by Sue Townsend
I leaped in quickly – my parents are perfectly capable of attempting to explain the notion of suicide to a two-and-three-quarter-year-old child. ‘Topped myself, means… er… it means… getting better at something,’ I lied. ‘Wouldn’t you feel better if you opened the curtains and the window and got some air and light in here?’ I asked.
‘No,’ whined my father. Then, sounding like Blanche Du Bois, ‘I don’t like the light.’
I looked around the room and realized that my mother’s mad clutter of books, magazines, cosmetics and beauty aids was missing. Apart from my father’s bottles of tranquillizers, the room was devoid of those personal touches that make a house a home. They were obviously sleeping apart.
‘Are you going to get out of bed and let me drive you to the polling station?’ I asked him kindly.
My father groaned and turned his face to the wall. I noticed that his bald spot, the size of a fifty-pence piece on Wednesday April 2nd, 1997, the last time I saw him, was now the size of a digestive biscuit (McVitie’s).
I decided to attempt a breakthrough in our relationship: i.e. I would try to talk to my father as if he were a real person. I started by pushing William aside and lying next to my father on the bed. I patted his bony shoulder and said something I’d heard an expert in family therapy suggest on the Oprah show. ‘I’m sorry you’re not happy, Dad,’ I said. ‘How may I help you?’
My father turned to face me. ‘You sound like a bleeding shop assistant,’ he replied. ‘And I’m sorry I’m not happy, Adrian, but do you know what Freud said about happiness?’
‘No,’ I admitted, ‘I’m a follower of Jung.’
My father raised himself on one elbow. ‘Freud wrote, in the Reader’s Digest, “To be happy a man needs two things: Love and Work,” and I haven’t got either any more.’ His mouth crumpled and he turned his face back to the wall.
‘Oh, thank you very much, George,’ said my mother, with heavy sarcasm. ‘My love doesn’t count.’ Tears were gathering in her eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks and bring brushfuls of mascara with them. She addressed my father’s back. ‘Tony Blair will give you a job, George,’ she said, ‘and we can sort the love thing out.’ She turned to me and lowered her voice. ‘When he says love he means sex.’ She leaned over and kissed my father’s bald spot. ‘We’ll go back to that sex therapist, shall we?’ I got up and inched towards the door, wishing now that I had not instigated this Oprah-like family confessional. William put his hand in mine, and we left the room together, but unfortunately not before I had heard my father say, ‘But I’m not having those injections in my dick, Pauline.’
‘Who’s Dick?’ said William, as we walked down the stairs.
One of the Spice Girls, Emma, was ironing a skirt the size of an African postage stamp in the kitchen. It was Rosie, my sister.
‘How’s your revision going?’ I asked.
‘What effing revision?’ She sniggered. I felt it was my duty to remind her of the importance of taking her GCSEs seriously. Her parents were obviously too busy trying to revive their clapped-out sex life to care about their daughter’s education. I was only halfway through my little lecture when Rosie flew into a tantrum and slammed the iron down on to the board. Steam hissed as she shouted, ‘Chill out, man, I’m, like, cool about the effing exams, y’know?’
‘Please,’ I said, ‘don’t swear in front of William.’
‘Effing is not swearing, you sad bastard,’ she said.
In a deliberately calm voice I pointed out that the iron was burning her so-called skirt. She snatched up the iron and stood it on end. A cloud of vapour momentarily obscured her face, reminding me of a horror film I’d seen about a female killer running amok in a New York sauna.
As I watched my son chomp through his third bowl of Coco Pops, I tried to remember if I had been as obnoxious as Rosie when I was a young teenager. But quite honestly, dear Diary, I feel sure that I was a happy-go-lucky lad, polite, considerate and extremely well adjusted. And, bearing in mind that I had no parental encouragement (no encyclopedias, no Anglepoise) I did quite well in my GCSEs: five at C grade.
I rang the Next headquarters and ordered a pair of chinos from their catalogue. I then rang Nigel on his mobile again, and requested that he deliver the chinos to me, together with my mother’s red trouser-suit.
He said, ‘How about a duvet cover and a pair of pillowcases?’ But I assured him that I was OK for bedlinen.
