by Sue Townsend
Pandora, Nigel, Parvez, Barbara, Victoria Louise and I shared an Emperor’s Banquet. We sat at a large round table. I sat in between Nigel and Pandora. I asked the waiter, Wayne’s brother, Keith Wong, to take Nigel’s chopsticks away and bring a fork and spoon, explaining that this would make life easier for Nigel as he was almost blind.
To my astonishment, Nigel had a mini temper tantrum and demanded that Keith return his chopsticks.
Nigel said, ‘Keep your nose out, Mole,’ and turned his back to me and talked to Parvez about his finances.
Parvez said, ‘You’re not as badly off as Adrian. He’s saddled himself with a pile of debts.’
I said, ‘Parvez, don’t accountants take a vow of silence, or a Hippocratic oath or something? My finances are not a suitable subject for dinner-table conversation.’
Barbara Bowyer asked Pandora what Tony and Cherie were ‘really like’.
Pandora said, ‘I’m keeping my trap shut about the Blairs. Adrian keeps a diary, you know.’
Nigel said, ‘You’d better not write anything about me.’
I said, ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Nigel.’ And I said to Pandora, ‘Your secrets are safe with me. My diary is not for publication.’
Pandora said, ‘That’s what that creepy butler Paul Burrell said. I hear he’s toting Diana’s secrets around.’
‘And anyway,’ said Nigel, ‘who would be interested in publishing the diary of a provincial nonentity?’
I took a prawn cracker from the lazy Susan in the middle of the table and bit into it to disguise how much his remark had hurt me.
At 11.45 p.m. my mobile rang. It was Marigold, asking me how the writing was going. Unfortunately, at that moment Keith Wong was serving the next course, shouting, ‘OK, you got yuck sung, you got seaweed, you got prawn toasts, you got wantons, and you got vegetable spring rolls.’
Marigold said, ‘Where are you?’
I thought about lying and saying it was the television in the background, but Marigold knew that ntl had not yet connected my television, so I was forced to tell the truth.
Pandora laughed at a joke Parvez made.
Marigold said, ‘Who are you with?’
Pandora said suggestively, ‘Can I help you to a spring roll, Aidy, darling?’
Marigold said, ‘Who is that?’
I left the table and walked over to the fish tank. A large carp swam to the glass. It looked disconcertingly like Marigold without her glasses. I gained courage and said to the fish, ‘Look, Marigold, this is not working for me. Perhaps we shouldn’t see each other again.’
She said in a flat voice, ‘You’re with another woman, aren’t you?’
I said I was with three women and two men.
Marigold sobbed, ‘Three couples.’
I said, ‘Please, don’t cry.’
She said, ‘I’ve spent all evening working on a loft apartment doll’s house. It was going to be your Christmas present.’
I didn’t know how to break off the conversation. It seemed heartless to point out to Marigold that my food was getting cold. I had to let her ramble on about her disastrous track record with men. The carp in the tank continued to stare mournfully at me. I could see my reflection in the glass. I looked a bit mournful myself.
Eventually Marigold rang off, saying in that spooky flat voice, ‘There’s no point in living without you.’
The fish swam to the bottom of the tank and lay there without moving. I went back to the table. Keith Wong was putting down a dish of duck and pineapple, but when I pronged a bit with a chopstick it tasted like sawdust in my mouth.
I drank four tiny cups of sake and told my dinner companions about Marigold. The general consensus was that Marigold had to go.
Wayne Wong said, ‘No offence, Aidy, but you can do a lot better. She ain’t exactly a laugh a minute, is she?’
Pandora said, ‘She sounds like one of those snivelling whiny types that give women a bad name.’
Nigel said, ‘But any woman who fell for Adrian would have to be half off her rocker.’
Then Pandora said, ‘You forget, Nigel, that I was once in love with Adrian myself.’ She took my hand and held it. ‘We were both fourteen. We were going to live in a farmhouse and have lots of children. Adrian was going to be an ice-cream man during the day and I was going to milk cows and bake bread and wait for him to come home.’
