by Sue Townsend
Savage has had Gill’s review blown up at the Copy Shop and stuck it up in the window, where it draws admiring crowds.
Around about midnight I asked my fellow workers, those who could understand English, if they intended to vote today. Luigi, the maître d’, is a Communist in Italy, but he will be voting Liberal Democrat in Croydon, where he lives. Malcolm, the washer-upper, said he was thinking of voting Conservative, ‘because they help the self-employed’. I pointed out to Malcolm that he was only self-employed because Savage refused to pay for a National Insurance stamp and tax, but Malcolm then went on to say that he liked John Major because he (Malcolm) had been fostered by a couple who lived in Huntingdon, Major’s constituency. As Malcolm grappled with the Spotted Dick tin in the sink, I asked him about the Conservatives’ election pledges.
‘They’ve said they won’t put the taxes up,’ he said, in his reedy voice.
I said, ‘Malcolm, you don’t pay tax, remember? You get paid cash in hand. You’re off the books, which enables you to draw benefits from the DSS. You get free teeth, free travel to hospital, free everything.’
Malcolm said, ‘On the other hand, I might vote Labour.’
Thursday May 1st
Dean Street, Soho, London, to Wisteria Walk, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, in three hours. Not bad considering I kept under the speed limit all the way. On the way down I heard the Labour Party candidate for Ashby, Dr Pandora Braithwaite, talking about the importance of family values on Talk Radio. I was so outraged I almost choked on an Opal Fruit and steered into the fast lane. Talk about hypocrisy!
Pandora has shown open contempt for family life. Her first husband, Julian, was openly, in fact boastfully, gay. And her live-in lover, Jack Cavendish, has been married three times and has ten acknowledged children, three of whom have been in drug rehabilitation units up and down the country. The eldest is still languishing in jail in Turkey. Most of the others seem to be attracted to strange religious sects. Tom, the youngest, is a vicar in Hull.
How Pandora ever got past a Labour Party selection committee is a mystery to me. She smokes at least forty cigarettes a day. The radio interviewer asked her about her partner.
‘He’s a professor of languages at Oxford,’ she replied, in her husky voice. ‘And he’s enormously supportive. But then,’ she added, ‘I support him too.’
‘How very true,’ I shouted at the car radio. ‘He needs your support because he’s a chronic alcoholic and can’t stand up unaided after eight o’clock at night.’
At junction eighteen I ran out of Opal Fruits, so I pulled into the services and bought three packets. Are the manufacturers putting something extra in them? Something addictive? I seem to have been getting through rather a lot of them lately. The other night I woke at 3 a.m. and was distraught to discover that there wasn’t a single Opal Fruit in the flat. I tramped the streets of Soho looking for them. Within two minutes of leaving home I was offered lesbian sex, heroin and a Rolex watch, but an innocent packet of Opal Fruits took over half an hour to track down. What does it tell us about the world we live in?
A Labour government will change all that. Mr Blair is a committed Christian, and I forecast that a religious revival will sweep the land. I long for the day that I wake up in the morning and realize that, Hallelujah! I too believe in God!
As I was tearing open the Opal Fruits on the way back to the car, a tall man in a lorry-driver’s overalls approached me. I could tell that he was annoyed about something by the manner in which he barred my way with his thick arm.
‘Are you the dick’ead in the Montego?’ he said. ‘The one who’s been hogging the middle lane at sixty-five miles an hour?’ I didn’t like his aggressive tone. I pointed out to him that the motorway was quite damp, and that in my opinion sixty-five miles per hour was quite fast enough.
‘You’ve had a bleeding truck behind you since Watford,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you see me flashing my bleeding lights?’
I replied, ‘Yes, I thought you were being friendly.’
‘Why would I wanna be friendly to a dick’ead like you?’ he said.
I sat in the car and watched him jump into the cab of his lorry. I was relieved to see that he wasn’t driving for Eddie Stobart, whose drivers wear a shirt and tie under their overalls, and whose lorries are kept in immaculate condition. This oaf was driving a truck full of mineral water from Cornwall to Derbyshire. Why? Derbyshire consists of mineral water. You can’t move without falling into a beck, tarn or raging river.
