by Sue Townsend
His irony was lost on Mortimer, who cocked his head and resurveyed the room as if trying to visualize six bed spaces on the attic floor.
I asked Mortimer if he was a reader. ‘Not for pleasure,’ he said.
‘So you don’t want to go through and select a few favourites?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I just want rid.’
It was the first time I had been to a valuation where the owner of the books had offered to pay the bookseller to take the books away.
In the taxi going back to the shop, Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘He’s such an unpleasant fellow that I don’t feel the least bit guilty. We’re saving those books from the skip.’
We allowed Mortimer to pay us £50 to take all the books away. The taxi driver congratulated us on our obvious good spirits; we could not stop smiling. The Mortimer collection was the bookseller’s equivalent of finding gold in the Klondike. One thing haunts me though: Lawrence Mortimer told me that his mother had died in bed with a book in her hand. When I asked the title of the book he said, ‘I dunno, it was just a book. What’s it to you?’
When I replied, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living,’ he said, defensively, ‘I saw her at Christmas and Easter. I’m a busy man.’
Tuesday April 8th
Mr Carlton-Hayes has enlisted the help of an ex-bookseller friend of his called Bernard Hopkins to help catalogue the Mortimer collection. According to Mr Carlton-Hayes, Hopkins is an alcoholic who drank a thriving business away; he is perfectly competent and congenial providing he can down a bottle of Absolut Vodka a day. It’s when he can’t get it or afford it that problems arise.
I received the following letter from the council today re: Swan Harassment.
Neighbourhood Conflict Co-ordinator
Leicester City Council
New Walk
Leicester LE1
April 4th 2003
Dear Mr Mole
Your letter regarding the nuisance you have experienced from your neighbour, Mr Swan, has been passed to this department, the Neighbourhood Conflict Unit.
We offer a reconciliation and conflict-resolution service.
You and Mr Swan would be brought face to face to talk about your differences. You would meet on neutral territory, and our Conflict Resolution Facilitator would be present.
If you wish to avail yourself of this service, please telephone, write or contact me by email on nuisanceneighbour.gov.uk.
I do not have Mr Swan’s address. If you send it to me, I will contact him immediately.
Yours sincerely
Trixie Meadows
Neighbourhood Conflict Co-ordinator
Wednesday April 9th
US Marines toppled Saddam’s statue today. I watched it on television with the sound turned down.
Mia Fox complained the other night about the Archers sound seepage. She said, ‘I do not want my thoughts interrupted by ludicrous storylines. I don’t believe for a minute that Lynda Snell would give Robert two llamas for his birthday.’
Thursday April 10th
Michael Flowers sent the work-experience boy round with another note.
Adrian
You cannot possibly know, since you have not enquired, but Marigold has been barely able to walk, due to extreme fatigue. However, she has bravely said that she will make a huge effort to go to Caprion April 16th, as she does not want to let Netta down.
I have paid for their Italian sojourn in full. I am asking you to pay your share, today, as promised.
M. Flowers
Mr Carlton-Hayes is baffled as to why I am paying for Marigold’s holiday. I reminded him that Marigold is having my baby.
At lunchtime, I went round to my building society and withdrew £1,000 of my precious life savings.
Friday April 11th
The United States published a pack of fifty-five playing cards today, identifying its most wanted suspects. Saddam is the Ace of Spades.
Posted Glenn’s birthday card and present at the post office round the corner from Rat Wharf. The postmaster was telling an old lady that his post office was being closed down and that she would have to go to another post office in future.
I waited impatiently while she said, ‘But I can’t manage the bus. The steps are too high.’
After a lot more tedious lamentation from her about the good old days, I gave him my parcel. He read the BFPO address and said, ‘Kuwait? You must be worried about your son, sir.’
I said that I was hoping that the war would be over soon. He told me that his son had joined the army but had left after three days, after he was called a Paki bastard on the parade ground.
