Lost for Words: A Novel Read online

  ‘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.’

  Malcolm could hear himself stumbling from one platitude to another, but there was nothing he could do beyond hoping to survive. What was it in his nature that destroyed these moments of potential triumph? Why had he made his fatal speech about Scottish independence when he appeared to be rising inexorably toward a cabinet post? Why had he proposed to two women on the same day and in the ensuing muddle lost both of them, although they had both accepted? Why had he not declared his interest in The Greasy Pole when the committee was considering it? He couldn’t think about it now, that flaw that made him throw away the game at the last moment. The one thing he knew was that he must stop talking about writing. Anything he said might be take
n down and used by the press when they exposed the Greasy Pole scandal. He glanced up and thought he could make out figures twitching over their phones. The story was probably breaking as he spoke, appearing on people’s screens around the room, and being discussed by the pundits back in the studio.

  ‘What we have offered the public is the opinions of five judges who were all asking themselves the same basic question: “Which one of these books could be enjoyed by the largest number of ordinary people up and down this country?”’

  How many times had he used that phrase in his political career? He was close to tears at the thought, but powerless to say anything meaningful.

  ‘When a journalist asked me what qualifications I had for this job…’

  Why had he said that? He was like a criminal returning to the scene of his crime.

  ‘What I told him was that I’d taken my lessons from the best teachers of all: the British people.’

  Flatter the audience, always works.

  ‘Now, if you would prefer to trust the opinion of one journalist who sets himself up as judge and jury and executioner for the entire prize, without having read all two hundred books we ploughed our way through, then be my guest.’

  Oh, God, the good old combative approach.

  ‘Before I make the final announcement, I want to thank my fellow judges for their … for their passionate dedication to the cause of literature. I’m quite sure that we shall remain friends, reminiscing fondly about the ups and downs of the selection process in the years to come.

  ‘I would also like to thank Sir David Hampshire, in the year of his retirement. David has been the power behind the prize, always close to hand, ready to smooth ruffled feathers, and offer the wisdom he draws from his vast wealth of experience.’

  Malcolm paused in vain for a round of applause.

  ‘And so, without further ado,’ he resumed, impulsively deciding that the public could do without any praise of the Short-Listed books or explanation of the committee’s final choice, ‘the winner of the 2013 Elysian Prize is The Palace Cookbook by Lakshmi Badanpur.’

  * * *

  John Elton snapped the stem of his wine glass.

  Jo smiled triumphantly at Vanessa’s empty seat.

  Alan stared down the well shaft of his empty panna-cotta ramekin.

  Penny decided that ultimately it was not her responsibility if Nicola chose to gamble with her savings, but that she would chip in something towards a new roof.

  Auntie let out a cry of unfeigned consternation. Camera lights were soon shining in her eyes and everyone at her table pressing forward to offer their congratulations. Yuri expressed his joy while reminding Auntie that she was under contract to Page and Turner.

  ‘Of course,’ she murmured, ‘my memoir … Oh, Sonny, I’m not sure I can manage.’

  ‘Of course you can. Remember who you are!’

  ‘I do remember who I am, but I don’t remember being a writer. Ah, Mansur, there you are. Please help me up, I’m feeling a little dizzy. Where have you been?’

  ‘I was near the stage, ready to do my duty; then I heard that your Highness had won and…’

  ‘Never mind all that,’ said Sonny.

  ‘Do his duty – what an earth does he mean?’

  ‘Auntie, you’re needed at the front!’

  To Sonny’s relief, a young woman with a walkie-talkie came up to Auntie.

  ‘Could you please come to the podium as quickly as possible, Lakshmi? We’ve cut to our panel of critics in the studio, but we’ve got the news coming up in twenty minutes, and obviously everyone is very keen to hear your speech.’

  ‘I only wish I were very keen to make it,’ said Auntie, ‘but to tell you the truth, I’m dreading it. Where is Didier? Oh, Didier, it was so kind of you to write that speech for me, but I’m not sure I completely understand it.’

  ‘Excellent!’ said Didier. ‘If you understood it, no doubt you would disagree, but this way you can deliver it with perfect sincerity!’

  Not entirely reassured, Auntie was led past dozens of tables where the words ‘absurd’ and ‘ridiculous’ seemed to be playing an unusually large part in the conversation. By the time she reached the lectern, she was so anxious that she wondered if she would be able to speak at all.

  ‘What is literature?’ she began, feeling that her voice was not her own. ‘What is this privilege we grant to certain verbal combinations, although they employ the very same words we use to buy our bread and count our money? Words are our slaves: they may be used to fetch a pair of slippers, or to build the great pyramid of Giza: they depend on syntax to make the order of the world manifest, to raise stones into arches and arches into aqueducts.

