Pratt a Manger

by David Nobbs

  While Henry and Kate toiled, Jack played patience impatiently.

  Dusk fell, and the first watch began. Henry and Kate stayed up and waited, sitting in the dark, silently. Jack slept. At three in the morning Henry woke Jack, and he and Jack kept watch while Kate slept.

  The realisation that this could go on for days sobered them considerably.

  ‘Come on, keep your spirits up,’ whispered their inspiring commander.

  But it was hard. In the morning, Jack played patience impatiently. Kate struck no gold. Henry jotted down ideas for his next cookery book, a gastronomic tour of Europe. He wondered idly if … His head lolled. The commander was asleep. His foot soldiers both smiled affectionately, and indicated to each other, also affectionately, that they thought that he was just a little mad.

  Kate played Jack at backgammon. Henry woke up and dealt with a few more letters.

  ‘I’ve gone off you, big style. I’m glad now that you never came for that blow job. Consider the offer closed as of today. Incidentally, I’ve moved. It is easier to come off at junction 39 now.’

  ‘My mum makes better Yorkshire puddings than your Asbo ones, and she’s Croatian.’

  ‘My name was Henry Pratt, but recently people have started to make remarks, which was getting on my nerves, so I’ve changed it by deed poll. Yours sincerely, Jamie Oliver.’

  He soon got dispirited, and tried to cheer himself up by making lunch. Then he played Kate at Scrabble, while Jack played patience impatiently. Then Jack played Henry at backgammon, and Kate struck no gold. Then Henry cooked supper. Dusk fell, as it does. They all wondered if there was a glorious sunset.

  Jack and Kate stayed up, watching, waiting, in the dark, silently. Henry went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. At three in the morning Jack woke Henry, who had fallen into a deep sleep three minutes before Jack woke him, and he and Jack kept watch while Kate slept.

  Nothing happened. The troops began to feel, more and more, that this was all a great waste of time, a folly. If their commander shared their thought, he did not show them.

  Kate struck no gold, Jack grew terminally bored, Henry cooked. Scrabble was played, backgammon was played, Henry made more notes for his European tour.

  The phone rang four times and wasn’t answered. Could these calls be the perpetrator of the outrages against Henry, checking up? Henry hoped so.

  Claustrophobia began to set in. They longed to answer the phone. They ached to watch television, even The Fifty Most Amusing Interrupted Orgasms, which was on that night. They were bursting to listen to the radio. They wanted to rip back the curtains and see if there was still a world out there.

  Time passed slowly, agonisingly slowly. Dusk fell, as it does. They all wondered if there was a glorious sunset.

  Henry and Kate stayed up, watching, waiting.

  Suddenly Henry was awake, horrified that he had fallen asleep on watch. What had woken him? Had he heard a noise? Had there been a car, or had he dreamt it?

  He woke Kate very gently, holding his finger to his lips. She nodded, mouthed, ‘Sorry. I fell asleep.’ He mouthed, ‘So did I.’ They shared a smile.

  There was a noise from the dining room, a scratching, a scraping. Smiles were quickly forgotten.

  They tip-toed hurriedly to the dining room and eased the door very slowly, very carefully.

  The window was open!

  Live chickens began to come in, hurtling through the air, hurled by someone outside the window. They were squawking and flapping and shrieking and shitting.

  Kate rushed upstairs and woke Jack.

  Henry very carefully, very quietly unlocked the front door. Then he switched the outside light on and rushed out, closely followed by Jack and Kate.

  There was a small lorry parked outside the house. Kate clicked her camera. The moon face of the driver was frozen in disbelief and anger, in hostility and horror. He was holding a squawking chicken in each hand.

  ‘Tosser!’ said Henry sadly. ‘Oh Tosser. I had hoped against hope it was Felicity.’

  20 Carry On Up the Crem

  THE MOOD IN the waiting room at Mortlake Crematorium was sombre. It’s difficult to regard a funeral as a celebration of a life when the person being mourned has found so little to celebrate in his own life that he has ended it by his own hand.

