by Sue Townsend
‘And television,’ I queried. ‘Does that take up the time when you could be writing?’
Mr and Mrs Wellbeck exchanged a glance. She’d been caught bang to rights. However, I felt no joy at my victory, and to show compassion to Mrs Wellbeck I bought yet another notebook to add to my collection.
On the way home, I easily overtook Mrs Lewis-Masters, who was still inching up Gibbet Lane in the rain. I walked at a funeral pace beside her, sheltering both of us from the heavy downpour under my umbrella. She looked a little afraid of me and moved her handbag, so that it hung on the other side of the Zimmer frame. I put her at her ease by discussing the merits of the hanging baskets which were displayed on every cottage and lamp post.
She looked at the floral baskets disdainfully. ‘Were I younger,’ she said in an accent the Queen would have felt at home with, ‘I would steal out at night and destroy the gaudy horrors.’
She stopped and stared at some bright orange flowers that spilt out of a green plastic tub, hanging from a bracket on the wall of Pamper Yourself.
‘What are they?’ I asked.
‘Begonias,’ she spat. ‘They are abominations, the Margaret Thatcher of the plant world. Shrill, domineering, ubiquitous.’
I looked at the old woman with new eyes. I would have put her down as a certain Thatcherite.
*
Before we parted company at the top of the hill, I determined to find out why she regularly corresponded with somebody in Timbuktu.
‘Do you live far from here?’ I asked.
‘No, that’s my house there.’ (No, thets my harse thare.) She nodded at an imposing flat-fronted brick house at the crest of the hill.
‘So not as far away as Timbuktu?’ I said, feigning a laugh.
‘Timbuktu?’ she said, lifting her head and focusing her grey eyes on me. ‘Why bring Timbuktu into the conversation?’
I said, ‘It’s an expression my father uses to denote distance.’ I wished her ‘good day’ and hurried away.
When I got home I Googled Timbuktu and learnt that it is the main city in the landlocked state, the French Sudan, where the river meets the desert. Arab tribes brought gold from the south and salt from the north. Once described as the place where the ‘camel meets the canoe’.
Thursday 12th July
Gracie had a horrible tantrum this morning, demanding that she be allowed to wear her Little Mermaid outfit rather than her school uniform. Daisy and I were quite helpless in the face of the child’s rage. I explained that it would impede her movements, and the fishtail dragging through the puddles in the lane would prevent her from walking to school. Besides, Little Mermaid has to be carried everywhere and then lowered on to ‘rocks’. Gracie was screaming, ‘I am a fish! I can swim to school!’ as I abandoned my wife to my by now hysterical daughter, costumed in her half-bimbo, half-fish dress. It was pouring with rain again, but I didn’t care. I would have cycled in a typhoon to get away from the din in that house.
Mr Carlton-Hayes was away again. A young man in black square-framed glasses asked me if I had anything on tropical diseases. He looked a bit peaky, so I kept my distance and directed him to the medical shelves where he opened Rapid Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine by Rachel Isba, read for twenty minutes looking increasingly worried, then hurried from the shop without buying anything.
After he had gone, I sprayed the shop with Dettol Antiseptic Disinfectant, just to be on the safe side. I can’t afford to be ill.
Saturday 14th July
Nigel rang me at work to tell me that he’s in love ‘with a fellow blind man’! How stupid can you get? It would have been better all round if Nigel had fallen for a man with good eyesight. But as it is, Nigel and his new partner, Lance Lovett, will be blundering around, bumping into furniture, spilling drinks and walking into the traffic together!
I told Nigel that he has made a rod for his own back.
He said, ‘I’ve still got Graham to help me.’
I said, ‘Graham is a dog, Nigel! And he’s on his last legs, it’s not fair to expect him to look after two blind people. It’s extra work for him.’
‘Don’t feel sorry for Graham,’ said Nigel, bitterly. ‘He’s been a lazy bastard lately. I asked him to fetch a clean towel from the airing cupboard yesterday and he wouldn’t move out of his basket.’