I said to him, ‘Please check the size of the trousers, thirty-two-inch waist, thirty-one-inch inside leg.’ I heard him crash the gears, then without him saying goodbye, his phone went dead.
To keep myself awake as William chewed each individual Coco Pop twenty times (the kid is a genius – how many almost-three-year-olds can count to twenty?), I read Pandora’s election leaflet, which was fastened to the fridge with a Postman Pat magnet. It was a tawdry document. She’d been far too profligate with her exclamation marks.
Dear Voter [it started]
• Are you sick of hearing the same tired excuses about sleaze from the clearly morally bankrupt Tory candidate for Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Sir Arnold Tufton? Yes! So am I!
• Do you think that his record on civil liberties (petitioning Ashby-de-la-Zouch council to deter vandals by installing closed-circuit TV cameras in the cubicles of public lavatories) is disgraceful? Yes! So do I!
• Do you agree with Sir Arnold Tufton that TV licence dodgers should be jailed for a minimum of fifteen years? No! Nor do I!
• Do you demand an explanation as to why Sir Arnold Tufton was photographed in Marbella in the company of the notorious criminal Len Fox? Would you like to know what was inside the Jiffy-bag that was passed from Len Fox to Sir Arnold in the Bar Español? Yes! So would I!
• If you vote for me on May 1st, I pledge that I, Dr Pandora Braithwaite,Oxford Don, Linguist of Leicestershire Stock, will work conscientiously, honestly and fearlessly to represent the wishes of the people of Ashby-de-la-Zouch. In this cradle of democracy! The mother of parliaments! Send me to the House of Commons!
• IT CLEARLY MAKES SENSE!
At nine o’clock I took a cup of Nescafé up to my father. He lay where we had left him, his face to the wall, his hands clasped together as if in anguished prayer. He said he could hear Tony Blair’s voice whispering from the corner of the room. For a split second I thought madness had set in and that he would leave the house in a straitjacket, but then I realized that the clock radio had turned itself on and Radio Four was transmitting Tony Blair’s soundbites. I crossed the room, turned it off and my father seemed to relax a little. But I couldn’t persuade him to leave his bed and come with me and my mother to vote.
I went to his side of the wardrobe and riffled through his pathetic collection of trousers, a hymn to man-made fibres and Elvis-in-Las-Vegas styling, and discarded them all. However, in a drawer in his side of the chest of drawers I found a pair of 501s that he’d never worn, a Christmas present from my mother in 1989 apparently. As I tried them on and looked in the wardrobe mirror, a shaft of sunlight touched the top of my head, and I saw with horror that my hair had thinned so much that light was able to penetrate to the very follicles. I went into the bathroom and examined my scalp in the devastating light of the magnifying mirror on the window-ledge. The evidence was unmistakable: I was losing my hair.
Even as I watched, a hair detached itself, floated from my head, and landed in the bottom of the washbasin. With great difficulty I picked it up, and put it into my shirt pocket with the Ralph Lauren logo. Don’t ask me why I did this.
I took William and the New Dog for a walk around the block. The street was a riot of cherry blossom. Is it compulsory to have a cherry tree in your front garden in Ashby-de-la-Zouch? Did the council pass a by-law? There were drifts of fallen blossom on the pavements. William ran through it, grabbed handfuls and covered the New Dog. It looked like a grizzle-faced bride.
I’ve tried hard but I can’t get used to the New Dog: it’s got a miserable kind of fac
e – the Old Dog was always smiling. Also, the New Dog displays no curiosity: it never tugs on its lead or gets excited. However, when a white van trailing blue balloons, blasting ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ from a crackling public-address system, went by, the New Dog turned its shaggy head and bared its teeth. So I warmed to it, very slightly.
While William was on the swings I phoned Nigel in his van and cancelled my order for the chinos. He was very short with me, said he’d been to the warehouse in person, and had been to enormous trouble, etc., etc. He said he was on his way to deliver them as we spoke. I explained about the 501s but he didn’t want to know. I hate ending a conversation on an unpleasant note, so I asked him if he was going to vote for Pandora. He said he had already voted for the Green candidate, Lillian Dale, who had canvassed on a mountain bike until it was stolen. Nigel is a keen cyclist now, apparently. I pointed out to him that too much pressure from a saddle could affect sperm production (according to an American report). He said, sarcastically I thought, ‘Oh dear, and I’d planned to have at least four children, with that nice girl my mother is always going on about.’