  ‘The Palace Cookbook forces the recognition of this truth through the play of irony and absence: the only authentic relationship modernity can have with the classical ideals of equilibrium and lucidity. By appearing to use language for the most banal purpose, for the maintenance of our material existence through eating, we are thrown into a crisis of meaning. Is this all there is to life? And yet slowly, through the hypnotic reiteration of quantities and ingredients: rice, water, flour, oil, ounces, pounds, cups and teaspoons, the author invokes, through their absence, the impossible ambitions of the highest art. Right from the beginning, in the title itself and in the Introduction, we are in the presence of this paradox. The Palace, we are told, is ruined, abandoned, lost, and yet it stands behind the Cookbook, just as the matrix of syntax stands behind the banality of the semantic corpus, ready to transform it into the scandal of excess and transgression of utility that is art!

  ‘When Foucault tells us, in The Order of Things…’

  Auntie couldn’t go on. She had no idea what Didier was driving at and felt that, whatever the consequences, she must tell the truth.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she resumed, ‘I want to thank Monsieur Didier Leroux for writing me such a clever speech and trying to make me a worthy recipient of this famous literary prize, but I have to say that I am a simple woman and that what I set out to do when I wrote The Palace Cookbook was to record as many recipes as possible before they were irrevocably lost. These recipes have been passed down from head cook to head cook over the centuries, but never written down, being treated as a kind of secret family knowledge. Fortunately we were able to interview the last cook, Babu Singh, a few months before he died. Despite being very old and completely blind, Babu had a perfect recall of the recipes and was able to recite them like verses, day after day for a week. The way of life that accompanied those dishes has gone for ever – the tiger hunts, the elephant fights, the stables with a hundred matching polo ponies, the six hundred household staff, and the very special relationship between a maharaja and his people, who looked to him as children look to their father: for kindness and advice. The palaces have fallen into disrepair, or been turned into hotels – but I hoped that perhaps I could bring the culinary art perfected over many generations to a more varied world, and preserve some of the splendour of that tradition by sharing it more widely.

  ‘Mr Malcolm Craig has told us that the novel is such a “varied” and “flexible” form, and yet no one could be more amazed than I am to discover that I have transformed my cookery book into a work of literature, simply by including one or two stories about some of our more colourful ancestors.

  ‘I want to thank the distinguished panel of judges for giving me this prize, and to say that I shall donate the money to the Badanpur Orphanage, of which I have the honour to be the Patron.’

  Auntie bowed to her audience and crossed the stage with quiet dignity, holding her sari a little raised as she walked cautiously down the steps, amidst a scattering of applause, tentative in places and fanatically enthusiastic in others.

  * * *

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Katherine, staring at the television from her bed, while Sam stared at her glowing skin from the pillow beside her, ‘that’s the book that Alan sent to the judges instead of Consequences.’

  ‘The world
’s gone mad,’ said Sam, leaning over to kiss her on the neck.

  ‘Listen to this,’ said Katherine. ‘It’s an interview with one of the judges’ daughters.’

  Sam turned to the screen and saw an angrylooking, middle-aged woman standing in front of a terraced house, with her arms folded across a thick sweater.

  ‘Yes, I’m saying that my mother told me to place a bet on wot u starin at. She gave me inside information and encouraged me to commit what would in effect have been fraud.’

  ‘But it wasn’t fraud, was it, because that book didn’t win?’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she didn’t try to cheat,’ said Nicola stubbornly, ‘it’s just another thing she isn’t any good at.’

  ‘Great,’ said Sam, relighting the joint. ‘Maybe there’ll be a retrial and we can both get Short-Listed and one of us can win. I don’t mind which one of us, that’s how madly in love I am.’

  ‘If you were madly in love, you’d want me to win,’ said Katherine.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ said Sam. ‘I think love is about equality: both of us equally happy with either result. One-sided self-sacrifice is only enabling someone else’s egoism. Altruists always end up riddled with resentment, or if they make that last superhuman effort, with spiritual pride.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Katherine, ‘you mean you’re not going to enable my egoism.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Sam ‘you’re right – love is doing everything you want all the time.’

  ‘Only because you want it too,’ said Katherine.

  ‘Hmm, the ever-popular merged volition,’ said Sam, ‘that can work, for about three weeks.’

  ‘Oh, look,’ said Katherine, lying down sideways, with her head in her hand, ‘it’s the mother of that woman.’

  Sam looked at Katherine, her fine shoulder blades, the line of her waist, the ridge of her hipbone, and her legs tapering into the sheets.

  ‘Amazing,’ he said.

  ‘She’s been told about her daughter,’ said Katherine.

  Sam looked back up at the television. Penny was still in the Banqueting Room, with the empty stage behind her.