by Sue Townsend
Morgan said, “It’s a free country, isn’t it?”
McPherson didn’t answer. Estelle and Poppy would look good on the front of the Sun; Morgan would only have spoiled the picture with his miserable, spotty face.
♦
Palmer was at a meeting where plans to assassinate Saddam Hussein and thus precipitate a regime change were being discussed. A foreign office official had just said, “Nobody apart from the Prime Minister and his Christian Socialist pals are keen on attacking and invading Iraq. It would be rather expensive and not a little dangerous given the situation in the Middle East and would engender a tiresome amount of paperwork given that none of the MoD computers are up to facilitating a war.”
There was general laughter, and it was agreed that other options should be explored.
Palmer, himself a confectionery lover, said he had read in the Spectator that Saddam Hussein had a passion for Quality Street chocolates. “Apparently he’s especially fond of the Country Fudge.”
A young black woman representing the CIA said, “Sir, latest intelligence reports he’s now swapped his allegiance to the new one, Orange Chocolate Crunch.”
“Typically opportunistic of him,” murmured the Foreign Office official.
The meeting lost its focus for a few moments as the members discussed the relative merits of orange creams, hazelnut and caramel and the coconut éclairs. An Iraqi specialist argued for the toffee penny until the meeting was brought back to order.
Palmer suggested, “Why not ask Porton Down to adulterate the Orange Chocolate Crunch ones with one of their deadly bacteria and send Saddam one of those festive tins for Christmas?”
There were several objections to this. Somebody said the Quality Street people might not cooperate and could sue the government. Somebody else said that Iraq didn’t celebrate Christmas. Another said Saddam might offer the tin to one of his grandchildren and that they could not condone the killing of an innocent child.
Since nobody at the meeting could condone the accidental poisoning of a small child with a chocolate, it was agreed that a surprise missile attack on areas of major population seemed inevitable—unless the Prime Minister had undergone a change of heart during his week’s absence.
♦
The only sounds in the kitchen came from the zips and metal buttons of the denim jeans as they scraped and turned across the porthole of the washing machine. The four of them watched the kettle and waited for it to boil. The music from the next room dominated them; the Prime Minister wished that somebody would turn it off.
The reek of marijuana and crack hung in the air. Peter stood on the floor in a corner of his cage cheeping repetitively and monotonously. Jack said, “The poor little bugger’s off his head.”
James stood with his back against the kitchen door and Jack got the uncomfortable feeling that to ask him to move aside might exacerbate the violent atmosphere already present in the room.
The Prime Minister looked around with interest. It appeared to him that he was in a typical working-class kitchen. Cans of lager were stacked on the draining board next to boxes of microwave food. There was even a mangy-looking budgerigar whose cage floor was lined with a copy of the Sun; the headline read, ‘Saddam likes Quality Street’. An ashtray on the kitchen table held a small pyre of cigarette ends, and next to it, almost touching, was a donkey pulling a cart containing salt and pepper pots. There was nothing in the kitchen of any taste; Adele would find it amusingly kitsch.
Jack’s mother, a slattern wearing too much make-up, did not appear to be pleased to see her son. She shouted over the music, “And I don’t know why you’re looking so bleedin’ mardy, our Jack. I told you not to come, I said I’d be busy.”
The Prime Minister noticed that Norma looked at James when she said this, as if absolving herself from blame.
As his mother poured boiling water into a metal teapot Jack spoke with absolute banality about the weather, trying to neutralise the tension in the room.
The Prime Minister wrinkled his nose. He had just identified the acrid smell; some of the more dissolute students at Cambridge had smoked dope. He never had, knowing instinctively that he wouldn’t like it—he had to keep himself under control. He wondered now if his mother and his real father had ever shared what he believed used to be called a jazz cigarette.
Norma said, “So you’ll drink this tea then you’ll go, will you?” It was more order than question.
Jack said to James, “How’s college?”
