Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction (26 page)

I fell silent.

Marigold asked me who I would choose for my best man.

I said, ‘I suppose it ought to be Nigel. He’s my longest and best friend.’

Netta said, ‘Is that the blind chap? But won’t he make a mess of the best man’s duties? I mean, fall over the altar and get the rings mixed up?’

‘How about Parvez then?’ I said.

‘But isn’t he a Muslim? Do you not think it might be a little insensitive to ask him to attend a Christian church at this politically sensitive time, when the two cultures are at war?’

Marigold said, ‘Bruce Henderson is very nice. Wouldn’t he make a good best man?’

I was stunned into saying, ‘Brain-box Henderson has never been a close friend. Why can’t I have a best woman? I’m sure Pandora Braithwaite would be delighted to do the honours.’

*

Marigold wanted to stay for the afternoon but I told her that I had arranged to visit Nigel and read the Sunday papers to him. This was a lie. However, I needed to talk to somebody about the quagmire I was drowning in.

Nigel was in the granny annexe with his guide dog, Graham, listening to
Gardeners’ Question Time
. When I asked him why (he once said that gardens made him physically ill), he said, ‘I’m not interested in fucking plants, flowers or pest control. I’m trying to work out from what they say to each other who’s shagging who.’

I said, ‘Who?’

He said, ‘Matthew Biggs, Pippa Greenwood and Bob Flowerdew.’

We listened together as a woman in the audience from the Kidderminster Allotment Society asked the panel how to tell a male from a female holly bush.

Nigel cackled. His laughter has a manic tone to it lately.

I said, ‘You ought to get out more, Nigel.’

He said, ‘I know. I’m waiting for Graham to learn the Highway Code.’

I started to read an article from the
Observer
to him about America and Britain bombing Iraq in an apparent bid to soften up the county’s defences ahead of war. But Nigel became so angry and so foul-mouthed and so abusive to me personally that I stopped.

I changed the subject completely and invited him to the engagement party next Sunday.

He said, ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Moley.’ And cackled again.

Sometimes I think he’s seriously unhinged. I didn’t feel able to talk to him about my problems.

Bank of Scotland MasterCard statement arrived this morning. I shouldn’t have bought that seven-piece real leather luggage set from Marks & Spencer last week. I regret it now; I never go anywhere. I owe MasterCard £8,201.83. The minimum payment is £164.04.

I owe:

This is £24.19 more than I take home each month after tax and insurance. I am drowning in a sea of debt. I will have to get a better-paid job.

Mr Brown has earmarked £1.75 billion to fund the war.

The foreign ministers of France, Russia and Germany released a joint declaration stating that they will ‘not allow’ a resolution authorizing military action to pass the UN Security Council.

So Mr Blair and Mr Bush stand alone against tyranny. Our Prime Minister has been making the speeches of his lifetime. His nostrils flare, his chin sets in a determined way and his eyes blaze with passion. He reminds me lately of Robert Powell in the television series I saw about Jesus when I was a boy. What an actor Mr Blair would have made. The National Theatre’s loss is the British public’s gain.

Mia Fox has gone skiing in the Alps so I was able to watch the broadcast by President Bush on CNN. He said that war is very close.

The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has issued an ultimatum that unless Saddam ‘demonstrates full, unconditional, immediate and active cooperation by March 17th, Iraq will be invaded’ by British troops.

Sharon came into the shop with Karan in his baby buggy. The kid looks more like William Hague every day. She said that she cannot sleep for thinking about Glenn.

My father rang today on the pretext that they had lost Nigel’s mobile number. But it was clear to me that my mother was regretting her interference in my life and was anxious to have a reconciliation. After I had given him Nigel’s number he said, ‘Bring Marigold to the Piggeries
for tea tomorrow and we will try to get to know her better.’

Animal was knocking down one of the pigsties when we arrived. He was swirling the sledgehammer around his head as though he was competing in the Highland Games.

My parents made a great effort to make Marigold feel at home by giving her the best folding chair and offering her a baked potato cooked in the ashes of the bonfire that burns perpetually. They even got up and walked downwind of Marigold when they had a cigarette, in deference to her pregnancy.

