Read Online Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame by Robin Robertson - Free Book Online

fact that writers are expected to turn up for nothing; try telling that to your plumber.)
    Then there was the library in the Midlands where I was booked to do a reading. However far you’ve travelled to a library you’ll be lucky to get a mug of Nescafé, but this one phoned me to ask if I’d like something to eat and drink while I was there. A sandwich and glass of wine would be lovely, I replied. A few days later the phone rang again. ‘We’ve been looking at your photo,’ they said, ‘and trying to decide if you were a vegetarian.’ ‘What did you decide?’ I asked. ‘That you weren’t.’ I took this as a compliment. They said: ‘So we thought we’d buy you a Marks and Spencer salmon sandwich, if that’s all right.’ ‘Lovely,’ I replied. Two weeks later I took the train there, to be greeted by the librarians, the sandwich and a lot of fluster. ‘We’ve got you the bottle of wine,’ they said, ‘but we can’t find a corkscrew.’ A great deal of scrabbling around followed. ‘Have you seen one, Maggie?’ ‘Didn’t Bob have one once?’ ‘A corkscrew? I don’t think so.’ ‘There must be one somewhere …’ Cupboards were ransacked. ‘Really, I don’t mind …’ I said. ‘Please don’t bother.’ ‘No, we’ve started now and we’re going to find it!’ they replied. I stood there, feeling like a pervert whose very special needs were going to be satisfied, by hook or by crook, because after all the librarians had promised. Finally the corkscrew was found, the bottle uncorked and some wine solemnly poured into a tea mug. The audience was filing in by now as I stood there, surrounded by librarians, drinking my wine and eating my sandwich. ‘I suppose we should have given you a plate,’ one of them said.
    In Anne Tyler’s
The Accidental Tourist
one of the characters runs a factory that makes bottle tops. When asked about it, he replies: ‘It’s not half as exciting as it sounds.’ The same could be said about the publicity tour. What deepens the humiliation is the presence of witnesses – another writer, the bookshop assistants. Their embarrassment and pity can be too much to bear. To avoid some of this I travel alone, without a publicity assistant to share my shame. This can, however, make one feel defenceless. I remember a recent visit to Glasgow, to do a reading in the Waterstone’s there. As I was walking through the deserted shopping precinct I heard a voice hissing: ‘You got a knife?’ ‘Actually, yes,’ I replied. The man was sitting on the cobblestones, in the freezing cold, hunched over what looked like a pigeon. Peanuts lay scattered around. ‘Help me, then,’ he muttered. I took out my knife – a retractable blade I use to sharpen my eye-liner pencil – and gave it to him. Now I could see what he was doing: trying to cut some cotton thread that was tangled around the pigeon’s leg. He tried to cut it, for some time. ‘Steady me, can’t you?’ he said testily. ‘Hold my shoulders!’ I knelt down on the cobblestones and gripped his shoulders, as indicated. ‘You’ll have to throw this knife away afterwards,’ he said, ‘pigeons carry a disease that’s fatal for humans.’ This was rather a shame; I was fond of my knife and had never been able to find another one like it. As the minutes ticked by I said: ‘I really ought to go, I’m a bit late.’ ‘Hang on!’ he barked, busying himself with the purple, scabby leg of the pigeon. By this time I was really late and the pigeon’s leg was still not freed. I told him to bring the knife to the bookshop down the road, walked there and started my reading. The audience consisted of four people, including a chap in an anorak who apparently came to all the readings with his mother and just wanted autographs. In the middle of my reading the door opened and the pigeon-liberator marched in, gave me back my knife and marched out again. I couldn’t really explain to my audience what had happened. Besides, they