I sat in the car park for a few minutes to allow the lorry-rager to put a few miles between us, then I rejoined the motorway and, mindful of my recent contretemps, put my foot down and got up to sixty-nine m.p.h.
Immediately after I had turned off the motorway I was confronted by Pandora’s lovely face staring down at me from an election poster nailed to the trunk of a chestnut tree at the side of the road. I stopped the car and got out to take a closer look. It was a glamour shot, reminiscent of 1940s Hollywood. Pandora’s highlighted dark blonde hair fell to her shoulders in rippling waves. Her glossy lips were open, showing Harpic-white teeth. Her eyes said bed-room! She was wearing a dark jacket thing; there was a hint of white lace underneath, and beneath that more than a hint of voluptuous cleavage. I knew that every man in Ashby-de-la-Zouch would walk on his knees to vote for her.
And to think that I, Adrian Mole, was the first to kiss those divine lips, and the first to insert my hand (left) beneath her white cotton training bra. Also, on June 10th, 1981, Pandora declared her love for me.
The fact that she has been married once is of no consequence. I know that I am her only true love, and that she is mine. We are Arthur and Guinevere, Romeo and Juliet, Charles and Camilla.
When I married Jo Jo, Pandora came to my wedding and I saw her wipe the tears from her eyes before saying to my new wife, ‘Commiserations.’ She quickly apologized for her faux pas and said, ‘I meant, of course, congratulations.’ But I knew that her slip of the tongue betrayed her deep hurt that it was not she who was Mrs Adrian Albert Mole.
I said, ‘I love you, my darling,’ to the Pandora on the tree, then I got back into my car and continued my journey into Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Pandora’s face smiled down at me from windows and signposts along the route. VOTE BRAITHWAITE – LABOUR, the poster said.
Occasionally, the grotesque porcine features of her Conservative rival, Sir Arnold Tufton, were to be seen on posters in the windows of the larger houses. Were he to enter for the Best Pig Class in the Leicester Agricultural Show he would stand a good chance of winning a rosette. Against the youth and radiance and intellectual brilliance of Dr Pandora Braithwaite he stands no chance at all – besides, Tufton has been embroiled in a row about his close friendship with Len Fox, the mobile-phone magnate (something about a Jiffy-bag in Marbella), decreasing his chances even further.
The people of Ashby-de-la-Zouch are not known for their tempestuous natures, so it was difficult to tell whether or not they were in the mood for revolution. Even the dogs and cats looked quiescent in the early-morning sunshine.
There was a Labour Party poster in the living room of my parents’ house on Wisteria Walk, and a Spice Girls poster in my sister Rosie’s window. Behind all the posters the curtains were closed. It took five minutes of banging on the door before it was opened. My mother stood before me in a grubby white towelling bathrobe and a pair of men’s grey wool socks. A Silk Cut Ultra Low burned between her fingers. Her purple nail varnish was chipped. Last night’s mascara was smudged around her eyes. Somebody, possibly in a hairdressing salon, had done something terrible to her hair. Two pairs of spectacles were slung around her neck on gold chains. She lifted one pair and put them on. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. 1 was hoping it was the postman. I’ve ordered a red trouser-suit from Next and it was supposed to come today.’ She took off the first pair of spectacles and replaced them with the second. She peered up and down the avenue, sighed, then kissed me and led the way down the hall and into the kitchen.
>
My son, William, was sitting at the kitchen table eating Coco Pops with a serving spoon. When he saw me he jumped from his chair and hurled himself towards my genitals. I saved myself from considerable pain by snatching him up and throwing him into the air.
