Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction (9 page)

Dear Dad

Me and the lads are having a great time. It is dead hot and I have gone brown. I had a phone call from Mum. She told me that you and Ryan was fighting in the shop. I hope you done him over good, Dad. Don’t worry about me missing the holiday we was going to have. I will be going to Cyprus with the army soon. Ha ha ha.

Best wishes,

Your son, Glenn

I made the coffee and took it out to the balcony and heard my father say, ‘You see that humped-back bridge in the distance, Pauline? It was under that bridge that I lost my cherry with Jean Arbuthnot. I was seventeen and it felt like I’d won the pools that night.’

‘Did you wear a condom?’ she asked.

‘A condom?’ he said. ‘Nobody wore a condom in the 1950s.’

‘It’s a wonder she didn’t get pregnant then,’ said my mother censoriously.

‘We did it standing up, Pauline,’ he explained, as if talking to a moron. ‘You can’t get pregnant if you do it standing up, not the first time.’

When they’d finished smoking they looked around for an ashtray, then, not finding one, flicked the ends into the canal.

My mother helped me to assemble and wire up the entertainment centre while my father read the
News of the World
, occasionally complaining about the sexual immorality of today’s youth.

When he got up to go to the toilet I gave him the usual warning about his outline being visible, but he said, ‘I’ve got nothing that your mother and you haven’t seen before.’

However, I still chose to turn my head away, but couldn’t fail to hear the thunderous sound of his urination. He urinates, defecates, coughs, sneezes and belches louder than any man I have ever known. How my mother sticks it, I don’t know.

When the entertainment centre was operational and the speakers were in place, I sorted out my
Phantom of the Opera
CD. The volume setting had inadvertently been turned to full and Sarah Brightman’s opening shrieks nearly knocked us off our feet. I hurried to turn it down, but even with the volume on low the floor reverberated and the bricks of the glass lavatory shook. Professor Green in the apartment below banged on my floor. Somebody else in the apartment above banged on my ceiling. I became uncomfortably aware of my neighbours.

My mother told me that she had rung Rosie yesterday.

‘How did she sound?’ I said.

My mother’s face broke into a big smile and she said, ‘Oh, fantastic. She’s doing incredibly well. She’s almost finished her dissertation and she’s going out with a lovely boy called Simon. She needed £200 to buy a new printer for her computer so that she can print her dissertation out.’

How little our parents know about us. Do my children lie to me?

*

Just before they left, my father told me that he had placed a bet with Ladbrokes that Hans Blix, the United Nations chief weapons inspector, wouldn’t find any Weapons of Mass Destruction after his return to Iraq tomorrow.

My mother scoffed, ‘A fool and his money are soon parted.’ Then she said, ‘Tony Blair obviously knows something we don’t know. He sees secret documents, George. He reads all the intelligence reports. He’s in touch with MI5, MI6, the CIA, the FBI, Mossad and Rupert Murdoch.’

My father said, ‘We lied to Adrian about the tooth fairy, Pauline. He was eleven before he found out that it was me who put a quid under his pillow rather than bleeding Tinkerbell.’

My mother said, ‘And your point is?’

My father shouted, ‘My point is, people we trust lie to us. Just think of Jeffrey Archer.’

My father was a great Archer fan and felt betrayed when it was revealed that Archer had lied at his first trial.

When I arrived outside Chez Flowers in Beeby on the Wold, Marigold came running out to meet me.

She said nervously, ‘Just a few pointers. Don’t mention that you live in a loft or that your father used to sell electric storage heaters, that your parents smoke, that you have a son in the army or that you were once an offal chef in Soho. And please, please don’t mention Mexico.’

I said that I had never been to Mexico, I knew no Mexicans and I did not speak Mexican, so it was highly
unlikely that I would ‘bring up Mexico’. I protested to her that these conversational prohibitions meant that I could well remain mute throughout my visit.

Marigold said, ‘Stick to talking about books and how marvellous
I
am.’

I entered the house with a heavy heart and with Marigold hanging on my arm.

I had bought Netta a bunch of flowers from the BP garage. When I gave them to her she said, ‘How perfectly lovely, a forecourt bouquet. I’m sure I can revive them if I plunge them into water immediately. Please excuse me.’

