by Sue Townsend
My mother listened to this conversation with her lips parted and her tired eyes shining.
Zippo shouted to his PA, Belinda, ‘We’ve got the green light for Young Love.’ He turned back to me and said, ‘Sorry about that, Adrian, but it’s my first feature. OK, let’s go through this as quickly as possible. Eh?’
It’s not easy to read from an autocue while chopping offal at the same time, but here’s what I said:
‘Hi there, offal lovers or lovers of offal. It has to be said that offal has had a bad press. Jack the Ripper did this delicacy immeasurable harm and offal’s image has never quite recovered. However, I hope to persuade you, our friends and viewers at home, that offal is the new black. So, if you’ve fed the cat, chomped on your Creme Egg and poured boiling water on to your Pot Noodles, all that remains is for you to grab a can of cider from the fridge. Push that essay to one side – you know you’re never going to finish it. So, settle down and watch. I’m going to teach you how to make that pathetic student grant stretch. You can feed yourself really well for the price of a sheep’s head and a few vegetables.’
William screamed when I produced a sheep’s head from underneath the worktop, and he had to be taken out by my father when I cleavered the sheep’s head in half. Unfortunately, ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ is his favourite nursery rhyme.
I looked into the camera lens and imagined 700,000 students watching. Some of them were bound to be studying French or French literature, so I threw in a few bons mots. As I scooped out the brains from the sheep’s head I said, ‘These are brains. Eating them won’t necessarily make you clever, but who wants to be clever? As Flaubert said, “If you want to be happy, it is necessary not to be too intelligent.”’ I put the pieces of sheep’s head in a stockpot full of water, with two lamb Oxo cubes and a sprinkling of dried rosemary. As it came to the boil, I lifted the scum off the top and said, ‘This is scum. You’ll be familiar with it if you frequent student-union bars.’
Zippo shouted, ‘OΚ, that’s it, it’s a wrap.’ There was applause, led by my mother. ‘You’re a natural, Aid,’ he said. ‘You pitched it perfectly. Liked the Flaubert, nice touch.’ I didn’t tell him that I’d been inspired by the Sylvia Plath rhyming slang.
Zippo had to rush off to Heathrow. He was going to LA to try and persuade Kim Basinger to make a trailer for his shows. For saying, ‘Yum, if it’s Pie Crust, it’s gotta be good!’ he’s offering £50,000. Belinda (small, white face, red, red, full lips, Titian ringlets, DKNY sportswear and trainers) said that they’d be in touch to ‘finalize a deal’.
As my mother and I trooped down the fire escape, she said, ‘They’ll stitch you up good and proper unless you get somebody who knows what’s what.’
When we got to the car, she repeated this witch’s warning in front of my father. He concurred with her, saying, ‘Yeah, they’re all sharks, these public-school boys,’ and then he offered himself as my manager! A man whose only jobs have been in potato wholesale, storage-heater sales, spice-rack construction and canal-bank renovation. I politely turned down his offer. The atmosphere in the car was tense. Even William kept his mouth shut for once.
When we got back to the flat my mother took me aside and hissed, ‘Thank you very much for destroying your father’s confidence. It took a full hour to persuade him to get out of bed and drive me down here because of your severe gastroenteritis, which was so bad yesterday morning that you said you might have to go into hospital, on a drip.’
William gave me a get-well card that he’d made out of painted eggshells. I wish now that I had not told such a black lie: a grey one would have done perfectly well, and ensured that they’d all have stayed in Leicester. They left at 7 p.m.
My mother said she had to get back in time to walk the dog. She tried to kiss me, but I turned my cheek away from her adulterous lips.
Monday May 19th
Pandora finally phoned me back at eight-thirty this morning. She said she’d already been to the gym and was now at her temporary desk in her temporary rooms in the Commons. I told her my suspicions about her father and my mother. She said, ‘I know. They’re in love – pathetic, isn’t it?’
