by Sue Townsend
On the way home I told Daisy that she could visit her father alone in future.
She said, ‘That’s so unfair, I put up with your parents every day of my life.’
Later that night we climbed into our cold marital bed in silence, and turned away from each other.
Monday 20th August
After work I bumped into Dr Pearce outside the bookshop. She was struggling to carry a large box which contained a single goose down duvet (9 togs), and I offered to wheel it to her car. I could not help but notice that her breasts were rather prominent in her low-necked summer frock, and I had a vision of her slipping naked under the duvet. My mouth went dry and I developed a tremor in my left hand, the one holding the box on the saddle of my bike. We walked to her car and I helped to put the box in the hatchback. Each time I attempted to leave she engaged me in conversation, telling me that she was enjoying the long summer holiday. She volunteered that she was the mother of four children and that her youngest had just moved from a cot to his first bed.
I had another vision of Dr Pearce, haggard and harassed, stumbling from her bed to quell the noise of several bawling children. I said goodbye, mounted my bike and left.
When I got home, Daisy, Gracie, my mother and father were sitting outside in the early evening sun. I went into my parents’ house to find another deckchair and couldn’t help but notice my mother’s handbag was on the hall table, with her manuscript poking out.
CHAPTER SIX
I Escape
On the night of my twelfth birthday, administering a brutal beating, my parents took it in turns to beat me with the buckle end of Father’s leather belt. I lay in the dark in the understairs cupboard, where I slept on a pile of rags, and planned my escape. I heard my parents speak of the town Spalding and, judging by the way in which they spoke of it, I surmised that Spalding was a gateway to the world. I planned to make my way there as soon the fractures in my ribs had healed.
I had no clothes apart from potato sacks with holes cut for my head and arms, and no shoes apart from sandals made from old lorry tyres and rope. Why did nobody notice my neglect? Shouldn’t my teacher have enquired as to why I was the only child not in school uniform? Did no social worker drive by as I was pulling a laden potato cart with a yoke across my slim shoulders?
Friday 24th August
A family came into the shop this afternoon. Judging by vividly coloured cheap clothes, trainers etc. and low brows I would guess socio-economically they were CDs.
All but one of the children displayed Attention Deficit Disorder. The mother, who was missing several teeth, said to the exceptional child, a tall grave-faced boy, ‘Why have you chose this shop?’ She looked around suspiciously.
‘I want to buy a book,’ said the child.
‘You’ve gorra book,’ said the mother.
‘I want another one,’ the child insisted.
At this point I intervened and led the boy to the children’s classics section. The mother drummed her fingers on the counter, impatiently. The father sighed deeply, went outside and lit a cigarette.
I demonstrated to the boy how he should handle a hardback book, and asked him if he was interested in pirates.
‘Yeah, I seen the film,’ he said.
I found a copy of Treasure Island. He opened it and leafed through, reading a few lines, moving his lips.
‘You might find bits of it hard, but it’s worth persevering,’ I said.
He looked at the coloured illustration. Long John Silver was crowing over a treasure chest. He took a £10 note out of his pocket. I almost said the book cost £15, but instead I kept quiet.
After I had paid the money into the till, the mother said, ‘Don’t he get no change out of a tenner?’
I said, ‘No, sorry.’
As they were leaving the shop, the mother said, ‘You must be bleddy mad, spending your birthday money on a book.’
Saturday 25th August
I told Daisy that I would be very late home because I had to call in at Dude’s nightclub and attempt to contact Tiny Curtis.
She said, ‘I could meet you there, it’s ages since we danced together.’
I said, ‘I don’t intend to enjoy myself, Daisy. I’m simply doing an errand for Glenn.’
She put her arms around my neck and kissed me and said, ‘Do you remember how we used to dance, before we were married?’
I said, ‘Yes, we were naked and I never wanted to let you go. I thought about you day and night. I lost half a stone in weight, colours were more vivid and everything I heard or read reminded me of you.’
Gracie came between us and pushed us apart, saying, ‘Stop kissing.’
