by Sue Townsend
Friday November 1st
All Saints’ Day
Glenn’s passing-out day.
Saturday November 2nd
Rose at dawn yesterday, showered, made tea, took tea into parents. There was a bottle of wine and two glasses on my father’s bedside table. The television was still on from the night before. It took a long time to wake them.
I was worried that they had both, in an amazing coincidence, fallen into a simultaneous coma. I urged them to hurry, to get themselves ready for departure at 8.30, as I had to pick my suit up from the dry-cleaner’s, then drive to the opposite side of town to pick Sharon up.
As I was closing their door, I heard my father say, ‘Bags I sit in the passenger seat, next to Adrian.’
*
When we drew up outside Sharon’s house, her new partner, a youth of twenty-seven, Ryan, came to the front door and stared at my car and its occupants. He was holding Sharon’s latest baby in his arms.
Sharon appeared in the doorway, carrying a large suitcase, a cigarette, a handbag, a black velvet hat, an umbrella, a vanity case and a pair of gloves.
‘Christ’, said my father, ‘she looks like a contestant from Crackerjack.’
I got out of the car and opened the boot.
Ryan joined me at the back of the car. ‘What time will you be bringing her back tomorrow?’ he said.
I replied that it depended on weather conditions and the volume of traffic on the motorways.
‘I need her back for 12.30,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a gig at Cooper House.’
He made it sound as though he was Fat Boy Slim playing at Stringfellows, whereas in fact I knew that he earned £8 a fortnight for playing a few Vera Lynn records at Cooper House, the old people’s home.
It took longer than I had hoped to get to Deepcut Barracks, due to the many cigarette stops demanded by my passengers. I was forced to change into my suit, shirt and tie in the back of the car in the car park at the barracks.
When I stepped out, my mother gave a little scream and said, ‘What’s that white stuff on your trousers?’
She spat on a handkerchief and tried to remove the stains, but they had been baked on by the dry-cleaning fluid.
I spent most of the day, when I remembered, with my hands flat against my thighs, like a man who was about to bend down and pat the head of a small child.
An extremely tall and cultured man, General Frob-isher-Nairn, in a dress uniform with many medals, told the seated crowd of relations and friends on the parade ground that we should be proud of our sons and daughters who were about to serve their Queen and country.
Then the young soldiers marched up and down to the sounds of the regimental band. We couldn’t see Glenn at first, then Sharon spotted him and burst into tears. I put my arm around her.
My father filmed the ceremony on his mini video camera.
I was quite proud when, during the inspection, General Frobisher-Nairn spoke to Glenn for a full minute.
When Glenn joined us in Tela Hall, where we were served afternoon tea, I asked him what the general had said.
Glenn said, ‘He asked me where I was from. I told him, “Leicester, sir.” He said, “Leicester? Isn’t that where they make Walkers Crisps?” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “Do you like crisps, Bott?” I said, “Yes, sir.” “And which flavour do you prefer, Bott?” I said, “Cheese and onion, sir.” Then he said, “Splendid, Bott.” And I said, “Thank you, sir.”’
I didn’t say anything to Glenn, but quite frankly, diary, I was disappointed at the banality of their exchange. Especially at a time when there is talk of war in the air.
We didn’t stay long at the party, which was held in the back room of a pub. My parents made fools of themselves, dancing to ‘Let’s Twist Again’, and I think Glenn was relieved when we announced that we were going back to the Lendore Spa Hotel.
Before we left he said, ‘I’d like to have my photo took with my mum and dad.’
One of his mates, a timid-looking soldier called Robbie, took our photograph. Glenn stood in the middle and Sharon and I put our arms around his shoulders. Glenn looked ecstatic.
I felt a pang of sadness that Glenn grew up without a mum and dad who lived together in the same house and loved each other. He is catching a plane early in the morning from Gatwick to Tenerife for a week’s leave with a crowd of his soldier mates.
I gave him fifty quid, though I could ill afford it.
The Lendore is owned by a couple called Len and Doreen Legg. As nobody else in our party had a valid credit card, it was mine that Len Legg took a print of.
