Pratt a Manger

by David Nobbs

‘I don’t know if you know this, Gunter,’ said Kate, ‘but I ran away with Benedict when I was sixteen. I lost my virginity to my half-brother … then I realised that he was using me. He did use people, but … there were one or two moments during that week that were … just lovely.’

  She began to cry. Henry put his arm round her and began to cry too.

  Soon Michelle, the manageress, sturdy, solid, built, as she said herself, ‘like a brick shithouse’, arrived with the first of their food.

  Kate had the stuffed marrow, five of them had the pork aphelia, and Henry had the herrings in oatmeal. Jack had herrings in oatmeal as a starter, followed by pork aphelia, with stuffed marrow on the side. None of them had the duck Benedict. They drank five bottles of Argentinian merlot between them.

  It’s amazing how food can cheer one up. It’s amazing how drink can cheer one up. They became chatty and lively. There was laughter. Other customers thought what a great party the funnily dressed people at the big round table were having. It must be a birthday.

  And all the time, every moment of the evening, Henry felt, beneath his other emotions, beneath his genuine disappointment at not finding Benedict, beneath his sorrow at all the suffering he had witnessed, an insistent glow that would not go away, and he heard an insistent, unworthy voice that kept repeating, ‘Jenny thought you were brilliant. She asked for your autograph. You’re going to be all right.’

  Towards the end, he became silent. The glow remained, deep down, but on the surface he was nervous. He had something to say, a difficult question to ask, a very short question, just three words, but three of the hardest words he could ever have said, because his question would not be welcome, and it might sound foolish.

  He stood up and cleared his throat.

  ‘Same time tomorrow?’ he asked.

  There was a shocked silence at the round table.

  ‘I’m on for it,’ said Jack at last. ‘May as well get really behind with work before Christmas.’

  ‘I’ll come,’ promised Kate. ‘The new show’s up and running. If I’m at the theatre, there’ll be a crisis to sort out. If I’m not there to sort it out, there won’t be a crisis.’

  ‘I think it’s been a complete waste of time if we don’t see it through,’ said Camilla.

  ‘It may be warmer tomorrow,’ hoped Guiseppe without much confidence.

  Diana looked at Gunter nervously.

  ‘We’re here till Sunday,’ he said. ‘Even if it’s useless, what are four evenings of our life compared to what he’s been through?’

  ‘I think it’s appalling not to know for certain what’s happened to somebody you loved,’ said Hilary. ‘Even if, as may well be true, he’s dead, I want to know – and I speak as someone who’s never known him.’

  ‘You’re so right,’ agreed Camilla. ‘If he is dead, I want a proper … a proper recognition of the fact. A proper ending. When I’ve read about disasters, and people being so distressed because they haven’t been able to identify or bury their dead, I’ve felt that, while it was very sad, it was perhaps a waste of urgent resources once people were known to be dead. I think now it was pitiful of me not to understand it before.’

  ‘You’re always too hard on yourself,’ commented Guiseppe.

  ‘Well, thank you, all of you,’ said Henry. He poured the remains of the merlot – a sip for everybody. ‘So we’ll see you tomorrow. Oh, and I almost forgot, Camilla. Your father’s joining us.’

  ‘What? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I … I persuaded him.’

  ‘Well, well done, you. That is amazing. I don’t feel as pleased as I should, though. You’re my father now.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how happy I felt when you first said that,’ said Henry. ‘That was wrong of me. It’s flattering, but it’s wrong.’

  ‘You’re all too hard on yourselves,’ said Guiseppe.

  Henry had the last word, as usual.

  ‘I hope you’ve got a satisfactory pension scheme, Gunter,’ he said. ‘Otherwise it’ll be a long night.’

  On Thursday, 19 October, 1995, on a go-kart track in London, thirteen-year-old Prince William completed a circuit in 19.66 seconds, narrowly beating his younger brother Harry (19.79) and easily beating their detectives. The newspapers gave the times achieved at the circuit by other famous people. They included Damon Hill (20 seconds), David Coulthard (20.51) and Barry Sheene (20.75).

  Not ten miles from the go-karting exploits of the young princes, Henry and Hilary Pratt sat at the same round table as the previous evening, and wondered if the others really would come.

