She said, ‘I don’t know what happened to me, I came over all Snow White.’
I said, ‘Don’t do it again, Daisy. Domesticity is the death of romance.’
I opened my emails.
Hi, Moley
Great news! Marigold has made me the happiest man in the world and agreed to fit me up with a ball and chain. Yes, she has said she will be Mrs Bruce Henderson.
We are not hanging about, we are tying the knot on Saturday July 19th at the Heritage Hotel, Little Smeton. I wonder, Moley, would you do me the great honour of being my Best Man?
Marigold is in agreement with this, though she thinks it would be good if you had a haircut before the 19th.
Poppy has agreed to be Matron of Honour, and I’m sure Daisy will agree to be a bridesmaid; it’s just a matter of tracking her down.
Marigold is being a real trouper about losing the baby. She hasn’t mentioned it once.
Yours, Bruce
Please reply ASAP
Later, when we were lying in bed, Daisy asked me if there was anything I didn’t like about her.
I said, ‘Your swearing,’ and asked if there was anything she didn’t like about me.
She said, ‘You read too many fucking books.’
Sunday June 29th
I took Daisy to visit my father today. He is on his fourth course of antibiotics but is showing no improvement. Daisy told me, as we were walking down the corridor towards the David Gower ward, that about 5,000 patients a year die in British hospitals of MRSA. I can’t imagine a world without my dad in it.
We passed Edna, who was rubbing a filthy rag over the door to the entrance of the ward.
Edna said, ‘I’ve just fed your dad his dinner. He didn’t eat much.’
My mother was happy to see us and told us that she had received an invitation to the wedding. She said, ‘Your dad won’t be well enough to go. Would you mind if Animal was my escort for the day?’
I said, ‘Yes, Mum, I would.’
Monday June 30th
My patriotic support of Henman is over. An interviewer asked what he did in the locker room during the breaks for rain. Did he read books?
Tim, one of England’s heroes and role models replied: ‘NO, I NEVER READ BOOKS. BOOKS ARE BORING.’
I thought about Arthur Ashe, John McEnroe, Boris Becker and Bjorn Borg, who were all booklovers, and wondered if there was a connection between literature and winning the men’s singles final at Wimbledon.
Tuesday July 1st
All three of my credit-card bills arrived this morning. I put them, unopened, in the gadget drawer.
Wednesday July 2nd
Jo Jo rang from Nigeria. She said, ‘Your son waited all day yesterday for his birthday present to come from England. My heart bled for him. When I put him to bed, he said, “Mamma, perhaps the airplane bringing the parcel from Dad has crashed.”
‘I told him that he was almost certainly correct. Every half an hour he checked for emails, and whenever the telephone rang he ran to answer it. Glenn remembered to send a card, as did his friend, Robbie, whom William has never met. I hope you are ashamed of yourself.’
Diary, I am. How could I have forgotten William’s birthday? Why didn’t my mother remind me?
Thursday July 3rd
Letter from Robbie.
Dear Mr Mole
Thank you very much for the boots. They fit spot on.
Glenn was lucky the other day, wasn’t he? I think he took it hard, but he hasn’t told me much. I expect he told you a bit more. He is always bragging that he can talk to you about anything.
Some of the Iraqi people are OK, but we have to wear our helmets all the time now. Sometimes it’s stones, sometimes it’s bullets. We have stopped giving the little kids sweets.
I wouldn’t mind a bit of English rain right now; it is ninety-five in the shade.
Well, I have come to the end of the page, so I will say goodbye.
Best wishes,
Robbie
I immediately rang Sharon and asked her if she had heard from Glenn. She said that Glenn had rung her in the middle of the night, but the line was so bad she couldn’t make out what he was saying.
All the MOD lines were busy.
10 p.m.
Henman was knocked out of the men’s singles quarterfinal today by Sebastien Grosjean in four sets. The last took only thirty-two minutes. Naturally, Henman’s wife and parents were there watching the match. When will he learn?
