by Sue Townsend
I went to Debenhams and confessed to a kindly woman behind the counter in the furniture department that I had no money. She agreed with my mother that a store card would solve my problems and pointed out to me that should I activate the card today, I would get a 10 per cent discount on everything I bought. Within a quarter of an hour and after lying about my salary and showing my passport and Visa card, I was given £10,000 worth of credit.
I should have had somebody with me, somebody sensible. Did I really need a white towelling bathrobe? Was a white sofa with non-detachable covers a wise choice? And did I really need a home entertainment centre with a cinema screen and Dolby Surround Sound?
I had never slept on a futon before, but I was too shy to test it in the shop. I bought it anyway. I also bought bookshelves and an aluminium bistro table and matching chairs for the balcony, a Dualit toaster and a cafetiere (the last two items are loft living must-haves).
I phoned Sian and Helen and asked if they were free to collect these items from the store’s delivery bay. They arranged to meet me at 4 o’clock.
In the intervening hour I bought a hexagonal-shaped black dinner service, a wine rack and a bottle of extra-extra-virgin olive oil which Debenhams import from an olive grove owned by a close friend of Gore Vidal’s.
When Sian and Helen eventually turned up, I was sitting among my new purchases like a latter-day Howard Hughes, a victim of consumerism.
Sian said, ‘I thought you were strapped for cash.’
I told her about the store card and Helen asked how much interest I would be paying. When I told her 29 per cent, she said, ‘Leave the stuff here, cancel the card, get in the van and I’ll put my foot down.’
But, diary, I couldn’t do it. What is the point of living in a loft if you can’t pad around the wooden floors in your white towelling bathrobe, sit on your white sofa while waiting for the coffee to brew in your cafetiere, then take the pot to the galvanized table on the balcony and eat a croissant from your hexagonal-shaped black plate?
*
Marigold managed to walk swan shit all over my gleaming floorboards. She offered to clean them with a mop and bucket, and when I irritably informed her that I had not yet bought such mundane articles, she said, ‘Life is not only composed of white sofas and extra-extra-virgin olive oil, you know, Adrian.’
She gave me a house-warming present – a collection of hanging feathers, which she called a ‘dream catcher’. Its purpose, apparently, is to catch my dreams and make them come true. I didn’t tell Marigold that I have a recurring dream whereby Pandora Braithwaite falls to her knees and begs me to make love to her.
We sat out for a while on the balcony, drinking coffee. Marigold was wearing a rainbow version of the sweater her father had been wearing for the last month, but after a short time she shivered and said, ‘I catch cold very easily. I’d like to go in now.’
When she asked if she could use my toilet, I felt honour bound to tell her that her outline would be seen through the glass bricks, so she said she would wait until she got home. I hoped it wouldn’t be too long.
She watched me unpack my home entertainment centre and was horrified by the amount of packaging materials that came out of the boxes. When she started banging on about the evils of polystyrene, I found myself defending it. I said it was a beautiful, practical and light material. We were soon having a heated discussion about the earth’s resources. This somehow led into the letter I had sent her on November 12th, which she quoted back to me word for word.
She said, ‘Sooner or later all of my boyfriends write a similar letter.’
She picked at a piece of polystyrene, crumbling it between her fingers. Annoyingly, a slight draught blew it across the floor. I should have told her there and then that I no longer wanted to go out with her. After all, it was the first day of my new life. But courage failed me and I heard myself accepting an invitation to have Sunday tea with her parents at the house in Beeby on the Wold.
Rosie rang and begged me to send her £200 minimum. She said that Simon’s dealer was threatening to break Simon’s legs. I told her the truth, that I was in debt to the tune of thousands of pounds.
I asked her if she had started writing her dissertation yet.
She said, ‘Go and shag yourself.’
I took that to mean no.
I advised her to get Simon out of her life.
She said, ‘I can’t, he needs me. None of our friends will talk to him. He spent last night in a police cell because he stole an NSPCC charity collection box from the uni bar.’