James said contemptuously, “College is for pygmies. Only little people go to college. I operate on a need-to-know basis; why should I clutter my head up with facts I ain’t gonna need?”
The Prime Minister had once heard Michael Heseltine make a very similar statement.
Norma said, “James will get by without an education; he’s the cleverest person I know. He’s got a Mercedes and he’s only nineteen.”
The Prime Minister said tentatively, “Well, y’know, Mrs Sprat, I kind of think that education is not only about equipping us with the tools for material gain. A good education should also enhance our lives and enable us to contribute to society, to make a difference.”
James said, “Where were you educated?”
“At Cambridge,” said the crime Minister, lowering his eyes modestly.
“Well, it ain’t done you much good, has it?” said James. “Look at the state you’re in. You ain’t a man, you ain’t a woman, you ain’t no class, what are you?”
The Prime Minister adjusted his wig and ran a hand over his bristly chin. He had meant to shave before entering the house, but there hadn’t been a suitable opportunity.
James said, “I’ve seen you before; do you work in the cloakroom at the Powder Poof?”
There was a violent banging on the other side of the kitchen door. James shouted, “Get back in that room and stay there.” He could have been yelling at a dog.
“Who’s that?” said Jack.
“One of our guests,” said Norma. She was clattering cups and teaspoons into saucers. She said to James, “Shall I take our guests in the front room a cup of tea?”
James shouted, “No! Stay out of there.”
Jack saw his mother’s frightened face and stood up and said, “I’m not staying out of there! I’ve got to turn that music off.” He asked politely for James to move away from the kitchen door, and when James refused and called him a fascist, Jack behaved fascistically: he took James’s right arm and bent it behind his back with such ferocity that it almost broke. James screamed with pain and sank to his knees.
Norma cried out, “Don’t hurt him, Jack!”
Jack pulled James to his feet and pushed him along the hallway and into the front room. It was completely dark but he could smell the presence of other people. The music was like a living thing thumping at Jack’s body. His hand went to the light switch on the wall by the door, but somebody had taped over it.
Jack tore off the tape and flicked the switch and the centre ceiling light came on and revealed four men and two women who protected their eyes from the sudden glare. They were an ex-manager of a carpet shop, an ex-hospital nurse, an ex-tyre-fitter, a car salesman, a doorman and a girl who lived in a probation hostel. They had begged, stolen and taken out loans that they could never repay so as to give James £500 each to weekend at his house, all found. A huge speaker stood in each alcove either side of the fireplace. Speakers smaller than these were used in the Palais de Danse where Jack had taken ballroom lessons with 300 other people. All he could think of was to stop the noise; he looked around for the source and saw that the speakers were connected to a CD player standing on his old desk next to his reference books and a donkey vase containing a bunch of dead daffodils. He fumbled with various switches. Eventually there was silence, and Norma’s guests looked at this newcomer who had blundered into their dreams.
James stood in the centre of the room and looked at Jack with contempt. He pitied the little people who were afraid to take crack—they wer
e pygmies. They would never know the ecstasy that James had experienced the first time he’d taken it. He affected the stance of a world statesman, both commanding and patronising, and started to preach to everyone in the room.
“The purpose of life is to take crack,” he explained. “It is the reason we were born, and it is all we exist for. Only a few superior people are allowed to know the wonders of crack, and we are the true elite. These privileged people”—here he gestured towards the tyre-fitter—“are holy and must be allowed to gather together to worship crack. Everything is allowed in its name. Rape, murder and torture will happen to people who try to prevent the worship of crack. If a crack-user has no money they must be allowed to steal from the pygmies like you and your mother, Jack. To kill a pygmy is no crime, to rape a pygmy is no crime, to bugger a pygmy is no crime, to kidnap and torture a pygmy is no crime. A crack-head knows the truth and the truth is a pleasure so exquisite as to need a new form of words before the degree of the pleasure can be understood.”
