Marigold looked puzzled until I explained that Tania was my ex-stepmother.
I said, ‘Don’t feel that you have to go to the party, Marigold.’
Netta said, ‘No, you must go, Mazzie. It will be something to look forward to.’
9 p.m.
I have left messages for Keith Vaz, MP, Patricia Hewitt, MP, Jim Marshall, MP, Gary Lineker, Martin Johnson, the Tigers captain, Rosemary Conley, Willie Thorne, the Lord Mayor of Leicester and the manager of Marks & Spencer, asking each of them to speak at the dinner.
I then had a brainwave and rang Wayne Wong and asked him if Engelbert Humperdinck was spending Christmas in Leicester with his family as usual.
Wayne said, ‘Mr Humperdinck’s people haven’t made a booking yet.’
While I was on the line, I asked Wayne to book a table for eight people for 7.30 tomorrow.
Wayne said, ‘We’re fully booked, Aidy. It’s Christmas Eve eve.’
He must have heard the desperation in my voice because, after listening to my pleas, he relented and said with ill grace, ‘I’ll fit you in somewhere, but you’ll have to be out by 9.30.’
Monday December 23rd
Woke this morning with a black cloud of anxiety hanging above me. On the walk to work I phoned Ken Blunt and Gary Milksop and told them about the arrangements for tonight.
Ken Blunt said, ‘Did you manage to get a celebrity speaker?’
I told him that a guest would be joining us for dinner at the Imperial Dragon and that we would be going back to my loft apartment for coffee and the after-dinner speech.
The bell on the shop door never stopped ringing as customers trooped in and out. At one time there was a queue for the fire.
My parents came in. They were doing their last-minute Christmas shopping. My mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I told her to buy me rope so that I could hang myself.
She said, ‘Why are you so mardy-arsed? Unless you tell me otherwise I’m buying you two pairs of Calvin Klein underpants. I hope you are coming to Wisteria Walk for your Christmas dinner. It’ll be the last time, as we’re moving out the day after Boxing Day.’
I asked my parents what they wanted for Christmas.
My father said, ‘A sledgehammer would be useful.’
And my mother said she had run out of Clinique’s Deep Comfort Body Butter moisturizing cream.
She told me that my sister and her boyfriend, Simon, were expected for Christmas Day and warned me to buy presents for them. And she said, ‘And Christmas Day will be the first anniversary of the new dog’s death, remember.’
My father said, ‘He ought to bloody remember. He killed it.’
I said, ‘Look, how many times do I have to tell you that I did not give the new dog that turkey bone. It jumped up and stole it from my plate!’
I asked my mother if she knew any celebrities who would be available at short notice for an engagement that evening.
She said that she knew Gary Lineker’s cousin’s ex-wife, who told amusing anecdotes about Gary when he was a little boy.
I said, ‘Unless Gary was reading Dostoevsky at a tender age, I doubt if the woman could keep the creative writing group interested.’
At 5.30 I asked Mr Carlton-Hayes if he would be the guest speaker at the creative writing group dinner.
He said, ‘My dear, what a shame. I’m hosting a drinks party for the neighbours this evening. The only person you’ll get at this late juncture is somebody who likes the sound of their own voice.’
We said simultaneously, ‘Michael Flowers.’
I checked with the mumming poster. Flowers did not have a performance that evening. I rang him immediately. Netta answered and said that her husband was at the hospital, visiting Marigold. She volunteered the information that Marigold would be discharged in the morning.
I rang Surgical 2 and asked to speak urgently to Michael Flowers. The nurse asked me if I was a relation. I said no.
She said, ‘Then I’m afraid I can’t put you through.’
I was desperate to speak to him, so I said that I was Marigold Flowers’s fiancé.
When Michael Flowers came to the phone, I explained to him that I had been badly let down at the last minute by Cherie Blair and had to find a replacement for her by 7.30 tonight. I asked him if he would do the honours.
He said, ‘As your future father-in-law, of course I’d be thrilled to help you out of your dilemma.’
He asked me if I had a message for Marigold.
I said, ‘Yes, please give her my best wishes.’
