by Sue Townsend
Wednesday June 15th
When I got home from work, where I was shunned and vilified (it turned out that all the library staff like Jane Austen), I went to my room to find that my mother had cleared out my toy cupboard. Pinky, my pink and grey rabbit, was nowhere to be seen! I burst into the kitchen, where my mother was entertaining her neighbours to tea. Through a thick smog of cigarette smoke I looked my mother in the eye and said, ‘Where’s Pinky?’ ‘He’s outside in the dustbin,’ she said. She had the grace to drop her eyes. She knew she’d done me and Pinky a terrible wrong. ‘How could you?’ I said coldly. I flung open the door that led to the yard. Pinky’s threadbare ears were visible sticking out of a black plastic bag. I pulled him out of the bag and dusted him down, then I re-crossed the kitchen and slammed the door. Huge gusts of female laughter could be heard behind me as I ran up the stairs.
Pinky is exactly the same age as me. He was purchased by my drunken father on the day of my birth. Pinky only has, only ever had, two legs; but he is still a rabbit. It is beyond my comprehension how anyone could even think about disposing of him. I packed my suitcase there and then. I placed Pinky carefully in a carrier bag. I went into the kitchen. I addressed my mother. ‘I’m going. I shall send for my books.’ I went.
Thursday June 16th
Living here with Sharon and eight other Botts is a nightmare. I am supposed to be sleeping on the living room couch but the Botts don’t go to bed. They stop up, in the living room, talking and shouting and quarrelling and watching violent videos. A few Botts, Sharon was one, went to bed at 3am but the remaining Botts had noisy discussions about babies, contraception, menstruation, death, funerals, the price of ice-cream, Clement Freud, the Queen, the man in the moon, dogs, cats, gerbils, various aches and pains they had suffered from, clothes they had tired of. Then, after an hour of malicious gossip about a woman I’d never heard of called Cynthia Bell, I closed my eyes, feigning sleep. Would they take the hint and go to bed? No.
‘Funny looking bugger isn’t he?’ said Mrs Bott. ‘What does our Sharon see in him?’
Was she referring to me?
‘He’s supposed to be dead brainy,’ said her eldest daughter Marjorie, ‘though I ain’t seen no evidence of brains. He just sits there looking like a wet weekend.’
‘He’s a randy little sod,’ said Farah, the youngest Bott, ‘our Sharon reckons ‘e can do it four times a night.’
‘Do what?’ screeched Mrs Bott, ‘thread a needle?’
The Botts screeched and cackled for quite some time then finally, after a lot of noisy stair climbing, went to bed. Dawn was breaking as I stretched out on the couch and went to sleep.
At 6am Mr Bott, a timid and, not surprisingly, quiet man, came into the living room, and switched on breakfast television.
‘’pe I’m not disturbin’ you,’ he said politely.
‘Not at all,’ I said. I got up, retrieved my suitcase from the hall, and walked out into the cool morning air.
I was on the first stage of my journey to Oxford, where I intended to fall on Pandora’s neck and plead sanctuary.
Friday June 17th
It was lunchtime when I got to Pandora’s flat. Pandora wasn’t in. She was having a tutorial. However, a languorous youth called Julian Twyselton-Fife was in. We shook hands. I’ve grasped firmer rubber gloves.
To make conversation I asked him what he was doing at Oxford.
‘Oh I’m just farting about,’ he said airily. ‘I shan’t sit my finals, only people who intend to work do that.’
He offered me Turkish coffee. I accepted, not wanting to appear provincial. When it came I regretted my inferiority complex. I asked if he shared the flat with Pandora.
‘I’m married to Pandora,’ he said. ‘She’s Mrs Twyselton-Fife. I did it as a favour to her last week. Pandora has this dinky little theory that first marriages should be gotten over with quickly, so we intend to divorce quite soon. We don’t love each other,’ he added. Then, ‘In fact, I prefer my own sex.’ ‘Good,’ I said, ‘because I intend to be Pandora’s second husband.’
Pinky had slid out of his carrier bag. ‘I say, who is that divine creature?’ brayed Twyselton-Fife. He grasped Pinky to his tweedy bosom. I said, ‘It’s Pinky.’
