This morning the phone rang at work. It was a friend who, coincidentally (yes I know publishing seems to be all about who you know, but knowing me will not get you far) is the author of book we are publishing next year, on a deadline, sitting in a café, whacking out the last few thousand words of her opus. I had no sooner transferred her to higher powers when there was a second call, this time from yet another member of the Networking Bookclub of Yesteryear whose book we are also publishing next year (are you sensing a trend yet?) wondering when Mr T was free for her to stop by and visit. I found her a window, and relayed the message through the glass ceiling, where Mr T raised his head and said: 'Ah, so you’re having lunch out today.' It was a statement not a question, and I wondered how he knew that yes, indeed I was having lunch that very day with yet another friend who had recently submitted a novel for our consideration.
You would be forgiven for thinking that I only know authors. In fact I only know these three authors. The rest of my friends are, apparently, in hiding.
Before I could ask how he had a hotline to my social life, he announced: 'We’ve just given her a three book deal.'
'Oh,' I said, as I walked out in pursuit of a J5 sized Jiffy Bag to cushion my envy, no no actually it was to put a couple of copies of Aravind Adiga's White Tiger, just longlisted for the Booker and as a result in demand by every publication in town from Large Cat Weekly to Albinos Today. But then I stopped, and went back into the office for a PS.
I must just say that it kind of pisses me off that you’ve published books by almost everyone else I know who can hold a pencil but you turned my book down.
Twice, I didn’t say, but stood there long enough for him, perhaps, to remember the serial occasions it languished on his desk before I came to work here.
He hesitated then offered a thoughtful, measured and very professional response – smiled and lifted both hands and gave me the v sign.
I replied in kind.
Not something you usually do to your boss on which your livelihood and salary (if not your publication) depends.
What are you complaining about? He asked. You’re at Waddling Duck and they’ve got the whole machinery going for them.
I’m just saying, that’s all.
And why shouldn’t I publish them. They’re all talented, driven, ambitious and very bright women. He said.
Not arguing with you, Mein Bookmeister, but, so what am I? Chopped, rarely driven, liver, lacking in ambition woman of a lesser talent?
Truthfully I’d rather have the job than the contract with dear old Pedantic Press, and God knows, I wouldn’t want to be competing with all these brainy women in the Key Title stakes in the same publishing meeting, but the pangs of inferiority are like a twist of lemon in the Grey Goose vodka of rejection which I can't stop knocking back.
And then I have to drag my lumpen self off to have lunch with the three book pink Cosmopolitan girl.
It’s made worse by the fact that she’s little and slim and perky and pretty and connected as well as beautifully dressed in a little silk skirt that flirts around her knees like a Cuban after a passport in a Havana dancehall, while I look like laundry.
I woke up that morning and decided I would wear my new white t-shirt. Then couldn’t find it. So, then I thought, okay I’ll wear the black dress, and the black dress was too tight, and so then I moved back to another t-shirt – a flesh coloured one which needs a flesh coloured bra. Beep. Also missing (we seem to have a somewhat communal attitude to undergarments in my house which I only hope does not extend to the male members of the family), and so I ended up in a skirt that looked like a potato sack and a shirt that dripped rather than draped. The flip flops just added ankles to insult. I was, frankly, surprised when the staff at the Wolsey didn’t stop me at the door and direct me on to the nearest homeless shelter.
But no, they directed me to a table where my lunch date sat with her other important asset. Her husband.
He was having lunch with a couple of high earning, well maintained women in high heels and too-tight clothes on one side of the restaurant and she was having lunch with Help The Aged me on the other. In between was Trevor McDonald and Edwina Curry and Howard Jacobson. Not all together, I may add, but sprinkled like salt on different tables.
She told me all about her books. I whipped out a picture of my cover the way I used to do with my children, with about as much admiration.
'Oh it looks lovely' (not mentioning the cradle cap, infantile excema and baldness) while they then get out the studio shots of their own offspring, taken by David Bailey, in which they’ve all got blonde curls and hand shirred antique christening gowns. Yours is in a baby gro with pudding on the front and drool in strings from their mouth, and naturally still isn’t sitting up at 8 months while theirs is already walking.
Oh groooooooooan.
Books are just as exhausting as babies, believe me.
She chattered prettily and cleverly and animatedly and charmingly while I slumped.
'I’m so sorry,' she said, 'this was supposed to be us being miserable together, but I’m so happy about my books.'
'Oh I’m not miserable,' I said, defensively, making an effort to smile which turned me into a sort of Cheri Blair novelty bottle opener.
It used to be in youth that the danger was drinking and dialing, you know, the itchy finger in the taxi on the way home when you decided you really have to ring the ex-boyfriend and tell him how much you love him, despite the fact that you haven’t seen him in 12 years and the last communication you had from him was a restraining order.
However, now, in the absence of old boyfriends, or indeed new boyfriends, it’s drinking and dishing you have to beware of.
And this is how I start blabbing:
She sympathised.
'No, I’m fine really, absolutely fine,' I added, the voice faltering, the words disappearing into that hole between thought and speech and emerging like bad reception on the World Service from a wind up radio.
Nevertheless I had a lovely lunch, then I plodded like a yeti up Bond Street, stopping to try on clothes in Jigsaw that made me look, if anything, worse than I did in the clothes I was already wearing, but in wrap around mirrors.
Why did I need to do that?
Wasn’t I feeling bad enough without going into the changing room?
Apparently not.
