by Sue Townsend
1 a.m.
What a bore! How can anybody talk about themselves for four solid hours? I blame the women. Every time he appeared to be running out of things to say about himself either Daisy or my mother would ask him a question about his very fascinating life and he would be off again. Yak, yak, yak.
How his lavatory in Tokyo washes and dries his bum automatically, what a great view he has of Central Park from his apartment in New York, how he loves to watch the boats on the river from the terrace of his Thames-side flat.
He seems to know every chef in London, constantly talking about Gordon, Marco and Jamie. And, according to him, his name is embroidered on Tracey Emin’s tent.
He has got the whitest teeth I have ever seen, freakishly white. They could light up our dark field. I suppose he is conventionally good looking in a sort of vacuous George Clooney way. He told us that his casual suit had been made from hairs gathered from the underbelly of a rare kind of ‘high-end’ goat that was found on the north side of a mountain in Tibet.
I asked my half-brother why, since he had the latest communication devices, he had not bothered to get in touch for over two years? Did he not realize that this neglect had caused our father anguish? Brett turned a bit maudlin and accused my father – his father… our father – of neglecting him. My mother stuck up for my father by saying, ‘No, Brett, George was always fair. He neglected all of his children equally.’
I could see that things might turn quite nasty, so I steered the conversation away from the rocks of our family dynamic towards the safe harbour of house prices.
Brett told us that all three of his properties have doubled in value.
I said, ‘Aren’t you afraid of the lessons of history, such as the South Sea Bubble?’
‘No,’ said Brett. He leaned towards me, giving me his full attention. ‘Tell me about it.’
There was something about his intense gaze that drove all details of the South Sea Bubble out of my head. I stammered, ‘It’s something to do with overinflated bonds and a sort of eighteenth-century financial meltdown.’
After an agonizingly long pause, during which everybody waited for me to provide details, Brett said, as though speaking in bullet points, ‘Company formed in 1711, each share one hundred pounds, peaked in August 1720, each share worth one thousand pounds, bubble burst September 1720, shares worth one hundred pounds. Main trade African slaves, big losers Sir Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift, who wrote Gulliver’s Travels.’
I said, ‘I know who wrote Gulliver’s Travels, I am a bookseller.’
‘Precisely. You’re working and living in the past, Adrian. You surround yourself with old books all day, and Daisy tells me you’re writing a medieval play. Wake up, smell the coffee, it’s time you made some serious money.’
I said, ‘We’re very happy living in the country; we’re not materialists.’
I looked at Daisy for affirmation, but she had not heard a word I’d said. She was admiring Brett’s shoes, which had apparently been hand-stitched by a nonagenarian in Venice.
I continued, ‘Anyway, Paul Lewis of Money Box on Radio Four thinks that there’s a big recession on the way.’
My mother said, ‘I know it’s coming. I can feel it in my bones, and I’ve been watching smokers. When people start to smoke a fag right down to the filter, you know the country’s in financial trouble. That’s why I’m hoarding rice and pasta, and boxes of candles.’
Brett laughed. ‘Pauline, I work in finance all day and most of the night, I use Fibonacci retracements and extensions with the DeMark 9–5 countdown, with the addition of sophisticated mathematical equations. So forgive me if I discount the fag butts, Pauline.’
My mother’s cheeks flushed. She changed the subject. ‘Did Doreen have “a good death”?’
Brett took us in excruciating detail through Doreen’s death throes, claiming that her last words had been, ‘Lift me up so that I can see the buds on the trees.’
This is when I first began to suspect that Brett Mole was an unreliable narrator:
a) Doreen died yesterday, long after the buds had developed into leaves.
b) I know for a fact that Doreen Slater hated trees. She used to say, ‘Look at them, they just stand there.’
My father put himself to bed at ten o’clock, which is early for him.
My mother said, ‘Poor George, he wants to grieve for Doreen.’
I don’t think it was grief that sent him to his bed early, I think it was yawn-inducing, brain-deadening, buttock-clenching BOREDOM.
