The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole

by Sue Townsend

  She looked pleased to see me and then asked why I’d brought the spaghetti jar into the hospital. I was halfway through telling her, when she screwed her face up and started singing ‘Hard Day’s Night’.

  After a bit she stopped singing and looked normal. She even laughed when I got to the bit about the horrible taxi driver. After a bit a kind black nurse came in and said, ‘Are you all right, honey?’

  My mother said, ‘Yes. This is Adrian.’

  The nurse said, ‘Put a mask and gown on, Adrian, and sit in a corner; it’s going to be action stations soon!’

  After about half an hour my mother was singing more and talking less. She kept grabbing my hand and crushing it. The nurse came back in and to my relief told me to go out. But my mother wouldn’t let go of my hand. The nurse told me to make myself useful and time the contractions. When she’d gone I asked my mother what contractions were.

  ‘Pains,’ she said, between clenched teeth. I asked her why she hadn’t had her back frozen to stop the pain. My mother said, ‘I can’t stand people fiddling around with my back.’

  The pains started coming every minute, and my mother went barmy, and a lot of people ran in and started telling her to push. I sat in a far corner at the head end of my mother and tried not to look at the other end where doctors and nurses were clanging about with metal things. My mother was puffing and panting, just like she does at Christmas when she’s blowing balloons up. Soon everyone was shouting, ‘Push, Mrs Mole, push!’ My mother pushed until her eyes nearly popped out. ‘Harder,’ they shouted. My mother went a bit barmy again, and the doctor said, ‘I can see the baby’s head!’

  I tried to escape then but my mother said, ‘Where’s Adrian? I want Adrian.’

  I didn’t like to leave her alone with strangers, so I said I’d stay. I stared at the beauty spot on my mother’s cheek for the next three minutes, and I didn’t look up, until I heard the black nurse say, ‘Pant for the head.’

  At 5.19 p.m. my mother had a barmy moment; then the doctor and nurses gave a sort of loud sigh, and I looked up and saw a skinny purple thing hanging upside down. It was covered in white stuff.

  ‘It’s a lovely little girl, Mrs Mole,’ the doctor said, and he looked dead pleased, as if he were the father himself.

  My mother said, ‘Is she all right?’

  The doctor said, ‘Toes and fingers all correct.’

  The baby started crying in a crotchety, bad-tempered way, and she was put on my mother’s flatter belly. My mother looked at her as if she was a precious piece of jewellery or something. I congratulated my mother and she said, ‘Say hello to your sister.’

  The doctor stared at me in my mask and gown and said, ‘Aren’t you Mr Mole, the baby’s father?’

  I said, ‘No, I’m Master Mole, the baby’s brother.’

  ‘Then you’ve broken every rule in this hospital,’ he said. ‘I must ask you to leave. You could be rife with childish infectious diseases.’

  So, while they stood around waiting for something called the placenta to emerge, I went into the corridor. I found a waiting-room full of worried-looking men, smoking and talking about cars.

  (To be continued after sleep.)

  At 6.15 I rang Pandora and told her the news. She did big squeals down the phone. Next I rang Grandma, who did big sobs.

  Then I phoned Bert and Queenie, who threatened to come and see my mother. But I managed to put them off. Then I ran out of five pence pieces, so I called in to see my mum and sister. Then went home. I walked around the empty house, trying to imagine sharing it with a little girl.

  I put all my smashable possessions on the top shelf of my unit. Then went to bed. It was only 7.30 but for some reason I was dead tired. The phone woke me up at 8.15. It was my father gibbering about having a girl. He wanted to know every detail about her. I said she took after him. Half bald and angry-looking.

  FRIDAY NOVEMBER 12TH

  The Russians chose their new leader today. He is called Andropov. I am a hero at school. The story has got round that I delivered he baby. The dinner lady in charge of chips gave me an extra big portion. Went to the hospital to see my female relations after school.

  I am staying at Pandora’s house. Over supper I gave them a blow-by-blow account of the birth. Halfway through Mr Braithwaite got up and left the table.

