by David Nobbs
‘Oh?’
Henry could feel his heart thudding.
‘I started a novel today.’
‘Darling! Oh, I am glad!’
He hugged her and kissed her.
‘Are you really?’ she said.
‘Utterly,’ he said. ‘Totally.’ Hilary was smiling and Howard was smiling and Henry couldn’t bear being the recipient of so much warmth, so he said, ‘Well, I’m fed up with living off my tips.’
All through 1985, Hilary wrote; Howard said, ‘I’m in the way, I’m under your feet’; and Henry proved how right the Director (Operations) had been all those years ago, when he said, ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’
The miners’ strike ended after almost a year, French security agents set off two explosions on the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, which was aiming to disrupt French nuclear tests in the South Pacific, the wreck of the Titanic was found in the North Atlantic, and Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev achieved very little in Geneva in the first US–Soviet summit for six years.
Nearer home, a Leeds art dealer was gaoled for selling forged paintings. His crime came to light when Timothy Whitehouse’s successor at the Cucumber Marketing Board realised that his office was full of reproductions of non-existent old masters. To the relief of Derek Parsonage, Henry, Uncle Teddy and the forger, the art dealer refused to reveal his sources. He might need their help again.
One night Henry arrived home full of excitement: ‘I’ve served eleven lobster thermidors. Eleven in one night!’ to be comprehensively upstaged by Hilary: ‘I’ve finished my novel.’
Howard Lewthwaite said, ‘This is a great moment for you. You’ll want to be alone,’ but didn’t move.
Henry read Hilary’s book. It was called Towards the Light and was a story about the conquering of depression. He found it deeply moving, but with a caustic wit. Nigel Clinton loved it and scheduled publication for October 1986, and Hilary met him for rewrites, and Henry went to the Post House and said, ‘The Mauretania was a bugger for serving zabaglione. Something about the stabilisers, I suppose,’ and came home tired and made himself a light supper, and didn’t mind about Nigel Clinton or about Howard Lewthwaite saying, ‘You want a quiet snack, a moment to yourself, you’re tired, it’s natural, you don’t want to listen to an old man rabbiting on, I understand,’ and not going.
The book was an instant success. Henry opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate the good reviews, and said how thrilled he was, and meant it, and Howard Lewthwaite said, ‘No, no. I’ll go to my room. You share the bottle. I don’t want to be in the way,’ and Henry said, ‘Have some champagne, Howard, and enjoy your daughter’s success. That’s an order,’ and they all laughed, and another summit meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, this time in Iceland, ended in bitter disappointment after seeming to promise so much, and a chemical spill in Switzerland threatened to destroy all life in the River Rhine, and one evening, early in 1987, on Henry’s night off, as the three of them were watching television, Howard Lewthwaite suddenly gave a gasp of pain.
‘What is it?’ said Hilary.
‘Nothing,’ said Howard Lewthwaite in a strangled voice. ‘I don’t want to spoil your programme.’
His face was contorted with pain. He tried to stand. Hilary rushed over to him. Henry switched the programme off with the remote control. Howard Lewthwaite died in his daughter’s arms.
Councillors and council officials and Labour Party workers and his new-found cronies from the Mulberry Inn, Rawlaston turned up in force for Howard Lewthwaite’s cremation. Peter Matheson flew back, leaving Olivia in Albufeira. Sam discovered that the world wouldn’t end if he didn’t think up any new soups for three days, and came to support his sister. After the brief, impersonal service, Henry and Hilary and Sam and his girlfriend Greta stood among ageing men and women with watery eyes, and there was much talk about the end of an era, and there not being many of us left, and they don’t make them like that any more. The landlord of the Mulberry told Hilary, ‘The moment he walked in I knew he were a gentleman. He stood out.’ Hilary had as many as she could back to the house, and after they’d all gone she flopped exhausted into a chair and let Sam and Greta make a fish pie for supper.
Over supper they talked about anything but death. They laughed about how obnoxious Sam had been as a child and told Greta all the awful things he’d said. Sam grew broody. He could feel a soup coming on. Almonds. Something to do with almonds, possibly. He went for a walk. While he was gone, Greta talked about the differences between Aalborg and Luton. They were many. Sam returned, suffering from soup creator’s block. They were all tired, and went to bed early.
