Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years

by Sue Townsend

  He strode out into the vibrant Soho night, his cowboy boots tapping strangely on the murky pavement. I must get them soled and heeled tomorrow, he thought. As he passed down Old Compton Street, he looked up at the window of the flat above Alma’s Patisserie. The light was still burning but he knew that by now all human life had been extinguished. He was a murderer by proxy.

  Tears poured inside his heart, but his face was as it always was, hard and unforgiving and without God’s blessing.

  Saturday February 29th

  I have informed Mr Andropolosis, the landlord, that I have taken over the tenancy, and paid him a month’s rent in advance, so the room is now mine. Thank God for the end of this month. It has surely been the worst since time began.

  To complete our catalogue of family misery, Grandma was admitted to hospital during the early hours of this morning with abdominal pains. I rang the hospital this afternoon and was told by the ward sister that Grandma was ‘comfortable’. If this is true, then she is the only member of the family who is – the rest of us are in total misery.

  Sunday March 1st

  I joined my mother, father and Rosie at Grandma’s hospital bedside this afternoon. It was the first time I had seen Grandma without her teeth. I was shocked at how old she looked.

  My mother has lost weight and her eyes looked sore, as though she has been weeping constantly since Muffet upped and left her. After visiting time was over and we were trooping down the ward, my mother said bitterly: ‘They’re in Hounslow, staying with his brother, Andrew.’

  I said, ‘I don’t want to know, Mum.’

  My father said, ‘Let it drop, Pauline.’

  Rosie said, ‘I’m glad he’s gone. I hope he never comes back.’ She held her hand up and my father took it and steered her through the big double doors at the end of the ward. As we walked alongside the hospital tower blocks, the litter swirled around our feet and I had a premonition of doom.

  I almost turned back to say a proper goodbye to Grandma, but I didn’t want to keep the others hanging around in the potholed car park, so I didn’t. Instead, we went home and had a Marks & Spencer’s roast beef dinner each. Mine was quite nice, but it wasn’t a patch on the real thing cooked by my grandma. As I was compressing the dirty tin foil trays into the kitchen pedal bin, the telephone rang. It was the hospital, telling us that ‘Mrs Edna May Mole passed away at 5.15 p.m.’

  I tried to remember where I was exactly at 5.15 p.m. I worked out that I was in a BP petrol station, helping my father to check the pressure in his car tyres.

  I haven’t shed a single tear for her yet. I’m dried up inside. My heart feels like a peach stone.

  Monday March 2nd

  It is a well-known fact that Grandma and my mother never got on, so nobody was prepared for the positively Mediterranean grief my mother is displaying over her mother-in-law’s death: copious tears, breast-beating, etc. This morning she was lamenting, ‘I owed her fifty quid’ over and over again.

  My father continues to astonish me with his maturity. He has dealt with all the death paperwork and haggled over the cost of the funeral with commendable efficiency.

  Tuesday March 3rd

  At 10.00 p.m. I rang ‘Savages’ to tell them that I am staying in Leicester for the funeral on Friday afternoon. Roberto said, ‘I’m glad you ring, Adrian. Your flat has been called on by burglars.’ He made it sound as though burglars had been invited to tea, brought flowers and left a visiting card. There’s nothing I can do tonight. The police have employed the services of a locksmith. The new key is at ‘Savages’. I feel strangely calm.

  Wednesday March 4th

  Train to Leicester 8.40 p.m.

  They have taken everything, apart from my books, boxer shorts and an old pair of polyester trousers. How they got the bed down the stairs will probably always remain a mystery. The policeman I spoke to on the phone said, in answer to my question about the likelihood of their finding the culprits: ‘You know what chance a snowball has in hell? Well, halve that. Then halve it again.’ He asked if I had insurance.

  I laughed scornfully and said, ‘Of course not. This is Adrian Mole you’re speaking to.’

  I am now a man without possessions.