Sunday November 17th
I slept uneasily on my new futon. I’m not used to sleeping so close to the floor. I woke at 5 a.m. and worried for an hour about having tea with the Flowers family. I then read half a chapter of John Major’s autobiography. It never fails to get me back to sleep.
I was next woken by the sound of my father’s voice shouting, ‘Get back, you bastards, get back.’
And my mother screeching, ‘George, George, don’t antagonize them. They can break a man’s arm, y’know.’
I put on my white bathrobe, went to the balcony and looked down. The swans had surrounded my parents on the towpath. My father held a copy of the News of the World in front of him as though it was a rapier and he was the Count of Monte Cristo. As I watched, the swans retreated and regrouped in the middle of the canal. Once again Gielgud stared at me. I swear to God that there was a sneer on his beak. What has he got against me?
The soles of my parents’ shoes were covered in swan shit, so I made them take them off at the door.
They walked around in silence and then my father said, ‘190,000 for this. It’s just one big room with a glass bog!’
My mother said, ‘It’ll be all right when you’ve got some carpet down.’
They lit up cigarettes, but I informed them that the loft was a no-smoking area and ushered them out on to the balcony. A stiff breeze was ruffling the swans’ feathers.
My mother gave me a postcard of a lunar landscape. I was puzzled until I turned it over. It was from Glenn in Tenerife.
Dear Dad
Me and the lads are having a great time. It is dead hot and I have gone brown. I had a phone call from Mum. She told me that you and Ryan was fighting in the shop. I hope you done him over good, Dad. Don’t worry about me missing the holiday we was going to have. I will be going to Cyprus with the army soon. Ha ha ha.
Best wishes,
Your son, Glenn
I made the coffee and took it out to the balcony and heard my father say, ‘You see that humped-back bridge in the distance, Pauline? It was under that bridge that I lost my cherry with Jean Arbuthnot. I was seventeen and it felt like I’d won the pools that night.’
‘Did you wear a condom?’ she asked.
‘A condom?’ he said. ‘Nobody wore a condom in the 1950s.’
‘It’s a wonder she didn’t get pregnant then,’ said my mother censoriously.
‘We did it standing up, Pauline,’ he explained, as if talking to a moron. ‘You can’t get pregnant if you do it standing up, not the first time.’
When they’d finished smoking they looked around for an ashtray, then, not finding one, flicked the ends into the canal.
My mother helped me to assemble and wire up the entertainment centre while my father read the News of the World, occasionally complaining about the sexual immorality of today’s youth.
When he got up to go to the toilet I gave him the usual warning about his outline being visible, but he said, ‘I’ve got nothing that your mother and you haven’t seen before.’
However, I still chose to turn my head away, but couldn’t fail to hear the thunderous sound of his urination. He urinates, defecates, coughs, sneezes and belches louder than any man I have ever known. How my mother sticks it, I don’t know.
When the entertainment centre was operational and the speakers were in place, I sorted out my Phantom of the Opera CD. The volume setting had inadvertently been turned to full and Sarah Br
ightman’s opening shrieks nearly knocked us off our feet. I hurried to turn it down, but even with the volume on low the floor reverberated and the bricks of the glass lavatory shook. Professor Green in the apartment below banged on my floor. Somebody else in the apartment above banged on my ceiling. I became uncomfortably aware of my neighbours.
My mother told me that she had rung Rosie yesterday.
‘How did she sound?’ I said.
My mother’s face broke into a big smile and she said, ‘Oh, fantastic. She’s doing incredibly well. She’s almost finished her dissertation and she’s going out with a lovely boy called Simon. She needed £200 to buy a new printer for her computer so that she can print her dissertation out.’
How little our parents know about us. Do my children lie to me?
*
Just before they left, my father told me that he had placed a bet with Ladbrokes that Hans Blix, the United Nations chief weapons inspector, wouldn’t find any Weapons of Mass Destruction after his return to Iraq tomorrow.