“Imagine infinity, the immeasurable distances of space stretching into a forever future, and then imagine pleasure so large. Who wouldn’t want to feel so gooooooooood, so hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh, so loooooooooooovely, so wooooooonderful…?”
♦
God is crack.
Jesus is crack.
Allah is crack.
Buddha is crack.
Krishna is crack.
Abraham is crack.
Moses is crack.
Martin Luther is crack.
Mandela is crack.
Beckham is crack.
Puff Daddy is crack.
Crack is crack.
♦
James’s voice faltered slightly. “This is the promise of crack; this is why we take it again and again and again and again and again…”
The ex-nurse said, “But it is a broken promise and we can never, never, never, never get that same pleasure again, no matter how much we take and how much we spend.”
James continued, “But we have to keep on trying. There is always hope, we must have faith.”
The car salesman said, “And we got to be prepared to lose our families, lose our wives and husbands and children, lose our jobs, our friends, lose our money, our property, our houses, our self-respect, our pride, ourselves.”
James said, “Yeah, and we will live in a dark world where everybody is our enemy as shadows wait to kill us, where every sound threatens our lives and the sun only reminds us that we will soon be thirsty yet we have nothing to drink and nobody to moisten our lips.”
James felt the energy leave his body and he lay down on the half-moon rug in front of the fireplace and seemed instantly to fall asleep.
Jack switched the light off and closed the door quietly behind him as if he had just been checking on sleeping children. He went upstairs and pulled Norma’s largest suitcase from the top of the wardrobe in her bedroom.
♦
Norma was telling the Prime Minister how much he looked like the Prime Minister: “You’re Edward Clare to a T,” she said. “The voice, the blinking, the smile, even the crooked teeth, everything,” she said.
The Prime Minister, unnerved by James’s rant from the other room, tried to remember how one spoke to a genuine, old-style working-class person. What were the key points? Ferrets? Bingo?
Norma told the Prime Minister that he could be a million times better at being the Prime Minister than Rory Bremner. She said, changing the subject, “I’m glad our Jack’s come to take charge.”
The Prime Minister said automatically, “Our policemen do a wonderful job.”
He asked Norma how she thought the government was doing. She didn’t appear to understand the question. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not interested in politics, except for Ron Phillpot; I liked it when he gave that bloke a good pasting.”
The Prime Minister was strangely comforted by Norma’s indifference. What was the point of him lying awake at night fretting about the Kyoto Agreement when the vast majority of people slept for eight hours in blissful ignorance of the dangers of power-station emissions?
The telephone rang on the kitchen wall. Norma looked at it fearfully; James had discouraged her from answering the phone or making her own calls.
Upstairs Jack heard the phone ringing and ran down to answer it. It was his sister, Yvonne.
“Where are you?” he asked, genuinely interested—after all, she could be anywhere in the world.
“I’ve just landed at Luton and I’m on the motorway,” she shouted. “Why hasn’t Mam been answering the phone? Has owt happened to her?”
Jack didn’t know how to begin to explain to Yvonne what had happened to their mother during the past week, so he said, “I’m so glad to hear your voice, Vonnie.”
She said, “Is Mam all right, then?”
Jack said, “She’s here in the kitchen smoking a fag.”
Yvonne shouted over a badly connected line: “Tell her I’ve brung her some money.”
Jack said, “Is Derek with you?”
“Who?” Yvonne seemed to have forgotten that she had once been married to a man called Derek for twenty-six years.
“No, I’m on my own,” she said. “And I’m driving my own car.”
Jack couldn’t imagine his sister driving, driving her own car or driving her own car on the motorway having ‘landed at Luton’. The last time he’d seen her she’d been cleaning the windows of her semi-detached wearing a wrap-around apron and fluffy slippers while Derek held the back of the chair she was standing on.
Norma panicked slightly when Jack told her that Yvonne would be there in an hour or so. She said, “Vonnie won’t like all these guests here, Jack.”
Jack was amazed at his mother’s capacity for self-deception. Calling the people in the front room ‘guests’ was like describing ants in the jam as ‘welcome visitors’. Jack said, “Where does he keep the stuff, Mam?”
