The Complete Pratt

by David Nobbs

  ‘Good idea,’ said Martin. ‘Your father obviously can’t help you quite so much on humanism.’

  ‘I’m coming too,’ said Denis Hilton. He turned towards Henry. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but that’s my real interest. The wider field. I think the idea of confining it to humanism is a bit narrow for me.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Henry. ‘Anybody else who finds the future of mankind too narrow and prefers the broader field of “What is is?” may as well go as well.’

  Betty Bridger looked questioningly at Karen Porter.

  ‘No, I’m staying,’ said Karen Porter, grinning at Henry, who immediately felt glad that Maureen Abberley had a cold.

  Betty Bridger and Denis Hilton departed. There were now two girls facing four boys, two of whom had not yet spoken.

  ‘Right,’ said Henry. ‘So what is humanism?’

  Alan Turner leant forward again, urgent, impressive, measured, as he had at the last meeting, when he had said, ‘I agree with that.’

  ‘I agree with what she said last time,’ he said this time.

  ‘Which “she”?’ said Henry.

  ‘The pretty one,’ said Michael Normanton. His appearance improved briefly as the rest of his face and neck went as red as his acne.

  ‘That’ s not a very nice thing to say of. .of whichever girl you don’t mean,’ said Henry.

  ‘He means me,’ said Denise Booth. ‘I mean I’m the one he doesn’t mean. We all know that.’

  ‘I looked up your medieval humanism stuff, Denise,’ said Karen Porter. ‘I must say I found it all very confusing.’

  ‘I’m probaby on the wrong track altogether,’ said Denise Booth. ‘I’m probably stupid as well as ugly.’

  She stormed out of the pavilion, slamming the door so hard that a photograph of the Thurmarsh Cricket Team of 1932 fell to the ground.

  ‘Why have you come here, Michael?’ said Henry. ‘You haven’t contributed anything.’

  ‘I wanted to meet girls,’ said Michael Normanton.

  ‘What girl would look at you? You’re covered in acne,’ said Henry. ‘You’ve got more spots than a set of dominoes. In fact we could have a good game of fives and threes on your neck.’

  Michael Normanton flung himself at Henry. They rolled on the floor. Martin grabbed Michael Normanton’s collar and attempted to pull him off. Alan Turner walked calmly over, yanked Michael Normanton from the pile of bodies and punched him on the nose. Bobby Cartwright made no move.

  ‘Why did you hit me?’ said Michael Normanton, sitting on the floor, holding a hankerchief to his nose.

  ‘You attacked the chairman physically. That’s anarchy,’ said Martin.

  ‘He made personal remarks about my face,’ said Michael Normanton.

  ‘You called Denise Booth ugly by implication,’ said Karen Porter.

  ‘To praise you,’ shouted Michael Normanton. ‘And, any road, his insults to me weren’t by implication.’

  ‘Now we’re splitting hairs,’ said Martin.

  ‘Greasy unwashed hairs,’ said Karen Porter.

  ‘All right. I’m going, you sods,’ said Michael Normanton.

  Once more, the pavilion door slammed.

  They poured out the coffee, and Henry asked Bobby Cartwright why he came.

  ‘I like listening,’ he said. ‘I may not have owt to contribute, but I like listening.’

  Nobody made any further references to humanism or to any further meetings. They cleared up, locked up, and went home. Henry insisted on accompanying Karen Porter to her door. She lived in Aylesbury Road, which was only two roads away from Park View Road.

  ‘I suppose I can’t come in or owt,’ he said.

  ‘Which?’ she said.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘In or out?’ she said.

  ‘I meant in or owt like that,’ he said.

  ‘What is there like that?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, we’re not onto all that again, are we?’ he said. ‘I meant, I don’t want to say goodnight. Can I see you again, Karen?’

  ‘There’s no point,’ she said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  He grabbed her by her slender waist and bent to kiss her on the mouth. She averted her mouth.

  ‘You find me repulsive,’ he said.

  She laughed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to laugh. It was just the way you came out with it. No, I don’t find you repulsive. I think you’re probably quite attractive.’

  ‘What do you mean “probably”?’

  ‘I like you,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got a feller of me own. He’s a friend of yours. Stefan Prziborski.’