My father asked when Marigold would be having a scan. Marigold said she didn’t believe in scans because they ‘desanctified the mystery of the womb’.

My father said,
sotto voce
, to my mother, ‘The only bleedin’ mystery is how she got pregnant in the first place.’

I was slightly embarrassed by Marigold’s appearance. She has taken to wearing Birkenstock sandals. When I discreetly complained of this to my mother, she said, ‘Adrian, Birkenstocks are so cutting edge they almost slash the feet.’

I asked her to translate.

She said, ‘Birkenstocks are
très chic
.’

But they do not look
très chic
on Marigold; they look frumpy. She looks like a German
Hausfrau
in them. I suggested to her that it might help to lessen the
orthopaedic nature of the sandals if she painted her toenails, but Marigold said, ‘Only sluts paint their toenails.’

Unfortunately, she said this in front of my mother; she was not to know that underneath her big boots my mother’s toenails are painted with Chanel’s Scarlet Plum.

In an attempt at female bonding, my mother indicated the bare-chested Animal and asked, ‘Are you a fan of the six-pack, Marigold?’

Marigold glanced at Animal and said, ‘I don’t care for men with muscles. I prefer slim, sensitive men with smooth bodies, long hair and delicate features.’

My mother laughed and said, ‘Christ, Marigold, you’ve just described Kylie Minogue. What are you doing with Adrian?’

A wall of the pigsty crashed down and my parents applauded. Animal stood back and looked as happy as a toddler who had just demolished a tower of wooden bricks.

Marigold asked, ‘What are you going to do with all that rubble?’

‘Make a rockery,’ said my father, ‘with a central water feature.’

Marigold pointed out that there was no electricity with which to activate the water pump.

My mother said, ‘Don’t stamp on my husband’s dream, he’s a visionary.’ She put her arm around my father’s bent back and said, ‘You can see that waterfall, can’t you, George? You can imagine the sound of it as it trickles down the rocks into the pond below. You can see the ripples spreading out across the still, quiet surface.’

My father’s eyes widened. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I can see it
all, Pauline. We’re sitting by the side of the pond on that Homebase patio set, the green one with four chairs, table and parasol for £199 all told. The sun is setting and we’ve got a drink in our hands, and our fags are lit and there’s no mossies.’

Marigold said, ‘But Adrian told me that there is no water on the site either. How will you make your water feature without water?’

My mother said, ‘Animal is going to dig a ditch half a mile long which will connect us to the nearest water main.’

I asked them how much Animal was charging them.

My mother said, ‘£3.50 an hour.’

Marigold said, ‘Aren’t you breaking the law? That’s less than the minimum wage.’

My mother said, ‘He lives in our tent and I provide him with three meals a day. Plus he’s company for George.’

I said, ‘But he never speaks.’

My mother bellowed back, ‘No, but he listens to all those boring anecdotes of your father’s that I’m sick of hearing.’

Marigold asked my parents if they were coming to Beeby on the Wold tomorrow evening to celebrate the engagement and discuss the wedding arrangements.

My mother said angrily, looking at me, ‘It’s the first I’ve heard about it.’

I told her that it had completely slipped my mind.

My father said, ‘Is there a dress code, Marigold?’

Marigold said, ‘No, just come as you are. Well, perhaps not exactly as you are.’

I was glad she made the slight qualification, because
my father was dressed in tattered army-surplus clothing and decrepit boots, and once again looked like a soldier retreating from Stalingrad.

Animal sat down on a lump of concrete and began playing with the dog. He looked like Lenny fondling the rabbit in Steinbeck’s
Of Mice and Men
. I hope he doesn’t absent-mindedly strangle it.

A wind blew up and Marigold shivered and said she wanted to go home.

My father said, ‘We’re thinking about wind farming. All this bleeding wind is going to waste. It’s the best wind in the world; it comes all the way from the Urals.’ His few remaining grey hairs were being blown about his head. He looked like he had a grey halo.

Marigold said she thought that wind farms disfigured the landscape.

I took her home.

