Number 10

by Sue Townsend

  She had given him such a beautiful smile that he felt warmed by it, and even the prospect of visiting eighty-one-year-old Uncle Ernest in a nursing home did nothing to diminish the heat.

  Jack asked Ali to slow the car down and pointed out Pamela’s wild flowers growing at the side of the road. The Prime Minister said, “Y’know, Jack, there’s nothing as beautiful as the English countryside—except Tuscany, of course.”

  Ahead a tractor was skirting the perimeter of a field adjacent to the road. A pipe on top of the enclosed cab was spraying a fine mist, and before they could wind up the windows of the car the mist had wafted inside and was stinging their eyes and making them choke and cough. Ali braked and turned the engine off, unable to see the road ahead. Not only were his eyes full of moisture, but also the windscreen was covered in an opaque film that the windscreen wipers couldn’t remove.

  A quarter of an hour later a 999 call was received at police headquarters in Cheltenham from a farmer at Swale-on-the-Wold who claimed to have been dragged from his tractor and assaulted by three ramblers: a tall white male, a blonde transvestite and a Pakistani man. The officer who took the call warned the farmer about the penalties for making hoax calls: a large fine or imprisonment.

  When the officer had disengaged the call, she said to her colleague seated next to her, “Another crazy call from a farmer. It’s all the chemicals they use.”

  ∨ Number Ten ∧

  NINETEEN

  In the reception area of the Rainbow Residential Home for the Elderly, where the smell of uric acid intermingled with the scent of industrial disinfectant, Jack and the Prime Minister were greeted by the proprietor, Harry Rainbow, a man who could have been a retired heavyweight boxer. An obese black cat slinked around his pinstriped trousers as he shook their hands vigorously. “This is Blackie,” he told them. “The residents love him.”

  “I’ve never seen such a fat cat,” said Jack.

  “He’s a monster,” agreed Harry Rainbow. “I’ve asked the residents not to feed him but they’re killing him with kindness. We get through a cat a year on average; they’re all called Blackie, ‘cause it saves getting new identity discs made. So, have you come about the closure?”

  “No,” said the Prime Minister. “We’ve come to see Ernest Middleton.”

  Rainbow was surprised that Ernest had visitors. “His niece, Pamela, comes every Sunday,” he said. “But nobody else. Sad, really—he’s the uncle of the Prime Minister, you know. But the poor bugger doesn’t get so much as a Christmas card from him. Ernest has taken the closure very badly. He could do with cheering up.”

  The Prime Minister said, “Why are you closing, Mr Rainbow? Isn’t there a demand for places in residential homes?”

  “Yes, but me and Mrs Rainbow are in business first and foremost and the profit margins on old people are not worth the candle, to be honest. I need another fifty quid a week per unit to make it worth me and Mrs Rainbow’s time. And then there’s all this new legislation coming in. I’ve got to widen all the doors by an inch.”

  “But where will they all go?” asked the Prime Minister.

  A stoop of old ladies crept on Zimmer frames across the reception area. Harry Rainbow shouted, “It’s the Zimmer-frame gang, run for your lives!”

  The old ladies laughed politely at Harry’s familiar joke. Harry said, lowering his voice, “I don’t know where they’ll go, but in three months’ time this place will be a private clinic: breast augmentation, Botox, liposuction, that’s where all the money is now.”

  He introduced them to Lauren, a care assistant. Lauren looked directly at the Prime Minister from behind her green-rimmed spectacles and said, “Where do I know you from? Is it Weight watchers?”

  Jack diverted Lauren by asking her if it was possible to see Ernest now.

  “You can see him,” she said, “but he might not talk to you. He’s sulking, bless him. It’s come as a terrible shock to them all, this closure.” She continued to walk as she led them down a corridor and into a large room where wisps of old people sat in plastic armchairs corralled by bib-like tables. “Mind you, I’ll be sorry to see the old people go, but Mr Rainbow’s told me that private patients’ll tip well providing we bow and scrape a bit.”

  A large television was showing a children’s programme. Four actors wearing primary colours and genial monster heads were miming to a song about the delights of cake.

  Lauren went up to a scrawny old man with a clever face who was wearing a suit, shirt, tie and waistcoat and said, “Ernest, you’ve got visitors.”

