Carnage on the Committee (3 page)

'Like that advertising idiot who spends hundreds of thousands of pounds buying up piles of dirty laundry - knickers they've called "Journey's End" or "Finder's Keepers". That kind of thing?'

'That kind of thing.'

The baroness blew a smoke-ring. 'I had a most enjoyable fight about him last week on a TV programme. With Den Smith, as it happens. Den, of course, so much believes that ugliness is truth, that he'd rather art galleries showed pickled hedgehogs than Michelangelo's "David". He called me a dinosaur.' She smiled and picked up her whisky glass.

'So you called him?'

'A dung beetle. He seemed quite vexed.'

'Augers well. Anyway, Knapper leaped upon the War-burton with cries of glee, renamed it Knapper-Warburton and, because he's the mega-ambitious sod he is, decided it had to be the biggest and best prize ever. Big-money literary prize. Jack. His equivalent of rocks. Got him to the dinner tables of the literati.'

'Who wants to get to their dinner tables? They don't know anything about food. Look at Iris Murdoch. Ate dog food. And not even decent home-made dog food. Tinned. Probably drank bad wine as well.' 'So,' said Amiss wearily, 'once Hermione won the prize he consulted her on how to make it famous. She took him under her wing, he made her chair . . .'

'What!'

'Sorry, chairman, and all our present problems stem from that. Do you want to know the state of play?'

'No.'

A familiar small figure darted into the room, strode down to their table and clapped Amiss on the back. 'Good to see you, Robert. Can't stop. Ida's got to take off for Cambridge at six tomorrow so I'd better get her home to bed. Have you finished?'

'No, I haven't, Myles. I've been trying to persuade her to do something but she won't listen properly and I need an answer tonight.'

Myles Cavendish gazed sternly at the baroness. 'If Robert wants you to do it, Ida, you must do it.'

'Why?'

'Because he's your friend and he always does the things you want him to do. It's a matter of honour.'

She drained her glass. 'In that case, of course I'll do it. Now why didn't you say that, Robert? I thought you were supposed to be good at handling me.'

'I was about to try the throwing-myself-on-your-mercy gambit.'

She yawned noisily. 'Honour's quicker. I'll pick you up at six-thirty tomorrow and you can tell me all about it on the way down to Cambridge.'

As she began shouting for the bill, Cavendish looked at Amiss and winked.

2

'Are you ready?'

'Up, dressed and waiting. Jack. Where are you?'

'Hammersmith Bridge. With you in five minutes. Find your umbrella and wait outside.' The phone went dead and, fretfully. Amiss dialled her back. 'I won't wait outside. You'll want to see Plutarch. And what's more you claimed recently that you wished to see where I'm living now.'

'Did I? To check you've improved on the hostel you used to call home? Not the
House Beautiful
tour, though. I've no time to waste. Be ready.'

He was checking his e-mails when the bell rang. As he hastily scanned a message from Geraint Griffiths, the ringing went on and on until, cursing, he leaped from his chair, ran to the buzzer, pressed it and dashed out into the hall.

'Is Plutarch on parade?' she shouted, as she banged the front door behind her.

'Sssshhhhh!' said Amiss, wondering why he was bothering.

'What are you sssshhhhhing for?'

He ran back into his flat, waited until she was in and shut the door gently. 'I was sssshhhhhing in the vain hope that you would remember that not everyone in the vicinity wants to be woken up at six-thirty. But of course I'd forgotten what you've told me often enough.'

She nodded approvingly. 'When I'm up, everyone should be up. Now where is she?'

Plutarch arrived in a whirl of ginger and launched herself at the baroness, who staggered, nearly fell, but recovered herself gamely and scooped the cat into her arms. 'What have you got I can give her? I forgot to bring anything.'

'You should seek to have a relationship free of bribes.'

'Bollocks. Plutarch's a cat. Cats have no sentiment. She's glad to see me because she associates me with pleasure. Get me something. Cats shouldn't be let down.'

'I haven't anything suitable.'

She strode into the kitchen and yanked open the door off his refrigerator. 'Bugger all here. No wonder you're so thin. You need a woman to put meat on your bones. Get Rachel back.'

Plutarch lunged at the top shelf. 'Ah, yes. Clever girl. Sausages.' She handed the packet to Amiss. 'No time to cook it. Get the meat out of two of these and mould them into bite-size pieces.'

