Nigel yanked on his guide dog’s harness and spat, ‘All I said was, don’t stand at the altar with your mouth gaping open. It makes you look as though you live in sheltered accommodation!’
‘How do you know when he’s got his mouth open?’ I asked.
Nigel snapped, ‘I can hear him breathing! I asked him to have his adenoids seen to before the wedding!’
It was an awkward moment but my mother took charge and told them that she had lost her nerve on the morning of her wedding. She said, ‘The night before, George told me that he didn’t want to have children. He said children ruined your sex life and wrecked a woman’s figure.’
My father said, ‘And I was right, wasn’t I, Pauline?’
My mother said quietly, ‘What he didn’t know was that I was already pregnant with Adrian.’
The ceremony was conducted by an avuncular registrar who told us that it was Fairfax Hall’s first civil marriage. It was a bit too sentimental for my taste.
He gushed, ‘Alone you each have a heart that beats like the wings of a tiny bird but when you agree to this union you will have one strong eagle’s heart, and like that noble creature you will soar into the sky together!’
Personally I would not have left the dog in charge of the rings. I was the Best Man and that should have been my duty. It was not a pretty sight to see the dog snarling and baring its teeth when various people tried to take the rings from the gold pouch around its neck.
At one point in the ceremony I had to look away – Lance’s laboured adenoidal breathing, together with the look of open-mouthed idiocy on his face, was too much to bear. I could see the vein in Nigel’s temple throbbing like a convulsed worm.
When I turned, I saw Daisy in her black suit standing at the back holding a clipboard. She gave me a half smile and looked away. I was extremely proud of my wife. It was her first wedding at Fairfax Hall and she had arranged everything beautifully. Not easy when half of the guests were gay men with very exacting standards.
When I stood up in the reception to make my Best Man’s speech, I got a standing ovation. It took me completely by surprise.
Nigel muttered at my side, ‘They’re applauding the cancer, Moley, and the fact that your wife’s scarpered. It’s got nothing to do with you.’
I kept the speech short but humorous, saying that Nigel was the only boy in the school to apply moisturiser before he went out on to the football field. I also read aloud a text from Pandora.
Sorry can’t be there, am in the Forbidden City.
Masses of love to Mr and Mrs Nigel and Lance.
Pandora.
I quipped to the guests, ‘By “Forbidden City” Pandora doesn’t mean Liverpool. She is leading a trade delegation in China.’
My mother laughed but not many people joined in.
Sunday 20th April
Spent the morning with Gracie, colouring at the kitchen table. She was drawing a succession of princesses, I was drawing my ideal garden.
Bernard cooked us his all-day breakfast. Gracie asked me for a napkin before she started to eat. When I handed her a piece of kitchen towel, she frowned and said, ‘Don’t you have proper linen?’
In the afternoon I took her to see the brook, and allowed her to take her socks and shoes off and paddle in the ankle-deep water. We made a dam with some of the smooth stones off the bottom.
When Daisy came to pick her up, I said, ‘You look tired.’
She said, ‘I’m working a fourteen-hour day.’
I said, ‘I hope he’s paying you well.’
She said, ‘We don’t take a wage, all the money we make goes back into the business.’
So he is employing my wife for nothing!
Monday 21st April
My mother has got a meeting in Leicester with a commissioning editor from Melancholy Books Ltd. To talk about A Girl Called ‘Shit’!
She said, ‘They want to change the title but I’ve told them, it’s A Girl Called “Shit” or nothing!’
P.M.
My mother back from meeting. She is calling her book The Potato Farmer’s Daughter.
I asked her if she would show some of my unpublished work to Melancholy Books. She agreed, but she could have been more enthusiastic.
Tuesday 22nd April
My father rang from next door and asked me to bring ‘that tin of beans’ round.
I said, ‘What do you want it for?’
He said, ‘What’s this, an interrogation? Are you working for the bleedin’ CIA now?’
A ludicrous overreaction to a simple question. I took the tin of beans round. My father was there with Brett. My mother wasn’t, but she had attached a sheet of A4 paper to the door of their fridge and had written in huge black letters:
GEORGE! DO NOT MAKE ANY DECISIONS WITHOUT ME!