  “The Visiters by Daisy Ashford,” said Ernest. “A delightful book. It could have been tiresomely faux naive but she pulled it off, I think.”

  Lauren said, “He talks gibberish sometimes.”

  Jack said to Ernest, “It’s a very funny book.”

  The Prime Minister said, “Uncle Ernest, do you remember my mother, your sister-in-law, Heather Clare?”

  “She can’t be your mother, my dear,” said Ernest. “Heather only had two children. One of them is the Prime Minister and you’re obviously not him, and the other is the beautiful Pamela and you’re certainly not her. So who are you?”

  The Prime Minister sank momentarily into a pit of self-doubt. Who was he?

  Jack came to his rescue: “This is Edwina, Heather Clare’s love child.”

  Ernest said cheerily, “I’m not surprised. Your mother enjoyed a bit of rumpy-pumpy; she mixed with a fast set in the thirties, when she was young—musicians, you know.”

  This account of his mother did not in any way accord with the Prime Minister’s memories. “Do you have any photographs of her?” he asked.

  “In my room,” said the old man.

  They helped him as he struggled to get up from his chair, and escorted him to the lift in the corridor. As they slowly ascended two floors Jack asked, “How long have you lived here, Ernest?”

  Ernest replied, “I’ve forgotten. All I know is that I had to sell my house to pay for my care, and now all that money is gone and I’m completely dependent on the state.”

  His room was small but pleasantly furnished with a well-stocked bookcase and a Dansette record player.

  Jack looked out of the window and saw Ali washing his car clean of pesticides with a bucket of hot soapy water he’d begged from a kitchen assistant.

  Ernest rummaged through a drawer and eventually he brought out a handful of photographs. “That’s rather a lovely one of Heather,” he said, placing it on the Prime Minister’s lap. “It was the winter of 1936.”

  The Prime Minister looked at the pretty, vibrant-faced girl walking alongside a column of flat-capped, poorly dressed, pale-faced men.

  Jack, looking over the Prime Minister’s shoulder, said, “The Jarrow Marchers. They stopped off in Leicester at the Co-operative Shoe-works; my granddad was one of the blokes who volunteered to stay late and mend their boots.”

  The Prime Minister took in every detail of his mother’s image. The cigarette she held between the forefingers of her right hand, her dark-lipsticked mouth, the ridiculous ankle-strapped shoes she wore on the cobbles, her tiny waist and the excitement shining in her eyes.

  Ernest passed the Prime Minister another photograph, this one of his mother standing in front of a theatrical poster laughing and pointing to a name in the middle of the bill. She now held the cigarette in her left hand. He tried to read the name but the letters were too small.

  Ernest said, “She was a rhythm guitarist in an all-girls jazz band. Miss Monica’s Hot Seven.”

  “Guitar? Jazz?” said the Prime Minister. “No, not my mother—she was a very quiet, devout woman. She wouldn’t let me listen to popular music of any kind.”

  Ernest lowered himself on to his bony knees and said, as he pulled a box out from under his bed, “That was before she married that Stalinist Percy.” He took a seventy-eight rpm record in a yellowing sleeve out of the box, passed it to Jack and asked him to put it on the record player.

  Jack carefully
removed the shellac record from its sleeve and using only his fingertips lowered it on to the turntable.

  Ernest said, “Your mother has rather a good solo, about two minutes in.”

  After a few seconds of hiss and crackle, ‘Stomping at the Savoy’ filled the room. Miss Monica had arranged the music so that each of her girls had the chance to shine with her instrument, albeit briefly. When the guitar solo began the Prime Minister leaned towards the record player nervously, willing his mother to do well.

  When she finished the Prime Minister applauded and accepted jack’s congratulations as though he had played the solo himself.

  The next photograph was more conventional. His mother was standing next to his father. They were in their wedding clothes. Her dress was like a draped white column and she held a huge bouquet of flowers in front of her belly. Ernest said, “She was five months pregnant, though one would never have known.”

  The Prime Minister said, “So Edward, her first child, was illegitimate?”

  “A bastard,” said Ernest. “But it was awfully good of Percy to marry her, considering the morals of the time.”

  The Prime Minister said, “What do you mean?”

  “Edward’s real father was a refugee called Shadrack Vajansky.”

  “Crikey,” said the Prime Minister. “What was this chap’s nationality?”

