Making the Cat Laugh (28 page)

Of course I became an expert on horse-flesh years ago, when I avidly consumed books such as
Jill Enjoys Her Ponies
. Also, I spent many childhood Sunday afternoons ‘treading in’ (stamping on divots) between chukkas at a nearby polo club. Yet I had a strange feeling that it was my body, not my equine expertise, that Raoul was really after. The O’Flaherty triplets are all notorious womanizers, but Raoul is the best lover of the three, ranked number eight in the world! Raoul clearly wanted to pluck me from my flat, lavish all sorts of sexual attention on me, drive me wild with jewels and frocks, and drop hilarious innuendoes about the thrill of goal-scoring. What on earth was a girl to do?

Well, the string bag is much better now, you will be relieved to hear. The currants are tucked in neatly behind the prunes. But I am seriously wondering what to do with this copy of Jilly Cooper’s Polo, which seems to be the source of the trouble. What do other women do in these circumstances? As a mere novice to the so-called bonk-buster novel (obliged to read
Polo
for purely professional reasons) I had no idea it would fill my world with rich, good-looking blokes with strong brown arms akimbo. I poke through my jewellery and can’t believe my eyes. What, no perfect emeralds, gift of an infatuated millionaire? No diamonds? How can it be true that my only ring is the one I bought for a fiver in a place called Mousehole? Thank goodness the Freudian heyday is a thing of the past.

Of course I am not the ideal reader for a bonk-buster novel, because I am not married. I am free to get excited in the polo tournament bits (‘Come on, you brave little ponies!’) and to salivate openly during the sex scenes, whereas the target reader will be a married woman on a beach somewhere, obliged to disguise her reactions for the benefit of the husband (not rich, not handsome, and can’t tell a divot from a hole in the ground). While reading, she controls her breathing, tries not to perspire too visibly, and occasionally breaks off during a particularly juicy bit to say offhandedly ‘Not very good, this, actually’, before plunging back again and memorizing the page number for later on.

For me personally, on the other hand, Polo recalled all those
Jill and Her Ponies
books I used to read when I was ten. Who will win the silver cup? Will the pony rescued from cruelty turn into the best little pony in the world? This jolly gymkhana stuff made me feel quite young again, but it also made me wonder whether the Jill in question grew up to become Jilly in later life. It is not impossible. After all, the fictional Jill’s mother was a writer – but an unsuccessful one who clearly overlooked the bankable nature of her own daughter’s pony-mad
activities. Poor Jill was obliged to wear second-hand jodhpurs to the Pony Club Gymkhana, which is just the sort of indignity (in bonk-busters, anyway) that makes an ambitious girl grow up aching for a shot at some serious dosh.

I am not sure, in retrospect, that we were supposed to despise Jill’s mum for being a hopeless breadwinner. In fact, I used to think it was sweet that when the pig-tailed Jill came home on summer afternoons – all dusty from a hack on Black Boy, all worried about where the next curry-comb was coming from – there would be Mother, leaning out of the window of their little cottage, excitedly waving a small piece of paper. ‘A cheque!’ she would yell. ‘I’ve sold a story in London!’ And my heart would leap. ‘Saddle up Black Boy again, Jill,’ Mother would say. ‘Today we’ll have buns for tea!’

Such innocence. It makes you feel all old and jaded and peculiar. True, I always shout ‘Buns for tea!’ when a cheque arrives in the post, but it is heavily ironic, since I know perfectly well that the money will only service the overdraft, or go half-way towards some car insurance (buns doesn’t come into it). But I prefer the world of ‘Buns for tea!’ to the casual purchase of Renoirs and Ferraris to be found in Polo. Cream puffs evidently mean nothing on the international polo circuit; teacakes make them laugh.

I think this is why, in the end, I turned down Raoul’s tempting offer of the Palm Beach trip. So what, if these polo people are good at jewels and orgasms, if they are blind to the value of an honest barm cake? Of course, memory may be playing tricks here: perhaps Jill and her mum sang ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ in the evenings, while flipping through glossy magazines for pictures of rich people. Perhaps they would have killed for a chance to fly off to the world of Cartier and great sex, leaving the second-hand jodhpurs in a heap on the ground. In which case, when Raoul O’Flaherty came to call, perhaps I made a rather large mistake.

A few years ago, I met a dynamic woman journalist who told me she was keen to launch a new daily paper aimed at a female readership. Unfortunately for the ensuing discourse, our meeting took place at the wrong end of a highly boozy book-award dinner, at that delirious point in the evening when you start to pass out in your chair, and think hey, that’s nice, everyone’s a bunny rabbit. So when this charismatic woman mentioned the newspaper idea, I couldn’t think how to react, except with boundless enthusiasm. ‘Great,’ I shouted, so loudly that other people looked round. ‘Brilliant, I mean, brilliant,’ I added, in a whisper, and knocked back another glass of port as if to show how brilliant I thought it really was. ‘Er, how would it be different exactly? What would you put in?’ ‘Well, the main thing is this,’ she said. ‘It’s what you
take out.’
I smiled in a vague what’s-she-talking-about kind of way and concentrated for a couple of minutes on trying to rest my chin on my hand, without success. ‘All right, what do you take out?’ I slurred at last, leaning forward. ‘You take out the sport,’ she said.

I never saw this woman again, but I often think of her. Until I met her, I would never have dared to assert that sport was uninteresting to all (or most) women; I just thought I had a blind spot. But now, when I open my
Times
in the morning, flipping the second section adroitly into the bin (only to rescue it later with a stifled scream and a flurry of soggy tea-bags when I remember the arts pages), I know I am not alone. Similarly, when the
Today
programme reaches twenty-five past the hour (‘Now, time for sport’) and I rush about for precisely five minutes doing the noisy jobs such as bath-running and kettle-boiling, I am confident that countless other people are doing the same. And finally, when a programme such as
Sports Review
of
the Year
soaks up two hours of BBC1 peak-time on a Sunday night, I happily regard it as a gap in the schedule, and read a book. Fran Lebowitz spoke for me and for millions, I quite believe, when she said the only thing she had in common with sports fanatics was the right to trial by jury.

