by Sue Townsend
Moon’s Last Quarter
I telephoned Gladys and arranged to go round at 7.30, so when Marigold rang I was able to tell her, truthfully, that I was visiting an old lady and would not be able to see her after mummery rehearsals.
Gladys has found a publisher for her cat poems. A community worker at the old people’s club she attends on Monday afternoons has convinced her that her poetry ‘is really, really good’. She has said that Gladys’s ‘voice must be heard’. She is to be published by Grey Panther Community Press.
She read me her latest poem:
‘Naughty paws
Lives indoors
Doesn’t stray
From the litter tray
He loves his Whiskas
But will never throw a discus
No athlete he
He stays near me
I love my paws
He stays indoors.’
She wanted my advice on what to call her book. I suggested Poems about Cats, but Gladys said that was too plain and she wanted something a bit fancy.
I said cruelly, ‘Then call it Contemplations on our Feline Friends,’ and Gladys said, ‘That’s champion. Thank you, Mr Mole.’
I lied and told Gladys that, according to the rules of the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group, she would have to leave because, once published, she would have to renounce her amateur status.
She seemed quite proud of this and even asked if she could dedicate the book to me.
I said that I would be delighted, but I did not feel proud of myself as I wished her luck with the book and left her house for the last time.
Thursday November 28th
Spent an uncomfortable night in Marigold’s single bed, which she has had since she was a small girl. It is the shape of Cinderella’s coach.
Marigold said, ‘It was hand-made by a crafts person and painted by a disabled retiree.’
In the morning I woke to find parallel lines running down one side of my face, having been pressed against a carved pumpkin all night.
The sex was fair to middling and lasted about seven minutes.
Friday November 29th
Had sex with Marigold on futon at Rat Wharf. We both had to keep our vests on as the underfloor heating didn’t seem to be working.
Saturday November 30th
Considering there are only three Saturdays left before Christmas, business was very slow. The shop was full of browsers at times, but hardly anybody bought anything.
On the way back from the post office I was handed a flyer by a dopey-looking youth in a woolly hat. It said:
Randy Applestein,
America’s Mr Motivator,
is holding a seminar in the Garden Room
at the Great Eastern Hotel in Leicester on
Sunday December 8th.
Treble your turnover,
Achieve your Life Goals,
Look good – feel good.
Power breakfast and lunch included.
Money-back guarantee.
I asked the dopey youth in the bobble hat if he had attended a seminar himself. He said that he had.
I gave the leaflet back to him and said, ‘The seminar obviously didn’t work for you. I hope you got your money back.’
My parents came into the shop. They were looking for building manuals. My father looked uncomfortable. The proximity of so many books makes him nervous. Since leaving school, he has only finished one book, Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.
He said, ‘Aidy, have you got anything on pigsty conversion?’
I pretended to look along the shelves, and then said with a heavy irony which was lost on him, ‘No, we don’t seem to have anything in at the moment. There’s been quite a rush on pigsty conversion manuals.’
He looked pleased to hear this, and said, ‘Yeah, John Prescott has opened up the can of worms that used to tie up greenfield development. He’s beckoned me and your mother inside.’
I said, ‘Inside what, the can of worms?’
He said, ‘No, the greenfield with the pigsties in it. Me and your mum are surfing the crest of a new trend.’
I laughed in his face. My father is ill equipped to spot a trend: he was the last man in Leicester to give up flared trousers.
My mother collected a hefty pile of manuals on bricklaying, joinery, electrical wiring and plumbing, and stacked them on the counter.
Mr Carlton-Hayes tied them together with brown string and made a loop for ease of carrying.
My mother said to him, ‘You could do with a few chairs in here, Mr Carlton-Hayes.’
To my amazement, he said, ‘Yes, I was thinking of bringing some from home.’
My mother said, ‘And the smell of coffee is always attractive in a bookshop.’
He said, ‘Do you think so, Mrs Mole?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘If you give your customers a free cup of coffee, they feel obliged to buy something.’
