by Sue Townsend
Min. payment
£220 a month
Mortgage
£723.48 a month
Total
£1,107.52 a month
This is £24.19 more than I take home each month after tax and insurance. I am drowning in a sea of debt. I will have to get a better-paid job.
Tuesday March 4th
Mr Brown has earmarked £1.75 billion to fund the war.
Wednesday March 5th
The foreign ministers of France, Russia and Germany released a joint declaration stating that they will ‘not allow’ a resolution authorizing military action to pass the UN Security Council.
So Mr Blair and Mr Bush stand alone against tyranny. Our Prime Minister has been making the speeches of his lifetime. His nostrils flare, his chin sets in a determined way and his eyes blaze with passion. He reminds me lately of Robert Powell in the television series I saw about Jesus when I was a boy. What an actor Mr Blair would have made. The National Theatre’s loss is the British public’s gain.
Thursday March 6th
Mia Fox has gone skiing in the Alps so I was able to watch the broadcast by President Bush on CNN. He said that war is very close.
Friday March 7th
The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has issued an ultimatum that unless Saddam ‘demonstrates full, unconditional, immediate and active cooperation by March 17th, Iraq will be invaded’ by British troops.
Sharon came into the shop with Karan in his baby buggy. The kid looks more like William Hague every day. She said that she cannot sleep for thinking about Glenn.
My father rang today on the pretext that they had lost Nigel’s mobile number. But it was clear to me that my mother was regretting her interference in my life and was anxious to have a reconciliation. After I had given him Nigel’s number he said, ‘Bring Marigold to the Piggeries for tea tomorrow and we will try to get to know her better.’
Saturday March 8th
Animal was knocking down one of the pigsties when we arrived. He was swirling the sledgehammer around his head as though he was competing in the Highland Games.
My parents made a great effort to make Marigold feel at home by giving her the best folding chair and offering her a baked potato cooked in the ashes of the bonfire that burns perpetually. They even got up and walked downwind of Marigold when they had a cigarette, in deference to her pregnancy.
My father asked when Marigold would be having a scan. Marigold said she didn’t believe in scans because they ‘desanctified the mystery of the womb’.
My father said, sotto voce, to my mother, ‘The only bleedin’ mystery is how she got pregnant in the first place.’
I was slightly embarrassed by Marigold’s appearance. She has taken to wearing Birkenstock sandals. When I discreetly complained of this to my mother, she said, ‘Adrian, Birkenstocks are so cutting edge they almost slash the feet.’
I asked her to translate.
She said, ‘Birkenstocks are très chic.’
But they do not look très chic on Marigold; they look frumpy. She looks like a German Hausfrau in them. I suggested to her that it might help to lessen the orthopaedic nature of the sandals if she painted her toenails, but Marigold said, ‘Only sluts paint their toenails.’
Unfortunately, she said this in front of my mother; she was not to know that underneath her big boots my mother’s toenails are painted with Chanel’s Scarlet Plum.
In an attempt at female bonding, my mother indicated the bare-chested Animal and asked, ‘Are you a fan of the six-pack, Marigold?’
Marigold glanced at Animal and said, ‘I don’t care for men with muscles. I prefer slim, sensitive men with smooth bodies, long hair and delicate features.’
My mother laughed and said, ‘Christ, Marigold, you’ve just described Kylie Minogue. What are you doing with Adrian?’
A wall of the pigsty crashed down and my parents applauded. Animal stood back and looked as happy as a toddler who had just demolished a tower of wooden bricks.
Marigold asked, ‘What are you going to do with all that rubble?’
‘Make a rockery,’ said my father, ‘with a central water feature.’
Marigold pointed out that there was no electricity with which to activate the water pump.
My mother said, ‘Don’t stamp on my husband’s dream, he’s a visionary.’ She put her arm around my father’s bent back and said, ‘You can see that waterfall, can’t you, George? You can imagine the sound of it as it trickles down the rocks into the pond below. You can see the ripples spreading out across the still, quiet surface.’