Sunday 15th July
Nigel rang. Hysterical.
Graham is dead. The vet said he’d probably been dead at least twelve hours.
‘And you didn’t realize the poor dog had stopped breathing?’ I said scathingly. ‘I thought blind people were supposed to have superior hearing?’
‘You’re confusing me with Superman,’ said Nigel, through his sobs. ‘Anyway, Mole, I want you to come over and bury Graham in the back garden.’
Later I said to Daisy, ‘Why me? Why are people always asking me to bury their dead dogs?’
‘Why, how many dead dogs have you buried?’ she said.
‘Two,’ I said. ‘Bert Baxter’s dog, Sabre, and my family’s old dog.’
‘What was its name?’ she asked.
‘The Dog,’ I said. ‘It didn’t have a name.’
‘Well, two dead dogs in how many years?’
‘Nearly twenty.’
‘Well, that’s hardly a regular supply of dead dogs, is it?’
10 p.m.
Nobody is on my side over the dog burial thing.
My mother accused me of being callous, saying, ‘You’re breaking the hearts of two blind men.’
I pointed out that Nigel and Lance are planning a kayak expedition through the Norwegian fjords, so they are more than capable of digging a hole big enough for a golden Labrador together.
My father thumped me on the arm from his wheelchair. ‘I’d dig the hole myself if God hadn’t given me a stroke.’
‘It wasn’t God, George,’ said my mother, curling her lip. ‘It was pork scratchings and forty fags a day.’
I rang Nigel when I got home and asked him if he’d got a spade.
‘I didn’t own a spade when I could bloody see. Why would I own one now?’ he answered.
I could hear Lance sobbing in the background over the theme tune to Newsnight.
Monday 16th July
Left Mr Carlton-Hayes in charge of the shop and called for a taxi. Daisy, who had previously shown no interest in Graham whatsoever, insisted on accompanying me to the funeral, saying, ‘We never go out together.’
I said, ‘Since when did attending a dog’s funeral count as taking you out?’
She said, ‘There’ll be a few lovely gay people there, so it should be a laugh.’
She was in black from head to foot and had even painted her fingernails with Chanel Noir. I did point out that wearing all black was a futile gesture because Nigel and Lance, the chief mourners, had only got 2 per cent eyesight between them.
Daisy said, ‘I’m in all black because I’m in mourning for my fucking life!’ I saw the taxi driver glance at Daisy in his rear-view mirror. I could tell that he disapproved of my wife, and I felt a little ashamed of her myself.
She sounded desperate.
To cheer her up I held her hand and suggested that we go to Wayne Wong’s for a Chinese after the funeral. She squeezed my hand and smiled. It was like a shaft of bright sunlight piercing lowering storm clouds.
We arrived at Nigel’s house by 9.30 a.m. There was a black wreath on the front door. I hadn’t realized that Graham’s interment would be such a big deal.
Nigel had invited guests. There was a sort of shrine to Graham on the corner unit in the living room and a large framed photograph of him smiling with his tongue lolling out. On a velvet cushion next to it lay the dead dog’s collar and identity disc, and a Bonio that had been sprayed silver. Lance looks at least ten years older than Nigel, and has shaved his head, though not very well, as his scalp is covered in tiny scabs and more recent nicks. He was dressed in a dark suit and has a gold earring in his right ear, which I expect he thinks is rather d
ashing.
A candle burned in a black candlestick. Nigel choked, ‘I’ll never let that flame go out.’
I said, ‘You should blow it out before you go to bed. The statistics for house fires have gone through the roof since candles became an interior design must-have.’
The deceased Graham lay in a Habitat storage box, surrounded by potpourri. His mouth was half open, displaying his teeth and giving him, even in death, the look of aggression that always kept me from being entirely comfortable in his presence.
While the guests ate the Iceland canapés and sipped pink champagne, I went into the little back garden and began the laborious business of digging a grave in wet clay. Every now and again I would stop to wipe my brow and look back at the living-room window, where one of Nigel’s friends would wave encouragingly. I could see Daisy, surrounded by a crowd of admirers, talking and occasionally shouting with laughter. From this distance she appeared to have lost a little weight. Her resemblance to Nigella Lawson was remarkable.