Flowers said, ‘Come, come, Adrian, you can do better than that, you love-struck swain. No need to be shy with me. Tell the girl you love her.’
What could I do, diary? I was putty in his hands.
I phoned Nigel and asked him to be my partner at the dinner. He said ungraciously, ‘Why not? It’ll save me cooking.’
I led Nigel into the restaurant, steering him by the front of his shirt. He still banged into chairs and tables on the way, and dropped his white stick twice. His language was unrepeatable. He has developed quite a temper since turning blind.
Wayne had managed to insert an extra table next to the fish tank. The lights inside the tank cast an unpleasant green glow over the table, but I could hardly complain.
Ken Blunt and his wife, Glenda, resembled middle-aged Martians. She is a bit vulgar-looking but friendly enough.
She said, ‘I don’t mind Ken writing. It is a cheap hobby, not like golf.’
Gary Milksop’s eyes lit up when he saw Nigel. Not surprising, because Gary’s partner turned out to be a ferret-faced youth with a pencil-thin beard and ears that stuck out like mug handles.
I wish it had been possible to warn Milksop that he stood no chance with Nigel. Nigel likes horny-handed men of toil who order him about and make his life a misery.
Milksop’s friends were two serious-looking girls he said he had met at group therapy the previous month. They seemed to think that he was some kind of genius.
Flowers kept us waiting and then made an entrance, shouting, ‘I’m expected at the writers’ table.’ He was wearing a green tweed suit and a large trilby hat.
I said our celebrity guest had arrived.
Ken Blunt turned round and said, ‘It’s that gobshite from the health food shop in the market.’
Glenda Blunt put her autograph book away in her handbag.
Disappointment settled over the table like heavy snow. It was a most unsatisfactory meal. Wayne Wong kept reminding me that we had to be out by 9.30.
Ken Blunt and Michael Flowers quarrelled about Iraq. Ken is violently anti-American – Glenda told me that he won’t allow Coca-Cola in the house – and Michael Flowers claims to be a pacifist (he doesn’t know that I know that Mr Carlton-Hayes knocked him out in that car park fight).
At one point I said that, despite his wife’s behaviour in letting the writers’ group down, I still had complete faith in Mr Blair and that the Weapons of Mass Destruction would soon be found, but that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of France.
Nigel said, ‘Or looking for a piece of turkey in this fucking turkey chow mein.’
Gary Milksop said that Iraq was about oil. His acolytes nodded and gazed at him as though he were some kind of political guru.
Nigel stubbornly refused to accept help in locating bits of turkey and continued to drop noodles down his Kenzo shirt front.
The two serious girls talked to each other but seemed reluctant to add anything to the general conversation.
Michael Flowers went into monologue mode – talk about death by anecdote. At the end of the meal he proposed a vote of thanks to me, saying, ‘We have Adrian, my future son-in-law, to thank for arranging this delightful occasion.’
Nigel gave a horrible sardonic laugh and called for champagne.
Wayne Wong brought over a magnum bottle of Pomagne and nine glasses and said, ‘What are you celebrating?’
Nigel said, ‘Adrian’s engaged to M
arigold Flowers.’
Wayne Wong said, ‘No, you’re joking me. Not that thin woman who’s scared of the fish?’
I said hurriedly, ‘Wayne, this is Marigold’s father, Michael.’
Wayne briefly shook Flowers’s hand, then said to me, ‘It’s 9.25, so you’ll have to drink up quick.’
When our glasses were charged, Nigel began to sing Cliff Richard’s winning Eurovision song, ‘Congratulations’.
The other diners in the room joined in and Ken Blunt pulled me to my feet to acknowledge the congratulations of the room.
One of the serious girls took a photograph of me and Michael Flowers embracing and shaking hands. She promised to send me a copy via Gary Milksop.
It seems that, against my will, I have become officially engaged to Marigold Flowers.
Gielgud and the other swans were gathered together in a corner of the car park. I pointed them out to Michael Flowers, who said, ‘Methinks we should proceed with caution. A swan can break a man’s arm, you know.’