  They did all turn up, and it was a long night, even though Nigel didn’t actually mention pensions once. He came in his idea of casual dress – cord trousers, a vicuna sweater and a Crosby overcoat. He looked as if he was modelling clothes for the mature man.

  ‘Nigel,’ said Henry – he wouldn’t call him Tosser once this evening, in gratitude for his having turned up – ‘you can go with Camilla and Guiseppe.’

  ‘So my coming here isn’t actually achieving anything,’ grumbled Nigel. ‘We won’t be covering any extra ground because of me.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you call having my dad at my side when I search for my lost brother achieving anything?’ asked Camilla.

  Nigel looked at his beautiful daughter, and Henry saw that he was at a complete loss how to behave with her. He had forgotten how to be a father. He had forgotten how to be human. Being human was a bit more difficult than riding a bicycle. You needed to keep practising at it.

  It would have seemed like a nice evening to most people – dry and pleasantly mild. However, when you were out in it for four hours, you knew that it was getting slowly, steadily, remorselessly colder. There was a dank damp windless chill in the meaner streets of London. Henry and Hilary tried to avoid breathing in the fumes from methssodden human wrecks, tried to continue to see each person as a tragedy rather than a statistic, tried to respect these ruined souls, tried to be patient, tried not to give up hope.

  The areas around King’s Cross and Euston stations in the north, and Charing Cross, Waterloo, Cannon Street and Blackfriars in the south were among the districts they explored that night.

  Big strong Jack grew tired and was amazed by Kate’s stamina. Nigel sighed from time to time, but otherwise remained grimly stoical in his suffering. Gunter was cheery, calm and bright, especially when Diana’s resolve faltered.

  Many eyes looked at the photos of the beautiful boy that Benedict had been: bloodshot eyes, misty eyes, drunken eyes, deep miserable eyes, paranoid eyes, psychopathic eyes, eyes rimmed with despair, defeated eyes, angry eyes, scornful eyes, nearly sightless eyes. None of them showed any recognition.

  Henry was not asked for his autograph, but the glow remained, fainter, cooler, but resilient. ‘This is a nightmare, but it will end. Great times are coming for you,’ said that faint glow.

  By the time they got back to the Café even Jack was shivering deep inside himself. Nigel looked as if he had just trekked to the North Pole.

  ‘Duck Benedict!’ he exclaimed.

  Henry explained his motives and the nature of the dish.

  ‘He wouldn’t be able to eat all that now,’ said Nigel. ‘His digestive system will be shot to pieces. Assuming he’s still alive.’

  There was silence round the table. Nobody welcomed these depressing thoughts.

  ‘Face facts, Henry,’ said Nigel. ‘Stop being a sentimental fool.’

  ‘Henry,’ said Guiseppe, ‘when I got home last night I thought, “Where’s the Henrygraph?”’

  The Henrygraph was a sculpture, a rather unflattering caricature of Henry, with a large screen where his large stomach should have been. It was sculpted by Guiseppe, who was a caricaturist as well as a serious sculptor. Henry had made up competitions, and the results had been shown on the screen. It had been a talking point, but Henry had grown tired of it.

  ‘Yes, I’m really sorry, Guiseppe,’ he said. ‘I … I should have told you. I … er … I decided it
was too gimmicky. I … I thought it a bit self-conscious. I don’t like the cult of personality. I’m very modest at heart, you know. Too modest for my own good, perhaps.’ He recalled the pleasure he’d felt from being asked for his autograph, and felt uneasy. There was a brief silence, which suggested that others might be uneasy as well. ‘I am, Hilary!’

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ said Hilary.

  ‘You didn’t need to. I saw your look.’

  ‘You did your job too well, Guiseppe,’ said Hilary. ‘Henry didn’t like looking at himself. It was too accurate.’

  Henry opened his mouth to protest, but he was preempted. He was pre-empted by a sniff.

  We know you too well, Henry, Hilary and I, said Cousin Hilda’s sniff.

  Henry tried to hide his horror. To be haunted by a sniff was bad enough, to know what the sniff meant was disconcerting, but to be haunted by a sniff that spoke – that was truly disturbing.

