Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction (38 page)

Best wishes,

Glenn Bott-Mole

Dear Mr Carlton-Hayes

This is Robbie muscling in on Glenn’s letter. I have thoroughly enjoyed, if that’s the word, the volume of Siegfried Sassoon’s war poetry. He knew what he was on about, that’s for sure.

I have learned ‘Survivors’ off by heart.

Thanking you once again.

Robbie

PS By the way, I am Glenn’s best friend.

Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘I shall send the lad
Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man
.’

If only he had been referring to Glenn.

Mr Carlton-Hayes asked me when I was going to take my annual two weeks’ holiday. I told him that I couldn’t afford to go away.

Hopkins said, ‘I don’t believe in holidays. Why go somewhere else for a drink?’

My AA Visa card arrived in the post this morning. I saluted it.

After a lot of thought, I have decided to give Tim Henman some advice on how to win the men’s singles title. I have sent him an email c/o The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

Dear Tim Henman

I hope you will not take offence at what I have to say, but as a keen student of human nature I think I may be able to help you realize your ambition to win Wimbledon.

a) Do not let your parents attend any matches. In fact, if they try to get on to the Centre Court, have them thrown out by security staff. If my parents were
watching me doing my work, I would also go to pieces.

b) Wife, Lucy, ditto.

c) Try to attract more glamorous fans. Your present followers are the type of women that trainspotters marry.

d) Ask Vinnie Jones to show you a more threatening clenched-fist, forearm-lifting gesture.

e) Forbid your fans from shouting out, ‘Come on, Tim!’ It makes you sound as though you are coming fourth in the egg and spoon race at junior school.

I think you will find that if you implement my suggestions, you will win the nation’s heart and almost certainly be made BBC sports personality of the year.

Yours,

A. A. Mole

My father was readmitted to the Royal Hospital this afternoon, after telling my mother that he was dying. The wound in his back is infected again. I went to see him, and took a pillow with me, just in case.

Daisy rang from her hotel room in Bristol. She said that the author she is on tour with drank too much wine before their reading in Waterstone’s and ended up haranguing the audience during the question and answer session because a young man asked, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’

The author had shouted, ‘From the Tesco’s Ideas Counter, pillock!’

I asked who the author was.

She said, ‘Marshall Snelgrove. You won’t have heard of him, he writes sci-fi. His galaxy is set in a kangaroo’s pouch.’

I asked her what she was wearing.

She said, ‘Your favourite, nothing.’

Pandora rang to ask about Glenn. I told her he was in Basra and was scared and unhappy. She said, ‘I’m furious with you for letting him go to that obscene war.’

She asked me if I thought Glenn would talk to her, in confidence, for an article she was writing for the
Observer
. I said, ‘There is no such thing as “in confidence” any more.’ And refused on Glenn’s behalf.

She said, ‘OK. My autobiography,
Out of the Box
, is published in a couple of weeks. Will your shop host the regional launch?’

I said I would talk to Mr Carlton-Hayes tomorrow and ring her back.

Readers’ club.

Mr Carlton-Hayes started by saying, ‘I ought to open this meeting by admitting that I am not an advocate of
organized religion but, having said that, I was profoundly moved by the Koran. And as a bookseller, I am always terribly excited by the notion that a book can be central to the lives of a billion people throughout the world.’

He then invited Mohammed to say what the Koran meant to him.

Mohammed said quietly, ‘The Koran as I interpret it helps me to live my life. I follow its rules, I take comfort from its teachings, and I use it for guidance when I am uncertain and need to hear God’s word.’

Darren interrupted and said, ‘I was proper surprised to read about Adam, Abraham, Moses and Jesus. It weren’t all that different from the Bible.’

Lorraine said, ‘Yeah, and Pharaoh, who’s a right evil bastard.’

Melanie Oates said, ‘What I liked about it was the language. I was reading it in a deckchair in the garden, and it was like I was hypnotized. A bit scary really – I should have been watching the children in the paddling pool.’

Mohammed said, excitedly, ‘Melanie, you have hit the spot. The Koran helps us to meditate, it should be read sitting cross-legged on the floor, then its power is revealed.’