My father asked if the bar was still open. Len Legg sighed and rolled his eyes, then took a huge bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the grille over the bar.
‘Thank you, mine host,’ said my father, and asked if there was a bottle of cold champagne.
‘Not cold,’ said Len. ‘But I could put it in the freezer for half an hour.’
My father said, ‘No, don’t bother. In half an hour I’ll have worked out that I’m paying a 300 per cent mark-up, and I’ll have gone off the idea. It’s now or never with champagne.’
*
After we had been served our drinks, Doreen Legg came to the door of the bar and said in a whiny voice, ‘I thought you were coming to bed, Len.’
Len said, ‘You can see how I’m placed, Dore.’
Doreen Legg looked at us accusingly and said, ‘He’s been up since 5.30.’
My mother said, ‘As residents of this hotel, under EU law, we are entitled to drink in this bar for twenty-four hours should we wish to do so.’
I asked Doreen Legg if they did bar food.
Doreen said, ‘Not after 10.30.’
Sharon shifted nervously on the banquette next to me. It was 11.15 and she has to eat at two-hourly intervals.
My father volunteered to go out and search the area for food.
Doreen Legg told us that everything was shut, but that we would find the minibar well stocked with chocolate and nuts.
My mother spoke in a loud voice about the hotels she had stayed in abroad, how welcoming the staff were, how good the food was.
Len Legg stood behind the bar, listening and cleaning his nails with a chewed-down match.
When we were going up in the juddering lift I reminded my parents that the contents of the minibar were not complimentary.
I had been hoping that the room I was to share with Sharon would have twin beds, but it was not to be. A large pink candlewick-covered bed dominated the room.
Sharon walked around the small room like a tourist. She was enraptured by the trouser press and thrilled by the television on a bracket on the wall. She admired the fullness of the dirty net curtains, opened every drawer and cupboard, and, when she found the Gideon’s Bible, said, ‘Somebody’s left their book behind.’
She found the minibar inside the sliding wardrobe. I hadn’t got the heart to stop her from ripping open a tin of mixed nuts. I checked the minibar price list.
‘My God,’ I said, ‘they’re £8.50.’
I went into the bathroom and changed into my pyjamas.
When I came out Sharon was eating a Nestlé’s Crunchy Nut. She flicked a piece of stray chocolate from the corner of her lips into her mouth with her tongue and said, ‘Aidy, no offence, but I don’t dog around no more, so don’t expect nowt tonight.’ Then she went into the bathroom and emerged five minutes later wearing what looked like biblical robes and got into bed. She said sleepily, ‘That’s the best bathroom I’ve ever seen, an’ don’t you think it’s nice of them to put all them little soaps and bottles of stuff in there for the guests?’
I lay awake for a while and wondered what Marigold would say if she could see me and Sharon lying side by side. Would she understand or was she the jealous type?
As Sharon and I entered the breakfast room I could hear my mother’s voice. She was having a toast row with Doreen Legg. It was a monologue I had heard many times before.
‘I ordered a
full English breakfast with toast. You brought my breakfast, but my toast arrived fifteen minutes later. And when it arrived it was cold and uncooked. The so-called toast you brought to me had not in actual fact been toasted. It had perhaps spent thirty seconds in a toaster. I do not think it was unreasonable of me to ask you to take the so-called toast back to the kitchen and retoast it.’
Doreen Legg said, ‘Nobody else has complained, madam,’ and looked around the breakfast room, where other guests were sheepishly chewing at their uncooked toast.
My father said obsequiously, ‘I don’t mind raw toast. But my wife’s very fussy about hers.’
My mother said, ‘George, this isn’t toast.’ She waggled a piece of the limp white bread in his face.
I thought it was time to intervene. I said, ‘Mrs Legg, we are paying £95 each for our rooms. Is it impossible to get a few slices of white bread, browned on both sides, without all this melodrama?’
I led Sharon to the breakfast buffet and explained that she could help herself to the cereals, fruit juice and the bowl of fermenting fruit salad.