“I can’t tell you,” she whispered. “I’ve promised him I won’t tell. He made me swear on Pete’s life; he said he’d put him in the microwave and eat him with a poached egg. He said he’d wear Pete’s feathers in his hair. I’m glad you’ve come, Jack.”
Jack whispered, “Don’t tell me then, Mam, show me.”
Norma pulled open the cutlery drawer of the kitchen table and took out an Old Holborn tobacco tin; wrapped inside a piece of dark-blue velvet were small glittering rocks. “Crystals?” said the Prime Minister.
“Crack!” said Jack.
The Prime Minister drew back as if expecting one of the tiny rocks to insinuate itself inside his body to send him mad and propel him on to the street to rave and mug and commit unspeakable acts against his fellow human beings. He felt better when Jack covered the little rocks with the velvet, replaced the lid and put the tin into the inside pocket of his jacket.
Norma said, “You can’t keep it, Jack; the guests have paid for it up front.”
Jack said to his mother, “I’ve got your suitcase off the top of the wardrobe and put it on the bed. Go upstairs and pack it; you’re leaving here tonight.”
“Where are you taking me?” said Norma.
“I don’t know,” said Jack.
“I can’t leave Pete,” she said.
“We’ll take him with us,” Jack said, though in his opinion Peter didn’t look strong enough to withstand much of a journey.
With Jack standing guard in the hallway Norma went upstairs and began to pack. The Prime Minister said to Jack, “Jack, I’m a tolerant kinda guy but I sort of draw the line at crack, and I’m feeling pretty uncomfortable right now with this situation. I realise that this is nothing out of the ordinary for you, Jack, but I must confess that I’m sort of, y’know, shocked. Jack, it’s your duty to take me away from this place. Call Ali, tell him to come now.”
Jack said savagely, “I blame you for this. You’ve known about crack for ten years and you’ve done fuck all about it. You’ve run away and shoved your fucking moderate head under the duvet and
pretended that crack was a nasty thing that would go away all by itself if we kept still and pretended it wasn’t there. Well, it’s here,” he shouted, “in my mother’s house.”
Statistics came to the Prime Minister’s lips. He reeled off the millions spent on drug education and prevention; he said that X per cent of something had been spent on something and that X per cent had been allocated to something and that X per cent of X per cent was due to be spent over the next spending cycle.
Jack shouted, “Yeah, and eight and a half per cent of the Disciples betrayed Jesus. Percentages mean nothing, statistics are balls.”
The Prime Minister said, “The government has spent four and a half million pounds funding research.”
Jack roared. “Crack-related crime costs this country billions. I’ll tell you what, Ed, my mam’s front room is full of drug experts—why don’t we go in there and pick their brains? It won’t cost your government a fucking penny.”
♦
Yvonne was getting used to the controls of the BMW car and she dared to move into the fast lane where she put her foot down until she reached ninety miles an hour. The weather was crap and she wished now that she’d worn the yellow cashmere cardigan she’d bought in Marbella. She turned up the car heating and twiddled with the radio trying to get some decent music: Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, Queen—something with a tune she could sing along with. But all she got was depressing news about England. That they’d lost at cricket, floods had engulfed the West Country, the M25 had been closed for seven hours and that Edward Clare would be resuming his Prime Ministerial duties the next day, that the Prime Minister’s children had issued a statement pleading for their mother’s privacy. Yvonne wondered how she could have lived in England for so long. Compared to Marbella it was total crap. Was it possible in England to breakfast on a warm balcony surrounded by bougainvillaea, sipping fresh orange juice and eating croissants with proper coffee while looking at a blue sea? No, it bloody well wasn’t. Could you walk about in a white denim skirt suit with gold sandals and matching shoulder bag in Leicester in the winter without looking like a prat? No. Could you eat dinner on the street at ten o’clock at night without freezing your tits off in England? I don’t think so.