As a deadline approaches, the fact I’m writing a book has begun impinging a little more on my son’s life, since I’ve had to disappear upstairs with a little more regularity outside normal work hours. ‘Daddy’s writing his book,’ his mother tells him on such occasions. To this, he cheerily responds, ‘Good luck with that!’ in a manner that is sweetly meant, but sounds sarcastic.
He has always known I’m ‘a writer’, but, these days, he mentions it a bit more, now that he reads avidly by himself and has even written several exciting opuses of his own.
He occasionally pauses at the few copies of my memoir we have about the place, most especially the one that’s recently been translated into Estonian. I must admit the sight of it pleases me, offering a racily cosmopolitan flavour to the small – OK, three-books-long – section of the living room shelf in which my canon can be found.
If I find that Estonian volume pleasing, my son is practically mesmerised. This, more than anything else I have ever achieved, impresses him greatly. The idea that people somewhere else, speaking another language, might be interested in my writing is awe-inspiring to him.
He tells me I must start writing a French one at once, for his best friend, Elena. I tell him that it’s more of a grownup book and, being five, she probably wouldn’t like it just yet. I also remind him that, despite being a fluent French speaker, Elena does actually speak English and he spends so long trying to understand this that I am tempted to ask what language he believes they’ve been speaking together all this time.
Before I can, he asks me if I speak French myself and I say no, I don’t. When his face drops, I am surprised – in fact appalled – to hear myself adding churlishly, ‘but, uh, I did, uh, learn a bit of German in school’, in the wheedling whine of a keen little try-hard, caught off guard in a job interview. It is an act of such neediness that his lack of impress serves me right.
‘I don’t speak Estonian either,’ I tell him. ‘You don’t need to – the book people translate it for you.’ At this, he is gobsmacked. ‘They get someone who speaks English and Estonian to translate it.’
‘How do you know if they do it right?’ he asks, with more savvy than I’ve ever evinced in any dealings I’ve had with my own publishers. My pride wounded enough for one afternoon, I decide not to tell him that my Estonian translator is quite thorough or that I know this because they discovered a character whose name spontaneously changes in the middle of the last chapter – an error I didn’t catch in either of my book’s first two print runs.
‘I guess I’ll just have to take their word for it,’ I say.
He looks at me piteously, as if I’m a credulous hayseed not cut out for the dog-eat-dog world of publishing. ‘Good luck with that,’ he says sweetly.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
Follow Séamas on X @shockproofbeats