It’s been three weeks since I last saw my son, but his verbal dexterity has improved considerably (I must stop using the word considerably – it’s John Major’s fault). He is only two and three-quarters, but is already, to my considerable alarm, besotted with that television motoring oaf, Jeremy Clarkson. My mother indulges the child horribly by videoing Clark-son’s testosterone-driven programmes and allowing William to watch them continuously. I don’t know where he gets this obsessive interest in cars from. Not from our side of the family, that’s for sure. His Nigerian grandmother was once the managing director of a lorry-tyre importer in Ibadan. It may be a tenuous connection, but genes are funny things. Nobody has ever been able to explain where I get my talent for creative writing and cookery from. My mother’s family (Norfolk) were practically illiterate, and seemed to live on boiled potatoes with HP sauce, and my father’s family (Leicester) viewed books with deep suspicion, unless they had pictures which ‘broke up the pages’. My paternal grandmother, May Mole, was a plain cook, who regarded eating as a gross indulgence. Thank God she died before I became a professional chef. It was her proud boast that she had never eaten in a proper restaurant in her life. She spoke of restaurants as others speak of crack dens.
I must record that my son is a handsome boy. His skin is clear, and the colour of dark cappuccino. His eyes are the exact shade of ‘dark oak’ in the Cuprinol wood-stain range. Physically, his Nigerian blood predominates, but I think I can see a certain English something about him. He is very clumsy, for instance, and when he is watching Clarkson (for example) on the TV, his mouth falls open and he looks a tiny bit gormless.
‘Have you heard from Jo Jo?’ asked my mother, as she kicked out at the New Dog to stop it licking its prominent testicles.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Have you?’
She opened a drawer and took out an airmail letter, which was plastered with Nigerian stamps.
‘Read it while I take him upstairs and get him ready,’ she said.
It gave me a jolt when I saw Jo Jo’s extraordinarily beautiful handwriting. The slopes and curves of the black letters reminded me of her body, and her voice. My penis stirred slightly as if expressing interest in what my wife had to say.
My dearest Pauline,
I am sorry to have to tell you that Adrian and I are getting a divorce.
I know that you won’t be surprised by this news, especially after my last visit when he lost the way to Alton Towers, blamed me and tore the map in half.
I was sorry that you and George (and especially William) had to witness such a scene.
The truth is, Pauline, that there have been many such unhappy incidents, and I feel that it is better to end our marriage now. I am sick with longing when I think of William. Does he speak of me? Please send an up-to-date photograph of him.
I thank you, Pauline, for caring for William in the absence of his parents. One day, when the political situation here has improved, I will send for him.
Love to you and the family, from Jo Jo.
‘You should’ve told me you were getting a divorce,’ said my mother. ‘Why didn’t you?’
I said, truthfully, ‘I thought she might change her mind.’
‘Fancy letting a beautiful wife like Jo Jo slip through your fingers,’ she said. ‘You must be bloody mad. You’ll never get another woman in the same league as her. She had everything, beauty, brains, money, talent –’
‘She couldn’t cook,’ I interrupted.
‘She cooked Nigerian food superbly,’ said my mother, Jo Jo’s biggest fan.
‘Yes!’ I said. ‘But I’m an Englishman.’
‘A little Englander,’ scoffed my mother, who rarely crossed the boundary of Leicestershire. ‘D’you want to know why I think your marriage failed?’ she asked.
I looked out at the back garden: the lawn was littered with garish plastic clothes pegs which had fallen off the washing-line.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘One,’ she said, ‘you resented the fact that she had a degree. Two, you postponed your trip to Nigeria five times. Three,’ she continued, ‘you never came to terms with the fact that she was four inches taller than you.’
I washed my hands in the sink in silence.
‘There’s a PS,’ said my mother. She read the postscript with relish. ‘PS. Did you see the A. A. Gill review of Hoi Polloi in the Sunday Times? I have to hide it from my family.’
So even in Lagos, Nigeria, they are sneering at my culinary skills! I should never have allowed Savage to persuade me to put bangers and mash on the menu.
And why, oh, why, did Gill and his blonde companion have to choose that night when we ran out of the traditional hand-made sausages I buy from the butcher’s in Brewer Street? I should have looked Gill in the eye and admitted to the fact rather than send out to the supermarket.
There was the throb of a diesel engine outside, then an urgent knocking on the front door. I answered it to find a handsome blond man carrying a parcel. It was Nigel. He used to be my best friend at Neil Armstrong Comprehensive.
‘Nigel!’ I said. Then, ‘What are you doing driving a van? I thought you were gay.’
Nigel snapped, ‘Being gay isn’t a career, Moley, it’s a sexual orientation.’