  Thursday March 5th

  I went into Grandma’s home this morning. Everything was the same as ever. My GCE certificates were still there, framed on the wall. My dead grandad Albert’s photograph was on the mantelpiece. The clock was still ticking. Upstairs, the linen lay folded in the cupboard and in the garden the bulbs pushed through the earth. The biscuit barrel was full of fig rolls and her second best slippers stood by her bed. Inside a kitchen cupboard, I found her Yorkshire pudding tin. She had used it for over forty years. Stupid to weep over a Yorkshire pudding tin, but I did. I then wiped it dry and replaced it in the cupboard, as she would have liked.

  Friday March 6th

  Grandma’s Funeral

  My mother and father, Rosie and I worked together as a team today and managed to give Grandma a good send-off. There was a respectable turnout in the church, which surprised me, because Grandma didn’t encourage people to call on her. She preferred the company of Radio Four. She had been known to turn people away from her doorstep, should they be inconsiderate enough to call during the Afternoon Play.

  The hymns were ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. Bert Baxter sang out loudly, almost drowning the others in the congregation. For an atheist, he certainly enjoys singing in church. As I watched him, I couldn’t help thinking wistfully that it should have been him who died instead of Grandma. The vicar said a lot of incredibly stupid things about Grandma being born into sin and dying in sin.

  Anybody who knew Grandma knew that she was incapable of sin. She couldn’t even tell a lie. When I asked her once if my spots were clearing up (I must have been about fifteen), she answered, ‘No, you’ve still got a face like a ladybird’s arse.’ She occasionally used such mild profanities, but she was certainly not a sinner.

  I don’t like to think of her lying under the earth, alone and cold. Still, at least she was never burgled or mugged. She is safe from all that now.

  The funeral tea was held at our house. My mother had been up most of the previous night, cleaning and polishing and trying to get the stains out of the lounge carpet.

  My father replaced the missing light bulbs and mended the ballcock so that the lavatory flushed properly.

  Tania Braithwaite came round to give her commiserations and kindly offered to defrost some vegetarian quiches she had in the freezer. She told us that Pandora had cancelled a lecture and was intending to come to the funeral tea and would be bringing six bottles of Marks & Spencer’s champagne with her.

  She said, ‘Pandora believes in celebrating death. She sees it as a new adventure, as opposed to a rather boring ending.’

  Bert Baxter had phoned to ask what time the service started, which reminded my mother that there was no beetroot in the house. So Rosie was given a personal safety alarm and sent round to the corner shop to buy a jar from Mr Patel’s shop.

  At midnight, I watched my parents spreading a white tablecloth over the dining-room table, which had had its leaves fully extended. As they flapped and adjusted the cloth, one at either end, I had a sudden sense of being a member of the family.

  Rosie had arranged some daffodils and freesias nicely in a vase and was praised by everyone. Even the dog behaved itself. When we finally went to bed, the house looked perfect; everything was in its place and we Moles could hold our heads high. Grandma would have been proud of us.

  After the funeral service, Rosie and I ran ahead of the other mourners to take the clingfilm off the sandwiches and sausage rolls.

  Pandora was waiting outside the house in her car. We filled the bath with cold water and put the bottles of champagne into it to chill.

  Pandora looked beautifully severe in a black tailored suit. However, I no longer felt in awe of her, so we were able to talk to each other as friends and equals. She compliment
ed me on how well I was looking and she even praised my clothes. She fingered the lapel of my navy blue unstructured Next suit and said, ‘Welcome to the nineties.’

  The house soon filled up with mourners and I was kept busy circulating with glasses of champagne on a tray. At first, everyone stood around, not knowing what to say, nervous of enjoying themselves for fear of being thought disrespectful to the dead. Then Pandora broke the ice by proposing a toast to Grandma.

  ‘To Edna Mole,’ she said, lifting her glass of champagne high, ‘a woman of the highest principles.’