At 11.45 a young man with blond highlights knocked on the door. Brett introduced him as Logan, ‘my driver’, kissed everybody on both cheeks and nuzzled Gracie (who was sleeping in my arms), whispered, ‘Dors bien, ma petite,’ then climbed into the back of his car and was driven away. Stick Insect’s funeral is next week.
When we got home and had put the sleeping Gracie into bed, Daisy said, ‘Brett has invited us to stay with him in Bournemouth after the funeral.’
I said, ‘No thank you. He’s got to be the most boring man in England.’
‘Boring?’ she said. ‘I thought he was totally fascinating. And he was so funny about Guy Ritchie and Madonna.’
My wife baffles me.
Friday 10th August
Daisy managed to mention Brett’s name at least a dozen times before I left for work.
As I was putting my cycle clips on in the hall, I heard her on the phone to my mother, speculating on whether Brett was gay or not. ‘There was no mention of a wife or girlfriend,’ said Daisy. ‘And he’s incredibly well groomed.’
Monday 13th August
I went to see Nigel and asked if I could borrow his car. He refused, saying that the last time I borrowed it I brought it back with the petrol tank empty.
I said, ‘What’s it to you? You can’t use the car yourself – you’re blind, as is your life partner, Lance.’
Nigel said, ‘He might not be my life partner for ever. I might fall in love with somebody with good sight and a driving licence.’
I said, ‘In that case, stop introducing Lance as “My Life Partner”.’
Nigel said, ‘Yes, I should. He’s getting far too complacent, he’s let himself go a bit, he’s now only shaving every other day.’
After I’d promised to return the car with a full tank, Nigel reluctantly agreed to let me borrow it ‘for a couple of days’.
As I left, I passed Lance in the kitchen. He was at the sink, wearing a shirt and tie, football shorts and old man’s slippers.
Cut down on liquids. Only ten visits today.
Thursday 16th August
In the week between Brett breaking the tragic news and Doreen Slater’s funeral there has been much agonizing about the etiquette involved. Would it be even proper for my father to attend the funeral of his ex-mistress? And should my mother accompany my father? Did the fact that I was Brett’s half-brother justify my place in a pew at the crematorium, and was it right that my wife should accompany me? And did her grandfather’s ex-mistress’s funeral justify Gracie having a day off from nursery?
Google tells me that Mangold Parva to Bournemouth is a distance of 175.7 miles and should take three hours and forty-six minutes.
I am allowing three toilet stops at approximately ten minutes per stop, then an additional ten minutes for getting the wheelchair in and out of the boot, thus working out that because the funeral is at 11.30 we will need to leave the pigsties at 7.04 a.m. on the dot.
Friday 17th August
Left on time but had to queue for half an hour to get on to the M1 at junction 21. Why are there so many idiots on the motorway, getting in the way of legitimate travellers? Isn’t it time that the government bit the bullet and made lorries travel in tunnels underground? If they can run a train under the English Channel, surely we could have subterranean lorry routes connecting the major cities and towns.
To save money we ate our own sandwiches on the way. I thought it was incredibly selfish of my father to insis
t on Camembert as his main filling. Even before my mother opened the Tupperware box the smell was bad. When the lid was removed, Gracie started to cry. I immediately opened the windows, and everybody screamed at me to close them again.
I made up some of the lost time on the A43, but the traffic was slow going round Oxford, then it speeded up on the A34 down to Newbury.
We arrived at Stick Insect’s bungalow just as the hearse pulled up with the coffin inside. There were dozens of motorbikes parked in the driveway and many people clad in black leather talking quietly in groups.
By the time I’d got the wheelchair out and put my father in it, the hearse was ready to leave for the crematorium. There was no time to have a look at the interior of the amazing labour-saving bungalow. The outside looked very unprepossessing, and the sea view was rather dull in my opinion, there were no breakers, and no waves. The sea was just lying there doing nothing much.
The Hells Angels were not so much angels as baby boomers. They were mostly grey-haired under their helmets. They gave Doreen’s coffin a motorcycle escort, which turned a few heads as we processed along the front.