I must say that I was very proud of Sharon. She must have broken some kind of record, and she still managed a full English with fried bread and extra toast.
When we went back to our room to pack our bags, I emptied the complimentary toiletries into Sharon’s suitcase and included the spare toilet roll and a white flannel.
In the daylight the room looked grubby and I could see that the carpet bore the stains of multi-occupation.
A jackknifed lorry delayed us on the M25. We were caught in a tailback for two and a half hours and my father was forced to urinate into an empty Diet Coke bottle.
Sharon rang Ryan using my mobile to tell him that she would be late. She told him excitedly about the hotel, but he cut her off. She fell into a sad silence for the rest of the way home.
Just before she got out of the car I said, ‘It might be best not to mention to Ryan that we shared a room, or a bed. He may not understand.’
Sharon said, ‘It’s OK, Aidy. Ryan and me promised to tell the truth to each other, 24/7.’
I carried her suitcase up the path. Ryan was glowering out of the front-room window. The baby was screaming in his arms. I begged Sharon to lie and to tell Ryan that she slept in a single bed in a single room.
As I finish writing this entry I feel a growing sense of unease.
Sunday November 3rd
Since Cherie Blair has chosen to ignore my invitation to speak at the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group on December 23rd, I have written to Ruth Rendell.
Dear Ms Rendell
As one writer to another, where do you get your ideas from? Do you write by hand or use a word processor? How long does it take to write one of your novels? Do you write from personal experience or are your characters and plots totally fictional?
Let me cut to the chase.
I am the membership secretary of the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group. We have been badly let down recently by Cherie Blair. She has failed to respond to an invitation to be the main speaker at our Christmas dinner to be held on December 23rd this year (venue to be arranged).
I realize it is short notice, but could you do the honours?
We cannot afford to pay a fee or expenses, but I think you will find us a lively crowd.
I hope you will reply in the affirmative. However, should Mrs Blair decide to accept our invitation after all, I hope you will understand if I have to disappoint you at the last minute. She is, after all, the highest lady in the land.
I remain, madam,
Your most humble and obedient servant,
A. A. Mole
Monday November 4th
New Moon
It was a quiet morning in the shop. Mr Carlton-Hayes was in the back, smoking his pipe and reading Tony Benn’s Diaries, which were published last week.
I was cataloguing the Rupert annuals when Sharon’s partner, Ryan, burst in to the shop and gave me a mouthful of foul abuse, claiming I had ‘knobbed’ Sharon during our stay at the Lendore Spa Hotel.
I told him, truthfully, as you will attest, diary, that Sharon and I had remained in a state of grace all night.
I will do anything to avoid physical violence, but when somebody thumps me on the shoulder, I thump them back. After a little untidy skirmishing, Mr Carlton-Hayes came from out of the back and, in a loud, authoritative voice, ordered Ryan to leave the shop.
When Ryan said, ‘Fuck off, you stupid old bastard, before I shove your pipe up your arse,’ Mr Carlton-Hayes handed his pipe to me and hit Ryan hard on the jaw.
Ryan left, saying that he would be back with his brother.
When he’d gone, Mr Carlton-Hayes took his pipe from me and said, ‘You seem to have a frightfully dramatic romantic life, Adrian. I do envy you.’
Tuesday November 5th
I rang Marigold last night and asked her if she would like to accompany me to a Fire Service organized bonfire party, all proceeds to go to their strike fund. Marigold said that she was afraid of fireworks and would be barricading herself inside their house, together with the family pets. Her frailty both excites and irritates me.
My parents have found a couple of pigsties on the outskirts of Mangold Parva. They both stand on an eighth of an acre of unprepossessing land, half a mile along a farm track. There is planning permission for conversion to two dwellings. However, they have no water, gas, electricity or main drainage.
They showed me a photograph, and my mother pointed excitedly to where they intended to fit French doors. I advised them against it, but madness has taken them over. They are suffering from folie à deux, like Myra Hindley and Ian Brady.
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.
Wednesday November 6th
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.
Thursday November 7th
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.
Friday November 8th
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.
