by David Nobbs
The Queen released the first nuclear power into the national grid. An increase in prescription charges to 1s. per item was criticized by the British Medical Association. President Eisenhower suffered a bloodshot eye when two pieces of confetti got into it during a ticker tape election rally. Henry spent the weekend writing letters to Anna and tearing them up.
Hazel Carstairs had taken the children to their granny’s for the weekend. Henry kept his wireless on very loud, to protect him from the sounds of satisfactions that he would never know. Anne Shelton kept telling him to lay down his arms. Frankie Laine had a woman to love. Henry didn’t. Doris Day informed him that whatever would be, would be. Stupid tautologous female. Bill Haley rocked complacently through the rye. Selfish bastard. The Ying Tong Song drove him mad. ‘When Mexico gave up the Rumba,’ sang Mitchell Torok. ‘When Henry Pratt gave up women,’ said Henry grimly.
At last he’d completed a letter that didn’t make him cringe with embarrassment.
Dear Anna [he’d written]
Thank you very much for coming out with me, and for giving me the omelette. It was delicious. I’m afraid I failed to round the evening off in the way you’d hoped. It’s not something that’s ever happened to me before. I think it may have been partly the drink, but that isn’t the whole story. I certainly wouldn’t want you to think it was because, when I saw you with nothing on, I didn’t fancy you. I think you’re extremely beautiful.
The truth is, Anna, that in Siena I believed that love had come to me like a swift on the wing. What mindless twaddle! What romantic nonsense! Love isn’t like that. I don’t believe in love at first sight. It’s an insult to one’s partner, an insult to love and an insult to oneself.
I believe that love must come gradually, as you get to know people really well, and probably I only function really well as a sexual being when I’m in love. Can we meet again, get to know each other better, and try again? I’d like that.
Please write.
Thank you once again for the omelette. It was delicious.
All best wishes
Henry
The moment he’d posted the letter, it made him cringe with embarrassment.
Poland was on the verge of war. The headlines rolled off the presses. Soviet leaders fly to Warsaw. Poles ‘Going too far to independence’. Gomulka returns to power in Warsaw. Poland rebuffs Russian Navy.
The headlines rolled off the presses in Thurmarsh too, onto Henry’s stories. Splutt WI enjoyed potato lecture. Cyclist drank too much. Barmaid (27) hit customer (42) after remark about bust (38).
War in Poland was narrowly averted. It was reported, almost as an afterthought, that Hungary might be the next East European country to demand genuine independence from Moscow. The discovery of arms on a ship in Alexandria Harbour lent substance to French claims that Egypt was supplying the Algerian rebels.
Thousands marched to demand freedom in Budapest. The Russian tanks rolled in. Unarmed civilians were mown down in the streets. The world was shocked. Britain, France and the United States asked the United Nations to condemn the Russian use of force. Henry received no reply from Anna. He hadn’t expected that he would.
Israeli troops swept 100 miles into Egypt, on a two-pronged drive towards Suez. Britain and France gave the Israelis and the Egyptians 12 hours to withdraw their forces to a distance 10 miles from the canal. Israel agreed. Egypt didn’t. The Anglo-French invasion of Egypt began. Only later would it emerge that these moves had been agreed by Britain, France and Israel, in a secret meeting at Sèvres. Still Anna didn’t reply. It would be several months before her secret emerged.
The back bar of the Lord Nelson was in ferment. The police and criminals were mostly for the invasion. The lawyers were divided. Ted, who’d become ‘Thurmarshian’ after the departure of Neil Mallet, was taking the newspaper’s official line. He was solidly behind Eden. It was a regrettable but necessary action to protect our interests. Helen agreed. Gordon was scornfully against it. Ginny was wracked by visible conflict. The eyes of the war correspondent lit up. The warm-hearted private self thought it a tragic mistake. Pacifist Ben was quietly, doggedly angry. Colin, a socialist who verged on communism, found himself in terrible confusion. His pugilism welcomed the chance of a scrap for our lads. His chauvinism thought Nasser deserved a bloody nose. His communism couldn’t forgive the Russians for betraying his ideals, and couldn’t forgive the Suez adventure for diverting world pressure off the Russians. Denzil saw it all as a tragi-comic opera. The world was a cynical place and he couldn’t understand why everybody was so surprised and shocked.
