Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction (32 page)

My mother gave me a lump of wood with a depression in the middle. I asked her what it was and she said, ‘It’s a receptacle. Animal carved it out of an old timber from the original pigsty.’

I said, ‘What’s it for?’

She said, ‘It’s for putting things in: apples, cufflinks, car keys, whatever.’

After I had taken my mother home, I called round to see Nigel. Nigel’s mother was in the granny annexe pressing his shirts. The poor woman could hardly reach the ironing board, even though it was on its lowest setting. She was only four foot ten when I was a teenager, and she has shrunk over the years. Apparently, she has to sit on three cushions to reach the steering wheel in the car.

Nigel had bought me a new polyphonic ring-tone for my mobile phone. He made me audition the various sounds. There was Eskimo Nose-Singing, a dog barking, a lion roaring, a sheep bleating, a whale singing, a baby crying, the brakes of a London bus, a thrush singing, Bach’s suites, ‘Hungarian Rhapsody’,
Carmen
,
Jesus Christ Superstar
, ‘Jerusalem’, a Zulu chant and a Dalek shouting, ‘Ring! Ring!’

After long deliberation I chose the Zulu chant.

Got home and switched on my television, listening on the headphones because Mia Fox was at home. The Allied
bombers are making one thousand sorties a day. Shock and Awe does not appear to have worked so far. The people of Baghdad have not taken to the streets. Not even to flee them.

I want Daisy so badly my toes curl whenever I think of her.

Gielgud and his wife, whom from now on I will call Margot, after Margot Fonteyn, the ballet dancer, are building a monolithic nest directly opposite my balcony. They are using a mixture of natural and manmade materials. Reeds, twigs, grass, bits of old rope, a pair of nylon knickers left on the towpath and what appears to be a torn up copy of the
Spectator
, all held together with mud.

When I got home from work both my credit card bills had arrived. I was shocked: my MasterCard is £200 over the agreed limit of £10,000. They are demanding the £200 immediately and a further £190 within twenty-eight days. Barclaycard wrote to ask if I wanted to join their wine club, and asked for a minimum payment of £222, also to be paid within twenty-eight days. I ticked the box to order a selection of twelve bottles of New World wines.

A letter from Robbie, written in a good clear hand.

Dear Mr Mole

Thank you very much for the birthday card and also the books. I would be very grateful if you could see your way to sending some more. I have enclosed a cheque to cover the cost of the books and postage. Glenn got me a cake, made by the lads in the field kitchen. I don’t know how they managed it, because things are a bit tricky here.

At the time of writing I am trying to open a tin of pineapple with Jerome K. Jerome. I have read bits to Glenn, but he only laughs at the stuff about the dog, Montmorency.

Yours sincerely

Robbie

I pointed out to Mr Carlton-Hayes today that we are not maximizing the rooms behind and above the shop.

He said, ‘But I have no desire to expand the business that dramatically. Think of the extra staff that we would have to employ, and the commensurate paperwork. I’m too old to burden myself with such worries.’

I reminded him that he was paying thousands in business rates for what was almost empty space.

I watched from the balcony tonight as Gielgud and Margot put the finishing touches to their nest. They don’t know how lucky they are. It costs them nothing and they don’t have to go to IKEA.

I replied to Robbie’s letter today.

Dear Robbie

I’m so pleased you are enjoying
Three Men in a Boat
. It is one of my own favourites.

I would be happy to send you some more books.

Do you trust me to choose them for you, or do you have favourite authors?

Give Glenn my love and tell him to wear his helmet at all times, and please do the same yourself.

Best wishes, keep safe.

Mr Mole

Today we closed the shop and went to do a valuation at a large Victorian villa in Leicester’s red-light district. I was reluctant to take my car, so we took a taxi. As we lurched over the speed bumps and negotiated the chicanes of the mean streets, I pointed out the sights: the crack delivery boys in their hooded tops speeding along the pavements on their BMXs, the teenage prostitutes shivering in their cropped tops and hot pants, their arms clasped around their bodies.

Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘Poor creatures.’ He could have been an etymologist reluctantly pinning specimens to a board.