Watched the morning politics show to check on war news. Clare Short was on. She is threatening to resign from the Cabinet if Britain and America invade Iraq. She claims that we would be breaking international law unless there is authorization from the United Nations.

I was disappointed to see that, despite my advice, she is still wearing one of her scarves.

This evening’s engagement party and the subsequent discussion about the wedding was the most difficult social
occasion I’ve ever been involved in. At least a third of the guests had made it clear to me beforehand that they disapproved of my fiancée. Even Fatima, who is the sweetest of women, said, ‘It will be a marriage made in hell, Moley. She ain’t right in the head.’

My mother does not seem to have any normal clothes lately. She either looks like Bob the Builder or somebody in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot.

My father was wearing what he calls his best ‘slacks’, a blazer and a navy-blue baseball cap. When I asked him to remove his cap inside the house, my mother said, ‘He can’t because of the “I am a nutter” tattoo. That’s why I’m wearing a hat, to keep him company.’

When Netta and my mother met, Netta said, ‘How very brave you are, Mrs Mole. So few women would have the confidence to wear a hat in the evening.’

I could tell that my mother regretted wearing the hat. She kept blowing the black feathers away from her face all night.

My father panicked when he saw the food on the buffet table and whispered to me that there was nothing he could eat. ‘It’s all mucked-about-with stuff,’ he said. I told him to relax and pointed out that there was bread, butter and cheese.

‘Goat’s cheese,’ he complained. ‘It smells like it’s been festering in a goat’s armpit.’

Michael Flowers did not make his entrance until the guests were assembled. There was Nigel, in Paul Smith and dark glasses; Parvez and Fatima in their traditional clothes; Brain-box Henderson in his Norman Wisdom
suit; Marigold in a burgundy velvet leisure outfit; Poppy in a 1970s op-art retro dress and white boots; various Morris men and Morris women in their more prosaic civilian clothes; the woman vicar in a dog collar and black trouser suit; Michael Flowers’s sister, a thin bitter woman with a wispy beard; and Alexandra, Marigold’s old school friend, a timid woman with a square jaw who seemed to be afraid of Marigold.

Michael Flowers clapped his hands and asked for silence. He sounds more like Donald Sinden every day. He said, ‘May I crave your indulgence and ask you to wait a little longer before we start the party proper. We’re waiting for a very important guest, Marigold’s sister Daisy. She is on a train that is crawling into Leicester station as I speak. She will jump into a taxi and be with us in approximately half an hour.’

When he said Daisy’s name, my heart constricted and I almost fell down in a swoon. Every fibre, every atom, every corpuscle of my body wanted to see Daisy. But I also wanted to run screaming into the dark night so as to put a distance between me and her. I said, without realizing that I was speaking out loud, ‘Why in God’s name is Daisy coming?’

Margaret, the woman vicar, happened to be at my elbow and said, ‘Isn’t she one of the bridesmaids?’

We then had a very stilted conversation about the marriage service. Marigold joined us and said that she would like the words ‘love, honour and obey’ to be incorporated, and explained that she felt ‘feminism had gone too far’.

I thought that the vicar looked a little alarmed at this
request and, in a subsequent conversation, found out that she was a radical and was hoping to ‘make bishop’ before she turned fifty.

The minutes waiting for Daisy’s entrance were agonizing to me. I was embarrassed because my mother’s hat was shedding feathers all over the buffet, and I was forced to excuse myself four times and go to the lavatory.

When I returned after my fourth visit, Michael Flowers said, ‘Trouble with the waterworks, Adrian? Have you tried an infusion of mustard seeds? Give it a go for six weeks, but if you’re still pointing Percy at the porcelain every ten minutes, I know a good urology chap.’

I excused myself, saying I had to go to the lavatory again. After I had bolted myself in, I washed my hands with lavender soap and stared at my mendacious face in the mirror above the washbasin. I then looked through the books that Michael Flowers kept on a shelf next to the lavatory.
Knots
by R. D. Laing,
Ulysses, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Mein Kampf
and
The Lord of the Rings
. None of them was worth anything. But I noticed that Flowers had annotated the margins of
Mein Kampf
with his indecipherable scribbling. There were a lot of exclamation marks.