And Henry? He was appalled, but he was also appalled at how difficult he was finding it to feel as appalled as he felt he should. He knew, with a part of himself, that he didn’t love Anna, that she didn’t love him, that she wouldn’t reply to his letter. But another part of him was still obsessed with her, still expected that letter every day. And that part of him knew that Anna would be in favour of the Suez operation. And that part of him wondered if it was possible for people who disagreed so fundamentally about something so fundamental to ever truly love each other. And that part of him prevented the parts of him becoming the whole of him.
Occasionally he felt a trickle of returning happiness, of relief that Anna hadn’t replied, of freedom. These feelings didn’t last long, because it depressed him to feel happy at a time like this.
A large British fleet sailed east through the Mediterranean towards Egypt. In the United Nations there was an American resolution asking members to refrain from the use of force and a Russian resolution asking Israel to withdraw its forces from behind the armistice line. Britain and France vetoed both resolutions. Henry felt the sharpest stab of anger that he’d yet managed.
Denzil asked Henry to spend the weekend with him and Lampo, in his town house. They wanted to thank him for bringing them together. He couldn’t refuse. He didn’t want to refuse. It would get him away from Thurmarsh, where Anna’s ghost stalked every street. It would get him to London, where every journalist wanted to be, at this time of historical significance.
It was Friday, November 2nd, 1956. There was uproar in the Commons. The Egyptian air force was systematically crippled by bombing raids. The English and French navies were closing on Suez. Henry was closing on Denzil’s town house, in a little mews in Chelsea. And feeling, as he moved away from Anna’s orbit, more and more angry about world events.
A little jewel, Denzil’s town house. Clearly his private means were on a fair old scale. Small, slightly over-full of good Georgian and Victorian furniture. Many vases. Numerous miniatures. Little and pretty, making limping Denzil seem elephantine and clumsy.
Something different about Lampo. What?
‘The news is awful,’ said Henry.
‘Never mind,’ said Denzil. ‘None of that need touch us here.’
Do we have any right to say that? The words formed themselves, but Henry didn’t say them. It wasn’t the time.
‘Show Henry some of my biscuit tins. He’ll find them amusing,’ said Denzil. It was suspiciously like an order. We have ways of making you find our biscuit tins amusing. Careful, Henry.
‘Biscuit tins?’
‘Denzil collects biscuit tins. He has a rather amusing collection.’
Let’s tell the Hungarian rebels. It’ll be a great consolation to them as they’re crushed under tanks. Careful, Henry. Unfair. What harm are Denzil’s biscuit tins doing? And this isn’t the time. Lampo showed him a Peak, Frean tin, with a buxom black woman carrying an earthenware pot on her head. ‘Very nice,’ he said, the pitifully inadequate praise of a confused Anglo-Saxon.
He realized what was different about Lampo. He was contented. At the height of his discontent he had consented to spend a weekend with two contented and consenting adults. And they were putting him through this ordeal to thank him! It really took the biscuit. And, to put the tin lid on it, at a time of international crisis they kept showing him biscuit tins. ‘Very nice,’ he said, as Lampo showed him the
Pied Piper of Hamelin, on a limited edition produced by McFarlane, Lang & Co.
Denzil in a blue apron! They had coq au vin. Denzil called it ‘my famous coq au vin’. Velvet wine. And then Armagnac. He’d never drunk Armagnac before. Not the time to ask to see the news.
Bedtime. What a test. Was he capable of truly unselfish emotion? Could he feel free from envy, lying there, separated only by a wall from his two friends? Because … it had to be asked … had he really failed with Anna because he was, after all, a latent homosexual? A trying night. Not a lot of room for worry about Hungary and Suez.
Fitful sleep. A little self-pity. A few noises from hearty drunks outside. Not much envy, really. The answers to the questions that he’d set himself were cautiously encouraging. Cautiously encouraged, he fell into a deeper sleep.
