Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction (7 page)

They are going to live in a tent and do the conversion themselves.

‘A tent?’ I queried.

My mother said, ‘We bought it from Millets today. It’s got three bedrooms, a kitchen area and a patio with bad-weather sheeting for the odd rainy day.’

‘Don’t forget the integral groundsheet,’ said my father.

I said, ‘But a winter in a tent in Mangold Parva will kill you.’

My father said, ‘You’re forgetting one thing, lad, me and your mother are baby boomers. We were born in the 1940s. We grew up without central heating, tissue paper, vitamins, hot water on tap. We walked four miles to school and four miles back in short trousers through the snow. It will take more than a few draughts to kill us off.’

I asked them what they were doing with their furniture. They said they were getting rid of it all. My mother asked me if I would like to take some of the best pieces to my new loft apartment. I almost laughed in her face.

I rang David Barwell and asked if a completion date had been set. Angela said she had given Mr Barwell the papers but he had reacted badly to the glue used to stick down the laminated floorboards and was away from the office.

Mr Carlton-Hayes had his little Roberts portable tuned to Five Live at 12 o’clock for Prime Minister’s Question Time. We heard Mr Blair telling Parliament that he had just spoken on the telephone to President Bush, who told him that there would be a UN resolution announced at 3.30 saying that it was all right to go to war with Iraq.

Mr Carlton-Hayes asked me what my opinion of Tony Blair was. I said I admired him and supported him and trusted him implicitly.

Rang Marigold and asked if we could meet after work. She sounded tired and said that she hadn’t slept well due to ‘the horrendous noise’ of the fireworks last night. She said it was time that we, as a civilized country, banned all fireworks.

I didn’t tell her that last night I wrote her name in the dark with a sparkler.

Rang solicitors. Angela said the place was in chaos. The laminated floorboards were being ripped up. I stressed that I needed to be given a completion date.

Went to Parvez’s house. He has set up business in his spare bedroom. He has bought a home office from IKEA, and a black leather swivel chair, but one wall is still covered in Postman Pat wallpaper.

I was surprised to see him wearing traditional Muslim dress. He said that he had started going to the mosque again.

I told him that his new goatee beard suited him and made his face look thinner.

He sat me down and interrogated me about my financial position. I told him that my monthly income is £1,083.33.

He then ran through a comprehensive expenditure questionnaire and tapped the answers into his laptop. It included how much I spent on newspapers each week (£8), how much my car cost to run (£100 a month), takeaway beverages (an astonishing £15 at two cappuccinos a day, five days a week), broadband Internet connection (£35 a month). I was aghast. By the time we had finished, I discovered my outgoings exceed my income by almost £5,000 a year.

When the form had been filled in, Parvez said disapprovingly, ‘Don’t you remember when we did
David Copperfield
at school, Moley?’

I said that it was one of my favourite books.

He said, ‘Remember Mr Micawber? “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery” – Citizens’ Advice Bureau, debt counselling, bankruptcy and homelessness.’

We stared at Parvez’s laptop, where the stark truth was written out in numbers.

I said, ‘What can I do?’

Parvez said, ‘You can’t move into that loft apartment, Moley. You don’t earn a loft apartment salary.’

I told Parvez that it was too late, that I had signed the papers and that the money had been transferred.

Parvez said, ‘Do you want me to give you some financial advice, Moley?’

I said, ‘No, I can’t afford it.’ And went home.

A triumph for Mr Blair! After many weeks of trying to convince foreign leaders that Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction were a serious threat to the world, resolution 1441 was passed unanimously. Even Syria voted with the fourteen other countries.

My mother tried to stir my father from his early-morning torpor by discussing this with him.

My father said, ‘1441, wasn’t that the name of the perfume my mum used to wear?’

My mother sighed and looked sad. She said, ‘No, George, that was 4711.’

When he had gone out of the kitchen, she said, ‘I wish I was married to somebody like Roy Hattersley, somebody who was interested in politics.’