  Henry felt all sorts of uneasy emotions – sorrow, guilt, shame. He didn’t think that anybody, not even Hilary, quite understood why he felt such shame over Nigel’s suicide.

  It was a great source of comfort to him to have his family around him. Hilary clutched his hand and squeezed it. He wanted to squeeze her hand in response, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know why he couldn’t. He didn’t like himself for not squeezing her hand, but then he didn’t like himself at all that morning.

  Kate came up and kissed him. She had made a great effort to look smart; he had never seen her looking so smart. She was wearing a dark grey suit quite unlike her usual clothes, and she looked beautiful and ethereal.

  Jack looked so awkward in an ill-fitting cheap black suit that had never been worn before. Flick was also in black. She was larger than ever now, but the sheer simplicity of her good nature, and her lack of concern for her own appearance, gave her a reassuring attractiveness.

  Camilla and Guiseppe had tried to dress down for the occasion, but looked what they were, a couple of very successful and stylish artists.

  Henry kissed Camilla and held her tightly for almost a minute. They spoke no words. There were none to speak. Then Hilary hugged Camilla. All three of them had wet eyes, but they fought against tears. If tears began, where would they end?

  Outside, a squirrel, grey as the morning, hopped across the lawns. The air was eerily still. There was just a hint that the sun might break through the murk. Henry hoped it wouldn’t. It would be quite wrong if the sun came out that day.

  Camilla, of course, was there to mourn for her father. Henry knew that Jack and Kate had only come to support him, they had never really known Toss— Nigel all that well. He was grateful to them for coming, and would have said so, had he trusted himself to speak.

  But why was Bradley Tompkins there, immaculate in black? And why did he go up to Henry, avoiding eye contact, and stroke his arm, very gently, before turning away to gaze at the leaden sky over South West London? Perhaps the gesture was in gratitude for the fulsome, even grovelling apology that Henry had felt obliged to make to the assembled hacks at a hurriedly convened press conference.

  It was Fergus Horncastle of the Daily Smear who had linked the comparatively small story of the suicide of a man who had played one undistinguished game of rugger for England, and had been an obscure Conservative MP for four years, with the much larger story of the craven, even grovelling apology of the People’s Chef for his wild allegations against Bradley Tompkins, an apology which seemed in danger of driving the last nail into the coffin of Henry’s reputation. Henry never uttered a word on the subject. He had said too much too often, and now, when it was too late, he said too little.

  Felicity looked pale and white. Henry had never liked her or understood her and she had never liked or understood him, but they were partners now in guilt, united, in the press’s eyes, and therefore in most of the nation’s, for their part in causing the tragedy of the fallen sporting hero of Dalton College. The press had dug up, to everyone’s astonishment, evidence that Felicity had been having an affair with a Brazilian heart surgeon.

  Henry went up to her and kissed her and looked into her eyes and saw nothing, nothing at all, as if she had stayed at home and sent her body to represent her.

  He knew what strength a woman’s fury could give her, but as he looked at Felicity, he found it hard to believe that he had ever managed to persuade himself that she might have had enough power and enough passion to be the person behind the varied attacks on Henry and his property.

  The arrival of Diana, Nigel’s first wife and Henry’s second, made Henry think about all sorts of things; a great swirl of happy and wretched moment
s passed by him, and as he gave her a demure social kiss he thought how old she must be, even though she didn’t look it, and how old by inference he must be. Then he thought how sturdy and prosperous and Swiss she looked, and he realised that he didn’t know what she was thinking, how difficult it was to know what people were thinking. He shook hands with Gunter, her third husband, and thought, ‘She has had three husbands, but what a respectable woman she is.’

  The moment Celia Hargreaves entered that sad little room, the atmosphere changed. It was as if the sun had come out. She had presence. She had an indestructible elegance to which her daughter could never aspire. Her skin was crossed by a thousand lines now; she had a limp; she walked with a stick; but all eyes were upon her. It seemed as if perhaps all was not hopelessness and gloom, that life would one day be worth living again.

  The eeriness of the morning made Lampo look frail. It had never been possible to imagine him as a small boy, and it had always been difficult to think of him becoming an old man, but that day … no, he wasn’t quite an old man yet, but Henry could see in him the old man that he would become.