I said mockingly, ‘And how about a mince pie and a slice of Yule log, and a chocolate Santa for the children?’
Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘That’s rather a charming idea.’
I had a horrible vision of a badly behaved kid smearing chocolate over some of our precious books.
Once started, my mother could not stop. ‘You could unblock that fireplace,’ she said, pointing to the boarded-up chimney breast. ‘A Christmas tree in the window with fairy lights would be welcoming.’ She half closed her eyes and seemed to sway a little, lost in a reverie of refurbishment.
Mr Carlton-Hayes was like a benign snake, hypnotized by its charmer. He was caught up in my mother’s vision of Christmas past. And to my astonishment he allowed my father to pull away the sheet of plywood that was blocking the fireplace. A dusty and sooty fire grate was revealed, a leftover from when Mr Arthur Carlton-Hayes founded the shop in 1929.
My mother continued to interfere and rang a chimney sweep and arranged to have the chimney swept on Tuesday morning.
Then, while I served a late surge of customers, she and Mr Carlton-Hayes began to plan to convert the shop. I wondered to myself who would cart the logs, brew the coffee, buy the mince pies and wash everything up afterwards.
My mother suggested to Mr Carlton-Hayes that we go and eat somewhere en famille. He said that he would like to join us but that he would have to phone Leslie first. I told her about my 10 per cent discount at the Imperial Dragon.
Wayne Wong told my mother that Pandora had spent last Saturday night at Rat Wharf, and then said, ‘I’m glad you’ve finished with that weirdo, Marigold.’
I informed him coldly that I had not yet finished with Marigold and that I would be seeing her later that night. He said that he was sorry to hear it. My mother was agog, of course.
She said, ‘Why don’t you phone her and ask her to join us?’
I explained that she was at mummery practice at the cathedral. I watched my mother’s face carefully. She managed to keep it straight, and Mr Carlton-Hayes appeared to be engrossed in the menu, though I did notice that his eyebrow twitched when I said the word ‘mummery’.
My father always gets overexcited in restaurants and tonight was no exception. He kept getting up and going to look at the fish in the aquarium and tapping on the glass.
My mother had to keep saying, ‘George, don’t do that.’ She sounded like a recording of Joyce Grenfell.
Mr Carlton-Hayes was an artist with the chopstick. Even Wayne complimented him. Mr C-H murmured that he had spent some time in Indo-China, but seemed reluctant to go into detail.
Even before the main course came, my mother was advising Wayne on how to do a makeover on the restaurant, saying that he should get rid of the old-fashioned dragon motif and clad the walls with animal-skin prints.
Over a Christmas Banquet Special at £12.99 a head, I was interrogated by my mother about my long-term aims in life. Did I intend to marry again? Was my dream still to be a full-time professional writer? Or did I see my future in selling antiquarian and second-hand books?
I said that I was happy in my job and hoped that I would be working for Mr Carlton-Hayes for many years to come.
He looked a bit sad and said, ‘Our little shop is losing rather a lot of money each week. It’s been kept afloat in recent years by income from investments, but the stock exchange has not been kind to me recently.’
I said, ‘Mr Carlton-Hayes, perhaps we ought to call in a business consultant.’
He said, ‘But don’t they cost a fearful amount of money?’
My father said, ‘You have to spend brass to make brass.’
He sounded like a cruel mill owner who was about to shackle a small child mill worker to a spinning jenny.
Using the paper tablecloth, I wrote out a simple business plan for the shop. There were four bullet points:
• Open a section selling a selection of new titles
• Start a readers’ club
• Buy a coffee machine
• Introduce chairs
Had sex with Marigold in coach bed, as ordered by Mr Michael Flowers.
Sunday December 1st
Somebody moved into one of the apartments this morning. When I went to get the papers there was a removal van parked in the car park. The swans were on the opposite bank, menacing a fisherman.