  “Czechoslovakian,” said Ernest. “He was a handsome fellow with black eyes and a couple of gold teeth who did a bit of knife-grinding in the neighbourhood. There were rumours that he came from an aristocratic Romany family. Though I rather think he started those rumours himself. He certainly had the gift of the gab.”

  “Blimey. Is he still alive?” asked the Prime Minister.

  “I don’t know,” Ernest answered. “The poor chap was deported and sent back behind the Iron Curtain. Heather was terribly upset; she made inquiries but nothing came of them.”

  Sweat had broken out on the Prime Minister’s forehead. Jack took out a white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to him. The Prime Minister mopped his brow then excused himself and went to find a lavatory. He was glad of the support of the disability rails that surrounded the toilet bowl. He sat down and took a piece of Bronco lavatory paper from out of his handbag.

  So the foundations of his childhood had been blown up by Ernest’s revelations. He was the child of a Romany; he had bona fide Bohemian blood flowing in his veins. His mother sounded like a fabulous woman. He wished he’d known her better. He threw the Bronco into the bin and tore off pieces of soft pink paper from the roll on the wall and he blew his nose and wiped his eyes, then looked into the mirror and repaired his make-up. He didn’t bother washing his hands.

  ♦

  Clarke and Palmer knew about the Prime Minister’s mother’s career with Miss Monica’s Hot Seven, but it came to them as a surprise to learn about his natural father. Palmer tapped a few details into the laptop in front of him and within minutes found out that Shadrack Vajansky was still alive and was living in the outskirts of Bratislava in a Romany encampment. According to immigration records, he had made two attempts to settle in Britain, the first in 1951, when he was fleeing from Soviet Communism, and the second in 1998, when he got no further than Heathrow in a vain bid to claim asylum because of persecution by racist skinheads in Slovakia. Apparently he told immigration officers that he was the father of their Prime Minister and asked if he could be allowed to make a phone call to Edward, the son he had never met. Permission was refused.

  Clarke said to Palmer, “You know what, Palmer; I look nothing like my dad.”

  ♦

  After the Prime Minister had left, Jack said, “Are there any photographs of Pamela, Ernest?”

  Ten minutes later even he was growing tired of looking at the constant stream of photographs that Ernest passed to him. There she was, a true beauty, sitting on Santa’s knee, paddling in her knickers at Black Rock Sands, in her Girl Guides uniform, tearing up L-plates on the day she passed her driving test, and getting married to Andrew, a tall man with a thick neck whom Jack disliked on sight.

  A bell rang as the Prime Minister re-entered the room. Ernest said, “That’s the lunch bell.”

  Jack helped Ernest to put the photographs away and took the opportunity to steal one and palm it into his pocket. He didn’t know which one he’d stolen. He would look at it later when he was alone.

  The Prime Minister was more direct. He asked Ernest if he could have a photograph of his mother to keep.

  Ernest said, “Take all three, I’ll be dead soon.”

  The Prime Minister said, “Uncle Ernest, you could live another twenty years.”

  Ernest said, “With any luck, my dear, I shall be dead in a fortnight.”

  There was a queue of old people at the lift, so they half-carried Ernest down the stairs and into the dining room and sat him at a round table for six.

  Lauren and other care assistants bustled about delivering plates of pale stew and vegetables to the residents.

  “I’ll let you eat your lunch, shall I?” said the Prime Minister to Ernest.

  “I shan’t be eating lunch,” said Ernest. “I shan’t be eating ever again. I’ll tell you a secret: I haven’t eaten for two days; I’m starving myself to death.”

  He picked up the plate of food in front of him and with difficulty bent down and placed it on the floor. It wasn’t long before Blackie padded over and began to lick delicately at the watery stew.

  ♦

  Jack said he wanted to stretch his legs and went for a walk in the grounds. He saw why Ernest didn’t want to leave this place—the gardens were lovely, with daffodils and crocuses shining through the grass under the mature trees. Jack sat on a wooden bench that displayed a brass plaque inscribed, ‘In loving memory of Elsie Stafford who was happy here’. He took the stolen photograph from out of his pocket. He didn’t recognise Pamela at first; she was being dragged across the village green in Swale-on-the—’Wold by two uniformed policemen, and in the background was a pack of hounds and a huntsman on a horse who looked remarkably like Prince Charles.

