The Other Side of the Story (24 page)

43

The
Observer
, Sunday 5 March

SWEET AND SOUR

Mimi's Remedies
by Lily Wright. Dalkin Emery 298pp £6
.99

Mimi's Remedies
is sweet enough to turn Alison Janssen sour.

Reviewing books for a living, I'm the envy of my friends but next time they start complaining about what an easy life I have, I shall give them
Mimi's Remedies
and insist they read it right to the very end. That ought to subdue them.

If I say that
Mimi's Remedies
is the worst book I've ever read, I'm probably exaggerating, but you get the idea. The attached material from the publishers describes it as a 'fable' - messaging ahead not to expect realism, three-dimensional characters and believable dialogue.

And by golly, they're right. It appears to be a cack-handed stab at magic realism without being either magical or realistic. Frankly, the premise was so jejune I spent the first hundred pages waiting for the punchline.

And so will you when you hear what passes for a plot: mysterious, beautiful 'lady' appears out of the blue in a small village which manifests every version of textbook human dysfunction. A sundered father and son, an unfaithful husband, a young frustrated wife - so far, so
Chocolat
. But instead of confectionery, Mimi makes spells and even shares the recipes with us - many of which include the emetic instruction, 'Add a sprinkle of compassion, a tablespoon of love and stir with kindness.'

If this is the remedy, I'll take the problem.

Less than halfway through this - mercifully brief - novel I felt as though I were being flogged to death with liquorice laces or being force-fed candy floss.

The author, one Lily Wright, is an ex-PR girl, so she knows all there is to know about cynical manipulation. And it shows, in every single cloying word. The 'plot' is peppered with coy references to miracles but the only real miracle is how this candy dross ever got published. It is sweet enough to rot the readers' teeth, yet as unpleasant as sucking a lemon.

Mimi's Remedies
is lazy, contrived and verges on the unreadable. So the next time you complain about your job, spare a thought for this wretched book reviewer…

It was one of the worst things that had ever happened to me. It was a little like the time I had been mugged. After reading it my ears began to hum as though I were about to faint, then I sprinted to the loo and sicked up my breakfast. (Perhaps by now it's clear that I am the feeble type who becomes ill after most upsets.)

Being a bleeding-heart liberal, I was an
Observer
reader and it was particularly painful being attacked by an organ which I respected. If it had been the Torygraph, I could have laughed and said, well what do you expect. Actually, perhaps I might not have laughed because being slagged off in front of
the whole world
is never funny. But I could have called them fascists and thus tried to discount their opinions.

Frequently, I read bad reviews of other people's books, films and plays but I had always assumed they must deserve them. I did not deserve this and this so-called Alison Janssen had just misunderstood me.

Jojo rang to cheer me up. 'It's the price of success. She's just jealous. I betcha she's got some shitty novel that no one's gonna touch, so she's pissed with you cos you got published.'

'Do they do that?' I had always thought of reviewers as noble, detached creatures, disinterested and above petty human concerns.

'Sure. All the time.'

Then Otalie the publicist called. 'Tomorrow's fish and chip paper,' she consoled.

'Thanks.' I put down the phone and began to shiver violently. I had the flu. Except of course I hadn't. Psychosomatic Girl that I am, I just felt as though I had.

Then Dad rang: he had seen the review. Goodness knows how. He's an
Express
man and has no time for what he calls 'the lefty crap' of newspapers like the
Observer
.

He was blustering with fury. 'The muppet. She can't say those things about my girl. You deserve the best, twinkle. I can have a word with Thomas Myles.'

Once upon a time Thomas Myles had been the editor of
some
newspaper but even I knew it had never been the
Observer
. But that was Dad all over.

It felt like the whole world was laughing at me and I was frightened to go out because it felt as though I were walking around naked.

I devoted an obscene amount of time to wondering who this Alison Janssen was and what I had done to make her so nasty. I even thought of hanging around outside the
Observer to
waylay her and demand an explanation. Then I thought of writing to the
Observer
to give my side of the story.

Anton said he knew some 'boys' from Derry who could work her over with iron bars and I was shocked to find that I did not want the boys from Derry to do it. I wanted to do it myself.

But then, in a lapse of self-hatred, I decided that Alison Janssen was right and that I was a talentless moron; I would never again attempt to write a word.

The following Sunday, the
Independent
reviewed me: it was just as savage as the
Observer
piece. Again Otalie rang to offer words of comfort: 'Tomorrow's dog basket lining.'

I took little consolation in this. So now even the dogs would know how abominable my book was.

An interview with the
Daily Leader
followed; it was quite a positive piece except they said that Anton was a chef and that I had not provided biscuits. I was bitterly ashamed of the biscuits bit, but not as ashamed as Dad, who prides himself on his generosity.

