Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction (14 page)

I said, ‘But the family won’t want me there. I’ll leave you all in peace to talk it over among yourselves.’

Marigold said, ‘Please don’t go. I need your support. But please don’t be offended by anything Daisy might say. She’s half Mexican, you know.’

The front door opened and Michael Flowers bellowed, ‘Come in, come in, my boy. The food is on the table!’

Daisy Flowers sat next to me in the dining room. Her perfume was overpowering. She looked as though she had stepped out of the pages of
TV Quick
. Her black hair was piled on top of her head and skewered together by what looked like a thin bone. She had dark olive skin and her breasts wobbled like the jellies my grandma used to serve up for Sunday tea. I didn’t know where to put my eyes. Her legs were hidden under the table. She was almost, but not quite, as beautiful as Pandora Braithwaite.

She said, ‘Hello, Adrian. I know everything there is to know about you. Marigold is never off the phone to me.’

Her voice was deep. I asked her if she had a cold. She laughed and threw her head back, exposing her lovely throat. I wanted to sink my teeth into her neck.

Poppy sat opposite. She had tamed her hair into two immensely long, fat plaits. She looked disturbingly like a middle-aged Heidi. She said disapprovingly, ‘Daisy has been smoking since she was thirteen years old, that’s why she sounds like a mating walrus.’

Netta Flowers came in with a gravyboat full of what I presumed to be vegetarian gravy and set it down. My rosé wine was the most colourful thing on the table.

Michael Flowers got to his feet, paused dramatically and then announced, ‘This could be the last meal we eat together as a complete family unit. Netta and I are no longer sexually compatible. My darling wife informed me last night that she is about to embark on a sexual adventure with Roger Middleton.’

Netta looked around at her daughters for their reaction. Poppy and Marigold looked down at the tablecloth.

Daisy reached for the rosé, took a corkscrew from out of her bag and said, ‘Roger Middleton? The seriously weird lavender supplier with the nose?’ She pulled the cork and slopped the rosé into my glass before filling her own.

Poppy said, ‘Roger Middleton is half your age, Mummy.’

Netta smiled and adjusted the ruched neckline of her gypsy blouse.

Flowers said, ‘For what we are about to receive, may Mother Nature make us truly grateful.’

Bowls of food were passed around and various brown baked things were put on to plates.

I thought about the magnificent roast dinners that my grandmother used to make for me, of how she would cut the fat off the beef and hand it to me as a special treat.

When everyone had food on their plates, Michael Flowers said, ‘I would like to open the debate. The question is, should Mummy and I have an open marriage during which Mummy and Roger Middleton have it off and I cast myself into the uncertainties of the singles circuit? Or should we divorce, sell the house and shop, and go our separate ways?’

When nobody said anything, he said, looking at me, ‘C’mon, family, what do you think, eh?’

I grew more alarmed with every minute that passed. For some inexplicable reason, he was treating me as though I were a member of his family.

Marigold half sobbed and said, ‘But, Daddy, I want you and Mummy to live in this house for ever.’

Netta said, ‘Oh, Mazzie darling, you’re being a teensy-weensy bit selfish. You’ll be getting married yourself and leaving us one day, won’t you? Perhaps one day soon?’

The Flowers family looked at me
en masse
. I felt a bit like sobbing myself.

Marigold said, ‘Nobody will ever marry me, will they? I’m far too plain and dull.’

She waited for a response.

Netta said, ‘Remember what your therapist told you, Mazzie. You must learn to love yourself first.’

Poppy said, ‘She should have spent the money on having her hair done.’

Daisy added, ‘Or buying a few decent clothes.’

Marigold buried her head in my shoulder. I felt obliged to put my arm around her.

Daisy said to me,
sotto voce
, ‘If I were you, I’d run while there’s still time.’

Michael and Netta Flowers both got to their feet and said, ‘Hug time,’ and enveloped Marigold in their parental embrace.

Daisy turned her head away and put her index finger down her throat.

I don’t know how I got through the rest of the meal. Netta and Michael Flowers talked openly and frankly about their psycho-sexual problem in toe-curling detail. At one point we were forced to listen as Netta recounted how she had pleasured Michael during a Bob Dylan concert on the Isle of Wight.