I brought his attention to the notice.
‘I’ve decided to ignore it,’ he said defiantly.
Brett said, ‘I’ve been sickened by how Dad’s so-called family have treated him. Try to see beyond the wheelchair, Adrian. Dad is fully capable of making decisions, he is an intelligent man.’
I said, ‘Is that why he thinks the actors on Coronation Street make up their own dialogue?’
Thursday 24th April
Why is everyone using the word ‘unacceptable’ lately? An irate woman on Five Live phoned in this morning and said that it was ‘completely unacceptable that the banks were gambling with our money’.
Tonight, on East Midlands Today, after a disturbing report about a sawn-up body found in a wheelie bin in a Nottingham suburb, a policeman said, ‘This is a quiet residential area and, as such, this crime is totally unacceptable.’
A neighbour who was interviewed in the street said, ‘I noticed the bin had been out on the pavement for three days, which is obviously unacceptable.’
Saturday 26th April
Watched Bernard running up our drive this afternoon. He saw me at the window and waved what turned out to be a Rupert Bear annual above his head. As soon as I saw the cover, I knew why Bernard had been running. Rupert was brown and it was the 1973 edition.
The publishers that year had changed Rupert’s colour to white after only a few brown copies had been printed. Consequently those rare brown Rupert editions are a book dealer’s Holy Grail.
Bernard said, ‘I found it in the vicar’s rummage sale. I was looking for a decent pair of trousers when I spotted it. It’s in perfect nick, never been opened by the look of it.’
He handed it to me, it was in pristine condition.
‘Whoever it was given to must have shared my opinion of young Master Bear,’ said Bernard.
‘Which is?’ I asked.
‘Well, he was a bit of a degenerate, wasn’t he? That bear had a serious drug habit. I’d guess at hallucinogenics, wouldn’t you?’
He leafed carefully through the pages. Rupert seemed to be undergoing increasingly bizarre adventures, in what could only be described as Dali-esque landscapes.
I logged on to the book dealers’ website and started to put in the information. ‘How much did you pay for it?’ I asked while I typed.
‘The crone behind the trestle table only asked ninety pence for the Rupert annual, a pair of cavalry twills and a regimental tie,’ he said.
When I saw how much the last 1973 brown Rupert had sold for at auction, I said to Bernard, ‘If you’re on heart tablets take one now… sixteen thousand pounds!’
Bernard sat down and lit a cigarette. He said, ‘It can’t be true, I was always last in the queue when Lady Luck came to call.’
I offered him a celebratory drink but he said, ‘Better not, I’m on the wagon.’
We clapped each other on the back in a manly way. I made him wrap the precious book in a kitchen towel and put it inside a carrier bag.
He said, ‘I owe you board and lodging since Christmas.’
I protested that he had paid me something out of his pension every week.
‘Then I should buy you something for your land,’ he said, ‘coc
ker.’
I rang Mr Carlton-Hayes and told him about the 1973 brown Rupert annual. He gasped, and said he knew of a collector in America who would ‘dearly love to complete his collection’.
I asked him how Leslie was.
After a short pause he said, ‘Leslie is extremely well, and how are you, my dear?’
I told him that I was feeling better and that I was spending a lot of time cultivating my land.
He said, ‘You’ve read Thoreau’s Walden, I expect?’
I said, ‘It’s on my bedside table.’
After I’d put the phone down, Bernard said, ‘Are you up to sorting the books we were given by Mr C-H?’
I said I was.
So we spent the afternoon going through the boxes of semi-valuable books from the shop. After taking out the books we wanted to keep, we agreed to sell the remainder online.
‘So, cocker, we can call ourselves booksellers again,’ said Bernard.
Sunday 27th April
Brett has not been seen for two days! I fear that the baked bean tin and his absence are not unrelated.
My mother thinks that the tin of beans is still in my pantry. My father has begged me not to say anything to her.
I asked him how much was in the tin.
He said, ‘Too much.’
