by David Nobbs
Nigel Pilkington-Brick, né Tosser, joined them, and Henry felt sad. Not because she was married. He wanted her to be married. Not because she was happy. He wanted her to be happy. Not because she was enormous. He wanted her to have children and, if that involved being enormous, he wanted her to be enormous. But … there was a Pilkington-Brick in there.
Colin Edgeley was wedged into a corner with Tony Preece’s fiancée, Stella. Colin looked drunk, dishevelled and desperate. Stella had gone to great lengths to look smart but had only succeeded in looking gaunt.
‘Has Tony named the day?’ said Henry.
Stella shook her head. ‘Last night his act went well, she said. ‘He was pleased. He said we must name the day.’ He asked her where Tony had been appearing. ‘Drobwell Miners’ Welfare,’ she said.
‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘What’s his new act?’
‘He calls himself Cavin O’Rourke, the Winsome Wit from Wicklow. He pretends to be very stupid. He thinks it may catch on.’
‘Good Lord. Stella? Go up to him now. Make him name the day, while romance is in the air.’
Stella set off, uncertainly, without confidence, towards her reluctant fiancé.
‘What’s wrong, Colin?’ said Henry.
Colin turned his glassy, pained eyes on Henry. ‘Glenda’s left me,’ he said.
‘Oh no,’ said Henry. ‘Why?’
‘I got drunk and stayed out all night.’
‘Oh no.’
‘With Helen.’
‘Oh no!’
‘I was so drunk I don’t even remember. She said I said she had the most beautiful legs I’d ever seen.’
‘Oh no.’
‘Can there be any value in an experience you can’t remember? Why are you staring at me?’
‘Because you can make fine philosophical points when your world’s collapsing around your ears. So what are you going to do?’
‘Go and try and get her back. I love her, Henry. I really love her.’ This discovery seemed to astound him. ‘I’d have gone this weekend, if it wasn’t for this.’
‘Colin!’ said Henry. ‘This isn’t important. You should have gone today.’
‘And missed your wedding, kid? You’re my mate,’ said Colin.
‘Colin! Why do you do these things?’
‘I have a strong streak of self-destruction. Like you.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do. Always having disasters. Always laughing about them.’
‘I only laugh at them in order to cope with them,’ said Henry. ‘I’d love to be a success, talking about my successes. And I will. So belt up about self-destruction and go and get Glenda and the kids and show them that you love them.’
‘What’s happened to you?’ said Colin.
‘Hilary. She’s changed me. Do you know what I’ve become at last?’ said Henry. ‘A man.’
OH NO! NOT THAT AGAIN.
The hububble of noise and champagne was rising to a crescendo. They were trapped, by the wall, between the buffet and the drinks: Cousin Hilda, Auntie Kate, Mrs Wedderburn, and, nearest to the drinks, Auntie Doris and Geoffrey Porringer. Michael Collinghurst, the best man, was charming them.
They smiled as Henry approached, even Cousin Hilda. Auntie Doris was trying not to cry and ruin her mascara. Geoffrey Porringer was trying not to cry and ruin his reputation. Cousin Hilda was sniffing furiously. Even Mrs Wedderburn had moist eyes.
Michael Collinghurst came forward, touched Henry’s hands, smiled shyly, said, ‘Lovely. She’s a lovely girl,’ and then stood to one side, smiling, as if conducting, with the baton of his goodness, the symphonic variations of Henry’s relations with his family. It was the first time they had met since Florence. Henry’s telegram had read ‘Man best my you be like I’d to.’ The clerk had queried it. Michael’s reply had read, simply, ‘Pleasure with accept I.’ Now such childish things were behind them. Henry smiled at Michael’s smile and wondered if, even on this day, he had no regrets about committing himself to celibacy.
Auntie Doris hugged him, and the tears streamed, ruining her mascara, and she said, ‘I wish Teddy were here to see this day.’ Geoffrey Porringer twitched. Cousin Hilda sniffed. Auntie Doris, who always made things worse by protesting about them, said, ‘There’s no need to sniff, Hilda, just because I mention Teddy. He’s still alive, you know. He’s not dead.’
