Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years

by Sue Townsend

  Worked on Lo! with Angela Hacker in mind.

  Jake opened his manuscript book. The ivory handmade paper looked enticing. He took his Mont Blanc pen in his hand and began to write.

  ‘Sorry, darling,’ he said to the glorious example of English womanhood who sprawled opposite him, showing her knickers, ‘but the Muse is upon me.’

  Then he lowered his handsome head and was at once in Kronk, the home of his hero, Sparg.

  Sparg grunted, recognizing the hated form of his father in the darkness. His father grunted back. Sparg threw a pebble from one hand to the other. Why hadn’t something been invented to pass the hours of darkness before bed, he wondered. Something like a game such as cards, he wondered. He went back into his hut and pushed the animal skins listlessly around on his bed. He was cold at night without a woman. He determined that he would get up early the next morning and find one and bring her home to Kronk.

  Thursday March 26th

  I bought a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts from a stall in Berwick Street market. I have never worn shorts since reaching adulthood.

  A new Adrian Mole is emerging from the ashes.

  Savage turned up drunk and disorderly at the restaurant and proceeded to fire Luigi, Roberto and the whole of the kitchen staff apart from me. He said, ‘You can stay, Adrian. You’re a fucking loser, like me.’

  He has promoted me to Maître d,’ a position I do not want and cannot do.

  Luigi and Roberto sat in the kitchen, smoking and talking in Italian. They didn’t seem too concerned. Meanwhile, dressed in Luigi’s suit, I was forced to fawn over customers, show them to their seats and pretend to be interested in their requirements. Savage sat at the bar, shouting out the biographical details of his customers as they came in. As one respectable-looking middle-aged couple entered, he yelled: ‘Well, if it isn’t Mr and Mrs Wellington. He’s wearing a toupée and she’s paid three thousand pounds for those perky looking titties.’

  Instead of going straight back out, or thumping him on the side of his drunken head, Mr and Mrs Wellington grinned and allowed me to show them to table number six. Perhaps they are proud of their artificial attributes. As my recently dead grandma would say, ‘There’s nowt so strange as folk, especially London folk.’

  Poor Grandma. She never went to London in her life.

  For the past four days, I have been unable to write a word. The thought of Angela Hacker reading my manuscript has totally inhibited me. However, tonight I achieved a breakthrough.

  He had writer’s block. For over five hours he stared down at the mockingly empty page. His publisher was calling hourly. The printing presses were waiting, but still he could not finish his book. Jake looked out of the window, hoping for inspiration. The New York skyline stretched away into infinity…

  ‘Infinity!’ shouted Jake, excitedly, and he began to work on his novel, Sparg from Kronk.

  Sparg had wandered far from Kronk and was standing on a high headland, looking in wonderment at a strange watery mass and a blue line ahead of him. Without knowing it (because there was no language), Sparg was marvelling over the sea and the far distant horizon. Sparg growled and began to descend the headland. He would walk to the far blue line, he thought. It would be something to do. Sparg thought this because there was as yet no swimming…

  Received confirmation from Faxos Institute that I have a place on the Writers’ Course. I am terrified.

  Friday March 27th

  Luigi has been reinstated and I am safely back in the kitchen, thank God. Roberto has been allowing me to watch him at work. For most of my life, I have been denied a proper food education. There was never anything to learn from my mother; she stopped cooking real food soon after reading The Female Eunuch. Though, ironically, the author of that seminal tome, Ms Germaine Greer, is a renowned cook and dinner party giver.

  Thanks to Roberto’s kindness, I can now cook pasta ‘al dente’ and make a basic sponge cake and I’ve almost cracked making watercress soup. I now spring from my double banquettes in the morning, eager to get to work.

  Plane tickets arrived today.

  A new girl started work as a waitress at ‘Savages’ this evening. Her name is Jo Jo and she is from Nigeria. She is studying Art at St Martin’s. She is taller than anybody else in the restaurant. Her hair is braided with hundreds of tiny beads. She rattles when she walks. Her mother is something big in the Nigerian tractor industry.

