Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction (36 page)

We worked on the cards together, and after some thought came up with:

1. Please get out of the car

2. Please put your hands in the air

3. Please open the boot

4. Please do not throw stones

5. Please do not hurt me. I am only eighteen years old

6. I am a liberator, not an invader

7. Thanks for your co-operation

There was a lot of argument about number six, but Mr Carlton-Hayes and I agreed to differ.

Dear Glenn

Please find enclosed a copy of
How to Master Your Fear
. I found this useful when I developed a phobia of driving on the M6.

Try to take deep breaths when you leave your barracks: mind over matter can always help.

Try to think about a happy time. Do you remember that Sunday afternoon at Rampart Terrace when you were thirteen and you beat me at Monopoly? Me, you and William toasted some bread on the coal fire with my Grandma’s old toasting fork. We drank tomato soup out of those special tomato-shaped mugs we bought from the ‘Everything for a Pound’ shop. You were wearing your first pair of genuine Reeboks and you said ‘Dad, I’m happy.’

As you see, I have also enclosed some flashcards that me and my boss, Mr Carlton-Hayes, have made up for you.

Mr Carlton-Hayes has sent you an anthology of poetry written by a soldier in the First World War. He’s put a note inside the book.

I think about you all the time, son. Be assured you are in Iraq fighting for a good cause.

Much love from

Dad

My dear Glenn,

I hope you don’t mind me writing to you, but your Father showed me your letter. I served in the Second World War as an infantry man. I spent most of my war service in a state of terror. It is entirely normal to feel as you do. I hope Siegfried Sassoon’s poetry will reassure you. Some of it is savage stuff, but it is a truthful account of war, as you will know when you read it.

I send you my very warmest wishes,

Hugh Carlton-Hayes

An adolescent boy wearing a hooded top, with the hood up and half-obscuring his face, came into the shop and mooched around the shelves. When I asked if he needed help, he said, ‘Have you got a book called the Bible?’

Unfortunately, Bernard Hopkins heard this exchange and said with false puzzlement, ‘The Bible? Tell me, young cocker, who’s it written by?’

The youth blushed. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Weren’t it God?’

This made me, Hopkins and Mr Carlton-Hayes laugh quite a lot.

The youth is doing a humanities project on the subject of fathers and sons. He has chosen God and Jesus.

I asked the youth why he had not availed himself of the school library. He said he had been banned from the library for eating a satsuma in there and spitting a pip and ‘accidentally’ hitting a boff girl called Louise Moore.

Warming to his theme of why he had been forced into a bookshop, he told us that his mum refused to get connected to the Internet, so he couldn’t download from websites and copy stuff for his project like other kids. He made it sound as though his mother made him walk barefoot to school.

Bernard Hopkins took over the sale and sold the youth an
Illustrated Children’s Bible
for seventy-five pence, wherein Jesus had blond hair and blue eyes and looked a bit like a long-haired David Beckham. It was only slightly mildewed.

Brain-box Henderson rang me this morning and asked if he and Marigold could visit this afternoon. I made throat-cutting gestures down the phone, but agreed to see them.

Brain-box’s tan has faded a little and some of his geekiness has come back, but I have never seen him so
happy. Marigold is transformed; pregnancy seems to suit her. They can hardly keep their hands off each other. It was sickening, diary.

They want to get married and had come to ask me for my blessing, and to talk about the unborn child.

Brain-box said, ‘I’m keen to adopt the baby, Adrian. Shall I get my solicitor to draw up some papers?’

I said, ‘I’m too poor for the law. Can’t we discuss this after the baby is born?’

Marigold said, ‘I knew he’d be difficult, Bruce.’

Brain-box said to Marigold in a surprisingly authoritative manner, ‘Don’t
start
, Marigold.’ He then covered her face in tiny kisses.

I had to turn away.

He then said to me, ‘I’m quite prepared to help you out financially, Adrian. I know you are strapped for cash.’

I thought about ‘Grace’ in her tutu and said, ‘I don’t want to sell my parental rights.’