Suddenly we were both weeping. ‘It’s that fucking rice wine,’ said Pandora. ‘It always does this to me.’
Nigel broke the party up by saying he had to get up early in the morning, because a woman from the RNIB was coming to interview him to vet his suitability for a guide dog.
Parvez, being a Muslim, was the only one sober enough to drive, so the rest of us left our cars parked outside the restaurant and we squeezed into Parvez’s people carrier and I invited everybody back to Rat Wharf for a nightcap.
Gielgud was waiting for me in the car park, but I scared him off with a Star Wars light sabre belonging to Ali, Parvez’s youngest son, which had been left in the car.
I switched the lamps on and made coffee and warned everybody about the glass lavatory. People went out on to the balcony and Pandora said how beautiful the swans looked in the moonlight. I hoped that, for once, Gielgud wouldn’t spoil the party.
Sunday November 24th
Parvez took everyone home except Pandora. We stayed up talking until it was almost light. She told me about the terrible workload she had, of how she could never get on top of the paperwork, of how the press monitored her every statement. She was almost certainly under constant surveillance. She knew for sure that her phones were tapped, and said that it was a relief to be able to talk openly and freely with an old and trusted friend.
I said, ‘We should have moved into that farmhouse, Pandora.’
She laughed and said, ‘It’s a real shame that we were not sexually compatible.’
I pointed out to her that her theory had never been tested. However, I made no move in that direction and neither did she.
*
At 5 a.m. I rang for a taxi, and when I heard it blaring its horn in the car park I escorted her to its door.
Just as I was preparing myself to sleep on the futon, my phone rang and left a text message from Pandora. It said:
Thanks, Aidy. I do love you, Pan.
My mobile rang again at 7.30 a.m. It was Marigold, telling me that she had written me a letter explaining to me why she had done what she had done. She put the phone down. I immediately rang back. The phone rang and rang. Eventually Michael Flowers picked the phone up and bellowed, ‘Who is this?’
I told him it was me and he said, ‘It’s 7.35 on a Sunday morning. This is terribly inconsiderate of you. I realize you’re besotted with Marigold, but you must try and restrain your passion. Come to lunch. I’ve got something to show you.’
I heard myself asking, ‘What time?’
It was a gruesome meal, not only badly cooked and gracelessly served, but a meatless, flavourless repast served with cloudy home-made beer poured from an earthenware jug.
A smoky log fire burned half-heartedly in the grate in the dining room. Through the window, a row of forlorn frozen brassicas could be seen in the garden. A robin perched on the handle of a deserted spade, unaware that it had become a living cliché.
Marigold’s eyes were swollen with crying. Every now and again throughout the meal, she pressed pads of cotton wool impregnated with witch hazel to puffy eyes.
Netta Flowers tried to enlist my help in stewarding a ‘Stop the War March’ she was organizing in Beeby on the Wold.
I said, ‘I doubt if you will need stewards. I can’t imagine that there will be tens of thousands thronging the village green.’
She said that she had received messages of support from Little Snetton, Frisby on the Wreake, Long Lampton, Shepshed, Melton Mowbray, Short under Curtly and Burrow twixt Soar.
I interrupted her recitation of these centres of civil disobedience and said that I fully supported Mr Blair’s s
tand against Saddam Hussein and his Weapons of Mass Destruction.
I asked Marigold for her opinions about a possible war in Iraq. She looked down at her plate of badly cooked root vegetables and said, ‘I think war is wrong. Why can’t people be nice to each other?’
Perhaps she is an idiot savant.
After lunch was over I offered to wash up. To my considerable annoyance, Netta Flowers said, ‘That would be super. And you’ll find clean tea towels drying on the Aga.’
So I was obviously expected to wash and dry.
Marigold said that I would find her in the attic after I’d finished.
The Flowers family make their own washing-up liquid out of lemon and glycerine and keep it in a screw-top jar next to the sink. When it came to washing the burnt roasting pans, I went into the sitting room and asked if there was a Brillo Pad in the house. You would have thought from the consternation and shock this caused to Mr and Mrs Flowers that I had asked then to hold down a baby seal while I clubbed it to death.