Friday July 4th
Independence Day (USA)
Went to see my father in hospital. Edna was telling him that asylum-seekers have been stealing the Queen’s swans and cooking them. Apparently over one hundred swans have disappeared from the River Lea in the East End of London.
In Edna’s opinion, the asylum-seekers should be sent back to face whatever murderous regime they had fled from.
I could see that my father wanted to agree with Edna, but he kept his mouth shut.
To cheer him up, I bought him the latest Jane’s Missiles and Rockets (An Enthusiast’s Guide).
No nurses were available, so me and Edna gave my father a stripwash and changed his pyjamas.
On the way back from the hospital I listened to Peter Allen and Jane Garvey on Five Live. They were discussing the Asylum-seekers Eat Swans story.
Mrs Garvey was of the opinion that this was an urban myth, similar to the one about the dead granny transported on the roof of a car in a roll of carpet.
A listener from Wolverhampton rang the programme convinced otherwise. He shouted that swan-eating asylum-seekers could expect a £5,000 fine or six months in prison.
Which, if true, seems to me to be unnecessarily harsh. Surely swans are vermin.
Saturday July 5th
Letter from Glenn.
Dear Dad
Sorry I haven’t wrote, but there is not much time, and when we are not on patrol we are eating and doing our washing and trying to get some kip. The Yanks are lucky, they have got air conditioning, but we have not got it, I don’t know why.
Me and Robbie got the boots this morning, they are great, thanks a lot, and the pick and mix went down well with the lads, thanks a lot again.
Dad, I don’t know what I’m doing here. Half the people are glad Saddam has gone, and half the people are trying to kill us. Trouble is; we can’t tell which is which no more.
One of the cooks here, Tommy Cumberbush, has read that cookery book you wrote years ago. When Robbie told him you were my dad, Tommy asked me for my autograph.
I can’t wait to go on leave, Dad; I’m fed up with people trying to blow me up.
Road blocks are the worst. Me and Robbie tried using the flashcards, but an Iraqi translator attached to our squad said that the Arabic was dead old-fashioned and didn’t mean what the English words meant on the other side of the card. So it’s back to doing Charades, that game you used to make us play at Christmas. But I was no good at Charades. Nobody could guess when I did The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Remember?
I was in an armoured vehicle the other day when we was caught in a blue on blue and our sergeant got his fingers blown off.
Dad, if anything happens to me, promise you will look after Mum. That bastard Ryan will do a runner one day, like all the others.
Give my love to Granddad. I hope he gets well soon.
Love
Your son, Glenn
PS Sorry this is such a moaning letter, but I’m a bit fed up today.
Sunday July 6th
Daisy entertained my father at his bedside today by telling him about the Summer of Love video she has been promoting in London all week. She said, ‘Do you remember Acid Bungalow, George? Their big hit was “I am a Greenhouse”.’
My father smiled and said, ‘I went to see them at a Rock Festival on the recreation ground, next to the football club. I was eighteen and had a twenty-nine-inch waist, and my hair was longer than Adrian’s is now. A girl with bells on her skirt put a flower behind my ear and said, “This
is the dawning of the age of Aquarius.” I didn’t know what she was talking about.’
My mother said, ‘I remember Acid Bungalow. I used to love Terry, the lead guitarist, the one with the long red hair.’
Daisy said, ‘Poor Terry. When we went to Broadcasting House he thought he was in the Priory for rehab. I felt more like his nurse than his PR person’.
My mother said, ‘I do envy you, Daisy. It must be fantastic mixing with celebrities on a daily basis.’
Daisy sighed and said, ‘Most celebrities are totally talentless tossers. I’m sick of pandering to their ludicrous demands, feeding their horrible little dogs on Raspberry Ruffles and Badoit water.’ She dropped her voice and said, ‘When I was promoting a book by a certain round-the-world yachtsman, he confessed to me one night in the hotel bar that he’d spent the whole of the voyage moored up in a harbour in Malta.’
