Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years

by Sue Townsend

I watch TV.

  But I see nothing there,

  Return to me.

  I’ll burn my cardigans,

  Update my glasses.

  Eat crisps another way,

  I’ll join the masses.

  Learn to rock ’n’ roll,

  Watch EastEnders.

  Like R & B and soul,

  And gender benders.

  I’ll watch Big Brother live,

  And the repeat.

  I’ll educate myself

  By reading Heat.

  I will embrace The Wire

  And ditch my Newsnight.

  Oh, Daisy, light my fire,

  And soothe my Dark Knight.

  A. A. Mole

  (husband of Daisy Mole)

  Friday 21st March

  Good Friday

  What is so good about it?

  Since Daisy left, the house is dead. It was she who turned the lamps on at night and put flowers in the vase, she who straightened the rugs and plumped up the cushions. I miss her clutter of lotions in the bathroom and the glossy magazines she kept next to the lavatory. Does she have them delivered to Fairfax Hall now?

  And I didn’t think I would miss Gracie as much as I do. I miss the physical presence of that indomitable little girl, trying to make her mark on the world. The feeling of those small strong arms around my neck. I miss the made-up songs she used to sing in the bath, I miss the certainty of her world. She knows nothing of nuclear proliferation or the misery that comes from loving somebody too much.

  I cannot imagine my wife with another man. What do they talk about? Does Fairfax-Lycett know that she likes Pulp but can’t stand Coldplay? That her favourite number is six? That her porn name is Cindy Arnez? That her first memory was being stung by a wasp at a picnic? Does he know that she rates Tracey Emin but thinks Damien Hirst is a wanker? Does he know she hates milky tea? Has she told him that she is allergic to hyacinth bulbs, biological soap powder and prawns? How will he cope with her premenstrual tension or her fear of ants?

  Does he know how lucky he is?

  Saturday 22nd March

  Nigel rang and said, ‘Sorry about Daisy, Moley, but do you reckon we can get mate’s rates if we have our wedding at Fairfax Hall?’

  I said, ‘Quite frankly, Nigel, I’m disgusted at you. I can’t hear Daisy’s name without a small piece of my heart breaking off, and all you can think of is saving a few pennies on your not-quite-a-wedding wedding reception.’

  Nigel said, ‘C’mon, Moley. I love you to bits but she was bound to leave you some time. You can’t pluck a hot-house plant like Daisy Flowers out of tropical London and transplant her in the cold soil of Mangold Parva. She’s gonna wither and die, man.’

  Before he could carry on with his horticultural analogy, I said, ‘Phone Daisy on her mobile,’ and hung up.

  Who can I talk to who will sympathise with me?

  Sunday 23rd March

  Easter Sunday

  No Easter egg from Daisy this year. I felt the loss keenly.

  Gracie is staying with my parents while her mother is in Paris. A letter arrived yesterday.

  To the parent/guardian/principal carer of

  GRACIE PAULINE MOLE

  An appointment has been made for the aforementioned child to attend Dr Martin Hazlewood’s Educational Psychology Clinic at 2.30 p.m. on Friday 27th June.

  At Sigmund House

  113 Cockfoster Lane

  Leicester

  LE2 1SZ

  When I showed my parents the letter, my father said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with our Gracie that a bloody good thrashing wouldn’t cure. You’re too soft with her, Adrian. She walks all over you. You’ve got her footprints on your face.’

  My mother said, ‘She doesn’t need an educational psychologist. All under-fives are mad. When you were Gracie’s age you used to talk to the moon. You invited it to your birthday party and cried when it didn’t come. Remember, George?’

  My father doubled up with laughter. When he could speak, he said, ‘As it got dark and the moon came up, he went in the garden and threw a sausage roll at it.’

  It was quite nice to see them laughing together again, even if it was at my expense.

  Monday 24th March

  My mother brought Gracie round this morning. Apparently, she had behaved impeccably. There had been no tantrums, no answering back and no delusional behaviour, i.e. talking to the moon.