‘But,’ I stammered, ‘I expected you to be doing something artistic.’
‘You mean like cooking?’ he asked, laughing.
‘But I thought you were a Buddhist,’ I continued, digging another conversational grave.
He sighed, then said, ‘Buddhists are allowed to drive vans.’
‘But you’ve dropped the yellow robes,’ I said, unnecessarily, as he was wearing denim from head to toe.
‘I now realize that the outer manifestations of spirituality mask the inner,’ he said.
I asked about his parents: his father had been in hospital to have a new steel plate in his head, and his mother was still asking her son when he was going to settle down with a nice girl.
‘You haven’t told your parents you’re gay?’
‘No,’ he admitted, looking at the van throbbing at the kerb.
‘Look, this is a longer conversation, why don’t we meet up sometime?’ he said. We swapped our mobile numbers and he drove off.
When my mother came down with William she ripped open the parcel eagerly, saying, ‘It’s my Labour victory outfit. I’m wearing it at the count tonight.’ Her face sagged past its normal levels when she saw the navy-blue trouser-suit nestling between the sheets of tissue paper. ‘I ordered red,’ she shouted. She ranted on about the impossibility of wearing navy blue at Pandora’s victory party tonight. She threatened to sue Next for the psychological trauma she was suffering. I extracted the order form from the wrapping paper and spotted that my mother had ticked Navy Blue in the colour column. There could be no doubting her own distinctive mark. Eventually she conceded that Next was not at fault. Had he known, her lawyer, Charlie Dovecote, would have wept for his lost fees. She is waiting to appear in court against Shoe Mania! because a stiletto heel fell off on the summit of Snowdon. Privately I hope that she loses her case. If she were to win, the law would be made to look even more of an ass. Charlie Dovecote is clearly taking advantage of a half-crazed menopausal woman who can’t find an HRT treatment to suit her.
I offered to ring Next and arrange an emergency delivery of a red suit. She said scornfully, ‘As if.’ But I called Nigel on his mobile and he promised to do what he could, though he warned that ‘anything red’ was sprinting out of the warehouse and prophesied that there was to be a Labour landslide. I tried to tell him about my informer, Fred Gipton, but my phone signal broke up. I was annoyed to see that some of William’s spilled milk had seeped into the holes in the microphone.
I was even more annoye
d when William, distracted by the New Dog, upset his second bowl of cereal and a vile mixture of brown milk and sugar dripped off the edge of the table and on to the crotch of my stone-coloured chinos. I leaped to the sink, grabbed a dishcloth and wiped myself down, but the cloth had obviously been harbouring another, worse stain among its folds – orange juice, possibly – and this stain transferred itself to the Coco Pops stain. The two transmogrified into yet another stain – one speaking of long-term incontinence. I looked around for the washing-machine, only to be informed that it was the subject of a dispute, and was residing back with the manufacturer. More work for Charlie Dovecote.
‘You’ll have to borrow a pair of your father’s,’ said my mother.
I laughed out loud at the notion that I would be seen decomposing in a ditch in my father’s trousers. ‘Where is he, by the way?’ I asked.
‘Upstairs in bed. He’s got clinical depression,’ my mother said, unsympathetically.
‘What brought it on?’ I asked, as we climbed the stairs (which were dangerously littered with a myriad toy cars).
She lowered her voice on the landing. ‘One, he knows he won’t work again, not in a proper full-time job. Two, he’s got piles, but he’s scared of the operation. Three, he’s been impotent for three months.’
My father shouted from the bedroom.
‘Four, he’s sick of his bleeding wife blabbing his sexual secrets to all and bleeding sundry.’ My mother threw the bedroom door open. ‘Adrian is not all and sundry,’ she shouted, through the cigarette haze.
‘No, but the bloke in the bleddy video shop is,’ he roared.
William threw himself on to my father’s recumbent form and kissed him passionately. My father murmured, ‘This little lad is the only reason I haven’t topped myself.’
‘What’s “topped myself”, Grandad?’ asked William, who had begun to unfasten the buttons on my father’s pyjama jacket. (His physical dexterity is amazing.)