,’ shouted the crew in the scanner. ‘Somebody kick him in the Tom Paines, gag him, knock him over,’ said Ros feistily into the microphone.

Suddenly, prodded violently from behind, the Chairman halted, midway through the Battle of Saratoga, and gulped the name of the winning author. The oldest, untidiest and baggiest of the bag ladies rose up bewildered, walked off in the wrong direction, was reprogrammed by her Fiona, and found her way to the platform. The Chairman kissed her rather cautiously and handed her a generous cheque. ‘Turn to camera and smile, dear,’ murmured Ros. The winner turned to camera, gushed copious tears, and thanked her publisher and her mother. ‘Her mother !’ cried Ros, ‘I suppose she’s sitting at home writing next year’s winner.’ ‘There we are,’ said the presenter breathlessly, ‘One more writer twenty thousand pounds the richer. What will she do with the money?’ ‘Buy a motorbike,’ said Ros sourly, ‘Go on, get over there and ask her.’ ‘Out of time,’ said the engineer. ‘And there we have it,’ said the presenter, realizing that the Nine O’Clock News was pressing at her back, ‘Another great day for contemporary fiction.’

Credits rolled, and Ros banged her fist furiously on the console. ‘Oh God, no interview, and we didn’t even hear her name properly,’ she cried, ‘Did anyone hear her name? Or which book?’ ‘Thank you very much,’ I said, ‘I’m going.’ Ros looked up. ‘Thank you, darling,’ she said, ‘You were the best thing in the whole damned programme. And you were frigging terrible.’ No more television, I thought, as I hurried back to the bright Guildhall through pouring rain, I’ll stick to the real world of books and print. But when I reached the great Banqueting Hall, I discovered a curious sight. The dinner was not over; indeed the entire event had resumed again. Having made the simulacrum, the Booker people were now trying belatedly to create the reality. The meal had restarted, the chairman had risen once more, and was completing his ruminations on the Battle of Saratoga. The winner rose again and, having now perfected her art, reached the podium without difficulty. She accepted another cheque, or the same one a second time, made another speech, thanking yet more of her relatives, and sat down. And now the five losers, faces etched with the misery of a whimsical life which had brought them so near to the summit and then cast them back into the pit of oblivion again, came to the platform. Each was presented with a leatherbound copy of what proved to be their own books; they looked at them in dismay, having presumably read them already.