Monday July 7th
‘A Bad Day at Black Rock’.
Barclays Bank
Dear Mr Mole
Unpaid Direct Debits
I am writing to advise you that you have insufficient funds to meet the direct debit payments listed below.
Insurance
£40.00
Debenhams
£200.00
Mortgage Co.
£723.48
We have debited your account at £35.00 per item for costs incurred, as detailed in our terms and conditions. Please ensure that you have sufficient funds to meet future direct debit payments.
Yours sincerely
Jason Latch
Personal Account Manager
Barclays Bank
Dear Mr Mole
Returned Cheque
I am writing to advise you that we have returned your cheque Number 001876 for the sum of £58.00 in favour of the Imperial Dragon marked ‘Unpaid, please refer to drawer’, due to insufficient funds in your account.
We have debited your account £25.00, as detailed in our terms and conditions.
Yours sincerely
Jason Latch
Personal Account Manager
£130 for two letters. I was tempted to write Jason Latch an offensive letter, but I cannot afford to pay for his reply.
Tuesday July 8th
Another letter from the bank.
Barclays Bank
Dear Mr Mole
I write to advise you that your personal account is overdrawn in excess of your approved overdraft limit by £1,282.76.
Please telephone your personal account manager to confirm that you will be paying sufficient funds into your account to bring you within the terms of your approved overdraft limit.
Meanwhile, do not write any further cheques on this account.
Yours sincerely
Jason Latch
Personal Account Manager
Phoned Parvez in a panic, but he was at the mosque. Fatima joked that Parvez was praying that Barclays would give me an extension on my overdraft. She said, ‘What’s happened to you, Moley? You’re spending like you was Michael Jackson or somethink.’
I told her I was trying to fill an emotional void. I blamed my parents because they had brought me up to hide my emotions. I recounted the time I came downstairs to find my goldfish, Cagney and Lacey, floating on top of their bowl. I had sobbed over their bloated bodies, but my parents were indifferent to my grief, and my father had said, ‘Flush ’em down the lav for Christ’s sake, they’re stinkin’ the bleedin’ place out.’
My mother had, it’s true, passed me a piece of toilet paper to dry my eyes but had then gone on to blame me for the fishes’ death, saying, ‘I told you when you won a prize at the Hook-a-Duck to choose a fluffy toy, but you had to choose the fish, didn’t you?’
My father sneered, ‘Everyone knows a fairground fish is already on its last legs.’
Fatima said, ‘So you’re blamin’ dead fish for the fact that you bought a talking fridge?’
I sensed that I was not receiving a sympathetic hearing and said I would ring Parvez when he got back from the mosque.
Phoned Parvez again. Fatima said, ‘’E’s took the kids to the fair, an’ I told ’im to keep away from the Hook-a-Duck.’
I phoned him on his mobile but couldn’t hear a word he was saying for the screaming. He was on the Wheel of Death with his kids.
Wednesday July 9th
When I arrived at work this morning there were thirty-eight cardboard boxes stacked on the shop floor. They were from Gorgon Press, Pandora’s publisher.
Bernard Hopkins had been told to order 350 copies of Out of the Box using the online ordering service.
Mr Carlton-Hayes cast a practised eye over the boxes and said, ‘I think Bernard may have slipped up.’
He estimated that we now had 750 copies in stock. He asked me how many copies I thought we could sell. I told him that Pandora had kept me in the dark over the contents of her autobiography. He handed me a copy. A moody photograph of her lovely face was on the front; her name was written in what looked like red lipstick across her forehead; the tip of her tongue was poking out between her full moist lips.
The publishers had slipped a publicity brochure inside the book with some early reviews. A quick professional glance ascertained that they were what is known in the trade as ‘mixed’.
