by David Nobbs
Henry wrote to Paul accepting the invitation. He wrote to Simon saying that he wouldn’t be able to come.
He no longer needed to spend long, painful hours in the Paw Paw Coffee Bar and Grill. He loved Diana. She loved him. He wouldn’t remain a virgin for long.
On the first Saturday of the summer holidays, in reverse chronological order, Henry met a girl on a bus, posed as a Frenchman, saw an idol, and had a very unexpected encounter. The names of the four people concerned were Maureen Abberley, Henri Bergerac, Len Hutton and Geoffrey Porringer.
The encounter with Geoffrey Porringer occurred at the top end of The Moor, in Sheffield. Henry was looking at the shops with Martin Hammond and Stefan Prziborski, prior to watching Yorkshire play Middlesex at Bramall Lane. He carried a shoulder bag full of bloater paste sandwiches and apples. They had bought three bars of Fry’s Chocolate Cream. They were wearing sandals and grey flannel trousers. And suddenly he was face to face with Geoffrey Porringer, in a lightweight fawn suit. He wasn’t surprised, since he now believed prayer to be ineffective, to see that the poor man’s nose was still festooned with blackheads.
‘Hello!’ he said.
Geoffrey Porringer looked at him blankly.
‘Henry Pratt,’ said Henry.
Recognition dawned slowly, and apparently not to Geoffrey Porringer’s utter delight.
‘Can I have a word with you?’ said Henry.
‘Of course,’ said Geoffrey Porringer, a trifle uneasily.
‘Allez vous, mes braves,’ said Henry to Martin and Stefan. ‘Je vous verrai à la petite rue de Bramall.’
It was their latest little game, talking in French. It was all good practice for Henry.
‘Bon,’ said Martin.
‘J’espère que vous ne vous perdrerez pas, notre Henri,’ said Stefan.
‘Fermez l’orifice de votre gateau,’ said Henry. ‘See you at the usual place.’
Geoffrey Porringer listened to all this with a mixture of incomprehension, irritation, impatience and distaste.
‘Look, I am rather busy,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ said Henry.
Martin and Stefan set off for the ground.
‘What is it?’ said Geoffrey Porringer.
‘Are you going back to Rangoon soon?’ said Henry.
Geoffrey Porringer stared at him in amazement.
‘Rangoon?’ he said. ‘Rangoon?’ Then comprehension seemed to dawn. ‘Ah! Rangoon!’ he said. ‘Rangoon! Yes. Probably. Well, almost certainly. Doris told you she’d seen me, did she?’
‘Yes.’
‘That was naughty. My presence there is supposed to be top secret.’
Geoffrey Porringer put his finger to the side of his blackheaded nose.
A lorry with a crane pulled up at a faulty street lamp.
‘My business activities in Rangoon are just a cover, said Geoffrey Porringer. ‘Say no more, eh?’
Henry’s mind went back to Cap Ferrat, and the secret message about Bingley. He couldn’t recall it exactly now, but it had always puzzled him. Now it was all becoming clear. Geoffrey Porringer was a spy.
‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ he said.
‘Good man,’ said Geoffrey Porringer.
‘Will you do something for me?’ said Henry.
‘It depends what it is,’ said Geoffrey Porringer cautiously.
‘Will you take a present for Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris?’
‘If it’s not bulky,’ agreed Geoffrey Porringer, ‘and if it doesn’t take too long.’
They chose the present together. It was a set of six coasters with scenes of Yorkshire life – to wit, Robin Hood’s Bay, Bolton Abbey, Richmond Market Place, the Shambles in York, Gordale Scar and the front at Scarborough.
‘It’ll bring a lump of nostalgia to their throats every time they have a drink,’ opined the spy in the lightweight suit.
There was crowd of 17,000 at Bramall Lane, noisy, knowledgeable, hard to please. It was a strange ground, set between the cricket pavilion and the three-sided football ground. It made up in character what it lacked in charm.
Henry was in the mood to enjoy a game of cricket, but Martin and Stefan were feeling frivolous.
Middlesex batted and were in trouble from the start. On Henry’s left there was a fat boy, who recorded every ball in his score-book. There always was.
