by David Nobbs
‘Did he fetch them, dad?’
‘Did he hell as like. He told me to piss off.’
One Saturday, Henry borrowed four books from the library and settled down for a momentous weekend’s reading. The four books were, as it chanced, all by Captain W. E. Johns. They were called Worrals Flies North, Worrals Flies South, Worrals Flies East and Worrals Flies West. He had read the complete canon of Biggles and Gimlet. Now for Worrals. He didn’t start the books on the tram. He wouldn’t waste them. He would wait till after tea.
At last tea was finished, and Ezra popped down to the Navigation for ‘a quick bevvy’.
He opened the front page of the first book. Now for a wallow.
The dreadful truth hit him almost immediately. Worrals was a girl. Captain W. E. Johns, the greatest writer in the history of the universe, wrote books about girls.
He turned to the wireless, that faithful friend who had never let him down.
There was a roar of traffic. An old cockney woman shouted, ‘Violets. Lovely violets.’ The traffic stopped, and the announcer said, ‘Once again we stop the mighty roar of London’s traffic, and from the great crowds we bring to the microphone some of the interesting people who are “In Town Tonight”.’
He found none of them interesting. He bitterly resented their good humour, their idle metropolitan and transatlantic chatter. Worrals was a girl, the weekend stretched before him like a desert, and still they prattled on.
He was alone. He had no friends. He was in a rat-infested back-to-back terrace which was steadily falling to pieces. It all swept over him. And the little voice which told him that he must fight piped up again. You always have to fight, it said. Stop for even five minutes and you’ll go under.
By gow, he would fight.
He got out a notebook, and pencil, and settled at the table. He’d show the world. He’d show Captain W. E. Johns. There’d be no girls in his books.
‘Chapter One,’ he wrote.
Inspiration failed him at this point in his endeavours. He thought he knew why. He must plan his book.
He decided to start by writing down the titles of his books. Then he would decide which one to write first, and begin.
Half an hour later, when Cousin Hilda, alias the sniffer, found him, he had listed six titles in his notebook.
1. Pratt Flies North.
2. Pratt Flies South.
3. Pratt Flies East.
4. Pratt Flies West.
5. Pratt Sweeps the Desert.
6. What Is Happiness?
Cousin Hilda looked round the room and sniffed.
‘Where’s our Ezra?’ she said. ‘He’s never gone down the pub and left you on your own!’
She poured a reservoir of disapproval into the word ‘pub’
‘He’s gone for a walk,’ said Henry. ‘He likes walking.’
‘Does he often leave you alone?’
‘Well, not for long.’
‘Does he ever go to the pub and leave you alone?’
He sensed that a total denial might not carry conviction.
‘He might go for a quick bevvy every now and then,’ he said.
Cousin Hilda sniffed.
She sat at the table and leant forward to talk earnestly to Henry.
‘Does he feed you all right?’ she said.
‘Oh aye,’ said Henry. ‘We had whale today. I like whale.’
‘Is he…does he treat you all right?’
‘Course he does. He’s me dad.’
‘Aye, I know, but…war’s a terrible thing, Henry. It upsets people. It upsets their nerves. Sometimes, people go…well, a bit funny. It’s not their fault, so if they did go a bit funny, there wouldn’t be any cause not to tell anybody about it, would there?’
‘No, Cousin Hilda.
‘Is he happy?’
Henry considered the question. It wasn’t the sort of thing you normally wondered about, in connection with your father.
‘I don’t think he likes not having a job,’ he said.
‘Does his having one eye upset you?’ said Cousin Hilda.
‘No. They’ve made a right good job of t’ false one,’ said Henry.
He hoped she wouldn’t stay too long. His dad was often unsteady when he got home.
‘It’s right nice of thee to call,’ he said, ‘but I’ve gorrus homework to do.’
‘Is that your homework?’ said Cousin Hilda, taking the notebook before he could stop her.
She read his list of titles.
‘Homework?’ she said.
‘We’ve gorra write a book,’ he said. ‘I’m planning me titles.’
‘Daydreams,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘Nay, lad.’
‘Daydreams?’ he said.
‘They’re all about you,’ she said.
‘That isn’t me,’ he said. ‘That’s me dad.’
It was easy, telling lies, once you got into the swing of it.
Cousin Hilda handed him the notebook.
‘You don’t loop your pees right,’ she said. It was her way of telling him that all the other letters were perfectly formed, but if she said it straight out, it might spoil him.
‘I’m going to set to,’ she said. ‘The whole place is in a right pickle. I don’t reckon it’s seen a duster since VJ day.’
Cousin Hilda took a square of old pyjamas from under the sink, examined it, sniffed, and went to the door to give it a good shake. Then she went upstairs.
Henry had to pretend to be continuing with his homework.
‘Ezra Pratt, known to all his friends as Prattles, stood on the steps of the Royal Aero Club,’ he began.
Every now and then he could hear her exclaiming with disgust, as she found more dirt.