‘A searing indictment of the moral vacuity of the Blair government and an unusually frank account of Dr Braithwaite’s political and sexual credo’ Spectator
‘A naughty, racy, pacy glimpse behind the scenes at Westminister’ Sun
‘Braithwaite is astonishingly frank about her public and private life. “When I was a junior minister at the Department of Ag. and Fish, I asked if I could go out with a trawler fishing for cod. The conditions were appalling. I lost a Cartier watch overboard; it was sucked from my wrist by a huge wave. The trawlermen were amazingly kind to me and the skipper used to join me in my bunk to petition me about quotas.”
‘“I regret nothing in my life. I have been privileged to be part of the working of one of the world’s great democracies. As I said to Bill Clinton, ‘My sex life is full of light and shade – we all need Monicas and Hilarys in our lives.’
‘“Bill laughed his easy laugh and said, ‘Pan, if you’d kept your pretty legs together oftener, youda made a great Labour leader.’”’
I turned to the index and was both alarmed and pleased to see that ‘Mole, Adrian’ was given three entries.
Page 17: ‘My first boyfriend was a shy, spotty boy called Adrian Mole. I loved him with a passion that blinded me to his unprepossessing appearance. There was something primeval about my love for him. I wanted to protect him from the world.’
Page 38: ‘My political awakening coincided with the faint stirrings of sexuality. My childhood sweetheart led a protest against the school-uniform regulations that only allowed the wearing of black socks. Adrian courageously wore red socks to school one day. It was my first organized protest. At the time I interpreted his choice of colour as symbolizing revolution and dissent. However, Adrian has since told me he only wore red socks because his black ones were in the wash.’
Page 219. ‘A Mole in MI6 took me out to dinner one night and told me that the September dossier in which Mr Blair informed the country that Weapons of Mass Destruction could be deployed in forty-five minutes and hit Cyprus was “missing the caveats and conditionals of the latest reports”’.
I turned to the index again. Under ‘lovers’, it listed 112 entries – 112! I can count the women I have had carnal knowledge of on the fingers of one hand!
Mr Carlton-Hayes was reading the invoice from Gorgon Press Ltd. He said, ‘My dear, I rather think that our computer has made the most monumental mistake. It has ordered 750 copies on a no sale, no return basis. But we can’t possibly sell so many copies.’
I told Mr Carlton-Hayes that I would do some local publicity in advance of Pandora’s book-signing event on Saturday.
Thursday July 10th
Letter from Mortgage Co.
Dea
r Mr Mole
We have noted with concern that three direct debit payments have not been received. If this is an oversight, please make an immediate payment of £2,100.00 direct to one of our branches.
We enclose a new Direct Debit Mandate.
If you are in financial difficulty and require assistance, please telephone the above number to speak to one of our Mortgage Debt Advisers.
May we respectfully remind you that if payment is not received, the ownership of your property could be at risk.
Yours sincerely
Jeremy Yarnold
Manager, Mortgage Arrears
After two glasses of red wine, I went to the gadget drawer and opened and read all the letters inside. It was worse than I thought.
I couldn’t sleep, so I listened to the World Service on the radio. A woman doctor was giving a live interview from Baghdad. Her maternity hospital has no water or electricity and the drugs and anaesthetics had run out last week.
She said, ‘Thieves and looters come in here with guns and take our equipment. Things were bad before the invasion because of the sanctions but now things are worse.’
A woman was screaming in the background.
I got up and drank the rest of the wine. I crave the comfort of sleep.
Friday July 11th
I was on Radio Leicester this morning talking about Out of the Box.
The interviewer was a genial, literary man called John Florence. He asked me a lot of penetrating and uncomfortable questions about Pandora.
He said, ‘Do you agree with me, Adrian, that Pandora Braithwaite is a bit of an enigma. On the one hand she’s intellectually brilliant. I think she astonished us all in Leicester when she stood up at the Labour Party Conference last year and welcomed the Chinese Trade Delegation in fluent Mandarin, in a speech lasting over half an hour. But, on the other hand, she sometimes, how can I put this delicately… well, not to put too fine a point on it, she’s notched up a few blokes on her belt, hasn’t she?’