by Sue Townsend
Another thing she didn’t like was the music. For one thing she couldn’t see what was musical about that thump, thump, thump. To her it seemed like a lot of angry men shouting about smacking up their bitches. But it was easier to listen to after she’d smoked a few joints—in fact, everything was easier then. She stopped thinking about Stuart, worrying about Yvonne and about Jack being lonely. Even her arthritis had stopped bothering her and when she went to sleep she had beautiful dreams.
When the boys and girls had gone and James and Norma were cleaning up in the kitchen, James said, “How’d you like to do a bit of social work, Norma, at the weekends? There’d be a hundred quid in it for you.”
Norma said, “I’m too bleedin’ old to go out to work!”
James said, “Now that’s the beauty of it, you don’t have to go nowhere. I’d bring the poor unfortunates here from Friday night to Sunday evening.”
“What’s up with ‘em?” she asked. She thought about the minibus that used to pick up the mongol boy from the bottom of the street.
“They’re committed to taking an illegal substance,” he said. “And they need a mother to take care of them while they’re under the influence. They need to be somewhere safe, Norma, where they won’t hurt themselves or other people.”
“What would I have to do?” she asked.
“Nothing much,” he said. “Just feed them and do a bit of washing. Sometimes they lose control of themselves, down below, if you get my meaning.”
She said, “Are we talking about crack, James?” She had read in the Mirror’s pull-out ‘Parents’ guide to drugs’ about crack. One of the signs was uncontrollable diarrhoea; crack-users mixed the stuff with bicarbonate of soda and that made them shit themselves.
James said, “You’d be brilliant at it, Norma. I mean, you’re not judgemental, are you? I mean, you’ve got compassion for druggies, haven’t you? I mean, you did your best for Stuart, didn’t you? You would have liked Stuart to be looked after by somebody like you, wouldn’t you, Norma?”
“Are you one of these poor unfortunates, James?”
“To be honest, Mother, I am,” he said.
“Since how long?” she asked.
“It’s only been a couple of weeks, Norma,” he answered. “But since I first took it, my first hit, it’s all I’ve been able to think about.”
Norma tried to recall what she had read in the Mirror. Didn’t crack send them mental? And violent? Or was that ecstasy? She couldn’t remember.
She couldn’t bear the terrible look in his eyes, and said, “If I’m going to be washing shit-up pants, James, I’ll need more than a hundred quid.”
James said, “Sorted.” He kissed her goodnight and went to bed.
When Norma heard the door to the donkey room bang shut, she kicked off her shoes and unfastened a few of the hooks and eyes on the corset she been wearing under her cocktail dress. One of the girls had complimented her on her slim figure earlier and told her that she didn’t look seventy-one.
Norma said to Peter, who was swinging on his trapeze, “Don’t tell our Jack, Pete, it could get him into big trouble.”
Peter jumped off the little swing with a flurry of his wings and hopped to his water dish, hoping that Norma had remembered to fill it. But it was still empty.
♦
The Bostocks were quarrelling in the kitchen when the Prime Minister and Jack went down to breakfast the next day. Glade and Sissy Klugberg were at the sink washing up what looked like last night’s pots.
Bostock was saying to his wife, “You’ll have to get on the phone and order more foreigners, Daphne. You’re responsible for driving the last lot away.”
Daphne turned to Jack and the Prime Minister to elicit their sympathy. “All I said to the foreigners was that it wouldn’t hurt to see a smile now and then, considering how good we’ve been to them. I know they’d been through difficult times, torture, having to flee their villages and so on. But Clive and I have been very good to them. I mean, we gave them a perfectly good dormitory to sleep in, and food. OK so it wasn’t the same food we ate, but it was food. And they got pocket money, and if they’d smiled more that would have earned them tips from our guests. They should have been grateful.”
Clive pushed the remains of last night’s loaf towards Jack and the Prime Minister, followed by a sticky jar of marmalade. He said, “It’s a bit of a scratch affair this morning, due to the foreigners escaping in the night, and we’ve a conference today—I don’t suppose you could help us to put the chairs out?”