In bed, cuddled deep against Henry’s soft body, Hilary said, ‘I’m so glad we got together again. You know why?’
‘No,’ said Henry, ‘but tell me.’ It had been a long, exhausting day. A compliment would come in nicely.
‘Because if I hadn’t, Daddy would have died in exile, and he’d have hated that,’ sobbed Hilary.
A few days after Howard Lewthwaite’s cremation, Henry got home tired at a quarter to twelve, having had an amazing run on apple strudel – ‘Funnily enough, on the old Queen Mary the apple Strudel always went like hot cakes, whereas on the Queen Elizabeth, the old Queen not the QE2, it could be decidedly sticky. No explanation for it. One of the mysteries of the deep.’
Hilary was standing with her back to the grate, as if she was the squire and there was a roaring log fire, rather than the battered coal-effect electric one they’d picked up second-hand.
‘Sit down,’ she commanded.
Henry realised that she was going to broach a difficult subject. She was never bossy otherwise.
He sat down. His heart was thumping.
‘You’re the person I love most in all the world,’ she said. ‘I loved Daddy, too, and I’d never have suggested it while he was alive, but now that he’s dead I think it’s possible. But if you decide you don’t want to, we won’t, and I won’t mention it again, and that’ll be the end of the matter.’
‘That’ll be the end of what?’ said Henry. ‘What won’t you mention again? What are you talking about?’
‘Moving to London,’ said Hilary.
There was a moment’s silence in the little terrace house.
‘Actually I’d like to move to London,’ said Henry. ‘It’d be perfect for what I have in mind.’
‘I didn’t know you had anything in mind,’ said Hilary.
‘I didn’t,’ said Henry. ‘I’ve only just thought of it.’
‘Only just thought of what?’ said Hilary.
‘The Café Henry,’ said Henry.
On March 18, 1987, treasure worth £20 million was found by Danish divers aboard the wreck of the P and O liner Medina, torpedoed by a German U-boat off Start Point in 1917, a pizza-parlour manager and a hotel barmaid became the first couple in Church of England history to be married by a woman, and Henry and Hilary set off for another cremation. They found Uncle Teddy dazed and lost.
Jack and Flick came down the night before, and an Adamless Kate arrived on the day. A smattering of old drinking cronies from Monks Eleigh’s two pubs also attended. The small gathering, barely filling two rows of the chapel of Ipswich Crematorium, hung their heads as Auntie Doris’s coffin slid slowly away, much as her mental faculties had done.
They went for lunch at the Swan in Lavenham. At the bar, Jack told Henry, ‘I don’t want to upset Great-Uncle Teddy by giving good news, but you’re going to be a grandfather.’ Henry flinched at the thought of the potential size of any child produced by burly Jack and earth-mother Flick. ‘That’s wonderful, Jack,’ he said. ‘I think you should tell everyone. Life must go on.’ So Jack made his announcement, and Hilary cried, and Uncle Teddy smiled bravely and said, ‘Well, that’s good news. That’s really cheered me up.’
After lunch Jack and Flick set off in their BMW, and Kate left in her Deux Chevaux. As they stood outside the old hostelry, in the venomous March wind, Henry sai
d, ‘Not interfering, darling, but you haven’t mentioned Adam recently.’ ‘No,’ said Kate. ‘We’ve split. I may find somebody perfect one day, Dad. I may not. I’m twenty-eight. I’m happy. I love you both. Goodbye.’
Henry drove Hilary and Uncle Teddy very slowly back to Honeysuckle Cottage, dreading the silence of the house. Hilary made tea.
‘Fancy a spot of Scrabble?’ said Uncle Teddy.
‘Do you?’ said Henry.
Uncle Teddy reflected.
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No. I think it might seem a bit tame without the cheating.’
At six o’clock Uncle Teddy said, ‘They’re open. We’ve nobody to look after. What say we have a couple or three?’
They had a couple or three, and then Hilary made a light supper.
After supper, over a whisky, Uncle Teddy said, ‘It’s been very difficult, you know.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Hilary.