My mother scoffed, ‘A fool and his money are soon parted.’ Then she said, ‘Tony Blair obviously knows something we don’t know. He sees secret documents, George. He reads all the intelligence reports. He’s in touch with MI5, MI6, the CIA, the FBI, Mossad and Rupert Murdoch.’
My father said, ‘We lied to Adrian about the tooth fairy, Pauline. He was eleven before he found out that it was me who put a quid under his pillow rather than bleeding Tinkerbell.’
My mother said, ‘And your point is?’
My father shouted, ‘My point is, people we trust lie to us. Just think of Jeffrey Archer.’
My father was a great Archer fan and felt betrayed when it was revealed that Archer had lied at his first trial.
When I arrived outside Chez Flowers in Beeby on the Wold, Marigold came running out to meet me.
She said nervously, ‘Just a few pointers. Don’t mention that you live in a loft or that your father used to sell electric storage heaters, that your parents smoke, that you have a son in the army or that you were once an offal chef in Soho. And please, please don’t mention Mexico.’
I said that I had never been to Mexico, I knew no Mexicans and I did not speak Mexican, so it was highly unlikely that I would ‘bring up Mexico’. I protested to her that these conversational prohibitions meant that I could well remain mute throughout my visit.
Marigold said, ‘Stick to talking about books and how marvellous I am.’
I entered the house with a heavy heart and with Marigold hanging on my arm.
I had bought Netta a bunch of flowers from the BP garage. When I gave them to her she said, ‘How perfectly lovely, a forecourt bouquet. I’m sure I can revive them if I plunge them into water immediately. Please excuse me.’
She hurried off with the bouquet as though she was rushing them into intensive care to hook them up to a heart and lung machine.
Michael Flowers was in his study. He pretended to be too engrossed in a big leather-bound book to notice when Marigold knocked on the half-open door and walked in, with me following behind. The tree sweater was looking the worse for wear. He pushed his spectacles on to the top of his head and rose to his feet.
‘You bearded me in my lair, young sir,’ he said. ‘I was just looking up the derivation of the word “mole”. It seems, Adrian, that a mole is a burrowing animal with hairy forearms, a blemish or spot, a fleshy growth in the uterus, a measurement in physics, a harbour protected by a breakwater, or a spy who has infiltrated an organization and over a long period of time has become a trusted member of it. Which of these are you?’
Through the study window I could see Netta throwing half of the flowers I had just bought her on to a large compost heap at the bottom of the garden.
Marigold saved the day. She said, ‘I think Adrian is more of the spy. He’s terribly secretive.’
I said, ‘On the contrary, Marigold, my life is an open book.’
Michael Flowers said, ‘Yes, books. Marigold tells me you work for that dreadful old libertarian Hugh Carlton-Hayes.’
I thought of Mr Carlton-Hayes’s kind face, his cardigans and his soft white hair, and felt honour bound to defend him. I said, ‘Mr Carlton-Hayes is the most decent man I know.’
Flowers said, ‘I’ll let you keep your illusions for now, Adrian.’
A sulky girl with extraordinarily long hair wearing a T-shirt which said ‘Bitch’ banged in and snarled, ‘I’ve been ordered to tell you that tea is apparently ready.’
It was Poppy, Marigold’s middle sister, who had returned home temporarily to recover from an unhappy love affair with a fellow maths teacher.
I was led into the sitting room and made to sit down and introduced to the cats, Saffron and Fleur.
Poppy had the longest hair I have ever seen. Apparently she has been growing it since she was twelve. She fiddled with it, pulled it over her shoulders, pushed it back, sat on it, twirled it on top of her head and let it fall. I knew I was expected to comment on the length of her hair and that she had built her whole personality around this hirsute feature, but I could not bring myself to mention it.
Marigold said, ‘It takes Poppy four and a half hours to dry her hair.’
Apart from a slight inclination of the head, I could not respond.
I was given the choice of having apple and blackberry, nettle, peppermint or basil and borage tea.
Netta said encouragingly, ‘We grow and dry our own herbs. There are no additives and preservatives. Everything is quite pure.’