Denis Compton was in a spell of terrible form, and the crowd gave him a tremendous, deeply moving ovation. Henry, who alone had been for Hutton in the summer of 1947, could afford to be generous now, and felt a lump in his throat as he clapped. He hoped Martin and Stefan wouldn’t speak, and luckily they didn’t.
Compton drove his first ball for four, but was lbw to Yardley without addition. Hutton took two fine catches off Eric Burgin, playing his first game in front of his home crowd. There were two attractive girls sitting behind them, and in the lunch interval Stefan told them that Henry was a leading man in French cricket.
‘Give over,’ said the fairly pretty one.
‘Mais c’est vrai,’ said Henry. ‘Je suis le président de l’ association du cricket du Dijon. Je suis aussi enthousiaste comme la moutarde. J’ aime très bien l’ouest equitation de Yorkshire.’
‘Give over,’ said the very pretty one.
Yorkshire let Middlesex off the hook, dropping Leslie Compton three times in his innings of 91. Knightley-Smith made 57. Henry kept on having to pretend to be French.
‘What position do you play?’ said Martin, speaking slowly and loudly, as to a foreigner.
‘Troisième homme ou stupide mid-on,’ said Henry.
‘Give over,’ said both girls.
Henry felt that his day was being spoilt by all this pantomime. When Yorkshire batted, he was nervous until Hutton was off the mark. Hutton was dropped by Denis Compton (if only all the boys from Brasenose had been there) and was 21 not out at the close, with Lowson (no relation of the peripheral Sid) 15 not out. The fat boy sadly closed his score-book, and the three Thurmarsh boys wandered out of the ground with the two girls. Henry knew that Stefan would put his arm round the very pretty girl, Martin would put his arm round the fairly pretty girl, and Henry, who had done all the hard work of pretending to be French, as a result of which the girls thought him a total idiot, would put his arm round nobody. And so it was.
He told himself that he didn’t care. Why should he? Next week he would be with Diana.
He cared. This was this week, not next week. He told them that he was going home, and their protests carried the authentic ring of true insincerity.
He sat in the off-side front seat upstairs on the Thurmarsh bus. On the near-side front seat sat a curvaceous brunette schoolgirl. Their driver did not seem terribly popular. Other drivers greeted him only curtly.
‘Haven’t I seen you in the Paw Paw Coffee Bar and Grill?’ said Henry.
‘I have been there,’ admitted the curvaceous brunette.
He moved over to sit beside her. His heart was thumping.
‘I’m Henry Pratt,’ he said.
‘I’m Maureen Abberley,’ she said.
‘I’m at Thurmarsh Grammar School for Boys,’ he said.
‘I’m at Thurmarsh Grammar School for Girls,’ she said.
‘We certainly go to the right schools,’ he said.
‘You what?’ she said.
‘If I went to the girls’ school, it’d be ridiculous,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t mind going to the boys’ school,’ she said. ‘I like boys, me.’
His willie perked up at this. Its owner decided that it was time to impress this curvaceous liker of boys with his worldliness.
‘The driver isn’t very popular,’ he said.
‘You what?’ she said.
‘The driver isn’t very popular. The other drivers are waving, but only very curtly.’
‘You what?’ she said.
‘I look at the other drivers,’ he said. ‘If our driver’s popular, they all smile. They aren’t smiling at our driver. They’re g
iving the minimum acknowledgement they can without being downright rude.’
Your successful seducer is the man who recognises swiftly when he is on a loser. Henry changed the subject now.
‘I’m a humanist,’ he said.
‘Oh aye?’ said Maureen Abberley.
Curvaceous, sexy, but thick. Oh well, you couldn’t have everything.
‘Do you know what a humanist is?’ he said.
‘It’s a person who doesn’t believe in God, but believes in man’s powers of reason to create an ordered and purposeful system of ethics,’ said Maureen Abberley. ‘That’s the way I look at it, any road.’
Curvaceous, sexy and a genius.
He put his hand in hers. She didn’t remove it. In fact, one nail gently stroked the back of his hand.
He put his left hand on her right thigh. It was solid and yielding at the same time. She didn’t remove his hand. He couldn’t believe it.