A child began to scream outside, then there was the sound of a man’s voice, loud and angry. We all went out on to the balcony. A middle-aged man and a young boy were in a canoe being attacked by Gielgud. He was flapping his wings and pecking at the man’s paddle.

Brain-box said, ‘He’s a vicious creature.’

I said to Brain-box, ‘He’s only protecting his eggs.’

The man and the child paddled off and Gielgud returned to the nest.

Marigold said she felt unwell and Brain-box put his arm protectively round her and took her home.

As they were leaving, I casually asked Marigold how Poppy and Daisy were.

She said, ‘Poppy’s on holiday in Albania, but Daisy’s had to move back to Beeby on the Wold.’ She laughed and then said with some satisfaction, ‘She got thrown out of her flat for trashing the place when she was drunk.’

I asked if Daisy had lost her job.

Marigold said, ‘Not yet, she’s commuting.’

I have to see her, diary.

Spring Bank Holiday

I tried ringing Daisy’s mobile, but the line has been disconnected. I drove to Beeby on the Wold and parked my car in the pub car park, and walked across the fields to where I could see the back of the house.

There was nobody in sight, but it calmed me to know that Daisy could be somewhere near. I sat with my back against a tree for over an hour. I had nothing to read and nothing to do except watch the clouds move across the sky, listen to the birds singing and follow various insects as they stumbled through the grass. As I walked back to the car I made a vow to myself that I would win Daisy back, marry her, and have children with her.

A letter from Trixie Meadows.

Neighbourhood Conflict Co-ordinator

Leicester City Council

New Walk

Leicester
LE
1

May 27th 2003

Dear Mr Mole

I found the tone of your letter most offensive. Mr Swan is obviously in need of help, not condemnation.

You say he is mute. Is he in touch with the Speech Therapy Department at the Leicester Royal Hospital, and is he aware that Social Services can help with his incontinence?

Perhaps Mr Swan’s problems are the cause of his antisocial behaviour. I still feel that reconciliation and negotiation is the path we should take towards a satisfactory outcome.

Calling Mr Swan ‘a creature, a wild animal’ and threatening violence can only be counterproductive.

Yours sincerely

Trixie Meadows

Neighbourhood Conflict Co-ordinator

11.35 p.m.
Daisy, Daisy, Daisy.

Bernard Hopkins opened the discussion on Zadie Smith’s
White Teeth
by drawling, ‘It wasn’t bad for a bint, but Salman does it better.’

I said to Hopkins, ‘You use Mr Rushdie’s first name with familiarity. Do you know him?’

Hopkins tapped the side of his nose and said, ‘I had him as a houseguest when he was on the run from al-Qa’eda.’

Mohammed said heatedly, ‘You are confusing the fundamentalists with a terrorist organization.’

Hopkins said, ‘They’re all the same to me, cocker.’

Mohammed snapped, ‘But they are not all the same. They are as far apart as the Reverend Ian Paisley and the gay Bishop of Boston. Both men would call themselves Christians.’

Lorraine Harris said, ‘This is a wicked book. I know people like the people in the book. I was laughing so much I made the bed shake.’

Darren confessed he hadn’t read it. He was still immersed in
Jude the Obscure
. He then went on to confide to the group that his constant reading was ‘causing a few problems with the wife’. He said he had bought a bookcase for the living room, which had meant moving the furniture around, and his wife had ‘gone mardy’ because
the television set was now too far away from the socket.

Mr Carlton-Hayes nodded sympathetically though it was inconceivable to me that he could have experienced such domestic dramas.

I suggested that Darren take a present home to his non-reader wife:
Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less
by Lord Archer.

I was asked to name the next book. I suggested
Stupid White Men
by Michael Moore. Bernard Hopkins blustered and swore and said, ‘If I’d written a book called
Stupid Black Men
, I’d have been had up by the race relations industry.’

Mohammed said quietly, ‘May I suggest it would be helpful to all of us if we read the Koran?’

Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘An excellent suggestion.’

On my way home I called in at all the fashionable pubs and wine bars, but Daisy was not in any of them.

I read the first few pages of the Koran in bed tonight. It brought me closer to Glenn somehow.

