Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years by Sue Townsend
I asked, ‘Did you make the wig you are wearing yourself?’
He said huffily, ‘I’m not wearing a wig. This is my own hair.’ He measured my head and asked, ‘Do you have any preferences? Colour? Shape? Style? Length? Curly? Straight?’
I said, ‘Since I started chemotherapy, I’ve been unable to make a decision about anything.’
Daisy said, trying to be helpful no doubt, ‘Now is your chance to have the hair you’ve always wanted, Aidy.’
Daltrey said, ‘Do you want to try a few on?’
The first wig I tried on was black and parted to one side and made me look like Gok Wan. The second was blond and curly.
Daisy said, ‘Take it off, you look like Harpo Marx.’
The third was a mousy short-back-and-sides apology for a wig.
Daltrey said, ‘Well, that’s your basic Anglo-Saxons. Do you want to look at the wigs for “persons of colour”?’
I said, ‘I might as well, while I’m here.’
After inspecting a black wig with tight curls and something he called an ‘oriental standard’, Daltrey said, ‘We can mix and match colour and length but we are restricted by NHS guidelines.’
I said, ‘Do you do a Boris Johnson? I think I might suit that.’
Malcolm Daltrey said, ‘You’re asking the impossible, Mr Mole. If it’s a celebrity intellectual style you’re after, you may have to go private.’
I resented him suggesting that Daisy and I were so impoverished that we could not afford a private wig so we left without choosing one.
When we got outside, Daisy said, ‘Aidy, why don’t we go and see Lawrence at Pamper Yourself? He’ll know where we can go for advice.’
We drove back to Mangold Parva and parked outside the salon. Lawrence was lounging in a chair in front of a mirror reading Vogue. Mrs Lewis-Masters was underneath a drying hood, her head was covered in huge rollers the size of sewage pipes. She was reading Country Life. She raised an eyebrow in greeting.
Daisy and Lawrence fell on to each other’s necks and Lawrence said, ‘Where have you been, Daisy?’
Daisy said, ‘I’ve been washing and trimming it myself, at home.’
Lawrence threw his sinewy arms back in exaggerated alarm. ‘You’re a bad girl! I know you’re a bit short of the spondulicks at the moment but hair always, always comes first!’
Daisy explained why we were there.
Lawrence said, ‘I’d heard that you were doing chemo.’ He sat me in the chair he’d just vacated, stood behind me and looked at my reflection in the mirror. He picked up odd clumps of my remaining hair and said, ‘You could go the whole hog and let me shave these bits off. They’re not doing much, are they? They’re just hanging around on your head.’
Daisy said, ‘I like a shaved head.’
I was reluctant to lose the little hair I had left but Daisy said, ‘You’re losing handfuls of it every day in the shower, Aidy. If the pipes clog up, we’ll be having to pay a plumber to unblock them.’
While I equivocated Lawrence brought Mrs Lewis-Masters to the next chair and began to take out her rollers.
She said, ‘The men of the desert regarded baldness as being a sign of wisdom and sexual potency.’
I said, ‘All right, Lawrence, shave it off.’
While Lawrence blow-dried Mrs Lewis-Masters’ hair, I glanced through her discarded Country Life and was startled to see Daisy’s happy smiling face staring out at me on a half-page devoted to a photographic account of the Belvoir Hunt Ball. She was arm in arm with ‘The Honourable Hugo Fairfax-Lycett’. Other large-toothed members of the hunt were holding champagne glasses aloft. One would have thought that they were congratulating Daisy and Hugo on their engagement. I showed the page to Daisy. She blurted out, ‘I did tell you about that, Aidy – remember?’
I said, ‘I remember it well. I was in hospital overnight after having a very unpleasant, painful biopsy.’
She lowered her voice and said, ‘Hugo had nobody to go with. He’d been let down at the last minute.’
I said, ‘I didn’t mind you going, Daisy. But did you have to look quite so happy? You told me that you had a miserable time having to listen to a “load of tossers” bragging about how they had tortured several helpless foxes.’