She lit her first cigarette of the day and we watched the news on the kitchen television. Mr Blair was very impressive. He looked sternly into the camera and said directly to Saddam Hussein, ‘Disarm or face force.’ His voice trembled with emotion.

My mother said, ‘He looks as though he’s about to burst into tears.’ She shouted at the screen, ‘Butch up, Tony.’

4 p.m.

Marigold came in to the shop this morning. She couldn’t stay long because she was on her way to the Karma Health Centre to have an Indian head massage. She has suffered from migraines all her life. I was astonished to hear that having her head rubbed for half an hour was going to cost £25. I advised her to buy a packet of Nurofen Extra instead and told her that they always work for me. Migraines are the only thing we have in common.

She asked me if I would like to accompany her to a concert the Madrigal Society is giving in Leicester Cathedral. She said her father was singing a solo. He is a counter-tenor.

5.30 p.m.

Mr Carlton-Hayes has gone home. I am sitting here waiting for Marigold. I don’t know where this relationship is going. I can’t think of a more horrible way to
spend a Friday night than sitting in a cold cathedral listening to Michael Flowers singing in a woman’s voice.

Midnight

Marigold and I walked to the cathedral arm in arm. She was wearing a red beret and a khaki trouser suit. I didn’t say anything, but she looked like a paratrooper on leave. Perhaps she is subconsciously preparing herself for war.

You would have thought that Michael Flowers would have changed his clothes for the occasion, but, oh no, he has worn the tree sweater for twenty consecutive days to my knowledge. When I mentioned this to Marigold, she said that detergents are a major pollutant of our rivers and waterways.

Michael Flowers started the concert by giving what he said would be a short address about the history of the madrigal, but he droned on for twenty-five minutes, seemingly oblivious to the fidgeting and boredom of his audience. Eventually the terrible singing started.

Netta Flowers loomed over the other choristers. She was also vocally dominant. Her deep contralto seemed to make the pew Marigold and I were sitting in reverberate.

Afterwards, when we were mingling in the vestry, convention forced me to congratulate Mr and Mrs Flowers on their performances.

Mr Flowers said, ‘Are you two young people going to a rock and roll club later?’

I almost laughed out loud. He smells of damp wool.

*

Later, in Wong’s, I asked Marigold if she had ever considered leaving home. She pushed a clump of bean sprouts around her bowl with a chopstick and said that she had expected to be married by now.

Marigold rang early this morning to say that her parents had told her that I was an admirable young man. She sounded very happy. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had been awake half the night wondering how I could end the relationship.

Watched the old blokes and old women marching past the Cenotaph. Some of them looked like they were on their last legs; others didn’t have legs and were pushed past in wheelchairs. My father asked me why I was sniffing. I said I was allergic to poppies.

He said, ‘Your grandad Arthur was in the Second World War.’

I asked him where my grandad had fought.

My father said, ‘He wouldn’t talk about the war, but if he saw it on telly or heard “Lili Marleen”, he’d cry like a baby. Your grandma Mole would send him out to the backyard with a clean handkerchief, until he’d recovered himself. She was a hard woman.’

*

My mother has made some change of address cards on her Apple Mac. Their new address is going to be The Piggeries, The Bottom Field, Lower Lane, Mangold Parva, Leicestershire.

I said, ‘Aren’t you being a little premature?’

She said, ‘No, we bought the pigsties at an auction yesterday afternoon.’

Nobody ever tells me anything in this house. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.

I rang Nigel at his parents’ house. He has been living in their granny annexe since putting his London flat up for sale. His sight has deteriorated even more. I asked him if he wanted to go and see
The Lord of the Rings
with me.

He said, ‘No, it all takes place in Middle Earth in half-darkness, and anyway elves and gnomes are seriously naff.’

I asked Nigel if his hearing had improved since he had gone blind.

He said, ‘Yes, I can now hear a page being turned in Hay-on-fucking-Wye, aren’t I a lucky boy?’