  My mother looked years younger. I asked her if she had been using Boots No. 7 Protect & Perfect Beauty Serum (I had heard that women were going wild for it).

  She said, ‘No, but I’ve got my name on the list. I look better because I slept for eight hours last night. Since Gordon has nationalised Northern Rock me and your dad can rest easy.’

  I said, ‘You talk about our prime minister as though he is an intimate friend of yours.’

  She said, ‘I know that Gordon is secretly on the side of the working class and that when he’s settled in a bit he’ll show his true colours.’

  This made me laugh quite a lot. I said, ‘A few years ago you were bragging that you were middle class.’

  She said angrily, ‘I’ve never called myself middle class. That was your father. He thought that selling electric storage heaters gave him a key to the executive toilet.’

  When my mother had gone, I interrogated Gracie about life at Fairfax Hall. She told me that, ‘Hugo and Mummy sleep in a big bed with a curtain hanging round it,’ and that, ‘Hugo has bought me a puppy which is called Snowball cos it is white all over,’ and that, ‘Hugo teached me to canter on Daffodil and I sleep in a princess bed from IKEA.’

  I asked her if she missed me and Grandma and Granddad Mole when she was at Fairfax Hall.

  She said, ‘No,’ and turned her attention to Bernard, who was dealing the Happy Family cards in preparation for a game.

  At a crucial point (I was only waiting for Mr Bun the Baker to win the game) Brett burst into the kitchen shouting that Bear Stearns had crashed. Bernard, Gracie and I looked at each other with mutual incomprehension.

  Brett said contemptuously, ‘You don’t know what it is, do you?’

  I said, ‘No, but you’re going to tell us, aren’t you?’

  He said sarcastically, ‘It’s one of America’s largest investment banks, one of Wall Street’s most prestigious names.’

  Bernard said, ‘Oh dear.’

  Brett said, ‘You won’t be saying, “Oh dear,” when the world’s financial institutions have collapsed and you are rioting in the street and looting Sainsbury’s in order to survive.’

  Bernard said mildly, ‘Look, cocker, I’ve reached my three score years. I’m not really up to rioting. I’d just quietly drink myself to death and leave the looting to the young folk.’

  Bernard took and rejected a card. It was Mr Bun. I fell on it like a slathering dog and shouted triumphantly, ‘I’ve won!’

  As Brett sorted through the Sunday papers and extracted the business sections, he said, ‘Illiquidity in global capital is as bad as when the markets froze in August last year. How much further do central banks have to go to support a system that is so obviously broken?’

  None of us could answer his question. He left after saying that he had a fail-safe system, if only he could raise the capital. Was it my imagination or did his glance fall on the tinned goods shelf?

  As I microwaved three Morrisons cottage pies and opened a packet of petits pois, I wondered if Daisy was sitting at a table on the Champs Elysées watching Parisian life go by whilst eating escargots and sipping her vin rosé.

  In the afternoon Bernard took Gracie for a walk to see the bluebells in the wood. I lay down on my bed and slept with my arms around Daisy’s pillow. When I woke up, there was a jar of wilting bluebells on the kitchen table and Bernard told me that the world’s finances had fallen a further 3 per cent and that financial experts were predicting mass unemployment and homelessness due to mortgage foreclosures. He spoke these words as though they were foreign to him.
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  Tuesday 25th March

  My mother took Gracie to school this morning, then came back and took me to the hospital for my treatment. As I was being hooked up to the infusion, she said, ‘I’m starving, I’m going to the canteen to buy a cheese cob.’

  She came back minus her two front teeth, having bitten into the bread with what she admitted was ‘unusual force’. She rang her NHS dentist, Mr Little, from the hospital and was told by a receptionist that he had died four years ago.

  My mother said, with her hand over her mouth, ‘I need an urgent appointment.’

  ‘I could get you in to see Mr Sturgeon at three,’ said the receptionist.

  As we were walking to the car park, my mother said, ‘I can’t show my face to the world until I’ve got my replacement teeth.’

  I said, ‘Mum, you’re being ridiculously oversensitive.’