I asked her how she knew for sure, and she told me that she’d found a fax from my mother addressed to her father. It was a verse of a John Betjeman poem. I was amazed on two counts:
(a) I didn’t know that my mother had access to and knew how to use a fax machine.
(b) I didn’t know that my mother liked the poetry of Sir John Betjeman, though I suppose he is still England’s favourite modern poet. Just in front of Barry Kent (whom I wish were dead), Pam Ayres and Ted Hughes.
I asked her to fax the verse to me. She said she’d get Edna to do it. I asked her if our parents’ affair could damage her politically. She said, ‘I’m already under attack for wearing Chanel on election night. Some dreary little Labour Party Millbank apparatchik clad in a burgundy trouser suit from Principles said I must be seen to support the British fashion industry.’
I said, ‘You’re the Princess Di of the Commons, Pandora. You should set an example as she does.’
I heard the click of her lighter.
‘Listen,’ she said tersely, ‘Princess Di may have been forced into wearing Catherine-bloody-Walker, but her handbags are still Hermès.’
I had no idea what she was talking about (I feel increasingly as though people are speaking in a sort of code, one to which I have been denied the key). I asked her what we ought to do about our parents. She laughed and said, ‘We could encourage the other two, my mother and your father, to fall in love. They’ve both had mental health problems.’
‘And they both dress badly.’ I laughed. I asked Pandora if I could visit her in the House of Commons.
She said, ‘I’m busy writing my maiden speech.’
I asked her what she proposed speaking about.
She said, ‘You wouldn’t be interested, Adrian.’
I said, ‘Try me.’
She said, ‘The recapitalization of defunct manufacturing industries.’
She was right. I wasn’t interested.
Wednesday May 21st
Kim Savage turned up at the restaurant just as lunch was about to be served to a full dining room. She overturned the bubble-and-squeak trolley and threw several bottles of HP sauce at the bar (only narrowly missing Nigel Dempster’s head). The police were called, but she’d gone by the time they arrived, shrieking, ‘That’s what I think to your f------ injunction!’ Savage went around the tables growling, ‘See what you get when you marry into the lower classes.’ He seemed uncaring of the fact that several members of the government and a high-ranking union official were in the room.
Thursday May 22nd
Hoi Polloi was thronging with reporters from the tabloids and one from the Peterborough column in the Telegraph today. They were hoping, no doubt, for a report of yesterday’s Kim Savage attack, which made most of the gossip columns in this morning’s papers:
SAVAGE ATTACK
Kim Savage, estranged fourth wife of Peter Savage (restaurateur and second son of the Earl of Boswell), astonished lunchers in Savage’s fashionable Soho eatery, Hoi Polloi, yesterday, when she ran somewhat amok in the dining room, breaking a court injunction to stay away from the upmarket caff. Mrs Savage shouted at her cowering husband, ‘And I know all about you and Ivana Trump, you dirty little s---.’
Mrs Savage, formerly society florist Kim Didcott, left the restaurant sobbing, comforted by a member of staff who commented, ‘As Tolstoy said, each family is unhappy in its own way.’
Savage lined us all up tonight and demanded to know the name of the member of staff who comforted ‘that mad bitch’.
Nobody said a word, but everyone in the kitchen knows that I am a quarter of the way through War and Peace.
No word from Belinda of Pie Crust
No reply from Ms Smith
Alcohol – nil
Cigarettes – nil
Opal Fruits – 4 pkts
Drugs –
1 paracetamol
Bowels – large release of gas
Thin patch – no change
Penis activity – 5/10
Friday May 23rd
Another snippet from the Daily Mail gossip column.
Yesterday’s erudite spokesman on the sad business of the Savage marriage break-up has been revealed as Adrian ‘Turd’ Mole, Head Chef at Hoi Polloi. An insider said, ‘He’s been seen reading the Russian classics in lulls between courses.’
However, a little bird chirrups in my ear that Adrian may not be working at Hoi Polloi for much longer. He has been approached by Zippo Montefiori’s company, Pie Crust Productions, and is set to join the ever-growing ranks of TV cooks.