Henry went rigid with shock. He felt that his hair was standing on end. He heard Cousin Hilda say, ‘What do you mean by that?’ He heard Auntie Doris say, ‘In my heart. He lives on, in my heart.’ His hair subsided. His legs felt weak. He hoped nobody’d noticed anything. ‘Geoffrey knows that,’ continued Auntie Doris. ‘Geoffrey understands that. Geoffrey accepts that.’
‘Geoffrey doesn’t have much choice,’ muttered Geoffrey Porringer. He turned to Henry and said, ‘Well done. I always knew you had it in you.’
It was the moment to be generous. It was the time to show his mettle. ‘Thank you, Uncle Geoffrey,’ he said.
‘Oh, I say,’ said Geoffrey Porringer. ‘Oh, I say. Uncle Geoffrey, eh?’ He put his arm round Henry. ‘It’s a happy day for us all, young sir,’ he said.
Henry kissed Cousin Hilda. She sniffed. ‘Are you having a good time, Cousin Hilda?’ he asked. She said, ‘I thought the bridge rolls were a little on the dry side.’ Henry realized that, if she’d continued, she’d have said, ‘Everything else was perfect.’ You detected Cousin Hilda’s praise by taking map references on the points where she had not imparted blame.
He kissed Mrs Wedderburn. ‘It was right nice of you to invite me,’ she said. He heard himself saying, ‘One good turn deserves another, Mrs Wedderburn.’ ‘Good turn?’ said Mrs Wedderburn. ‘You lent me your camp-bed. Now your gift horse has come home to roost,’ said Henry. But he knew, with a twinge of shame, that he’d invited her because he wanted to search, beneath Cousin Hilda’s widowed neighbour’s plump exterior, for the naughty schoolgirl who’d done it behind the tram sheds with Uncle Teddy.
He kissed Auntie Kate. She explained that Fiona hadn’t been able to come because her one-legged husband was having ‘one of his turns’. It was the first Henry had ever heard of these ‘turns’. ‘May I bring Hilary to Skipton often?’ he said. ‘She won’t want to see a dreary, faded old lady,’ said Auntie Kate. ‘She will! You don’t know Hilary,’ he protested. By the time he realized that he should have said, ‘Auntie Kate! You aren’t a dreary, faded old lady’, it was too late.
Michael Collinghurst, smiling shyly, bowed ever so slightly, as if laying his benediction on them all.
A waiter opened two of the frosted-glass windows, allowing the sun to stream into the Sir William Stanier Room and the cigarette and cigar smoke to stream out into the cool, tramless town.
Henry and Hilary found themselves together at last, holding hands.
‘Love you,’ he said.
‘Love you,’ she said. She looked round and lobbed a great grin across the room towards her family. Her parents smiled back. Sam stuck his tongue out. ‘I haven’t seen my parents look so happy since the illness,’ she said.
There were moments when Henry believed that he had been utterly right not to reveal his scoop. This was one of them, until he looked into Hilary’s smiling face and wished again that there wasn’t this great secret between them.
‘We ought to be off,’ he said.
‘Right. Let’s step out into the great adventure of our life together,’ she said.
But, before they could step out into the great adventure of their life together, a man stepped rather shyly towards them. He was vaguely familiar. With a shiver Henry realized that it was the man from his dreams, who told him, in a few blindingly simple words, all the secrets of life and of its conduct. For an agonizing moment he wondered if it was all a dream. Had he known, all along, that it was too good to be true? He broke into a clammy sweat. In a moment the Sir William Stanier Room would disappear, the late afternoon sunshine would disappear, the roar of animated chatter would be silenced
, Hilary would fade into the ether, all his happiness would disappear for ever, and he’d wake up in a crumpled bed … where? Which part of his life was not a dream?
‘I seem to recognize that man,’ said Hilary.
She could see him too! He was real. She was real. He hugged her in his relief. She looked at him in astonishment.
‘It’s the man in my dreams,’ he said.
‘It can’t be,’ she said.
‘Don’t you recognize me?’ said the man.
Of course! ‘Oscar! From the Pigeon and Two Cushions!’
Oscar beamed.
‘Nice bit of extra, this, for me,’ he said. ‘Congratulations, sir. Congratulations, madam.’