We were met on the doorstep of number eleven, Crimea Road, by Lawrence Mortimer, son and executor of Mrs Emily Mortimer, who had died in the house some five weeks previously. Mortimer threw the cigarette he had been smoking on to the pavement and said brusquely, ‘It’s a mess in there. My mother stopped doing any housework years ago.’

We followed him into the large hallway. Every visible wall was lined with bookshelves. Books were stacked on the floor, on furniture, on chairs, on the kitchen table and next to the draining board. The stairs were a rat run of books. They were in the bath and filled every bedroom.

Lawrence Mortimer said, ‘As you can tell, my mother went doolally years ago. Me and my wife tried to get her certified in 1999, but her doctor said collecting books wasn’t a reason for having her put away.’

‘Indeed not,’ said Mr Carlton-Hayes, ‘or I should have been confined to a padded cell many years ago.’

I could hardly breathe for excitement; one of the bedrooms I wandered into was filled entirely with children’s books in plastic covers. I prayed that Mr Carlton-Hayes would not display his own excitement.

‘I need ’em moving quick,’ said Mortimer. ‘There’s some good furniture and carpets under these bleedin’ books.’

We climbed up into the attic rooms: they were chock-a-block with crime-fiction paperbacks. Lawrence Mortimer kicked at a pile of Ed McBains and said, ‘I’ve got plans for this house. I reckon I can get at least four asylum-seekers to a room.’

To my astonishment, Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘Oh,
I’m sure you could squeeze at least six to a room, Mr Mortimer. These asylum-seeker chappies are usually on the thin side.’

His irony was lost on Mortimer, who cocked his head and resurveyed the room as if trying to visualize six bed spaces on the attic floor.

I asked Mortimer if he was a reader. ‘Not for pleasure,’ he said.

‘So you don’t want to go through and select a few favourites?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I just want rid.’

It was the first time I had been to a valuation where the owner of the books had offered to pay the bookseller to take the books away.

In the taxi going back to the shop, Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘He’s such an unpleasant fellow that I don’t feel the least bit guilty. We’re saving those books from the skip.’

We allowed Mortimer to pay us £50 to take all the books away. The taxi driver congratulated us on our obvious good spirits; we could not stop smiling. The Mortimer collection was the bookseller’s equivalent of finding gold in the Klondike. One thing haunts me though: Lawrence Mortimer told me that his mother had died in bed with a book in her hand. When I asked the title of the book he said, ‘I dunno, it was just a book. What’s it to you?’

When I replied, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living,’ he said, defensively, ‘I saw her at Christmas and Easter. I’m a busy man.’

Mr Carlton-Hayes has enlisted the help of an ex-bookseller friend of his called Bernard Hopkins to help catalogue the Mortimer collection. According to Mr Carlton-Hayes, Hopkins is an alcoholic who drank a thriving business away; he is perfectly competent and congenial providing he can down a bottle of Absolut Vodka a day. It’s when he can’t get it or afford it that problems arise.

I received the following letter from the council today re: Swan Harassment.

Neighbourhood Conflict Co-ordinator

Leicester City Council

New Walk

Leicester
LE1

April 4th 2003

Dear Mr Mole

Your letter regarding the nuisance you have experienced from your neighbour, Mr Swan, has been passed to this department, the Neighbourhood Conflict Unit.

We offer a reconciliation and conflict-resolution service.

You and Mr Swan would be brought face to face to talk about your differences. You would meet on neutral territory, and our Conflict Resolution Facilitator would be present.

If you wish to avail yourself of this service, please telephone, write or contact me by email on nuisanceneighbour.gov.uk.

I do not have Mr Swan’s address. If you send it to me, I will contact him immediately.

Yours sincerely

Trixie Meadows

Neighbourhood Conflict Co-ordinator

US Marines toppled Saddam’s statue today. I watched it on television with the sound turned down.

Mia Fox complained the other night about the
Archers
sound seepage. She said, ‘I do not want my thoughts interrupted by ludicrous storylines. I don’t believe for a minute that Lynda Snell would give Robert two llamas for his birthday.’

