by Sue Townsend
Wednesday February 13th
Brown/Megan affair is on again. Apparently Brown cycled round to Megan’s flat in the early hours, after telling Mrs Brown he was going bat-watching. Their reconciliation was very passionate.
I cannot imagine anything in the world more distasteful than seeing Brown in a state of orgasmic pleasure. Apart from being with Brown in a state of orgasmic pleasure.
Bought new condom – spearmint flavoured.
Also bought bunch of bananas. Megan says they are very good for those, like me, who suffer from an irritable bowel.
Thursday February 14th
Valentine’s Day card from my mother as usual. Megan in tears again. Brown forgot. Bought economy box of tissues at lunchtime for Megan’s sole use. I can’t afford to keep wasting Kleenex on her. Bluebeard has sent Pandora a disgracefully extravagant bouquet (it is disgusting when people are starving), and at seven o’clock this evening he called with champagne, an Art Nouveau brooch and a pair of satin pyjamas. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, he took her out for dinner in a hired car with uniformed driver! Most unacademic behaviour.
Cavendish behaves more like a pools winner than a professor of Linguistics at an ancient seat of learning.
Left to myself, I ate a simple meal of bread, tuna and cucumber and went to bed early. I am reading English Love Poems, edited by John Betjeman. Valentine’s Day is a ridiculous charade, the ignorant masses are manipulated by the greetings card companies into forking out millions – and for what? For the illusion of being loved.
Friday February 15th
A Valentine’s Day card! Signed ‘A Secret Admirer’! I sang in my bath. I walked to work without touching the pavement! Who is she? The signature told me that she is educated and uses a felt-tip pen, like me.
Leonora had her hair pinned up today; she was wearing silver earrings so long that they brushed her slim shoulders. She was wearing a scooped-neck black top. A bra strap was visible. Black lace. She occasionally pushed it back inside her top. Every time she did so her sparkling bracelet fell down her arm towards her elbow. I am not in love with Leonora De Witt. But I am obsessed with her. She invades my dreams. She made me talk to an empty chair and pretend that it was my mother. I told the chair that it drank too much and wore its skirts too short.
Saturday February 16th
I finally took my library books back today: A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood, English Love Poems by John Betjeman, Scenes from Provincial Life by William Cooper and Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky. I owed seven pounds, eighty pence in fines. My least favourite librarian was on duty at the desk. I don’t know her name, but she is the Welsh one with the extroverted spectacles.
After I’d written out my cheque and handed it to her, she said, ‘Do you have a cheque card?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘But it’s at home.’
‘Then I’m afraid I cannot accept this cheque,’ she said.
‘But you know me,’ I said. ‘I’ve been coming here once a week for eighteen months.’
‘I’m afraid that I don’t recognize you at all,’ she said and handed me my cheque back.
‘This beard is quite recent,’ I said coldly. ‘Perhaps you could try to visualize my face without it.’
‘I don’t have time for visualization,’ she said. ‘Not since the cuts.’
I showed her a small photograph of myself that I carry in my wallet. It was taken pre-beard.
‘No,’ she said, after giving it a cursory glance. ‘I don’t recognize that man.’
‘But that man is me!’ I shouted. A queue of people had built up behind me and they were listening avidly to the exchange. The librarian’s spectacles flashed in anger.
‘I have been doing the job of three people since the cuts began,’ she said. ‘And you are making my job even more difficult. Please go home and find your cheque card.’
‘It is now 5.25 p.m. and the library closes in five minutes,’ I said. ‘Even Superman couldn’t fly back in time to pay the fines, choose four books and leave before the doors close.’
Somebody behind me in the queue muttered, ‘Get a bleedin’ move on, Superman.’
So I said to the spectacled one, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’
‘Oh no you won’t,’ she said, with a tiny smile. ‘Due to the cuts this library doesn’t open again until Wednesday.’