At the crematorium, a tall man with a familiar face gave me an order of service with Stick Insect’s photograph on the front and said, ‘Hello, Adrian, I’m Maxwell – Doreen’s elder son.’
‘Maxwell House!’ I exclaimed.
He said, testily, ‘Nobody calls me that now.’
I gave him my condolences.
He said, ‘She had it coming to her. She rode that bike like a maniac.’
Brett was already sitting in a pew at the front, sobbing ostentatiously. When my mother pushed my father down the aisle, Doreen’s side of the family gave a collective grumble of disapproval. My father kept his eyes down, as though he was particularly interested in the flagstone floor.
There was confusion about where we, the Moles, should sit. In the end we sat immediately behind Brett. Then Meat Loaf filled the little chapel with ‘Bat out of Hell’ and a man with long greasy hair and black leathers came in from a side door and climbed into the pulpit. He said that Doreen had requested in her will that she should have a humanist service because, I quote, ‘After George Mole left me, and went back to his wife, I knew there was no God.’
All heads turned to look at my father, who bowed his head even further. My mother, in contrast, stared people down defiantly and muttered under her breath, ‘He knew which side his bread was buttered.’
The humanist, who said his name was Rick, invited various people to come to the front and say a few words. Maxwell House (Stick Insect’s illegitimate first son) got up and said that although his mother had suffered depression after George Mole left her, in later years she had found great happiness and companionship in the Bournemouth Chapter.
Her last boyfriend Yeovil Tony’s voice broke as he told the congregation that he had asked Doreen to marry him, but she had refused, saying, ‘No, I live in hope that George Mole might come back to me.’ Tears glistened in his eyes as he said, ‘She was a lovely lady.’
Then Robbie Williams sang ‘Angels’ and Brett came to the front and said his mother had lived a very difficult life. Her anorexia had caused her a lot of misery, some unkind people had taunted her, and called her Stick Insect. He said, ‘Yes, it’s true that my mother’s heart had been broken by my father, George Mole, but I think I managed to make her last years happier. I imported a Harley-Davidson for her sixtieth birthday, and she became a well-known Bournemouth character.’
*
Afterwards we went back to the bungalow with the rest of the mourners. Brett had paid for caterers. Most of the food consisted of towers of vegetables, and my father grumbled, ‘I don’t recognise any of this stuff. Is there a bit of ham or a pork pie, son?’
Suddenly the curtains began to open and close, the lights went on and off, and music blasted through the speakers which were in every room of the house. The mood controller remote could not be found, even though everybody searched thoroughly for it. My mother tried to wrestle the curtains open but Brett screamed, ‘Step away from the curtains, Pauline! You’ll ruin the delicate electronic timers.’
The journey back was complicated by the fact that each of my family’s respective bladders needed emptying at different times. In all we stopped on nine different occasions. At Watford Gap Services, when Daisy searched for a wet wipe in Gracie’s bag, she found Brett’s mood controller.
Gracie denied hiding it there.
My mother said, ‘If you carry on lying, our Gracie, your nose will grow like Pinocchio’s.’
Gracie said, ‘I don’t care. I want to be a wooden boy.’
I said, sotto voce to Daisy, ‘I’m going to ring the school psychology service on Monday.’
There was a ray of sunshine at the end of a gloomy day when Glenn rang from Afghanistan. He is coming home in ten days. When he asked me if I’d been to Dude’s yet and spoken to Tiny Curtis, I lied and told him that I had. I will have to go next week.
As we were falling asleep, I told Daisy that I was envious of Brett’s vast wealth.
She said, ‘He’s empty inside, Adrian. He says he envies you.’
‘Me,’ I said, ‘Why?’
‘Because you’re married to me,’ Daisy said. Then she turned over and was almost instantly asleep. I lay awake, listening to my mother coughing through the party wall. At 3.10 a.m. a lone bird started to sing. The song was somehow heartbreaking in the pre-dawn darkness.
