by David Nobbs
‘Nothing concrete,’ said Fred Hathersage.
‘Oh good,’ said Henry. ‘I don’t like concrete.’
Fred Hathersage glared at him.
‘It was a joke,’ said Henry.
Fred Hathersage exploded into a condemnation of youthful cynicism, of lack of respect for authority, of louts who defaced controversial ambulance stations. When he stopped – he was panting considerably, and probably had to stop, for medical reasons – Henry apologized and asked again if he had plans for the town centre.
‘Nothing definite,’ said Fred Hathersage. ‘But, should urban renewal become desirable in certain areas, I’d like to hope that local people, who understand Thurmarsh, would be entrusted with it. What would outsiders be interested in? Profits. Money. LSD. Pounds, shillings and pence. Lolly. Ackers. Lucre. Shekels. The old spondulicks.’ Fred Hathersage realized that he was getting quite excited at discovering how many words there were for money. He changed the subject. ‘I’d like to see a city of the future rise up on the banks of the Rundle. A city of magic. A city of glass.’
‘What about our old buildings, our heritage?’ said Henry.
‘I like old buildings,’ said Fred Hathersage. ‘But they’re old. Does the future lie in the past? Does it?’
‘No.’
‘Precisely! Listen. My ambition is to provide work so that there’ll never be another depression. Lasting, decently paid work. The working people of Thurmarsh are very close to my heart.’ Fred Hathersage thumped himself inaccurately, to illustrate this. It seemed to Henry that the working people of Thurmarsh were actually very close to Fred Hathersage’s wallet.
‘But do you not have a Rolls-Royce, and a huge pseudo-Gothic mansion above Thurmarsh Lane Bottom?’ said Henry, who’d done his research.
‘I have to,’ said Fred Hathersage. ‘Regrettably, we live in a world where appearances matter. I’m a plain man, Mr Pratt. I’m proud to say I prefer tinned salmon to the real thing. Why not? It’s nature improved by technology. But could I drive up to the Midland Hotel in an old Austin Seven and order tinned salmon with bottled mayonnaise? It’d be, “Hey up, old Hathersage must be on t’rocks.” Such comments in the business jungle can be self-fulfilling. So, it’s fresh salmon and lobster thermidor, when I long for fish and chips. It’s a sacrifice I have to make. I’m a prisoner of my success.’
Henry had a dreadful thought. Fred Hathersage didn’t mean a word of it. Then he had an even more dreadful thought. He meant every word.
As he walked down Doncaster Road, Henry had an uneasy feeling that his article, if ever printed, would make him a laughing stock. He also had an uneasy feeling that he hadn’t got very far with his inquiries.
He wanted fresh air, and took a roundabout route back to the newsroom. It took him, as it chanced, past Lewthwaite’s. He’d proved that he couldn’t cope with healthy, unrepressed women with beautiful bodies. Perhaps Hilary represented the only kind of girl with whom he could cope. Maybe she worked in the shop, if her condition was stable enough to permit her to work anywhere.
At the last moment he didn’t dare go in. He walked along Market Street, past Fish Hill, turned left into Rundle Prospect and went for a cup of tea in the Rundle Café. It was a grey, raw November evening, fading almost imperceptibly into night. The café was hot and bright and steamy.
He had seen, in Siena, that Hilary was interested in the arts. She’d been brought up in the narrow world of English provincial drapery. Her friends were philistines. Her father was a Tory politician. She thirsted for culture, for art, for wide horizons. Could not her mental problems be because of this? Mentally sick she might be, but perhaps not irremediably so, if given the patient love of a gentle, caring young man. Shy and repressed, but not irremediably so, if warmed in the love of an amusing and witty young man about town, even if the town he was about was only Thurmarsh. But he had friends in Hampstead and Chelsea. He had an aunt who’d been to Cap Ferrat. Who better to introduce this unsophisticated girl to the great world outside, to art, literature, theatre, gastronomy?
Henry ‘Sisley’s late haystacks are amazing’ Pratt stepped out from his glittering mind into the cold blackness of a Thurmarsh evening. He hurried up Rundle Prospect, and turned right into Market Street.
Henry ‘Don’t have the pamplemousse, darling, it’s only grapefruit’ Pratt boldly entered the dingy interior of Lewthwaite’s. On all sides there were vast rolls of pink and brown material. He approached Mr Lewthwaite.