On my way home I railed internally against a government that is depriving me of new reading matter. Pandora has forbidden me to touch her books ever since I left a Jaffa cake inside her Folio Society edition of Nicholas Nickleby; Julian’s books are in Chinese and I’m finding the last hundred pages of War and Peace heavy going. There is no way I can afford to buy a new book. Even a paperback costs at least a fiver.
I have to cough up thirty pounds a week for Leonora. I have even had to cut down on my consumption of bananas. I am down to one a day.
I have been forced to read my old diaries. Some of the entries are incredibly perceptive. And the poems have stood the test of time.
Sunday February 17th
Pandora spoke to me today. She said, ‘I want you to leave. You stultify me. We had a childhood romance, but we are both adults now: we have grown in different directions and the time has come to part.’ Then she added, cruelly, I thought, ‘And that bloody beard makes you look absolutely ridiculous. For God’s sake, shave it off.’ I went to bed shattered. Read page 977 of War and Peace, then lay awake staring into the darkness.
Monday February 18th
I looked into the newsagent’s on my way to work. I saw the following advertisement, written in a reasonably educated hand, on a Conqueror postcard:
Large sunny room to let – in family house.
Fire sign preferred. Use of W machine/dryer.
£75pw inclusive to N/S male professional. Ring Mrs Hedge.
I rang Mrs Hedge as soon as I got to my cubicle. She asked for my date of birth. I told her it was April 2nd, which excited the response, ‘Aries, good. I’m Sagittarius.’
I went to see her at 7 p.m. and inspected the room. ‘It’s not very sunny,’ I said.
She said, ‘No, but would you expect it to be on an evening in February?’
I like the cut of her jib. She is oldish (thirty-five to thirty-seven, I would guess), but has not got a bad figure, although it’s hard to tell with the clothes women wear nowadays. Her hair is lovely; treacle-coloured, like Pandora’s used to be before she started mucking about with Colour-Glo. She was wearing quite a bit of make-up and her mascara had smudged. I hope this is not a sign of sluttishness. She was recently divorced and needs to let the room in order to continue paying the mortgage. Apparently the Building Society (my own, coincidentally) has turned nasty.
She invited me to test the bed. I did so and had a sudden vision of myself and Mrs Hedge engaging in vigorous sexual intercourse. I said aloud, ‘I’m sorry.’
Naturally Mrs Hedge was completely in the dark as to the reason for my apology and said, ‘“Sorry”? Does that mean you don’t like the bed?’
‘No, no,’ I gibbered. ‘I love you; I mean, I love the bed.’
I was concerned that I hadn’t made a good impression, so I rang Mrs Hedge when I got home (in an effort to impress her) and informed her that I was a writer; would the scratching of my pen in the small hours bother her?
‘Not at all,’ she replied. ‘I am visited by the Muse myself in the night occasionally’
You can’t walk on the pavement in Oxford without bumping into a published or unpublished writer. It’s no wonder that the owner of the stationery shop where I buy my supplies goes to the Canary Islands twice a year and drives a Mercedes. (He drives a Mercedes in Oxford, not the Canary Islands, though of course it is perfectly feasible that he has the use of a Mercedes in the Canary Islands as well. But I doubt, given the comparative infrequency of his visits, if he actually owns a Mercedes in the Canary Islands though I suppose it could be leased.) I don’t know why I felt the need to explain the Canary Islands/Mercedes
confusion. I suppose it may be another example of what Leonora calls my ‘childish pedantry’.
Tuesday February 19th
My mother rang in a panic at 11.00 p.m., to ask if Martin Muffet, my young stepfather, had turned up at the flat. Quite frankly, I laughed out loud. Why would Muffet want to visit me? He knows I disapprove of my mother’s foolhardy second marriage. Apart from the age difference (which is as wide as the mouth of the Amazon), they are physically and mentally incompatible.
