by David Nobbs
He was in control of himself.
He tried to concentrate on those world events that fitted his mood. There were disasters, of course. A TWA plane from New York’s Kennedy Airport crashed into the Atlantic, and all two hundred and thirty passengers died. A pipe bomb killed one person and injured a hundred and eleven at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. He told himself how lucky he was and reminded himself every day to feel grateful for his good fortune.
Iceland legalised gay marriages. Henry could just imagine Tosser’s indignant reaction – ‘That’s Reykjavik off the list, Felicity’ – but he was happy for the gay men of Iceland. Now they could be gay in the original sense of the word as well. He took Ben and Darren to The Gay Hussar in Greek Street, just round the corner, raised a glass of Tokay, and said, loudly, ‘To every gay in Iceland.’
Nelson Mandela attended a state banquet with the Queen as host, and in South Africa F.W. de Klerk apologised for the pain and suffering caused by apartheid. If there had been a South African restaurant in London, Henry would have gone to it and raised a glass of pinotage.
An eight-year-old female gorilla called Biriti Juan rescued a three-year-old boy who fell eighteen feet into a gorilla pit. The gorilla picked him up very gently and carried him to the entrance. Henry put up a notice which stated, ‘Gorillas, yes. Guerrillas, no.’
It was a happy summer for Hilary too. At last she had finished her book, and she was pleased with it. It was a story loosely based on the life of her crippled mother Nadezda and her councillor father Howard. It dealt with matters that had affected her and Henry’s lives deeply. It featured a newspaper very like the Thurmarsh Evening Argus, with journalists not entirely dissimilar to Ted and Helen Plunkett, and Colin Edgeley, and Ginny Fenwick and … yes, and Henry too. The fiction writer’s art transformed these people so that, when they read the book, if they read the book, they might not even recognise themselves. It was a story about the clash between public and private morality, public and private duty, honour and expediency, love and self-interest, right and wrong. Her publishers loved it. Henry loved it, although he thought the main journalist (the one loosely based on him) unconvincingly moral and caring.
His regular appearances on A Question of Salt brought Henry greater and greater recognition. Newspapers rang to ask his opinion about diets and fads and allergies. The Café Henry was constantly full, and, after some soul-searching as to the advisability, it was decided that a modest and very gradual expansion would be a good thing, provided that standards were maintained and it never developed into a franchised chain. A site for a second café was purchased, in South Kensington.
Henry began to think about writing a book.
Occupation of the upstairs flat by Ben and Darren was a great success. Ben continued to enjoy his work, and Darren continued to hurtle round London on his Yamaha, revelling in his speed and skill. On their day off they would sometimes eat in the Café, and Henry would try to sit with them for at least a few minutes. Ben would talk about this other Ben, the Ben he barely remembered, the Ben he was told about. He said that as the weeks and months passed he was beginning to remember and understand his old self. ‘I was ambitious. Now I’m not remotely ambitious. The thing I’ve understood is that there is nothing wrong with ambition, nothing at all, but there is nothing wrong with lack of ambition either.’
Henry turned this into a notice, which pleased Ben enormously. He also created a very silly notice which he showed to anybody unwise enough to comment on Darren’s nose stud. It read, ‘I intend to open a nose stud and breed noses.’ One day Ben thought of a notice that made them all laugh. ‘This notice is exactly the right length to fill this gap.’ Henry felt proud of him. He often forgot that Ben wasn’t his son.
Kate’s play about the homeless provided another critical and commercial success for the prestigious Umbrella Theatre.
By midsummer’s day Jack’s firm were a total of one hundred and twenty-seven days behind at starting jobs and one hundred and sixty-three days behind at finishing them. ‘We’re a success,’ he cried, as he pranced around the garden at one of his barbecues.
Camilla had an exhibition in Mayfair. A painting of the wild horses of the Camargue went for £16,000.
Henry and Hilary went for a delightful long weekend near Lucerne with Diana and Gunter. Over the four days Henry had one steak, two train rides, three portions of rosti, four litres of beer and five fillings. It was the first time he had left the Café in the hands of Greg and Michelle for any length of time. At last his confidence in them was growing.