As he was wrestling with his task she looked disapprovingly at the label. 'These are unfit for feline consumption. You should never have sausages made from anything except Tamworths. No other pig is worth eating.'

Amiss handed her a few balls off sausage meat. Plutarch, who up to now had been behaving exceptionally politely, snatched one rudely from the baroness's grasp, leaped to the floor and tucked in.

The baroness looked at Amiss disapprovingly. 'I'm surprised she's survived this long if you're feeding her such inferior food.'

'That's what I eat.'

'Quite.'

Plutarch finished her first course and was given three more in quick succession. Then the baroness pulled a vast handkerchief out of her Gladstone bag, wiped her hands energetically and turned back to Amiss. 'Are you ready?'

'The flat. You wanted to see it.'

She threw a glance around the living room. 'Is there a decent garden for Plutarch?'

'Yes. Small but secluded. I regret to say she plays merry hell with our feathered friends. I do not enjoy dealing with the corpses.'

'Tough. Nature's nature. Plutarch has to have her fun. Now come on, come on, we haven't got all day.'

Amiss picked up his coat. 'Christ, Jack, I'm not exactly house-proud, but you made such a song and dance about my buying somewhere decent that I'd have thought you'd have a passing interest in what I bought.'

She shrugged. 'It's all right. Indeed a signal improvement on that hideous place you were renting. But you need more bookshelves. It's a tip.'

'Those piles are Warburton contestants. I'll be getting rid of most of them at the first opportunity.'

'And do something about pictures. And get some decent rugs. Then it'll do as a transient stop before you make millions from your novel and move into a Georgian crescent. Have you finished it yet?'

'I only started it last month.'

'What's holding you up?'

'The bloody Warburton for starters.'

Plutarch, who had been yowling lustfully, leaped back into the baroness's arms in search of more sausage. The baroness dropped her unceremoniously. 'That's it, Plutarch. Can't stop any longer. See you shortly. Someone I must introduce you to. I'd take you with me now if I had a Mickey Finn to keep you quiet on the journey.'

Amiss looked at the baroness suspiciously as he closed the door. 'Whom do you want to introduce her to?'

'That would be telling. You'll meet him. At St Martha's.'

'A dog, presumably. Or an ailurophobe.'

'Better than that.' She skipped out of the front door grinning, dashed down the steps through the rain, pointed her key at the car, clicked the remote control and dived into the driver's seat. 'Are you impressed?' she demanded, as Amiss climbed in 'I'm becoming technological.'

'What brought that on?'

'Myles convinced me that it was in my interests.'

'You two seem very Darby-and-Joanish at the moment,' said Amiss, as he buckled his seat belt. 'Are you settling down?'

'I'm too young to settle down.' She revved up the engine. 'Told Myles I might marry him when I'm eighty and have sown enough wild oats. Vrooom, vrooom,' she carolled, as the car took off. 'Now, to business. Is it settled? I presume you'd have got round to telling me if they didn't want me.'

'How am I supposed to settle something like that between midnight and six a.m.?'

'I thought this was urgent.'

'Well, actually, I have. Georgie Prothero ...'

'Who?'

'The PR guy who's in charge of the Warburton.'

'What an extraordinary name. Sounds like a lovelorn 1930s provincial draper.'

'Well, he's certainly keen on clothes.'

'Woofdah?'

'Very much so, though restrained when on duty.'

'The supply of heterosexuals seems to be completely drying up. No wonder I stick with Myles.'

'Except when you're being a lesbian.'

'Except when I'm being a lesbian. But I'd be much

less a lesbian if there were more available men. Doesn't mean I approve of woofdahs. They spoil things for us by turning real men into pansies.' The brakes screamed as the lights ahead turned red, and the car juddered to a halt. Amiss squeezed his hands together tightly and mentally rehearsed his painfully acquired techniques for getting through a journey with Jack Troutbeck. There was no point in cajoling, begging or warning.

Rule One: pretend not to notice she's driving fast or recklessly or you'll encourage her.

'Anyway, Georgie was on after we parted last night and reported that Ron Knapper was thrilled to bits that you've agreed.'

'You mean he'd heard of me?'

'He recognised your name, but fortunately didn't know what he knew about you, if you follow me. If he did, he probably wouldn't have wanted you; I can't imagine you are the toast of the literary dinner parties he so enjoys. But he's delighted to have a peeress . . .' There was a deafening blast of her horn and the car in front took off at high speed.