  Everyone clinked glasses and swigged back the champagne and it wasn’t long before laughter broke out and I was fishing the bottles out of the bath.

  My mother rummaged in the sideboard and brought out the photograph albums. I was astonished to see a photograph of my grandma at the age of twenty-four. She looked very dashing, dark-haired, with a lovely figure, and was laughing and pushing a bicycle up a hill. There was a man next to her wearing a flat cap. He had a big moustache and his eyes were crinkled against the sun. It was my grandad. Everybody remarked that I looked like him.

  My father took the photograph out of the album and went into the garden and sat on Rosie’s swing. After a while, I followed him out. He handed me the photograph and said, ‘I’m an orphan, son.’

  I put my hand on his shoulder, then went back inside to find that the funeral tea had turned into a party. People were laughing hysterically at the photographs in the album. Me at the seaside, falling off a donkey. Me in a secondhand cub’s uniform three sizes too big. Me at six months, lying naked on a half moon-shaped rug in front of a gas fire. Me two days old with my grinning, young-looking parents in the maternity hospital. On the back was written, in my mother’s handwriting, ‘Our darling baby, two days old’.

  There was a photograph I don’t remember seeing before. It was my mother and father and my grandma and grandad. They were sitting in deckchairs, watching me, aged about three, playing in the sand. On the back was written: ‘Yarmouth, Bank Holiday Monday’.

  Rosie said, ‘Why aren’t I in the photo?’

  Bert Baxter said, ‘Cos you ‘adn’t been bleedin’ born, that’s why’

  At seven o’clock, Ivan Braithwaite offered to escort some of my grandma’s elderly neighbours back to their pensioners’ bungalows while they and he could still walk.

  The rest of us carried on until eleven o’clock. Tania Braithwaite, who has been vegetarian for nine years, cracked and ate a sausage roll and then another.

  My mother and father danced together to ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’. You couldn’t have slid a ruler between them.

  Pandora and I watched them dancing. She said, ‘So they’re back together again, are they?’

  ‘I hope so,’ I said, looking at Rosie.

  As I said before, it was a good send-off.

  Monday March 9th

  Old Compton Street

  I am back in my room with only my books and boxer shorts for company. I have given the trousers away to a young man selling The Big Issue. I made a pillow out of my underwear and slept on the floor. I have often wondered what it would be like to be a celibate monk in a bare cell. Now, thanks to burglary and desertion, I know.

  I went into ‘Savages’ to help clean the kitchen. Savage himself was there, released from the alcohol abuse unit and looking fit and athletic and sipping on a glass of mineral water. He commiserated with me on my various losses and said that there was some old furniture in the attic above the restaurant that I could have.

  ‘Just help yourself, kid,’ he said.

  I can’t get used to this new, kind, philanthropic Savage. I keep thinking he must be Savage’s long lost twin brother, recently returned from a missionary station in Amazonia.

  My room is now furnished with rococo style banquettes and fag-stained faux marble tables. Stuff that was obviously thrown upstairs when Savage took over the restaurant. I now sleep on two banquettes pushed together. I have angels at my head and cherubs at my feet. Roberto gave me some cutlery and crockery and kitchen utensils. Most of my fellow workers brought something to work with them this morning, to donate to the Adrian Mole Disaster Fund. I cook on a ring fuelled by a gas canister and I read by a mock chandelier, both donated by Luigi.

  Wednesday March 11th

  I rang home this morning. My father is still there, living in sin with my mother. My mother told me that Bianca and Muffet are intending to set up an engineering partnership called ‘Dartington and Muffet’.

  I cannot bear the thought of Muffet’s bony fingers touching Bianca’s lovely pale skin.

  I cannot bear it.

  Thursday March 12th

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Resurgence

  Jake sat down at the faux marble table and began to write another chapter of his novel, Sparg from Kronk.

  Chapter Five: Green Shoots

  Sparg missed his woman, Barf. There was a part of him that would never be reconciled to her loss.