Nothing went wrong in his absence to dent that confidence, so a few weeks later they went away again, to stay in Copenhagen, where Hilary’s younger brother Sam lived with his Danish wife, Greta. Sam had been pretty obnoxious as a boy, but now they all got on well. Henry took Sam to one side, though, and said, ‘Don’t.’ ‘Don’t what?’ asked Sam. ‘Do it,’ said Henry. ‘Do what?’ asked Sam. ‘Have that affair you’re dreaming of.’ Sam went white. ‘How do you know that?’ he said. ‘I can read you like an open sandwich,’ said Henry.
While Henry was in Copenhagen, giving advice on not having affairs, Sally Atkinson visited the Café.
‘Good afternoon, madam. I see that Boris Yeltsin has been re-elected President of Russia, I don’t think it’s surprising, do you? Speaking of surprises, can I get you something unusual?’ said Greg.
‘A glass of champagne would be nice,’ said Sally. ‘Is Henry anywhere about?’
‘I’m afraid he’s in Denmark.’
When he told Henry of her visit, Greg said, ‘Her face fell. You’re well in there with that one.’
Henry shook his head and said, ‘Those days are behind me, Greg. I will never be naughty again. Hilary is too precious to me. She’s a jewel.’
‘Got you,’ said Greg.
They didn’t see or hear from Tosser or Felicity once, and neither did Ben.
Bradley Tompkins was also conspicuous by his absence. Apparently he had a place in the country and spent quite a lot of time there. No wonder he didn’t win any Michelin stars, thought Henry. His was a business, not a passion.
Even a visit to Denzil and Lampo for a take-away – Denzil didn’t cook any more and Lampo never had – proved less painful than expected.
‘Before we eat, we must tell you what happened,’ said Lampo. ‘I … it was very naughty of me. I didn’t tell Denzil I’d retired. I wanted one glorious week with … I don’t give him a name.’
‘I said, “I don’t want to know his name,” ’ said Denzil. ‘ “I might start picturing him.” ’
‘I had a glorious week. In Siena, actually.’
‘Yes, so we heard,’ said Henry.
‘We … we went to that restaurant, actually, in the square, where you two met.’
Hilary gave an enormous, rather strange sigh.
‘That was an enormous, rather strange sigh,’ said Lampo. ‘Do you resent my going there?’
‘I have no reason to,’ said Hilary. ‘Denzil might. Not me. No, I suddenly thought, supposing we’d not met. I wouldn’t be here now, with Henry. The enormity of that shocks me. It’s very sobering.’
‘Very sobering,’ said Henry. ‘Could we have some more wine?’
‘Fill their glasses, Lampo,’ said Denzil. ‘He’s my legs now,’ he told them. He tapped nervously on a miniature Yugoslavian biscuit tin, purchased in Dubrovnik. ‘Go on, Lampo. Tell them it all.’
‘I loved showing him Italy,’ said Lampo. ‘It was weak of me, but … I am human. I fully intended to tell Denzil, on my return, that I was retiring. There would have been no more lies.’
‘I accept that,’ said Denzil. ‘I believe him.’
‘He wouldn’t speak to me for three days, when I got back,’ said Lampo.
‘I found it hard to believe that he hadn’t had a farewell party,’ said Denzil. ‘It narked me to have missed it.’
‘As if I would,’ said Lampo. ‘So banal.’
‘I accept that now,’ said Denzil.
‘It’s nerves, not sex,’ said Denzil. ‘I fear burglars. My biscuit tins … I couldn’t bear to lose them. There’s no sex in our relationship any more. He is repelled by my pale, thin, twisted, tired old body, my old man’s breath, my hollow chest, my scrawny pudenda.’
‘One should never be surprised that he exaggerates,’ said Lampo. ‘He was a journalist, after all.’