Barry Kent was in the Sunday Times. It was a feature called ‘How I Spend My Money’. He told the interviewer, Topaz Scroggins, that he gives his huge income mostly to charity, but he apparently begged Topaz not to reveal this in the paper. Topaz wrote, ‘I hope he will not feel betrayed, but I felt that the readers of this newspaper should know that Barry Kent, despite his gritty, uncompromising image, is a true humanitarian who wears his genius lightly.’
Monday December 2nd
I got a House of Commons Christmas card from Pandora, an obscene picture of a snowman with the carrot in the wrong place from Aunty Susan and a letter from Glenn.
Dear Dad
I think the war might be kicking off. We done some desert training today. Me and Sergeant Brighouse went to the builder’s merchants and ordered ten tons of sand for the same-day delivery. Sergeant Brighouse told me that if he had ordered the sand through army supplies it would have took three months to come. Anyway, the sand came in the afternoon. We emptied the bags on the assault course and Sergeant Brighouse made me and the lads stand behind the heap, then he started the generator up and sand blew in our eyes. He was shouting, ‘You’re in the fucking desert now, you O-level reject bastards.’
Then he made us take our boots off and fill them with sand. Then we had to put them back on and run round the assault course until we was knackered. Then he shouted, ‘Right, that’s your fucking desert training done.’
Me and my best mate, Robbie Stainforth, have met two girls on the Internet. They are from Bristol and we are driving to see them on Sunday. Their photos are OK. I hope they are not fifty-year-olds with no teeth. I think you would like Robbie, Dad. He reads a lot of books and knows a lot about everything. When he seen me reading the Sun he set fire to it for a laugh.
All the best, Dad
Your son, Glenn
PS We might not get any leave this Christmas, but we can have parcels.
Enclosed was a photograph of Glenn and Robbie Stain-forth. They were in their khaki uniforms, holding a little trophy of a man with a fat belly throwing a dart. Robbie had a shy smile. I had forgotten that soldiers can wear glasses. On the back of the photograph Glenn had written, ‘Me and Robbie was the finalists in the regimental pairs darts match, and we won. I was bought eleven pints by the lads. Dad, I have never felt so bad.’
I watched Rowan Williams being sworn in as Archbishop of Canterbury. He reminds me a little of Michael Flowers. I longed to take my nail scissors to his beard, and I suspect his wife cuts his hair. And I know Jesus wore sandals, but this is the twenty-first century. He is reputed to have a great brain and a powerful intellect. He certainly likes the sound of his own voice. He makes Donald Sinden sound like David Beckham. However, I wish him well. Being in charge of the Church of England must be as hard as Iain Duncan Smith trying to persuade Tories to vote Conservative.
*
Reply to Glenn’s letter.
Dear Glenn
I don’t know why Sergeant Brighouse made you do desert training, because you certainly won’t be going to Iraq. If Saddam refuses to give up his Weapons of Mass Destruction there is bound to be a long-drawn-out period of negotiation. The diplomats will sort everything out. And anyway, you are too young. You are still only seventeen and are not old enough to fight. So rest assured, son, the nearest thing to danger you will experience this year will be meeting up with a girl you found on the Internet.
Have a good time, but remember to drive carefully on the M4. Keep well back from lorries. They are constantly jackknifing or shedding their loads, and white minibuses are notoriously accident-prone. Steer clear of them. A thousand people die on Britain’s roads every year, and countless thousands are injured or permanently disabled.
Please don’t drink eleven pints again. You are putting a terrible strain on your system, not to mention your bladder.
Make sure you have a condom with you. Bear in mind that over half of Britain’s women have a sexually transmittable disease: 30 per cent have chlamydia, for instance, 20 per cent have genital warts and an unknown quantity have syphilis, which causes your nose to rot away and eventually fall off.
But have a good time in Bristol, son, and congratulations to you and Robbie on your darts triumph.