The net result was that I was afraid to open a newspaper. As soon as we heard that
Book News
was coming to interview me, Anton was dispatched to Sainsburys to get the finest biscuits money could buy. But the journalist neither ate any nor mentioned them in the piece. They called Anton 'Tom' and a photo of Anton and me, with our heads tilting towards each other, was captioned 'Lily and her brother Tom'.

Then came word of the 'At Home' with Martha Hope Jones. It was an enormous coup and Otalie was beside herself. 'You've arrived, Lily!'

'Could I perhaps meet her in a cafe?'

It was proving impossible to prettify our small, dingy flat and trying to sneak the journalists past Mad Paddy was taking its toll on my nerves.

'Lily, it's an "At Home"!'

Anton was once again sent to the shops to buy the best biscuits in the land. The piece had still to run so we were on tenterhooks waiting to see whether Martha would mention them or not.

Amidst the bad reviews the book surprised me by continuing to sell. I thought the readers' group in Wiltshire calling themselves a 'coven' in my honour was a one-off, until a readers' group in Newcastle contacted Dalkin Emery to say that they had done likewise. 'The critics may not love you,' Otalie said. 'But your readers do.'

I got the occasional good review. For example,
Loaded
described the book as 'The most fun you can have with your clothes on.' And the press remained interested. But the odd thing was that the good reviews made little impact on me. I could quote the unkind ones verbatim, but I distrusted the good ones.

44

I opened my eyes and foreboding weighed me down.

Lying beside me Anton said, 'Something awful's happening today, isn't it?'

I sighed. We're having Sunday lunch with Dad and Debs at Dettol Hall.'

'Ohh! I thought I was being executed or something. If only…

'I mean, your dad's alright but…' After another wretched pause Anton picked up the phone and began to speak. 'Debs, I'd love to visit you,' he said. 'But I'm after breaking my leg. Freak accident. I was emptying the washing machine, and
snap!
Just went from under me. That's femurs for you, though. Unreliable johnnies. What's that? You want me to hop over to Dettol Hall on my good leg? Well, I'd love to, Debs, but haven't you heard? About the nuclear warhead they've just exploded over Gospel Oak? No Debs, at least I don't
think
you can clean up nuclear fall-out with Dettol and a soft cloth.'

He clattered the phone down again and lay gloomily on his back. 'Feck,' he observed. 'And it'll take all day to get there.'

Although he could probably have afforded to, Dad had not returned to live in Surrey. After being ejected once I think he feared that there was a bouncer who would refuse him re-entry.

Instead he lived now in Muswell Hill, in a gleaming Edwardian house infused with ferociously artificial smells. Debs shook'nVacced on a regular basis, was a great fan of the air-freshener and counted antiseptic wipes amongst her close personal chums.

Muswell Hill was not terribly far from Gospel Oak, as the crow flew. But as the trains went, it was quite a different story. Anton was in the shower and I was changing Ema's nappy when the phone rang. I let the machine pick up. But after a few seconds, the curiosity overwhelmed me, so I went to the living room and played the message.

It was Otalie. The Martha Hope Jones interview was out; she had not expected it to run on a Sunday. She did not say that it was 'a lovely piece'. This was a bad sign. 'Anton,' I yelped, 'I must go out and buy a paper.' Anton emerged from the shower. 'What is it?'

'The Martha Hope Jones piece is out.'

'I'll go.' Anton pulled on clothes over his still-wet body and bounded out of the door.

While he was gone, I automatically went about dressing Ema, while I prayed,
Please let it be nice, oh please let it be nice
.

Then Anton was home again, a rolled newspaper under his arm.

'Well?' I asked anxiously.

'I haven't looked.'

We spread the paper on the floor and nicked over the pages with trembling fingers.

And there it was. Spread across two pages, the headline read 'Wright and Wrong'. Which made a change from 'Lily Wrights her way to Success' and 'Wright On!'. What other atrocious puns could they come up with?

At least my photo looked nice; for once I looked intelligent instead of dippy. But underneath Martha's mugshot, her epaulettes up to her ears, was a horrible picture of a black and blue shoulder. The caption said, 'Lily's bruises were similar.' Oh dear.

I began to speed-skim.

Lily Wright is riding high in the best-seller charts with her 'novel' Mimi's Remedies. But don't make the mistake of thinking this was laboured over with meticulous care. 'It only took me eight weeks to knock it off,' Lily gloated. 'Most books take five years and even then they don't get published
.'

It was like being splashed in the face with iced water.

'I didn't gloat,' I whispered. 'And what does she mean "novel"? It's a novel, not a "novel".'