On Monday, 16 September, 1996, Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Fein, said in his first speech in Stormont that he wanted to ‘make friends’ with Doctor Ian Paisley, Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party; Frank Dobson, the Health Secretary, confirmed that Viagra would not be available on the National Health Service until further notice; and Henry Ezra Pratt, who didn’t wish to make friends with Gerry Adams or Doctor Ian Paisley, and had never needed Viagra, got into a taxi with a box of ingredients and a saucepan full of one he had made earlier.
The format of Here’s One I Made Earlier was really very simple. Two chefs were invited to create a dish. Each chef was allowed to bring a maximum of three examples of the dish at various stages of the cooking, and one which had to be the finished article. The two chefs talked their way through the cooking process, in turn, three minutes from one, then three from the other, then back to the first, etcetera. At the end the chefs tasted each other’s dishes and marked them, the technicians tasted the dishes, a celebrity visitor tasted the dishes, and three members of the public, chosen at random from closely vetted volunteers, tasted the dishes. Everyone who tasted the dishes gave marks, and a winner was declared. The winner took home a substantial prize. The loser took nothing.
Since the beginning of September Henry’s peace of mind had gradually burnt away like autumn mist. There was no getting away from the fact that his sense of control was slipping away, and he was becoming more than a little obsessed with Sally Atkinson. The thought of competing with her filled him with excitement, both sexual and professional, and with dread, also both sexual and professional. She had a Michelin star. He wouldn’t be able to compete. She aroused him terrifically, and he was a happily married man. He was a tiny raft, being bounced on converging tides and crosswinds, in a most perilous waterway.
If only Hilary could have come, to save him from himself, but she had another of her publishing engagements.
Be good, Henry, he told himself in the taxi. Be grown up. Don’t be a berk. Don’t cause distress to your family and friends. Don’t let your public down.
My public – the thought took his breath away, just as the taxi lurched rather too fast round a steep bend. He only just managed to cling on to the saucepan.
He leant forward very carefully.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Would you mind driving a bit more slowly? Only I’ve got the one I’ve made earlier here and I don’t want to spill it.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m appearing on the show Here’s One I Made Earlier and you have to bring with you the one you made earlier, and I have.’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about, squire.’
Perhaps the thought that he had a public to let down was a bit of an exaggeration. If he did have a public, it had melted away when he needed it. Perhaps that was what publics did. Suddenly he felt very insignificant. Suddenly he felt that he might be imagining that Sally fancied him. He’d reflected once or twice recently how strange it was that, after moments of desperation when he’d been convinced that no woman would ever fancy him, he had begun to believe that almost every woman did.
The excitement of his appearances on A Question of Salt had gone to his head. They were nothing. It was nothing. He was nothing. In the great world of the media, he was a speck, a pathetic, deluded speck.
As the taxi pulled up at the obscure studios of Protean Television – it had turned out not to be Protein Television after all – in a very obscure street in Brondesbury, Henry felt a little boy again. He felt desperately uncertain now about his choice of fish stew. He could imagine a communal ‘ugh’ going up from the viewers. Sally had a Michelin star. She had enjoyed the favours of several chefs. He didn’t stand a chance with her, publicly or pubicly. She would eat him for breakfast. As it were.
A cold London autumn morning. A plump, grey-haired man of sixty-one, clutching a saucepan full of cold fish stew. My public! Don’t be ridiculous.
He walked up to the young woman on the reception desk. He was very conscious that he carried around with him a strong whiff of fish. Today of all days surely one of the receptionists could have said, ‘Mr Pratt! Good to see you’ or ‘Good morning, Henry. I hope you don’t mind my calling you Henry. I feel as if I know you already.’ No. The receptionist at Protean Television sniffed and said, ‘You must be for the food programme. Name?’
They kissed, politely, professionally, two contenders in a TV game, but then his eyes took over and gazed suddenly at her eyes at the moment when her eyes shot an impulsive look at his. Both held the look for what seemed an eternity, but might only have been a few seconds in real time.
Henry was fascinated by Sally’s eyes. They were pale blue, very pale blue, and they were beautiful. However, what touched him most was the weariness in them, and what disturbed him most was their ambiguity. They seemed frank and evasive at the same time.