  There were other people in the room whom Henry didn’t know, but none of them were actually close friends of Toss— Nigel’s. There were colleagues from the world of pensions and finance. There was a representative of Dalton College. There was an official mourner from the Conservative Party. There were two representatives of Harlequins Rugby Club.

  Among those not present were Nigel’s son Benedict, long dead but not forgotten; Martin Hammond, who had shared a bitter electoral battle with Henry and Nigel in Thurmarsh; and Nigel’s cleaning lady, Viv, who had found him hanging from a beam at the top of his stairs, and had been a quivering wreck ever since.

  It was a great relief to everybody when it was time to move through into the chapel. It wasn’t large and it was far from full. Everyone in there must have shared in the feeling that Henry had – an embarrassment at the paltry attendance, to mourn a man who had been a rugby international and a Member of Parliament.

  Sometimes one can drive without being conscious of where one is going. One is lost in one’s thoughts and frightened to discover that one has negotiated seven miles of road, three roundabouts and two sets of traffic lights perfectly safely without being conscious of doing so. It was the same with the hymns and prayers that morning. Henry wasn’t conscious of standing and sitting, of closing his eyes and opening them, of singing the words, almost in tune with everybody else. He was back at The Old Manor House, remembering the moment when he had come face to face with Nigel Pilkington-Brick, his moon face distorted, and a live chicken in each hand. Nigel had dropped the chickens to the ground, where they had picked themselves up and run away. They hadn’t been bad judges. It had been a painful scene. Only later had Henry thought about the devastation they would have found on their return from Spain, if they had really been away, piles of dead chickens, blood and shit and feathers everywhere, flies in their hundreds and a disgusting stench.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ Henry had asked, before the two chickens had even reached safety.

  ‘Why? Why? You ask why?’ Nigel had replied. ‘Because I hate you, of course. You’ve destroyed my life. Oh yes you have. You were my fag. Little Henry. My fucking fag, for God’s sake. I was head of bloody house. You were a little oik, for God’s sake. You were a Northern hick, and I came from one of the best families in England. To find that counts for nothing. You’ve had a colourful career. I’ve sold pensions. I don’t have any talent outside sport. I sold sodding pensions for forty years. And you refused to buy one. Laughed at me. Called me Tosser. Tosser this, Tosser that. You smug bastard! Oh yes, boring bloody Tosser and his fucking pensions. Every time you called me Tosser I hated you more. Every time you refused to buy a pension I hated you more. You coveted everything I had. You married my first wife. You made my son love you. You knew I didn’t want to become Member of Parliament for that sodding bloody dump Thurmarsh. I was being groomed for higher things. You made sure I won. You made sure there were no higher things. You ruined my political career. You bastard! You didn’t do much for my second marriage either, did you? You never liked Felicity. You never helped her. Not a bloody finger did you lift to help us. You made us feel guilty over Ben … oh how you rubbed that in … and then … and then … you offered me a job! Me, Head of House, working for my fag. Oh yes, that rubbed it in, didn’t it? And haven’t you been wonderful? Oh, aren’t you wonderful? The people’s sodding chef. Fucking hell. Oh and the lovely Hilary, aren’t you lucky? Aren’t you just so smug? And now you’ve stolen my daughter. She regards you as her father now. You’ve had everything off me – my family, my life, and you ask me, “Why have you done this?”!’

  Henry would never forget a single word of that diatribe. He could remember exactly how far Nigel was through it when Mrs Scatchard arrived upon the scene in his/her nightdress, so lacking in make-up that Henry had felt that somebody must recognise him as Bradley, though in all the drama nobody did.

  At the end of the speech, Nigel had begun to cry. That had been the worst thing of all, to see those great shoulders shaking, and to hear those last tearful broken words – ‘You won’t tell Lampo, will you?’

  Dear God!

  Henry forced himself away from that awful night, back to the chapel, and found, to his astonishment, that the service had just come to an end.