Suddenly masterful, pitying Stefan and Martin, he debated whether to go first for the short-term or the long-term. It was a straightforward choice between, ‘Would you like to be the girls’ school representative on the Thurmarsh Grammar School Bisexual Humanist Society’s Joint Steering Committee?’ and ‘Do you fancy a coffee at the Paw Paw Coffee Bar and Grill?’
Before he could decide which to choose, she suddenly stood up and said, ‘I gerroff here.’
He was too surprised to say anything.
‘Oh well,’ he thought. ‘It’s probably all for the best anyway. I ought to be saving myself for Diana.’
The train arrived at St Pancras thirty-eight minutes late. Henry’s heart raced as he walked towards the ticket barrier.
There was Paul, waving. No Diana.
‘Super to see you,’ said Paul.
He had forgotten how public school Paul was.
He tried to be casual, and it wasn’t until they’d been in the taxi (taxi!) for several minutes that he said, so casually that its importance must have been crystal-clear, ‘How’s Diana?’
‘Super,’ said Paul, looking out of the window. ‘Absolutely super. She’s gone to spend three weeks with that Tooth-Braceingham horror in Rowth Bridge. She sends her love.’
The weather in Brittany was fine, the scenery pleasant if unspectacular, the villages drab, the small towns picturesque, and Henry tried hard to react in any way except dumb misery.
The first time they went swimming, he got an erection when he saw Mrs Hargreaves’s long, elegant, ageless legs. He had to flop down into the sand, to hide it.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘Fine,’ he said, craning his neck round so that he could see her while still hiding his erection.
She bent over him, concerned. Her breasts grew more pointed as she did so. He gritted his teeth and looked away, just managing to avoid an orgasm in the sand.
‘Absolutely fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll be along.’
She went away at last, and a few minutes later he deemed it safe to go into the water. He was sure they all thought he was mad.
He was very silly over the French food, refusing to eat anything except steak and chips. The Hargreaves ate oysters, langoustines, crabs, soles, crêpes de fruits de mer and gigot d’agneau avec haricots, and he ate steak and chips. He felt oiky again, and demonstrably a virgin. He felt that all these sophisticated French people could see that he was an oiky virgin, and he made it worse by behaving like one and by hating himself for it. He told himself that he was being loyal to his class, but it seemed a fairly pointless manifestation of loyalty even to him. It occurred to him that he was belittling himself in Mrs Hargreaves’s eyes, in order to ensure that no sexual chemistry existed between them. Then he realised how ridiculous and shamingly ill-adjusted that thought was. Mrs Hargreaves noticed him as a sexual object even less than her daughter. Nobody noticed him as a sexual object. He longed to get out of this hole he had dug for himself over the food, and on the sixth day he simply ignored it and ordered langoustines, without comment, and after that he tried everything, and enjoyed most of it. He resented the fact that Dr Hargreaves was so rich, and he felt that he ought to refuse to eat all the food, in solidarity with his friends at home, but that would have made Dr Hargreaves even richer, so he ate extravagantly, and Dr Hargreaves was extremely generous about it, and this made him feel guilty.
Henry sat on a seat in the park, watching the ducks. Stefan was late. He wasn’t surprised.
It was Sunday afternoon, when the dead hand of boredom clutches the throat. But Henry had vowed not to be bored at all during his last year at school. He was disgusted with his behaviour during the summer of ennui.
It was the last day of the holidays. There was an autumnal chill in the mornings, bringing him a desire for a new sense of purpose.
His purpose was to find an equilibrium between his mind and his genitalia, to rediscover the sense of purpose of his religious phase and ally it to a healthy sexual and emotional development. If he passed his ‘A’ levels as well, that would be a bonus, but exams could not be taken seriously, they were not a valid test of a man’s worth.
If there was one point where Henry’s mind and his genitalia might meet, it was the Thurmarsh Grammar School Bisexual Humanist Society. Only two things had so far prevented the development of that society. It had no headquarters and no members.
He had already taken steps to remedy the second deficiency. He had acted with a decisiveness that had astonished him. He had looked in the telephone directory to find Abberleys living in the vicinity of the stop where Maureen had got off the bus. He’d been lucky. She was on the phone. She was in. He had taken her to the pictures in Sheffield, and kissed her in the back row, long wet kisses during a long wet film. She had promised to put a notice on the board at school, seeking a list of girls who might be interested in joining the humanist society. She had agreed to come out to Derbyshire with him the following Sunday, if it was fine.