Lily's book has been described as 'sickly sweet', but not so its creator. Displaying an arrogant disregard for the opinions of others, Lily said, 'I don't care what the critics say.'

My eyes were drawn once more to my photo: I no longer looked intelligent. I looked calculating.

She went on to quote me: 'Welcome to my humble abode.'

Well, one of us had to say it!

She made reference to the laundry drying in the kitchen…

Wright cares not a jot for beauty or hygiene in the home.

The square of Lego…

When one is invited to sit down, is it foolhardy to expect that one's hostess has removed all sharp objects from the seat?

My single status…

Though Wright has a little girl, she has no interest in legitimizing her. And what kind of mother sends her child out to play in sub-zero temperatures?

It was HORRIBLE.

'She makes me sound like Courtney Love.' I said, utterly appalled.

She quoted the worst parts of the
Observer
and
Independent
reviews just in case one or two people might have missed them the first time round. Then told the story of my mugging, putting particular emphasis on my not working or washing myself in its wake. The final paragraph read,

The trauma wrought by her attack still lingers. Though Wright is laughing all the way to the bank, she chooses to remain living in a grubby one-roomed flat that, frankly, looks little better than a squat. Is this all she thinks she deserves? And if so, perhaps she's correct…

'Which bank am I laughing all the way to?' I asked. 'Apart from my advance I haven't seen a penny. And which am I? Arrogant? Or beset with low self-esteem? And it's not a one-roomed flat. It's a one-broomed flat.'

For once Anton was clean out of optimism. There was nothing good to be said about this. Nothing at all.

'Ought we to sue?' I asked him.

'I don't know,' he said thoughtfully. 'It's your word against hers, and a lot of what she's said is just her opinion and people can't be sued for that. But let's talk to Jojo about it.'

'OK.' A fresh wave of iciness hit me. This was a million times worse than the
Observer
piece. That had only been slagging off my book, but this article had savaged me personally.

'Only miserable people are this cruel,' I tried to convince myself. 'She's probably very unhappy.'

'So would I be if I looked like that. What's with the clothes brushes on her shoulders? Do you need to puke?'

I shook my head.

'God, you must be very bad.'

A second read revealed the masses of inaccuracies we had missed on our first horror-stricken burn.

'Anton, you're a brickie, apparently.'

'A brick?'

'A brickie.'

'Where do they get this stuff FROM? And the bitch said nothing about the biscuits - even though they were top-of-the-range ones.'

'I'll ring Jojo.' But her machine picked up.

Anton and I simply looked at one other — we were utterly without the emotional equipment to deal with this. Even Ema was unusually quiet.

We remained in silence until Anton said, 'Right, I've an idea.' He spread the two horrible pages in the middle of the living-room floor and extended his hand to me. 'Up you get.'

'What?'

He was searching through his CDs. 'Let's see. Sex Pistols? Ah no, this is the one.'

He put on some Flamenco music.

Perplexed, I watched him strutting, stamping and arching his arms above his head, as he danced his way onto the article. In truth he was very good, nearly as good as Joachim Cortes. Ema, relieved that the dreadful atmosphere seemed to have lifted, shrieked and galloped around him. The music sped up and so did Anton, stamping and clapping with great panache until the song ended and he tossed his head back with a flourish. 'Ole!'

'Lay!' Ema yelled, also tossing her head and almost falling over.

The next song began. 'Come on,' Anton said.

I tried one stamp and liked it, so tried another, then really got into it. I concentrated my stamping on Martha's face, until Anton toed my foot aside, 'Give me a go. Right, Ema, your turn.'

Ema galloped on the spot above Martha's picture. 'Good girlie,' Anton encouraged, 'give her a fine pounding there.'

Then Anton retreated several steps and took a running jump, landing with his size elevens on Martha's face.

The three of us stamped and banged until the horrible words and Martha's ugly mug were smeared with print. The grand finale was when Anton held up the page like a matador's blanket and I put my foot through it with a 'Da-dah!'

'Feel better?'

'A little.'

Not terribly, but it was worth a try.

Seconds later Mad Paddy appeared to complain. 'What's all the banging and clattering? A lump of plaster's after falling off the ceiling into me tea!'

'Tea!' Anton scoffed and shut the door on him. 'Long Island Iced Tea, more like.'

'And so what if it is?' Mad Paddy was muffled but indignant on the far side of the door.

'It's probably his bloody fault,' Anton observed. 'If he hadn't sung "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town", that woman wouldn't have been so vicious.'

'I don't know…'

'We should move.

'I'm serious,' he said, when I made no reply. 'We really should think about buying a place.'

'With what? Beads and mirrors? We're just about able to feed and clothe ourselves.'