  However, when she uncovered her mouth to put the car into gear and turned to me and smiled, it gave me quite a shock. With the green light from the sun visor on her face, her untidy hair, wrinkled smoker’s lips and missing teeth she looked like the Wicked Witch of the West.

  Mr Carlton-Hayes rang this afternoon and asked if Bernard and I could help him catalogue the remaining books that were still in storage. I told him that tomorrow morning would be a good time.

  On hearing this, Bernard rubbed his hands together and said, ‘Christ, kiddo, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on those beauties,’ rather as other men might react on being invited to a topless bar.

  I often think that Bernard’s relationship with books is not entirely healthy. Perhaps he has substituted books for sex and sometimes confuses the two.

  Wednesday 26th March

  I had never been to a storage depot before. It was a series of huge containers. Some of the doors were open as we passed by. Some seemed to hold the contents of a house. One was full of life-sized mannequins who were striking various attitudes, while another was stacked to the container ceiling with old newspapers.

  Mr Carlton-Hayes and Leslie were already working methodically, placing books with the value of over £25 in a tea chest and those over £50 in a small cardboard box. After Bernard and I arrived, the work slowed down.

  Leslie said, ‘Bernard, we do not have time to discuss the merits or otherwise of the books. We are here this morning to sort them according to their price.’

  Bernard said, ‘I can’t just handle them without giving them their due, can I, cocker? I mean they’re not inanimate objects, are they?’

  Leslie said, ‘But they are inanimate objects, Bernard. They can’t see or think or feel, can they?’

  Mr Carlton-Hayes, who seemed to be shrinking by the day, said, ‘I know how Bernard feels. Every book seems to be a living breathing thing, I’ve always hated to see books kept in a dark cupboard.’

  At lunchtime we broke off and went to The Clarendon Hotel for a drink. Naturally the talk was of books and booksellers, and we did actually talk about cabbages and kings. When I pointed this out, we all laughed. It was the happiest I had been for a long while.

  On the way back to the storage depot, I pushed Mr Carlton-Hayes in his wheelchair and told him about Daisy and Hugo Fairfax-Lycett.

  Mr Carlton-Hayes turned round in his wheelchair and said, ‘My dear boy, how absolutely dreadful. You must win her back. There is a volume of John Donne’s poetry in the over-fifty-pounds box.’

  Poor Mr Carlton-Hayes. Does he honestly think that a metaphysical seventeenth-century poet can compete with a manor house, a canopied bed and sexual fulfilment with a handsome aristocrat?

  When we got back to the container, he rummaged inside the box and brought out John Donne’s The Love Poems.

  He said, ‘These poems are wonderfully sensual. When I was a young man, they were never far from my bed.’ He quoted, from memory:

  License my roving hands, and let them go

  Before, behind, between, above, below.

  O my America! My new-found-land,

  My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned…

  He handed the book to me and said, ‘I’m distantly related to the Fairfax-Lycetts. They’re a bad lot. They made their money transporting African slaves.’

  It took the four of us until about 7.30 p.m. to finish sorting the books. Just before we were about to leave, Mr Carlton-Hayes pointed to the ‘valuable’ boxes and said, ‘Adrian, these are yours. You must regard them as your redundancy payment.’

  I was overcome and could hardly stammer my thanks.

  Bernard slapped me on the back and said, ‘You deserve it, kiddo.’

  Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘I haven’t forgotten you, Bernard. You will find some of your favourites among them. They are marked with your name.’

  When my mother came to pick us up, she had a scarf wrapped around the lower part of her face. She had been to see Mr Sturgeon and he had told her that he only saw private patients. To have two new front teeth would cost her at least £2,000.

  She said, ‘I had no choice but to tell him to go ahead. The only National Health Service dentist I could find was on the Isle of Wight.’

  When we got home and she removed her scarf, I examined the new teeth. To my mind they did not look right. They towered over the rest of her mouth, a bit like Canary Wharf and the Lloyd’s building tower over the City of London. Whenever she enunciates sibilants, she whistles like the sheep farmers on One Man and His Dog.