My father’s eyes widened. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I can see it all, Pauline. We’re sitting by the side of the pond on that Homebase patio set, the green one with four chairs, table and parasol for £199 all told. The sun is setting and we’ve got a drink in our hands, and our fags are lit and there’s no mossies.’
Marigold said, ‘But Adrian told me that there is no water on the site either. How will you make your water feature without water?’
My mother said, ‘Animal is going to dig a ditch half a mile long which will connect us to the nearest water main.’
I asked them how much Animal was charging them.
My mother said, ‘£3.50 an hour.’
Marigold said, ‘Aren’t you breaking the law? That’s less than the minimum wage.’
My mother said, ‘He lives in our tent and I provide him with three meals a day. Plus he’s company for George.’
I said, ‘But he never speaks.’
My mother bellowed back, ‘No, but he listens to all those boring anecdotes of your father’s that I’m sick of hearing.’
Marigold asked my parents if they were coming to Beeby on the Wold tomorrow evening to celebrate the engagement and discuss the wedding arrangements.
My mother said angrily, looking at me, ‘It’s the first I’ve heard about it.’
I told her that it had completely slipped my mind.
My father said, ‘Is there a dress code, Marigold?’
Marigold said, ‘No, just come as you are. Well, perhaps not exactly as you are.’
I was glad she made the slight qualification, because my father was dressed in tattered army-surplus clothing and decrepit boots, and once again looked like a soldier retreating from Stalingrad.
Animal sat down on a lump of concrete and began playing with the dog. He looked like Lenny fondling the rabbit in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I hope he doesn’t absent-mindedly strangle it.
A wind blew up and Marigold shivered and said she wanted to go home.
My father said, ‘We’re thinking about wind farming. All this bleeding wind is going to waste. It’s the best wind in the world; it comes all the way from the Urals.’ His few remaining grey hairs were being blown about his head. He looked like he had a grey halo.
Marigold said she thought that wind farms disfigured the landscape.
I took her home.
Sunday March 9th
Watched the morning politics show to check on war news. Clare Short was on. She is threatening to resign from the Cabinet if Britain and America invade Iraq. She claims that we would be breaking international law unless there is authorization from the United Nations.
I was disappointed to see that, despite my advice, she is still wearing one of her scarves.
This evening’s engagement party and the subsequent discussion about the wedding was the most difficult social occasion I’ve ever been involved in. At least a third of the guests had made it clear to me beforehand that they disapproved of my fiancée. Even Fatima, who is the sweetest of women, said, ‘It will be a marriage made in hell, Moley. She ain’t right in the head.’
My mother does not seem to have any normal clothes lately. She either looks like Bob the Builder or somebody in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot.
My father was wearing what he calls his best ‘slacks’, a blazer and a navy-blue baseball cap. When I asked him to remove his cap inside the house, my mother said, ‘He can’t because of the “I am
a nutter” tattoo. That’s why I’m wearing a hat, to keep him company.’
When Netta and my mother met, Netta said, ‘How very brave you are, Mrs Mole. So few women would have the confidence to wear a hat in the evening.’
I could tell that my mother regretted wearing the hat. She kept blowing the black feathers away from her face all night.
My father panicked when he saw the food on the buffet table and whispered to me that there was nothing he could eat. ‘It’s all mucked-about-with stuff,’ he said. I told him to relax and pointed out that there was bread, butter and cheese.
‘Goat’s cheese,’ he complained. ‘It smells like it’s been festering in a goat’s armpit.’
Michael Flowers did not make his entrance until the guests were assembled. There was Nigel, in Paul Smith and dark glasses; Parvez and Fatima in their traditional clothes; Brain-box Henderson in his Norman Wisdom suit; Marigold in a burgundy velvet leisure outfit; Poppy in a 1970s op-art retro dress and white boots; various Morris men and Morris women in their more prosaic civilian clothes; the woman vicar in a dog collar and black trouser suit; Michael Flowers’s sister, a thin bitter woman with a wispy beard; and Alexandra, Marigold’s old school friend, a timid woman with a square jaw who seemed to be afraid of Marigold.