He turned away before she did. He’d known that he would have to.
‘Hilary not with you?’ she asked.
‘No. No. I … I wanted her to come …’
Their eyes met again – briefly, this time.
‘… but she has another engagement. Actually, as it’s not a studio audience sort of set up, she might have been a bit of a … er …’
‘… spare prick.’
‘Exactly. As it were.’
‘Yes. Not really very appropriate. Well, to work, then. Good luck. May the best chef win.’
‘Oh, I hope not, but I’ll not be too upset if you do.’
‘What are you cooking?’
‘Well, I …’ Oh God. I feel so ashamed of it. It’s fine to knock up a great fish stew for supper, but as the subject of a TV show, what possessed you? ‘… I … I thought that with you having a Michelin star and everything …’
‘Oh God. It’s a millstone round my neck, Henry.’
‘… that I’d go for something really simple. It’s my special … er … fish stew … fish casserole, I mean. That’s part of the trouble, I don’t know what to call it.’
‘Prattabaisse.’
‘What?’
‘Like bouillabaisse, only yours.’
‘Sorry. My brain must have seized up. Sally, I just wish I wasn’t here.’
‘Good God, man, don’t you think I do too? I’m a private person. I’m a dedicated, professional chef. Poncing around on TV isn’t me, but there aren’t enough prosperous gourmets in Dorset to fill my place, and the exposure doesn’t half bring the punters in. Anyway, we’re here, we’ve agreed to do it, so it’s pointless to moan.’
Henry felt about two foot high. Sally touched him on the shoulder, gently. ‘Utterly professional, eh?’
‘Absolutely. I … I haven’t asked you what you’re making.’
‘Well, I thought I ought to make something a bit challenging, a bit technical, a bit messed about, a bit Michelin star. I mean, this is what today’s about, isn’t it? The Michelin Star versus the People’s Chef.’
‘I hadn’t looked at it that way.’
‘I’m making a guinea fowl and pistachio galantine, with a tarragon and chablis reduction.’
The studio was quite small, and seemed very bare after the big BBC job. It was like working in a barn. You had to make your own glamour.
There were seats for the three chosen members of the public, and there was a paper door through which the mystery celebrity would burst.
The members of the public weren’t call
ed for the rehearsal, nor was the mystery celebrity, who was played in the run-through by the stage manager.
Henry discovered, to his horror, that they actually did cook the dishes on the run-through. He should have brought the two that he’d made earlier. Sally had piles of stuff, as she was introducing three different stages, all of which she had to have ready twice.
‘You didn’t read your bumf, did you?’ said the presenter, Dermot Wolfstone, he of the indefatigable smile, soon to become runner-up to Tony Blair in the ‘Smiler of the Year’ competition.
‘No,’ admitted Henry sadly, ‘I didn’t read my bumf.’
This was terrible. Was he to start every new TV project feeling like this?
‘It doesn’t matter in your case since you aren’t really going through any stages as it’s all in one,’ said Dermot Wolfstone with a smile. ‘You’ll just have to mime your casserole.’
The run-through was a nightmare to Henry. He lacked all conviction. Sally, on the other hand, was professional, detached and poised.
He felt a real fool, miming preparing his fish, miming chopping an onion and two cloves of garlic, miming frying them, miming the addition of white wine and pernod and a tin of tomatoes and hot paprika and saffron and star anise, miming taking it all off the stove and lifting the lid.
‘Wow,’ said Dermot Wolfstone with a smile. ‘Those aromas! And now, our celebrity guest. Top model, Samantha Hamstring, with her gorgeous long legs and elegant, shapely breasts, and how does she keep that stomach of hers so taut and tight?’
Through the paper door – no expense was spared – burst the paunchy, hairy form of the stage manager, so everybody fell about. Henry pretended to find it funny too, and hoped that Sally was only pretending.
‘Well,’ said Dermot Wolfstone with a smile. ‘That honestly really was … average.’
There was no Green Room at Protean Television, but Sally had brought a bottle of rioja.
‘Fancy a drink in my dressing room?’ she asked.