‘Can you? Yes, I suppose you can. You’re a novelist,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘No, it has been extremely difficult. I haven’t been able to let her out of my sight. I’ve had to do everything for her. I’ve had to tell her the story of our life every night. Every night. I’ve been a prisoner and a warder. It’s almost driven me crazy.’
Even Hilary couldn’t find a reply.
‘I didn’t go to the pub for over two years. I saw mirages of beer in my dreams. I haven’t even been able to go for walks. Henry knows how much that’s meant. But do you know what I’ve really longed for? Not a juicy steak in a posh restaurant. Not a well-pulled pint of Adnam’s in a low-beamed pub. The sea. That cold old North Sea. Wind in my hair, ozone in my lungs, salt on my lips, gulls mewing in my ears.’
‘Well now you can go to the sea any time you like,’ said Henry.
‘Exactly!’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘Exactly! And I will. Oh yes. I will.’
He poured Henry another whisky. Hilary declined.
‘Cheers,’ said Uncle Teddy.
‘Cheers,’ said Henry.
‘Oh God!’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘I don’t care if I never see the bloody sea again. Great big stupid thing sitting there full of salt. Who cares? I just wish she was here now, to tell our life story to.’
19 The End of an Era
IT WAS A really good day at the Café Henry until the phone call came.
Henry had arrived early, as usual. He helped lay out the splendid array of excellent cakes and salads, for which the café was justly famous, and chalked up on the blackboard the three hot dishes of the day – spinach and red-pepper cannelloni, lemon chicken (free-range) and plaice dieppoise.
Trade was brisk. There were happy actors on their way to rehearsals, unhappy actors on their way to auditions, the odd writer (one of them very odd), a sex-shop proprietor, a head waiter, some artists, a group of Japanese tourists who took photos of the Henrygraph and giggled, even a yuppie or two.
For which the café was justly famous? Yes, gentle reader, Henry’s establishment in Frith Street had become well-known. As he looked round his little kingdom, the marble floor, the attractive wooden tables, the clever use of mirrors, the jumble of notices and slogans which breathed life into the elegance without quite destroying it, as he forced himself to look at all this as if he’d never seen it before, so that he would never for a moment forget how fortunate he was, Henry smiled as he recalled Hilary’s initial doubts.
‘Will it lose us lots of money?’ she’d asked. ‘I mean, I’m all for it, but I don’t want to lose lots of money.’
‘It’ll make money,’ he’d said.
‘How can you be so sure?’ she’d asked.
‘Because I’m not doing it for the money.’
She’d nodded and accepted that, but he knew that she hadn’t really been convinced. He might be her lovely Henry, but she couldn’t believe that he could also be successful.
And now they were both successful! Hilary’s third and fourth novels had been best-sllers, and the first two had been reissued. There’s nothing like a long creative silence for arousing interest in an artist.
There was a congenial group seated at the bar stools that morning. Behind the bar hung three prominent notices: ‘You are in a no-privacy area. If you don’t wish to talk to your fellow human beings, please sit at a table,’ ‘No minimum charge at any time. No maximum charge either!’ and ‘If you look miserable you’ll be asked to leave unless you have a good reason. The state of the world is not acceptable. That’s a reason for having one place where nobody looks miserable.’
The phone rang, a gentle noise like a happy frog, carefully chosen by Henry to avoid creating tension.
It was a journalist.
‘No,’ said Henry. ‘I don’t give interviews. Neither does Hilary about her private life. We’ve turned down “Relative Values”, “How We Met”, “A Typical Day”, “A Month in the Life of”, “My Favourite Childhood Memory”, “What We Like About Each Other”, “What We Hate About Each Other”, “Twenty-Five Things You Didn’t Want to Know About Our Sex Lives”, and “Our Favourite TV Supper” … Well, we want people to come here because they’ve been told about it, not read about it. So sorry.’
He beamed round the bar, and said, ‘The press again. How I’m hounded.’