I said, ‘The carpet is a bit dirty, but if nobody minds?’

I heard Mr Carlton-Hayes’s knees crack as he sat down and crossed his legs in front of him. The rest of us joined him, forming a circle, and Mohammed began to chant. As he read, his body swayed in a slight oval pattern, and took on a rhythm of sixty beats per minute.

‘In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful,

All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds.

The Beneficent, the Merciful,

Master of the Day of Judgement.

Thee do we serve and Thee do we beseech for help.

Keep us on the right path.

The path of those upon whom Thou has bestowed favours. Not of those upon whom Thy wrath is brought down, nor of those who go astray.’

Melanie said, ‘It’s very rhythmic. Do you think Flaubert ever read the Koran?’

Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘Almost certainly. It is one of the greatest books in the civilized world.’

We stayed sitting on the floor, and Mohammed explained that his personal interpretation was not shared by anybody else, including his sons. ‘Each Muslim interprets the Koran in their own way,’ he said.

Melanie sighed and said, ‘I’m a bit disappointed to hear that. I was hoping to find some definite rules on how to live my life.’

At the end of the meeting we spontaneously applauded Mohammed, and I think he was quietly pleased.

I went to see my father after work. My mother was already at his bedside, dressed in her builder’s overalls and steel-toe-capped boots. I was there when his
consultant came to give him the results of the blood and urine tests they had done earlier in the week.

The consultant was pink and podgy and called Mr Fortune. He said to my father, ‘George, it’s as we feared, you’ve got a super bug.’

My father said, ‘Super.’

I don’t think he fully realizes the seriousness of his condition. He obviously thinks that a super bug is a more superior type of bug.

Mr Fortune said to me and my mother, ‘MRSA is a bit of a bugger to treat. He’s on a very powerful antibiotic mix already, and we don’t have much more up our sleeve.’

My mother said, ‘I’m relying on you to get him back on his feet, Mr Fortune. He’s needed back at the pigsty.’

Mr Fortune looked my mother up and down and I felt an explanation was needed.

I said, ‘My mother is converting a pigsty into a dream home.’

Mr Fortune said, ‘Splendid. I live in a converted cowshed myself.’

As I walked to my car, I passed Animal. He was teaching Ivan to sit up and beg.

Went to the bank today and withdrew £2,000 in cash courtesy of the AA card. Then paid it back over the counter. £1,000 went to Visa and the other £1,000 to MasterCard.

The bank clerk, a middle-aged woman with nine chins, said, ‘Pardon my presumption, but you are paying over the odds for your cash. Would you like to see our accounts manager?’

I said, ‘The AA loan is interest free.’

She said, wobbling her chins, ‘Not for cash it isn’t.’

So my attempt to give myself a breathing space has failed. I am in an iron lung of debt.

Daisy came for the weekend. I picked her up from the station. She brought two large suitcases with her, full of shoes and clothes.

Had a mango session last night so had to clean the bathroom floor before I went to work. I left Daisy in bed reading an article in the
Independent
about Ali, the little boy who had both arms and both legs blown off by an American bomb. Apparently he was here having major surgery. I wanted to say something, but we have agreed not to talk about Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction or Marigold.

When I came back from work, Daisy had filled the remaining wardrobe space with her stuff. She has got twenty-seven pairs of shoes. Some of them she can’t walk in at all and has never worn.

She had moved my furniture around and tidied my bookshelves. She had obviously been out shopping: there
were white flowers on the worktop and the fridge was full of the food we both like. Our underwear was conjoined in the washing machine.

She said, ‘I don’t know what happened to me, I came over all Snow White.’

I said, ‘Don’t do it again, Daisy. Domesticity is the death of romance.’

I opened my emails.

Hi, Moley

Great news! Marigold has made me the happiest man in the world and agreed to fit me up with a ball and chain. Yes, she has said she will be Mrs Bruce Henderson.

We are not hanging about, we are tying the knot on Saturday July 19th at the Heritage Hotel, Little Smeton. I wonder, Moley, would you do me the great honour of being my Best Man?