Before the Prime Minister could speak Jack said, “We’ve both got bad backs, sorry, and we’re leaving for Gloucestershire as soon as our car arrives.”
Sissy said, “Glade and me would be happy to help.”
The conference was being held in the old gymnasium where the lunatics once danced with the staff at the annual Christmas parties. Photographs on the walls showed happy people wearing paper hats. It was impossible to tell the warders from the inmates.
Jack and the Prime Minister stood in the doorway and watched Glade and Sissy unstacking chairs and lining them up in rows in front of a small stage.
A banner backdrop said, ‘The Entitlement Card—a corporate opportunity’.
Jack said, “Not so much Big Brother, but big sister and the whole bloody family.”
The Prime Minister snapped, “That’s just paranoid hysteria.”
Jack said to the Prime Minister, “Ed, surely you can see the point in being anonymous occasionally, of being able to just sod off without anybody knowing who you are or what you’re doing?”
The Prime Minister said, mantra-like, “If you’ve got nothing to hide what’s there to be afraid of?”
Jack said, “But I have got things to hide. My credit rating, my taste in library books, the political party I support, my stepfather’s criminal record, how my brother died, how much booze I buy in a week, my genetic code. Why should some insurance company know all that?”
The Prime Minister grew thoughtful. Would the Entitlement Card scheme find out about the Bronco lavatory paper? He was absolutely sure that Adele was the only person who knew of the use he put it to. But he would die, die if his idiosyncrasy became known to the Daily Mail.
While the Prime Minister packed Jack went outside to ring Ali and find out how long he would be. He longed to get away from this place. While there he saw a fleet of minibuses transporting dark-suited men and women down the drive. He watched as the delegates got out and gathered together at the front of the house. Clive Bostock came out to meet and greet them before leading them inside.
♦
Adele drifted in and out of a blissful sleep. The bed was deliciously soft and warm and she felt weightless, as though she was enveloped in the substances of fairy tales—goose down, swans’ feathers and the fine thread spun by glow-worms.
Three swans were holding the silken ropes in their beaks and were pulling her bateau lit through a sky streaked pink and blue as the sun set over a medieval landscape.
She was being transported to Fairyland, a utopia with a landscape designed by Vita Sackville-West, where her fellow fairies would drink the morning dew from flowers and eat berries and where all sustenance was provided by the natural world.
Adele sat up in her bed and said to the swan leading the formation, “I think you’ve taken a wrong direction—shouldn’t you have turned left at the Milky Way?”
The swan said, “Excuse me, but I’ve been on the Fairyland route for a thousand years, don’t try and teach me my job.” Adele spoke to the swan again: “When do I get my gossamer wings?”
“They’ll be allocated on arrival,” said the swan irritably. “Try to relax.”
But Adele couldn’t rest. “What will I do in Fairyland?” she said.
The swan replied, “The same as the other fairies: you’ll sleep in a cobweb hammock slung between two blades of grass; you’ll wake in the morning and rinse your face in a washbasin made from an acorn cup; you’ll breakfast on nectar
and berries and then you’ll choose what to do with the rest of your day.”
Adele said tentatively, “Would it be acceptable if I simply sat and did nothing?”
“That would be perfectly acceptable,” said the swan. “Idleness is a condition much admired in Fairyland.”
“Ignorance is venerated,” said another swan.
As the swan’s wings flapped her towards the horizon, Adele planned her future life. She would wear an upturned bluebell on her head and commission a fairy dressmaker to fashion a dress made of rose petals. She couldn’t possibly make her own fairy clothes; she was hopeless with a needle and thread.
♦
Lucinda sat in a chair at the end of Adele’s bed and read an article in that week’s Spectator which praised Adele’s courageous position on one of the most important issues of the day, Barry’s Leg. Lucinda was interested to be informed that the Pope had been heard to remark in several languages, “Barry’s Leg was given by God, removed by God and must be disposed of by God.”
♦
Adele looked over the side of her bed. Fairyland twinkled below and she couldn’t help worrying: as far as she knew, Fairyland’s socio-economic system might be similar to the world she was leaving. Was there a class system? Did some fairies live in large toadstools, in exclusive enclaves on prime sites, while others slummed it in small mushrooms on the edge of bog land?
