Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction (3 page)

I said I was Adrian Mole from the bookshop and would like to speak to Ms Flowers.

The man shouted, ‘Marigold!Chap from the bookshop.’

So her name is Marigold Flowers. No wonder she didn’t give me her full name. She took some time to come to the phone. While I waited I could hear Rolf Harris singing ‘Jake the Peg’ in the background. When that came to an end, ‘Two Little Boys’ started up. Was it possible that somebody in Marigold’s family had a long-playing record, cassette, CD or video of Rolf Harris singing and was actually
playing
it?

Eventually Marigold said quietly, ‘Hello. Sorry I took so long. I was at a tricky stage with the shepherd’s pie.’

‘Eating it or making it?’ I joked.

‘Oh, making it,’ she said gravely. ‘If one doesn’t distribute the carrot rings evenly, it throws the whole thing out of kilter.’

I agreed and said that she was obviously a perfectionist, like me. I told her about the titles I had tracked down. She said that she already had a copy of
Soft Furnishings for Your Doll’s House
, but she sounded enthusiastic about the
Miniature Embroidery
book and asked me to order a copy for her.

To keep her on the phone, I asked her if dolls went in for loft-type homes. She said that she would get in touch with the National Association of Miniature Enthusiasts, of which she was a member, and that it could be her next project.

When I put the telephone down I felt that old feeling, that mixture of joy and fear, I feel just before I fall in love.

There was an incredible coincidence last night. My mother defrosted a shepherd’s pie she had made some weeks earlier. The carrots were chaotically distributed. Surely this is a sign. I asked my mother what had compelled her to take the shepherd’s pie out of the freezer. She said, ‘Hunger.’

A letter from Glenn.

Royal Logistics Corps

Deepcut Barracks

Surrey

Dear Dad

Hope you are well. I am well. I’m sorry I have not wrote to you before. I have been very busy doing my basic training. They keep us going 24/7. It is nothing but shouting and being sarcastic. Some of the lads cry in the dormitories at night. Sometimes I feel like walking out and coming home, Dad. I hope I stick it. Will you come to my passing-out parade on Friday November 1st? I would like Mum and Grandma and Grandad to come. I know William can’t come because he is in Africa. I think you was wrong, Dad, to send William to live with his mum. It was you who brought him up. You should have kept him here in England with you. I know Jo Jo is nice,
but William can’t speak Nigerian and he doesn’t like the food. I seen Pandora on the telly the other night. I told some of the lads that she used to be my dad’s girlfriend, but nobody believed me because she is posh. They are taking the piss out of me now, Dad, and calling me Baron Bott. That is all the news.

Warmest wishes,

Your son, Glenn

I just remembered, tell Grandma Pauline she has got to wear a hat. It is the law.

Why did he need to add ‘your son’? How many other Glenns do I know who are in the army?

I showed my mother Glenn’s letter.

She said, ‘I’ll wear the mink hat I’ve had in the wardrobe for the last thirty years. There aren’t likely to be any anti-fur protesters on an army parade ground, are there?’

A middle-aged fat man came into the shop this morning and asked for a ‘clean copy’ of
Couples
by John Updike.

I said, quite wittily I thought, a clean copy of
Couples
is an oxymoron surely.

Fatty said irritably, ‘Have you got it or not?’

Mr Carlton-Hayes had heard our conversation and was already searching through American Hardback Fiction. When he found
Couples
, he delivered it into Fatty’s podgy hands, saying, ‘A fascinating social document about the
sexual mores of people with rather too much time on their hands, I think.’

Fatty mumbled that he would take it. As he was leaving the shop, I saw him look at me and distinctly heard him mutter, ‘Moron.’ Though, thinking about it later, he could have said, ‘Oxymoron.’

Nigel called in this afternoon after his eye clinic appointment at the Royal Hospital. He is supposed to be my best friend, but it is over six months since I saw him in the flesh.

The last time I spoke to him was on the phone. He had said that he couldn’t bear the gay clubs in the provinces, where they huddle together for validation and companionship, instead of like the London clubbing scene, ‘the music and the sex’.

I had said that there was more to life than music and sex.

He’d replied, ‘That’s the difference between us, Moley.’