We sat in Flowers’s Range Rover and waited for the others to arrive.
It was impossible to avoid the swan shit on the stairs and inevitably some of it was trampled on to my floorboards.
I made coffee and gave the usual warning about the glass wall of the lavatory. My warning did not inhibit Michael Flowers, whose urination sounded like the Zambezi in spate.
Nigel and Gary Milksop sat next to each other on the white sofa. The two serious girls sat cross-legged on the floor. Ken Blunt and his wife lolled awkwardly on the futon. I brought the chairs in from the balcony to a chorus of swans hissing. Ferret Face took one chair and Michael Flowers the other. I was quite happy leaning against the kitchen counter. I just wanted the awful night to be over.
Flowers kept us waiting. He assumed the posture of Rodin’s The Thinker first, then lifted his head and said, ‘Before I address you, can we move closer together and form a circle.’
A lot of awkward furniture shifting took place, and Flowers said, ‘I want you to hold hands and close your eyes, and feel the atmosphere in this room.’
I closed my eyes and held Ken Blunt’s and Ferret Face’s hands and felt embarrassment, suspicion and boredom.
Flowers intoned what he said was a Buddhist mantra, which he urged us to join in with.
At the end Ken Blunt pulled his wife to her feet and said, ‘We’ve got to go home now to let the dog out.’
As I saw them down the stairs, Ken said, ‘I’d sooner dance barefoot on drawing pins than stay to hear what he’s got to say.’
When I went back into the room Flowers was saying, ‘I was reading Voltaire at six and Tolstoy at seven.’
Gary Milksop lisped, ‘Have you ever written a novel, Mr Flowers?’
Flowers said that in the 1960s he had written ‘the definitive English novel’. He had asked his dear friend Philip Larkin to read the manuscript. According to Flowers, Larkin had written back to say, ‘Hello to All This is the novel of the age. Humbler writers such as myself, Amis et al. should push our pens aside and weep. Mike, my good friend, you are a genius. Every publisher in London will be beating a path to your door.’
Nigel said, ‘I know I am just an ignorant gay-boy, but I’ve never heard of Hello to All This.’
Flowers bit his lower lip and turned his head, as though trying to control strong emotions. ‘No,’ he said, in what I imagine he thought was a hollow-sounding voice. ‘My first wife, Conchita, burned my manuscript.’
Gary Milksop, Ferret Face and the two serious girls gasped in horror.
Nigel said, ‘And it was the only copy?’
Flowers nodded. ‘It was handwritten in purple ink on fine hand-blocked paper.’
Nigel’s lip curled. ‘And you sent this through the post to Philip Larkin?’
Flowers bridled. ‘The postal workers of this country are the finest workers in the land. I trusted them implicitly.’
I said, laying a trap, ‘But you still have the Larkin letter?’
‘No,’ he answered. ‘Conchita destroyed everything that was precious to me.’
One of the serious girls broke her silence and said, ‘I did my MA on Philip Larkin – ‘Philip Larkin, Uber-Nerd’ – I read everything there was to read but I don’t remember him mentioning Michael Flowers.’
Flowers smiled and sighed. ‘You dear sweet girl, poor old Phil’s papers were burned.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that you were a intimate friend of Philip Larkin? Or that you wrote a masterpiece called Hello to All This?’
*
I couldn’t stand any more and excused myself, saying I needed air. I stood on the balcony for a few minutes until the cold forced me back inside.
When I returned Flowers was saying, ‘I did my best to halt the encroaching dictatorship of the motor car. I tried to stop the production of the Ford Cortina. I lay down outside the gates of Dagenham. I had the prescience to see that supplying the proletariat with motor cars would destroy the environment, England and eventually everything we hold dear.’
Nigel said, ‘My dad had a Cortina Mark 4. It was duck-egg blue and had leopard-skin seats. Did any of the car workers give up their well-paid jobs because you were sufficiently worried to lie down in the road?’
Flowers said, ‘I was deeply disappointed by the workers’ response. I’m afraid they lampooned me and several of them took the opportunity to give me what I believe is called now “a good kicking”.’