Eventually Poppy stood up and said to her parents, ‘I can’t listen to any more of this filth. You have both put me off sex for life. I hated the way you both walked around the house naked and wouldn’t allow us to have locks on any door.’

The meal ended in tears and recriminations. Michael Flowers said over the heads of the sobbing women, ‘It’s so good that a family can talk openly and frankly about these things, isn’t it, Adrian?’

I said, ‘But nothing has been decided. Is Netta going to sleep with Roger Middleton or not?’

Netta said, ‘I will decide by visiting a rowan tree
at midnight. If an owl hoots after I have sung my rowan song, I will sleep with Roger in an open marriage. If the owl is silent I will divorce Daddy and take him to court, for half the value of this house and half the value of the shop.’

Then, to my horror, she sang the rowan song:

‘O rowan tree, O rowan tree,

Hey nonny no, how sad I be,

There is a man that I do love,

He be my dear, my turtle dove,

If I do lie with him abed

And he do kiss my bonny head,

Will he stay or will he go?

Hey nonny, nonny, nonny, no.’

When she had finished singing, Daisy, quite cruelly I thought, gave an owl impression.

I started to clear the table, but Michael Flowers said, ‘No, let the women take care of the washing-up. I’d like to see you in my study.’

I would sooner have climbed into the bear pit at Whipsnade Zoo naked and covered in honey than gone into Flowers’s study, but I went anyway, because anything, anything, was better than staying in a room with three weeping women.

Flowers sat behind his desk and put a hand over his eyes. I didn’t know whether to remain standing or sit down on the battered leather and mahogany chair in front of the desk.

He said, ‘Adrian, I think I am a good man. I have certainly tried to better the lives of humankind. I walked in a wet duffel coat to Aldermaston every Easter weekend for ten years. I donated and erected tents for the women at Greenham Common. I sent a fruit basket to Nelson Mandela at Robben Island. I delivered 100 vegetarian samosas to the picket line at a Nottingham coal field and I attempted to bring a little culture to the working men’s clubs by singing Schubert, but bingo put paid to that. I’m bitterly disappointed with the English working classes, Adrian. They’ve chosen consumerism over art, materialism over culture and celebrity-worship over robust spirituality.

‘I have asked for so very little for myself. My needs are few: sufficient daily quantities of vegetables and fruit, good bread, a jug of home-brewed ale, books of course. But most of all, Adrian, most of all I have had the love of my family. I have been blessed with two extraordinary wives and three daughters, two of them loving.’

He raised his head and banged his fist on his desk, causing the ink bottles and nibbed pens he uses to jump. ‘I have only one regret.’ He looked me in the face and locked on to my eyes. I was unable to tear my gaze away from his. ‘I desperately wanted a son. And, Adrian, I think I’ve found him. You and I have so much in common. I too despise sport and low culture. And I, like you, adore Marigold. I honestly feel, Adrian, that you are the son I never had. Please say that I can lean on you in the dark days to come.’

He held his hand out. What could I do, diary, but take
it? My audience in his study lasted fourteen minutes, yet I did not speak one word.

A scandal has broken out concerning Mrs Blair, the prime minister’s barrister wife. She has allowed a convicted fraudster called Peter Foster to negotiate on her behalf to buy two riverside apartments in Bristol, costing in total over half a million pounds.

Foster is wanted by the Australian police for selling false slimming pills. On September 1st he was told by immigration officials at Luton Airport that he would be deported within two days on the grounds that he was ‘not conducive to the public good’. Mr Foster is the lover of Cherie Blair’s guru and aromatherapist, Carole Caplin.

I wonder why she didn’t use an estate agent. I know that in opinion polls they are less respected than politicians and journalists, but surely even an estate agent is more trustworthy than a convicted fraudster.

The Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group met in the snug at the Red Cow. Only Ken Blunt turned up. Gary Milksop left a message on my mobile to say that he was stuck on the M6, where a lorry had shed its load of frozen turkeys, but he said, ‘I’ll see you on the 23rd. I’ll be bringing my partner and a couple of friends. Please text details of venue, time and dress code.’

Ken read to me a vicious piece of polemic called ‘Bush’s Poodle’.