I was shocked at how much he has changed. He is still handsome, but his face looks a bit ragged around the edges, and it’s obviously been a while since he’d seen his hair colourist.

He was still visibly shocked at his recent bad news. He said, ‘The consultant examined my eyes and was quiet for a horribly long time, and then he said, “Did you drive yourself here, Mr Hetherington?” I told him that I had driven up from London. He said, “I’m afraid I can’t allow you to drive back. Your sight has deteriorated so much that I’m going to put you on the partially sighted register.”’

I desperately searched for something positive to say, but could only come up with, ‘You’ve always enjoyed wearing dark glasses, Nigel. Now you can wear them all year round, night and day, without people thinking you’re a prat.’

Nigel leaned against the bargain books table, dislodging a pile of unread
Finnegans Wakes
. I would have helped him to a chair had there been one in the shop.

‘How can I live without my car, Moley?’ Nigel said. ‘How am I going to get back to London? And how can I be a media analyst when I can’t read the fucking papers?’

I said that if Nigel was partially sighted, it was probably a good job that he wasn’t driving down the M1 and negotiating London traffic.

Nigel said, ‘I have been making a lot of mistakes at work lately. And it’s months since I’ve been able to read normal print without a magnifying glass.’

I rang Computa Cabs and asked for a taxi to take Nigel to his parents’ house. The controller said that most of the taxi drivers were at the mosque, praying for peace, but that he would send one ASAP.

While we waited, I suggested to Nigel that he learns Braille.

He said, ‘I’ve never been good with my hands, Moley.’

I asked Nigel if he could still see colours.

He said, ‘I can’t see anything much.’

I was very shocked. I had been hoping that Nigel would help me decorate my loft apartment. He used to be good with colours.

I helped him into the cab and told the driver to take
him to 5 Bill Gates Close, The Homestead Estate, near Glenfield.

Nigel said in a bad-tempered way, ‘I can still speak, Moley!’

I hope he is not going to become one of those bitter blind people, like Mr Rochester in
Jane Eyre
.

I phoned Johnny Bond at Latesun Ltd this morning and we wrangled over the £57.10.

He said sneeringly, ‘Has your mate the Prime Minister coughed up any proof yet?’

I replied that Mr Blair was staying with Mr Putin in his hunting lodge, trying to persuade him to join Britain and America to fight Saddam Hussein.

Bond said, ‘He’ll never get Russia, Germany and France to back his illegal little war.’

Miniature Embroidery for the Georgian Doll’s House
was delivered by FedEx this morning. Mr Carlton-Hayes was very impressed.

I said, ‘If we had a computer in the shop, Mr Carlton-Hayes, we could order books online and double our turnover.’

‘But Adrian, dear,’ he said, ‘we tick along very nicely,
don’t we? You and I earn a living wage, we cover our expenses, and we spend our days surrounded by our blessed books. Aren’t we content just as we are?’

It was not a rhetorical question. He genuinely wanted to know. I mumbled something about how much I liked the job, but, diary, I long to modernize this place. We haven’t even got an electric till.

At lunchtime I walked to the marketplace. Marigold was in Country Organics, prescribing lima beans to a miserable-looking woman with low-level depression. When the woman had gone, clutching her recycled paper bag, I said to Marigold, ‘I thought I’d deliver it in person.’

She took the book out of the FedEx envelope and shouted, ‘Mummy, it’s arrived.’

A tall woman with a face like a pretty pig joined us at the counter. I have never seen anybody so pink. Either she has a dermatological condition or she has had a recent accident with a sun lamp.

I said, ‘How do you do, Mrs Flowers?’ and held out my hand.

She said, ‘I won’t shake your hand if you don’t mind.’

Marigold looked uncomfortable and said, ‘Mummy thinks that hand-shaking is an outmoded practice.’

Mrs Flowers took the book and leafed through it, narrowing her squinty eyes even further. Marigold watched her anxiously, as if awaiting her verdict. I began to feel a little nervous myself. I always feel uncomfortable in the presence of women who are taller than me.

I said, ‘I hadn’t realized the book was for you, Mrs Flowers.’

She replied, ‘It isn’t for me, but Marigold is easily taken
advantage of. How much are you going to charge her for this?’