He crooned, ‘Oh, Pinky, you’re a handsome one, aren’t you? Now, don’t deny it, sir, accept the compliment!’
Pandora came in. She looked clever and lovely.
‘Hello Mrs Twyselton-Fife.’ I said.
‘Oh, you know then?’ she said.
‘Can I stay here?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
So that was that. I am now in a ménage à trois. With a bit of luck it will soon be a ménage à deux. For ever.
Saturday June 18th
I phoned home this morning. One of the engineering lodgers answered. ‘Hello, Martin Muffet speaking.’
‘Martin Muffet!’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and spare the jokes about tuffets and spiders will you?’
‘I wish to speak to my mother, Mrs Mole,’ I said.
‘Pauline,’ he bellowed before banging the phone down on the hall table. I heard the click of my mother’s lighter, then she spoke.
‘Adrian, where are you?’
‘I’m in Oxford.’
‘At the University?’
‘Not studying at the University, no, that honour was denied me. If I’d had a complete set of Children’s Encyclopaedias perhaps I’d …’
‘Oh don’t start on that again. It’s not my fault you didn’t get your “A” levels …’
‘I’m here with Pandora and her husband.’
‘Husband?’
I could image the expression on my mother’s face. She would be looking like a starving dog which was being offered a piece of sirloin steak.
‘Who? When? Why?’ asked my mother who, in the unlikely event of being asked for her recreation by the publishers of Who’s Who, would be honour bound to reply: ‘My main recreation is gossiping.’
‘Do Pandora’s parents know that she’s married?’ asked my mother, still agog.
‘No,’ I replied. Then I thought, ‘But it won’t be long before they do, will it, mother?’
In the afternoon, Pandora and I went shopping. Julian Twyselton-Fife was lying in bed reading a Rupert Bear annual. As we were leaving, he shouted, ‘Don’t forget the honey, darlings.’
Once we were outside, on the street, I told Pandora that she must start divorce proceedings. ‘Right now, this minute.’ I offered to accompany her to a solicitor’s office.
‘They don’t work on Saturday afternoons,’ she said. ‘They play golf.’
‘Monday morning,’ I said.
‘I’ve got a tutorial,’ she said feebly.
‘Monday afternoon,’ I pressed.
‘I’m having tea with friends,’ she said.
‘Tuesday morning?’ I suggested.
We went through the whole week and then the following week. Pandora’s every waking moment seemed to be accounted for. Eventually I exploded, ‘Look Pandora, you do want to marry me don’t you?’
Pandora poked at a courgette (we were in a greengrocer’s shop at the time), then she sighed and said, ‘Well actually darling, no; I don’t intend to remarry until I’m at least thirty-six.’
‘Thirty-six!’ I screeched. ‘But, by then I could be fat or bald or toothless.’
Pandora looked at me and said, ‘You’re not exactly an Adonis now, are you?’ In my hurry to leave the shop I knocked a pile of Outspan oranges onto the floor. In the resulting confusion (in which several old ladies reacted to the rolling oranges as though they were hand grenades, rather than mere fruit coming towards them), I failed to see Pandora leaving.
I ran after her. Then I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder, then a growling voice: the greengrocer’s.
‘Runnin’ off without payin’ eh? Well, I’m sick of you students nickin’ my stuff, this time I’m prosecutin’. You’ll be in a police cell tonight, my lad.’
It was with horror that I realized I had an Outspan orange in each hand.
Sunday June 19th
I have been charged with shoplifting. My life is ruined. I shall have a criminal record. Now I will never get a job in the Civil Service.
Pandora is standing by me. She is feeling dead guilty because when she ran out of the shop she forgot to pay for a pound of courgettes, a lettuce and a box of mustard and cress.
Nothing has changed. It’s still the rich what gets the gravy and the poor what gets the blame.
Mole at the Department of the Environment
July 1989
Monday July 10th
I was called into Mr Brown’s office today, but first I was kept waiting in the small vestibule outside. I noticed that Brown had allowed his rubber plant to die. I was scandalized by the sight of the poor, dead thing. Taking my penknife out of my pocket, I removed the decayed leaves until a brown, shrivelled stump was left.
