by David Nobbs
He laughed at these letters, and he was flattered by them, but he was also saddened – very saddened. It seemed that there were vast wells of loneliness and frustration out there. Sickness, too. Some of the letters he received were so sick and depraved that they had to be unceremoniously binned.
There were even one or two letters from men who fancied Henry. One of them wrote, ‘It is clear from your every appearance that you are gay and fighting it. Wake up. Come out of the closet. It’s dark in there.’
And of course there were begging letters. He sent a standard reply to these, stating that he sympathised greatly with their cause, but had his own charitable arrangements in place.
In fact he contributed generously to two causes – help for the homeless, because of his experiences with Ben, and research into Alzheimer’s, because of his experiences with his Auntie Doris, who had helped to bring him up after the death of his parents, and over whom the mists had gathered remorselessly.
The success of Hooray, It’s Henry soon caught the eye of Nigel Clinton.
‘Nigel Clinton here, Henry. Hilary’s editor.’
‘I do remember.’
‘I really love your new programme.’
‘Thank you.’
‘How about a book?’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Of course. I rang Hilary first She thinks it’s a great idea.’
‘She would, Nigel. She’s very generous.’
‘Yes. I wouldn’t be dealing with it, we don’t do cookery books, but another imprint here at Consolidation House does. I thought I’d check how the land lay first, but if you are receptive, I could set up a meeting with a lovely lady called Carmel Sloane.’
‘Terrific.’
‘You’ll adore Carmel.’
Henry managed not to say ‘terrific’ a second time. It might well not be terrific. He didn’t like being told that he’d adore somebody. It sounded rather like an order. It could be the kiss of death.
Carmel was nervous, edgy, and a great deal older than she claimed. She took him to the Ivy. She had a pale face which had been lifted at least once and not very well. Her smile died at the edges. She had long, straight hair, dyed jet black. She was slim and flat-chested, and she moved her food around on her plate more than she actually ate it, to an extent that got on Henry’s nerves, so that he longed to say, ‘For God’s sake, woman, either eat it or leave it.’ She wasn’t lovely, and he knew that he wouldn’t adore her, but she was far too vulnerable to dislike, and he felt that they would get on well together.
‘I want this book to be different,’ she said.
‘Right.’
‘I want it to be more than the series.’
‘Right.’
‘I take my starting point from your … Hello, Melvyn … from your own phrase, well, no, I think it was Clive Porfiry’s – “an autobiography in food”.’
‘It was my phrase, actually.’
‘Even better. A recipe book primarily, of course … Morning, Nick … and one with fabulous photos, I think – I have a wonderful photographer lined up. Mohammed is absolutely brilliant – but, threading its way through the recipes … Morning, Harold … implicit even in the photos, is the story of a life. Your life,’ she added unnecessarily. ‘A bit of a revolution in cookery books, which is … Morning, Sir Tom … why I felt we needed to be discreet. I initially thought of the Groucho, but it’s crawling with media.’
‘Who is this Mohammed?’ asked Henry over his tartlet.
‘Mohammed El Bashir, simply the best food photographer in the universe.’
‘A Muslim? Very little of my food has any Oriental influences.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, Henry,’ said Carmel, toying with her salad, moving bits of avocado round her plate like a listless sheepdog rounding up its flock. ‘Mohammed is British. Mohammed is a one-man triumph for integration. He’s multi-culturalism in human form. He’s ace. He’s wicked. He’s awesome. He’s the incarnation of globalisation.’
‘You like him, do you?’
‘Like him? Like him, Henry? I should have thought I’d made that pretty obvious. If I told you that his “Yorkshire Pudding at Sunset” won first prize in an England in Spring competition in Hull, perhaps you’ll begin to realise what we’re talking about.’
‘Do you mind if I pour myself another glass?’ asked Henry.
‘No, no. Of course. So sorry. I don’t drink much, so I forget. No. Help yourself. Order more. Please.’ She lowered her voice to bring him the momentous news, which she spoke with awe, as if the Ivy was a cathedral, which in a way it was. ‘I’ve been allowed to spend as much on you as on Minette Walters.’