  He realised that he must hide his horror. Clearly nobody else had heard anything.

  He stood up. His heart was thumping.

  ‘Same time tomorrow?’ he asked, without much hope or conviction.

  Nigel looked at him aghast.

  ‘You’re not going on with this pantomime, are you??’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re fooling yourselves. I’m sorry, but you are. He’s dead. I’m sorry, but he is. I can’t go, anyway. We have to go to see some of Felicity’s farmer relatives.’

  The thought of Felicity having relatives who were farmers astounded Henry. The thought of Nigel having to visit them tickled him pink. He hoped they all had their pensions sorted.

  He didn’t say any of this, of course. What he did say was, ‘You’re probably right, Nigel, but the more it looks as if he’s dead, the more convinced I become that he’s alive.’

  ‘I wonder if any of you realise just how stubborn my dear man can be,’ said Hilary.

  On Friday, 20 October, 1995, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund sacked twenty-nine volunteers, many of them in their seventies, for stealing donated cash and clothes; bureaucrats in Brussels abolished leap years for cows, deciding that milk quotas would henceforward be calculated on the assumption that every year had three hundred and sixty-five days; and Kate and Jack Pratt (known at all his schools as Jack Sprat) showed a photo of Benedict to an old tramp.

  The tramp shook his head. The evening had been just as fruitless as the other two, and even colder. They were ready to go back to the Café a few minutes before schedule. They had had enough. They had given up hope.

  Then, just as they were about to move on, the tramp made a guttural animal noise and held out his hand for the photo. Kate handed it back to him. He studied it carefully. He was swaying drunkenly. It seemed inevitable that he’d fall over. He burped, and the air was like a garage forecourt – if you set a match to his breath, he would burn to death in seconds – but there was something extraordinary, something deep down that was still functioning, a quality of concentration, a desire to help, which revealed that there was still a human being in there, beneath the hair and dirt and stench.

  Then he said something. Well, he slurred something. They couldn’t make sense of it. His accent, so far as they could recognise it, suggested that he might be a Geordie. Probably they wouldn’t have understood him even if he wasn’t slurring. He tried again. He really wanted to communicate. They felt awful that they could barely catch a word he said. He pointed at the picture and nodded, even grinned. They were glad that Gunter wasn’t there to see his teeth.

  He spoke again. Again, they couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.

  ‘Big Ben?’ asked Kate, without confidence.

  He nodded vigorously. He was pleased, gratified, he still had emotions, he was still a human being.

  ‘Big Ben,’ he repeated.

  ‘You saw him near Big Ben?’ suggested Kate, speaking slowly and loudly as to a foreigner.

  The tramp shook his head irritably, berating them for their stupidity.

  ‘He is Big Ben!’ exclaimed Jack.

  ‘Of course,’ said Kate. ‘Of course. How stupid.’

  ‘Well we never called him Ben, did we? You couldn’t.’

  ‘He … is … Big … Ben?’ asked Kate, pointing at the photo as she did so.

  The tramp nodded and said something else. They couldn’t understand it. The tramp frowned, and repeated what he’d said. It sounded like ‘played skeet’.

  ‘Played skeet?’ asked Jack incredulously.

  The tramp tried to speak, made a great effort, strained, swayed drunkenly, burped and farted at the same time, then fell to the ground like a great elm in a gale, except that elms don’t shit themselves.

  He groaned, stirred, burped again. A foul smell filled the air. They identified the road, and his position on the pavement, and rang 999.

  It wasn’t their responsibility any more. The authorities would take over. They’d done all they could. Nobody could be expected to do any more. It would be dangerous for them to try to move him. These things should be left to experts. It would be better for the man if he died. He had nothing left to live for.

  All that was true, but they both agreed, afterwards, that they had felt really bad about leaving him.

  ‘Played skeet?’ said Henry, as he poured wine into their glasses in the Café. He had described the wine to the others as ‘a rather exciting syrah from the Cote d’Oc’, but the excitement of the wine was completely overshadowed by the excitement generated by Kate and Jack’s story.

  ‘Skeet is a form of clay pigeon shooting,’ said Camilla, who knew about such things, ‘in which targets are hurled from two traps at varying speeds and angles.’