Finally, when the last battered tin and chipped crockery had been put away, Michael Flowers led me to his study and invited me to ‘peruse his library shelves and give a quick valuation’.
I told him that Mr Carlton-Hayes did the valuations and explained that I was still a novice in the antiquarian and second-hand book trade.
He said, ‘Give me a ball-park figure, a guesstimate.’
I said that it would take many hours of work and that I would need reference books etc.
He plucked a book off a shelf and said, ‘This, for instance.’
It was Tales of an Empty Cabin by Grey Owl. It was in a slip case, a little scuffed and stained but sound. I took the book out and opened it. It was the Lovat Dickson 1936 edition and was signed ‘Grey Owl’.
I examined the book more carefully and said to Flowers, ‘The cloth boards are a little scuffed. The spine is faded. The top gilt edge is nice, but the fore and lower edges are a bit foxed, and it’s a shame that the ribbon bookmark has lost its colour.’
‘So, how much?’ said Flowers impatiently.
I looked at the sepia illustrations and at the colour plate of Grey Owl’s strong face in his Indian headdress, and I wanted the book for myself. I knew that the book that I was holding in my hand was worth at least £250.
I was barely able to control my voice. I asked as casually as I could, ‘Do you have any more books by Grey Owl?’
Flowers said that he had collected them at one time, but when he saw the film starring Pierce Brosnan and he found out that Grey Owl was a fraud and was really an Englishman called Archie Belaney, he no longer wanted the fraudster’s books in his house.
I told Flowers that the book might fetch £50 and offered to take it off his hands. Flowers seemed pleased enough and hunted along the shelves for his remaining Grey Owls.
The other books he had were Men of the Last Frontier, Pilgrims of the Wild and Sajo and Her Beaver People. They were all first editions and signed by the author. All three were in fair condition. My mouth watered. I told Michael Flowers that the books would probably fetch £200.
Flowers said, ‘That will go towards the council tax for the bloody shop.’
As I write this now I feel ashamed of myself. I have always wanted to be an honest person. When faced with a moral dilemma of any kind, I have asked myself what George Orwell would do. But it is Michael Flowers’s fault. He brings out the worst in me.
I joined Marigold in the attic. She was laying strips of varnished wood on to the floor of a loft apartment doll’s house. On her work bench was a tiny white sofa and a futon bed, and on a mini balcony sitting on a little metal chair was me, Adrian Mole, wearing a white bathrobe and glasses; and on the other chair was Marigold, wearing her khaki trouser suit and red beret outfit. The two dolls were holding hands.
I noticed with alarm that on the cloth middle finger of each doll’s hand was a matching gold-coloured band.
Marigold said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you. Please sit down.’
I sat on a paint-spattered old chair.
Marigold did a lot of face twitching and hair twirling. She threw her head back and gazed into the eaves, she examined her nails, she sighed, then she said in a small voice, ‘I have decided to offer myself to you. Sexually, I mean. You have been a perfect gentleman so far, but I feel that our relationship has now entered a different phase. It may surprise you, darling, that I am relatively sexually inexperienced, but I now feel that I am ready to put my heart, my soul, my body into your care.’
I felt my genitals wither as she spoke. I had to get away. I told her that I was unworthy of her, that I was vastly sexually experienced, and that I had had many lovers, not only in this country but abroad as well. I said that I was not the quite boring man she thought I was, that I was an unpleasant devious person who would break her heart one day. But this seemed to excite her and she lunged at me, then fell on my lap and kissed my neck.
As you know, diary, my neck is my Achilles’ heel. One thing led to another and, within the space of a minute, I was fumbling with her bra strap.
She said huskily, ‘Slide the board into the hatch.’
It was some time before I realized that this was not sexual linguistics, but that she literally wanted me to secure our privacy by sliding the cover over the open hatch to the attic.
In doing so my ardour cooled a little, but the sight of her pretty breasts and rosy nipples revived me, and it wasn’t long before we were engaging in sexual intercourse on a pile of old fur coats that had been thrown into a dark corner of the attic.