Brown bellowed, ‘Come’. So I went, though I was annoyed at being summoned in like a dog.
Brown was looking out of the window and jiggling the change in his pocket. At least I think that was what he was doing, the only other possible alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.
He turned and glowered at me. ‘I have just heard a disquieting fact about you, Mole,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Oh, indeed,’ repeated Brown. ‘Is there something you should tell me about your lavatorial habits, Mole?’
After a period of thought I said, ‘No sir, if it’s about the puddle on the floor last Friday, that was when I …’
‘No, no, not at work, at home,’ he snapped. I thought about the lavatory at home. Surely I used it as other men did? Or did I? Was I doing something unspeakable without knowing it? And if I was how did Brown know?
‘Think of your lavatory seat, Mole. You have been heard bragging about it, in the canteen.’ As I was bidden I thought about the newly installed lavatory seat at home.
‘Describe the aforementioned lavatory seat, Mole.’ I fingered my penknife nervously. Brown had obviously gone mad. It was common knowledge that he wandered around on motorway embankments at night, muttering endearments to hedgehogs.
‘Well sir,’ I said, edging imperceptibly towards the door. ‘It’s sort of a reddish brown wood, and it has brass fittings …’
Brown shouted, ‘Ha, reddish brown wood! … Mahogany! You are a vandal, Mole, an enemy of the earth. Consider your job to be on the line! Mahogany is one of the earth’s most precious and endangered woods and you have further endangered it by your vanity and lust.’
Tuesday July 11th
Pandora and I had an in-depth discussion about the mahogany lavatory seat tonight. It ended when she slammed the lid down angrily, and said, ‘Well, I like it; it’s warm and comfortable, and it’s staying!’
I have started scanning the job pages in the Independent.
Wednesday July 12th
Brown has sent a memo round to all departments ordering the expulsion of all aerosols in the building. A spot check will be carried out tomorrow. The typing pool are in an ugly mood and are threatening mutiny.
Thursday July 13th
There were pathetic scenes throughout the day as workers tried to hang on to their underarm deodorants and canisters of hairspray. But by four o’clock Brown announced a victory. It was a perspiring and limp-haired crowd of workers who left the building. Some shook their fists at the sky and swore at the ozone layer, or the lack of it. One or the other.
Friday July 14th
Bastille Day
Now there is trouble with the cleaning ladies! Apparently Brown has left a note in each of their mop-buckets ordering them to rid themselves of their Mr Sheen and Pledge. Mrs Sprogett who cleans our office was very bitter about Brown. ‘’E’s askin’ us to go back to the dark days of lavender wax,’ she said. I tried to explain to the poor woman, but she said, ‘What’s a bleedin’ ozone layer when it’s at home?’
Saturday July 15th
Made a shocking discovery this morning. Our so-called mahogany seat is made entirely of chip-board! I rang the bathroom fitments showroom and informed them that they had contravened the Trade Descriptions Act. I demanded a full refund.
Monday July 16th
Went to Brown’s office to apprise him of the latest facts regarding the lavatory seat, but he wasn’t there. He has been suspended on full pay pending an enquiry into his wilful neglect and cruelty to a rubber plant.
Susan Lilian Townsend
Majorca
Week One
Thursday October 29th
The flight to Majorca is delayed. My boarding pass is rejected by a uniformed youth of thirteen.
ME: ‘Why?’
YOUTH: ‘Something’s wrong with the plane.’
ME: ‘What exactly is wrong with the plane?’
YOUTH: ‘Dunno.’
ME: ‘How long before …?’
YOUTH: ‘Dunno.’
I predict a glittering future for the youth. Foreign Office spokesman is one job that comes to mind.
Although there are at least two hundred empty seats in the departure lounge, the majority of my fellow passengers begin to queue in front of the desk. Why? We have all been given our seat numbers for the aeroplane. There is a café only five yards away but few passengers break ranks and avail themselves of its facilities.