She hurried off with the bouquet as though she was rushing them into intensive care to hook them up to a heart and lung machine.

Michael Flowers was in his study. He pretended to be too engrossed in a big leather-bound book to notice when Marigold knocked on the half-open door and walked in, with me following behind. The tree sweater was looking the worse for wear. He pushed his spectacles on to the top of his head and rose to his feet.

‘You bearded me in my lair, young sir,’ he said. ‘I was just looking up the derivation of the word “mole”. It seems, Adrian, that a mole is a burrowing animal with hairy forearms, a blemish or spot, a fleshy growth in the uterus, a measurement in physics, a harbour protected by a breakwater, or a spy who has infiltrated an organization and over a long period of time has become a trusted member of it. Which of these are you?’

Through the study window I could see Netta throwing
half of the flowers I had just bought her on to a large compost heap at the bottom of the garden.

Marigold saved the day. She said, ‘I think Adrian is more of the spy. He’s terribly secretive.’

I said, ‘On the contrary, Marigold, my life is an open book.’

Michael Flowers said, ‘Yes, books. Marigold tells me you work for that dreadful old libertarian Hugh Carlton-Hayes.’

I thought of Mr Carlton-Hayes’s kind face, his cardigans and his soft white hair, and felt honour bound to defend him. I said, ‘Mr Carlton-Hayes is the most decent man I know.’

Flowers said, ‘I’ll let you keep your illusions for now, Adrian.’

A sulky girl with extraordinarily long hair wearing a T-shirt which said ‘Bitch’ banged in and snarled, ‘I’ve been ordered to tell you that tea is apparently ready.’

It was Poppy, Marigold’s middle sister, who had returned home temporarily to recover from an unhappy love affair with a fellow maths teacher.

I was led into the sitting room and made to sit down and introduced to the cats, Saffron and Fleur.

Poppy had the longest hair I have ever seen. Apparently she has been growing it since she was twelve. She fiddled with it, pulled it over her shoulders, pushed it back, sat on it, twirled it on top of her head and let it fall. I knew I was expected to comment on the length of her hair and that she had built her whole personality around this hirsute feature, but I could not bring myself to mention it.

Marigold said, ‘It takes Poppy four and a half hours to dry her hair.’

Apart from a slight inclination of the head, I could not respond.

I was given the choice of having apple and blackberry, nettle, peppermint or basil and borage tea.

Netta said encouragingly, ‘We grow and dry our own herbs. There are no additives and preservatives. Everything is quite pure.’

I was handed a plate of stodgy brown lumps. These turned out to be scones made by Netta using stone-ground flour that was posted to her from a windmill in Somerset.

Michael Flowers said, ‘We try to eat much as they did in the Middle Ages, before our food became adulterated.’

I was very hungry and would have given anything for a Mr Kipling Iced Fancy. However, I took a scone and nibbled at it from time to time. It tasted as if it had been baked in ad 1307 over a fire made of twigs and dried cow dung.

The talk eventually centred around the absent Daisy, Marigold’s eldest sister, who had sent a letter to her parents the week before, denouncing them and blaming them for her miserable childhood.

Michael Flowers said, ‘Poor Daisy, she was always rather a strange child.’

Netta, Marigold and Poppy started to slag off Daisy, who was in public relations in London.

The more they slagged her off, the more I liked the sound of her. Apparently she was ruining her health and
her feet by teetering from premieres to book launches while wearing skimpy clothes and five-inch heels.

Michael Flowers shook his head. ‘Such a shallow life,’ he said. Then my interrogation began. ‘We know so little about you, Adrian. Tell me about your family.’

I said that my mother’s parents, the Sugdens, had been potato farmers in Norfolk.

Flowers said, ‘Yes, there is something of the Fens about you.’

I said that my father’s family were unskilled factory workers in Leicester.

Flowers said, ‘That’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

I said that I wasn’t in the least ashamed.

Flowers said, ‘We can trace our ancestors back to the Magna Carta. How far back does your family go?’

I don’t know what made me say it, diary. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them, particularly when I saw the distress on Marigold’s face. My excuse was that I was goaded beyond endurance. I wanted to see Michael Flowers discomforted.