Had she not interfered, we might have made love. It would have been worth being late for work.
Sunday 26th August
1 a.m.
Not being a regular clubber, I hadn’t realized that Dude’s did not even open its doors until 11.30.
Leicester city centre was like the Wild West. I tried to find a quiet pub where I could sit and read my book, but there was nowhere. In the end I went to Wayne Wong’s and had the Special Dinner for One. I asked Wayne if I could swap sweet and sour chicken for beef in black bean sauce, but to my astonishment (this is a man I have known for thirty years!) he refused, saying, ‘If I do it for you, Moley, I’ll have to do it for everybody and we’ll be in chaos – chaos.’
Wayne has not aged well, he has lost most of his hair and has ballooned in weight and now looks like the Michelin Man.
When he brought me my meal, I said, ‘Did you ever achieve your ambition of owning a Lamborghini?’
‘No,’ said Wayne, ‘but thanks for reminding me.’
I asked if he knew what time ‘Dude’s’ opened its doors. ‘Do I look like somebody what would know that?’ said Wayne. ‘I’m in this place twenty-four seven. I work my bollocks off.’
I said, ‘Money is not everything, Wayne.’
He flicked a stray noodle off the tablecloth and said, ‘Money is everything, Moley. I got two kids at private school, parents in a nursing home and I’ve just had to replace two koi carp at five hundred quid a throw.’
At eleven o’clock I was outside Dude’s. The doors were still closed. A queue started to form behind me.
A youth in a string vest came up to me and said, ‘You won’t get in looking like that, Bro, you’re violating the code.’
A girl shrieked, ‘No Burberry!’
I took my M&S Burberry scarf off and stuffed it into a pocket.
At exactly 11.30 the doors opened, releasing a blast of stale air, and a handsome black giant put portable stands and a velvet rope across the door. I approached him and he said, ‘Easy, professor, we ain’t open yet.’
I asked him if he knew Tiny Curtis.
He said, ‘That’s me.’
I said, ‘I’m here with a message from Afghanistan.’
The giant laughed.
‘I’m Glenn’s dad,’ I said.
Tiny checked, ‘Glenn Glenn?’
‘Yes, I’m Glenn’s dad, Mr Mole.’
A girl near the front of the queue shouted, ‘Let us in, Curtis. It’s freezin’ out here.’
‘He wants the girl he was with last time he was in to contact him in Afghanistan,’ I said.
The giant took the slip of paper with Glenn’s BFPO address and mobile number. ‘That would be Finley-Rose,’ he said. ‘I’ll let her know. I appreciate what your boy’s doing for us out there, Mr Mole.’
I wished him goodnight, collected my bike from the bookshop and cycled home.
Daisy hadn’t waited up for me.
Monday 27th August
The Jeremy Kyle Show has written to my mother, inviting her to appear on the programme to ‘settle once and for all the question of your daughter Rosie’s paternity’. She has not told my father because she thinks it would kill him, and has sworn me and Daisy to secrecy. If my mother agrees to go on The Jeremy Kyle Show, I will have to leave the village, the country, Europe.
App
arently, Mr Lucas – my mother’s one-time lover – contacted the show, claiming to be Rosie’s real father. I got a text from Rosie in the middle of a staff meeting at the bookshop.
Hoo the fk is Alan Lucas?
Before I could reply, another text pinged through from Daisy.
Come home soonest. Yr mum in bits.
Mr Carlton-Hayes must have sensed my agitation because he paused in his introduction of the new titles and said, ‘Adrian, has your telephone conveyed bad news?’
I said, ‘The Jeremy Kyle Show have been in touch with my mother.’
There was an audible gasp from Hitesh, the work experience boy that Mr Carlton-Hayes had agreed to take on in a weak moment when I was not in the shop. He understood the significance of The Jeremy Kyle Show. However, Mr Carlton-Hayes does not own a television and relies on The Archers for his knowledge of current affairs. In Mr Carlton-Hayes’s world, Wagner’s Ring cycle is popular culture.