‘I’m impressed. Sunset? A Yorkshire pudding at sunset?’
‘Yes. It has a slight crimson tinge, faintly visible in the rich yellows and browns of the pudding, just hinting at what’s going on outside in the wider world. That’s what you get from Mohammed. The food and the wider world.’ Carmel Sloane was getting very excited, so excited that for several minutes she didn’t even look round the restaurant to see if there was anybody else she knew. ‘And that’s what your series is giving us. Cookery within the wider world. In your cooking, Henry, I see a deep love of animals and of people, I see a concern for the environment, I see sympathy for the Third World, I see passion about poverty, I see concern over obesity.’
‘Not many people can find all that in a fish terrine.’
‘Exactly! But you can, and Mohammed can, and that’s why it’s all so exciting.’
Everything in Henry’s life, and in his temperament, led him towards mockery of Carmel Sloane, and many people would later laugh at his disloyal impressions of her, but that day, over that lunch, he actually began to believe that there was something in what she said, that his book would be a cookery book, but also more than a cookery book.
‘I’ve really enjoyed this. Thank you,’ he said, and he meant it.
‘Oh, so have I,’ said Carmel. ‘It’s been absolutely … Goodbye, Melvyn … exhilarating. Sometimes my spirits droop at the start of a project. This time they’ve soared. I’m in a room … Goodbye, Nick … with lots of talented people, but I can honestly say that I would rather work with you than with … Goodbye, Harold … any of them. We’ve got on so well that I haven’t really been aware that there’s been anybody else in the … Goodbye, Sir Tom … room. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?’
This was too much for Henry to take.
‘Goodbye, Hans,’ he said to a very surprised tourist.
‘Who’s he?’ asked Carmel Sloane.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said Henry. I just felt like saying “goodbye” to somebody.’
11 A Difficult Relationship
A HUGE CHUNK of the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica broke off; Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, held responsible for the murder of a million civilians, died; so did Frank Sinatra; Amnesty International released its annual report detailing human rights abuses in a hundred and forty-one countries; President Clinton was subpoenaed to testify before a Federal Grand Jury regarding his relationship with Monica Lewinsky; and Henry’s food was photographed with enormous thoroughness by Mohammed El Bashir.
Henry knew from the beginning that it was going to be a long process. He chose simple dishes for the first photographic session, beginning with a starter which he had named Prawn Pippins. The recipe consisted of grating an apple, submerging it in lemon juice to retain its colour, shallow frying very fresh, top quality prawns in butter with salt and pepper, letting them cool, removing the shells and leaving the tails for decoration, then draining the grated apple, placing it on the plate as a bed, putting the prawns on the bed of apple in a decorative manner, spooning over the prawn and apple a vinaigrette consisting of one tablespoon of white wine vinegar, one tablespoon of olive oil and one tablespoon of the apple juice produced from the grating process, then sprinkling the dish with chopped dill. The result was pretty, tasty, refreshing and stimulating to the appetite. It was a little
gem of a dish, but nevertheless it was in essence a simple starter. Mohammed took three and a quarter hours to film it.
‘How come it took so long?’ asked Henry, when it was finished at last.
‘I just wasn’t happy with it. It didn’t sit up and say “apple” to me. The problem was to get it as appley as it was prawny.’
‘And it’s saying “apple” now?’
‘Loud and clear.’
A few days later, Mohammed upset Henry considerably. He asked him to add some cayenne pepper to his chicken paprika.
‘I don’t use cayenne,’ protested Henry. ‘Any other pepper except hot paprika distracts from the purity of the flavour I’m trying to achieve. Often, in cookery, more means less.’
‘This isn’t cookery. This is photography. Paprika just isn’t paprika-coloured enough. It’s too dull, too matt. Photography needs sharpness.’
‘But it won’t be authentic.’
‘I don’t want to boast, Henry, boasting’s not my line, but my “goulash sur l’herbe à côté de Lac Balaton” won second prize in Budapest. In Budapest, Henry, world capital of goulash. I used cayenne. Nobody complained.’