I said, ‘The Sugdens were yeomen farmers and were mentioned in the Domesday Book, and the Moles were believed to be Mexican refugees who fled religious persecution, and came to England on the return journey of the
Mayflower
.’

Flowers tugged at his beard and muttered, ‘Mexicans.’ Then he left the room, saying, ‘I have wood to chop.’

Marigold walked me to the car in silence.

Just before I drove away she said, ‘That was terribly cruel of you. The
Mayflower
made no return journey.’
She put her frail hands underneath her glasses and wiped her eyes.

I apologized and once more heard myself making a date to see her again.

As I drove through the gently undulating Leicestershire countryside, I thought about Mr Carlton-Hayes. I know nothing about his private life. He occasionally refers to his partner, Leslie. I have no idea if Leslie is a man or a woman.

It was dark when I drove into the car park at Rat Wharf, but I could see the white shape of Gielgud watching me from behind a clump of reeds as I got out of my car and ran to the entrance of the Old Battery Factory. He seems to take an unhealthy interest in my comings and goings.

Walked to work along the towpath. No sign of swans, but saw an alarming number of rats. At one time I felt like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

When we were reorganizing the Travel section I asked Mr Carlton-Hayes if he had any children. He said he had a son, Marius, who was in a secure mental hospital and a daughter, Claudia, who worked in Ethiopia, distributing
food for UNICEF. He said, ‘Leslie and I are awfully proud of them,’ then added quietly, ‘both of them’. I still don’t know if Leslie is the mother of his children or a male soul mate.

Parvez paid me an unexpected visit tonight. When I opened the door he was panting and sweating, having been chased by ‘a bloody great white thing’ across the car park.

I told him that it was almost certainly Gielgud the swan.

Parvez said, ‘A.S.C.B.A.M.A.Y.K.’

He looked around my apartment and admired my new furniture, then he asked me awkward accountant-type questions. Eventually I cracked and admitted I’d got a store card. He clapped a hand to his head dramatically and said, ‘Where is it?’

I took it out of my wallet and handed it to him. He searched in his pocket, found a small Swiss Army knife, prised out the mini scissors and cut my card in half. He said, ‘You’ll thank me for this one day.’

I didn’t tell him that there was only £89 left to spend on it and that I owed Debenhams £9,911.

Parvez asked me if I was going to the Neil Armstrong Comprehensive reunion on Saturday night.

I said that wild horses would not drag me to such an occasion, and that the thought of seeing such dullards as Brain-box Henderson and the rest of my classmates filled me with horror.

*

I need every penny I can get, so I wrote to Latesun Ltd, threatening legal action unless they sent me a cheque for £57.10 immediately. I said that Britain was preparing to invade Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction. What more proof did head office need?

Full Moon

After work I took Marigold to Wong’s for a meal. She was wearing what looked like a giant romper suit in a pink fleece fabric.

Wayne Wong asked me if I was going to the Neil Armstrong reunion.

I said that I had other things planned and Marigold smiled and squeezed my hand.

Wayne added, ‘Pandora’s coming up from London especially. She’s giving a long-service medal to Miss Fossington-Gore, who’s retiring at the end of term. Barry Kent’s coming an’ all. He’s bought a minibus for the school.’

Marigold said, ‘You don’t mean
the
Barry Kent, the novelist and poet, do you?’

Wayne said, ‘Adrian was in Barry’s gang at school.’

‘Only for a week,’ I said.

‘Oh, I love his stuff,’ breathed Marigold. ‘I can recite his poems off by heart. Do you think you could get him to sign my copies of his books?’

I mumbled something about if I ran into him.

‘Why don’t we go on Saturday?’ said Marigold.

I did not like her use of the word ‘we’. I did not want to parade Marigold in front of my friends, especially Pandora.

I said that I would be working on my
Celebrity and Madness
book on Saturday night. But this was a lie. Nothing on earth would keep me from seeing Pandora, even if I have to share her with my ageing school mates.

I drove Marigold home. She kept her head turned away and looked out of the car window, though there was nothing to see. Every now and again she sniffed and blew her nose. At one point I asked her if she was crying.

She said, ‘I haven’t met any of your friends. Are you ashamed of me?’