‘I … er … I happened to be passing,’ he said, in a voice whose nervousness would have revealed to somebody a great deal less shrewd than Howard Lewthwaite that there was nothing remotely casual about this encounter. ‘I … er … I wondered if Hilary was around … at all. I’ve some photos of Siena I’d like to show her.’
‘I’m afraid she’s away,’ said Howard Lewthwaite. ‘We aren’t expecting her back for some time.’
Away! Not expected back for some time! Henry had visions of high walls topped by broken glass, of a huge dark building with rows of depressingly small windows, and an air of deadly calm.
‘Away?’ he managed to croak.
‘At Durham University. She’s in her final year there.’
17 Proud Sons of Thurmarsh
ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 3rd, Selwyn Lloyd told gloomy Tories and contemptuous socialists that it was safe for the British and French forces to withdraw from Egypt, though the French pointed out that there were no guarantees that the United Nations force would remain. In the middle of typing the sentence ‘There’s a double dose of delight for connoisseurs of the creepy at the Roxy next week when sci-fi shocker X The Unknown is paired with gruesome French frightener The Fiends,’ Henry was summoned to the editor’s office.
Mr Andrew Redrobe liked his article on Fred Hathersage! Asked to suggest follow-ups, he could only think of Tommy Marsden. The editor suggested Peter Matheson. ‘He is the Thurmarsh Conservatives. He also happens to be a close personal friend of mine, but that’s irrelevant.’ He left the editor’s office dazed, thrilled and horrified in equal proportions.
On Tuesday, December 4th, thousands of Budapest housewives forced their way past Russian soldiers and heaped flowers on the tomb of Hungary’s unknown warrior. Britain’s roads were littered with cars that had run out of fuel. The Daily Telegraph said that the whole Suez affair had been bungled by the government to an incredible degree.
Henry interviewed Tommy Marsden for his series ‘Proud Sons of Thurmarsh’. Tommy said that he’d thought of moving to a bigger club, but had decided that his future lay with the town that had taken an urchin off the streets, and turned him into a star.
On Wednesday, December 5th, women spat and jeered at tanks in Budapest, Judy Grinham won a sixth gold medal for Britain in the Melbourne Olympics, and Henry’s portrait of Fred Hathersage was unleashed upon an unsuspecting Thurmarsh.
On Thursday, December 6th, 50 workers’ leaders were arrested in Hungary, and Fred Hathersage complained about Henry’s article. Henry was summoned again.
‘I never made this attack on young people. I like young people,’ said Fred Hathersage.
‘Do you have your shorthand notes, Henry?’ said Mr Andrew Redrobe.
Henry, who hadn’t kept up his shorthand lessons, went to his desk, produced a notebook full of somebody else’s old shorthand notes, reserved for just such a purpose, and handed it to Fred Hathersage. Fred Hathersage stared at the meaningless scrawls blankly, while the editor examined the shiny wet roofs of the town.
‘Oh, well, I may have done,’ admitted the diminutive property developer grudgingly.
On Friday, December 7th, the Anglo-French forces withdrew 20 miles from the Suez front line. To add to the fury of retired majors everywhere, they were replaced by Indians. The entire parish council of Puddletown decided to resign unless Dorset County Council rescinded its decision to change the name to Piddletown.
Henry wrote a letter to Hilary.
Dear Hilary [he wrote]
This grey Thurm
arsh December day makes me think of Siena in September. What a pleasant lunch that was. I found out from your father that you’re at Durham University. I expect you’ll be back for Christmas. It’d give me great pleasure if I could take you out some time. Perhaps you’d get in touch when you get back. You can phone me at the Argus or write to 239, Winstanley Road.
I do hope we can meet.
With all best wishes
Henry (Pratt)
Henry was pleased that he’d written. His one regret was that it was possibly the dullest letter in the history of the universe.
On Saturday, December 8th, Russian ‘storm units’ poured into Budapest. Scores of Hungarians were killed in clashes with police and Russian troops. Henry received a letter from Auntie Doris. It was in the ‘inverted commas’ school of letter-writing, which seemed to be taking stronger and stronger hold of Auntie Doris as she grew older.