Nobody offered to help. Though I must admit, when it started to rain, a gay friend of Lance’s – who introduced himself as ‘I’m Jason, I’m mad, I used to have green hair’ – brought out an umbrella for me before running back inside to avoid getting wet.
Has Jason, or anyone else, tried to dig a hole with one hand, whilst holding an umbrella with the other?
I intended to take no part in the actual interment ceremony. In my opinion it was grossly over the top to have a CD of Elvis singing ‘Old Shep’ and a procession carrying the storage box and contents to the grave.
When the time came to lower the box, there was a horribly emotional scene. Nigel’s grief was pitiful to see and hear. He almost stumbled into the grave at one point. To my great annoyance, the storage box was too wide for the hole and I had to retrieve the spade and resume digging. I am no homophobe, but digging a dog’s grave whilst being watched by a dozen or so critical gay men is not an experience I want to go through again.
Eventually the lid of the storage box was put on and Graham was laid to rest. I was the only person present to remain dry-eyed throughout.
Diary, should I worry about my emotional detachment? Or should I congratulate myself on my self-control?
Nigel recited a poem Lance had composed.
‘Graham’ by Lance Lovett
Graham, is that your bark I hear?
Is that your growl, dear?
Graham, are you there in the daytime,
Are you there in the night?
Is it true that your bark
Was worse than your bite?
You lightened our darkness,
You shouldered our load,
Your eyes were appealing,
Your fur it was gold.
You shouldn’t have left us
Before you grew old.
It was everything I hate about amateur poetry. It was sentimental, bathetic, it failed to scan and was riddled with clichés, but everybody else lapped it up and Lance was congratulated over and over again.
We didn’t go to Wayne Wong’s. Daisy drank too much pink champagne and became quite abusive about my cardigan, so I took her home before there was a scene.
Times visited the loo: twelve.
Wednesday 25th July
Half the country is underwater. The television news is showing cars and whole trees floating in the rapids that used to be roads. I walked down to look at the brook, it has turned from being a trickle of clear water into a white-water hell and it is encroaching on to the piggeries’ land.
Gordon Brown has taken charge of the flood crisis. He is holding many emergency meetings. The newspapers have been over the top, with headlines such as ‘Gordon Saves Flooded Brits’. Anybody would think he was lugging sandbags about or pumping the water out himself.
Wednesday 8th August
Took advantage of my parents’ absence. They are at a protest meeting at The Bear, called about the proposed closure of our post office. I wanted to find the copy of Jane Eyre that my mother borrowed and swore she had given back to me. Sure enough, I found the missing book on the battered table she calls her ‘desk’, underneath a pile of misery memoirs.
A Child Called ‘It’, Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, Running with Scissors, but more interesting to me was a box file labelled A Girl Called ‘Shit’. I opened the lid, there were a few pages of manuscript inside. I read them, standing at the desk. It was an account of her childhood in the Norfolk potato fields. My mother’s book is a tissue of lies. In fact, it’s a brown paper of lies – tissue is too delicate a simile to be attached to such a fraudulent enterprise.
A Girl called ‘Shit’ by Pauline Mole
I was born in the middle of a potato field near the village of Hose in the county of Norfolk. A bitter east wind chilled my mother’s thighs as I made my way into the world of poverty and pain.
My father was a brutal giant of a man, with a head of black hair and a matted beard. He was taught to read and write at the village school and proved to be a brilliant pupil. His teacher, Mr Chipper, encouraged him to apply for Cambridge. However, on the day he was due to take the exams he was five minutes late, having walked barefoot from his village. He was turned away, and on his return home he burned every book and vowed never to read again.