When Mrs Lewis-Masters’ hair had been teased into her usual helmet style, Lawrence left her with his junior (who I remember Daisy told me had to be taught how to use a sweeping brush) and turned to me. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I’ll shave your head and I’ve got some fabuloso Andre Agassi products that will keep that scalp gleaming.’
It took only a few minutes to shave and moisturise my head. I stared at my reflection. My skull shone under the spotlights and my glasses looked very prominent.
Daisy said, ‘It’ll look better when it’s had a bit of sun.’
Lawrence only charged me £5 for the head shave, but by the time I’d bought Agassi moisturizer, toner and serum it cost me the best part of £40. I didn’t give him a tip.
When we got home, my mother said that she had always liked bald men ever since she had seen Yul Brynner dancing around a ballroom with Deborah Kerr in The King and I.
My father laughed and said, ‘By Christ! You look like a billiard ball on legs. If I were you, I’d keep clear of The Crucible in Sheffield. If Ronnie O’Sullivan claps eyes on you he’ll take your head off your shoulders before you can say “pot black”.’ He laughed himself stupid and had to be given a drink of water in order to calm him down. Did my father’s over-elaborate analogy hide his true feelings? Was his first instinct to weep? If so, he hid it very well.
When Gracie came home from school, she said, ‘I like your new hairstyle, Dad.’
I was very tired and my mouth was sore. I said irritably, ‘How can it be a hairstyle, Gracie? I haven’t got any hair.’
Her lip trembled but I managed to divert her by telling her that she could polish my head with a duster if she wanted.
She said, ‘Can I use Mr Sheen?’
When I said no, she carefully laid herself down on the rug in front of the fireplace and had a tantrum. I didn’t have the energy to do anything so I watched her thrash about until, after five minutes, she calmly got up and walked away.
Sunday 9th March
My mother gave me a lift to the hospital this afternoon. On the way she drove down the High Street and parked outside the bookshop. We got out and looked through the window. The builders were in and had already knocked down the walls between the shop area, the back room and the store rooms beyond, making one large space.
My mother said, ‘It’s going to be a Tesco Metro. I thought about applying for a job. I’ve got a few hours spare while you have your chemo.’
Diary, how insensitive can you get?
When I was hooked up to the machine, I called Daisy at work. Hugo Fairfax-Lycett answered the phone and told me that she was on the other line to the States. He said, ‘Sorry, Adrian, but I don’t want to interrupt her, she’s closing a deal with a Yank travel agent.’
I said, ‘Yes, she told me that you’re going all out to get American coach parties in.’
He said, ‘The Yanks are very nervous travellers lately. We have to convince them that Al Qaeda are not likely to bomb them while they’re taking tea in the orangery.’ He went on, ‘I’m sorry if I’ve taken up a lot of your wife’s time lately, but we’re trying to prepare the hall for our opening in April. We’re spring-cleaning thirty-four rooms, mowing eight hundred and forty acres of deer park and dredging a moat. I’m sure you know what it’s like.’
I was longing to discontinue the call but didn’t know how to.
He said, ‘I hear you’ve been under the weather lately.’
I agreed that I had.
He said, ‘Daisy must be a great comfort to you. She’s a marvellous girl.’
I said that I had not seen a lot of Daisy recently, but that my mother was being extremely helpful.
‘Good, good,’ he said. ‘One’s family is terribly important.’
Tried to eat the orange segments my mother had prepared for me but couldn’t, my mouth was too painful. I’d been warned that this would happen.
Sally came in to see me and thought that my bald head looked ‘edgy’. I am an ardent follower of the ongoing saga of her relationship with Anthony. It is obvious to me that Anthony is fooling around with other women but Sally seems to be oblivious to his licentious behaviour.
Today she said, ‘We were meant to go away for the weekend to Wolf Edge in the Peak District, but by the time he’d stashed all the camping gear in his car there wasn’t room for me in the passenger seat.’
