by Sue Townsend
‘So why didn’t you marry him?’ I asked. My mother sighed and sat down on my bed next to Pandora. ‘Well, I couldn’t stand the maggots. In the end I gave him an ultimatum. “Ernie,” I said, “It’s me or the maggots. You must choose between us.” And he chose the maggots.’ Her lips started to tremble and so I left the room and bumped into my father on the landing. By now I was determined to sort out my paternity so I quizzed him about Ernie Crabtree. ‘Yeah, Ernie’s done well for himself,’ he said. ‘They call him the Maggot King in fishing circles. He’s got a chain of maggot farms now and a mansion with a pack of Dobermans running in the grounds … yeah, good old Ernie.’ ‘Does he still write poetry?’ I enquired. ‘Listen, son,’ said my father, and bent so close that I could see his thirty-year-old acne scars. ‘Listen, Ernie’s bank statements are pure poetry. He doesn’t need to write the stuff.’ My father got into bed, took his vest off and reached for the best-selling book he was reading. (Myself I never read best-sellers on principle. It’s a good rule of thumb. If the masses like it then I’m sure that I won’t.)
‘Dad,’ I said, ‘what did Ernie Crabtree look like?’ My father cracked the spine of his book open, lit a disgusting fag and said, ‘Short fat bloke with a glass eye, wore a ginger wig … now clear off, I’m reading.’ I went back to my room to find Pandora and my mother having one of those sickening talks that women have nowadays. It was full of words like ‘unfulfilled’, ‘potential’, and ‘identity’. Pandora kept chipping in with ‘environment’ and ‘socio-economic’ and ‘chauvinistic attitude’. I got my pyjamas out of my drawer, signalling that I wished their conversation to desist, but neither of them took the hint so I was forced to change in the bathroom. When I came back the air was full of French cigarette smoke, and they were gassing about the Common Market and the relevance of something called ‘milk quotas’.
I hung about tidying my desk and folding my clothes, but eventually I was forced to climb into bed while the conversation continued on either side of me. When they got on to cruise missiles I was forced to intercept and plead for a bit of multilateral peace.
Fortunately the dog got into a fight with a gang of dogs outside in the street so my mother was forced to run outside and separate it from the other canines with a mop handle. I took this opportunity to speak to Pandora. I said, ‘While you may have been idly chatting with my mother I have been formulating important ideas. I have decided that I am going to have a party.’ Pandora said, ‘A fancy dress party?’ ‘No,’ I shouted, ‘I’m forming a political party, well more of a Movement, really. It will be called the Mole Movement and membership will be £2 a year.’ Pandora asked what she would get for £2 a year. I replied, ‘Arresting conversation and stimulation and stuff.’ She opened her mouth to ask another question so I closed my eyes and feigned sleep. I heard the squelch of Pandora’s moon boots as she tiptoed to the door, opened it and went off, squelching, down the stairs. Thus was the ‘Mole Movement’ born.
The next morning, I woke with an epic poem thundering inside my head. Even before I had cleaned my teeth I was at my desk scribbling feverishly. I was interrupted once when a visitor called from Matlock, but I declined the encyclopaedias he was selling, and returned to my desk. The poem was finished at 11.35am Greenwich Mean Time. And this is it.
The Hoi Polloi Reception
BY A. MOLE
The food stood on the table
The drink stood on the bar
The crisps lay in the glass dish
’Twixt the gherkins in the jar.
The poets were expected
The artists had sent word
The pianists and flautists
Were bringing lemon curd.
The novelists were travelling
From dim and distant lands
The journalists were trekking
O’er deep and shifting sands.
The hoi polloi stood standing
Outside the party room
Which glowed with invitation
Like a twenty-year-old womb.
Yet they dared not cross the portal
To taste the waiting feast
For fear of what would happen
If they dared to cross the beast.
The hoi polloi grew weary
And sat upon the floor
And told each other stories
Until the clock struck four.
They drew each other pictures
One person sang a song
But was careful at the end
To say ‘Of course they won’t be long.’
The artists and the poets
And the people who write books
The musicians and the journalists
And the Nouvelle Cuisine cooks
Sent word they couldn’t make it
They couldn’t leave the town.
They were meeting VIPs for drinks
And couldn’t make it down.
The gherkins went untasted
The crisps were never crunched
The Chablis kept its cork in
The Twiglets went unmunched
But still the people waited
For a hundred million days
And just to help to pass the time
They wrote and acted plays.
They carved a pretty pattern
On the panel of the door.
They painted lovely pictures on the
Coldly concrete floor
They sang in pretty harmony
About the epic wait.
Then hush! … Was that a car we heard
Was that a creaking gate?
It’s the sculptors on the gravel
It’s the poets wild-eyed
Quick open wide the door to
Let the journalists inside.