Some people stand for one hour and ten minutes carrying heavy hand luggage. Not for them the luxury of placing it on the floor at their feet. Apart from it being communal airport neurosis, I cannot explain this perverse behaviour. Who says the English cannot be led into revolution? Get them inside an airport and they will follow any leader and have heads on pikestaffs quicker than you can say ‘boarding card’.
Eventually we board the plane. The middle-aged couple next to me are wearing tweeds and are discussing their plans for Christmas – who to invite out: ‘Certain people will not be welcome, not after last year,’ he says. My guess is that the ‘certain people’ are on her side of the family because she goes into a sulk. I don’t exchange a word with this couple until we descend from the clouds above Majorca and I say aloud, ‘Oh mountains!’ He tells me that most of Majorca is mountains, which is why he and his wife love the island. ‘The coast is hell for most of the year,’ he says.
We passed over red and green and black fields which together look like a vast Rastafarian draughtsboard, then hundreds of working windmills, and eventually Palma Bay, which looks like a child’s drawing of the seaside: brilliant blue sea, custard coloured sand, white yachts and purple mountains in the background.
Within twenty minutes of landing I am in a taxi and speeding along the coast road. The taxi driver curses the other drivers. We pass an open truck which is full of roistering men waving bottles of wine about. They are middle-aged and conservatively dressed. They turn out to be English. The taxi driver smiles and says, ‘Inglese’, as one might say ‘madmen’.
‘I have no knowledge of you,’ says the stern-faced Manuel at hotel reception. ‘You are not on the computer.’ I showed him my reservation, pointed to the magic words ‘confirmed’ and ‘telex’. He went into the back room. He picked up a phone. ‘There is no room in the hotel,’ he said, returning from the savage-sounding telephone conversation. I stood at the desk for twenty minutes. I sighed, I looked sad, I began to write in my notebook. Eventually he waved a large key at me and said, ‘There is only one room.’ I understood why when I got there. The plywood door stood ajar. The room was so unlovely that nobody in their right mind would want to steal anything at all from it. The decor was in shades of suicide brown, the lighting was to Albanian specifications. There was an appalling smell, as though a disease-racked creature had died and been decomposing behind the skirting board for some months. I sprinkled duty free perfume about like a high Anglican priest; the smell got worse. On such occasions I count my blessings: 1: I’m alive. 2: I’m almost healthy. 3: I’m not in a car on the Birmingha
m Inner Ring Road.
I changed out of my English woollens and into my daughter’s Bermuda shorts. I looked in the mirror. First the front view; not bad, Townsend. Then the back view; grotesque, Townsend. Take them off, woman.
Twelve floors down, Spanish women were strolling in the street, elegantly attired in tailored suits and high heels.
I inspected my holiday clothes. Had somebody, some mad person with a grudge against me, broken into my house the night before and thrown my carefully co-ordinated clothes away, and replaced them with this bizarre collection? How else to explain the presence in my luggage of an ankle-length, beige linen circular skirt, jewelled espadrilles, two evening bags. Bloodstained blue and orange sandals. A size sixteen sundress (I am size twelve). Harem trousers overprinted with (possibly insulting) Spanish phrases. How did my daughter’s old school cardigan get in there?
It was in the jewelled espadrilles and a cotton pyjama suit with an evening bag slung across my chest that I left the hotel and went for a walk. As I left the hotel my sunglasses fell off and broke on the pavement. I walked twenty-five yards and sat down at a pavement café. After a quick repair job on the sunglasses I ordered coffee and read my guide book: Majorca, English edition by Antonio Cammpana and Juan Puig-Ferran.
Dear Friends and Readers, if you are or imagine you are a victim of neurasthenia, deafened and confused by the noise of our modern civilization and the urge to arrive more quickly at some place where you have nothing to do, and if business has filled with numbers the space in your brain that is intended for what we call intelligence; if the cinema has damaged your optic organism and the flickering has become chronic, and restlessness and worry will not let you live, and you want to enjoy a little of the rest to which anybody in this world is entitled who has done no harm to anyone – then follow me to an island where calm always reigns and men are never in a hurry, where the women never grow old, where words are not wasted, where the sun stays longer than anywhere else and the Lady Moon moves more slowly, sleepy with idleness.
