Last night I had a little reading for the Kensington Ladies at The Brompton Library at which I arrived with trepidation. After my last reception in Pylon-land, I was fearful that this group too would be less than complimentary about my dear book, but with received pronounciation and very well coiffed hair.
I needn't have worried. They don't shoot authors, yet, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Library system and everyone was unfailingly polite.
I sat down on my lone chair with everyone facing me, feeling like I was at an interview for a job I had absolutely no hope of getting, and began to read, my voice trembling like a octogenarian on day release from the old folk's home. I fixed my eyes on the page, stumbling and stammering, thinking where are you now SUPER bloody MARION, get the hell out here and perform. Where's your inner Mariella? Where's your Marjorie? I can't imagine them sitting upstairs in a branch library reading in a monotone, all put following their finger across the page.
At the end I raised my head and looked around the room. A man in the back row was already asleep. Another man, a rather handsome, silver haired banker type (with a house no doubt 'cradled in the smug arms of The Boltons' (Picasso said when you start liking your own work you should give up, I can only imagine what he thought of quoting yourself) glared at me, studiously unimpressed.
My water glass was empty. I drank from it anyway.
'Would you like us to tell you what we thought?' asked one of the ladies in the second row.
'Not especially, actually, if you want the truth. The last time I did this it was a bit of a trial by fire. But if you want to ask questions?'
...and they were off.
One didn't like the 'Mills and Boon bit' but liked the thriller part. She didn't however think the heroine needed to be quite so hard on the daughter. 'That's what teenagers are like...' she said, imploringly. 'Is that how you feel about children?'
'Well I've four of my own so, no...' (I've four of my own so, yes...) I said and thought simultaneously.
She smiled sadly, her pretty Felicity-Kendal face troubled by my missopedia [I asked around the office for the word for someone who hates children. 'A mother?' Mathilda helpfully supplied - so I had to resort to that highly scientific reference engine - Yahoo Answers... no doubt you'll tell the correct term...]
Her son is a non-fiction editor at Fourth Estate, she whispered to me at the end, so I think it's safe to say I wont be submitting my ground breaking study "Quantum Processes in Semiconductors" (the real title of a book that someone offered today) any time soon.
'I did enjoy it,' she said hurriedly. 'But it's really a thriller and the cover makes it look like chic lit.'
Another lady thought the lack of maternal feeling in the novel 'refreshing' and yet another lady in the front row nodded off.
It was very hot. My cheeks were flushed, my palms were sweating, my water glass was still empty, it was still only five past seven. I was running out of things to say. They had run out of questions. The sleeper in the back row woke up and left with a lout slam of the door and another person crept in late.
'Jana!' I wailed, seeing that the, obviously highly intelligent and deeply prescient latecomer, was a woman I have known for 25 years.
'Thank god you were late, if you had come any earlier, I would have choked - how did you find out about it?'
'I saw a poster of you with very red cheeks in my local library. Let's go and have a drink,' she hissed when the ladies had clapped charmingly and I could finally, finally, finally shut-up (though silver fox was still looking extremely stern).
'Nuts?' she asked, half an hour later from the bar of the Portobello Gold.
'I'm beginning to think so,' I answered.