I asked him where we were going to meet up and have that drink, but he said he hadn’t got his electronic organizer with him, so we said goodbye. I dragged William off the swings and we went home.
My mother and I left William in the care of his depressed grandad and his foul-mouthed aunt and walked the quarter of a mile to vote.
There was a gaggle of voters outside the Scout hut polling station. Some enterprising senior Scouts had set up a stall and were selling chilli-flavoured Doritos and little pots of salsa. There was a choice of Coke or Diet Coke to drink. ‘Whatever happened to tea and home-made scones?’ asked my mother of a Scoutmaster-type person, who appeared to be in charge.
‘We’ve had to move with the times,’ he said politely. ‘This is what the public want.’
‘Baden-Powell would turn in his grave,’ she said. The man blushed and turned away, and began fiddling with the salsa dip as though embarrassed. ‘What did I say?’ she asked of me, as we went into the smelly hut.
‘Baden-Powell has been discredited by World in Action. He got a bit too fond of the boys,’ I said.
‘There are no heroes left any more,’ she said. ‘Apart from Tony Blair…’
A woman in urgent need of orthodontic treatment smiled and handed us our ballot papers. It gave me a thrill to see Pandora’s name – I had forgotten that she had two middle names: Louise Elizabeth. I wondered if she ever used her initials. I went into the voting booth and took up the pencil on the string and paused, savouring the moment. I, Adrian Mole, was about to exercise my democratic right and vote for a government of my choice. My reverie was broken when a scrutinizer inquired, ‘Are you all right in there, sir?’ I drew a thick, pencilled cross next to Pandora Louise Elizabeth Braithwaite’s name, and withdrew from the cubicle.
As I stood before the ballot box, folding my voting paper into a small square, I tried to fully realize the awesome significance of the moment. It may have been the tawdry surroundings of the Scout hut – the limp pennants hanging from the walls, the battered stacking chairs, the faded photographs of summer camps – that prevented me from registering any strong emotion, apart from a slight feeling of anticlimax. Surely our voting procedure should be accompanied by the sound of trumpets or massed choirs, or at the very least a singer singing freedom songs accompanied by a guitar. We should celebrate our democratic rights. Perhaps champagne or beer should be served (strictly one glass per voter) after we have dropped our papers into the ballot box. If I see Pandora tonight I may mention it to her.
My mother took my arm as we strolled home together. I didn’t mind because she looked so old now (she is fifty-three) and I knew that nobody seeing us together could possibly mistake us for lovers. As we reached the top of Wisteria Walk, she dug her nails into my arm and said, ‘I don’t want to go home.’ She sounded like a small child. When I asked her why, she said, ‘Three reasons: George, Rosie and William.’ Seeing my face, she said, ‘They’re all such hard work, Adrian.’ She sat down on a low wall where some blue stuff was growing, and lit a cigarette. ‘I’m constantly on the go,’ she said. ‘And the New Dog is nothing but a bloody nuisance. I’ve wasted my life.’
I rushed to contradict her, but after saying, ‘No, no, you haven’t,’ I couldn’t think of anything else to add. The highlight of her life seems to have been in 1982, when she ran away to Sheffield with rat-fink Lucas, our next-door neighbour.
‘Look at all the initials Pandora’s got before and after her name.’ She took a crumpled election leaflet out of her pocket, and we both looked down at it. ‘She’s a Doctor, a BA, and MA, a PhD, and she’ll be an MP by tomorrow. I’ve got nothing after my name and only Mrs before it,’ she said bitterly. ‘And,’ she added, ‘Pandora speaks six foreign languages, fluently. All I can say is “Two beers, please” in Spanish.’
Just then an old woman with a zimmer frame came round the corner of the house and shouted, ‘You’re squashing my aubrietia.’ I had no idea what she was talking about, but I apologized to the wall owner, and we moved on.
I was waiting for a Sainsbury’s lasagne to defrost in the microwave when the phone rang. It was Ivan Braithwaite, Pandora’s father. He asked if my mother was there. I said, ‘Hello, Ivan, it’s Adrian.’
‘Oh, hello,’ he said, unenthusiastically. ‘I thought you were in London. I read something about you in the Sunday Times, something about sausages – or was it sewage?’