I said that the book cost $21.95 and that the cost of postage and packaging was a further $25.

Mrs Flowers said, ‘How much is that in good English money?’

I handed her the invoice.

‘£29.75! For a little book with only 168 pages?’

I said, ‘But it’s been flown from America in three days, Mrs Flowers.’

She threw the book on to the counter and said to Marigold, ‘If you want to squander your money, then go ahead, but it makes nonsense of me and Daddy scrimping and saving to try and keep the business going.’

I said to Marigold, ‘Perhaps I ought to take it back.’

And she said quietly, ‘Perhaps you should. I’m sorry.’

When I got back to the shop, I told Mr Carlton-Hayes that
Miniature Embroidery for the Georgian Doll’s House
was unwanted by the customer.

He said, ‘Never mind, Adrian. I’m sure there must be somebody else in Leicester who is interested in miniature Georgian-style embroidery.’

Moon’s First Quarter

An email from Rosie:

Aidy, have you seen the news about the bombing in Bali? My friend Emma is on her way to Australia via Bali. Can
you phone the emergency number for me please – I’ve got no credits on my mobile. Her name is Emma Lexton and she is twenty.

I emailed her back:

Information is only being given to next of kin. I am sending you £10 by first-class post. Don’t give it to Simon. Please ring Mum. She is worried about you.

No replies from the Right Honourable Tony Blair, Jordan or Beckham.

Dear Mr Blair

Perhaps my letter of September 29th has been mislaid or overlooked in the confusion of these turbulent times. I enclose a copy and would appreciate an early reply. My travel company, Latesun Ltd, are still refusing to return my deposit of £57.10.

I remain, sir,

Your most humble and obedient servant,

A. A. Mole

Only four of us turned up for the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group meeting tonight. There was me, Gary Milksop, Gladys Fordingbridge and Ken Blunt. We met as usual in Gladys’s front room, hemmed in by cat ornaments and photographs of her vast family.

I opened the proceedings by reading from my dramatic monologue, ‘Moby-Dick Speaks’, wherein we get the whale’s point of view on being harpooned.

After a few moments Gladys interrupted me, saying, ‘I can’t make head nor tail of it. What’s going on? Is it supposed to be the fish talking or what?’

Ken Blunt stubbed his cigarette out into a cat ashtray and said, ‘Gladys, a whale is not a fish, it’s a mammal.’

I continued, but I could tell that I had lost my audience.

At the end, Gary Milksop twittered, ‘I liked the bit about Captain Ahab looking like a man who had been born without a soul.’

Gladys read her latest crappy cat poem – something about ‘I love my little kitty because she is so pretty…’ Naturally, because she is eighty-six, this received a round of applause.

Milksop followed with the latest chapter of the Proustian novel he has been writing and rewriting for fifteen years. It took 2,000 words to describe his first memory of eating a HobNob.

Milksop cries if he gets negative criticism.

Ken Blunt said, ‘Well done, Gary. I like the bit about the HobNob melting into the tea.’

I informed the group that I had not yet managed to arrange a guest speaker for our dinner on December 23rd, but that I had several irons in the fire.

Ken said he hadn’t written anything for this week’s meeting because he had been doing double shifts at Walkers Crisps. They are introducing a new line.

Gladys said, ‘What flavour will they be?’

Ken said, ‘I’ve signed a confidentiality agreement.’

She said, ‘It’s hardly
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
, is it? It’s only a few bleeding crisps.’

I changed the subject by telling them that I was moving into a loft apartment at the Old Battery Factory, Rat Wharf, soon, and that in future meetings could be held there.

Gladys said, ‘My husband worked there once. He spilt acid down his front. It only just missed his manhood.’

Gladys was not who I had in mind when I started the group.

Marigold came in at lunchtime and bought
Miniature Embroidery for the Georgian Doll’s House
but asked me not to tell her mother. She said that she would keep the book in the attic, where she kept most of her doll’s houses. She said that neither of her parents was capable of climbing the loft ladder.

I said that I would love to see her doll’s house collection and was perfectly capable of climbing a loft ladder.

She said that her parents were ‘funny’ about visitors.