Gary Milksop offered to give Nigel a lift home and ordered Ferret Face to drive the serious girls to the flat they shared.
Flowers stayed talking to me long after the others had gone. He talked mostly about Conchita. He said, ‘I went to Mexico after seeing a production of The Royal Hunt of the Sun at Loughborough Town Hall. I was a young man searching for an alternative civilization and I thought I had found it in the remnants of Aztec culture. I met Conchita in the courtyard of the La Croix Hotel.’
‘Was she a fellow guest?’ I asked.
‘No, she was sweeping it,’ he said. ‘We exchanged a few words. She complimented me on my Spanish and asked me if I needed a guide to see the Mayan ruins of Palenque.
‘We were lovers almost immediately. She took me to meet her family. They were dreadfully poor – ten of them living next to a rubbish heap in a shack with an earth floor. Her little brothers were running around in white vests and no pants. I gave her father $50 and brought her to England.’ He sighed. ‘It was like transplanting an exotic hothouse flower into a sodden English field. She was briefly happy when Daisy was born, but before Daisy was three years old she had deserted us and gone back to Mexico.’
‘With a pork butcher from Melton Mowbray,’ I prompted.
He winced and said, ‘Please,’ as if I had pulled the scab off an old wound.
Seconds ticked by and I wondered if it would be rude if I changed into my pyjamas in the bathroom. But he started up again, saying, ‘Netta quite literally saved my life at Stonehenge.’
I said, ‘Literally? You mean one of the stones was about to fall on you and she –’
He said, ‘Perhaps not literally, but she turned my life round, took charge of me and loved me, until very recently.’ He paused, and then said, ‘I’m finished with women. I’m going to channel my energies into something far more important – the future of this great country.’
When he finally left, I threw myself down on the futon, too exhausted to undress. I composed a letter in my head.
Dear Martin Amis
I have a request. Could you please take a quick look through the whole of your dead father’s correspondence, diaries, journals and other written material to see if you can find any reference, however slight, to Philip Larkin’s friendship with a Michael Flowers of Beeby on the Wold. In particular a letter from Larkin mentioning a manuscript called Hello to All This. I know that your father and Philip Larkin were the best of friends…
Tuesday December 24th
Christmas Eve
<
br /> My father rang me first thing this morning. This is such an unusual occurrence that my immediate thought on hearing his voice was that my mother was either severely incapacitated or dead.
He said, ‘You’ve broken your mother’s heart. Why didn’t you invite us to your engagement party last night? Are you ashamed of us? I know we smoke and drink a bit and your mother can be opinionated, but –’
I interrupted him by saying, ‘Dad, it wasn’t an engagement party.’
I then heard my father saying, ‘Pauline, he says it wasn’t an engagement party.’
I heard my mother’s muffled voice from across the room saying something angry and tearful.
My father translated, ‘Your mother says that everybody in the Imperial Dragon sang congratulations to you last night, according to our milkman.’
I said to him, ‘Tell Mum that the milkman should check his facts before passing on gossip.’
My father took the phone away from his lips and relayed this message to my mother. She shouted something incomprehensible, though I managed to make out the words ‘liar’ and ‘engaged’.
My father started to repeat my mother’s response, but I broke in and said, ‘Can I hear it from the horse’s mouth please?’
My father said, ‘The horse is lying on the settee, crying her bloody eye sout.’
I told my father that I didn’t know how I had got engaged, it had all been a horrible mistake, and I didn’t love Marigold or even like her much. I said that I would ring him and my mother later that night.
When I got to work the shop was already full of customers looking for last-minute presents. Mr Carlton-Hayes was struggling to serve a queue of people.
At 11 this morning Netta Flowers rang to say that Marigold was safely home from the hospital. She said, ‘She’s anxious to see you, Adrian. Would you like to join us for Christmas tea tomorrow?’
I said, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Flowers, but my family are holding a memorial service for a very beloved pet dog at teatime tomorrow.’
Netta said, ‘Marigold’s spirits are very low. I have given her an Indian head massage and strewn her room with lavender, but nothing seems to calm her.’