‘A children’s writer should, ideally, be a dedicated semi-lunatic’ Joan Aiken
Some years ago, I was invited to attend a Salon du Livre in Bordeaux, along with Beryl Bainbridge, Tom Sharpe and a children’s writer who looked like a plump doll, spoke in a squeaky voice and told everyone incessantly how much she appreciated ‘black men’s willies’. One memorable Saturday afternoon, the four of us went to lunch at a superb restaurant on the outskirts of the city. The publicity director of Penguin France and her assistant acted as hosts, even though I was the only Penguin author present. Beryl, loath to eat ‘foreign muck’, was given a large tomato salad while the rest of us feasted on red mullet and lamb. It was a sunny day, so we sat at a table in the exquisite garden drinking champagne, Sancerre and Chateau Haut-Batailley. The two French women were regaled with stories of the children’s writer’s black lover’s sexual expertise, including his habit of removing his false teeth prior to intercourse, and as we were laughing Tom Sharpe observed laconically, ‘What is it with this crazy dame?’
Two hours later, flushed and happy, we returned to the Salon, to take part in a joint event. The interviewer was a nervous man who was seriously unacquainted with our books. In desperation he asked us what we thought of each other’s work. ‘What a stupid bloody question,’ Tom replied. ‘No comment.’ Beryl and I both said that we were too embarrassed to answer, and the children’s writer squeaked, ‘I’ve only ever read one book – Winnie the Pooh – and I never finished it.’ We then became aware of a commotion in the packed audience, which contained many schoolchildren who were studying English. A tall, gaunt man wearing a beret and smoking a foul-smelling cigarette made his way to the front with many an ‘Excusez-moi’ and jumped on to the platform. He sat down next to Beryl and announced, ‘Je pense que les autres écrivains sont’ – and here he paused before shouting ‘fucking cunts’. The parents of the children whisked them out of the tent on the instant. The man in the beret now had his hand up Beryl’s skirt. ‘Je t’adore,’ he repeated over and over, while Beryl wondered aloud why he was saying ‘shut that door’.
The man turned out to be Robin Cook, alias Derek Raymond, whose crime novels – How the Dead Live and I was Dora Suarez – were extremely popular in France, where he had lived for eighteen years. He was very drunk that day. Beryl firmly removed his roving hand. He stood up and straight away fell over. Someone took him out of the tent, but the event was already at an end.
The day’s madness wasn’t finished. None of Beryl’s books was on display, but a young girl asked her to sign a copy of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Beryl remarked that she hadn’t written the novel and that she wasn’t a man, but the girl insisted on acquiring her signature. And later that evening the children’s writer revealed that she called her toothless black lover ‘Georgie Porgie’ when his denture was safe in its bedside glass.