Marigold is in agreement with this, though she thinks it would be good if you had a haircut before the 19th.

Poppy has agreed to be Matron of Honour, and I’m sure Daisy will agree to be a bridesmaid; it’s just a matter of tracking her down.

Marigold is being a real trouper about losing the baby. She hasn’t mentioned it once.

Yours, Bruce

Please reply ASAP

Later, when we were lying in bed, Daisy asked me if there was anything I didn’t like about her.

I said, ‘Your swearing,’ and asked if there was anything she didn’t like about me.

She said, ‘You read too many fucking books.’

I took Daisy to visit my father today. He is on his fourth course of antibiotics but is showing no improvement. Daisy told me, as we were walking down the corridor towards the David Gower ward, that about 5,000 patients a year die in British hospitals of MRSA. I can’t imagine a world without my dad in it.

We passed Edna, who was rubbing a filthy rag over the door to the entrance of the ward.

Edna said, ‘I’ve just fed your dad his dinner. He didn’t eat much.’

My mother was happy to see us and told us that she had received an invitation to the wedding. She said, ‘Your dad won’t be well enough to go. Would you mind if Animal was my escort for the day?’

I said, ‘Yes, Mum, I would.’

My patriotic support of Henman is over. An interviewer asked what he did in the locker room during the breaks for rain. Did he read books?

Tim, one of England’s heroes and role models replied: ‘
NO, I NEVER READ BOOKS. BOOKS ARE BORING
.’

I thought about Arthur Ashe, John McEnroe, Boris Becker and Bjorn Borg, who were all booklovers, and wondered if there was a connection between literature and winning the men’s singles final at Wimbledon.

All three of my credit-card bills arrived this morning. I put them, unopened, in the gadget drawer.

Jo Jo rang from Nigeria. She said, ‘Your son waited all day yesterday for his birthday present to come from England. My heart bled for him. When I put him to bed, he said, “Mamma, perhaps the airplane bringing the parcel from Dad has crashed.”

‘I told him that he was almost certainly correct. Every half an hour he checked for emails, and whenever the telephone rang he ran to answer it. Glenn remembered to send a card, as did his friend, Robbie, whom William has never met. I hope you are ashamed of yourself.’

Diary, I am. How could I have forgotten William’s birthday? Why didn’t my mother remind me?

Letter from Robbie.

Dear Mr Mole

Thank you very much for the boots. They fit spot on.

Glenn was lucky the other day, wasn’t he? I think he took it hard, but he hasn’t told me much. I expect he told you a bit more. He is always bragging that he can talk to you about anything.

Some of the Iraqi people are OK, but we have to wear our helmets all the time now. Sometimes it’s stones, sometimes it’s bullets. We have stopped giving the little kids sweets.

I wouldn’t mind a bit of English rain right now; it is ninety-five in the shade.

Well, I have come to the end of the page, so I will say goodbye.

Best wishes,

Robbie

I immediately rang Sharon and asked her if she had heard from Glenn. She said that Glenn had rung her in the middle of the night, but the line was so bad she couldn’t make out what he was saying.

All the MOD lines were busy.

10 p.m.

Henman was knocked out of the men’s singles quarterfinal today by Sebastien Grosjean in four sets. The last took only thirty-two minutes. Naturally, Henman’s wife
and parents were there watching the match. When will he learn?

Independence Day (USA)

Went to see my father in hospital. Edna was telling him that asylum-seekers have been stealing the Queen’s swans and cooking them. Apparently over one hundred swans have disappeared from the River Lea in the East End of London.

In Edna’s opinion, the asylum-seekers should be sent back to face whatever murderous regime they had fled from.

I could see that my father wanted to agree with Edna, but he kept his mouth shut.

To cheer him up, I bought him the latest
Jane’s Missiles and Rockets
(An Enthusiast’s Guide).

No nurses were available, so me and Edna gave my father a stripwash and changed his pyjamas.

On the way back from the hospital I listened to Peter Allen and Jane Garvey on Five Live. They were discussing the Asylum-seekers Eat Swans story.