  Saturday March 28th

  Made a tower of profiteroles today. Roberto said: ‘Congratulations, Adriana! The chocolate icing issa perfection.’

  Jo Jo tasted the first one and pronounced it to be ‘delectable’. Luigi happened to have his polaroid camera with him, so he photographed me and the tower and Jo Jo. I have pinned the photograph on my wall. I look quite handsome.

  Sunday March 29th

  I was still in bed at midday when there was a knock on the door. I never have visitors, so I was a little alarmed. I put my ear to the door, but all I could hear was a peculiar rattling noise. I eventually opened the door, but I kept the security chain on. I was delighted to see Jo Jo through the crack.

  She smiled at me and said that she was going to the Tate Gallery.

  ‘Do you want to come?’ she asked.

  I slipped the chain off and invited her in. She walked around the room and commented on how tidy it was. She stopped at the table where my manuscript lay in its transparent folder and said, ‘So this is your book.’

  She touched it reverently. ‘I would like to read it one day.’

  ‘When it’s finished,’ I said.

  I made her a cup of Nescafe and then excused myself and went into the bathroom to wash and change.

  I looked at myself in the washbasin mirror. Something had happened to my face. I no longer looked like John Major.

  Jo Jo likes walking, so we walked to the Tate. I was proud to be seen with such a stunning looking woman. I asked her about Nigeria and she spoke about her country with obvious love. She is a Yoruba and comes from Abeokuta.

  She asked me about my family and I told her about the tangled web of relationships, the break-ups and the reconciliations.

  She laughed and said, ‘To work out the relationships in my family, you would need an extremely sophisticated computer.’

  I had never been to the Tate, but Jo Jo knew it well. She guided me round and made me look at a few of her favourite paintings – all depicting people, I noticed. We looked at paintings by Paula Rego, Vanessa Bell and Matisse, and a piece of sculpture by Ghisha Koenig called ‘The Machine Minders’, and then she insisted that we leave before we got bored and our feet started to ache.

  As we were going down the steps, Jo Jo asked if I would like to have tea at her flat in Battersea.

  I said, ‘I’d love to.’ We crossed the road and stood at the bus stop, but then, on impulse, I flagged down a black cab and we rode to her flat in style.

  She lives on the top floor of a mansion block. Every room is full of her paintings. Many of the paintings are nude self-portraits, in which she has depicted herself in many colours, including green, pink, purple, blue and yellow.

  I asked her if she was making a statement about her colour. ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘But I would get bored only using blacks and browns.’

  We ate scones and drank Earl Grey tea and talked non-stop: about ‘Savages’ Nigerian politics; cats; one of her art teachers, who is going mad; Cecil Parkinson; the price of paint brushes; Vivaldi; our star signs – she is Leo (but on the cusp of Cancer); and her girls’ boarding school in Surrey, where she lived from the age of eleven until she got expelled at sixteen for climbing on the roof of the chapel in a protest against the lousy food.

  Over a glass of cheap wine, we discussed trees; Matisse; Moscow; Russian politics; our favourite cakes; the use of umbrellas; cabbage; and the Royal Family. She is a republican, she said.

  Over a final glass of wine and a plate of bread and cheese, I talked to her about my grandmother, my mother, Pandora,
Sharon, Megan, Leonora, Cassandra and Bianca. ‘You’re carrying a lot of baggage,’ Jo Jo said.

  We parted at 10.30 p.m. with a friendly handshake.

  Before she closed the door, I asked how old she was.

  ‘Twenty-four,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’

  Monday March 30th

  I ran out of ‘Savages’ during my break time and bought Ambre Solaire (Factor 8), espadrilles, sleeveless tee shirts, three more pairs of shorts and sixteen thousand drachmas.