  Before he went home, he dropped the packet of three down a grating.

  Twice he picked up the phone to ring Maureen Abberley. Twice he rang off before anyone answered. The third time he hung on, trying to sound cool as he asked for her.

  ‘She’s out,’ said her father. ‘Who am I to say rang?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

  He regretted that afterwards. He rang again. Again her father answered. He tried not to sound like the person who had rung before. She was out again. How dare she be out all the time? ‘Tell her Henry Pratt rang,’ he said curtly, and rang off, before her father had any chance to sound amused.

  He got a letter from her. ‘I’m sorry we keep missing each other. Pick me up at four o’clock on Saturday.’

  ‘That’s right. Keep up the good work,’ said the man in the herbalist’s.

  They went to the pictures. They kissed through most of the film. He took her home, and dropped his packet of three down a different grating.

  He kept quarrelling with Stefan, because Stefan was going out with Karen Porter.

  Christmas came and went. Maureen Abberley invited him to a party at the home of a friend whose parents were away. ‘Nice to see you again,’ said the man in the herbalist’s. ‘It makes you proud to be British.’ He went home, intending to hide the contraceptives in his room while he had his tea. There was a telegram waiting for him. It said, ‘No go stop sorry stop streaming cold stop Maureen.’ He went out and dropped the contraceptives down a grating. After tea he wrote to Maureen. He told her how much he loved her and wanted her. Then he tore the letter into tiny pieces. Maureen wrote and said, ‘I’m sorry about my boring old cold. I did miss you. Pick me up at four on Saturday, if my cold’s better.’ He couldn’t because it was Tommy Marsden’s debut for Thurmarsh United. He rang to explain, but she was out. At least her cold must be better. He left his message. She’d understand.

  To most of the crowd who clogged up the streets surrounding the compact, unpretentious Blonk Lane stadium it was just another match, Thurmarsh v Darlington in the Third Division North. Henry wasn’t sure how excited even Martin was.

  Henry himself was wildly excited. Somebody he knew, who had been a fellow member of the Paradise Lane Gang, was playing league football. He regretted bitterly all the distractions which had prevented him supporting the Reds as he should have done. Boarding school, living in Sheffield, God, humanism, Maureen Abberley. A wasted youth.

  The whole gang should have been there, but Chalky White was dead, Billy Erpingham had disappeared, Ian Lowson was sullen and unfriendly towards them.

  The team was Isherwood; Plank, Reynolds; Ayers, Cedarwood, McNab; Bellow, Marsden, Gravel, Greenaway and Muir.

  When the team came out, Tommy looked so young. The knot in Henry’s stomach tightened.

  The teams kicked around. The wind howled. Cedarwood, the veteran pivot, took his teeth out and put them in the goalmouth, wrapped in tissue paper.

  During the first half, Tommy looked bewildered and out of his depth.

  ‘Bring back Morley,’ said the man on Henry’s right. ‘Tha’s rubbish, Marsden.’

  ‘Give him a chance,’ said Henry. ‘It’s his first game.’

  The man gave Henry a cold stare, then turned away.

  Darlington were leading 1–0 at half time.

  Teena
ge star transforms game in second half, thought Henry. From dog turds to Wembley for England’s newest star. Knight-hood for Marsden. The Tommy Marsden I knew, writes Henry Pratt.

  In the sixty-ninth minute, MUIR equalised brilliantly after running onto a shrewd through-ball from Ayers.

  In the seventy-third minute, Tommy had his first effort at goal. He packed a powerful shot, to judge from the way the ball thudded into the corner flag.

  ‘Useless,’ muttered the man on Henry’s right. ‘Tha’s a great soft pudden, Marsden.’

  In the seventy-ninth minute, the Darlington goalkeeper punched the ball out under pressure. It landed at Tommy’s feet. Without time to be nervous, he lobbed it brilliantly into the goal. Suddenly confident, he soon split the defence to set up a third goal for GRAVEL.

  ‘Where’s tha been hiding him, Linacre, tha great twit?’ shouted the man on Henry’s right. ‘That lad’s a find,’ he told anyone who cared to listen. ‘He reminds me of Raich Carter. I can always spot ’em.’

