Edward Aubyn - Lost for Words

‘Sorry, but Tobias won’t budge,’ said Penny, leaning over to Malcolm. ‘He’s in a bate because when we couldn’t find you, Mr Wo asked him to stand in, and he’s spent the whole of dinner composing an “utterly brilliant” speech.’

‘Christ!’ said Malcolm. ‘He’s only ever attended one meeting! I suppose I’ll have to announce joint winners.’

‘Please sit down,’ said Mrs Wo to David, ‘you must be exhausted. What did your army friend say when you rang from the lift?’

‘He told me,’ said David, pausing to take a gulp of water, ‘to bugger off and call an engineer.’

‘Oh, dear, how unfortunate,’ said Mrs Wo, with a perfectly judged laugh that contained no mockery, only relief and sympathy.

‘I must get something inside me before my speech,’ said Malcolm.

‘No hurry,’ said Mrs Wo, ‘you have eighteen minutes. Perhaps some dessert and a small glass of wine.’

‘Quickest way to raise the old blood sugar,’ said Malcolm, knocking back a glass of wine and working his way swiftly through a little tub of panna cotta and woodland berries.

The prospect of being on national television, and having three or four minutes of it exclusively to himself — longer than a prime minister on the news during a major crisis — which in some ways, or more precisely, in every way, had been Malcolm’s motivation for accepting the job as chairman of the Elysian Prize, was now turning into a persecution and a potential source of humiliation. He had written a speech with two possible endings, one printed in green for the victory of wot u starin at and one written in red for the victory of The Palace Cookbook . Now he would have to improvise a merger of these two endings and present the resulting train wreck as some kind of cultural triumph. He quickly devoured a second panna cotta, abandoned by Penny during her negotiations with Tobias.

Mr Wo was about to ask Malcolm for a quiet word, when a woman with a belt full of brushes approached and said it was time to do his make-up.

‘Just a moment,’ said Malcolm, hoping Wo had some good news.

‘We can’t discuss this — for obvious reasons,’ said Mr Wo, smiling and tilting his head discreetly towards the television camera aimed at them across the table. ‘Apparently, the broadcaster employs lip-readers in case someone indiscreetly names the winner in public.’

‘I understand,’ said Malcolm, smiling back at him while accepting an envelope.

‘I finally persuaded Vanessa to commit.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said Malcolm.

He couldn’t look inside until he was out of range of the cameras, and the moment he left the Banqueting Room, the make-up artist immediately sat Malcolm down in the corridor and started to pat his face with a sponge and then dust it with a soft brush. He instinctively closed his eyes, holding the envelope tightly in his lap.

‘I’m sure that’ll be fine,’ he said impatiently.

‘Almost finished,’ said the make-up artist, but as soon as she had stepped back to admire her work, a young woman with a walkie-talkie came over and said, ‘Three minutes.’

‘I really must have some time to myself,’ said Malcolm, ‘to…’ he hesitated to say ‘find out who’s won’ and so he settled on ‘gather my resources’.

‘I completely understand,’ said the young woman. ‘Don’t forget to breathe slowly.’

‘Why?’

‘It helps you to relax.’

‘I don’t need to relax! I just need a moment alone ,’ said Malcolm.

‘I totally understand, I’ll leave you now and come back in about two minutes.’

* * *

Vanessa suddenly couldn’t bear it any longer. She knew that she had voted out of spite and anger and she felt ashamed of herself.

‘Excuse me,’ she said to David Hampshire, who was about to repeat the crushing remark he had made to the Spanish ambassador after he claimed that Britain was nothing but ‘a small island clinging to small islands’.

Vanessa hurried towards the door she had seen Malcolm go through. Out in the corridor she spotted him sitting on a chair, next to a temporary control centre, with a console of dials and knobs being checked by two men in headphones. As Vanessa approached, a young woman with a walkie-talkie blocked her path.

‘I’m sorry but this area is restricted during the broadcast,’ she said.

‘But I have to speak to Malcolm Craig,’ said Vanessa.

‘He’s specifically asked to be alone. I’m afraid you’ll have to talk to him after the announcement.’

‘But I’m on the committee,’ said Vanessa. ‘He’s about to make the wrong announcement.’

‘I very much doubt that,’ said the young woman, ‘he’s the chair of the judges and whoever you are, I’m quite sure he knows more about what’s going on than you do. Now, I’m going to have to ask you to leave, please.’

Vanessa did not move, but a man with ginger hair and a black T-shirt came over and said, ‘One minute,’ to the woman with the walkie-talkie.

‘Okay, I’m going to take him in. Could you accompany this lady back to the Banqueting Room?’

‘Malcolm!’ Vanessa cried out in despair, but when he glanced in her direction, Malcolm looked straight through her and continued towards the door that led to the far end of the Banqueting Room.

* * *

Watching Malcolm labour up the steps to the stage, Penny was assailed by guilt and anxiety. Why had she ever encouraged Nicola to place a bet? Vanessa had disappeared before Penny had time to find out her final decision, and Mr Wo refused to ‘spoil the surprise’ by telling her the result. Fingers crossed all would be well, but if things didn’t go her way, Penny’s moral dilemma was whether to refund Nicola’s original bet, or refund the sum Nicola would have won if Penny had provided her with an accurate tip. Perhaps she could get away with not refunding her at all. A gamble was a gamble, after all.

* * *

As Malcolm arrived on the stage, he paused a moment to allow the toastmaster to do his job.

‘‘Your Excellencies, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, pray silence for the Right Honourable Malcolm Craig, MP, Chair of the 2013 Elysian Prize.’

Malcolm spread his speech on the lectern, and put on his reading glasses with an air of unhurried self-assurance, smiling at the room he assumed was still there, although it was lost in the glare of the television lights. He had already been feeling a strange disquiet as he climbed to the stage, something much more menacing than the familiar strain of public speaking; now that he had to begin his speech, there was a surge in the strength of his anxiety. He could hear a high-pitched humming in his ears, and his body was throbbing, as if it had become a kettledrum for his pounding heart. What was going on? An electric tingling washed over his skin and he wondered if he was about to faint. With self-fulfilling dread he realized that he was experiencing stage fright for the first time. He had spent his professional life queuing up for a presidential slice of airtime, but now that he had what he thought he wanted, it felt like a primal threat to his existence.

‘I used to think,’ he began, knowing these were the opening words of his speech, but when he looked down at the page he felt utterly disconnected from the text in front of him.

The hall remained silent, apart from a few coughs and some ill-mannered conversation from people who weren’t even pretending to listen.

‘With a product as varied and flexible and, eh, slippery as the novel,’ Malcolm improvised, ‘there’s nothing to grab hold of.’ He clutched the podium, feeling that everyone knew that he was really talking about his vertigo and expected him to fall over at any moment.

‘You can talk about relevance,’ he said, grateful to Jo for the first time since he’d met her, ‘or, um, the human condition, or … eh, style, yes, writing style; but in the end it’s all a matter of personal taste.’