I said he should have reported it to an officer.
He said, ‘It was an officer who insulted my son.’
I apologized on behalf of the British Army, signed his petition and said that I hoped the government would reprieve his post office.
Mia Fox knocked on my door five minutes after I got home from work. She said, ‘I heard you put your key in the door and switch your kettle on. They tried to deliver your wine this afternoon. I took it in for you.’
I went upstairs to collect the wine and was disturbed to see that if she stood on the far right of her balcony she could see my glass-bricked bathroom. I must get those curtains made.
In bed I was tormented by a vision of the old lady in the post office trying and failing to step on to a bus. I am obviously suffering from some sort of anxiety condition.
I must make an effort to register with a doctor.
Saturday April 12th
A terrible thing happened this morning. While I was out in the back making coffee, a young man was knocked down and killed by a delivery van outside the shop. It could easily have been me – obliterated by a collision of time, space and bad luck. How fragile our lives are. How easily they are taken away.
In the afternoon, weeping girls started laying cellophane-wrapped flowers on the pavement where he died.
I read some of the tribute cards on my way home. Even the uneducated turn to poetry when they have to express extreme emotion. One read:
Maz, you were a
lovely lad.
Always nice and
never Sad.
And another.
God said, ‘Maz, it’s time to go,’
So you went
We’ll miss you so
A yob in a hooded top laid a bunch of orange carnations on Maz’s shrine and asked if I was Maz’s brother, Anthony. I said I was not. The yob said, ‘Right, only Anthony works in a library and wears glasses. I fought you must be ’im, like.’
Sunday April 13th
Why, oh, why do none of the clocks in the city show the correct time?
Why, oh, why do the doors in public buildings squeak so horribly?
Nigel rang to tell me that he is suffering from post-blindness depression.
In an attempt to counsel him, I asked him what was the worst thing about being blind.
Nigel snapped, ‘I can’t fucking see!’
To give him a change of scene, I asked him if he would like to go with me to visit my father in hospital.
Nigel said, grudgingly, ‘If that’s all that’s on offer.’
My father didn’t look well today; the post-operative wound in his back has become infected and he is running a high temperature.
A defeated-looking cleaner called Edna was mopping rancid water from a bucket around his bed.
When I asked my father how he felt, Edna answered, ‘’E ’ad a bad night and I ’ad to force ’im to eat ’is breakfast, didn’t I, George?’
My father nodded weakly.
Edna said, ‘When I’ve finished cleanin’ the ward, I’ll come back an’ freshen you up.’
When she had moved further up the ward, my father said, ‘Edna is the salt of the earth, she’s keeping me alive. All the bleeding nurses in here are too posh to wash. I told one yesterday that my bum was sore and she said, ‘I’ve got a first-class degree, Mr Mole. I’ll contact the bed-
care-management team when I’ve got a minute.’
To lighten the conversation I told them about Maz.
Nigel said, ‘He should have looked before crossing the road.’
I said that this was undoubtedly true but that he could at least show some compassion.
Monday April 14th
Maz’s shrine has grown to a size that is surely disproportionate to the youth’s age and popularity.
According to the headline in this evening’s local paper:
Maz Died a Hero’s Death
Young hero dies on Gran mercy mission. Martin Forster (Maz) died while on a mercy mission to buy new batteries for his grandmother’s hearing aid, the grieving family revealed today.
The shrine is proving to be a bit of a nuisance. It is blocking the entrance to the bookshop and the books from the Mortimer estate are due to be delivered this morning.
I asked the policewoman who was on duty by the shrine if the flowers could be moved along the pavement a little. She accused me of having no respect for the dead.
When she went off duty I pushed the shrine a few feet along, nearer to Habitat’s window. I’m sure Maz won’t mind.
There was a new poem pinned to a ragged teddy bear.
God was short of an angel, so he took Maz from this earth.
God, he said, ‘I want a lad who has been good and kind since birth.’