Michael Flowers sent the work-experience boy round with another note.

Adrian

You cannot possibly know, since you have not enquired, but Marigold has been barely able to walk, due to extreme fatigue. However, she has bravely said that she will make a huge effort to go to Caprion April 16th, as she does not want to let Netta down.

I have paid for their Italian sojourn in full. I am asking you to pay your share, today, as promised.

M. Flowers

Mr Carlton-Hayes is baffled as to why I am paying for Marigold’s holiday. I reminded him that Marigold is having my baby.

At lunchtime, I went round to my building society and withdrew £1,000 of my precious life savings.

The United States published a pack of fifty-five playing cards today, identifying its most wanted suspects. Saddam is the Ace of Spades.

Posted Glenn’s birthday card and present at the post office round the corner from Rat Wharf. The postmaster was telling an old lady that his post office was being closed down and that she would have to go to another post office in future.

I waited impatiently while she said, ‘But I can’t manage the bus. The steps are too high.’

After a lot more tedious lamentation from her about the good old days, I gave him my parcel. He read the BFPO address and said, ‘Kuwait? You must be worried about your son, sir.’

I said that I was hoping that the war would be over soon. He told me that his son had joined the army but had left after three days, after he was called a Paki bastard on the parade ground.

I said he should have reported it to an officer.

He said, ‘It was an officer who insulted my son.’

I apologized on behalf of the British Army, signed his petition and said that I hoped the government would reprieve his post office.

Mia Fox knocked on my door five minutes after I got home from work. She said, ‘I heard you put your key in the door and switch your kettle on. They tried to deliver your wine this afternoon. I took it in for you.’

I went upstairs to collect the wine and was disturbed to see that if she stood on the far right of her balcony she could see my glass-bricked bathroom. I must get those curtains made.

In bed I was tormented by a vision of the old lady in the post office trying and failing to step on to a bus. I am obviously suffering from some sort of anxiety condition.

I must make an effort to register with a doctor.

A terrible thing happened this morning. While I was out in the back making coffee, a young man was knocked down and killed by a delivery van outside the shop. It could easily have been me – obliterated by a collision of time, space and bad luck. How fragile our lives are. How easily they are taken away.

In the afternoon, weeping girls started laying cellophane-wrapped flowers on the pavement where he died.

I read some of the tribute cards on my way home. Even the uneducated turn to poetry when they have to express extreme emotion. One read:

Maz, you were a

lovely lad.

Always nice and

never Sad.

And another.

God said, ‘Maz, it’s time to go,’

So you went

We’ll miss you so

A yob in a hooded top laid a bunch of orange carnations on Maz’s shrine and asked if I was Maz’s brother, Anthony. I said I was not. The yob said, ‘Right, only Anthony works in a library and wears glasses. I fought you must be ’im, like.’

Why, oh, why do none of the clocks in the city show the correct time?

Why, oh, why do the doors in public buildings squeak so horribly?

Nigel rang to tell me that he is suffering from post-blindness depression.

In an attempt to counsel him, I asked him what was the worst thing about being blind.

Nigel snapped, ‘I can’t fucking see!’

To give him a change of scene, I asked him if he would like to go with me to visit my father in hospital.

Nigel said, grudgingly, ‘If that’s all that’s on offer.’

My father didn’t look well today; the post-operative wound in his back has become infected and he is running a high temperature.

A defeated-looking cleaner called Edna was mopping rancid water from a bucket around his bed.

When I asked my father how he felt, Edna answered, ‘’E ’ad a bad night and I ’ad to force ’im to eat ’is breakfast, didn’t I, George?’

My father nodded weakly.

Edna said, ‘When I’ve finished cleanin’ the ward, I’ll come back an’ freshen you up.’

When she had moved further up the ward, my father said, ‘Edna is the salt of the earth, she’s keeping me alive. All the bleeding nurses in here are too posh to wash. I told one yesterday that my bum was sore and she said, ‘I’ve got a first-class degree, Mr Mole. I’ll contact the bed-care-management team when I’ve got a minute.’