She dressed hurriedly, mumbled, "Thanks," unbolted the door and ran downstairs. I heard her Saab turn the corner a moment later. She telephoned at 7 a.m. from her car on the M1. "I must know, Aidy, did we do it?"
I a.s.sured her that we were no further forward in our carnal knowledge of each other than we had ever been. I asked her where she was going in such a hurry. She said, "I"ve got a meeting with Alastair, to plan my comeback. Then we"re lunching at Wilton"s, the fish restaurant, with a photographer."
I can guess what she"ll choose from the menu.
9.30 a.m. An extraordinary outburst from Eleanor tonight! I must say, she did look rather wild when she arrived and swept past me through the front door without a word. After Glenn"s lesson was over, I offered her a cup of tea. She nodded, biting her lip and looking a bit like Anna, in The King and I, when she tells Yul Brynner she is going back to England. I made the tea to complete silence, apart from the thwack of the football on the yard wall. I handed her the mug, which said, "Having a bad hair day?" (Picture of a stick woman with hair on end.) She looked at the mug and said tersely, "Why this mug?"
I said, "No reason. It was chosen off the mug tree quite at random."
Eleanor said, "Why have you stopped gazing at my wrists?" She then told me, in a choked-up voice, that she"d waited outside my house all night and witnessed Pandora leaving at 6.20 a.m. What could I say, dear Diary? Caught in the act! Unfortunately I slurped noisily on my tea, then tried to disguise it by coughing. I inhaled some of the liquid, which went down my windpipe. This led to a protracted and messy coughing fit, complete with snot and running eyes and a slight leak of urine from my full bladder.
Glenn came in and said, "Why are you cryin", Dad?"
I was still unable to speak.
Eleanor said, "The world is a sad place, Glenn."
This was a gross misrepresentation of the reason for my tears. Glenn said, "I think the world"s all right."
To think I once fantasized about lying on top of Eleanor and covering her pale body with kisses!
When I"d recovered and Glenn had gone upstairs to have a bath, I said to Eleanor, "I"d rather you didn"t give Glenn the impression that I"m in the habit of weeping for the world."
She said, "Everything looks black to me now."
I said, "Everything about you is black. Why don"t you introduce a bit of colour into your life? A pink shirt or a white jumper might cheer you up."
She said, "My numerologist warned me that I would meet a new lover through my work, and that it would end in tears."
I said, "Eleanor, you are constantly adding up two and two and making five. We"ve never been lovers."
She looked me in the eyes and said, "Do you want to be lovers?"
I explained that, like Stephen Fry, I had taken a vow of chast.i.ty.
She said, "I don"t believe you. The real reason is that you"ve been talking to Roger Patience and the police."
"What about?" I said, alarmed at the turn the conversation had taken.
She ignored my question and said, "You"re in love with that MP tart. You had her in our bed."
I said, "Pandora and I slept together. However, nothing of a s.e.xual nature took place. We kept our underwear on at all times."
She then dropped the bombsh.e.l.l that Stephen Fry had renounced chast.i.ty and was going about saying that s.e.x was "absolutely marvellous".
Glenn shouted from the bathroom that William had run off with the World Cup soap-on-a-rope. I went upstairs to sort the boys out. When I came downstairs I noticed that Eleanor had opened a b.u.t.ton on her black silk shirt. I asked her casually about the rather worrying police reference she had made earlier.
She said, "If you really must know I have a police record, though why it should impact on my effectiveness as a teacher--"
I cut her off. "What kind of police record?" I asked.
She shook her head and said, "Why does this happen to me over and over and over again? Why can"t I find a man who would walk through fire for me, as I would for him?" She lifted the hem of her long black dress and dabbed at her eyes.
I saw that she had a tattoo on her left knee, a phoenix with wings outstretched. She obviously never wears miniskirts.
She said, "My father rejected me when I was thirteen years old and men have been casting me aside ever since."
I said, "Just because your father ran away doesn"t mean..."
She rose from her chair. "He didn"t run away," she said, "he died, in an accident."
"I"m sorry," I said. "Was it a car crash?"
She gave a bitter smile. "Oh no, that would have been acceptable." She looked defiantly at me. "A small dog fell on his head from a balcony, in Torremolinos."
Diary, I tried not to laugh. And for at least five seconds I kept my composure but then I cracked. I turned my head away but she obviously saw my shoulders shaking and said, "Yes, laugh, laugh at the most tragic event in my life." I struggled to control myself and blurted out, "Was it a pedigree?"
Why? Why? I knew perfectly well that there are no pedigree dogs in Torremolinos. I was there five years ago.
I paid her PS9, then asked her to leave and not come back.
Before she slammed the door she said, "I will be back!"
If she does come back I won"t open the door to her.
Sat.u.r.day May 2nd. The Lawns 11.59. I have nothing left. No house, no money, no car, no ma.n.u.scripts. Eleanor burned the lot. William"s insects. Glenn"s trainers. The BP bloke apologized for selling her the petrol. He had joined the crowd of excited onlookers as they watched my house burn down.
We stayed and watched until the flames had been extinguished. Then a Chief Inspector Baron told me that Eleanor Flood had been arrested and that in his opinion she should never have been "let out of that secure unit". Apparently her career as an arsonist started at teacher training college with a small fire in the bar after she"d been refused a late-night drink.
My mother turned up in her towelling bathrobe and the grey socks she wears in bed. She leaped out of Ivan"s car and ran towards where we stood behind the police barrier at the end of the street. The excitement and the reflective glow from the fire made her look ten years younger.
"Adrian, please tell me you were insured!" were her first words.
I couldn"t bring myself to reply. Eventually Glenn said, "Dad kept forgettin" to buy any, didn"t you, Dad?" He clumsily patted my shoulder. I patted his.
A fireman came out of the house carrying something carefully in his helmet. I hoped it was some of my fifty-pound notes, but it turned out to be Andrew. He is quite thin when his fur is wet and flattened down.
My father tried to comfort me by saying, "Houses and possessions can tie you down, lad."
Things are undoubtedly bad. However, I have William and Glenn and Andrew and a smoke-damaged diary that a fireman found under the mattress of Glenn"s bed. On the cover are the words: "The Top Secret Diary of Glenn Mole (13").
On the first page is written: "When I grow up I wood like to be my dad."
I have often wondered how I would stand up against fire, flood and tempest. Would I run in panic and try to save my own life? Until tonight I suspected that I would do exactly that. But when I woke to the exploding gla.s.s and the choking smoke and the sharp flames on the stairs, I found that my own life was unimportant to me. Nothing else mattered apart from removing my sons from danger.
I expect that by tomorrow I will have embellished the story and given myself a heroic status I do not deserve, but all the same, on this night at this hour, I am pleased to record that I acquitted myself well.
EOF.