So when you look at a starry sky
And think of Maz, and cry,
Weep not, but see that shooting star, it’s our angel going by.
Night, night, son
Love from Mam, Dad and your devoted pets, Rex, Whiskey and Soda
I wept over this grossly mawkish poem.
I have cancelled tonight’s writers’ group due to rat activity, Gary Milksop’s litigation against me and general despondency about life.
Ken Blunt said on the phone that he was sick of the way the writers’ group was being run and offered to take over the chairman’s role.
My life is very slowly falling apart. I have signed another of the Barclaycard loan cheques and paid it into my account. I think, but I’m not sure, that I am now hopelessly in debt.
Tuesday April 15th
Before leaving for work I rang the War Office and left a message on their voicemail, asking if Mr Hoon had received my letter regarding Private Glenn Bott-Mole.
CCTV footage of me moving the flower shrine was shown on Midlands Today, at 6 p.m., and the Ashby Bugle ran the headline, ‘Callous Shopkeeper Disturbs Shrine’.
The article stated:
Ex-celebrity chef, Adrian Mole, thirty-five, was accused by a grieving family today of being heartless and despicable. ‘We are gutted and devastated,’ they said. Nathan Silver, a professor of anthropology from Loughborough University, said, ‘Disturbing a sacred shrine that honours the dead is taboo in every culture worldwide.’
Marigold rang and shrieked, ‘Mummy said you’re on the front page of the paper for vandalizing a grave. Everyone hates you.’
I told her that it was page five, and that it was not a grave but a shrine, and I said I would entirely understand if she wanted nothing more to do with me.
She said, ‘No, you’re still the father of my child. It’s important that we keep in touch.’
Michael Flowers came on the phone and asked me to drive Marigold and Netta to Birmingham Airport. ‘Their flight leaves at 6.10 tomorrow morning. So you’ll need to be at Beeby on the Wold by 4 a.m., at the latest.’
I heard myself agreeing to this.
Wednesday April 16th
I rose at 3 a.m., showered, dressed, beat Gielgud away from the driver’s door of my car and drove to Beeby on the Wold.
There was a small mountain of luggage on the doorstep, which I loaded into the boot. Then Marigold emerged from the house, helped by Michael Flowers, who was still in his plaid dressing-gown.
Marigold was wearing a smock-type thing, what looked like maternity trousers and the Birkenstocks. Netta was similarly attired. During the journey to Birmingham Airport, Netta and Marigold talked between themselves about how unfair it was that women have to carry a baby inside them for nine months. They then discussed what the baby would be called and decided between them that Rowan would suit both sexes. I was not consulted.
Netta had requested that a wheelchair be available to take Marigold to the aircraft. While this was being arranged, the check-in clerk asked me, for insurance purposes, what was wrong with Marigold. I answered, truthfully, that I didn’t know.
As I watched the plane hurtle down the runway and throw itself into the sky, I felt my spirits rise, and on the return journey my rear-view mirror told me that I looked ten years younger. For the first time in my life, I forgot to be frightened and drove at 70 miles an hour down the fast lane of the M6.
Later in the morning I was introduced to Bernard Hopkins. He is tall and stooped and has an egg-shaped head flanked by tufts of lifeless black hair. The capillaries carrying the blood around his face appeared to be making their way to the surface and some were in danger of bursting. He seemed exasperated by life. He appeared to be slightly drunk and was smoking a cigarette. Mr Carlton-Hayes normally bans smoking in the front of the shop, but Hopkins seems to have carte blanche to do anything he likes. He is possibly the rudest man I have ever met. On being introduced to me he said, ‘You’ve got the look of a nancy boy about you. Are you a poof?’
Mr Carlton-Hayes, surely the most gentlemanly of gentlemen, watches Hopkins with obvious delight, as a besotted parent might watch a precocious toddler – whereas I long to take Hopkins’s baggy corduroy trousers down and give him a few hard smacks on the back of his legs.