I was handed a plate of stodgy brown lumps. These turned out to be scones made by Netta using stone-ground flour that was posted to her from a windmill in Somerset.
Michael Flowers said, ‘We try to eat much as they did in the Middle Ages, before our food became adulterated.’
I was very hungry and would have given anything for a Mr Kipling Iced Fancy. However, I took a scone and nibbled at it from time to time. It tasted as if it had been baked in ad 1307 over a fire made of twigs and dried cow dung.
The talk eventually centred around the absent Daisy, Marigold’s eldest sister, who had sent a letter to her parents the week before, denouncing them and blaming them for her miserable childhood.
Michael Flowers said, ‘Poor Daisy, she was always rather a strange child.’
Netta, Marigold and Poppy started to slag off Daisy, who was in public relations in London.
The more they slagged her off, the more I liked the sound of her. Apparently she was ruining her health and her feet by teetering from premieres to book launches while wearing skimpy clothes and five-inch heels.
Michael Flowers shook his head. ‘Such a shallow life,’ he said. Then my interrogation began. ‘We know so little about you, Adrian. Tell me about your family.’
I said that my mother’s parents, the Sugdens, had been potato farmers in Norfolk.
Flowers said, ‘Yes, there is something of the Fens about you.’
I said that my father’s family were unskilled factory workers in Leicester.
Flowers said, ‘That’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
I said that I wasn’t in the least ashamed.
Flowers said, ‘We can trace our ancestors back to the Magna Carta. How far back does your family go?’
I don’t know what made me say it, diary. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them, particularly when I saw the distress on Marigold’s face. My excuse was that I was goaded beyond endurance. I wanted to see Michael Flowers discomforted.
I said, ‘The Sugdens were yeomen farmers and were mentioned in the Domesday Book, and the Moles were believed to be Mexican refugees who fled religious persecution, and came to England on the return journey of the Mayflower.’
Flowers tugged at his beard and muttered, ‘Mexicans.’ Then he left the room, saying, ‘I have wood to chop.’
Marigold walked me to the car in silence.
Just before I drove away she said, ‘That was terribly cruel of you. The Mayflower made no return jou
rney.’ She put her frail hands underneath her glasses and wiped her eyes.
I apologized and once more heard myself making a date to see her again.
As I drove through the gently undulating Leicestershire countryside, I thought about Mr Carlton-Hayes. I know nothing about his private life. He occasionally refers to his partner, Leslie. I have no idea if Leslie is a man or a woman.
It was dark when I drove into the car park at Rat Wharf, but I could see the white shape of Gielgud watching me from behind a clump of reeds as I got out of my car and ran to the entrance of the Old Battery Factory. He seems to take an unhealthy interest in my comings and goings.
Monday November 18th
Walked to work along the towpath. No sign of swans, but saw an alarming number of rats. At one time I felt like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Tuesday November 19th
When we were reorganizing the Travel section I asked Mr Carlton-Hayes if he had any children. He said he had a son, Marius, who was in a secure mental hospital and a daughter, Claudia, who worked in Ethiopia, distributing food for UNICEF. He said, ‘Leslie and I are awfully proud of them,’ then added quietly, ‘both of them’. I still don’t know if Leslie is the mother of his children or a male soul mate.
Parvez paid me an unexpected visit tonight. When I opened the door he was panting and sweating, having been chased by ‘a bloody great white thing’ across the car park.
I told him that it was almost certainly Gielgud the swan.
Parvez said, ‘A.S.C.B.A.M.A.Y.K.’
He looked around my apartment and admired my new furniture, then he asked me awkward accountant-type questions. Eventually I cracked and admitted I’d got a store card. He clapped a hand to his head dramatically and said, ‘Where is it?’
I took it out of my wallet and handed it to him. He searched in his pocket, found a small Swiss Army knife, prised out the mini scissors and cut my card in half. He said, ‘You’ll thank me for this one day.’
I didn’t tell him that there was only £89 left to spend on it and that I owed Debenhams £9,911.