I mention all this because on Sunday I eschewed the usual literary treat and forced myself to watch
Sports Review
instead. I had heard about the time-honoured award for BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and envisaged it as a bit of a laugh, with household-name sports heroes lined up in swimsuits and sashes (‘Mister Cricket’, ‘Mister 100 Metres’ and so on) trying to impress Desmond Lynam with their breadth of hobbies and love of travel, and nervously pushing back their tiaras as they paraded at the end. Of course, it turned out to be much less interesting than that, with lots of unidentifiable sports people got up like funeral directors, but it did conclude quite as oddly, when Nigel Mansell (the winner, a racing driver) addressed the viewer at home and said that he would like to thank us all for supporting him.

For a moment he was so convincing that I almost didn’t notice. ‘Any time, Nige. Don’t mention it, old son,’ I said, wiping a tear. But then I remembered that I never watch racing driving (can’t stand the
nyow-nyow;
can’t stomach the commentators; can’t follow who’s winning; hate the bit when they squirt champagne). And it suddenly occurred to me: These people don’t know. They really don’t know that sport is a minority interest. When they say ‘England’ and assume you will understand a team of footballers, they forget completely that the word has another (if only a secondary) meaning. Far be it from me to argue that other people should not enjoy sport. It is merely childish to argue against something on the grounds that you don’t know what they see in it. I just wish to point out, for those who didn’t know, that in a large number of households the television news gets switched off automatically
when the announcer says, ‘Cricket, and at Edgbaston …’ And also that sometimes, when drunk and in the pleasant company of the cast of
Watership Down,
one can believe for a bright shining moment that the collective indifference is so very marked, it might even be marketable.

How heartening to know that the prime minister buys books he doesn’t have time to read. No piece of news has ever, metaphorically speaking, drawn him closer to my bosom. I doubt it was meant to, however. The thought of him excitedly shuffling his book tokens at Waterstone’s check-out has already elicited sneers – intellectual snobs being always alert for vulgarians proudly displaying their embossed Shakespeare with the disclaimer, ‘Of course, it’s not something you can actually read’. But personally, I take great comfort in the news; it gives him a whole new human side. He has faith in the future. At the same time, he sensibly realizes that busy jobs don’t last for ever. He likes books for their own sake. And when people look at his shelves and say, ‘Have you read all these?’, he replies without embarrassment, ‘No, but I live in hope.’

My own sensitivity on this issue I can trace to my days as a guilty, hard-pressed literary editor in an office waist-deep with neglected review copies. ‘Have you read all these?’ people would enquire, innocuously enough, and then draw back in alarm as I scrambled to the window ledge and threatened to jump. They learnt not to ask. At home, I own literally hundreds of books I have bought, but not yet read; but if I say I regard them as a squirrel regards his nuts, I hope you will pardon the expression and catch my drift. I mean, what is the point of owning only books you
have
read? Where is the challenge or excitement in that? It would be like having a fridge full of food you have already eaten, cupboards of booze that’s already been
drunk. Imagine browsing for a meal in the evenings – ‘Mm, this moussaka was pretty good last time, and I reckon Mister Retsina could stand another paddle down the old alimentary canal.’

Of course, I have made mistakes, bought books I couldn’t get on with. By rights, I should donate them to passing students, but instead I hoard them, like ill-fitting shoes, in hope that one day I will make the effort to break them in. Henry James is no good at all, God knows I’ve tried, but from the very first sentence I always find myself sinking, disappearing, drowning in dark mud, it’s horrible, horrible, and finally I cry out in Thurberesque despair, ‘Why doesn’t somebody take this damn thing away from me?’ Yet if I retain my copy of
The Golden Bowl,
it’s not because I am dishonestly feigning an abiding love of Henry James, it’s just because I like to be prepared for all contingencies. Who knows, but one day I may positively yearn for intellectual suffocation in mud? Similarly, who knows, but I might break a leg and catch up on all my Gary Larson ‘Far Side’ books as well.

No, I defend the prime minister’s position. First, I think there is a moral imperative to buy books, even if you have little time to read them. After all, the authors wrote them in all good faith; why should they be penalized just because you are busy (temporarily) running the country? I grow very cross in bookshops, watching customers dither over fulfilling their obligation. ‘Just buy it, for heaven’s sake!’ I want to say. ‘What’s the big deal? First Lord of the Treasury salary not good enough for you?’ Second, there is no pleasure to compare with a heavy Waterstone’s bag. And third (obviously), if you wait for the exact appropriate moment to buy the exact appropriate book, it will no longer be in print, stupid.

I keep trying to imagine the sort of person whose bookshelves don’t say ‘This is what I’m interested in’ but ‘This is what I’ve read, actually; go on, test me.’ What a miserable
way to live your life. I remember once a potential boyfriend (it came to nothing) solemnly inspecting my bookshelves as though they were a measure of compatibility, and I thought, lumme, he’ll ask about those German poets, I’m done for. But then he leaned back and said, ‘I see you’ve got M.R. James, Henry James and P.D. James all together here.’ ‘Er, is there a problem?’ I said, nervously. ‘Well, yes,’ he snapped. ‘Alphabetically, Henry should come before M.R. Also, the books should be drawn forward neatly to the extreme edge of the shelves.’ It took me several weeks to realize it, but this reaction said more about him than it did about me.