Still, he knows his stuff and he loves books. He almost fainted with pleasure when he found a three-volume set of the Andrews & Blake 1807 first American edition of Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. He showed them to me and said, ‘Take a gander at these, cocker. You don’t get many of these to the kilo.’ He drew his hands across the volumes muttering, ‘Original full-gilt-stamped diamond-patterned Moroccan, complete with portrait and folding facsimiles.’
It was like an incantation. I hope to be fluent in bookselling jargon one day. I asked him how much the set was worth.
He said, ‘A kosher punter might spring a monkey, cocker.’
I’ve no idea what Bernard is talking about half the time.
He asked me to join him for a drink at lunchtime, so we went to the Dog and Duck around the corner. He was horrified when I ordered a still Malvern water.
He said, ‘Why come into a pub, cocker? Why not stay at work and stick your head under the cold tap in the bog?’
I found myself telling Bernard about my spiralling debts.
He said that he had been pursued by creditors since he was a young man at Oxford.
Thursday April 17th
Hopkins is supposed to be cataloguing the Mortimer collection, which is now stacked in the back room, but he keeps wandering into the front of the shop.
A pretty medical student came in today looking for a cheap copy of Gray’s Anatomy. I was showing her the three copies we had in stock when Bernard Hopkins shoved his nose in and started questioning the competency of women doctors.
‘It was a bint doctor killed my old mother,’ he said. ‘The bint was too bloody busy with her lipstick and sanitary towels to give my poor old mum the expert medical attention she deserved.’
The medical student was clearly taken aback by this assault on her sex and left the shop empty-handed.
When I remonstrated with Hopkins, he said in a choked-up voice, ‘My mother was a saint. I lived with her until she was ninety-six, and do you know, Adrian, she washed my handkerchiefs by hand, rinsed them in rosewater and ironed them so that they came to a point. Every morning she would take one from the drawer and put it into the breast pocket of my jacket before I went to work.’
He took a scruffy tissue from his trouser pocket and wiped his eyes before continuing, ‘She was still beautiful at ninety-six. She didn
’t have a single wrinkle on her lovely face, and her hair was jet black. Jet black at ninety-six.’
I said, ‘Bernard, you seem to have idealized your mother. It’s obvious that behind your back she dyed her hair.’
He flew into a rage, and when Mr Carlton-Hayes came out of the back office to find out what all the shouting was about, Bernard accused me of calling his mother a harlot.
I told Mr Carlton-Hayes that I had only suggested that Bernard’s mother dyed her hair.
Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘Oh, the famous black hair.’ He raised one eyebrow but said no more.
What is it with old men and handkerchiefs?
Friday April 18th
Good Friday (Bank Holiday UK, Canada and Australia)
Glenn is eighteen today. I hope to God that he is not sent to Iraq. My nerves won’t stand the daily agony of wondering where he is and what he’s doing.
So far the Iraqis have not thrown rose petals in front of the coalition forces’ tanks. On the contrary, there has been widespread looting, pillaging and armed resistance. Mr Blair’s liberation is their invasion.
Saturday April 19th
Easter Saturday
The bad publicity about the shrine has affected trade in the shop. My mother thinks that I should associate myself with a charity. Ivan has recently been diagnosed with epilepsy. She suggested that I hold a charity auction in aid of Canine Epilepsy Research.
She said, ‘If you want to win the hearts and minds of the British people, you need to be photographed with a dog.’
I went round to see Nigel and asked him if I could be photographed with his blind dog, Graham.
Nigel snapped, ‘Graham is not a blind dog. A blind dog would be no fucking use to me, would it? Graham is a guide dog, and no, you’re not exploiting him for the sake of your poxy public image.’
I didn’t mind too much; Graham is not a very attractive dog. He’s the only Golden Labrador I’ve ever seen with a squint and stumpy legs.