‘Bitch America is on heat

She straddles the globe

Defecating hamburgers, apple pie and Coke

Tony, the toy poodle, minces at the rear

Sniffing the bitch’s arse and trying to mount.’

A couple of old blokes who were sitting in the snug looked up in alarm. Ken has got a loud voice.

After I’d read him a few pages of my
Celebrity and Madness
book, Ken said, ‘I’m not surprised you’ve not found a publisher. It’s bloody crap. Who wants to read about a load of fake-tanned tosspots?’ He then said, ‘And this dinner on the 23rd, have you booked a venue?’

I told him that I had.

He then said, ‘So who’s the guest speaker?’

I told him that it would be a pleasant surprise.

He said almost menacingly, ‘I hope so. My wife is a keen autograph hunter.’

As soon as I got home to Rat Wharf I sent a text message to Pandora:

Keep the evening of 23 12 2002 free. U R guest speaker at VIP dinner in Leicester.

According to Asif, the garage log bloke, the photocopiers at the United Nations cannot cope with copying the 12,000-page document listing Iraq’s weapons programme.

Syria wants to know why America, Britain, France, Russia and China will see the document first.

Asif said, ‘America needs time to use the Tippex and blank out all the bad bits, what it’s done in the past, like selling weapons to Saddam, innit?’

I said, ‘As if, Asif.’

Mr Carlton-Hayes arranged for two armchairs to be delivered today. They are Edwardian and are covered in worn brown velvet.

I sat by the fire in one and checked his stock list. I was asleep within minutes.

When I woke, Marigold was sitting in the opposite chair. She said that she would be at mumming rehearsals each night this week. She asked me if I would join the group and play Joseph opposite her Mary.

I told Marigold that I was an official agnostic and couldn’t possibly take part in any religious enactment whatsoever.

Marigold said, ‘Mummery simply means mime. It isn’t necessarily religious. It has its roots in paganism. Mummy and Daddy were founder members of the New Secular Society.’

I threw another log on the fire and said, ‘I cannot tolerate mime, Marigold.’

Marigold said, ‘You are a very intolerant person.’

I told her that a combination of mime and madrigals was my idea of hell.

Marigold said, ‘My idea of hell is a life without you.’ Then she said, ‘You should wear gloves when you’re handling logs. A splinter could lead to septicaemia.’ Then she left the shop.

Before her parting remark I had handled logs with a nonchalance bordering on recklessness. But for the rest of the day I handled them as if they were sticks of dynamite.

Moon’s First Quarter

A hundred Hollywood stars signed a petition against a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. I have never heard of any of them apart from Gillian Anderson, the
X-Files
woman.

Pandora rang me at work to say that she won’t be in Leicester until the 24th, when she is attending a constituency drinks party. I begged her to change her plans.

She said, ‘Gordon and Sarah Brown have invited me for champagne and mince pies at Downing Street. He wants to talk to me about my political future. Is your “VIP” dinner more important than that?’

I had to admit that it wasn’t.

An email from William asking me to go to Nigeria for Christmas. As if! As I write, I am completely penniless, there is no petrol in the car and my fridge freezer contains two croissants and a wizened lemon.

Direct debits have snatched my wages from my account.

My credit card bill arrived. I was gobsmacked to see how much Barclays were charging me per month for the money I had borrowed for my deposit on Rat Wharf.

My solicitor, Dave Barwell, has sent me a Christmas card of a robin wearing a Santa Claus hat. Inside was a bill for £569.48 for ‘professional services’.

I ate the croissants and squeezed the lemon juice into a mug of hot water. I felt like a monk in a monastic order.

I was glad when lunchtime came and Mr Carlton-Hayes offered me one of his cheese sandwiches.

Barclaycard are a truly magnificent organization. I received a letter from them today which said, ‘As a valued Barclaycard customer we are delighted to advise you that your credit limit has been increased to £12,000. Your new
credit limit is available to use straight away and will show on your statement.’

Perhaps there is a God. Barclaycard have given me £2,000 to spend immediately.

My fridge freezer is packed with food. The car’s petrol tank is full. However, so are all the car parks within two miles of the city centre, so I walked along the towpath to Water Meadow Park, the out-of-town shopping centre. I kept a wary eye out for the swans. A cruel east wind was blowing around the squat buildings.