I explained to him that The Jeremy Kyle Show is a television programme that encourages not-very-bright people to confront other inadequate people with their grievances. Issues of adultery and the paternity of children are increasingly solved by the miscreants taking lie detector or DNA tests. People cry and scream and are confronted by angry former loved ones who are spurred on by Jeremy Kyle himself.
Mr Carlton-Hayes looked bewildered. ‘But why would a person agree to such an unpleasant public exhibition?’ he asked, genuinely wanting to know.
Tuesday 28th August
Email from Rosie:
Hi, Bro
Listen, a bloke rang me on the landline and told me that he was my real dad. His name is Alan Lucas. He said that he was Mum’s lover in the eighties. He said that you and him got on like a house on fire and that he took you on holiday to Scotland and bought you a Swiss army knife, with seventeen attachments. Is this true? He wants to meet me and ‘forge a relationship’. He says he is lonely and hasn’t got nobody in his life. He says he has been unlucky with women. They have all turned out to be evil scheming bitches who have taken his money, houses and cars and left him with nothing. I am severely pissed off with BT. I went ex-directory to avoid this sort of shit. I was hanging on the end of my phone for fucking months trying to go ex-directory, what a fucking waste of time that was. Do you think I can get some compensation? I missed signing on today because of his phone call.
Love U,
Rosie
I emailed back:
Dear Rosie
As usual, you are failing to grasp what is important and what is not. You should be exercised by the fact that ‘Rat Fink’ Lucas is claiming to be your father. (Yes, I remember him well. The Swiss army knife did have seventeen attachments. The scissors once came in handy when I caught my pubes in a zip, only minutes before my second wedding.)
The fact that Lucas somehow came by your landline number is of trifling importance. Surely you can see this? What is causing me anguish is Lucas’s assertion that you are his child. This could kill Dad (George Mole). You have always been his favourite. Whatever happens, Rosie, please don’t tell Mum and (especially) Dad about Lucas’s call.
Wednesday 29th August
Another email from Rosie:
Aidy, Mi Bro
Yeah, perhaps it’s a nightmare about Alan Lucas claiming to be my dad. But if you think that BT giving out information about their customers is ethical, then I feel sorry for you. We live in a Stalinist society, Adrian, watched and spied on 24/7. Quite honestly, Aidy, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter whose sperm fertilised Mum’s egg. Rizla says he is getting bad vibes from you and your emails. He says that Lucas sounds like he’s a cool dude. Rizla’s women have let him down, it’s the reason why he can’t work. The women have taken all his confidence away.
I think Dad ought to be told, Adrian. Me and Rizla believe in being totally honest.
I replied:
Rosie, I’ll be honest. Rizla is a lazy middle-aged poseur who smokes so much skunk that his brain is a scrambled mess of paranoia and self-pity.
I beg you, do nothing until I talk to you in person. Where will you be this evening?
Aidy
Aidy
Rizla says that you are a typical bourgeois and materialist who lives a lie and colludes with society to ‘stifle the world of the dreamer’. He asks if you could send him some money so that he can buy a hundred toilet rolls. He is making an installation. He wants to wrap toilet paper around a BMW car for an exhibition in December. He has written to various artists and Tate Modern but they have all turned him down. He has been offered various cheap brands but he is holding out for Andrex. Two hundred quid should cover it.
Love,
Rosie
PS: If you know anybody with a BMW who wants to sponsor an artistic genius, please let me know.
PPS: As for the identity of my real father, Rizla says that sperm is universal and that in the end we all have the same mother and the same father. He says that he would welcome the opportunity to go on The Jeremy Kyle Show and present the country with his manifesto.
I showed this latest email to Daisy, who snorted, ‘He’s ten years behind the times. The Black Box Gallery in Shoreditch exhibited a Robin Reliant wrapped in ASDA’s Own Brand!’
I pointed out to Daisy that the art installation was not the most important detail in Rosie’s rambling email. I said, ‘This could actually kill my father.’