Muffet is a six foot six bag of bones, who thinks the Queen works hard and that Paddy Ashdown is incapable of telling a lie. My mother is five foot five and squeezes herself into clothes two sizes too small for her and thinks that Britain should be a republic and that our first president should be Ken Livingstone, the well-known newt lover. On my last visit, I noticed that young Mr Muffet was far less attentive to my mother than of late. I expect he is regretting his mad rush into matrimony.
My mother said, ‘He went to London this morning, to visit the Lloyd’s building for his Engineering course.’
My mother’s grasp of the geographical layout of the British Isles has always been minimal. I informed her of the distance from the Lloyd’s building in the City of London to that of my box room in Oxford.
She said in a pathetic voice, ‘I thought he might have popped in on his way back to Leicester.’
She phoned back at 2 a.m. Muffet was trapped in an underground train in a tunnel for six hours, or so he said.
Thursday February 21st
This time Leonora invited me to imagine that the chair was my father. She gave me an African stick and I beat the chair until I lay limp and exhausted and physically unable to lift the stick again.
‘He’s not a bad bloke, my dad,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why I went so berserk.’
Leonora said, ‘Don’t talk to me, talk to him. Talk to the chair. The chair is your father.’
I felt stupid addressing the empty chair again, but I wanted to please Leonora, so I forced myself to look the upholstery in the eye and said, ‘Why didn’t you buy me an anglepoise lamp when I was revising for my GCSEs?’
Leonora said, ‘Good, good, take it further, Adrian.’
‘I hate your Country and Western cassettes,’ I said.
‘No,’ Leonora whispered. ‘Deeper, darker, an earlier memory.’
‘I remember when I was three,’ I said. ‘You came into the bedroom, yanked my dummy out of my mouth and said, “Real boys don’t need a dummy.”’
I then grabbed the stick from where it was lying on the floor and once again began to beat the chair. Dust flew.
Leonora said, ‘Good, good. How do you feel?’
I said, ‘I feel terrible. I’ve wrenched my shoulder beating that chair.’
‘No, no,’ she said, irritably. ‘How do you feel inside?’
I cottoned on.
‘Oh, at peace with myself,’ I lied. I got up, gave my therapeutic dominatrix the thirty quid and left. I needed to buy some Nurofen before the late-night chemist closed. I was in agony with my shoulder.
Friday February 22nd
Another split in the Newport Pagnell newts. There are now three separate habitats. Something fishy is happening in the newt world. Brown is phoning newt experts worldwide, droning on about this phenomenon.
Mrs Hedge has interviewed other potential tenants, but has chosen me! I was racked all night by erotic dreams, concerning me, Brown, Megan and Mrs Hedge. I am ashamed, but what can I do? I can’t control my subconscious, can I? I was forced to go to the launderette, though it is not my usual day.
Saturday February 23rd
Norman Schwarzkopf was on television tonight, pointing a stick at an incomprehensible map. Why he was dressed in army camouflage is a mystery to me:
a) there are no trees in the desert
b) there were no trees in the briefing room
c) he is obviously too important to go anywhere near the enemy; he could go around dressed like Coco the Clown and still not be shot at
Tuesday February 26th
Visited Mrs Hedge today, to finalize arrangements for renting the room and to discuss our tenancy agreement. She had a picture of the charred head of an Iraqi soldier who was found dead in a vehicle held against her fridge by a Mickey Mouse magnet. I averted my eyes and asked her for a drink of water.
Wednesday February 27th
Yesterday evening I informed Pandora that I am moving out of the flat at the weekend. I had hoped that she would fall on my neck and beg me to stay, but she didn’t. At 1 a.m. I was woken by the sound of a champagne cork popping, glasses clinking and wild, unrestrained laughter from Pandora, Cavendish and Julian. The Infernal Triangle.
Thursday February 28th
Leonora did most of the talking tonight. She told me that I expect too much of myself, that I have impossibly high standards. She told me to be kind to myself and made me draw up a list of ten things I enjoy doing. Every time I banish a negative thought about myself, I am allowed to treat myself.