Michael Flowers clapped his hands and asked for silence. He sounds more like Donald Sinden every day. He said, ‘May I crave your indulgence and ask you to wait a little longer before we start the party proper. We’re waiting for a very important guest, Marigold’s sister Daisy. She is on a train that is crawling into Leicester station as I speak. She will jump into a taxi and be with us in approximately half an hour.’
When he said Daisy’s name, my heart constricted and I almost fell down in a swoon. Every fibre, every atom, every corpuscle of my body wanted to see Daisy. But I also wanted to run screaming into the dark night so as to put a distance between me and her. I said, without realizing that I was speaking out loud, ‘Why in God’s name is Daisy coming?’
Margaret, the woman vicar, happened to be at my elbow and said, ‘Isn’t she one of the bridesmaids?’
We then had a very stilted conversation about the marriage service. Marigold joined us and said that she would like the words ‘love, honour and obey’ to be incorporated, and explained that she felt ‘feminism had gone too far’.
I thought that the vicar looked a little alarmed at this request and, in a subsequent conversation, found out that she was a radical and was hoping to ‘make bishop’ before she turned fifty.
The minutes waiting for Daisy’s entrance were agonizing to me. I was embarrassed because my mother’s hat was shedding feathers all over the buffet, and I was forced to excuse myself four times and go to the lavatory.
When I returned after my fourth visit, Michael Flowers said, ‘Trouble with the waterworks, Adrian? Have you tried an infusion of mustard seeds? Give it a go for six weeks, but if you’re still pointing Percy at the porcelain every ten minutes, I know a good urology chap.’
I excused myself, saying I had to go to the lavatory again. After I had bolted myself in, I washed my hands with lavender soap and stared at my mendacious face in the mirror above the washbasin. I then looked through the books that Michael Flowers kept on a shelf next to the lavatory. Knots by R. D. Laing, Ulysses, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Mein Kampf and The Lord of the Rings. None of them was worth anything. But I noticed that Flowers had annotated the margins of Mein Kampf with his indecipherable scribbling. There were a lot of exclamation marks.
I heard Daisy arrive. I let myself out and went to the top of the stairs and looked down. She was surrounded by people. Brain-box Henderson helped her off with the long black coat she was wearing. She looked up and saw me. She held her gaze and I held mine. It was impossible to tell from her expression if (a) she still loved me and would keep quiet about our brief affair, or (b) she loved me, but was so eaten up with jealousy and rage that she would denounce me in front of our families and friends, or (c) she no longer loved me and didn’t care if I married Marigold or not.
Netta bustled over and introduced Daisy to my parents. I watched Daisy compliment my mother on her hat. I stayed watching as my mother took off the hat and invited Daisy to try it on. I heard Daisy say, ‘I’ll go upstairs and look at myself in the bathroom mirror.’ When she was halfway up the stairs she said, ‘Hello, Adrian.’
I said, ‘Hello, Daisy.’
Marigold shouted from the bottom of the stairs, ‘There’s a perfectly good mirror in the hall.’
Daisy shouted back, over her shoulder, ‘I need to do my make-up.’
When she got to the top of the stairs, she said quietly, ‘I can’t believe you’re going through with this charade.’
I said, ‘Neither can I, Daisy, but Marigold’s having my baby. I’ve let down two children. I can’t let down another.’
She slashed red lipstick across her lips, then plunged a hand inside the neckline of her black cashmere sweater and adjusted her cleavage.
I said to her, ‘Aren’t you cold in that skirt? It’s little more than a belt.’
She said, ‘Yes, I am cold. But I’m so miserable and unhappy that I don’t care.’
She then advanced on me with the wand of her mascara, holding it like a small dagger. I backed out of the bathroom doorway and went downstairs.
When the company were assembled in what Michael Flowers called the ‘drawing room’, the gruesome proceedings began.
