Edward Aubyn - Lost for Words

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 responsibility 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.

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.’