  Henry and Martin celebrated with two pints of Mansfield best bitter at the Forge Tavern. The headline in the Green ’Un read, ‘Teenager Shines As Reds Shake Quakers’.

  He sucked a mint before arriving back at number 66 Park View Road. The euphoria slipped gently away as he left the glory behind and drifted reluctantly back to his bed-sitter. He thought of the matches he had seen with his father, and then he thought of his mother. His eyes filled with tears, and the gale mourned for her bitterly in the telegraph wires.

  Maureen wrote to say that he could get lost if she wasn’t as important to him as a football match. He replied that he loved he madly, and was very sorry. He would never do it again. He replied that Tommy Marsden had been an old friend and if she resented his going to see his debut then she wasn’t the sort of person he wanted to go out with. He tore both letters up. Maureen wrote to say that she was sorry. She realised that Tommy Marsden had been an old friend, and that he had to go to the match. He could pick her up at 3.30 on Saturday. This meant he’d have to miss Tommy’s next home match.

  They went to the pictures. Afterwards, he bought the Green ‘Un and found that he had missed an impressive 2–0 home win over Bradford Park Avenue, with goals from MARSDEN and BELLOW. Maureen Abberley removed the paper and looked straight into his eyes.

  ‘My parents are going to a party next Saturday,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all alone in the house. You can come round if you like.’

  ‘All right?’ said the man in the herbalist’s. ‘That’s the ticket. Have to discuss discount rates soon.’

  Mr and Mrs Abberley had gone when Henry arrived, and the television was on.

  Maureen was wearing rather a short dress, and her feet were bare. There was an electric fire and a cut-glass bowl of fruit on an occasional table. Maureen opened her mouth wide when he kissed her.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a television,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve just gorrit,’ she said. ‘Dad says there’ll be a rush as the coronation gets near. Have you seen much television?’

  ‘Hardly any,’ he said.

  ‘You can watch lots tonight,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want to watch television tonight,’ he said.

  ‘I promised my parents I’d be good,’ she said. ‘They trust me. I think trust between parents and children is too valuable to be trifled with, don’t you?’

  He had often longed to watch television. With what reluctance he spent his first evening in front of it. They watched ‘Looking at Fish’ with George Cansdale, an interlude on a Cotswold farm, and ‘Café Continental’ with l’Orchestre Pigalle, Père Auguste as Maître d’Hotel and Hélène Cordet as Mistress of Ceremonies. All the time they lay on the settee, semi-entwined, in the dark except for the glow of the electric fire and the flickering white light from the television. He made a last big effort to prove so irresistible to her that she’d forget her parents. At first, as their kisses grew more passionate in time to the music of Shirley Abicair and her zither, he had a wild hope that all would be well.

  Then came the close-down. Off went the set, Maureen Abberley smoothed her dress down, and said, ‘You may as well go before they get back,’ and a sad virgin bent to drop a packet of rubber goods down a grating, in a quiet suburban street which seemed to him to be alive with sexual satisfaction and excitement for everyone except himself.

  The following Friday, Henry took Maureen to the pictures. He’d had to borrow the money, as he’d spent all his pocket money on unused rubber goods.

  As they left the cinema, a boy stared at Maureen, and said, ‘I thought you’d gorra cold.’

  ‘It got better,’ she said, blushing. She avoided Henry’s eyes, then shot him a sudden, challenging look.

  ‘Who did you go to that party with, when you told me you’d got a cold?’ Henry said, as he walked her home.

  He grabbed her arm and held it behind her back.

  ‘You’re hurting,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’ he repeated, beginning to twist her arm.

  ‘Norbert Cuffley,’ she said.

  ‘Norbert Cuffley? Norbert Cuffley?’

  Girl found dead in duck pond.

  Don’t even think like that.

  He turned and walked away, without a word. He didn’t even look back, to enjoy the triumph of seeing her standing there at a loss.

  Norbert Cuffley.

  ‘Give up. You were never meant to be a lady-killer, our Henry,’ he told himself.

  Suddenly his ‘A’ levels were looming and he hadn’t done enough work, and brave talk about exams not being valid tests of a man’s worth were so much hot air.

  Tommy Marsden played ten games and scored five goals. Henry watched him four times.