  SATURDAY NOVEMBER 13TH

  Pandora and I went to see my mother and the baby this afternoon. We had to fight our way through the crowd of visitors round her bed. For such a stubborn person she is certainly popular. The baby was passed around like an exhibit in a court room. Everyone said, ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

  The women said, ‘Ooh it makes me feel broody!’

  The men said, ‘Small fingernails.’

  Then Queenie and Bert arrived, so a space was cleared for Bert’s wheelchair, and Queenie sat on the bed and squashed my mother’s legs and it was dead chaotic. The nurses started looking efficient and bossy. A staff nurse said, ‘You are only allowed two visitors to a bed.’ Just then my grandma and father turned up. So everyone else was pleased to go and leave these two particular visitors at the bed.

  SUNDAY NOVEMBER 14TH

  Remembrance Sunday

  My mother phoned me up to tell me that she is coming home at 10.30 tomorrow morning. She told me to make sure the heating is switched on. I asked if she wanted a taxi ordering. She said, ‘No, your father has kindly offered to pick us up.’

  Us! I am no longer an only child.

  Watched the poppies falling on to the heads of the young kids in Westminster Abbey. My eyes started running: I think I’ve got a cold coming on.

  MONDAY NOVEMBER 15TH

  Skived off school. Mrs Singh and Mrs O’Leary came round early to tidy the house. I said I was perfectly capable, but Mrs O’Leary said: ‘Sure, you’re talking non-sense, child. How would a lump like you know how to make a house nice enough to pass the eagle eyes of a woman?’

  At 11.15 I saw the bizarre sight of my father carrying his daughter down the front path. Followed by my thin purple-haired mother. I haven’t got enough emotions to cope with all the complexities of my life. After going mad over the baby, Mrs Singh and Mrs O’Leary melted away and left my immediate family staring at each other. Jo break the tension I made a cup of tea.

  My mother took hers to bed and I let mine go cold. My father hung about for a bit then went home to Grandma’s.

  The midwife came at 230. She did mysterious things to my mother in the privacy of the master bedroom. At 3.15 the midwife came downstairs and said my mother was suffering from after-baby blues caused by hormone trouble. She asked me who was looking after my mother. I said I was. She said, ‘I see,’ in a thin-lipped manner. I said, ‘I am perfectly capable of pushing a Hoover around!’

  She said, ‘Your mother needs more support.’

  So I took the pillows off my own bed and gave them to my mother. This act of kindness made my mother cry.

  TUESDAY NOVEMBER 16TH

  Phoned the school secretary Mrs Claricoates and enquired about maternity leave. Scruton came on the line. He barked, ‘If I don’t see you in school tomorrow, Mole, I shall be severely displeased!’

  The baby woke up five times in the night. I know, because I sat by her cot, checking her breathing every ten minutes.

  My mother has stopped crying and started wearing mascara again.

  WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 17TH

  Mrs Singh and Mrs Oleary are taking it in turns to look after my mother and sister. Pandora says I am beginning to be a bore about the baby. She says that my sister’s feeding pattern isn’t of great interest to her. How callous can you get?

  THURSDAY NOVEMBER 18TH

  My father was ironing baby clothes when I got home from school. He said, ‘If you laugh, I’ll kill you.’ My mother was feeding the baby, with her feet on the dog’s back. It was a charming domestic picture, only spoiled when my father put the ironing board away and went home to his other family.

  FRIDAY NOVEMBER 19TH


  I asked my mother what she was going to call the baby.

  She said, ‘I can’t think beyond the next feed - let alone decide on a name.’

  I suggested we both make a list, so after the next feed we did.

  My mother’s Mine

  Charity Tracy

  Christobel Claire

  Zoe Toyah

  Jade Diana

  Frankie Pandora

  India Sharon

  Rosie Georgina

  Caitlin

  Ruth

  I only liked ‘Rosie’ and ‘Ruth’ out of my mother’s list. She didn’t like any in my list. She said, ‘Pandora is a pretentious name!’ I think it is the most evocative girl’s name in the history of the world. Whenever I say it, or hear it, I get a bursting feeling behind my ribs.

  SATURDAY NOVEMBER 20TH

  My sister’s name is Rosie Germaine Mole.

  Everybody likes ‘Rosie’ but only my mother likes ‘Germaine’. The registrar raised his eyebrows, and said, ‘Germaine? As in Female Eunuch?’

