‘He hears
On all sides, from innumerable tongues
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn.’
Milton, Paradise Lost
I had a bad night in Wales. I was reading from my novel Wide Open. The gist of my presentation was that this was a novel which it was impossible to do a reading from. I was wedged between Alan Hollinghurst and Rupert Thomson. I ended up reminiscing – and at some length – about how my boyfriend once suffered from a series of spectacular nosebleeds while we were on holiday in Madrid, and how I could never really feel sympathetically inclined towards tapas after that.
Later we were led to an adjacent tent where we were to do a signing. Somewhere close by – in a much bigger venue – Terry Pratchett had just completed a public appearance. The signing tent was soon packed with Pratchett fans. I was standing behind a table, waiting (in vain) for somebody to buy a book. At this point I was approached by an angry-looking woman holding Pratchett’s latest and waving a ten-pound note. She shoved the book at me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered apologetically (five years’ experience as a bakery cashier, all coming to nothing), ‘but I don’t actually work here. I’m one of the authors.’
‘I don’t give a damn who you are,’ she hissed, ‘just take the fucking money.’
Afterwards, on my long walk home to a rather isolated cottage where several of the authors were staying, I saw two genial-looking teenagers strolling, hand-in-hand, along the empty country road towards me. I was carrying a box of champagne (the payment for the reading, and a drink which makes me violently ill), and I was struggling.
It took several minutes for us to draw adjacent. As they passed by, the boy-teen said, ‘You’re Nicola Barker, aren’t you?’ I stopped, panting slightly; ‘Yes, I am.’
‘We just went to see you reading,’ he said.
‘Oh, right,’ I puffed. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
No answer.
‘We took your book Reversed Forecast on holiday with us last year,’ the girl-teen eventually continued, ‘and I was so irritated by it that I forced him to read it.’
He nodded. ‘Neither of us understood the ending. We were so infuriated by the whole experience that we travelled all the way down here tonight, in hope of some kind of clarification …’ He paused, glancing down witheringly at my box of champagne. ‘But I’m afraid we didn’t get any.’