My mother had been one of the great Norfolk beauties, she was of aristocratic birth and had met my father when she was riding with the Sandringham Hunt. She had fallen off her mount whilst crossing a potato field, and my father had gone to her assistance. Their liaison caused a great scandal and my mother, Lady Clarissa Cavendish-Stronge, married my father and became Mrs Sugden. I never heard my father call my mother by her name, it was always ‘You’.
Within half an hour of giving birth, my father dragged my mother to her feet and insisted that she continue her work of picking potatoes from the black earth. I, having been wrapped in a potato sack, was pushed inside my mother’s ex-army greatcoat. She worked until nightfall, only after she had cooked my father’s dinner and cleaned out the ferret cages was she allowed to sit down.
My father’s first words on seeing me were, ‘A fookin’ girl child ain’t no use to me. I wanted a strong-armed lad to chuck a full sack o’ spuds on’t back of fookin’ cart. Tek the girl child to yonder dike and let the crows ’av ’er.’
Luckily for me, my father drank himself into a stupor on turnip wine and in the morning had forgotten his directive. He refused to acknowledge me or register my birth and only ever referred to me as ‘Shit’.
This is a complete lie. I have seen my mother’s birth certificate, she was born in the cottage hospital at Burnham Market and was given the name Pauline Hilda Sugden. Her father is a timid man who has never been known to raise his voice. Her mother was not beautiful. There is a story in our family that Grandma Sugden’s face once frightened the horses at a local gymkhana and she was asked to leave.
Thursday 9th August
Got home from work to find Daisy in a state of excitement: eyes shining, cheeks pink, dark lipstick freshly applied, smelling strongly of Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely and Jim Beam.
As soon as I put my key in the lock, she yanked the door open and said, ‘Guess who’s next door?’
I said nothing to Daisy but my actual first thought was that my dear younger son, William, had returned from Nigeria where he has been living with his mother and her new husband. I never talk about William – the subject is too painful.
‘Not Glenn, back from Afghanistan?’ I said.
She shook her head. A few hairgrips fell from her Amy Winehouse beehive.
‘It’s your brother!’ she said.
I took my bicycle clips off and put them on the hall table. ‘Half-brother,’ I corrected. ‘He’s only got my father’s blood.’
‘Yes, Brett Mole. Oh, Aidy, he’s amazing! You’d never think you were related.’ She said, ‘You didn’t tell me he’d been to Oxford.’
I asked where Gracie was.
‘She’s next door with her Uncle Brett
,’ said Daisy. ‘He’s wonderful with children.’
I said, ‘What’s brought him here.’
‘His mother. I don’t know her name,’ she said.
‘Stick Insect,’ I said. ‘Otherwise known as Doreen Slater.’
‘Well, she’s dead. She died yesterday. Brett wanted to tell your dad himself, face to face. He’s so thoughtful,’ she said.
‘Stick Insect dead,’ I said, shocked. ‘Was it anorexia?’
‘Motorbike accident,’ said Daisy.
‘What was she doing on a motorbike?’ I asked.
‘According to Brett, she got in with a bad crowd.’
‘She must have been sixty at least. You don’t get in with a bad crowd when you’re sixty,’ I said.
‘You do if it’s the Bournemouth Chapter of the Hells Angels,’ said Daisy. She checked her reflection in the hall mirror, gave a little smile and went next door.
I sat down on the bed and tried to control my breathing. Whenever I think about Brett Mole, I feel a deep sense of inadequacy. I remember that awful day in Skegness when my father told my mother that he had been having an affair with Doreen Slater and that she had just given birth to Brett. He is taller, better looking, better educated, he’s a sportsman par excellence, and he does something mysterious involving hedge funds (whatever they are) in London, Tokyo and New York that has made him immensely rich.
My mother never stops telling me about the bungalow that Brett bought for Stick Insect. Apparently, all Doreen had to do was press a few buttons and the lights would come on, the curtains would close and music would play in every room.
My mother used to sigh and say, ‘I wish…’ She never, ever finished the sentence but I know that her wish was that I had bought her a similar type of push-button house.
I had a good wash, changed out of my cardigan, combed my hair and went next door.