  My mother said, ‘Yes, have you read it?’ ‘No, but my wife can’t put it down,’ he said, smoothing his unironed shirt.

  We celebrated Rosie being on the official record sheet of Great Britain by going into a café, and having a meal. Rosie was in a baby sling squashed against my mother’s chest. She was dead well-behaved. She only woke up when my mother dropped a warm chip on her head. After the meal, we caught a taxi home. My mother was too tired to walk to the bus stop.

  SUNDAY NOVEMBER 21ST

  My father came round with £25. He mooned over my mother while she was defrosting a shoulder of lamb under the hot tap. They started having an intense conversation about their future relationship. So I took the dog for a walk into the garden for a session of obedience training, but it was a waste of time. Our dog would have Barbara Woodhouse in tears.

  MONDAY NOVEMBER 22ND

  We had to write a description of a person in English. So I wrote about Rosie.

  Rosie

  Rosie is about eighteen inches long, she has got a big head with fuzzy black hair in a Friar Tuck style. Unlike the rest of our family, her eyes are brown. She has got quite a good skin. Her mouth is extremely small, except when she is screaming. Then it resembles an underground cavern. She has got a wrinkled-up neck like a turkey’s. She dresses in unisex clothes, and always wears disposable nappies. She lazes about all day in a carrycot and only gets out when it is time to be fed or changed. She has got a split personality; calm one minute, screaming like a maniac the next.

  She is only eleven days old but she rules our house.

  TUESDAY NOVEMBER 23RD

  Rat fink Lucas phoned up tonight. My mother spoke to him for about ten minutes in a mumbling sort of way, as though she didn’t want me to hear. But I certainly heard the last thing she said before she threw the phone across the hall. Because it was said at a high rate of decibels.

  ‘ALL RIGHT - HAVE A BLOOD TEST!’

  Perhaps Lucas thinks he’s got a deadly blood disease. I hope he has.

  WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 24TH

  Mr O’Leary has gone to Ireland to vote in the Irish election, which is being held tomorrow. I admire his patriotism: but I can’t understand why he doesn’t live in Ireland all the time. I will ask him when he comes back. Mrs O’Leary is not so patriotic. She stayed at home and threw a party for somebody called ‘Ann Summers’. My mother was invited but didn’t go. She said Ann Summers was responsible for getting her into her present mess.

  I watched the O’Learys’ front door all night but all I saw was just a load of middle-aged women giggling and clutching brown paper bags.

  THURSDAY NOVEMBER 25TH

  Nobody won in the Irish General Election. It was a draw.

  Mr O’Leary was detained at East Midlands airport on suspicion of being a terrorist but he was let off with a warning and told not to bring Action Man accessories into the country again.

  FRIDAY NOVEMBER 26TH

  I got a dead horrible shock when I came out of the school gate today. Stick Insect was waiting for me. She stood there rocking an old royal family pram which contained Brett and Maxwell. She looked like a refugee from a Second World War newsreel. Maxwell shouted, ‘Hello, brudder.’ I thought he was talking to Brett, but no, the kid was talking to me! I shoved a bit of Mars bar into his mouth before he could show me up any more, and introduced Pandora to Stick Insect.

  I said, ‘My girlfriend, Pandora,’ to Stick Insect; and, ‘Mrs Doreen Slater,’ to Pandora. The two women looked each other up and down in a split second, and then smiled in a false way.

  ‘What perfect darlings,’ said Pandora, looking in the pram.

  ‘They’re both little buggers.’ Stick Insect whined. ‘I’d never have had them if I’d known.’

  ‘Known what?’ said Pandora, pretending to be innocent.

  ‘Known that they take your life over. Don’t you have none,’ she warned.

  Pandora said, ‘I hope I shall have six!’

  ‘And be editor of The Times?’ I said sarcastically.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pandora, ‘and I shall do my own painting and decorating!’

  ‘You wait,’ said Stick Insect. ‘You just wait.’ It was like a gypsy’s curse.

  I asked S.I. why she’d waited for me, and she told me that my father was awful to live with, and that Grandma was worse.

  I said, ‘Well what can I do about it?’

