Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction (16 page)

And she rejected
Hello!
, saying that she pitied rich, famous people and couldn’t care less about their clothes and houses.

I tried desperately to find a topic of conversation but failed, and we sat in an awkward silence and watched
Scooby-Doo!
on television.

At the end, after the janitor had ripped his face mask off and exposed himself as the evil scientist who threatened to blow up the world, Marigold started to cry and
said, ‘I’ll be in hospital for Christmas, and I so wanted us to spend our first Christmas together, Adrian.’

She had completely blanked our conversation of the night before.

An exhausted-looking African doctor came to examine her abdomen.

I tried to leave, but the doctor said, ‘No, stay where you are. You’re Miss Flowers’s fiancé, are you not?’

Marigold said yes and I could hardly contradict her in the current circumstances.

I watched as the doctor palpated her lower torso. Marigold reacted as though the doctor’s fingers were burning rods searing into her flesh.

After she had rebuttoned her pyjama jacket, the doctor said, ‘Your pain is a mystery to me. There is no swelling, you have no temperature, your blood pressure is better than mine. I do not think you have appendicitis. Have you suffered an emotional disturbance recently?’

Marigold said, ‘I have been in agony all night.’

The doctor looked at me and said, ‘I presume you are having normal sexual relations with your fiancée?’

I took offence at this and said, ‘Are you asking me if I am a sexual deviant?’

He said, ‘No, you have misunderstood me.’ And he turned to Marigold and said, ‘Is there pain on intercourse?’

She replied, ‘No physical pain.’

I sat with her for another hour, until her mother and father turned up.

*

Netta gave Marigold half a dozen cards. One was an invitation to Tania Braithwaite’s New Year’s Eve fancy dress party.

Marigold looked puzzled until I explained that Tania was my ex-stepmother.

I said, ‘Don’t feel that you have to go to the party, Marigold.’

Netta said, ‘No, you must go, Mazzie. It will be something to look forward to.’

9 p.m.

I have left messages for Keith Vaz, MP, Patricia Hewitt, MP, Jim Marshall, MP, Gary Lineker, Martin Johnson, the Tigers captain, Rosemary Conley, Willie Thorne, the Lord Mayor of Leicester and the manager of Marks & Spencer, asking each of them to speak at the dinner.

I then had a brainwave and rang Wayne Wong and asked him if Engelbert Humperdinck was spending Christmas in Leicester with his family as usual.

Wayne said, ‘Mr Humperdinck’s people haven’t made a booking yet.’

While I was on the line, I asked Wayne to book a table for eight people for 7.30 tomorrow.

Wayne said, ‘We’re fully booked, Aidy. It’s Christmas Eve eve.’

He must have heard the desperation in my voice because, after listening to my pleas, he relented and said with ill grace, ‘I’ll fit you in somewhere, but you’ll have to be out by 9.30.’

Woke this morning with a black cloud of anxiety hanging above me. On the walk to work I phoned Ken Blunt and Gary Milksop and told them about the arrangements for tonight.

Ken Blunt said, ‘Did you manage to get a celebrity speaker?’

I told him that a guest would be joining us for dinner at the Imperial Dragon and that we would be going back to my loft apartment for coffee and the after-dinner speech.

The bell on the shop door never stopped ringing as customers trooped in and out. At one time there was a queue for the fire.

My parents came in. They were doing their last-minute Christmas shopping. My mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I told her to buy me rope so that I could hang myself.

She said, ‘Why are you so mardy-arsed? Unless you tell me otherwise I’m buying you two pairs of Calvin Klein underpants. I hope you are coming to Wisteria Walk for your Christmas dinner. It’ll be the last time, as we’re moving out the day after Boxing Day.’

I asked my parents what they wanted for Christmas.

My father said, ‘A sledgehammer would be useful.’

And my mother said she had run out of Clinique’s Deep Comfort Body Butter moisturizing cream.

She told me that my sister and her boyfriend, Simon,
were expected for Christmas Day and warned me to buy presents for them. And she said, ‘And Christmas Day will be the first anniversary of the new dog’s death, remember.’

My father said, ‘He ought to bloody remember. He killed it.’

I said, ‘Look, how many times do I have to tell you that I did not give the new dog that turkey bone. It jumped up and stole it from my plate!’

I asked my mother if she knew any celebrities who would be available at short notice for an engagement that evening.