They thanked him. He began to gather up empties. He walked away, then turned back towards them. He had the same expression as he did in Henry’s dreams. It was the expression of a man who is about to divest himself of momentous information. Henry realized that Oscar was the unlikely agent who would tell them, in a few blindingly simple words, the meaning of life and the secret of its conduct. He shivered with fear and excitement. Hilary shivered too. They clutched each other’s hands tightly. Oscar came up very close to them.
‘I’ve had this summer cold,’ he said. ‘It’s right ironical. One nostril’s completely blocked up, and the other nostril isn’t blocked up at all.’
The Cucumber Man
The third Henry Pratt novel
1 An Interesting Appointment
THERE WAS FULL employment in 1957, but there is an exception to every rule. The exception to this particular rule turned to his wife Hilary and said, ‘Do you think I’ll ever get another job?’
Henry Pratt was sitting on the lower end of a sadly subsiding settee in a rented ground floor flat in Stickleback Rise. He was twenty-two years old, pale, five foot seven tall, on the podgy side, and wearing reading glasses. It was Monday, September 30th. There were 11.72 1/2 marks to the pound, winter fares for flying small cars across the English Channel had been reduced to £3 10s, paratroopers were on guard as black pupils attended the High School in Little Rock, Alabama, and it was raining in Thurmarsh.
That morning, a letter had arrived from the BBC, informing Henry that he had not got the researcher’s job for which he had applied. In the last week he had also failed to become a public relations officer for ICI, and a reserves manager with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Nevertheless, Hilary still had faith in him. ‘Of course you’ll get a job,’ she said. She kissed him, and the springs went ‘boing’. The settee, like Henry’s career, was proving a disappointment.
An occasional car whooshed along the wet road, a tram rattled past on its way to Thurmarsh Lane Bottom, and, on the mantelpiece, above the hissing gas fire, the elegant art deco clock struck eight soft chimes. A wedding present from Lampo Davey and Denzil Ackerman, it provided the only touch of style in the unremittingly brown, bulkily furnished flat.
To add to Henry’s feeling of inadequacy, Hilary had got the first job for which she had applied. From January she would be teaching English at Thurmarsh Grammar School for Girls, where she had been a repressed and depressed pupil less than five years ago.
She snuggled closer to Henry and kissed him again. ‘Boing’, went the springs. ‘You’re still my lovely lover,’ said Hilary.
Henry smiled. He was a lucky man to have won the love of this pale, serene, beautiful woman.
8.00 became 8.07. Tick of clock. Hiss of fire. Whoosh of tyre. Boing!
It was impossible to imagine that, on that very evening, a world which didn’t seem to care would send not one but two visitors, both of them with kind intentions, to Flat 1, 33, Stickleback Rise, Thurmarsh.
The first visitor was Howard Lewthwaite, Hilary’s father. He was pale and looked all of his fifty years. The lines on his face were etched deep. He sat in the only armchair, accepted a cup of coffee, and gulped it eagerly, as if he feared that without its stimulus he might gently expire.
‘I hope I haven’t interrupted anything,’ he said. ‘You’ve had your tea, have you?’ The Lewthwaites ate dinner, but he called it tea, because he was deputy leader of the majority Labour group on Thurmarsh Borough Council, and couldn’t afford to be thought a snob.
‘Yes, we’ve had our tea,’ said Hilary.
They’d had sausages and mash, with two cups of tea each. They hadn’t enough money to be sophisticated.
‘I’m the sole cause of your unemployment, Henry,’ said Howard Lewthwaite.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Henry.
‘Ridiculous,’ echoed Hilary.
‘No, no. No, no. You had a great scoop. It would have launched you on your journalistic career. You couldn’t write it up, because my disgrace would have broken Hilary’s heart. The sole cause.’
Neither Henry nor Hilary spoke. If a person is determined to take all the blame, there is nothing you can do. Besides, they had never discussed her father’s misdeeds. Henry hadn’t even wanted her to know about them, but Howard had insisted on ‘wiping the slate clean’.
‘I want to help you,’ said Howard Lewthwaite. ‘I’d like to pay your rent, but I can’t. The golden age of drapery is over. One day, not this year, maybe not even next year, but soon, Lewthwaite’s will fail. A hundred and seventeen years of family trading will cease. The proud tradition will crumble in my hands.’
‘It’s kind of you to come round to cheer us up,’ said Henry, and Hilary gave him a warning look. He put his right hand on her left knee and felt a stirring of desire. It was, albeit by a narrow margin, his favourite of her knees.