Oh welcome to our party!
We thought you’d never come
So sad we ate the food though
We haven’t left a crumb!
For in the time of waiting
The hoi polloi grew brave
They went into the room
And took the things they craved.
And the poets and the sculptors
And the artists and the cooks
And the women good at music
And the men who wrote the books
And the journalists and actors
And the people trained to sing
Stood waiting ever after for the party to begin.
A Mole in Moscow
September 1985
Woke up at 6am in the morning. Got out of bed carefully because the dog was spread-eagled across the bed, flat on its back, with its legs in the air. At first I thought it was dead, but I checked its pulse and found signs of life, so I just slid out from underneath its warm fur. The dog’s dead old now and needs its sleep.
After measuring my chest and shoulders I had a thorough wash in cold water. I read somewhere (I think it was one of Mr Paul Johnson’s articles) that ‘cold water makes a man of you’. I’ve been a bit worried about my maleness lately, somewhere along the line I seem to have picked up too many female hormones.
I’ve been to see the doctor about it, but as usual he was most unsympathetic. I asked if I could have some of my female hormones taken out. Dr Grey laughed a horrible, bitter laugh and gave his usual advice, which was to go out and have my head kicked about in a rugby scrum. As I was leaving his surgery he said, ‘And I don’t want to see you back here for at least two months.’ I asked, ‘Even if I’m taken seriously ill?’ He muttered, ‘Especially if you’re taken seriously ill.’ I’m considering reporting him to his superiors; all this worry has affected my poetry output. I used to be able to turn out at least four poems an hour, but now I’m down to three a week. If I’m not careful I’ll dry up altogether.
In my desperation I went to the Lake District on the train. I was struck down by the beauty of the place, although saddened to find that there were no daffodils flashing in my outer eye as in William Wordsworth the old Lake poet. I asked an ancient country yoke
l why there were no daffodils about. He said, ‘It’s July, lad.’ I repeated loudly and clearly (because he was obviously a halfwit), ‘Yes I know that, but why are there no daffodils about?’ ‘It’s July,’ he roared. At that point I left the poor deranged soul. It’s sad that nothing can be done for such pathetic geriatric cases. I blame the government. Since they put rat poison in the water supply most of the adult population have gone barmy.
I sat on a rock that Wordsworth once sat on and thrilled to think that where my denim was now was where his moleskin used to be. A yob had scrawled on the rock, ‘What’s wiv this Wordsworth?’ Another, more cultivated hand, had written underneath: ‘You mindless vandal, how dare you bespoil this precious rock which has been here for millions of years. If you were here I’d flog you to within an inch of your life. Signed, A. Geologist.’ Somebody else had written underneath, ‘Flog me instead. Signed, A. Masochist.’ After eating my tuna-fish sandwiches and drinking my low calorie orange drink, I walked around the lake trying to feel inspired, but by tea-time nothing had happened so I put my pen and exercise book back into my carrier-bag and hurried back to the station to catch the train back to the Midlands.
It was just my luck to have to share a compartment with hyperactive two-year-old twins and their worn-out mother. When the twins weren’t having spectacular tantrums on the floor they were both standing six inches away from me, staringat me with unblinking evil eyes. It used to be my ambition to have a farmhouse full of Hovis-like children. I would imagine looking out of my study window to see them all frolicking amongst the combine harvesters. With Pandora, their mother, saying, ‘Shush!… Daddy is working,’ whereupon the children would blow me kisses with their podgy fingers and run into the stone-flagged kitchen to eat the cakes that Pandora had just taken from the oven. However, since my experience with the mad twins I have decided not to spread my seed. Indeed I may ask my parents if I can have a vasectomy for my eighteenth birthday.
When I got home I hurried round to Pandora’s house to tell her about this change in my future plans. Pandora said, ‘Au contraire, chéri, should we still be having a long-term relationship, I should like to have one child when I am forty-six years of age. The child will be a girl. She will be beautiful and immensely gifted. Her name will be Liberty.’ I said, ‘But do women’s reproductive organs still reproduce at the age of forty-six?’ Pandora said, ‘Mais naturellement, chéri, and anyway there is always the test tube option.’
Mr Braithwaite came into the room and said, ‘Pandora, make your mind up. Are you going to Russia or are you not?’ Pandora said, ‘Not. I can’t leave the cat.’ They then had a furious row. I could hardly believe my ears. Pandora was turning down a week in Russia with her father just because her stinking old moggy was about to give birth for the fourth time! During a pause in the argument I said, ‘I would give my right leg to go to the country of Dostoevsky’s birth.’
