Waiting for Booker

In the last few hours of breathless anticipation and gossip before the Booker Prize announcement is made, I’m guessing this is what it feels like to be a Nominee:

CONTENDER ONE (feted novelist, but first-time nominee suffering from pre-Booker nerves): (giving up) Nothing to be done.

CONTENDER TWO (shortlist veteran, never won the prize yet):
(advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I’ve tried to put it from me, saying, be reasonable, you haven’t yet tried everything. The Kiriyama Pacific-Rim, the Pricks Femina, the Betty Trask. And I resumed the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to CONTENDER ONE.) So there you are again.

CONTENDER ONE:
Am I?

CONTENDER TWO (to Contender Three, who won the Booker many years ago but hasn’t won since):
I’m glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.

CONTENDER ONE (sourly, the critics have been comparing her novel unfavourably with Contender Three’s “elegant, soaring symphony on the soul-stirring necessity of apathy”):
Me too.

CONTENDER THREE (brimming with bonhomie, he wants to win the Booker again but on the other hand his advance for this book knocked Contender Two’s $$$s to flinders):
Together again at last! We’ll have to celebrate this. But how? (He reflects.) Get up till I embrace you.

CONTENDER TWO:
(irritably). Not now, not now.

CONTENDER ONE (eyeing Contender Three, speculating on the quantity of champagne already quaffed [considerable] and whether or not he boffed the comeliest of the Booker judges, who happens to be a man, but that’s beside the point [he did, way back when the longlist came out–Contender Three is, after all, a veteran at these things]):
(hurt, coldly). May one inquire where His Highness spent the night?

CONTENDER THREE (winking, nudging and generally gesturing in the direction of London’s ponciest hotel, if you look closely you’ll see he’s indicating the Presidential Suite):
In a ditch.

CONTENDER TWO (not experienced enough to have boffed Booker judges himself, but certainly experienced enough to Get It):
(admiringly). A ditch! Where?

CONTENDER THREE (Indicating a broad cluster of critics gossiping in the corner, leaving it open to Contenders One and Two whether he’s boffed them as well [actually, only one, but it didn’t work out too well, he wasn’t on form, and she gave him a bad review in, and out, of bed]):
(without gesture). Over there.

CONTENDER ONE (who still treats critics with awe, poor dear, she’ll know better in a few years):
And they didn’t beat you?

CONTENDER THREE:
Beat me? Certainly they beat me.

CONTENDER TWO (affecting boredom, as behoves a man whose book was called an honourable failure by six critics from different papers on the same day):
The same lot as usual?

CONTENDER THREE:
The same? I don’t know.

(Beckettian silence. It could have been a Kafkaesque silence, but it changed its mind at the last moment. The three Contenders eye one another with furtive but distinct hatred. Contender One wants to be a Booker-winning author, like Contender Three; Contender Three rather fears the judges might give it to Contender Two out of pity this year; and Contender Two knows that Contender One’s sales after the shortlist announcement were much higher than his.)

Enter Boy, timidly. He halts.
BOY:
Mister . . . ?

CONTENDERS ONE AND TWO (eagerly):
Yes.

CONTENDER THREE:
What do you want?

CONTENDER TWO (realising he may have been a tad over-eager):
Approach!

The Boy does not move.

CONTENDER THREE:
(forcibly). Approach when you’re told, can’t you?
The Boy advances timidly, halts.

CONTENDER TWO:
What is it?
BOY:
Mr. Booker . . .

CONTENDER ONE (asserting herself, she’s let these patriarchal sods run the conversation far too long):
Obviously . . . (Pause.) Approach.
CONTENDER THREE:
(violently, this may be his last chance to win the bloody thing again, he has writer’s block with the new book). Will you approach! (The Boy advances timidly.) What kept you so late?

CONTENDER TWO:
You have a message from Mr. Booker?
BOY:
Yes Sir.

BOY:
Mr. Booker—

CONTENDER THREE:
I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?
CONTENDERS ONE AND TWO (violently)
Shut up!

CONTENDER TWO (muttering)
Words, words. (Pause.) Speak.

Silence.

BOY:
(in a rush). Mr. Booker told me to tell you there won’t be a prize this evening but surely tomorrow.

Silence.

CONTENDER THREE:
Tomorrow?

BOY:
Yes sir.

(It begins to dawn on all three contenders that Someone Else has won, one of those outrageous Dark Horses who’s always on the shortlist for humorous effect.)

CONTENDER ONE:
It’s not worthwhile now.

Silence.

CONTENDER TWO:
No, it’s not worthwhile now.

Silence.

CONTENDER ONE (to CONTENDERS TWO AND THREE):
Er. Your trousers are down.

CONTENDER TWO and CONTENDER THREE:
That’s so the press knows where to aim when they kick us in the pants tomorrow.

CONTENDER THREE:
Well, shall we go?

CONTENDER ONE:
Yes, let’s go.

They do not move.