Stefan wasn’t coming, blast him. A wigeon quacked complacently, stupidly. He fought against his feelings of hostility towards it. Youth beheaded wigeon because friend didn’t turn up. ‘This callous crime,’ says JP.
He shook his head, to get rid of the sudden headline, which had come from nowhere, and to get rid of even the possibility of doing such a thing.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Stefan. ‘I bring good tidings. Who’s a clever boy, then?’
‘What have you done?’
‘I’ve just seen Dickie Billet.’
‘What about?’
‘Guess.’
Dickie Billet was the captain of Thurmarsh Cricket Team. Stefan, perhaps the best cover point fielder ever to come out of the Baltic, had played four games for Thurmarsh that summer, and scored 72 not out in one of them.
‘He’s not getting you a trial for Yorkshire?’
‘No chance.’
Dickie Billet had said, ‘It’s a pity you haven’t got a residential qualification for Yorkshire. They’d never play a Pole. Born in Durham, they might stretch a point. Danzig, no chance.’
‘What then?’
‘Guess.’
‘Oh come on.’
Stefan grinned.
‘We can use the cricket pavilion for the meetings of the humanist society,’ he said. ‘Provided there’s no alcohol or funny business.’
‘There won’t be,’ said Henry. ‘It’s a serious project.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Stefan sadly.
They wandered up and down the park, rushed over to the swings and took turns on them manically, then flopped exhausted onto the tired, thin, browned, late-summer grass.
‘Can you give me some advice about girls, Stefan?’ said Henry. He needed Stefan’s advice so badly that he felt it necessary to make an enormous admission. He swallowed. ‘I’m still a virgin,’ he said.
‘You get too worked up,’ said Stefan. ‘You’ve got to play it cool. Make them chase you. That’s the secret of my success.’
‘Where do you get precautions from?’ said Henry.
<
br /> ‘There’s a herbalist’s in Merrick Street has them.’
‘What do you say?’
‘You just ask for a packet of three.’
‘A packet of three what?’
‘Just a packet of three. You know what they are, don’t you?’
‘Course I do.’
‘Who are you taking out?’
‘Nobody. It’s just idle curiosity. Intellectual speculation. Thirst for knowledge. Like the humanist society.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘Oh aye, I’m serious about the humanist society, our Stefan. Any manking about, out.’
They wandered past the animal cages, three of which were empty. A family with two small children was examining them forlornly.
‘There’s nowt in this one either, dad,’ said the small boy.
Henry felt that he must entertain Stefan, to show his gratitude for the advice and the arrangement over the pavilion, and also to win back a bit of respect.
‘Excuse me,’ he said to the forlorn family. ‘There’s four sloths in there.’
‘Oh aye?’ said the man. ‘Where are they?’
‘Asleep,’ said Henry. ‘They’re very slothful, sloths.’
‘Aye, well, I suppose they would be,’ said the man.
‘They sleep twenty-three and a half hours a day. They won’t be up now while six in the morning.’
‘Oh. Thank you very much,’ said the woman.
The children stared at him.
‘There’s four chameleons in that one,’ said Henry, pointing at the next cage.
‘We couldn’t see owt,’ said the man.
‘Well you wouldn’t,’ said Henry. ‘They’re masters of disguise, are chameleons. It took us fifty-five minutes to spot all four.’
‘Oh. Thank you very much,’ said the woman.
When Henry and Stefan looked back, the family were peering intently into the empty cage.
By the Friday evening, Henry’s appeal on the school notice board for boys interested in joining the Thurmarsh Grammar School Bisexual Humanist Society had seventy-eight names. Some could be discounted, like Len Hutton, King Farouk, Freddie Mills, John Mills, John Stuart Mills, Ron Nietzsche, Busby Berkeley, Bobby Locke, Bertrand Russell, Jane Russell, Des Cartes, Sid Cartes, Plato, Pluto, Donald Duck, Karl Marx, Groucho Marx, Lorenzo Marx, Leibnitz and Landauer, Harry Stottle and all five Einsteins. When the silly ones had been eliminated, there were nine possible members.