Daisy muttered under her breath, ‘We all have to die someday.’
I rang my mother on her mobile and arranged to meet her in The Bear. I stressed that I wanted to talk to her and her alone. We walked to the pub in a stiff breeze, under a constant fall of gold, brown and red leaves. My mother complained that we were now in autumn and that we had never had a summer.
Midnight
Spent most of the evening outside in the cold. My mother said she could not talk about Lucas, Rosie or The Jeremy Kyle Show without smoking ‘many, many cigarettes’. We sat at an incredibly uncomfortable picnic table, under an inadequate parasol advertising Carling Black Label. We hardly had any time to talk privately. Smokers kept coming out to join us, including The Right Honourable Hugo Fairfax-Lycett from Fairfax Hall, who complimented my mother on her leopard-skin raincoat and matching hat. He drawled, ‘Bloody tiresome having to pop out for a puff every five minutes. One wants to support the local pub, but what’s a drink without one’s packet of cigs and one’s Ronson on the table in front of one?’
My mother went into a diatribe about New Labour’s propensity for ‘spoiling our simple pleasures’.
Fairfax-Lycett went on about fox-hunting, banning conkers and political correctness. Normally this kind of talk would act like a red rag to a bull, and I dreaded my mother’s reaction. But to my astonishment, she nodded and simpered as she gazed into Fairfax-Lycett’s battered but aristocratic face. When he offered her a Dunhill, I noticed that their hands touched, and when he lit her cigarette, they exchanged a look. I have seen that look before and it always presages disaster.
On the way home, as we circumnavigated the potholes in the lane, I managed to stress that she must on no account agree to an appearance on The Jeremy Kyle Show. I made her promise on Gracie’s life that she would not even speak to anybody from the production team, should they be in touch.
She said, ‘It would be an opportunity to clear the air.’
I said, ‘If you need the air clearing, buy an extractor fan. But on no account are you to wash our family’s linen in public.’
My mother said, ‘Adrian, to be honest, I’ve always wondered who Rosie’s dad was. She hasn’t got the Mole awkwardness. You know, that gormlessness, that cack-handedness, the inability to walk through the china section of a department store without your coat catching on something valuable…’
This referred to the time when I was eight years old and dislodged a Wedgwood soup tureen with the sleeve of my too-big winter overcoat in John Lewis in Leicester.
I said, ‘More to the point, Rosie is the spitting image of
Rat Fink Lucas: that dark skin, black hair, brown eyes. She’s always been a cuckoo in the nest, Mum.’
We continued walking in silence until we got to our respective front doors. I could hear the theme music to Big Brother blasting from the television in my parents’ house and the mournful tones of ‘Hallelujah’ seeping through the crack in my own front door.
When Daisy enters a Leonard Cohen phase, it means trouble for me.
Thursday 30th August
In the middle of the night I got up to pee and found Daisy on her laptop in the living room. Leonard Cohen was mumbling in the background about somebody called Alexandra who was leaving.
When she saw me, she clicked on the screensaver and said, ‘You should take that bladder to the doctor’s, Adrian.’ I pointed out to her that it was 4 a.m. and she said, ‘I prefer to keep rock ’n’ roll hours.’
The bed was cold when I returned to it. Melancholy autumn is closing in on us.
Friday 31st August
Took Daisy home a present of Nigella’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess.
She muttered a thank you and opened it at random, then said, ‘Anchovies, I hate anchovies,’ and closed it again.
I was cut to the core and had to leave the room before I said something.
The house was very untidy and the sink was full of dirty pots. When I mildly asked Daisy what she had been doing all day, she went into a tirade about me having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and said that all civilised people had a dishwasher. I listened to The Archers as I ploughed through the washing up – Ruth Archer is having trouble with her prosthesis, she plans to talk to David about having breast reconstruction. The running water made me go to the loo twice, which is ridiculous. There is obviously a nervous causation because, after I have voided urine, my bladder still feels full. Perhaps I should see a therapist.