‘I’m just disappointed that you cheated,’ said Henry. ‘I want my book to be truthful.’
‘My dear man! You’re living in the past. As we approach the digital age there’s no point in photographs being truthful. Anything can be faked. Nobody will be able to trust a photograph ever again.’
Before long, Henry would learn, in the most painful way, just how true that was.
In Chicago, two boys aged seven and eight were charged with the sexual molestation, robbery and killing of an eleven-year-old girl. They wanted her bicycle. The death penalty was abolished in Poland; Geri Halliwell was named cultural ambassador to the United Nations Population Fund; President Clinton called for air strikes against Iraq, citing continued refusal to permit UN arms inspectors to do their work; the warmest year on record ended, and Hooray, It’s Henry was published.
The book was launched with a modest dinner party at Le Lièvre Fou, the most expensive of Bradley Tompkins’s three expensive restaurants. Henry thought that this might work as a peace offering. In this, as in so much else, he was wrong.
The restaurant consisted of four smallish rooms, with white walls hung with discreet, tasteful abstract paintings, which looked expensive but had very little to say. Table settings were elaborate, and tables nicely spaced. It had everything, Henry felt, except an identity.
Present at the party were Henry; Hilary; Hilary’s editor, Nigel Clinton, balding now and with a slight stoop, a man aged prematurely by an excess of editing; Henry’s editor, Carmel Sloane; his house editor, an enthusiastic young woman called Imogen Clutterworth-Baines; Mohammed El Bashir; Mohammed El Bashir’s camera; and Carlton Husthwaite, the Managing Director of Impact Books, the imprint that was publishing Hooray, It’s Henry. Henry had wanted the party to be small. He hadn’t wanted to upstage Hilary in the books department, not because it would upset her, but because she was the real writer.
He knew that he had been wrong about his choice of restaurant before they even sat down. Bradley’s eyes were glittering dangerously.
‘I wasn’t coming in tonight,’ he said, ‘until I heard you’d booked. I thought, “I can’t miss Henry’s publication party. What an honour.” ’
Henry’s heart sank. The man meant, my Bradley on the Boil books are out of print. Nobody will ever give me a publication party again. It’s ‘Bugger Bradley’ all the way now. I’ve become the Bognor Regis of cookery.
His heart sank still further when a poncy waiter brought over a poncy basket full of poncy breads.
‘Tonight we have raisin and garlic bread, sultana and olive bread and smoky paprika bread,’ he smarmed.
Henry recalled vividly the remark he had made to Bradley in the Café. ‘Our bread today is bread flavoured.’ Bradley would have taken it as mockery.
He couldn’t win with Bradley.
The starters passed off reasonably peacefully, although Henry wished that people wouldn’t go on and on about how wonderful his book was in Hilary’s presence.
Nigel must have caught something of the same feeling, because he began to talk about how brilliant Hilary’s new book was. It was a tale of a woman who feels that her life has become impossible.
‘It has a brilliantly intriguing title,’ said Nigel Clinton, ‘Carving Snow.’
‘I’ve read it,’ said Henry. ‘It is brilliant. Rather puts my little effort in the shade.’
He was going too far. Hilary gave him a look – an affectionate look, but there was definitely dryness there too, gleaming beneath the affection. For the first time it dawned on Henry that there might be limits even to her famed lack of jealousy.
As they waited for their main courses, Carmel said, ‘Any thoughts on a follow-up, Henry?’
‘Good Lord. Don’t rush me,’ said Henry.
‘It would be wonderful if you could create a diet,’ said Carlton Husthwaite.
‘Everybody buys diets,’ said Imogen Clutterworth-Baines enthusiastically. ‘And when they can’t stick to them, they buy another one.’
‘I do have integrity, you know,’ said Henry. ‘I haven’t got a diet worked out. I don’t believe in diets. I believe food should be fun and varied and free of stress and combined with exercise.’
‘That’s a diet,’ said Carlton Husthwaite.
‘That’s a diet that anyone could stick to, even me,’ said Imogen Clutterworth-Baines enthusiastically.