  One Sunday, Tony Preece brought Stella, his new girlfriend, to dinner. She was a rather brassy blonde, with thin legs and lips. When she had left, Cousin Hilda said, ‘Well!’

  ‘She may have a heart of gold,’ said Henry.

  ‘Pigs may fly,’ said Cousin Hilda.

  Army medicals took place. Ears, feet and reflexes were explored, colour blindness and genitalia examined, anuses and rudimentary intelligence probed.

  Henry and Martin were accepted as fit for national service. Stefan Prziborski failed. He had flat feet.

  ‘Flat feet?’ said Henry. ‘He’s the only one of us who can run.’

  He listened to ‘In All Directions’, a radio comedy programme with Peter Ustinov and Peter Jones. In the first series they searched for Copthorne Avenue. In the second series they searched for more ambitious things, like Britain’s heritage and true love. Henry laughed a lot, but he also felt pained. He had found his Copthorne Avenue. Would he ever find anything else?

  Cousin Hilda got a television. She couldn’t miss the coronation. Sometimes, Henry abandoned his studies for a while, to watch ‘Animal, Vegetable and Mineral’ or ‘Kaleidoscope’ or ‘What’s My Line?’.

  Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing climbed Everest. It was all a Tory plot. That was what Reg Hammond said, any road.

  Tony Preece asked if he could bring Stella to see the coronation.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Cousin Hilda.

  They watched the coronation until their eyes hurt. The little basement room became London, City of Pageantry. ‘All we need’s a crate of light ale,’ said Tony Preece. Stella grinned, and Cousin Hilda sniffed.

  Mr McFarlane, History teacher and Marxist, suddenly copped out, and told the boys to be careful not to reveal Marxist bias in their exams.

  Henry had dreaded his ‘A’ levels, but when they came he enjoyed them.

  In the world of sporting action he could only watch the triumphs of Tommy Marsden. Here, when told, ‘“King Lear is not the tragedy of the downfall of a great hero: it is the story of a man who becomes great through tragic experience.” Discuss,’ or ‘“All the intelligent characters in Vanity Fair are bad characters: only the stupid show kindness or honesty.” Do you agree?’ he came into his own.

  In the world of sexual action, conv
entional morality did not even permit him to watch the triumphs of Stefan Prziborski. Far better to concentrate on ‘Are there reasons for doubting Juvenal’s sincerity?’ and ‘What tricks of style are characteristic of Tacitus?’

  Even the world of intellectual speculation had proved a disappointment for Henry in real life. Here, in the quiet examination room, with the windows open on the buzzing of bees and the droning of traffic, he could enjoy wrestling with such matters as ‘“Charles V was a Fleming rather than a Spaniard, and a Spaniard rather than a German. He was never an Italian.” Discuss.’

  Then it was over. He knew, with a deep inner conviction, that he had either passed or failed. He went for a final tea with the Quells. His school life drew to a close.

  Britain was embarking on a new Elizabethan age, in which poverty and unemployment and snobbery would disappear for ever. As this great vessel steamed out of harbour, a little rowing boat bobbed uneasily in its wake. That boat was Henry, and as the great liner of optimism disappeared over the horizon, her wash eased, and he rocked almost imperceptibly on the slow swell of anti-climax.

  12 Return to Upper Mitherdale

  THE SUN GLINTED on the roof of a grey Standard Eight as it made its way between the dry-stone walls, up into the high hills.

  In the car were four young men who had been rewarded by parents and guardians for passing their ‘A’ levels. Soon, three of them would be spending two years in Her Majesty’s armed forces. The fourth, the golden boy, had turned out to have flat feet of clay.

  Henry sighed.

  ‘My God, why the sigh?’ said Paul Hargreaves. Number 66 Park View Road and its businessmen, the Rundle Valley, Paradise Lane waiting for demolition, spittle on pavements, Fillingley Working Men’s Club, it had been a world more foreign than Brittany to Paul. He had grated on Henry’s nerves by looking brave the whole time. Now, for the first time, going into the country in Martin’s father’s car, to stay in a pub for a week, Paul looked relaxed. He wore the very scruffy old clothes of those who knew that they could afford to dress elegantly any time they chose.

  ‘Because I’m happy,’ replied Henry. ‘I’m so happy I feel insecure.’