Saturday May 24th
I came down this morning to find Savage slumped on a stool at the preparation table. He told me he’d been there since we closed at 3 a.m. and that he still loved his Kim. I asked him what had initially caused the marriage to break down, and he brushed away a tear. ‘I paid for a ten-week course of elocution lessons for her,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bear that Essex accent on my pillow every morning.’ He shuddered at the memory, as though his wife’s accent was a physical thing: a loathsome insect crawling on his bedlinen. ‘She ripped me off, Adrian,’ he said. ‘She didn’t go to a single elocution lesson. She got her mate Joanna Lumley to give her a few pointers.’
‘What did she spend the money on?’ I asked.
He broke down completely, and sobbed like a small child. I patted his heaving shoulders. ‘I gave her a thousand quid for those lessons,’ he gulped, ‘a thousand f------ quid. And d’you know what she blew it on?’
‘Shoes?’ I ventured.
He shook his head.
‘A lover?’
‘No, no.’
‘Cocaine?’
‘No!’ he roared. ‘Worse than that!’ He lowered his head and his voice and whispered, ‘She donated it to the f------ Labour Party!’
Was ever a man deceived?
It explains why Joanna Lumley is barred from Hoi Polloi for life.
Sunday May 25th
Trinity Sunday
I took advantage of Savage’s deep unhappiness to ask for a day off today. He said, ‘Yeah. Going to see your son, the half-caste kid?’
I said, ‘No, I’m just going to see my son.’
‘I didn’t know you had two,’ he said.
I was determined to press the point home to him. ‘I don’t call him “my son the half-caste kid”,’ I said. ‘His name is William.’
Savage could benefit from going on a racial-awareness course. I might suggest it to him. I find his prejudices most offensive. He is like all aristocratic people. They are all inbred, deranged sexual deviants who should be put up against the drystone walls of their country estates and, if not actually shot, then at least… made to feel very uncomfortable indeed.
I rang last night to tell my mother that I would be coming to Wisteria Walk and bringing a piece of illegal beef on the bone with me. Rosie answered the phone in her usual ungracious manner, which entails using the least possible vocal power without resorting to complete silence.
‘Is Dad there?’
‘Yuh.’
There was a long pause, though I could hear snotty breathing. ‘Rosie?’ I said.
‘Yuh.’
‘Can I speak to Dad?’ I shouted.
‘He’s in bed,’ she shouted back, and then she actually volunteered the information that he’d been in bed for a week with severe depression, brought about by the stress of his driving in London last Sunday. I asked where William was and she told me that he was sitting in an empty Kellogg’s cornflakes box in front of the television, watching a Jeremy Clarkson video. This bleak image brought a lump to my throat, and I couldn’t wait to get to Ashby-de-la-Zouch and hold the boy in my arms.
Later
Apart from seeing William my visit was a waste of valuable time. Nobody would eat the beef on the bone. My mother was out most of the afternoon, ‘walking the dog’, my father was in bed with the curtains drawn, and Rosie left the house with a hideous-looking youth called Aaron Michelwaite, whose face is deformed with lip, eyebrow, nose, eyelid, ear and tongue rings. Rosie saw me gawping and said, ‘You should see his Prince Albert.’ Once again I didn’t get the reference.
I could barely be civil to the youth. He is extremely well spoken, but he is far too old for Rosie (he is nineteen), and I hinted to him that my sister is a virgin and I would prefer it if she stayed in that condition for as long as possible. I said, ‘Rosie may look like Baby Spice, but she’s an innocent, do you understand, Aaron?’
‘Innocent.’ He snorted. ‘I’ve had more than cider with Rosie, mate.’ At the time I took his punning remark to mean that they shared a taste for strong alcohol – vodka, perhaps. But as I drove back to London I pondered on his oblique reference to Laurie Lee’s classic, and I am now convinced that they are in fact having a full-blown sexual relationship.