  A small wake had been arranged by Camilla, in an upstairs room in a pub by the river. They all stood outside the chapel, discussing how to get there, and the sun burst through the mist in all its tactless glory.

  Everyone except Felicity went to the wake. She told Henry that she didn’t feel up to it, and he had again the strong feeling that she was elsewhere, her body was empty and it had to hurry back to be filled.

  The room was too large, really, for the number of people, but it didn’t seem to matter. The mourning was over. Tongues were loosened. Everyone was hungry and thirsty.

  Celia Hargreaves was helped into a seat, and given a plate of canapés and a glass of wine. She signalled to Henry to sit beside her.

  ‘Dear Henry,’ she said. ‘What a success you’ve turned out to be.’

  ‘Success! I don’t know about that,’ said Henry with a sigh.

  ‘Oh, but you have. I’ve enjoyed it all so much.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  That did make Henry feel better, although he felt ashamed of feeling better.

  ‘Why have you not told the truth about why you sacked Nigel? Why have you allowed the press to vilify you?’

  Some of the press had portrayed Henry’s decision to sack his old Head of House as the last straw for the fallen hero. Henry had refused to give the real reasons, despite all the speculation. He had taken refuge in phrases such as, ‘He just wasn’t up to the job any more.’

  ‘Because I’m ashamed,’ said Henry. ‘Ashamed of my part in his downfall. Ashamed for him, for what he said and did that night. It’s to die with him, not to be broadcast.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Celia Hargreaves, and Henry felt that perhaps she was the only other person apart from Hilary who did. ‘You’re a good man, Henry.’

  Henry smiled.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘do you know I think I probably am. I think what I am is a good man, but not good enough.’

  Mrs Hargreaves smiled and nodded.

  ‘Poor Henry,’ she said. ‘That’s not a recipe for peace of mind.’

  ‘You knew it was him doing it, didn’t you?’ said Camilla. ‘That’s why you didn’t want me to be part of the trap.’

  ‘Apart from the fact that you were in Venice. No, I wasn’t sure it was him. I thought … I even hoped … that it might possibly be Felicity.’

  ‘Felicity!!’

  ‘She presents herself as so feeble, but is she really? And hatred gives enormous strength, Camilla. Enormous. I know, it sounds ridiculous now, but, yes, I hoped it might be her. After all, there are depths to her that we have no knowledge of. We have seen nothing that would
entrance a Brazilian heart specialist.’

  ‘How did you come to suspect either of them?’

  ‘Well, I realised with a shock … a dreadful shock … that it wasn’t Bradley. So I started to wonder who else might hate me that much. I began to see that Nigel could. I began to see how it all might be, from his point of view. I began to see the essence of what he said that night, which thankfully you didn’t hear.’

  ‘Kate’s told me roughly. It was horrible. Simply not true.’

  ‘Oh yes it was. Distorted, very distorted, but a distortion of the truth. In books it’s always the least likely person who does things. In life it’s usually the most likely. And I remembered being told that there were farmers in Felicity’s family. The alliteration stayed with me. I remembered also that Nigel had talked of going to a big family do, which was why he couldn’t come to the country one weekend. I didn’t know whether it was genuine or just an excuse, but then I learnt that the people at the farm that had the false Happy Fields name board had recently celebrated their silver wedding. I asked them for the list of guests. Nigel and Felicity were on it. They were also known by the ghastly owners of the real Happy Fields in Kent. The wife is Felicity’s sister. So different. So I was pretty sure that it must be one of them. Oh I am thankful, Camilla, that you weren’t there to see your dad that night.’

  ‘Well, of course it would have been awful, but … don’t forget, I haven’t regarded him as my dad for a long while. You’re my dad now, Henry.’

  Henry kissed her warmly on both cheeks.

  ‘You see,’ he said. ‘Nigel was speaking the truth.’

  Henry exchanged a few polite words with Nigel’s rugby colleagues, with the man from Conservative Central Office, and with the deputy headmaster of Dalton College, but quite soon they all took their leave, with relief, and to everyone else’s relief. Now at last they could stop talking about Nigel. They could talk, less emotionally, about themselves, about each other, about the future. After all, that is how funerals work.