Moon’s Last Quarter

Mr Carlton-Hayes and I seemed to be the only people in the High Street who observed the one-minute silence at 11 o’clock, apart from a few pensioners and a black bus driver who got out of his cab and stood with his head bowed.

*

Rang Barwell. Angela said the papers were ready for signing. To make conversation, I asked her what floor covering Mr Barwell would be having on his office floor next.

She said that Barwell had an appointment at 4 p.m. to talk to his allergy consultant.

I asked Mr Carlton-Hayes if I could nip out for an hour. He told me to take as long as I needed.

It should have been a happy occasion, but as I signed the documents which committed me to paying £723.48 a month, I could not help remembering Parvez’s warning, ‘Citizens’ Advice Bureau, debt counselling, bankruptcy, homelessness and misery’.

Barwell was wheezing and coughing throughout the little paperwork ceremony. I suggested that the air in his office was rather stale and offered to open the window.

He wheezed, ‘The window doesn’t open. I have to keep the pollen out.’

I pointed out to him that his windows were made of ultraviolet polyvinyl chloride and advised him to replace them with a traditional wooden frame. I told him in detail about the Radio Four documentary I had heard the night before about Sick Building Syndrome. He appeared interested at first, but then seemed to lose concentration and kept looking at his watch.

I pick the keys up for Rat Wharf on Friday.

Last night at the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group meeting, Ken Blunt asked me if I had fixed a speaker for our Christmas dinner on December 23rd and if I had found a suitable venue. I told him that neither Mrs Blair nor Ruth Rendell had replied as yet.

Gary Milksop said that he had applied for the position of Creative Writing for Disadvantaged Adults Facilitator at the Life-Long Learning Centre.

I said, ‘But, Gary, you are not qualified to teach creative writing.’

He said that he had a BA in Education and had almost finished writing his novel.

He said it was a part-time position and was worth £10,000 a year. He showed me the advertisement. It said at the bottom, ‘Preference will be given to a published writer.’

I pointed out to Milksop as kindly as I could that he had not yet earned a single penny from his writing and reminded him that he had decorated the chimney breast of his bed-sitting room with publishers’ rejection letters.

Gladys read us her latest cat poem:

‘Poor Blackie’s up in heaven,

God took her life away,

He said, you’ll go to Devon,

And have a holiday.

Once there, you’ll find your pussy friends,

Their ghosts do walk the prom,

Here are Ginger, Ming and Fluff,

Marmalade and Tom.’

She told us that Blackie had been run over by a lorry last Thursday.

Ken Blunt said that Gladys’s poem was a failure because it was not truthful. He said that she had obviously chosen Devon because it rhymed with heaven, and that the idea that dead cats prowled the promenades of Devon was totally absurd.

‘This poem is untruthful

This poem is absurd,

This poem is a contrivance

To rhyme with Douglas Hurd.’

I pointed out to Ken Blunt that ‘a contrivance’ didn’t scan properly.

Gary Milksop said that Gladys should collect her cat poems together and send them to a publisher.

Ken Blunt said, ‘What for, cat litter?’

Gladys said that we were mocking Blackie’s death and that we should leave. I was glad to get out of there. I was covered from head to toe in cat hair.

Ken Blunt asked me and Gary if we fancied a drink. We went to the Red Cow near the university. It was full of students singing along to Rolf Harris songs. Gary Milksop told me that Rolf Harris is a cult figure in student circles. How come I didn’t know this?

We discussed the future of the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group and came to the reluctant conclusion that Gladys was holding us back. Her cat poems now dominate the meetings. Ken said expulsion is the only answer.

I was deputed to tell Gladys Fordingbridge that she is no longer a member of the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group.

I asked Ken what he was working on at the moment; he said, ‘Nowt.’

Marigold rang and left a message on my mobile to say that she was ‘…concerned that you haven’t been in touch. Are you poorly?’ I didn’t want to speak to her so I scribbled a note:

Dear Marigold

Forgive me for my silence. You have been on my mind constantly. My breathing still quickens when I think about your delicate wrists and the way your glasses slip down your nose.