A man who was vaguely familiar was approaching. The man began to talk. In a few blindingly simple words, he revealed all the secrets of life, its purpose and its conduct. Henry woke feeling utterly exhilarated. All his problems had been solved. The three great crises – Suez, Hungary and his sex life – were crises no more. And then the words faded, dissolved, forgotten, as if they had never been.
Never mind. What a day Denzil and Lampo laid on for him. They went to the Tate Gallery and saw the Braque exhibition. How had he managed to live without cubism? They went to the Paris-Pullman Cinema and saw Fernandel in Don Camillo’s Last Round and Jacques Tati in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. How had he managed to live without Jacques Tati? They dined in a little French restaurant where Denzil was known. Oh sophistication! Oh classic, clichéd yearning of an unsophisticated Thurmarsh youth. How had he managed to live without being known in little French restaurants?
He felt no envy, no jealousy. He felt no embarrassment, when Lampo and Denzil touched each other, briefly, illegally, under the table. He no longer felt it strange that Lampo should have fallen for this ageing, limping journalist with the blotched parchment skin.
And on that Sunday morning, the November sunshine streamed into the little house, straight onto a striking picture of several native boats which adorned a Huntley and Palmers biscuit tin. Henry began to feel uneasy about the distance between himself and world events. Lampo and Denzil laughed at him. They felt he was exaggerating his importance in the scale of things.
It was Lampo’s turn to cook lunch. They had sole with wine sauce, and flinty white Burgundy. Henry assuaged his conscience by talking about Suez and Hungary. Lampo and Denzil had a phrase for every subject. On Empire: ‘The colonists found people who were like children, looked after them and educated them, and then were hurt when they turned into adults.’ On politics: ‘Politicians always do in a crisis what they should have done in the previous crisis.’ On American politics: ‘How politicians love peace when other nations are at war.’ On Suez: ‘The Englishman’s traditional love of the underdog is strictly for peacetime only.’
On the train back to reality, the Sunday papers rolled over Henry’s pleasure like Russian tanks over Hungarian fingers.
In Budapest, the tanks completed the obliteration of freedom. Radio Budapest was silenced. Its last words were, ‘Help Hungary … Help … Help … Help.’
Sterling plunged. The government asked the Americans for help. The Americans wouldn’t give it unless we stopped fighting. The Anglo-French invasion stopped, too late to avoid political defeat, too early to bring military victory. Diana Dors denied she was dating Rod Steiger.
In Parliament Square and Whitehall, while Henry had been admiring biscuit tins, huge crowds had been chanting, ‘Eden must go’ and, ‘Law, not War.’ Henry was filled with shame that he hadn’t been among them.
Dark days. Rain, drizzle and fog. Suez, Hungary and Henry. Lost illusions. The illusion that Britain could still be a great world power in military terms, could act in isolation from the United States, could alter the geography of the world. The illusion that, in communist Eastern Europe, there could be democracy, freedom or equality. The illusion that Henry Ezra Pratt could love, or be loved.
16 A Sleuth Wakes Slowly
AT 9.28 ON the evening of Thursday, November 8th, 1956, Henry Pratt entered the large lounge bar of the Winstanley. He was alone and listless.
At 9.29 his spine tingled. Martin Hammond had said that a councillor had arranged to meet a council official in a pub that was something to do with Dr Livingstone. Livingstone had met Stanley. Could he have meant the Winstanley?
He asked Martin from the public phone opposite. ‘That’s it,’ Martin said. ‘I knew it was summat to do with Livingstone. Why? Interested at last, are you?’ ‘I’m beginning to get a gut feeling about it,’ said Henry. ‘We journalists work on gut feelings. This could end up even bigger than the canary.’
As he returned to the bar, Henry saw Mr Matheson ordering a drink. His spine tingled again, and both the hairs on his chest stood on end. His brain was working at last.
Mr Matheson was a councillor, and he drank in the Winstanley! Henry knew, with that gut feeling of his, that Mr Matheson was the councillor. He was looking at Henry strangely. Why was he looking at Henry strangely?
Because Henry was looking at him strangely. He tried not to look strange, and approached Mr Matheson.
‘Are you all right?’ said Mr Matheson.
‘I had a terrible pain,’ said Henry. ‘Indigestion. I’m all right now.’