Michael Flowers introduced Margaret, the vicar, by saying, ‘Netta and I reared the girls to make their own minds up about religion. I embraced humanism. Daisy is a hedonist as far as one can tell...’
There was polite laughter. I looked at Daisy. She took a deep swig of champagne, followed by an even deeper drag on the cigarette she’d just cadged off my mother.
Flowers went on, ‘Poppy is a disciple of Ron Hubbard and is an active member of the Church of Scientology, but sweet, sweet Marigold has lately embraced the good old Church of England. Which is where Margaret comes in, so over to you, vicar.’
Margaret had a fresh, open face and a Shirley Williams hairstyle. She seemed a little too anxious to prove that she was one of us. She said, ‘I think marriage is a little like the buffet table over there. On it there are things I enjoy eating, such as the ratatouille casserole and the baked courgettes. However, there are some things there I loathe and despise. I cannot abide strawberry cheesecake and mushrooms make me sick to my stomach.’
My father whispered, ‘Ungrateful cow. I don’t like the food, but I’m not complaining.’
Margaret stretched the food/marriage analogy until it broke. The company exhibited bewilderment and incomprehension.
Netta then passed around what she called preliminary sketches of the bridal gown and the bridesmaids’ dresses. She coyly told me that I was not allowed to peek.
When the sketches got to Daisy, I saw her pull her mouth down in a sign of disgust and heard her say, ‘Mint green? I look foul in green.’
I was put on the spot by Netta when she asked me if I had chosen my best man. Nigel and Parvez turned to me expectantly, but I did some quick thinking and said to my father, ‘Dad, you have stuck by me in good times and in bad, will you help me out now please?’
My father took his baseball cap off and wiped his eyes with it, and my mother said, ‘Adrian, you’ve made an old man very happy.’
After the ushers had been sorted out – Nigel, Parvez and Brain-box Henderson and a bearded Flowers cousin – Michael Flowers said, ‘I would like to propose a toast to the happy couple. However, before I do, I want to say a few words about my own marriage. Netta and I have been married for over thirty years and we have been, I think, mostly happy, but now alas our marriage has finally come to an end. Netta has found somebody she loves more than she loves me, and so I must let her go.’ His voice started to break and the partygoers’ smiles froze on their faces. He turned to Netta and said, ‘Go to him, go to him soon, my love.’
Netta sa
id, ‘What? Now? Don’t be ridiculous, Michael, I have a party to run.’
My mother saved the day by saying loudly, ‘A toast to Marigold and Adrian.’
There were a few feeble shouts of ‘Hip, hip, hooray.’
I overheard Daisy saying to my mother, ‘Every social occasion ever held in this house ends in tears and snot.’
Parvez and Fatima went up to Netta Flowers to say goodnight. Fatima said, ‘We have to get back for the dog.’
When I was seeing them to the front door, I said, ‘You haven’t got a dog, Fatima.’
She said, ‘I know, but it’s what English people say when they want to go home, innit?’
The next time I saw Daisy she was wearing her long black coat and had her bag over her shoulder. I asked her where she was going.
She said, ‘I’ve got to get out of here. I’m going to try to catch the last train back to London.’
I said, ‘The station is on the way to Rat Wharf. I’ll give you a lift.’
There were protests from various people, but I didn’t care. Within minutes of leaving the front drive, we were parked in a lay-by hidden from the road and in each other’s arms.
We started undressing as we were climbing the stairs at Rat Wharf. Within seconds of opening the front door, we were on the futon and I was enveloped in the musky softness of Daisy’s body.
Mia Fox banged on my ceiling several times, but for once I ignored her and carried on with what I was doing. Afterwards, when we were drying each other after showering, I asked Daisy if she had changed her mind about war with Iraq and admitted that I fully supported Mr Blair.
She said slowly, ‘My God. I’m glad you’ve told me, but it’s like being told that somebody you love secretly votes Tory. You could never look at them in the same way again.’ Then she said thoughtfully, ‘It’s going to be very difficult to fully commit myself to somebody who is in favour of invading Iraq.’