  Stick Insect said, ‘I just wanted to get it off my chest!’ (Flat.) Then she wheeled the kids back to Grandma’s.

  I don’t know a single sane adult. They are all barmy. If they are not fighting in the Middle East, they are dressing poodles in plastic macs or having their bodies deep frozen. Or reading the Sun, because they think it is a newspaper.

  SATURDAY NOVEMBER 27TH

  Changed my first nappy tonight.

  Tomorrow I am going to try doing it with my eyes open.

  SUNDAY NOVEMBER 28TH

  How is it that my mother can change Rosie’s yukky nappies and at the same time smile and even laugh? I nearly fainted when I tried to do it without a protective device (clothes peg). Perhaps women have got poorly developed nasal passages.

  I wonder if research has been done into it? If I pass O level Biology I may even do it myself.

  MONDAY NOVEMBER 29TH

  My mother’s gone right off me since Rosie was born. She was never a particularly attentive mother - I always had to clean my own shoes. But just lately I have been feeling emotionally deprived. If I turn out to be mentally deranged in adult life, it will all be my mother’s fault.

  I’m spending most of the time reading in my room. I’ve just finished reading To Sir with Love. It’s about a black teacher who is badly treated by white yobs. But by persevering, and being kind yet firm, he triumphs over them, and decides not to be an engineer. I give it five out often. Which is not bad because I am very discriminating.

  TUESDAY NOVEMBER 30TH

  St Andrew’s Day

  Made my Christmas present list out in order of preference.

  Big present list

  Word Processor (no chance)

  Colour Telly (portable)

  Amstrad Hi-Fi unit (for future record collections)

  Electronic typewriter (for poems)

  %-length sheepskin coat (for warmth and status)

  Small present list

  Pair of trousers (pegs)

  Adidas trainers (size ten)

  Adidas anorak (36″ chest)

  Anglepoise lamp (for late-night poetry)

  Gigantic tin of Quality Street

  Solid gold pen set (inscribed A. Mole)

  Pair slippers

  Electric razor

  Habitat bath robe (like Pandora’s dad’s)

  Things I always get whether I want them or not

  Beano annual

  Chocolate smoking set

  Pkt felt-tip pens

  False nose/glasses/moustache

  I gave my mother the list, but she
wasn’t in the mood for talking about Christmas. In fact just mentioning Christmas put her in a bad mood.

  WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 1ST

  An emotion-packed phone call from Grandma: Stick Insect has taken Brett and Maxwell to stay with Maxwell’s father, who has just come back from the Middle East, loaded with tax-free money and stuffed toy camels!

  Apparently my father doesn’t mind being deprived of his paternal rights and Maxwell’s dad doesn’t care that Stick Insect has had a baby in his absence. I am shocked. Am I to be the sole guardian of the little morality left in our society?

  THURSDAY DECEMBER 2ND

  Maxwell’s dad, Trevor Roper, doesn’t mind about Brett because he thinks Brett is the result of having faulty coitus interruptus!

  Stick Insect is getting married to Mr Roper as soon as his divorce is through. It’s no wonder the country is on its knees. I am seriously thinking about returning to the church. (Not to go to Stick Insect’s wedding either.) I have made an appointment to see a vicar, Reverend Silver. I got him out of the Yellow Pages.

  FRIDAY DECEMBER 3RD

  The vicar was mending his bike when I first saw him. He looked quite normal except that he was wearing a black dress.

  He got up and gave me a bone-crushing handshake. Then he took me to his study and asked me what I wanted to see him about. I said I was worried about the disintegration of morals in modern life. He lit a cigarette with trembly hands, and enquired if I had asked Cod for guidance. I said I had stopped believing in God. He said, ‘Oh God, not another one!’ He talked for ages. It all boiled down to having faith. I said I hadn’t got faith and asked him how to get it.

  He said, ‘You must have faith!’ It was like listening to a stuck record. I said, ‘If God exists how come He allows wars and famines and motorway crashes to happen?’

  Rev. Silver said: ‘I don’t know, I lie awake wondering that myself.’

  Mrs Silver came in with two mugs of Nescafé and a box of Mr Kipling’s iced fancies.