She said that she knew Gary Lineker’s cousin’s ex-wife, who told amusing anecdotes about Gary when he was a little boy.

I said, ‘Unless Gary was reading Dostoevsky at a tender age, I doubt if the woman could keep the creative writing group interested.’

At 5.30 I asked Mr Carlton-Hayes if he would be the guest speaker at the creative writing group dinner.

He said, ‘My dear, what a shame. I’m hosting a drinks party for the neighbours this evening. The only person you’ll get at this late juncture is somebody who likes the sound of their own voice.’

We said simultaneously, ‘Michael Flowers.’

I checked with the mumming poster. Flowers did not have a performance that evening. I rang him immediately. Netta answered and said that her husband was at the hospital, visiting Marigold. She volunteered the information that Marigold would be discharged in the morning.

I rang Surgical 2 and asked to speak urgently to Michael Flowers. The nurse asked me if I was a relation. I said no.

She said, ‘Then I’m afraid I can’t put you through.’

I was desperate to speak to him, so I said that I was Marigold Flowers’s fiancé.

When Michael Flowers came to the phone, I explained to him that I had been badly let down at the last minute by Cherie Blair and had to find a replacement for her by 7.30 tonight. I asked him if he would do the honours.

He said, ‘As your future father-in-law, of course I’d be thrilled to help you out of your dilemma.’

He asked me if I had a message for Marigold.

I said, ‘Yes, please give her my best wishes.’

Flowers said, ‘Come, come, Adrian, you can do better than that, you love-struck swain. No need to be shy with me. Tell the girl you love her.’

What could I do, diary? I was putty in his hands.

I phoned Nigel and asked him to be my partner at the dinner. He said ungraciously, ‘Why not? It’ll save me cooking.’

I led Nigel into the restaurant, steering him by the front of his shirt. He still banged into chairs and tables on the way, and dropped his white stick twice. His language was unrepeatable. He has developed quite a temper since turning blind.

Wayne had managed to insert an extra table next to the fish tank. The lights inside the tank cast an unpleasant green glow over the table, but I could hardly complain.

Ken Blunt and his wife, Glenda, resembled middle-aged
Martians. She is a bit vulgar-looking but friendly enough.

She said, ‘I don’t mind Ken writing. It is a cheap hobby, not like golf.’

Gary Milksop’s eyes lit up when he saw Nigel. Not surprising, because Gary’s partner turned out to be a ferret-faced youth with a pencil-thin beard and ears that stuck out like mug handles.

I wish it had been possible to warn Milksop that he stood no chance with Nigel. Nigel likes horny-handed men of toil who order him about and make his life a misery.

Milksop’s friends were two serious-looking girls he said he had met at group therapy the previous month. They seemed to think that he was some kind of genius.

Flowers kept us waiting and then made an entrance, shouting, ‘I’m expected at the writers’ table.’ He was wearing a green tweed suit and a large trilby hat.

I said our celebrity guest had arrived.

Ken Blunt turned round and said, ‘It’s that gobshite from the health food shop in the market.’

Glenda Blunt put her autograph book away in her handbag.

Disappointment settled over the table like heavy snow. It was a most unsatisfactory meal. Wayne Wong kept reminding me that we had to be out by 9.30.

Ken Blunt and Michael Flowers quarrelled about Iraq. Ken is violently anti-American – Glenda told me that he won’t allow Coca-Cola in the house – and Michael Flowers claims to be a pacifist (he doesn’t know that I
know that Mr Carlton-Hayes knocked him out in that car park fight).

At one point I said that, despite his wife’s behaviour in letting the writers’ group down, I still had complete faith in Mr Blair and that the Weapons of Mass Destruction would soon be found, but that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of France.

Nigel said, ‘Or looking for a piece of turkey in this fucking turkey chow mein.’

Gary Milksop said that Iraq was about oil. His acolytes nodded and gazed at him as though he were some kind of political guru.

Nigel stubbornly refused to accept help in locating bits of turkey and continued to drop noodles down his Kenzo shirt front.

The two serious girls talked to each other but seemed reluctant to add anything to the general conversation.

Michael Flowers went into monologue mode – talk about death by anecdote. At the end of the meal he proposed a vote of thanks to me, saying, ‘We have Adrian, my future son-in-law, to thank for arranging this delightful occasion.’