Monday 28th April
I was in the post office with a parcel for Glenn in Afghanistan (a shoe box full of socks, toothpaste, Fruit Pastilles, Wotsits, a drawing from Gracie, a letter from my mother, shaving cream, Ritz biscuits and a Walker’s pork pie) when Kathleen Boldry, one of the militant dinner ladies, came in with a petition condemning the Council’s decision to grant planning permission in support of a safari park in the grounds of Fairfax Hall.
Wendy Wellbeck said, ‘None of us will be safe in our beds, with lions and tigers roaming free.’
‘And think of the traffic!’ said a sour face in the queue.
‘I’ve heard there are going to be giraffes,’ I said.
‘Giraffes!’ said the queue as one.
Mrs Golightly said, ‘We don’t want giraffes in the village with their long necks looking over our hedges.’
‘This is not Africa!’ said an old bloke with a bent back.
Tony Wellbeck said, ‘We should march to Fairfax Hall and tell that Fairfax-Lycett that the village is against it.’
I said, ‘It would be far more effective to march at night, with flaming torches.’
Much to my alarm there was whole-hearted support for my suggestion. The bloke with the bent back said that he’d been in charge of making flaming torches when he was props master for the Mangold Players’ outdoor evening performance of The Phantom of the Opera held in and around the moat at Fairfax Hall.
I said, thinking of Gracie and Daisy, ‘I suggest we don’t actually burn the hall down.’
A few hotheads in the queue were keen on a scorched earth policy, but Tony Wellbeck talked them out of it. We agreed to rendezvous at 8 p.m. on the green in front of The Bear.
Tony Wellbeck said, ‘That’s twenty hundred hours, check your watches.’
When the queue had dispersed, I noticed that the shelves looked bare and the government leaflets advising us on every aspect of our lives had gone. When I remarked on this, Wendy Wellbeck said, ‘We’re on the list for closure, we’ve put an appeal in but we don’t hold out much hope.’
I told them that I had a great deal of influence with Pandora Braithwaite, our Member of Parliament.
Wendy Wellbeck said, ‘Yes, we’d heard that you were knocking her off.’
Tony said angrily, ‘Wendy! I know you’re worried but there is no need to let your standards slip and use such offensive language to a valued customer.’
Wendy said, ‘I apologise, Mr Mole. We’re not ourselves lately. This place is our livelihood and our home.’
What was meant to be a torch-lit delegation of Mangold Parvians grew via the internet to include groups from: The World Wildlife Fund, Child Poverty Action, The Badger Protection League, People Against Zoos (PAZ), The Socialist Workers Party, Friends of Giraffes (UK), Ratepayers Alliance (Leicester Branch), Wildlife Aid, The Leicester Bat Group, Greyhounds in Need, World Parrot Trust and Tiger Awareness.
Protestors started to arrive in the late afternoon. It wasn’t long before cars were parked on both verges of Gibbet Lane and surrounding roads.
My parents went to the end of our drive to watch as the protestors went by on their way to the meeting place in Mangold Parva. My father was able to fully indulge his prejudices against ‘alternatives’ as every possible type of non-conformist passed him by.
My mother was the happiest I had seen her for years. She kept saying, ‘At last, something is happening in Mangold Parva!’
A police car went by, then an ambulance with its siren screaming.
‘Ay up!’ said my father, his eyes shining. ‘Trouble!’
My mother rang Wendy Wellbeck to find out what had happened. It seemed that somebody from The Badger Protection League had harangued an activist from Child Poverty Action saying that they had no legitimate right to be there. A Socialist Worker fanned the flames by stating that badgers were riddled with TB and didn’t deserve their place in the countryside. A policeman intervened and charged them both with a Section Five. The ambulance was for a man from Tiger Awareness who had fallen into a ditch full of stinging nettles.