I said, ‘So he’s gone alone?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he sounded so disappointed on the phone.’
I said sceptically, ‘Just how big is his tent, or are we talking marquee here?’
She said, ‘It’s a four-man tent but the sleeping bags take up a lot of room.’
I said, ‘What is he driving – a bubble car?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s a four-by-four, but he’s taking a lot of food.’
I said, ‘Sally, you’re only five foot three. You take up hardly any room.’
She said, ‘Yes, but there’s his camping stove and wet weather gear, his wellingtons, the water containers, the ice boxes, the groundsheet, the inflatable raft, the paddles…’
Diary, I gave up, she obviously does not want to see what is under her nose.
On the way home my mother said, looking intently into my face, ‘Daisy’s putting in a lot of hours at the hall. I hope she’s getting overtime.’
Daisy was home at 10.30 p.m. She has had trouble with the workers who are digging out the moat.
I said, ‘Well, it must be difficult for them, working in the dark.’
Monday 10th March
A Mexican email from Daisy’s mother.
Hello to you, my daughter. Daddy tells me that you have a job in an English country house. This is good news. When will you bring your husband and little Gracie to see us? Arthur is working in Mexico City. He has two shops now, both of them selling pig meat. We have many high-up customers: the chief of police, two cardinals and the nuns who care for the orphans who work on the rubbish tip. I hope that you are still not angry with me, Daisy. I had to run away from your father. He would talk to me for three hours every night without stopping. Every day he bought me presents. When he was at work, always he ring me on the telephone and tell me that he love me and that I am beautiful. That is why I left. What woman could stand it? I am happy with Arthur, he does not treat me good, I must serve him dinner every night at the dining table and I must eat alone in the kitchen but I am happy.
Love from your mother,
Conchita
When Daisy showed it to me, I said, ‘I will never understand women.’
Daisy said, ‘My father suffocated her.’
I asked Daisy if she would like to visit Conchita and Arthur, her stepfather, in Mexico City when I am better.
She said, ‘No, Hugo needs me, and anyway, we couldn’t possibly afford it.’
I was relieved, the murder rate in Mexico City is amongst the highest in the world.
Tuesday 11th March
Had a visit from the Environmental Crime Unit. The ‘unit’ consisted of two people – a young woman with a sulky mouth and an older man in wet weather gear. The woman showed me her ID and asked if they could come inside ‘for a chat’.
‘Chat’ is a word I detest so I said, ‘You may come inside and talk to me, but I don’t have time for a “chat”.’ I made them stand in the hallway because Bernard was in the kitchen wearing a too-small rummage-sale dressing gown that kept falling open, and my father was in the living room having his toenails cut by my mother, using my special cutters.
It transpired that the Environmental Crime Unit is employed by our District Council. They had been ‘out on patrol’ and had noted that our two bins had been in the lane at 10.17 a.m. – ‘a full two hours after they had been emptied at 8.16 a.m.’ – and the unit reminded me that this was an infringement subject to a penalty of £100.
‘And what’s more,’ said sulky lips, ‘the lid of one of the bins was open by six inches.’
When I protested that I was too weak to bring the bins back to the house and that I had instructed my wife not to overfill said bin, the duo exchanged what I took to be a professional glance.
The woman said, ‘We’ve heard every excuse going, Mr Mole. This is an official warning. Remember, no bins are to be put out before seven thirty in the morning, and bins are to be brought back to the house by eight thirty. Understood?’
They left shortly after Bernard came out to see what was causing voices to be raised. He said, when they’d gone, ‘Reminds me of living in East Berlin after the war, the neighbours reported you to the Stasi for coughing in the night.’
Wednesday 12th March
Couldn’t get out of bed this morning. Daisy took Gracie to school. They were late leaving the house because Gracie behaved disgracefully. She was perfectly pleasant until she saw the contents of her lunch box.
She whined, ‘Yuck! Horrible brown bread with bits in and horrible grapes with pips and horrible water with bubbles. Why can’t I have a Curly Wurly and crisps and a bottle of Coke?’