Love Dad
Tuesday December 3rd
Don’t ask me why, but I had expected the chimney sweep to be a bow-legged little man covered in soot, wearing a flat cap and carrying circular brushes over one shoulder. However, the ‘sweep’ was wearing a suit, collar and tie, was perfectly groomed and had immaculately clean fingernails. He attached a bag over the opening of the fireplace and turned on a vacuum machine. It was all over in ten minutes.
I said, ‘I don’t suppose you officiate at many weddings nowadays, do you?’
He said that his grandfather used to hang about outside the church, dressed in traditional chimney sweep clothes, but had stopped doing it after an unfortunate incident with a bag of soot and a crinoline-styled white wedding dress.
I suggested to him that he should think about describing himself as a chimney sucker rather than a chimney sweep. But he seemed unwilling to take this on board.
The fireplace is very pretty. There are old-fashioned, tulip-patterned red tiles surrounding the grate.
I went to the BP garage at the bottom of the High Street and lugged back two mesh bags of logs. I went out again for matches and firelighters. When I got back I found Mr Carlton-Hayes tearing up strips of the Guardian and twisting them into spills for the fire. Don’t ask me why, diary, but it was quite an emotional moment when Mr Carlton-Hayes touched the first firelighter with a Guardian spill. The little fire roared away and the logs began to spit and crack in the grate. Mr Carlton-Hayes had to stamp on some of the flying embers. Mindful of the recent announcement by the striking fire fighters’ leader, Andy Gilchrist, that he intends to topple New Labour, I left the shop yet again and ran across the road to Debenhams and bought a fireguard.
Later we cleared a space around the fire by moving some bookshelves. We then amalgamated British Politics with American History, which made space for two armchairs.
The fire was an instant success. A teenage boy who came in looking for an aircraft book for his dad’s Christmas present said it was the most realistic fire he had ever seen. When I told him the log fire was not a gas facsimile, he said the fire was cool.
Mr Carlton-Hayes joined us and said that it was a shame ‘one couldn’t buy coal these days’.
The youth said, ‘Coal, what’s that?’
Mr Carlton-Hayes patiently explained to the boy that once upon a time men descended into the bowels of the earth via a cage on a pit head pulley. Once there, they crawled on their hands and knees through dark tunnels until they reach
ed what was called the coal face, whereupon they hacked at the coal with pickaxes. Coal was the fossilized remains of trees. Large lumps of coal were thrown on to a conveyor belt and taken to the surface of the mine, where it was broken into small pieces, put into hundredweight sacks and delivered by lorry to every household in the land, where it was burnt in fireplaces and kitchen ranges, supplying heat for comfort and for cooking.
The boy listened with something akin to wonder, reminding me of the famous oil painting of the old sailor mending his nets and telling two young boys about his maritime adventures.
The youth said, ‘So have I got this right? You used to, like, chuck these lumps of black shiny stuff on to the fire and set them alight?’
I told the youth that in my boyhood coal had been superseded by electric storage heaters, which consisted of a pile of electrically heated bricks inside a metal box.
The boy’s eyes widened further.
‘My father used to sell them,’ I added. ‘Before he was made redundant, like the miners.’
Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘The miners were not made redundant, Adrian, their jobs were stolen from them by Mrs Thatcher.’
The youth said, ‘We haven’t done Thatcher yet. We’re still on the First World War.’
I managed to flog him The Observer’s Book of Aircraft for his dad.
Wednesday December 4th
New Moon
3 a.m.
Unable to sleep tonight due to money worries. Will my car have to go?
Thursday December 5th
Received an invitation for a New Year’s Eve party from Tania Braithwaite. It is fancy dress. I can’t afford to hire an elaborate costume: I may go as Osama bin Laden. All I will need are a few sheets, an old bathrobe, a pair of sandals and a false beard.
Friday December 6th
According to the Daily Mail, Cherie Blair is dabbling in the occult and cannot decide whether to have tea or coffee in the morning without consulting a medium in Dorking called Sylvia. Mrs Blair surrounds herself with gurus and mystics. It seems you cannot move in No. 10 before tripping over crystals and astrological charts.