Nigel gave a horrible sardonic laugh and called for champagne.

Wayne Wong brought over a magnum bottle of Pomagne and nine glasses and said, ‘What are you celebrating?’

Nigel said, ‘Adrian’s engaged to Marigold Flowers.’

Wayne Wong said, ‘No, you’re joking me. Not that thin woman who’s scared of the fish?’

I said hurriedly, ‘Wayne, this is Marigold’s father, Michael.’

Wayne briefly shook Flowers’s hand, then said to me, ‘It’s 9.25, so you’ll have to drink up quick.’

When our glasses were charged, Nigel began to sing Cliff Richard’s winning Eurovision song, ‘Congratulations’.

The other diners in the room joined in and Ken Blunt pulled me to my feet to acknowledge the congratulations of the room.

One of the serious girls took a photograph of me and Michael Flowers embracing and shaking hands. She promised to send me a copy via Gary Milksop.

It seems that, against my will, I have become officially engaged to Marigold Flowers.

Gielgud and the other swans were gathered together in a corner of the car park. I pointed them out to Michael Flowers, who said, ‘Methinks we should proceed with caution. A swan can break a man’s arm, you know.’

We sat in Flowers’s Range Rover and waited for the others to arrive.

It was impossible to avoid the swan shit on the stairs and inevitably some of it was trampled on to my floorboards.

I made coffee and gave the usual warning about the glass wall of the lavatory. My warning did not inhibit Michael Flowers, whose urination sounded like the Zambezi in spate.

Nigel and Gary Milksop sat next to each other on the white sofa. The two serious girls sat cross-legged on
the floor. Ken Blunt and his wife lolled awkwardly on the futon. I brought the chairs in from the balcony to a chorus of swans hissing. Ferret Face took one chair and Michael Flowers the other. I was quite happy leaning against the kitchen counter. I just wanted the awful night to be over.

Flowers kept us waiting. He assumed the posture of Rodin’s
The Thinker
first, then lifted his head and said, ‘Before I address you, can we move closer together and form a circle.’

A lot of awkward furniture shifting took place, and Flowers said, ‘I want you to hold hands and close your eyes, and feel the atmosphere in this room.’

I closed my eyes and held Ken Blunt’s and Ferret Face’s hands and felt embarrassment, suspicion and boredom.

Flowers intoned what he said was a Buddhist mantra, which he urged us to join in with.

At the end Ken Blunt pulled his wife to her feet and said, ‘We’ve got to go home now to let the dog out.’

As I saw them down the stairs, Ken said, ‘I’d sooner dance barefoot on drawing pins than stay to hear what he’s got to say.’

When I went back into the room Flowers was saying, ‘I was reading Voltaire at six and Tolstoy at seven.’

Gary Milksop lisped, ‘Have you ever written a novel, Mr Flowers?’

Flowers said that in the 1960s he had written ‘the definitive English novel’. He had asked his dear friend Philip Larkin to read the manuscript. According to Flowers, Larkin had written back to say, ‘
Hello to All This
is the novel of the age. Humbler writers such as myself,
Amis et al. should push our pens aside and weep. Mike, my good friend, you are a genius. Every publisher in London will be beating a path to your door.’

Nigel said, ‘I know I am just an ignorant gay-boy, but I’ve never heard of
Hello to All This
.’

Flowers bit his lower lip and turned his head, as though trying to control strong emotions. ‘No,’ he said, in what I imagine he thought was a hollow-sounding voice. ‘My first wife, Conchita, burned my manuscript.’

Gary Milksop, Ferret Face and the two serious girls gasped in horror.

Nigel said, ‘And it was the only copy?’

Flowers nodded. ‘It was handwritten in purple ink on fine hand-blocked paper.’

Nigel’s lip curled. ‘And you sent this through the post to Philip Larkin?’

Flowers bridled. ‘The postal workers of this country are the finest workers in the land. I trusted them implicitly.’

I said, laying a trap, ‘But you still have the Larkin letter?’

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Conchita destroyed everything that was precious to me.’

One of the serious girls broke her silence and said, ‘I did my MA on Philip Larkin – ‘Philip Larkin, Uber-Nerd’ – I read everything there was to read but I don’t remember him mentioning Michael Flowers.’

Flowers smiled and sighed. ‘You dear sweet girl, poor old Phil’s papers were burned.’