  Thursday 27th March

  No energy today, feel ill, mouth sore, am nauseous. Bernard panicked and sent for Dr Wolfowicz. When he came in, I was taken aback by his height and girth. I had forgotten that he was so huge. He seemed to completely fill the doorway of the small bedroom.

  After taking my blood pressure, temperature and shining a little torch into my eyes, he said, ‘You are in no immediate danger. Your vital signs are, I think, good.’

  Bernard, who was hovering near by, said, ‘He’s not himself, doctor, he can’t even pick a book up.’

  Dr Wolfowicz sat down on the side of the bed, almost crushing my legs under the now tightened bed clothes. He asked me if there was anything else I wanted to tell him. Did I have any worries?

  I told him that my wife had left me and that I was worried about the world’s financial situation.

  He said, ‘There is nothing modern medicine can do for these unfortunate occurrences, Mr Mole.’

  I asked him if I was depressed.

  He said, ‘I don’t know, are you?’

  I said, ‘Clinically depressed?’

  He said, ‘You are sad, I think, but that is fine. I am sad when I think of my homeland.’

  He stared at a reproduction of Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters, which hangs on the wall above the bed. I wondered if he was thinking about Warsaw and rye bread. Eventually he said, ‘If your sadness continues, I will refer you to our practice counsellor.’

  I said that I had seen therapists in the past and had either fallen in love with them or bored them with my problems. I told him about my last therapist, who had yawned throughout the fifty-minute session.

  He said, ‘Martha Richards is a different pan of fish. She is a good woman. Now, tell me about this prostate? How is it doing?’

  He made it sound as though my prostate had a life of its own, went shopping, had a relationship.

  I said, ‘I hope it’s shrinking.’

  He said, ‘Let us wish so. You must grow your hair back for the winter.’

  As he was leaving, he said conspiratorially, ‘Mr Mole, next time marry an ugly woman. Nobody will take her from you then, I promise.’

  Friday 28th March

  Had to leave my bed and go for chemo. Bernard came with me because my mother is having her hair cut at Toni&Guy. She has not used the salon in the village since Lawrence said she should have a ‘feather cut’ because it was ‘kinder to the ageing face’.

  Bernard had brought The Human Factor by Graham Greene to read in the waiting area. He offered to come into the treatment room and read aloud to m
e. I thanked him but said I would listen to a recording of Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time on my little Sony tape recorder.

  He said, ‘You’re a bugger for self-improvement, aren’t you, lad?’

  I said, ‘Due to parental neglect I missed out on a good education and was forced to become an autodidact.’

  The bloke who hooked me up to the chemo drip was from the Philippines.

  I asked him if he had lived in Leicester for long.

  He said, ‘Unfortunately, I have lived here for fourteen years.’

  I asked him why he didn’t go home.

  He said, ‘I was chosen by my father to be educated. Now I must send my wages home. They feed seventeen members of my family.’

  Later, when I was listening to Melvyn quizzing a panel of academics about the dissolution of the monasteries, I reflected that to be alive in England in the twenty-first century was comparable to winning the lottery of life.

  When I went to the waiting room to meet up with Bernard, I found him wiping his eyes with a filthy white handkerchief.

  He said, holding up his book, ‘You must read it, lad. Mr Greene’s hero is so noble, so decent, so fucking English.’

  I was struck by the reciprocity of our thoughts.

  I rang my mother on her mobile and she said that there had been a problem with her highlights but that the salon was trying to rectify the mistake.

  I heard an altercation, then a man with an Australian accent said into the phone, ‘Just to put you in the picture, sir, it was not the salon’s mistake. Your mother lied about having a skin test, and she has since admitted that she bleached her hair at home seven days ago, therefore this salon cannot be responsible for the mess that your mother’s scalp is now in.’

  I asked to be reconnected with my mother and said, ‘Mum, why can’t you follow the rules?’

  She said, ‘They’re getting their knickers in a twist over nothing. My scalp always reacts to bleach. I have an agonizing twenty-four hours, then it settles down and starts to heal. What’s the problem?’