  ‘I find it difficult to believe that our drunken old tramp was telling us that Benedict shot at targets hurled from two traps at varying speeds and angles,’ said Kate.

  ‘You wouldn’t say “played skeet”, anyway, would you?’ asked Guiseppe. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t say, “I think I’ll go and play shooting today.” ’

  ‘Where was this?’ asked Henry.

  ‘Off the Edgware Road,’ said Jack.

  Michelle came over to take their orders. Again, nobody could face the duck Benedict. It remained on the menu out of sheer Yorkshire stubbornness.

  Jack asked hopefully if he could have a beer instead of wine. Henry didn’t hear him, but he ordered it anyway.

  Henry was miles away, thinking.

  ‘Edgware Road,’ he said at last. ‘I wonder. Could he possibly have been saying “Praed Street”, do you think?’

  Neither Kate nor Jack had ever heard of Praed Street. You wouldn’t have, if you never got trains to Wales or the West Country.

  ‘Praed Street runs from Edgware Road westwards past Paddington Station,’ said Henry.

  ‘I suppose it could have been Praed Street,’ said Kate. ‘He was very indistinct.’

  It was still a long shot, but, long shot or not, Henry didn’t feel it fair that he should give himself and Hilary the honour of covering the Praed Street area that Saturday night. A commander has to make sacrifices. He gave the opportunity of finding Benedict to his mother.

  Henry was absolutely convinced that they would find him. Diana and Gunter had no such expectations. Diana’s sense that he was still alive had grown steadily weaker during the long evenings of frustration – and even if he was alive, the tramp might not have been saying, ‘Praed Street’, and even if he had been saying ‘Praed Street’, the fact that he had seen Benedict there didn’t mean that he would necessarily be there that evening.

  But Henry’s instinct was right. They found him selling The Big Issue on Paddington Station. He was very thin, and very pale, and rather yellow, and he looked much older than his thirty-eight years, but he was sober, and he didn’t appear to be under the influence of drugs, and he was neat and clean-shaven. He looked at his mother as if he was sure that he’d seen her somewhere before.

  6 A Family Party

  ‘I’M YOUR MOTHER,’ said Diana.

  ‘Get away.’


  ‘I am, Benedict. That’s why I’m out looking for you.’

  ‘I call myself Ben. Big Issue! Big Issue!’

  ‘Do you really not remember me?’

  ‘I don’t remember much. I was out of my mind for about fifteen years, I think. A lot’s gone.’

  ‘Well, Ben, I really am your mother and I’d like to give you a kiss. Would that be all right?’

  ‘Spose so.’

  They kissed, awkwardly. Behind them, the Swansea train started up, noisily.

  ‘Big Issue!’ cried Ben.

  ‘I’ll have one on the way back,’ said a passer-by.

  ‘Cheers, mate,’ said Ben. He pointed at Gunter, who was standing awkwardly a little to one side. ‘I don’t remember him.’

  ‘You wouldn’t. You’ve never met him.’

  ‘He’s not my dad, then.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  Gunter smiled bravely.

  ‘I’m Gunter,’ he said. ‘Gunter Axelburger.’

  ‘That’s a mouthful.’

  ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? Quite a mouthful, as you say.’

  ‘Big Issue!’

  At last Ben made a sale. Diana was absurdly pleased for him.

  ‘If he’s not my dad,’ said Ben, ‘what’s he doing here?’

  ‘He’s my husband.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  It was getting cold on the station forecourt.

  ‘There’s a lot to tell, Ben, if you want to hear it,’ said Diana. ‘We’ll take you to a café.’

  ‘I haven’t finished selling my Big Issues. I’ve twelve left.’

  ‘I’ll buy them,’ offered Gunter.

  ‘That’s not the point. I like people to read them. I don’t like it when people say, “I don’t want one, but I’ll give you a pound.” I’m not a beggar.’

  That little surge of pride was the first real sign of Benedicticity, thought Diana.

  ‘I agree, Ben,’ she said, ‘but there are some other members of the family waiting to see you – they’ve been looking for you too – and I have just found my lost son. It’s a pretty big moment for me and … just this once, for me, will you let Gunter buy them? Please.’