Edward Aubyn - Lost for Words

Katherine watched Sonny murmuring to himself. He was reclining on silk cushions in the corner of a frantically carved daybed, his legs tucked towards him, a slender hand clasping one of his ankles. She could see his eyes swivelling under their lids in a way that reminded her of the rapid eye movement of a dreamer, as well as the ceaseless vigilance of the blind. A pair of yellow slippers idled on the carpet. Two turbaned servants were placing dozens of silver pots onto the engraved silver table in the middle of the room. Her throne of castellated mahogany, too deep to sit back in and too jagged to lean against, made her long to leave.

She wished she hadn’t asked Didier to call Sonny before she left England. Like all her ex-lovers, except for the occasional Spartacus who would lead a gallant but futile revolt, easily crushed by a friendly email or a chance encounter, Didier remained her slave. If only he had been a little more reluctant to get in touch with his grand Indian acquaintance. He hadn’t seen Sonny for ten years and he warned Katherine that she would find him ‘ exotique , but totally crazy’. Before leaving England ‘totally crazy’ seemed a fair price for ‘ exotique ’, but after three weeks of travelling in India she felt the opposite. Tonight, thank God, she was flying back to the welcome dullness of London in early March.

Sonny’s head turned as if synchronized with the arrival of the elderly woman in a maroon and gold sari who now stood in the doorway.

‘Auntie!’ said Sonny, rising from the daybed. ‘May I present Katherine Burns, she’s a lady novelist from London.’

‘Oh, how delightful,’ said Auntie and then, noticing that Katherine hadn’t moved, she added, ‘Don’t get up, my dear, nobody curtsies any more these days; or only the old stick in the muds,’ her voice filled with mock-horror at the mention of this category. ‘We’re just having a cosy little lunch, nothing formal.’

She sat on the edge of the daybed and toyed with the folds of her sari.

‘You’re just the person I need,’ she began, conscious of the favour she was doing Katherine. ‘I’ve written the most marvellous cookery book — full of family portraits — and, of course, recipes that have been handed down from generation to generation by the cooks at the old palace.’ She hurried over this detail as if it were hardly worth mentioning. ‘You’re in the publishing world, could you take one of the manuscripts back with you and place it with a London publisher for me? We used to know the great English writers, Somerset Maugham and dear old Paddy Leigh Fermor, but they all seem to be dead now, or out of commission. So, you see, my dear, I’m relying on you.’

‘Of course,’ said Katherine, trying to assemble a smile.

Over the last few weeks, Penny had been so preoccupied by becoming a member of the Elysian Prize committee that she had neglected her own writing, but she was determined to get back to work on her current thriller, Roger and Out . She clicked, a little nervously, on its icon and found herself confronted by sentences she hadn’t looked at for ages. To give herself a running jump, she re-read the beginning of the latest chapter.

It was evening in St James’s Park and the sun, sinking in a westerly direction, had turned the clouds into pink balls of cotton wool. Meanwhile, at ground level, the puddles had already turned into dark pools of glossy chocolate.

Sitting in her battered grey Audi A6 3.0 litre TDI with all leather seats, Jane Street was ready to call it a day. That was the surveillance game for you, waiting and watching, watching and waiting, but often ending up with nothing to show for it. Then, just as Jane’s hand came to rest on the ignition key, Grove’s voice blasted into her earpiece.

‘I have an eyeball. I have an eyeball.’

The words shot through Jane’s body like an electric current. She reached instinctively into the Audi’s generous glove compartment and felt for her weapon. The IPX370 packed the punch of a Colt.38, but its magazine carried that one extra bullet that could make all the difference if things turned nasty. Six grams shy of its American counterpart, its lighter weight also made a real difference if you had to carry it round in your handbag all day.

Jane’s hand padded around the glove compartment, but apart from the service manual and a spare packet of Handy Andies, she could feel nothing there. Where the hell was her weapon? Then it all came back with a cold sickening thud. The shooting range. That morning. Richard Lane. Lane was a classic yes-man and pen-pusher, with no more idea of the reality of life at the sharp end of things than she had of how to dance the lead role in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Probably less. She had been avoiding Lane like the plague, but he had finally tracked her down at the shooting range and delivered his usual lecture about her ‘cavalier disregard for the proper rules of procedure’, her ‘run-away expenses’ and her ‘attitude generally’. It had made her so angry that she had left her weapon behind. She had spent the whole afternoon fuming and hadn’t had a chance to discover her mistake. Now it was too late.

Well, damn Lane, damn all the Lanes, sitting behind their desks in Thames House, watching the shafts of sunlight turn the river lapis lazuli, while their love-sick secretaries made bookings for lunch at Quo Vadis in Soho’s Dean Street. What did they know about putting your life on the line for your country?

Penny was torn between thinking that the pages were rather good — pacey, well researched, vivid — and thinking that she was not really a writer at all. Perhaps it had been a huge mistake to retire early from the Foreign Office to pursue her lifelong ambition of becoming an author. It was true that there had been other reasons to leave. Her career had stagnated after its dazzlingly rapid rise during David Hampshire’s last years as Permanent Secretary, over twenty-five years ago. His favouritism had generated so much resentment that she remained stuck at the same level ever after, often moving sideways but never up. Her affair with David not only ruined her marriage, but arguably ruined her prospects as well. He was still her greatest friend, but the glory days were over, when he used to call her ‘my very own Anna Ford’, at a time when the nation’s favourite newscaster was considered the most desirable woman on Earth. Unlike the delicious Miss Ford, who had confidently allowed her hair to go white, Penny’s remained resolutely mahogany, matching her eyes, but increasingly at odds with the sad story told by the sags and creases of her loosening skin. Penny sighed. Nicola had never really forgiven her for the divorce — or, if it came to that, for the career — but she wasn’t going to think about that now; she must press on, if only to get away from the old feelings of hollow sacrifice that she fought against every day.

‘Damascus is on the bridge. Damascus is crossing the bridge,’ said Grove’s audibly tense voice. ‘Where the hell are you, Street?’

Jane closed the glove compartment. She was about to face Ibrahim al-Shukra, one of the world’s most dangerous and ruthless men, responsible for the horrific, cowardly, tragic and completely uncalled for deaths of countless innocent members of the public, and she was unarmed.

‘Damascus has stopped on the bridge.’ Grove was audibly relieved. ‘Damascus is feeding the ducks.’

‘I’m on my way,’ said Jane.

‘Roger that,’ said Grove.

Well, Jane reflected philosophically, she may not have the reassuring weight of the IPX370 in her hand, but she still had her handbag (it wouldn’t be the first time she’d used that as a weapon), her common sense and, above all, her professionalism.