‘That has integrity,’ said Carmel Sloane. ‘Good for you, Henry.’
‘ “The Pratt Diet”,’ said Carlton Husthwaite. ‘It rolls off the tongue.’
‘Just as it’ll roll off the presses,’ said Hilary. Was there a touch of dryness there too?
Perversely, despite his experience with Carmel in the Ivy – or perhaps because of his experience with Carmel in the Ivy – Henry tried a little joke on her.
‘We shouldn’t have chosen this place,’ he said. ‘I’m really too proud to go to any restaurant that I can get into.’
‘But in that case you’d never eat out,’ she said.
‘It was a joke,’ he explained. ‘A modern take on Groucho Marx.’
‘I’ve seen his grave in Highgate Cemetery,’ said Imogen Clutterworth-Baines enthusiastically.
‘No, that’s Karl Marx,’ said Henry.
‘Was he the dumb one?’ asked Imogen Clutterworth-Baines enthusiastically.
‘No,’ said Henry. ‘People said many things about Karl Marx, but nobody said that he was dumb.’
He wondered what they taught in schools these days. And then he thought about how young she was, and how enthusiastic she was, and how ignorant he had been in his youth, and how he had no doubt made many similar faux pas which his elders had been too kind to point out, and he smiled at Imogen Clutterworth-Baines – enthusiastically.
The main courses arrived. The portions were on the meagre side. The presentation was so artistic that it seemed a crime to eat anything, but it all certainly looked tempting.
They all began to eat. There were murmurs of satisfaction. The food was good – but there was no astonishment, no surprise, no real pizzazz.
‘Well, Henry?’ asked Carlton Husthwaite.
‘Good but not great,’ said Henry in a low voice. ‘Sound enough, but not the flair you’d expect at these prices. No love. No excitement. No intensity.’
‘Mine needs salt,’ said Carlton Husthwaite. He called a waiter over.
The waiter hurried across the room with tiny steps, and stopped rather too abruptly, as if he was being worked by a man with a remote control that he hadn’t quite mastered.
‘Sir?’
‘We have no salt,’ said Carlton Husthwaite.
‘No, sir. We don’t serve salt, sir.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘We don’t provide condiments, sir. All our food is correctly seasoned.’
‘Is Mr Tompkins around?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Could you get him, please?’
‘Er …’ said Henry. ‘Carlton? A moment?’
Carmel put her hand on Henry’s. ‘Disagreement with Carlton Husthwaite is not a good career move,’ said Carmel’s hand. She left it there after it had delivered its message. Henry slid his hand out from under hers as unobtrusively as he could. That might not have been a good career move either.
‘Henry? You were saying?’ said Carlton Husthwaite.
‘I just … don’t want to make a fuss … on my party night.’
‘It isn’t a fuss,’ said Carlton Husthwaite. ‘Just a paying customer wishing to enjoy his food. Fetch Mr Tompkins, would you, waiter?’
The waiter hurried off, slightly jerkily. The remote control really did need sorting out.
Bradley Tompkins approached their table like a lorry about to crash into a council house.
‘I understand there has been a complaint,’ he said incredulously.
‘Not at all,’ said Carlton Husthwaite. ‘Just a request for salt.’
‘With respect, sir, we do not serve salt. We do not need to, as all our food is correctly seasoned.’
‘I find that a little odd in the case of salt,’ said Carlton Husthwaite politely. ‘Pepper, perhaps, but each person needs a different amount of salt.’
‘With respect, sir, you aren’t here for medical reasons,’ said Bradley Tompkins. ‘You are here to enjoy the flavours we produce, and the balance of seasoning and flavouring is our expertise, which is what you pay for.’
‘I thought the customer was always right.’
‘With respect, sir, rarely, in my experience.’
‘With respect, people who keep saying “with respect” usually have no respect. So will you provide me with salt?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Henry, what do you say?’
Henry sighed. None of them understood how dangerous it might be to make an even greater enemy of Bradley Tompkins. None of them knew how much he, Henry, hated being hated. None of them, except Hilary, knew how much he wanted to be loved by the whole world. But these were his publishers, his future.