Took photos of the Henrygraph and giggled? What on earth is the Henrygraph? the puzzled reader cries. The Henrygraph is a sculpture, a rather unflattering caricature of our hero, with a large screen where his large stomach should be. It was made by Giuseppe, Camilla’s husband, who is a caricaturist. Henry no longer minded being short and podgy, with thin strands of white hair. Adverts, films and magazines poured forth the obscene message that you weren’t worth anything unless you were tall, slim and beautiful. The Henrygraph, standing at the back of the café, redressed the balance. Every week Henry held a competition, and the results were shown on the screen. That week in April 1994, the results were 23 per cent John Selwyn Gummer, 17 per cent Cliff Richard, 15 per cent Nancy Reagan, 12 per cent Wet Sileage, 10 per cent Anneka Rice, 9 per cent Dry Sileage, 8 per cent A Pregnant Ferret, 6 per cent Other. Above the Henrygraph there was a notice – Henry loved his notices – which read, ‘There are no prizes in our competitions, because a) there are no answers, only results, and b) we don’t like greedy bastards.’
‘Have you done the competition?’ he asked the group at the bar. ‘I rather like this week’s.’
That week’s competition was, ‘Which of the following do you think is “The English Disease”? 1) Hypocrisy 2) Arthritis 3) Selfconsciousness 4) Strikes 5) Bronchitis 6) Shyness 7) Snobbery 8) Buggery 9) Neuralgia 10) Nostalgia 11) All ten.’
So that he would never forget for a moment how fortunate he was? It was almost ten years now since Henry had married Hilary for the second time, and they had never had a single argument in all that time. The atmosphere in their large, rambling house overlooking Clapham Common was always cheery and welcoming. Kate was always popping in, Camilla and Giuseppe came when they could, even Jack and Flick had been known to overcome their fear of London and bring little Henry to see his grandparents.
The morning proceeded peacefully. A party of young German trainee undertakers, having a day off from their study of British burial, proved polite, humorous and warm, destroying several preconceptions at a stroke, but also providing an intimation that Henry didn’t recognise. They even seemed to understand some of his slogans.
There were slogans everywhere. Sometimes Henry thought that they were pathetic, his feeble attempt to compete with Hilary, but they’d become a tradition and he was the prisoner of that tradition. They included, ‘Nothing that cannot stand mockery of itself is to be trusted,’ ‘Fish don’t farm us, so let’s not farm fish,’ ‘Double negatives aren’t necessarily unconstructive,’ ‘Everyone has a role in life. Mine is to show that it isn’t important to be good-looking,’ ‘I’ve just taken my sex test. Failed the written, passed the oral,’ ‘Everything goes in cycles. One day it won’t be politically correct to be politically correct,’ and ‘I have no doubt that
the really frightening people in this world are those who have no doubt.’
Does anything smell better than really good coffee? Could anything taste better at eleven o’clock than a slice of lemon cake, as light as a feather and pleasantly sharp? How delightful it is, if one is on one’s own, to read the leading British and world newspapers in peace, with nobody hurrying you.
So why was the man at the corner table looking so miserable? Under the rules of the establishment, Henry was forced to approach him.
‘Excuse me?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be rude, but I have to say that you’re as miserable-looking a man as I’ve clapped eyes on in many a month of wet Sundays. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave, unless you can provide an adequate reason.’
‘I’m the only writer of detective fiction in the whole country who hasn’t got a series on television,’ said the miserable-looking man miserably.
‘Best excuse so far this week,’ said Henry. ‘Have a glass of wine on the house.’
The gentle frog croaked pleasantly. Henry answered it happily.
‘A Mrs Langridge has rung from Thurmarsh,’ said Hilary. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid. Cousin Hilda is sinking fast.’
On Thursday, April 14th, 1994, two American F.15 fighters shot down two United Nations helicopters over Iraq, killing twenty-six allied officers. There was a furious row in the House of Commons over allegations that NHS hospitals were refusing treatment to people because they were too old, the Bosnian Serbs drew close to a full-scale confrontation with Nato and the United Nations, and Hilary, travelling with Henry from St Pancras to Thurmarsh, said how glad she was that her Croatian mother hadn’t lived to see the terrible destruction of her beloved Yugoslavia.
How Henry hoped that Cousin Hilda would live to see him that evening. He loved her. He hadn’t seen her for several weeks. She was the last of her generation. He was going to feel very exposed. It was the end of an era. Each time the train slowed down he grew anxious. His legs became exhausted as they pushed forward to will the train on faster.