I fear that our daughter has inherited my father’s bad food genes. He almost starved to death once when he mistakenly booked into an all-inclusive macrobiotic hotel on an otherwise deserted Greek island.
*
At 9.35 a.m. the house phone rang. I staggered out of bed to answer it.
A robotic voice said, ‘If you are the parent or guardian or principal carer of Gracie Mole press one.’
I pressed one.
‘This is Alerter Truant acting for Mangold Parva Infants and Junior School. Your child, Gracie Mole, is not at school. If your child is ill, press two. If your child has an authorised absence note, press three. If your child left for school and has not arrived, press four. If none of the above apply, press five. If you wish to speak to a member of staff, do not ring between the hours of…’
Here, Diary, the robot gabbled, ‘Eight thirty and nine ten. Eleven ten and eleven thirty-five. Twelve fifteen and one thirty. Three fifteen and three thirty-five. Please note that school closes at four p.m. Enquiries about lost property must be made in between the times stated above.’
I pressed six to see what would happen.
The robot barked, ‘Mangold Parva Infants and Junior School cannot be held responsible for any accident or mishap that may befall a child outside the boundary of the school.’
I disconnected the call and tried to ring Daisy but only got the robot back. I tried ringing her on my mobile but she was engaged. There was nothing for it but to go to the school and find out what had happened to my daughter. Had Daisy abandoned her in the lane, having been pushed to breaking point by Gracie’s awful behaviour?
Bernard offered to go in my place but a person of Bernard’s dishevelled appearance turning up in the playground and asking about Gracie would have sent every police car in the county screaming to the school – especially since he bought an old mackintosh from the village hall rummage sale.
Daisy and I met outside the locked school gate. Neither of us could speak due to shortness of breath. It’s some time since I attempted to run anywhere. As soon as I stopped, my knees buckled and Daisy had to help me to the wooden bench covered in carved initials near the bus stop. After she had buzzed and panted her name into the intercom and she had been let into the playground, I tried to recover myself.
I was sitting with my head in my hands when Simon, the vicar, put his Spar bag down next to me and said, ‘Adrian, don’t give way to despair.’ He sat down and put his arm around me. To my horror his eyes were full of hideous compassion. ‘Wherever there is life, there
It sounded as though he was recommending I contact BT Customer Services.
I took the opportunity and asked him if there were any family plots left in the graveyard. ‘I’d prefer a side view,’ I said, ‘out of sight of the school. And if possible I’d like the plot to catch the evening sun.’
Simon said he admired my pragmatism but that, sadly, there was a long waiting list for interment. However, in the event of my death, should I decide to be cremated, my family members would be allowed to scatter me on to the rose bed by the church porch.
When Daisy came out, angrily denouncing the school’s faulty Alerter Truant system, the vicar stood up and said, ‘Mrs Mole, these must be difficult times for you.’
She said, ‘Too right! You try finding a giraffe-keeper who’ll work for the minimum wage.’
I stared down in embarrassment at the contents of the vicar’s Spar bag: a jar of Vaseline, a tin of apricot halves, a head of garlic and a packet of cotton buds.
When he’d gone, Daisy said, ‘You look awful, Aidy. I’m going to ring your mum to come and pick you up.’
I’m not ashamed, Diary, to inform you that I allowed my mother to take me home and put me to bed with a cup of tea and two marshmallow tea cakes.
Bernard offered to open a tin of soup after he returned from The Bear. When they’d both gone, I gave way to tears and cried for two minutes and thirty-one seconds.
Friday 14th March
Chemo.
I have decided to make full use of my six hours in hospital. Went to the shed and dug out my old Linguaphone Russian course. I hope to be fluent enough by the end of my treatment to say, ‘Could you please direct me to Dostoevsky’s grave?’
Sunday 16th March
Found a discarded receipt in the kitchen bin today. On the back (in Daisy’s distinctive hand) she had written: