Malcolm Bradbury: Doctor Criminale

Nobody cared; the fuss was all for the winner. I found her at last in a sideroom, being poked at by tape-recorders, and enjoy­ing all the pleasures of sudden fame. Someone asked her what she would do with the winnings; ‘Buy a place in the Seychelles,’ she said. I took out my notebook and pressed nearer, only to find myself blocked by her Fiona, now an arrogant queen. ‘Just a short interview,’ I said. ‘Never,’ said the Fiona, ‘Believe me, as long as there’s breath left in my lovely body you’ll never interview one of my authors again.’ ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘You know,’ said the Fiona darkly. Bewildered, I set off to look for the five losers, hunting a story there. I found them at last in the crypt below, where the after-dinner bar was, soaking their cares away with tumblers of Glenfiddich and Laphroaig. But when I approached them for their comments I got the same reception. No one would talk to me. Literary agents who hours earlier had been ringing me up with hot gossip, publishers who had solicited my ravenous appetite for lunch at Rule’s or Wheeler’s only days before, turned their backs on me.

Finally the kindest, and smallest, Fiona explained. There was a monitor in the hall,’ she said, ‘We all watched you on TV. No one will speak to you ever again.’ ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘In fact you won’t have a single friend in the whole literary world,’ she said. ‘No one?’ I asked. ‘No one,’ said the Fiona. ‘Oh, well, maybe one,’ said someone beside me. I looked round, and there was Ros again. ‘You see what you did,’ I said to her furiously. ‘What I did?’ asked Ros, ‘What you did. Television doesn’t j create reality, it just reports it.’ ‘Don’t give me that,’ I said, ‘You set me up.’ ‘Not really,’ she said, ‘But there always has to be one shit at the Booker. Books are boring, Francis. You have to add a little drama. Anyway, never mind, they’ll all be round you like flies when they need you again, you’ll see. Come and sluice it away at the Groucho.’

So that was how I found myself sitting in the back of a long low contract limo, squeezed between Ros and some of her media friends. My cares were heavy, my mountain bike was left forgotten against its lamppost, where I imagine it remains to this day. Of what happened in London’s glitziest, noisiest literary club that night I have no clear memory. There was little to eat but plenty to drink; I gather I drank most of it. Melvyn Bragg, Umberto Eco and Gore Vidal were all seen there, but not by me, or not in a clear way. I got, or so they tell me, into a bitter argument over my TV opinions with a group of feminist publishers who’d apparently been overdosing on assertiveness training. I believed I had acquitted myself well, but others later told me I did very badly. Later still, the moon up high over London town, I rode somewhere else, in another, smaller vehicle. Next I was somehow standing, nearly upright, in someone’s shower. Then I was towelled and dried, and a sensual, disorderly darkness fell over my life. Realities and unrealities strangely merged; as on TV, parts of my body seemed no longer mine but in other hands entirely.

Then suddenly there was sharp morning light, and I was waking. This is not something I ever do lightly, but it seemed more difficult than usual on this occasion. I was, I found, in a small and ill-curtained bedroom, below the windows of which I could hear some people talking loudly in Bengali. While 1 tried to take this in, some men in metal helmets passed by the window swinging on a long steel girder and gave me a friendly wave. For a while, I hid my head below the duvet and tried to do some quick orientation. Kidnap, hostage-taking and sending young men into prostitution are uncommon in London, but not impossible. My throat was dehydrated. My stomach was knotted. I was buck-naked and my clothes had disappeared. Then the bedroom door opened, and I lifted the covers and peered out to find out who were my captors. There, dressed in an ‘Aloha!’ tee-shirt and cut-off jeans, stood Ros. The moment I saw her, I realized she had not been dressed like this all night.

She came over, sat on the bed, felt my pulse. She carried a portaphone and a cup of coffee: now she spoke into the one while I drank from the other. When the coffee had opened up my vocal chords, I asked for some bearings, temporal and geographical. It was late, said Ros, bloody late. And I was in her small but perfect terrace house, somewhere east of Bishopsgate, in the Bangladeshi garment district, and close to Liverpool Street station. The Bengali voices were discussing the going rate for distressed leather coats; it was Liverpool Street railway station that the men on the girder were reconstructing, or possibly deconstructing. My underwear and other clothing had been lost the night before in some friendly struggle, but Ros offered to go and find it. While she was away, I grabbed her portaphone and called my Serious Sunday to say that, due to an extraordinary chapter of accidents over which I had no control, I had no Booker copy. My editor explained that this mattered rather less than it might have, since they likewise had no newspaper left to put it in.

‘I don’t believe it,’ I said to Ros when she came back with my knickers, ‘My bloody newspaper’s folded, down the chute, gone bust.’ ‘Brilliant,’ said Ros. ‘How can it be brilliant?’ I asked, ‘Here I am, twenty-six, overhung . . .’ ‘You’re boast­ing,’ she said. ‘I’m not,’ I said, ‘I’m finished. Twenty-six and redundant. You’re looking at a post-Thatcherite cripple.’ ‘So what’s new?’ asked Ros, ‘You knew you’d picked a high-risk profession.’ ‘Right, and how am I supposed to pay my rent?’ I asked, ‘They say I probably won’t even get last month’s paycheque.’ ‘Stay here if you like,’ said Ros, ‘It’s brilliant.’ ‘Do stop saying everything’s brilliant,’ I said, ‘Nothing’s brilliant. I’ve come to the end of a great career.’ ‘Of course it’s brilliant,’ said Ros, ‘Now you can come and work for me.’

I looked at her. ‘Work for you how?’ I asked. ‘My company, Nada Productions, I run it with my big friend Lavinia, is doing this huge arts feature for Eldorado Television,’ said Ros, ‘Great Thinkers of the Age of Glasnost.’ ‘Fantastic,’ I said. ‘We need someone to research and present it,’ she said. ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘You’re just the person, educated, literary, nice-looking.’ ‘I’m not, not after last night.’ ‘Especially after last night,’ said Ros. I stared at her again, thinking hard. ‘Which bit of last night?’ ‘Both bits of last night,’ said Ros, ‘The bit on the box and the bit in the sack.’ ‘You said I was worse than Howard Jacobson,’ I said. ‘Oh, you were,’ said Ros. ‘Which bit of last night?’ ‘Both bits of last night,’ said Ros, ‘But Howard’s doing something else. Don’t worry, Francis. You got these really great reviews.’

She pushed over the morning papers at me; I picked up the Independent first, being one of those people who always does. ‘Biter bit,’ said the headline, and the piece began: ‘The only thing that will save last night’s Booker television coverage from a justified total oblivion was the sight of one of Britain’s most bumptious journalists, the ineffable Francis Jay . . .’ ‘You call this a good review? It’s terrible,’ I said. ‘It’s a mention,’ said Ros, ‘I told you, you were memorable. It means you’re a television personality.’ I knew a person of sense, a man of reason, would have called a halt at this point, and I did try. ‘No, no more television,’ I said, ‘I’ve learned all about myself. I’m really a verbal person, not a visual person.’ ‘Oh come on, I read your column,’ said Ros, ‘It’s pretentious crap, any kid could write it. No, the moment I got you in front of that camera I knew you could do it for a living.’