The manager of Habitat rang to say that Bernard Hopkins was asleep on ‘an item of garden furniture’. I went round to collect him. Before I woke him up I bought myself a new Anglepoise lamp. It’s time I got down to it and did some serious writing. If I can’t have Daisy, I can at least write a book about her.

Daisy! At my front door! No make-up, hair a mess, but still beautiful, in combats and a top that showed her midriff. She said, ‘You have to read this.’

She came inside and handed me a pink silk-covered diary with a lock. On the front it said ‘The Secret Journal of Marigold Flowers’.

Daisy said, ‘Turn to May 25th.’

I did as she asked and read in Marigold’s backward-sloping hand:

Bruce and I went to see Adrian today to talk about the wedding and what will happen when the baby is born. I wanted to tell Bruce in the car on the way to Rat Wharf that I’m not having a baby. That I’ve been telling lies to everybody, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I am frightened of losing Bruce.

I said to Daisy, ‘Did she confess to you, Daisy?’

Daisy said, ‘No, I was up in her bedroom and I picked the lock. I saw her in the bathroom last night. Her belly is completely flat. I thought you ought to know, seeing as you are the father of the phantom kid.’

I said, ‘Is nothing true any more? Is there honey still for tea? Are there Weapons of Mass Destruction? Am I actually standing here and are you flesh and blood, or are we holograms, Daisy?’

She said, ‘We’re flesh and blood. And after you’ve made me a cup of coffee, we’ll prove it.’

I got no sleep last night; I stayed up talking to Daisy. We drank three bottles of wine and ate two bags of Doritos and a large bowl of salsa. Pudding was a ripe mango which we devoured in the bath naked.

Daisy managed to get the CD-player going and we danced to
Motown’s Greatest Hits
. I have never danced naked before. It was OK once I got used to my genitalia swinging about. Mia Fox thumped on my door with her fists, but Daisy shouted, ‘Get a life, you poor sad cow!’

Later, as Daisy slept beside me, I thought about the many times I had forgone pleasure for the convenience of other people. Whereas Daisy took her fair share of whatever was going.

Daisy returned to Beeby this morning to replace Marigold’s book of revelations and collect her suitcase. She met me at the shop after work and I took her to catch the London train; she is going on a book tour to promote Edwina Currie’s diary.

As her carriage disappeared into the tunnel beyond the station, I felt the possibility of a new assertiveness fall away and resolved to buy Mia Fox a bunch of flowers by way of apology.

I need Daisy to light my life. Without her I will never metamorphose from caterpillar to moth.

I noticed that Donald Rumsfeld was now saying that the Weapons of Mass Destruction may never be found. This came as a considerable shock.

However, Mr Blair said he has ‘no doubt at all’.

Met a postman in the car park this morning, I told him that I was surprised to see him so early. He asked me in broken English for my name and address, then handed me my post.

There was a letter from the Automobile Association, informing me that they now provided gas and would I like to switch from my present provider. There were also two credit card bills demanding payment and threatening that unless I paid the overdue amounts immediately, I would have to pay the balance in full. There were veiled threats that if I failed to make immediate payments my credit rating would be affected.

Diary, I had no choice but to withdraw the last £3,000 from my building society deposit account. I live in a capitalist system, but I have no capital.

Where has all the money gone? I’ve nothing to show for it apart from the futon and a few pots and pans.

An appalling statistic – 63 per cent of Britons believe that Mr Blair misled them about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction; 27 per cent believe he deliberately lied.

I don’t know what I think any more.

I worked late at the shop tonight. When I left at 10 p.m. the High Street was full of young drunks of both sexes carousing from one bar to another. I walked in the middle of the road to avoid them and was almost knocked over by a taxi full of teenage slappers. One of them screamed out of the window ‘Gerrout the road, Granddad.’

It is no wonder that middle-aged people lock themselves into their houses at night.

I went to see Nigel after work to read to him as promised. He has chosen
Crime and Punishment
by Dostoevsky. The Russian names are impossible to pronounce and each time I stumble over one, Nigel sighs and mutters something to Graham.