Saw thirteen Eddie Stobarts. Nine waved, four didn’t.
Bowels – blocked
Penis – unresponsive to stimuli
Monday May 26th
Belinda from Pie Crust Productions rang, but I was in the middle of a tricky stage with some lambs’ testicles, so I couldn’t take the call.
Luigi tells me that a Prince Albert is a ring-chain device worn on the penis. I have written to Rosie. I feel that I am in loco parentis.
‘My dear Rosie… that’ is as far as I got. I was so outraged by the thought of Aaron Michelwaite’s Prince Albert that I threw down my pen in disgust.
Friday May 30th
Malcolm took a message from Belinda at Pie Crust, begging me to ring her back. Malcolm said, ‘She sounded as if she was gagging for it.’ I led him to believe that Belinda’s interest in me was sexual.
Edna rang, cancelling my appointment with Pandora. She has to wait in – she’s having a futon delivered. I pointed out to Edna that I could go round to Pandora’s flat, which I’ve never seen, and wait in with her, but apparently she wants to wait for her futon alone.
Saturday May 31st
Belinda strode into the restaurant kitchen today and said, ‘OΚ, I’m not proud. I’ve come to you to beg you to do it.’
Malcolm, Luigi and the temporary kitchen assistants, Sven and Boris, goggled at her Lycra-clad breasts and bum in her cycling shorts-vest combo. I steered her outside into the yard where all the fire extinguishers are kept until the fire officer rings to tell us he’s coming round to do an inspection.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I said. ‘I can’t cook,’ I admitted.
Ever since Savage spilled his guts to me (if only he had literally spilled them, I would have gladly cooked them up with a bit of garlic salt and enjoyed eating them) – about his undying love for Kim, he has totally ignored me. I asked him this morning if he had ordered the tinned carrots, saying, ‘We are dangerously low.’ But he looked straight through me. I am always aware when we are low on carrots because I use the stacked tins as my bedside tables.
Sunday June 1st
I spent the day alone, with the Observer. There was a cat in the kitchen yard today that looked amazingly like Humphrey, the cat who once resided at No. 10 Downing Street before Cherie Blair begged her husband to dispose of it, ‘by foul means or fair’ – this is according to a high-ranking member of the RSPCA, who told Luigi, who told Malcolm, who told me.
The cat I saw this morning was undoubtedly Humphrey: thinner, scraggier, flea-ridden and lacking any formal identification, but it was he, of that I have no doubt. Stories of him ‘going to a good home, somewhere in Streatham’ are false. No doubt the truth will come out one day when Cabinet papers are released under the thirty-year rule. I will be sixty-plus by then, but I will have the quiet satisfaction of knowing that I fed several cod’s heads to the Prime Minister’s spurned cat, thus helping it to survive in the mean streets of Soho.
Monday June 2nd
Humphrey was at the kitchen door mewing pathetically this morn
ing. Malcolm wanted to take him home, but I pointed out that a dormitory in a hostel was a home in name only. I think he saw my point. But he went out after his duties at lunchtime and bought Humphrey an engraved cat collar. Unfortunately Malcolm was ‘taught’ by the phonetic method of spelling, so the cat is now called ‘Humfri’.
Tuesday June 3rd
Humfri now has two bowls, a bed, a basket, a scratching post, a puffer bottle of flea powder, worm tablets, a ball/bell combination, a grooming brush, and is registered at a veterinary surgeon’s in Beauchamp Place.
Malcolm has showered the animal with his savings and his love. Yet the cat does not show the least sign of gratitude.
Zippo came into the restaurant tonight and said, ‘OΚ, Adrian, you win. You held out for nine-fifty a show, and that’s what we’re offering. And we’ll throw in a limo there and back, plus a set of pans.’
To test him I drawled, ‘A thousand five hundred, plus residuals.’ Plus residuals is a term I have heard many times in Hoi Polloi. I’m not exactly sure what it means, but television people have the phrase continually on their negotiating lips. But at that moment his mobile trilled.