  It was springtime. Green shoots showed through the earth. Sparg left his hut and went outside. He was glad to be outside, for the hut was damp and the damp was rising fast.

  Sparg needed a woman, but the only woman in sight was Krun, his mother. Though her face was wrinkled, her thighs were inviting. But it was forbidden by Kronkian law to take your own mother, even if she agreed.

  Sparg walked aimlessly up a small hill and then walked aimlessly down. He was bored. There was firewood to collect, but he was sick of collecting firewood. It did not challenge his intellect. He grunted in despair and wished it were possible to communicate with his fellow Kronkians. It was just his luck, he thought, to be born in prehistoric times.

  If only there was language, grunted Sparg internally…

  to be continued

  Jake fell back. The intensity of the writing had left him drained and pale. He left his room and walked to Wilde’s, his favourite restaurant, where he was greeted by Mario.

  ‘Longa tima noa see, Mr Westmorland.’

  ‘Hi, Mario. My usual table, please, and my usual bottle, well chilled, and I’ll have my usual starter, usual main course and usual pudding.’

  ‘And for your aperitif, Mr Westmorland?’ purred Mario.

  ‘The usual,’ barked Jake.

  I’ve got to finish Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland soon, but I can’t do that until Jake has finished writing Sparg from Kronk. I wish he would hurry up.

  Friday March 13th

  More businesses are closing around us. Every day, the boards go up at shop and restaurant windows. Every night, I pray that ‘Savages’ stays financially viable. I need my job. I’m aware that I’m being exploited, but at least I have a reason to get up in the morning, unlike three and a half million of my fellow citizens.

  Grandma left my father three thousand and ninety pounds in her will, so my mother is not going to have her house repossessed. This is truly joyous news. It means that I won’t have to break into my Building Society savings. I couldn’t have seen her thrown onto the street. At least, I don’t think I could.

  Saturday March 14th

  I received the following message when I got to work this morning. It was written on the back of a paper napkin. ‘Forgot G. Left 500.’ Nobody knew what it meant or who had taken the message.

  Monday March 16th

  Received another brochure from the Naxos Institute. Why are they mailing me so assiduously? Who has put them on to me? I don’t know any holistic types. I’m not even a vegetarian and I swear by paracetamol.

  I went to the National Gallery today, but it brought back painful memories of B., so I went back to Soho and paid two pounds to watch a fat girl with spots remove her bra and knickers through a peephole. I watched her through a peephole. She didn’t remove her underclothes through a peephole.

  Query: Are there night classes in syntax?

  Tuesday March 17th

  I ran out of toilet paper last night and reached for the Naxos Institute brochure to help me out of my emergenc
y, when something about Angela Hacker’s face made me pause. It seemed to say, ‘Come to me, Adrian.’ Her face is nothing to write home about, in fact it’s nothing to write anywhere about.

  I put the brochure down and picked up the Evening Standard instead. It has far better absorbency qualities.

  11.45 p.m Can’t sleep for St Patrick’s Day revellers, so have idly filled in the booking form for the first two weeks in April at the Naxos Institute in Greece.

  Thursday March 19th

  Idly filled in a cheque made out to ‘Naxos Institute’, but I was only trying out a new pen. I couldn’t possibly afford the time off work, or the money.

  10.00 p.m. The full message was: ‘Forgot to tell you Grandma has left you five hundred pounds, love, Dad.’ Luigi, who had been away from the restaurant with food poisoning, returned today and congratulated me on ‘Alia money ya got’. Naturally, I looked at him blankly. Confusion abounded for some minutes and then came the glorious realization, which we celebrated with a bottle of corked Frascati.

  Saturday March 21st

  The newly benign Savage has agreed to give me two weeks’ leave (without pay). I posted my booking form this morning and this afternoon I bought some swimming trunks from a shop that was closing down in the Charing Cross Road. I can’t wait to feel the warm Aegean sea on my body.