  Jack phoned Pamela because he wanted to hear the sound of her voice. He could hear the dogs barking in the background, and a man’s voice. Jack said, “You’ve got company?”

  Pamela said, “It’s my neighbour, Douglas. Something dreadful happened to him today. He was minding his own business spraying pesticides on to the hedgerows when for no reason at all a towny dragged him out of his cab and threw him into a drainage ditch where he was verbally abused by a female impersonator and a Pakistani.”

  Jack could tell she was trying very hard not to laugh.

  He told her that her Uncle Ernest was starving himself to death.

  Pamela said, “He’s a fool. I’ve offered to look after him here, but he said he’s had a dog phobia since reading The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

  Jack wanted to tell her that he loved her but he was conscious of her neighbour’s aggrieved presence in the room. It was Pamela who said she had to go; somebody had turned up to collect a female poodle called Harrie.

  He looked at the photograph again, searching for reasons why he should forget about this woman. Her view of the world was different from his own. He had previously thought that foxes were vermin, but now he was beginning to see the fox’s point of view.

  He remembered a fox stole that his mother used to wear around her neck on winter mornings; he had always hated its glassy-eyed stare. He phoned Norma but there was no reply. He would ask the Prime Minister if they could call in at Leicester on their way back to London.

  Ali shouted to him that they were ready to go; the Prime Minister was already sitting in the back of the car, holding the record of ‘Stomping at the Savoy’ as though it was nitro-glycerine about to explode. Jack said, “Ed, you can’t sit and hold it for two days.”

  The Prime Minister said, “But these shellac records shatter so easily.”

  Ali was hurt. He said to the Prime Minister, “Look, if you’ve go
t somethink to say about my driving, just say it, innit. When I was eleven years old I used to drive a TaTa truck full of eggs round Islamabad and I never broke one egg, not once.”

  Jack thought that Ali was overstating his case about being a careful driver, but he said nothing.

  After asking the Prime Minister’s permission Jack directed Ali to turn left on to the A46 and head towards Leicester.

  Ali said, “You can trust me with your precious record. Just put it on the seat next to you—Allah will keep it safe.”

  The Prime Minister did as he was told. He thought that Ali would make a very effective chief whip.

  After a few miles Ali regained his good spirits and the atmosphere inside the car lightened. The Prime Minister said, “Can we stop somewhere for a drink? I could murder a Campari and soda.”

  Jack said, “Ed, the expression is, I could murder a pint.”

  Ali said, “Stratford’s on the way.” Then he added, “William Shakespeare was born there, you know.”

  Jack said irritably, “You’ll be telling us the Prime Minister lives in Downing Street next.”

  Ali laughed triumphantly and said, “He don’t any more; he’s supposed to be in a nuclear bunker, but I reckon he’s dead.”

  “Dead?” said the Prime Minister.

  “Yeah,” said Ali. “I reckon he tried to walk on water and drowned himself.”

  The Prime Minister forced himself to laugh along with the others.

  Ali said, “My eldest boy, Mohammed, is doing Shakespeare for GCSE.”

  The Prime Minister said, “How did he do in his SATS?”

  “Don’t talk about SATS to me,” said Ali. “All my kids have had their hair turned grey from worrying about them tests.”

  “What Shakespeare play is he doing?” said the Prime Minister.

  “It’s not a play,” said Ali, “it’s a sonnet; that’s like a poem,” he explained helpfully and told them that he sometimes wrote poetry himself. It were no good, though—he wouldn’t never show it to anyone except for his wife. He usually did it late at night after the last kid had gone to bed. His wife had bought him a notebook and a pencil case and they were kept on a shelf in the old meter cupboard in the front room. He had started off making rhymes but then Mohammed read him a poem that had made him and Ali laugh; it was by a bloke who was still alive, Simon Armitage, he lived near Leeds. He was quite famous and Ali was pleased that Jack had heard of him. Edwina, the bloke in the blonde wig, hadn’t. So Ali explained to him that this Armitage bloke wrote about ordinary things and Ali had wrote a poem about his taxi, comparing it to a cowboy’s horse. It weren’t good enough to put in a book, but his wife liked it and she had copied it out for him in her nice handwriting and sent it to his father in Pakistan.