Dear Henry [she’d written]
Geoffrey and I’d love it if you could come for Christmas, but of course we’ll understand if you have to spend it with ‘the sniffer’. (I shouldn’t call her that. Smack smack, naughty Doris.) Poor dear, I don’t expect she’s got anybody, and you’ve got to sympathize even though it’s her own fault. We can’t have her here, we’ve advertised a festive Christmas and people might demand their money back. We’re ‘full to the rafters’ but one of our customers could put you up, all very nice, no ‘slumming it’! I do hope you’ll come. I’ll never forget what you did regarding poor Teddy and like to think that if he’d lived we’d have ‘worked something out’. Not that I’m unhappy. Geoffrey is good to me, but two waitresses have left recently, so I suspect he’s ‘up to his old games’. So you see I’m a bit of a lonely old bird. It’s my big regret I never had children. It was ‘not for want of trying’, as they say. So you see you are my son to me, and I hope you’ll come.
With lots of love from your soft old auntie.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (One for each year, one for luck and one for Christmas)
On Sunday, December 9th, martial law was declared in Hungary, there was the first feeble sign of United Nations interest in clearing the Suez Canal and, at the end of a mild, wet afternoon, Henry walked through the Alderman Chandler Memorial Park towards Cousin Hilda’s. Three barn owls sat miserably on a rail in the tiny aviary, beside the sad animal cages. On the pond a mandarin duck looked absurdly ornate in the gloom. The park keeper was waiting, with the over-emphasized patience of the congenitally impatient, to lock up.
A faint aura of expiring sprouts drifted through the silent house. The stove was glowing.
‘I wondered what’s happening about Christmas?’ he said, after the preliminaries.
‘What do you mean … “what’s happening?”?’ said Cousin Hilda.
‘Well, I’ve been invited by Auntie Doris.’
Cousin Hilda sniffed. ‘I could say summat about guilty consciences,’ she said, ‘but I won’t.’
‘She says I’m like a son to her.’
‘I suppose you aren’t to me!’
‘She never said that.’
‘Some folks don’t need to. Some folks are very good at hinting.’
‘So I wondered … er… what you were planning?’
‘I’m giving the Canaries a miss this year.’
He managed a laugh.
‘And I’ve sent my regrets to Sandringham.’
He managed another laugh.
‘I just wondered,’ he said, ‘whether you’d be … er … alone. Or whether you’ll spend it with Mrs Wedderburn.’
‘Mrs Wedderburn’s three sons are very good to her and have her in turn on a strict rota system.’
Henry found it hard to imagine that Mrs Wedderburn had ever made love three times.
‘Are they triplets?’ he asked.
‘Whatever makes you say that?’
‘Nothing. I wondered if … er … any of your “businessmen” will be with you.’
Cousin Hilda opened the cracked glass doors of the stove, and poked around unnecessarily.
‘Mr O’Reilly will be here,’ she said. ‘He has nobody. It’s sad.’
‘And Mr Pettifer?’
‘Yes. He seems to have washed his hands of his whole family.’
‘And Mr Whatsisname, who’s used to fine things?’
‘Peters. I understand there’s a sister in Morecambe.’ Cousin Hilda sniffed. ‘I dare say her house is chock-a-block with fine things.’
‘And Mr Chelmsford, with his hygiene problem?’
‘Brentwood.’ Cousin Hilda went pink. ‘I’ll make some tea,’ she said, and went into the scullery, where she banged about.
He went to the door of the scullery and got a welcome breath of air. The last of the light was fading over the mercilessly pruned rose bushes and tiny, sodden lawn.
‘Mr Brentwood’s left,’ she said. ‘It was right embarrassing. Oh, I was embarrassed. Norman Pettifer and Mr Peters gave me an ultimatum. Either him or them. I said, “Give him a chance. I’ll give him a fortnight’s grace. If he still smells at the end of it, he’s out.”’
‘What did you say to him?’
‘I said, “May I have a word on a personal matter, Mr Brentwood?” “Personal matter?” he said. “I’ve had complaints,” I said. “Complaints?” he said. “That you smell,” I said. “Smell? Smell where?” he said, going very white. “In my basement,” I said. “No. I mean where on me do I smell?” he said. I haven’t been so embarrassed since I asked Mr O’Reilly’s advice when you had your little problem when you were little with your little …’
‘Backside.’