Sunday 19th August
We cycled four miles through idyllic countryside, me towing Gracie in her little trailer past fields where harvesters were turning corn into bales of hay, to Beeby on the Wold to Daisy’s dad’s house, to give him the ‘dozen sturdy white handkerchiefs’ he had requested for his birthday. It’s a few months since I saw him in person and I was shocked at how old he suddenly looks. He has taken the failure of Orgobeet very badly.
Daisy warned him not to put the last of his money into all that beetroot crushing machinery, but he was full of bombast as usual and refused to listen to any advice.
When he went on Dragons’ Den and asked for £250,000 for 10 per cent of the business, the TV Dragons told him to cut his losses and pour the beetroot juice down the drain, but he shouted at them that they were shortsighted fools and that one day they would see his name in the Sunday Times Rich List. The episode was never shown – apparently, the Scots dragon with the health clubs, Duncan Bannatyne, turned nasty.
Michael Flowers was in his study on the telephone, having a maudlin conversation with his ex-wife, Netta. He had a glass of Orgobeet at his elbow. It looked as though he was wearing carmine lipstick – quite an unsettling sight. One of Orgobeet’s disadvantages is that it stains the lips. Gracie refused to sit on his knee and said, ‘Grandpa looks like a lady with a beard.’
His house is too big and dark to be comfortable, as he will only burn low-energy light bulbs. And he doesn’t believe in central heating, claiming that it robs Mother Earth of her precious resources. So we sat in the kitchen, huddled round the log-fired Aga, and looked out at the rain, waiting for Flowers to finish his phone call and join us for his birthday tea. Daisy had made him a cake and allowed Gracie to decorate it with ‘Happy Birthday, U R 62’.
Sixty-two! And the man still wears his hair in a ponytail.
I feigned interest in his remaining stock of Orgobeet and he took me out to the garage to show me the casks.
‘My only hope now,’ he said, ‘is that an arsonist should set the garage on fire.’
He lifted a grey straggling eyebrow, and looked pointedly at me. I asked him if he had taken out business insurance.
Flowers snarled, ‘Do I look like a fool? Of course, can one do anything in this hideous modern world without insurance? Don’t the insurance companies have us all by our balls? Yet when I claimed for a stolen camcorder, the bastards refused to pay out.’
‘But that’s because you had never had a camcorder, so you couldn’t furnish the Zurich with a Currys receipt as proof of
purchase,’ I said.
‘There was a time when a gentleman’s word was his honour,’ he boomed.
‘But you were lying to Currys,’ I protested.
‘They weren’t to know that,’ he said through gritted teeth.
He is an impossible man.
As we walked back to the house, he asked me if I had sorted out my tax affairs. I told him that I had written to Gordon Brown again and was expecting a reply any day.
He said, ‘I hope you didn’t mention that I was your father-in-law.’
When Daisy’s sister Marigold turned up with Brain-box Henderson, her husband, my spirits were lowered further. I cannot get over the fact that I was once engaged to Marigold. I had a narrow escape. Neither of the Hendersons likes children, preferring to spend their spare time as active members of the Star Trek fan club. Both are fluent in Klingon and converse in it when they share a private joke, which I think is the height of rudeness.
*
Tea was a gloomy affair.
Daisy said, ‘Only three years to go before you retire, Dad.’
He laughed scornfully and said, ‘If I live that long.’
Daisy said, alarmed, ‘Are you dying, Dad?’
Flowers said, ‘We’re all dying, Daisy. Nobody is immortal.’
Gracie said, ‘Are you going to die soon?’
Flowers gazed out of the window and said, ‘Who knows?’
After tea Gracie entertained the company with her improvised one-woman High School Musical show. She ‘sang’, in an appalling American accent, into a pink plastic microphone which amplified her voice. When any of us lost concentration, Gracie would shout, ‘Look at me! Look at me!’
As she frolicked in the big bay window of the sitting room, drawing the dusty velvet curtains between scenes, I envied the child’s self-confidence. I can remember fleeing from the house at family parties when my parents urged me to recite my poetry.