I was beginning to feel sorry that I had suggested a torch-lit procession. When I arrived at the green, I was amazed at the multitude of people waiting there. Bernard was holding two flaming torches. He handed one to me and we set off. The Socialist Workers were chanting, ‘Capitalism! Out! Out! Out!’ Other groups tried to find a rhyme with ‘safari park’ but failed. Many of the older marchers sang ‘Born Free’. We picked up my mother and father as we passed the end of our drive. As we got nearer to Fairfax Hall, I started to regret the whole thing and I began to think that it could be quite nice to have a safari park near by. Bernard told me that the animals’ dung would make an excellent fertiliser for the roses I intended to grow – and wouldn’t the village benefit from the jobs that the safari park would provide? I was relieved to see a police car parked near the gates. A traffic policeman got out of the car and addressed the crowd.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he shouted. ‘As you know, this is still a free country and as citizens of this country you are allowed to make a peaceful protest providing you inform the police of your intentions. However, I have to tell you that no such notice was given, therefore I am instructing you to turn round and go back in a peaceful manner to your cars and leave the area.’
I was about to turn back when Tony Wellbeck pushed to the front and made an impassioned but illogical speech about how money could be found for safari parks yet his post office, which had served the area well for seventy years, was being forced to close.
I told Bernard that I wanted to go back.
He said, ‘Don’t spoil the fun, cocker, I’m looking forward to giving that wife-stealer Hugo Fairfax-Lycett the fright of his privileged life. His sort live in dread of the mob.’ He went up to the policeman, saluted and said, ‘Colonel Bernard Hopkins retired here, sir. You have my word as an officer and a gentleman that I will lead these people in a peaceful protest.’
The policeman said he was off duty in five minutes and got back inside his car. The mob passed through the gates and started to process down the drive to Fairfax Hall.
My phone rang and Daisy said, ‘Adrian, I don’t know what to do. There is a crowd of people walking down the drive. They’ve got flaming torches and they look angry.’
I said, ‘Daisy, I’m here with them.’
She said, ‘Well, tell them to go back. I’m here alone with Gracie. Hugo is out somewhere on his quad bike, in fact I’m worried about him. He’s not answering his phone.’
Diary, it all ended in confusion, low farce and tragedy. After a few speeches by ardent animal activists, who railed against keeping wild animals in captivity, the crowd dispers
ed and most of them started to walk back into the village. At nine thirty, when Fairfax-Lycett had still not been contacted, Bernard, Tony Wellbeck and a few of the villagers set out to look for him in the grounds. Me, my mother, father and Wendy Wellbeck went into the hall and sat in the little room Daisy called ‘the snug’. It was a comfortable room with a lot of old brown antiques and modern sofas.
Daisy said, ‘I get agoraphobic in the rest of the house. I’m not used to such large spaces.’
My mother said, ‘That’s what living in a pigsty does to you.’
I can’t get used to the new Daisy. It still seems wrong to me that a woman would wear a two-piece tweed suit indoors.
At ten thirty Tony Wellbeck phoned to say that they had found Fairfax-Lycett under his quad bike. He was alive but unconscious. It hurt me to see Daisy’s obvious distress.
Before she got into the ambulance, she said, ‘He could be brain damaged.’
I said, ‘How could they possibly tell?’
Tuesday 29th April
The village is ankle deep in litter. Mrs Lewis-Masters has organised a litter pick. Fairfax-Lycett regained consciousness an hour after arriving at the hospital last night. When the doctors tested his cognitive skills by asking him the year, the name of the prime minister and his birth date, he answered 1972, Mrs Thatcher and 1066, so they are keeping him in for observation. Daisy is not at all pleased with him. When she asked him how the accident happened, he said that he was fleeing from the mob. She came to the Piggeries to leave Gracie with me so that she could spend more time at the hospital.
I said to her, ‘Daisy, if he has to answer a few general knowledge questions accurately he may never get out. He’s so thick.’
She said, ‘I don’t mind that in a man. The thickos are easier to control.’
In the afternoon Gracie wanted to paddle in the brook again so we took a few sandwiches, a packet of Jaffa Cakes and a flask of tea and had a picnic. I pointed out to her that the tree swaying over the brook was called a weeping willow. She wanted to know the names of the other trees near by and I was so happy that I was able to tell her.