As soon as I had come to my senses and after telling her she was beautiful etc., etc., etc., I asked her if she was on the pill.
She said that she didn’t believe in putting chemicals into her body.
As I write this, diary, I wish that I had not put anything into her body.
As I was climbing down the loft ladder I got a text message:
Where are you, Aidy? I’m at Rat Wharf. Love Pandora.
I almost certainly exceeded the speed limit in my rush to get to Rat Wharf, but I was too late. Pandora sent me another text to say that she was on the motorway going back to London.
Monday November 25th
Mr Carlton-Hayes valued the four Grey Owls at £725. I told him that the books belonged to Michael Flowers and that I had estimated their total value at £200.
Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘And was the dreadful Michael Flowers happy [pronounced heppy] with that [pronounced thet]?’
I said, ‘He seemed pitifully grateful. I think he’s on his way to Carey Street.’
Mr Carlton-Hayes was delighted at my literary reference.
He phoned a private collector of Canadian frontier history and gently reminded the boff of the rarity of finding four signed Grey Owl first editions. The boff said he had sold his collection to pay for his daughter’s college fees. Mr Carlton-Hayes commiserated with him and phoned a bloke who collects fraudsters’ signed first editions, Josh Pullman in Brighton, who immediately offered £1,000 for the set.
Apparently Mr Pullman’s Jeffrey Archer collection is second to none. I went out to Brucciani’s and bought two takeaway cappuccinos and two of their split cream buns to celebrate the sale, and also to mark a significant anniversary. It is a year since I started work at Carlton-Hayes Antiquarian and Second-hand Books. I admire my employer more than any person I have ever met. He is up there with Nelson Mandela and Tony Blair. He can even eat a split cream bun with dignity.
On my way to the post office to post Mr Pullman his books, I took a cheque for £200 to Michael Flowers.
Marigold was behind the counter. Her eyes were still puffy. There was nobody in the shop. Marigold said that her parents were at the bank, having an emergency meeting with the business accounts manager.
She came from behind the counter and kissed my neck. But this time it left me cold and I was relieved when she said, ‘Have you heard the latest news? The Madrigal Society is amalgamating with some members of the c
athedral choir and they are calling themselves the Leicester Mummers.’
I said no, I had not heard this earth-shattering news. I continued, ‘Have you phoned the Guardian and asked them to hold the front page? Does the editor of the Today Programme know? Have you phoned CNN?’
Marigold said, ‘Adrian, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.’
I said that I was not being sarcastic, I was being satirical.
She said that she had joined the Mummers and would be rehearsing or performing most evenings before Christmas. She invited me to join the group, but her invitation was only half-hearted.
I said, ‘Surprisingly, Marigold, I do not wish to dress up as a yokel in a smock and mask and perform in deeply unfunny medieval plays on cold village greens to a scornful or indifferent public. There are some traditions which should be allowed to die – madrigals, mummery and Morris dancing.’
Marigold said, ‘I told Mummy and Daddy last night that we had become lovers. They are very happy for us. Mummy gave me a box of organic condoms. The latex is made in Malaysia under fair trade conditions. Daddy said that you can sleep in my bed on Saturdays and Thursdays.’
An old bloke came in and asked for a packet of sunflower seeds. While she was serving him, I took the opportunity to leave the shop without making a date to see her again.
Tuesday November 26th
I received a redirected letter this morning from Ms Ruth Rendell, regretting that she could not join the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group on December 23rd as she would be in Australia.
This reminded me that I have got to tackle the Gladys Fordingbridge problem. I will do it tomorrow.
I have also decided to ask Mr Carlton-Hayes for a rise. My mortgage and store card payments are due next week. My wages, after tax and National Insurance, are £ 1,083.33 a month, and I have a horrible feeling that my mortgage, Visa and store card payments are in excess of £900. Perhaps I should sit down and work out my monthly outgoings. I can’t afford to hire Parvez, not at £125 an hour.
Wednesday November 27th