Edward Aubyn - Lost for Words

‘They flee from me that sometime did me seek,’ he muttered to himself.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Mrs Wo.

‘Oh, I was just struggling to remember a quotation — about naturalness and so forth.’

‘Ah, there are so many!’ said Mrs Wo. ‘Picasso saying he could draw like Raphael when he was a child but it took him his whole life to learn how to draw like a child; or La Rochefoucauld…’

‘Ah, La Rochefoucauld,’ said Tobias, delighted at the discovery of a mutual friend.

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Wo unexpectedly, inviting Tobias to turn around.

Standing behind them was a muscular young man in a black suit, holding a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label.

‘When I heard you asking for whisky I texted my driver; we always keep a bottle in the car, in case one of our friends would like a “wee dram”,’ said Mrs Wo, giggling at her imitation of a Scottish accent.

‘That’s more than generous of you,’ said Tobias, in a Scottish accent of his own. ‘I must say, Mrs Wo, you’re a woman full of surprises! Let’s drink a toast to naturalness: art’s greatest achievement!’

‘With pleasure,’ said Mrs Wo.

* * *

Sonny was thoroughly disconcerted by Malcolm’s absence and quite unable to concentrate on his food, or even find time to cultivate his indignation at the insultingly remote table assigned to him at the very back of the room. The time had really come to tell Mansur where his duty lay. Sonny regretted that his chances of evading capture would be somewhat reduced by committing murder on live television, but the poetic justice of a public execution easily outweighed the almost certain loss of a faithful retainer.

With great foresight Auntie had made Mansur bring a small picnic hamper in case the Elysian food turned out to be unsuitable. The main course of Beef Wellington could hardly have been more unsuitable for the Hindu party, and Mansur gradually distributed the contents of the creaking wicker hamper that nestled discreetly on the floor next to a fire extinguisher and a bright red bucket of sand.

‘Sonny!’ said Auntie, clasping his forearm, as if her chair alone couldn’t be expected to provide enough support under these conditions. ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened.’

‘I give up,’ said Sonny, still scanning the entrance in the hope of seeing Craig arrive.

‘The Russian gentleman to my right, who is the owner of the famous Page and Turner, has commissioned a memoir from me, all about the old days in Badanpur, before Independence and Partition: the glamour, the Durbars, the purdah, and the disastrous advent of modern India, Mrs Gandhi’s betrayal of the Constitutional guarantees offered to the princely states … are you all right?’

Sonny, who had inhaled a pickled walnut on first hearing the news of Yuri’s commission, was bent double with a napkin pressed to his mouth, trying to muffle the coughing fit that shook his prodigious frame and flushed his face with blood.

* * *

‘Now, look here,’ said Malcolm into the emergency phone, ‘I don’t want to be told to press the ground-floor button again, we’ve been through all that. I want you to send us a lift engineer immediately.’

Malcolm listened for a while to the reply.

‘Where exactly are you?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘In Bhopal? Well, what earthly use are you to someone stuck in a lift in London?’

David took another swing at the doors with his walking stick.

‘Please stop that,’ snapped Malcolm. ‘No, not you. I have someone in the lift with me who suffers from acute claustrophobia. Hello? Hello?’

Malcolm hung up the emergency phone with an exasperated sigh, and took his own phone out of his breast pocket.

‘Oh, Christ, I haven’t got a signal.’

‘Don’t panic,’ said David, ‘I have one of these satellite phones — they’re frightfully expensive, but they work pretty well anywhere. The colonel of the SAS is a friend of mine and I happen to know that he’s dining in London tonight.’

‘Isn’t that going a bit far?’ said Malcolm. ‘What we really need is a lift engineer.’

‘In an emergency always go straight to the top,’ said David firmly. ‘There’s no point in cutting corners.’

* * *

‘What direction do you see yourself taking the prize in?’ Jo asked Mr Wo, in a combative tone that suggested she was ready to fight any answer he gave, so it was no use trying to guess what she wanted to hear.

‘It’s a prize for literature,’ said Mr Wo. ‘I hope it will go in the direction of literature. My wife takes a great interest in these things. Personally I think that competition should be encouraged in war and sport and business, but that it makes no sense in the arts. If an artist is good, nobody else can do what he or she does and therefore all comparisons are incoherent. Only the mediocre, pushing forward a commonplace view of life in a commonplace language, can really be compared, but my wife thinks that “least mediocre of the mediocre” is a discouraging title for a prize,’ Mr Wo couldn’t help laughing.

Jo didn’t know where to begin. She disagreed with everything that Mr Wo had said, as well as with the assumptions behind everything he had said, but she was temporarily paralysed by the abundance of potential targets. Her hesitation gave Mr Wo the chance to speak again.

‘I am a little concerned,’ he said cheerfully, ‘our panna cotta with mixed woodland berries is about to arrive and there is still no sign of the chairman.’

‘I’m more than happy to take over,’ said Jo.

‘No need,’ said Mr Wo, ‘Tobias has already offered to “step up to the plate” — a baseball metaphor, I believe, which even your prime minister has started to favour over the “wicket”, such is the British enthusiasm for the Special Relationship.’

Jo stared incredulously at Tobias, who was leaning towards Penny, listening carefully to what she was saying.

‘Excuse me,’ said a timid voice behind Jo.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Robin Wentworth, the author of The Enigma Conundrum. I just wanted to take the opportunity of thanking you personally for putting me on the Short List.’

‘No need to thank me,’ said Jo, ‘your advocate was Penny Feathers. Why don’t you go and interrupt her. She looks to me as if she’s conspiring to pervert the course of justice.’

‘Congratulations on your Short Listing,’ said Mr Wo, shaking hands with Robin Wentworth. ‘As you can see, tempers run high among the judges. You could do us all a great favour by finding Malcolm Craig and Sir David Hampshire; we seem to have lost them.’

‘I have an idea,’ said Robin eagerly, ‘I saw them downstairs.’

‘Proper little boy scout,’ said Jo, as he set off.

‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Wo, ‘I must have a word with my wife.’

‘But you do realize,’ said Jo, ‘that we haven’t made a final decision yet.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Wo, ‘Penny explained everything. Maybe I will ask Vanessa if she could compromise a little.’

* * *

‘Hello!’ said Malcolm, spreading his arms to encompass the table. ‘I’m so sorry, we’ve been trapped in the lift. I do apologize, Mr Wo, Mrs Wo, all of you. It was a bit of a nightmare, especially for poor David. Just as we were about to despair, and David was on his satellite phone to a friend in the SAS, we were saved by one of the Short Listees. Naturally, we’d been pushing all the buttons we could lay our hands on, but for some reason he was able to call the lift from the first floor. It’s the strongest argument I’ve heard for including a thriller writer on the Short List. You wouldn’t find the author of The Frozen Torrent showing that sort of initiative.’

Malcolm glanced over to see the effect of his barb on Vanessa, but she was absorbed in listening to Mr Wo.