Mr Matheson didn’t look convinced. ‘I thought you looked happy,’ he said. ‘Almost triumphant.’
‘I like pain,’ said Henry. ‘I love indigestion. I went to a public school and became a masochist. I belonged to the indigestion society.’ Oh god. Would he never behave normally in the presence of this man?
Mr Matheson looked a little alarmed, then switched his full charm on Henry, who found himself smiling as he accepted a drink. He felt absurdly grateful. This worried him. Perhaps, if Mr Matheson bought him enough drinks, he’d lose the will to expose his corruption.
‘I understand you met Anna and didn’t quite hit it off,’ said Mr Matheson. ‘What a shame. She needs careful handling, Henry. We’ve probably sheltered her too much. Cheers!’
Henry Pratt, investigative journalist, was in a determined mood. Nothing would stand in the way of his investigations. Never again would he allow himself to become entangled with, or humiliated by, a woman.
His determination lasted until 6.37 on the following evening, when Helen’s sister Jill entered the back bar of the Lord Nelson, blushing shyly. Her youthful confusion and sexuality overwhelmed him. Her physical vulnerability, her air of barely controlled emotion, aroused him deeply. He felt as if he’d gone over a hump bridge too fast.
It had been, until Jill’s arrival, a rather listless Friday evening. Gordon had said ‘Ennui’ and Henry didn’t think he’d been referring to a French playwright, though with Gordon you couldn’t be sure. Colin had announced he must get home to Glenda. Ben had said it was time to give the wife one. But now they all accepted a drink off Ted. ‘Oh, we’re staying, are we?’ said Ginny, and Gordon said, ‘Frail craft. Tidal waves.’ Henry tried to go home, but found himself buying a round. He tried to hide his feelings for Jill. He knew he’d failed when Helen pressed her thighs against him.
Another drink came. He was powerless to leave. When Ted said they were going to show Jill the jazz club, he said he’d go for half an hour.
And all the others went too.
The smoky upstairs room at the Devonshire was packed and noisy. Ginny was sullen. She didn’t look attractive when sullen. Henry tried to concentrate on the music of Sid Hallett and the Rundlemen. They were playing ‘Basin Street Blues’.
Helen said ‘Don’t you still fancy me at all?’ during a particularly loud burst of trumpet. ‘You’re married,’ he said. ‘I’m disappointed in you. You’re getting boring,’ she said. ‘I know. Utterly boring. So, please, Helen, be bored by me, and leave me alone,’ he said. She didn’t hear him.
He stood close to Jill, almost touching her. After all, it was possible that her remark that
she didn’t find him attractive had been a subconscious reaction to her fear of the deep feelings he was stirring up in her.
At last he spoke. ‘Do you like jazz?’ was his sparkling opening remark. She didn’t hear him, because ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ cannot be played softly. ‘They’re loud, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘What?’ she said. ‘They’re loud, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘Sorry?’ she said. ‘It isn’t worth repeating,’ he said. ‘What?’ she said. ‘I said it isn’t worth repeating,’ he said. ‘What isn’t worth repeating?’ she said. ‘What I said,’ he said. ‘What did you say?’ she said. ‘They’re loud, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘I can’t hear you. They’re too loud,’ she said.
Ben interrupted. ‘Guess the first thing the wife will say to me tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Oh, shut up, Ben,’ said Henry. ‘Correct,’ said Ben.
When Jill left the room, Henry followed her. He hovered by the top of the stairs, between the bar and the toilets, among the people arriving and departing. When she returned, he said, ‘Jill? You remember I asked you out at the wedding?’ She blushed and said, ‘Yes. I’m sorry. I was a bit rude.’ He said, ‘Please! I asked for it. Er … Jill? You’re so incredibly lovely. Will you come out some time?’ ‘You’re asking for it again,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to. I think you’re horrible. Leave me alone.’ Helen walked past and heard! Jill returned to the crowded bar. Helen gave him an angry look. His cheeks blazed.
All he had to do was walk down the stairs and go home. But he couldn’t run away. Pride demanded that he went in and finished his drink. Then he’d make his escape.
‘We’re going to the Shanghai for a curry afterwards,’ said Ted. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Count me in,’ he said.