Adele asked the lead swan, “Will there be books?”
“No, there are no books in Fairyland,” said the lead swan.
“I’ll have to write my own books, then,” Adele replied.
“You’ll be thrown out if you do,” said the swan. “Books cause nothing but trouble.”
“But I must have something to read,” Adele said.
“What have all your books and magazines and inventions and schools of philosophy and political systems led to?” asked the lead swan.
They began to descend. Adele heard tinkling laughter and saw thousands of fairies looking up at her and smiling. Each of them had a nose exactly like her own.
♦
Lucinda noticed that Adele’s first gesture on waking was to cover that enormous nose of hers. “I dreamed I lived in Fairyland,” Adele said sleepily.
“What was it like?” said Lucinda with professional interest.
“It was heavenly; there was absolutely nothing to do,” said Adele.
Lucinda pressed: “And the other fairies?”
“Delightful,” said Adele.
Lucinda sensed, however, that Adele was holding something back, and asked, “Was Ed there?”
“No, but it was all right,” replied Adele.
“So what was wrong?” Lucinda pressed further.
“Nothing.”
“Come on, Adele, I’ve been your shrink for too long—I know when you’re holding back from me,” said Lucinda.
Adele put her hand up to her nose.
Lucinda took a chance and said, “Adele, there’s only one thing we’ve never discussed, though it’s as plain as the nose on your face—in fact, it is the nose on your face.”
Adele pulled up the sheet so that only her eyes could be seen.
“Adele, that thing on your face has to go! I know a plastic surgeon who…”
Adele was outraged. “That’s body fascism,” she shouted. “Why should I have to fit into the media’s idea of beauty?”
Lucinda said, “Admit it, your nose is a huge problem. It’s psychologically crippling you.”
An hour later, Lucinda and Adele were turning the pages of a plastic surgeon’s catalogue and choosing a new nose for Adele. There were noses of every imaginable size and shape.
∨ Number Ten ∧
SIXTEEN
When Norma and James returned from the cash and carry with the supplies for their weekend guests, the exterior of her house had been transformed. The front door had been reinforced with steel plate and security bars had been placed over the downstairs windows.
“It looks like a prison,” she said. “Where’s my letterbox gone?”
“You don’t need a letterbox,” said James. “You never get no letters.”
They carried the boxes of supplies from the car into the kitchen and found three of James’s friends about to bolt a sheet of steel on to the back door.
Norma offered them a cup of tea and one of the youths said, “We helped ourselves to a cup of coffee, Norma, I hope you don’t mind; an’ we gave Peter a drink of water an’ all.”
Norma said, “Do you lads work for the council, then?”
James laughed and said, “No, they work for me. I want my mother to feel safe in her house. Gotta keep the Yardies out, eh?”
Jack rang while the bars were being fitted to the kitchen window. He told Norma that he might call in on her sometime over the weekend.
Norma said, “Which day? Friday, Saturday or Sunday?”
Jack said he wasn’t sure about his arrangements and asked if it mattered.
James had been listening; he shook his head at Norma and mouthed, “Not this weekend.”
Norma said, “Don’t come this weekend. I’m going to be busy.” Then, because she didn’t know what else to do, she said, “Bye,” and put the phone down.
Norma and James unpacked the boxes and stacked the cans of lager, frozen pizzas, beefburgers and bags of oven chips on the table.
James had bought enough food and drink for eight people, including himself and Norma. He said, “When we’ve been up and running a few weeks we’ll buy a proper freezer and a new washing machine.”
Norma nodded, but she wasn’t entirely happy telling Jack that he couldn’t come to see her at the weekend. Sometimes she felt that James was taking over her life, but she didn’t want to say anything to him. She wouldn’t want to go back to the times when she spent every day alone with nobody to talk to except Pete. She was disappointed that James had stopped doing the cleaning, but, as he had explained to her, “Norma, at your age you need the exercise; it’ll stop you having a heart attack and stuff.”