However, Mr Braithwaite didn’t respond with an invitation for me to accompany him. How mean can you get? The Co-op Dairy had given him two tickets to go on a fact-finding tour of milk distribution in Moscow. (Mrs Braithwaite had refused to go because she’d recently joined the SDP.) So a ticket was going spare. Yet the tight git was denying me the glorious opportunity of studying revolution in the raw. When Mr Braithwaite had gone into the garden to savagely mow the lawn Pandora said, ‘You shall go to Russia.’ She worked on her father for a whole week. She refused to eat, she played her stereo at full decibels. She invited her ‘Hell’s Angels’ friends for tea every day. Her punk friends came to supper and I had breakfast with the family most mornings. By the end of the week Mr Braithwaite was a broken man and Mrs Braithwaite was begging him to take me behind the Iron Curtain. Eventually, after Pandora held an open air reggae concert on the back lawn, Mr Braithwaite relented.
He came to our house at 11 o’clock one Sunday morning, so I got my parents out of bed and we had a meeting at our kitchen table. They enthusiastically agreed to me going to Russia for a week. My mother said, ‘Great, George, we could have a second honeymoon while Adrian’s away!’ My father said, ‘Yeah, Mum’ll look after the baby. We can rediscover ourselves, eh, Pauline?’ They slopped over each other for a bit and then turned their attention back to the proceedings for, knowing that I was a virgin traveller, Mr Braithwaite had brought a passport form with him and I filled it in carefully under his supervision. I only made one mistake. Where it said ‘sex’ I put ‘not yet’, instead of putting ‘male’.
We turned the house upside down looking for my birth certificate before my mother remembered that it was framed and hanging on Grandma’s front room wall. My father was sent round to fetch it while Mr Braithwaite took me to have my passport photographs taken in a slot machine. On the way, in the car, I practised facial expressions. I wanted my photographs to show the real Adrian Mole. Warm and clever, yet enigmatic and with just a hint of sensuousness. In the event, the photographs were disappointing. I looked like a spotty youth with just a hint of derangement in my sticking-out eyes. After everyone, apart from me, had had a good laugh at the photographs my mother reluctantly wrote a cheque out for fifteen pounds and then the documents were checked and double-checked by Mr Braithwaite before being put into a large envelope. While he did this I examined him carefully, for he was to be my travelling companion and room mate for a week. Would I be able to stand the shame of being seen in the company of a man wearing flared trousers and a paisley patterned waistcoat? Too late! The die was cast! Fate had thrown us together!
As he left, clutching my documentation, he said: ‘Adrian, during the week we are in Moscow do you promise, swear, give me your word, that you will not utter one word about the Norwegian leather industry?’ Astonished I said, ‘Of course. If, for some reason, you find my mini-lectures on the Norwegian leather industry offensive, then of course I won’t mention it.’ Mr Braithwaite said, ‘Oh I don’t find your constant monologues on the Norwegian leather industry offensive, just deeply, deeply boring.’ Then he got into his car and went to put the documents through the door of the Passport Office.
If this was a film, then leaves would blow across the screen and pages of diaries would riffle, trains would roar and calendars would have months torn from them by unseen hands. But as this is just me speaking then all I need to tell you is that time went by, and I got my passport and my visa by second-class post. In the days before I left England for Russia I also got advice. My grandma said, ‘If the Russians offer to show you the salt mines refuse and ask to be shown a shoe factory instead.’ My mother advised me not to mention that at the age of fourteen she had been thrown out of the Young Communist League (Norwich Branch) for fraternizing with American soldiers. Pandora advised against buying her a light amber necklace saying she preferred the dark amber, and Mr O’Leary from over the road advised me not to go at all. He said, ‘The Russians are godless heathens, Adrian.’ Mrs O’Leary said, ‘Yes, and so are you, Declan, you haven’t been to Mass for over two years.’
The worst part of the journey to Russia was the MI motorway. Mr Braithwaite’s Volvo was almost sucked under the passing lorries several times. In fact at Watford Gap Mr Braithwaite lost his nerve and the capable hands of Mrs Braithwaite took the wheel. It was the first time I had flown in a plane so I was expecting sympathy and a bit of cherishing from the air stewardesses who stood by the plane door. I said: ‘This is the first time I’ve flown, I may need extra attention during the flight.’ The woman said in broken English, ‘Well you won’t get it from me, Englishman. I will be too busy flying the plane.’ Mr Braithwaite went pale when I told him that the pilot was a woman. Then he remembered that he was an avowed feminist and said, ‘Jolly good.’ Apart from my putting my seat belt around my neck, the flight was uneventful. The passengers concentrated on hiding or eating the garlic sausage and cream crackers they were served for lunch; but they warmed up a bit when the vodka came round, and by the time we landed at the airport just outside Moscow some of them were disgustingly drunk and were not good examples of Wes
tern Capitalist Society.