Rebecca Tyrrel: Days Like Those

I'm in a stew over my book club, telling lies and name-dropping to these brilliant women

Generally I am unable to tell lies unless I am on the phone. Face to face I just can't do it. Matthew says something happens to my lower lip, a discernable narrowing followed by a twitch, that gives me away. However, when I am at my monthly book club meeting the absolute opposite happens. I become pathologically unable to tell the truth.

Surrounded by eight well- read, intelligent women, I lie to impress. And not only do I lie, I also name-drop. I turn into the love child of Jeffrey Archer and Michael Winner.

The lying and name-dropping started a year ago at the founding meeting. I had no idea what any of my fellow members did for a living, (I still don't, too insecure to ask) but assumed that they must all have PhDs in English Literature.

And so, when someone suggested that for our first book we read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, not only did I say that I had already read it, I also said I had a signed copy because the author is a friend of Stephen Fry, who happens to be a friend of mine.

"We all knew each other at Oxford," I said.

I don't know if anyone subsequently noticed that David Mitchell was in fact at Kent University, but at the next meeting someone did point out that Stephen Fry went to Cambridge. Thankfully no one had bothered to find out that I was at Salisbury Technical College.

Within the hour though, I had bounced back sufficiently to claim that I had read Stendhal's The Red and the Black. "Really? Did you know that Julian Sorel is Umberto Eco's favourite literary character?" said Agnes.

"Who?" I asked.

"Sorel," Repeated Agnes. "The main character in Le Rouge et le Noir."

I had absolutely no idea what Agnes was talking about but that didn't stop me telling her how much I loved Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and that a friend had once taken me to see the real pendulum in a museum in Paris. The last bit was true, although, of course I had never actually read the book.

Next humiliation

So I have started to dread rather than look forward to my book club meetings and this next one is going to be doubly humiliating. Not only will I have to face them all after the most recent embarrassment, when I referred to Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, as a "he" several times in the same sentence, not only will I re-live the horror of the name dropping - "Dear Sam West," I brayed, "you know, the actor and director? He once told me such a good punning joke about a cocktail bar called Tequila Mockingbird! Such a funny man and so well read." - but it is my turn to host the meeting, i.e. lead the debate and cook dinner.

The food we eat at book club has become almost as important as the reading matter. Month after month the next hosting member outdoes the last with their Thai fusion food or their 20-day on a slow heat cassoulets. I do a nifty kedgeree.

Nursery food

Matthew says I can't give my ladies kedgeree, (he calls them ladies because it gets me every time). He says kedgeree is nursery food, not suitable fare for sophisticated ladies with PhDs. He also spent a few enjoyable (for him) moments pointing out why I shouldn't worry about leading the debate, "Because," he said, "once the ladies have eaten they won't be up to debating anything. Unless of course this month's book is The Stomach Pump by Salman Ella."

Then, when he had stopped laughing at himself he took pity on me and said he would do one of his beef stews.

"Now what's the book," he said in his "I'll take over as your carer now" voice.

"The Spire by William Golding," I said. "I think it's about Salisbury Cathedral and because I was at school and technical college in Salisbury I do feel partially qualified to talk about it."

"And you've read it of course?" suggested Matthew.

"No."

"Quite right. Quite right. Sorry, what was I thinking of? But you have read Lord of the Flies?"

"No, why would I have read Lord of the Flies?"

Then Matthew said, "Oh dear," and that he was off to the butcher to get the beef for the stew and then he was going to bookshop for a copy of The Spire so that I could at least spout the blurb on the back. He said that unless evasive action was taken Lord of the Flies is exactly what it would be like here on Wednesday night. "All the normal rules of civilised society will break down, and led by Agnes, the ladies will tear you to pieces."

Not having read it I have no idea how this will happen but I am willing to take his point.

Widow Twankey

As it turned out, the book club meeting at our house was not as disastrous as it could have been and I just about held my own. It was faintly embarrassing when I confused Ian McEwan with Sir Ian McKellen and said how much I had admired his Widow Twankey a the Old Vic. Also I am glad Matthew only forked out for a paperback of The Spire, and that it wasn't a hardback that got ruined. I am not in the habit of intentionally destroying books but I clearly had no choice.

First, obviously, I had to rough The Spire up a bit so it would look as if I had read it; I bent the spine back a few times, dog-eared a few pages and even inserted a dried cranberry into the middle of chapter 4. Then when Agnes reached across the table and there was real danger she might read the blurb for herself, I knew that only a major spilling incident with the beef stew could save me.