♦
After leaving the Grimshaw Hotel, the Prime Minister had suggested that they should take the scenic route and drive through the Peak District on their way to Bourton-on-the-Water. A map had been purchased from a petrol station and the Prime Minister had volunteered to map-read. But after only a few minutes he had directed them down a farm track and Ali had been obliged to make a five-point turn in the forecourt of a farmhouse, watched by the startled farmer and his wife. After a few more false starts the Prime Minister handed the map to Jack and said girlishly, “You’ll have to do it, Jack, it’s a well-known fact that we women are hopeless with maps.”
Ali said, “My missis is brilliant at map-reading. She got us from Islamabad to Karachi—that’s 900 miles—without one wrong turn, innit.”
The Prime Minister looked out of the window at the spectacular moorland and felt humbled by Ali’s wife’s expertise.
Jack took the map reluctantly. He’d been enjoying sitting back and looking out of the window. He liked the look of this countryside; there was something elemental and wild about it, and he thanked God there wasn’t a thatched cottage in sight.
But Ali’s patience was being tested, by the highest road in England: the Leek to Buxton road. One minute they were in bright sunshine and the next they were driving through dense cloud. Convoys of caravans crept ahead, buffeted by the unchecked wind, and immediately in front of them was a pensioner in a Reliant Robin who appeared suddenly to lose his nerve and slowed down to fifteen miles an hour. Unable to overtake because of the constant stream of motorcyclists roaring past in the opposite direction, Ali became dispirited and for the first time since their acquaintance he lost his temper and swore and raised his fist to the old man in the little three-wheeled vehicle ahead of him.
When Jack saw a sign advertising traditional cream teas just outside Bakewell he asked Ali to pull into the small car park. The Prime Minister and Jack got out but Ali remained seated behind the wheel.
/> Jack leaned into the taxi window and said, “Ali, come inside with us, nobody will nick the car out here.”
Ali said, “No, I couldn’t go in there.” He looked anxiously at the grey-stone cottage clad in wisteria, as though it were the KGB headquarters.
Jack asked, “Why not?”
Ali answered, “It ain’t my kind of place, innit. It’s for the English.”
“But you’re British, Ali,” said the Prime Minister. “You’re as free to have a cream tea as any other British citizen.”
Ali laughed a laugh devoid of humour or amusement. “I went in a country pub once with two of my brothers-in-law. It was noisy with talking, but when we walked in it went quiet. Before we could order, the landlord said, ‘I thought you chaps couldn’t drink’. I says, ‘We can drink orange juice’. We was only in there for five minutes, innit, and a woman comes in an’ said to the landlord, ‘Crikey, Eric, they’ve started coming out of the towns’.”
The Prime Minister said, “Did you report her to the Race Relations Board?”
Ali and Jack laughed. Jack said, “Your faith in the institutions is very touching, Ed.”
Ali said, “If I went to the Race Relations Board every time I was called a fuckin’ Paki, I’d have to pitch a tent on their doorstep. No, I just keep to my own streets when I ain’t working. It’s a shame, ‘cause my missis, she likes the countryside, cows an’ that…”
The Prime Minister said, “I insist that you accompany us, Ali. The cream tea is a British custom and should be freely available to everyone with a valid British passport.”
“Or an Entitlement Card,” muttered Jack.
Ali got out of his cab reluctantly and allowed himself to be led inside the cottage tea room. Those taking tea inside turned to stare, but it was not Ali they were staring at, it was the Prime Minister. Transvestites were rarer than Pakistanis in the Peak District. They sat down at a vacant table. Ali looked miserably down at the pink gingham tablecloth. It was bad enough being the only brown face in here, but look who he was in here with! He’d known after a few hours that the woman with the blonde hair was really a man, and everybody else knew an’ all, innit. He’d told his missis that if Jack called again he’d say he was booked. If word got out into the community that he was hanging out with perverts it could give him a bad name at the mosque. He was already under pressure to make his missis wear a burka. When he had mentioned it to her she had quoted the Koran at him, the bit that said women were as good as men, and then she’d said, “You know I can’t stand anything round my face, even my hair gets on my nerves.”