  I worked on the book late into the night. I am nervous about Angela Hacker’s opinion. Added more descriptive words to Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland and took out more descriptive words from Sparg from Kronk.

  Tuesday March 31st

  The staff arranged a small bon voyage party in the kitchen after the restaurant closed at lunchtime. I was very touched. Roberto cooked kebabs and arranged an authentic Greek salad in my honour. Jo Jo bought two bottles of retsina earlier in the day and we all clinked glasses and swore eternal friendship. Then Savage came in, complaining that Luigi had forgotten to add VAT to somebody’s bill, so the party broke up. Jo Jo is good at packing, she said. She offered to come and help me.

  I laid my clothes, toiletry bag and manuscript out on my bed before proceeding to pack, and then realized that the burglars had taken my suitcase.

  Jo Jo ran to Berwick Street market and bought one of those man-made fibre striped bags, the type that refugees have on the television news. Once I was packed, I debated with Jo Jo on whether or not to take a warm coat with me. She said I ought to, but I decided not to. Instead, I slung a cotton sweater around my shoulders. Everybody has said that Greece is warm in April. My legs look very white at the moment in my shorts, but by the time I return, they will be gloriously tanned.

  Spring

  Hotel Adelphi

  Athens

  Thursday April 2nd

  9.30 a.m.

  Dear Jo Jo,

  For the first time in my life, there is nobody to wish me a Happy Birthday. I am now twenty-five years old. Which is a millstone in anybody’s life. Do I still qualify to be called a ‘Young British Novelist’? I hope so.

  Other participants in the Naxos Institute course are swirling around downstairs in the hotel lobby, chatting easily to each other. I fled back into the lift when I saw them, and went up to the roof terrace, but Angela Hacker was up there, smoking a cigarette and looking moodily at the Acropolis in the far distance. She is skinny and dresses in white clothes. She was weighed down by ethnic silver jewellery.

  I don’t know when the photograph of her in the brochure was taken, but in life she looks at least forty-eight. Obviously past it, sexually and artistically.

  I didn’t thank you properly for that afternoon in the Tate. I keep thinking about the pictures. I particularly liked those painted by that Portuguese woman, Paula something.

  All best wishes,

  Adrian

  Ferry

  Friday April 3rd

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  I am writing this on the first ferry, which is taking us to where we catch the second ferry to Naxos. Angela Hacker and most of the twelve members of the writers’ group are already in the bar. The majority of them smoke. You would probably get along famously with them, Mum. The other, more holistic, holidaymakers are looking over the side of the ship, taking photographs or swapping aromatherapy recipes. I am keeping to myself. I don’t want to lumber myself with a hastily-made ‘friend’ and spend the next fortnight getting rid of him or her. It has just started to rain. I will have to stop now and go inside.

  Love from your son,

  Adrian

  Ferry

  Friday April 3rd

  4.00 p.m.

  Dear Jo Jo,

  There has been torrential rain for the whole of the three-hour crossing. I am wearing my cotton sweater, but am still cold. I now wish I’d followed your advice and brought a coat with me.

  Angela Hacker has been falling down in the bar. The sea is choppy, but I think her lack of balance is due more to the copious amounts of retsina she is throwing down her neck. My fellow writers have been laughing non-stop since boarding the ferry. Some private joke, no doubt. I have not yet introduced myself to them.

  Bamboo Hut Number Six

  8.00 p.m.

  The wind is whistling through the slats of my hut. Outside, the sky is grey and dotted with storm clouds. Supper was eaten in the open air, under a ‘roof’ of palm fronds. Not surprisingly, the ratatouille was cold.

  I can hear Angela Hacker coughing from here, though her hut is at least two hundred yards further down the rocky hill.

  There was a community meeting at eight o’clock, where the permanent staff and the facilitators introduced themselves and their work. The meeting was held in what they call here the ‘Magic Ring’, which is on the very top of the hill. The Magic Ring is a concrete base, surrounded by a low wall and covered in the usual palm frond and bamboo roof. There is nothing magical looking about it.