‘Precisely. “Nowhere in particular, Mr Brentwood. All over,” I said. “I believe the technical term is BO.” He said something very unnecessary. He said “I suppose you’re telling me that BO stands for …” I can’t say it.’
‘Bugger off.’
‘Precisely. I said “Mr Brentwood! Only one person has ever spoken to me like that in my life, and that was a parrot!” I said, “You’ve a fortnight’s grace to get things right. All bath charges are suspended for the duration.” He left next morning. I found a note. “Thank you for telling me what you told me. It must have required courage and I’m sorry I was rude but I was mortified. I know what has to be done and I’ll do it, but I can’t face that lot downstairs.”’
‘I’ll spend Christmas with you, and go to Troutwick afterwards,’ said Henry.
Cousin Hilda sniffed.
‘As you wish,’ she said.
On Monday, December 10th, Henry interviewed Mr Matheson for ‘Proud Sons of Thurmarsh’, in Tudor Lodge. Mr Matheson took him into his study, and gave him twelve-year-old malt whisky from a cut-glass decanter. He had a paperweight in the form of Sir Winston Churchill, complete with cigar.
Henry was hoping that on Thursday, after the council meeting, he would catch Mr Matheson with the council official, thus completing the link. Until then he was lying low.
Mr Matheson talked about his vision of a universally prosperous Thurmarsh, and believed it could be achieved if the people on the shop floor weren’t greedy. He went pale when Henry asked whether it would matter if the managerial and professional classes were greedy, but the moment passed and his self-command returned. He was a lounge iguana, basking on the rock of his certainty, in the sun of his self-esteem. The power and smoothness of his charm, and of his whisky, made disliking him hard work, but Henry wasn’t frightened of hard work, and kept thinking, ‘You wait. I’ll get you.’
On Tuesday, December 11th, the IRA blew up a BBC relay system in Londonderry, the Postmaster-General, Dr Hill, announced that the BBC and ITV would be allowed to fill the 6–7 p.m. gap, hitherto sacrosanct so that children could be put to bed, Henry’s interview with Tommy Marsden appeared as the second in his series ‘Proud Sons of Thurmarsh’, and Tommy Marsden was transferred to Manchester United for £18,000, without telling Henry.
On Wednesday, December 12th, more Soviet troops moved into Hungary, where there was still a general strike �
�unique in the whole history of the labour movement’, and Henry reviewed the Splutt Vale Iron and Steel Company’s pantomime. Martin Hammond was Widow Twankey. He was terrible. Henry praised everybody. Truth was too precious to be wasted on such trivia.
On Thursday, December 13th, two Ulster barracks were bombed, 52 terrorists were held in Cyprus, there were angry demonstrations and arrests in Poland, double white lines were introduced on British roads, and Mr Matheson entered the lounge bar of the Winstanley with a paunchy, careworn, balding, middle-aged man who was threatening to burst out of a shiny suit in several places.
Henry approached them and said, ‘Hello, Mr Matheson. Can I get you and your friend a drink?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Mr Matheson, putting an affectionate arm on Henry’s shoulder. ‘We have a personal matter to discuss.’
‘Oh. Right,’ said Henry.
‘Let me get you one, though.’
‘No, thank you. Not if you’ve …’
‘… a personal matter to discuss,’ said the balding man in the disastrous suit.
‘I’m Henry Pratt, incidentally. I’m a reporter on the Argus.’
‘Nice to meet you, Henry.’ The balding man held out a limp, fat hand. It was like shaking an exhausted flounder.
There were several things Henry might have said. ‘What’s your name, you secretive swine?’ ‘Personal matter? That’s a laugh.’ ‘You think you needn’t worry about me, don’t you? Well, you’re wrong. Nobody muzzles Henry “The man nobody muzzles” Pratt.’
What he actually said was, ‘Well, I mustn’t keep you from your personal matter.’
On Friday, December 14th, the Queen Mary arrived in New York 17 hours late after making a detour because the Greek captain of a Panamanian cargo ship had a persistent nosebleed. Henry arrived at the Rundle Café more than two hours late after hanging around outside the Town Hall, in the cold of the gathering winter, hoping to see the balding official return from lunch, hoping to stalk him through the corridors of local power and identify him as he entered his office. In vain. At five past three, freezing and starving, he attacked his dried-up meat and potato pie with relish. He recognized the man having a cup of tea at the next table.
