Sue Townsend - Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years

Adrian Mole

The Wilderness Years

Sue Townsend

To my sisters, Barbara and Kate

Whats gone and whats past help

Should be past grief.

William Shakespeare The Winters Tale

Winter Tuesday January 1st 1991

I start the year with a throbbing head and shaking limbs, owing to the excessive amounts of alcohol I was forced to drink at my mothers party last night.

I was quite happy sitting on a dining chair, watching the dancing and sipping on a low-calorie soft drink, but my mother kept shouting at me: Join in, fish-face and wouldnt rest until Id consumed a glass and a half of Lambrusco.

As she slopped the wine into a plastic glass for me, I had a close look at her. Her lips were surrounded by short lines, like numerous river beds running into a scarlet lake; her hair was red and glossy almost until it reached her scalp and then a grey layer revealed the truth: her neck was saggy her cleavage wrinkled and her belly protruded from the little black dress (very little) she wore. The poor woman is forty-seven, twenty-three years older than her second husband. I know for a fact that he, Martin Muffet, has never seen her without make-up. Her pillow slips are a disgrace; they are covered in pan-stick and mascara.

It wasnt long before I found myself on the improvised dance floor in my mothers lounge, dancing to The Birdie Song', in a line with Pandora, the love of my life; Pandoras new lover, Professor Jack Cavendish; Martin Muffet, my boyish stepfather; Ivan and Tania, Pandoras bohemian parents; and other inebriated friends and relations of my mothers. As the song reared to its climax, I caught sight of myself in the mirror above the fireplace. I was flapping my arms and grinning like a lunatic. I stopped immediately and went back to the dining chair. Bert Baxter, who was a hundred last year, was doing some clumsy wheelchair dancing, which caused a few casualties; my left ankle is still bruised and swollen, thanks to his carelessness. Also I have a large beetroot stain on the front of my new white shirt, caused by him flinging one of his beetroot sandwiches across the room under the misapprehension that it was a party popper. But the poor old git is almost certain to die this year hes had his telegram from the Queen so I wont charge him for the specialist dry cleaning that my shirt is almost certain to require.

I have been looking after Bert Baxter for over ten years now, going back from Oxford to visit him, buying his vile cigarettes) cutting his horrible toenails, etc. When will it end?

My father gate-crashed the party at 11.30. His excuse was that he wanted to speak urgently to my grandma. She is very deaf now, so he was forced to shout above the music. Mum, I cant find the spirit level.'

What a pathetic excuse! Who would be using a spirit level on New Years Eve, apart from an emergency plumber? It was a pitiful request from a lonely, forty-nine-year-old divorcee, whose navy blue mid-eighties suit needed cleaning and whose brown moccasins needed throwing away. Hed done the best he could with his remaining hair, but it wasnt enough.

Any idea where the spirit level is? insisted my father, looking towards the drinks table. Then he added, Im laying some paving slabs.

I laughed out loud at this obvious lie.

My grandma looked bewildered and went back into the kitchen to microwave the sausage rolls and my mother graciously invited her ex-husband to join the party. In no time at all, he had whipped his jacket off and was frugging on the dance floor with my eight-year-old sister Rosie. I found my fathers style of dancing acutely embarrassing to watch (his role model is still Mick Jagger); so I went upstairs to change my shirt. On the way, I passed Pandora and Bluebeard Cavendish in a passionate embrace half inside the airing cupboard. Hes old enough to be her father.

Pandora has been mine since I was thirteen years old and I fell in love with her treacle-coloured hair. She is simply playing hard to get. She only married Julian Twyselton-Fife to make me jealous. There can be no other possible reason. Julian is a bisexual semi aristocrat who occasionally wears a monocle. He strains after eccentricity but it continues to elude him. He is a deeply ordinary man with an upper-class accent. Hes not even good-looking. He looks like a horse on two legs. And as for her affair with Cavendish, a man who dresses like a tramp, the mind boggles. Pandora was looking particularly beautiful in a red off-the-shoulder dress, from which her breasts kept threatening to escape. Nobody would have guessed from looking at her that she was now Dr Pandora Braithwaite, fluent in Russian, Serbo-Croat and various other little-used languages. She looked more like one of those supermodels that prowl the catwalks than a Doctor of Philosophy. She certainly added glamour to the party: unlike her parents, who were dressed as usual in their fifties beatnik style polo necks and corduroy. No wonder they were both sweating heavily as they danced to Chuck Berry.

Pandora smiled at me as she tucked her left breast back inside her dress, and I was pierced to the heart. I truly love her. I am prepared to wait until she comes to her senses and realizes that there is only one man in the world for her, and that is me. That is the reason I followed her to Oxford and took up temporary residence in her box room. I have now been there for a year and a half. The more she is exposed to my presence, the sooner she will appreciate my qualities. I have suffered daily humiliations, watching her with her husband and her lovers, but I will reap the benefits later when she is the proud mother of our six children and I am a famous author.

As the clock struck twelve, everyone joined hands and sang Auld Lang Syne. I looked around, at Pandora; at Cavendish; at my mother; at my father; at my stepfather; at my grandma; at Pandoras parents,

Ivan and Tania Braithwaite; and at the dog. Tears filled my eyes. I am nearly twenty-four years of age, I thought, and what have I done with my life? And, as the singing died away, I answered myself nothing, Mole, nothing.

Pandora wanted to spend the first night of the New Year in Leicester at her parents house with Cavendish, but at 12.30 a.m. I reminded her that she and her aged lover had promised to give me a lift back to Oxford. I said, I am on duty in eight hours time at the Department of the Environment. At 8.30 sharp?

She said, For Christs sake, cant you have one poxy day off without permission? Do you have to kow-tow to that little commissar Brown?

I replied, with dignity, I hope, Pandora, some of us keep our word, unlike you, who on Thursday the second of June 1983 promised that you would marry me as soon as you had finished your A levels?

Pandora laughed, spilling the neat whisky in her glass. I was sixteen years old she said. Youre living in a bloody time warp.

I ignored the insult. Will you drive me to Oxford as you promised? I snapped, dabbing at the whisky droplets on her dress with a paper serviette covered in reindeer.

Pandora shouted across the room to Cavendish, who was engaged in conversation with Grandma about the dogs lack of appetite: Jack! Adrians insisting on that lift back to Oxford!

Bluebeard rolled his eyes and looked at his watch.

Have I got time for one more drink, Adrian? he asked.

Yes, but only mineral water. Youre driving, arent you? I said.

He rolled his eyes again and picked up a bottle of Perrier. My father came across and he and Cavendish reminisced about the Good Old Days, when they could drink ten pints in the pub and get in the car and drive off without having the law on your back'.

It was 2a.m. when we finally left my mothers house. Then we had to call at the Braithwaites house to collect Pandoras overnight bag. I sat in the back of Cavendishs Volvo and listened to their banal conversation. Pandora calls him Hunky and Cavendish calls her Monkey.

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