Dear Diary, is that A. A. Gill piece going to dog my footsteps for the rest of my life? Perhaps I should get in touch with Charlie Dovecote and ask him to write to Gill threatening litigation unless Gill retracts his ridiculous statement.
I shouted my mother to the phone. She came into the kitchen with William clinging to her hip and passed him over to me, saying, ‘Don’t put him down on the floor, he’s pretending it’s the open sea.’
After saying, ‘Ivan, how lovely to hear from you,’ my mother fell silent, only nodding now and again (Ivan Braithwaite always did like the sound of his own voice). Eventually she broke in and said, ‘Of course we’d love to help, we’ll see you in half an hour.’
When she put the phone down, her tired eyes were shining with excitement. ‘We’re needed, Adrian,’ she said. ‘Pandora is short of cars and drivers to ferry old people to the polling stations.’
‘Will they pay for the petrol?’ I asked, not unreasonably, I thought. A dark look came over my mother’s face. ‘This is an opportunity to unseat that fat scumbag, Sir Arnold Tufton, and you’re quibbling about the price of a few gallons of petrol,’ she said, stretching for her make-up bag, always within reach. By the time she had disguised her face it was 2 p.m. I’d been on the go for eighteen hours.
The Labour Party had set up a temporary office in an abandoned sweet shop, which was in a dismal shopping parade on the outskirts of Ashby-de-la-Zouch. The headquarters were flanked by Jolie Madame, a hairdresser’s in which could be seen several un Jolie-looking Madames, sitting under metal drying hoods. On the other side of the campaign headquarters was a futon shop. A man with a droopy moustache was staring out of the window, there were no customers in the shop and, judging by the man’s disconsolate expression, there never had been. The futon revolution has bypassed Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
Pandora was sitting with her back to me, her stockinged feet resting on the old sweet-shop counter. A pair of black suede court shoes was lying on the floor, where she’d kicked them off. She was wearing a tight-fitting scarlet suit, a large red rose was pinned over her left breast and a rosette was fastened over the right. She was talking in a husky voice into the smallest mobile phone I’d ever seen. Her other hand caught up her long golden hair and scrunched it into a topknot, before letting it fall to her shoulders.
A plain-faced woman in a gored skirt and a cardigan handed her a cup of tea. Pandora smiled her radiant smile, and said, ‘Mavis, you’re a sweetie.’
Mavis beamed as tho
ugh Richard Gere had just declared his love for her and asked her to run away with him to Malibu.
I stood at Pandora’s side and waited for her to finish her conversation with somebody called Boris from the Daily Telegraph. ‘Boris, darling, if I’m elected tonight, I promise we’ll have a celebratory dinner very, very soon, and if I lose we’ll have dinner even sooner. Bye, you horrible Tory, you.’
She switched the smile off with the phone, stood up and put her shoes on. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be in London cooking turds for A. A. Gill.’
‘I’ve come to help,’ I said, ignoring her mocking laughter.
She lit a cigarette and one of the volunteers, a thin man with a beard, rushed forward with an ashtray. ‘Chris, you’re a sweetie,’ she croaked. Chris stumbled away, as though he’d glimpsed paradise.
‘You’ve got everybody eating out of your hand, as usual,’ I said, looking around at the volunteers, who were doing busy things with paper, tea-bags and phones.
Pandora said, ‘They’re happy to be associated with my success. They know I’m going to win tonight.’
I replied, ‘The last I heard you were slagging the Labour Party off, saying it had betrayed socialism.’
‘Oh, grow up!’ she snapped. ‘Do you want the bloody Tories in or out?’
‘Out, of course,’ I replied.
‘Then shut the fuck up,’ she said. ‘I live in the real world.’
I looked around the HQ. It was the real world all right. My mother was holding a clipboard, and having a red rosette pinned to her jacket by Ivan Braithwaite. The back of his hairy hand brushed her left breast, and he apologized. She stretched her lipsticked lips and dipped her head to one side, in a submissive gesture I’d last seen on an animal-behaviour documentary (gorillas) on television. I’d seen that head-tilt gesture before, and it usually spelled trouble.
Mavis rushed up and said, ‘Pandora, the latest exit polls are awfully good.’