  I was most concerned to hear Ms Hacker describe her course as ‘Writing for Pleasure’. I get no pleasure from writing. Writing is a serious business, like painting.

  There is a man here who wears his hair like yours. I saw him on the headland, looking out to sea. From a distance he looked like you. My heart did a backflip.

  My hut is next to the hen-coop. A goat has just put its head inside my hut and a donkey is braying somewhere in the pine woods. If Noah’s Ark was washed up on the beach, I wouldn’t be surprised.

  Best wishes,

  Adrian

  Faxos

  Sunday April 5th

  Dear Pan,

  You asked me to let you know how the Naxos course was, so I’ll tell you about the first day.

  The writers collected on the terrace at 11.15 a.m. I sat upwind, away from the cigarette smoke. At 11.30 a.m. Angela Hacker had still not appeared, so a man called Clive, who had seven boils on his neck, was sent to her hut. She eventually showed up at noon and apologized for having overslept. She then rambled on for an hour and fifteen minutes about ‘Truth’ and ‘Narrative thrust’ and ‘developing an original voice’.

  At 1.15 p.m. she sprang to her feet and said, ‘Okay, that’s it for the day. Write a poem including the word “Greece”. Be prepared to read it aloud at 11.15 tomorrow morning.’ She then headed for the bamboo bar, where she stayed for most of the day. When I’d written my poem, I went in for a cup of tea and heard her talking about your college in Oxford.

  I asked her if she knew you and she said she had met you at Jack Cavendish’s house a few times, ‘before Jack left his third wife,’ she said.

  I said, ‘It’s a small world.’

  ‘Try not to use clichés, darling,’

  she said. She’s a strange woman.

  All the best from,

  Adrian

  Faxos

  Monday April 6th

  Dear Rosie,

  I hope you like this postcard of the cheerful donkey. There is something about its daft expression that reminds me of the dog.

  I have sent you a poem I was forced to write about Greece. It’s time you started to take an interest in cultural matters. There is more to life than Nintendo games.

  Love from your brother,

  Adrian

  Oh Greece, ancient cultured land

  You wrap around my heart just like

  An old elastic band.

  Your hag-like women pensioners

  Clad in clothes of black,

  Are they unaware of all the services they lack?

  Will they be content to watch

  The donkey with its load?

  Won’t they want a vehicle to

  Drive along the road?

  Faxos

  Tuesday April 7th

  Dear Baz,

  I am here on Naxos with Angela Hacker, whom I understand you know quite well. She and I hit it off immediately and she has invited me to stay at her place in Gloucestershire when we get back. I may be able to ma
ke the odd weekend, but I am currently doing research in a restaurant kitchen in Soho for my next book, The Chopper, so will not be able to stay for a couple of weeks, as she would like.

  The reason I am writing is to say that I hope there are no hard feelings any more over the Sharon Bott affair, because we are likely to be moving in the same circles soon and I would rather there were no acrimonious feelings between us.

  Congratulations on finally getting to number one!

  Cheers,

  Your old friend,

  Adrian Mole

  Faxos

  Wednesday April 8th

  Dear John Tydeman,

  As you cannot fail to see, if you have noticed the postmark, I am on the Greek island of Naxos. I am a member of a writers’ course being facilitated by Angela Hacker (she sends you her love).

  She asked us to write the first scene of a radio play, which is something I have never attempted to do before.

  I thought you might be interested to read what I have written. I would be more than willing to finish it, if you thought it had merit.

  I shall be back in London at 3.00 p.m. on the 15th April, if you would like to talk to me face to face.

  On second thoughts, the 16th would be more convenient for me. I shall probably need to rest after my journey.

  Here is how the play opens:

  The Cucumber Sandwich

  A Play for Radio by Adrian Mole

  A room in a wealthy house. A game of tennis can be heard through the french windows. Tea is poured. A spoon rattles in a cup.