The Returns by Philip Salom

Author:Philip Salom
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781925760262
Publisher: Transit Lounge

An hour later, rain over, wanting to be doing anything but this, he unpacks the plastic tarpaulin he had used as a drop cloth in the apartment and, on the stepladder, slowly drags it over the gable, covering the damaged roofing. He throws two ropes over the tarp and ties them down to four garden stakes he has found against her side fence. She must have been growing tomatoes in the abandoned bed.

Her anticipated literary night is not the old-style deal: one of the hyper-nights of dress-up and dinner. Not like the Oscars. Not any more the long nights of pre-dinner drinks, a big dinner, awards announcements and waywardly witty speeches from writers, sometimes catty speeches like Why the fuck hadn’t they won the prize before?

‘It was my chance to eat and drink at their expense,’ she had told Trevor.

‘But you don’t like eating,’ he replied.

‘A means of expression. It’s the attitude that counts.’

‘So what happens at these events now?’

‘Now it’s fucking canapés and bubbles.’

‘I want a full report.’

Still, it’s her chance to drink at their expense. And she does. During the presentations a right-wing historian no one had ever heard of is given a prize (when a politician intervened) and then stands and rants for twenty-five minutes without even being drunk. Elizabeth sees a so-called senior novelist who isn’t shortlisted for anything so must have been a judge. This man is welcoming and witty, sure to impress with anecdotes of things literary and famous people who … he’s a name-dropper. This famous figure had impressed her when she first met him, or met his charming manner, until she realised he was a younger-woman player.

There are many younger women.

This famous man is no longer, if he ever was, a conventional seducer. It’s reciprocal advantage: he fawns upon them and promotes them, and their fame keeps him in public view. Meanwhile, his books appear every few years, polished to the limits of his considerable facility, heavily mannered, because by now it is locked in, a personal style he cannot escape from. His characters all sound like him. Even his punctuation sounds like him.

The best work of fiction is by an attractive young woman for her debut novel, a startling new talent according to the Judges’ Report. She is writing about landscape and identity, a white person’s version of Country. Very topical, very young, very likely.

As a shortlisted writer who hasn’t won, Richard is ghosted at the exact moment the actual winner is announced. Years ago if writers and editors won they drank to celebrate, and if they lost they drank to drink. Now it sobers his publisher. It is all very well for poetry publishers to be impressed with a shortlisting but in the real world of fiction the author must win.

It had been a year between drinks with Richard, when he attended without having a book eligible. Part of seeing her. Now the way to transcend the night’s disappointment is with some lively and affectionate sex. They aren’t even in

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