'The way your career is going, we won't be skint for ever.'

'The way my career is going, I'll be stoned in the street.' I reached for the phone. 'I'm cancelling lunch at Dettol Hall.'

Why?'

'I'm too ashamed to go out.'

'Fuck them! You've done nothing wrong. Why should you be ashamed?'

'I thought you would jump at the chance to get out of seeing Debs.'

'I would. But it's more important that you hold your head up high. If you go to bits now, Martha Hope Jones will have won.'

'OK,' I said wearily, 'King's Cross, here we come.'

*

The Sunday north London train service was pitifully threadbare… even
before
they cancelled the 11.48. And the 12.07.

Anton, Ema and I sat in the draughty station, waiting for the next train which hopefully might not be cancelled, and thought up things we would rather do than visit Debs.

'Stick needles in my eyes.'

'Go to an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.'

'Lick Margaret Thatcher.'

'Debs isn't a bad person,' I said.

'No,' Anton agreed. 'She's not a person at all. Watch her today and see how she never blinks. I'm telling you she's an alien.

'Don't look!' He held his hands in front of my eyes to block the sight of a woman on the next bench leafing through the
Sunday Echo
. My stomach churned wretchedly. Had she seen the piece about me? How many people throughout Britain were reading that poison?

Forty-five minutes late we stood on the doorstep of Dettol Hall. Debs opened the door and regarded us with her round, blue eyes and, on cue, Ema began to wail.

'You were invited to lunch,' Debs scolded, good humouredly. 'Not supper.'

As always she was kitted out in the pristine pastels of baby clothes and her little plimsolls were so white my eyes ached. To look directly at them one would need a piece of cardboard with a hole in it, of the type used for viewing a solar eclipse.

'Sorry we're late.' I struggled to fold away the buggy as Anton calmed Ema. 'The trains were up the spout.'

'You and your trains,' Debs said indulgendy. She treats Anton and me as if we are wilfully Bohemian, instead of merely poor. 'One of you really ought to get a proper job!'

I gave Anton a warning look. No killing the hostess.

'Come through.' Debs led the way down the hall, pointing each little foot before laying it carefully on the floor.

In the kitchen Dad folded me in his arms as if someone had died. 'My little girl,' he said hoarsely. When he finally let me go, he had tears in his eyes.

'I take it you saw the
Echo
,' I said.

'She's a witch, that woman, an evil witch.'

' That's no way to talk about your wife,' Anton said quietly into my ear.

'Anything I can do for you?' Dad asked me.

'No thanks, I would love just to forget about it. Ema, darling, say hello to Grandad!'

'Look at her little face,' Dad cooed. 'It's a picture.'

Debs prepared drinks and said gaily to Anton, 'Well! I see your lot has been at it again.'

'What's that, Mum?'

Debs frowned slightly at the 'Mum' and continued, 'The IRA. Refusing to give up their weapons.'

We go through this charade whenever the IRA are in the news, and Anton has long given up trying to explain to Debs that, actually, he is not a member of the IRA. Anton is Irish and that is good enough for Debs. Debs's thing is that she disapproves of foreign countries. Except for Provence and the Algarve, she cannot understand why the whole world simply cannot be English.

Then Anton greeted Joshua and Hattie, Debs's eight-year-old son and ten-year-old daughter from her first marriage. 'Ah,' he said expansively, 'the Children of the Corn.'

Debs thinks he calls them that because they are both blond. But
The Children of the Corn
is a Stephen King novel so it's got little to do withi the colour of their hair and lots to do with their oddness: they are unnaturally clean and pliant.

'Hi Joshua, hi Hattie.' I crouched down to say hello but they eluded eye contact. However, unlike proper rude children they did not push me over and run away. Instead they stood obediently before me and fixed their sight on an invisible object somewhere behind my head.

Anton says he has faith that they will grow up to be axe-murderers and butcher Debs while she lies sleeping.

Then, like a mini-whirlwind, in came Poppy. She looks oddly like a miniature Dad, but in a wild corkscrew wig. 'Lily,' she yelped. 'Anton. And Ema!' She kissed us all, then grabbed Ema by the hand and ran out of the room with her. She is a total and utter delight and we are all madly in love with her, especially Ema.

When we eventually sat down to it, lunch was rather grim. First came Debs's apologies about the state of the roast beef. 'But unfortunately it was due to be eaten over an hour ago.'

'Sorry,' I muttered.

But that was simply a precursor to the real programme — the gloating over the Martha Hope Jones piece.

'You must be wretched with embarrassment, Lily. I know I would be.
Dying
with it. Afraid to show my face. When one thinks of all those people reading it and judging you, well you must be dreadfully upset.'