She asked if I can afford the occasional self-indulgence. I confessed that I have savings in the Market Harborough Building Society. She gave me a piece of paper and a child’s crayon and told me to write down ten treats.
Treats
1) Reading novels
2) Writing novels
3) Sexual intercourse
4) Looking at women
5) Buying stationery
6) Eating bananas
7) Crab paste sandwiches
8) Watching boxing on television
9) Listening to Tchaikovsky
10) Walking in the countryside
I asked Leonora what her treats were.
She said in a husky low voice, ‘We’re not here to talk about me.’ Then she smiled and showed her beautifully white teeth and said, ‘We have a few things in common, Adrian.’
I felt a throb of sexual desire surge through me.
‘I too like to watch the boxing on television,’ she said. ‘I’m a Bruno fan.’
Friday March 1st
At breakfast this morning, I asked Cavendish if he would help me to move my things to Mrs Hedge’s. He has got a big Volvo estate. He said, ‘Can’t think of anything I’d rather do, Aidy.’ He offered to move me immediately, but I said, ‘Tomorrow morning will do. Some of us have to work?’
He laughed and said, ‘So you think teaching Linguistics is a soft option, do you, Aidy?’
I said, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I doubt if work is a four-letter word to you.’
‘Speaking as a professor of Linguistics,’ he snarled, ‘I can assure you that work is indeed a four-letter word.’ As he reached for the ashtray, his dressing gown fell open, revealing withered nipples and grey matted chest hair. I was almost physically sick. I could hardly swallow my Bran Flakes.
Took the portable TV back to the shop. On my return, I wrote a poem to Pandora and slipped it under her door. It was my last-ditch attempt to seduce her away from Cavendish.
Pandora! Let Me! by A. Mole
Let me stroke your inner thighs
Let me hear your breathy sighs
Let me feel your silky skin
Let me make your senses spin
Let me touch your soft white breast
Let us stop and have a rest.
Let me join our beating hearts
Let me forge our private parts
Let me delve and make you mine
Let me give you food and wine
Let me lick you with my tongue
Let me do whatever’s wrong
Let me watch you take your pleasure
Let me dress you in black leather
Let me fit you like a glove
Let me consummate our love.
At 1 a.m. Pandora pushed a note under my door.
Adrian,
If you continue to send such filth to me, I will, in future, pass it on to the police.
Pandora
Saturday March 2nd
As I packed my be
longings, I reflected that I have not acquired much in my life. A basic wardrobe of clothes. A few hundred books. A Sony Walkman. A dozen or so cassettes. My own mug, cup, bowl and plate. A poster by Munch, a cactus, a magnifying mirror on a stand, a bowl for bananas, and a lamp. It is not much to show for a year and a half of toil at the DOE. True, I have got £2,579 saved in the Market Harborough Building Society, and £197.39 in Nat West, but even so.
I found the blue plastic comb I have been searching for since last year. It was on top of the wardrobe. Why? How did it get there? I have never climbed on the wardrobe to comb my hair. I suspect Julian. He is a big fan of Jeremy Beadle’s.
11 p.m. Too tired to write much, just to put it on the record that I am lying in Mrs Hedge’s bed. It is very comfortable. My new address is now:
8 Sitwell Villas
Summertown
Oxford.
Sunday March 3rd
I didn’t know where I was when I woke up, then I remembered. I smelt bacon cooking, but I didn’t go downstairs. I felt like an intruder. I got up, tiptoed to the bathroom, got dressed, made my bed, then sat on the bed listening to sounds from below. Eventually, driven by hunger, I went downstairs. Mrs Hedge was not there. The breakfast plates were still on the kitchen table. The kitchen pedal bin was overflowing. There were eggshells on the floor. The cupboard under the sink was full of filthy yellow dusters. The fridge was full of little saucers containing mouldy leftovers. The grill pan was unwashed. The Observer was speckled with tinned tomato juice.