'Imbecile,' she shouted at its rear. 'Were you asleep?'

Rule Two: never remonstrate about bad behaviour;she won't know what you 're talking about.

'He's delighted to have a peeress and college mistress all in one and what's more . ..' As the lights ahead turned orange to red, she accelerated and raced through.

Rules Three, Four and Five: keep repeating Rule One.

'What's more, he's in no position to be choosy, since Georgie also reported that it's beginning to look as if Hermione may have been murdered.'

'Really? You've taken rather a long time to impart that not uninteresting titbit.'

'I was seeking the right moment. Didn't want to upset you.'

The baroness snorted. 'I'm not upset. There were times when I'd have murdered the bloody woman myself if I weren't too busy.'

'Just because she wanted to get rid of titles?'

'Just because of her disdainful upper lip. When she spoke in the Lords she had a way of looking at us as if we were something Plutarch had dragged in through the cat-flap that riled me not a little. I don't mind people being superior if they've got something to be superior about, but Hermione was rich because of her husband, titled because she sucked up to New Labour and gave them some of William's money, and distinguished because her literary cronies puffed her.'

'She did win the Warburton.'

'Bet you anything you like the judges included some ex-lovers, social climbers and the superciliati.'

'Superciliati is right,' cried Amiss, in sudden anger. 'The way she banned genre novels was a disgrace.'

'What novels?'

'Crime, science fiction, fantasy, romance, comedy -anything that you find in publishers' lists separated from pure literary fiction.'

'But that would have excluded Wilkie Collins or Conan Doyle.'

'Or Jonathan Swift or Tolkien or probably Jane Austen.'

'Or Wodehouse. Didn't you make that point?'

'As forcefully as I could, but she had most of the others completely onside. Wysteria looked dubious for a moment, but...'

'Who?'

'Wysteria Wilcox. Come on. Jack. You've heard of her. Lady Wysteria Wilcox, author of those short, plaintive novels about angst-ridden, wounded lady toffs nurturing hopeless passions for unsuitable, uncaring brutes well below their station. And a poisonous bitch on the side.'

That doe-eyed cretin isn't Lady Wysteria Wilcox. For one thing, her first name is Trixie. And for another, she's Lady Wilcox, not Lady Wysteria, or even Lady Trixie, as she wasn't an earl's daughter. Just married one.' As the rain became heavier, she increased the speed of the windscreen wipers but did not decrease that of the car.

'I didn't realise you were such a stickler for etiquette. You'll be complaining any minute that you've wrongly been preceded into dinner by the second cousin of a marquess.'

'I'm a stickler when it suits me. And it suits me when someone I despise as much as Trixie operates under false pretences. She was a contemporary of mine and she was bad then, but she's got worse. How she got anyone to marry her - let alone an earl - beats me. She had all the sex appeal of a bag of golf dubs.'

'Whatever her other deficiencies, you can't blame the poor bloody woman for changing her name from Trixie. After all, you changed yours from Ida.'

'I wouldn't, if she hadn't changed it to Wysteria.'

Amiss grimaced. 'Fair enough. Still, for literary purposes I suppose it's an improvement. Anyway, Trixie, a.k.a. Wysteria, a.k.a. Lady Wilcox, also backed Hermione, on the grounds that we must eschew populism in favour of the spirit. Or some such guff. Geraint Griffiths was so keen to narrow the field in the interests of his candidate that he'd have excluded George Eliot, and nearly all the others went along with it because of intellectual snobbery. When I objected, Hermione looked down her nose at me and said, "I am the chair and I have spoken." There wasn't any point in fighting a battle with only one ally, and that one petrified and inarticulate.'

The baroness had stopped listening, and to Amiss's alarm, had turned round ninety degrees and was waving her left hand around impassionedly. 'What is
Macbeth
but a murder story?
Romeo and Juliet
but a romance?
A Midsummer Night's Dream
but a fantasy? What was the silly bitch on about?'

Rule Six: when her eyes are off the road and she's looking at you, show no fear or she'll dally to find out what's wrong with you.

'Couldn't agree with you more, Jack.' She turned her attention back to driving and Amiss breathed more freely. 'Still, I don't know why you're surprised at all this. It's snobbery, pure and simple. I've learned to my cost that the fashionable literati - at least the fashionable literati I've been exposed to - are like that. Can't bear to say a good word for anything the plebs like, so they sneer at their authors. You should have heard the committee when Harry Potter was mentioned.'