‘Naddy needs constant care.’ Howard Lewthwaite’s Yugoslavian wife Nadežda was crippled by polio. ‘We hope Sam will go to university. He’ll need a certain level of support for many years.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Henry. ‘I don’t need money. I’ll get a job.’
‘Of course he will,’ said Hilary staunchly.
‘Of course you will,’ said Howard Lewthwaite. ‘After all …’
He hesitated. Henry, hoping that a ringing endorsement of his qualities as man, husband and potential employee would follow, composed his face into a suitably modest expression.
‘After all, everybody gets a job in the end,’ said Howard Lewthwaite.
‘I’ll be working from January,’ said Hilary.
‘Couldn’t you get work as a teacher, Henry?’ asked Howard Lewthwaite.
Henry shook his head. ‘I went to too many schools as a child. I couldn’t face any more.’
‘I suppose they’re looking for people with degrees, anyway,’ said Howard Lewthwaite. He smiled warmly at Henry. Henry’s answering smile was just a trifle strained. ‘Anyway, Naddy and I don’t think that your modest savings should be frittered away in rent, and we’d like to offer you a room in our house until you’re both working and can afford a mortgage.’
He beamed, confident that his offer was irresistible. Slowly, his smile foundered on the long silence that ensued.
Henry looked at Hilary and realised that for the first time in their brief marriage he didn’t know what she was thinking. He stroked her knee and felt an aching longing and an unaccustomed bleakness.
He knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that he didn’t want to share his wife with her family. He didn’t want to compare her slender loveliness with her mother’s crippled body. He didn’t want her obnoxious fifteen-year-old brother Sam banging on their bedroom door and shouting, ‘Are you two having it off in there or can I come in?’ He didn’t want Howard Lewthwaite’s guilt with their dinner that was called tea every night. He dreaded the faint amusement which he knew would greet the discovery that they had both started to write novels. He couldn’t bear the thought of making love to Hilary in the room in which she had suffered her childhood depressions. Above all, he hated the thought of having to express any of these reservations to Hilary.
He caught her eye and wondered if she knew what he was thinking.
Hiss. Whoosh. Tick. It was becoming imperative for
somebody to say something.
‘That’s very kind of you, Howard,’ he said. ‘Incredibly kind.’
‘Amazingly kind,’ agreed Hilary.
‘I see,’ said Howard Lewthwaite flatly. ‘You don’t want to come. The institution of the extended family in advanced Western societies has broken down irretrievably. I was a fool not to realise it.’
Henry ‘You have a lively mind but it is our feeling that you are too creative a person to function well as a member of a team’ Pratt looked to his wife for support. She didn’t fail him.
‘That’s absurd, Daddy,’ she said. ‘It’s an incredibly kind offer, but we need to think about it. We need to consider its implications for our sense of independence and our mutual self-fulfilment.’
Howard Lewthwaite nodded. ‘That’s fair enough,’ he said. ‘You’re speaking my language there.’ He stood up somewhat stiffly. His back was giving him gyp, and his temper hadn’t been improved by his doctor’s explanation that we were designed to walk on all fours, not on two legs, thereby implying that our endless pain is entirely the result of the hubris of the species and is in no way caused by the incompetence of the medical profession.
‘Thank you for the coffee,’ he said. ‘It’s love and support that we’re offering you. I can’t pretend you’d be independent, but I hope we could do it in a way that isn’t incompatible with your mutual self-fulfilment. Anyway, the offer’s still on the table.’
Henry went to the door with him, shook his hand warmly, and came back into a room that suddenly seemed far too small. He felt awful. He didn’t know what to say. He stroked Hilary’s knee again, but the gesture was mechanical and he felt no stirrings.
‘I agree with you,’ said Hilary.
‘Agree with what?’
‘What you were thinking. Sam being impossible, Mummy crippled, Daddy guilty, our both writing novels seeming faintly amusing.’
Henry felt a surge of love and admiration and relief, but also a cold wind of unease. He was beginning to feel that Hilary was very much cleverer than he was. His novel wasn’t coming on well. She said that hers wasn’t either, but he wasn’t sure that he believed her. He felt a twinge of jealousy, and didn’t like the feeling.