Ten minutes later Ezra returned, slamming the door.
‘Cousin Hilda’s upstairs,’ said Henry hastily.
‘What’s she doing here?’ said Ezra.
‘Dusting.’
Ezra grimaced.
‘Is that you, Ezra?’ shouted Cousin Hilda.
‘Aye.’
‘I told her tha’s been for a walk,’ said Henry quickly.
‘What? Oh. Oh aye.’
Ezra looked at his son in astonishment.
Cousin Hilda came downstairs, carrying the pyjama duster as if it were a maggoty rat.
‘I just went for a spot of air,’ said Ezra.
‘Oh aye?’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘Three times round t’ bar of t’ Navigation?’
‘Just o’er t’ river,’ said Ezra. ‘Just round t’ roads.’
He sat in the rocking chair. It was his place as of right.
‘That rag rug’s coming unravelled,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘It’s a pig-sty. I could write my name in t’ dust on your wardrobe.’
Henry grinned, but only internally. His sudden talent for dissembling surprised him. He found it exhilarating.
What he was grinning at was the thought of Cousin Hilda writing in dust. He imagined her writing, ‘I’m filthy. Clean me,’ in the dirt on Uncle Teddy’s car.
‘Well done, lad,’ Ezra said, when Cousin Hilda had gone. ‘Well done. She’d have torn t’ bollocks off me if she’d known I’d gone to t’ Navigation.’
Only a few months ago, at Rowth Bridge, Henry would have been astonished to have been praised by an adult for telling a lie. But Rowth Bridge seemed centuries ago.
‘It’s lucky tha came back early,’ he said.
His dad snorted, rocked slowly in his chair, and began the longest speech he ever made in his life. Henry sat at the table, his notebook open, his pencil poised, as if he was taking the minutes of the meeting, although in fact he wrote nothing down.
‘Aye, well,’ said Ezra. ‘It seems I’m not welcome at t’ Navigation any more. I knew it spelt trouble when I saw t’ new name over t’ door. Cecil E. Jenkinson. I never trusted that E. It’s t’ end of an era, I thought. Still, fair dos, give him a chance, I thought. So I did. I gave him a chance. He says to me tonight, he says, “I’m not banning thee. Come here from time to
time, fair enough. But tha’s here all night every night.” Well, I were flambergasted. I said, “So what? Tha’s open, i’n’t tha? I’m entitled.” “Tha’s not entitled wi’out I say so,” he said. “I’m entitled to refuse to serve anybody.” “So what’s tha saying, then, Cecil?” I said. “I can but I can’t, is that it?” “It’s me other patrons,” he said. “They don’t see eye to eye wi’ thee.” “Aye,” I said, “I knew it were me eye. I lost that eye so they could be free to come into t’ pub,” I said. “Aye,” he said, “I agree, bur it’s nowt to do wi’ t’ eye.” He looked embarrassed. I’ll gi’e ’im that. “Patrons don’t like tha going on about t’ war,” he said. “T’ war’s over.” “Aye,” I said, “because I bloody fought it. That’s why it’s over. Don’t give me other patrons,” I said. “It’s thee. Tha’s never liked me.” That struck home, cos he hasn’t. And I’ll tell thee why. Cos I don’t like what he’s done to t’ pub, and he knows it. Well, I didn’t fight Hitler for five years so that he could put bright-green upholstery in t’ snug. “Tha’s never liked me,” I said. “I go away for five years and what happens? My place in t’ dominoes team gets taken. It’s a bloody disgrace.” “They couldn’t play a man short for five years,” he said. “Fair enough, Cecil,” I said. “Point taken, Cecil,” I said. “Bur I’m back now. Darts, fair enough. I’m a shadow of me former self wi’ one eye. But not dominoes. I played Sid Lowson last night,” I said. “I won six games end-away.” “Aye,” he said, “but I can’t split up a winning combination.” Sid Lowson, to his eternal credit, offered to stand down. I refused. “Thanks, Sid,” I said. “Much appreciated, but no. I don’t want to be the cause célèbre of a domino crisis. I couldn’t never represent this establishment again. There’s a clash of personalities, and that’s all there is to it.” But I never thought I’d be banned from t’ pub. Because that’s whar I am. Wharever he says. Banned. Well, I can’t go in there and say, “It’s all right, Cecil. I’m only staying twenty minutes and I won’t mention t’ war once.” Can I? Course I can’t.’
They sat in silence for a moment, a pale, emaciated embittered wreck with a glass eye and a pale, podgy, ten-year-old boy with a notebook and a pencil.
‘Sorry,’ said Ezra. ‘I didn’t mean to burden thee wi’ my problems.’
They spent Christmas Day at Cousin Hilda’s. Auntie Doris said, ‘Next year you must come to us. We insist.’
Cousin Hilda lived at number 66 Park View Road, Thurmarsh. It was a stone, semi-detached Victorian house on the town side of the Alderman Chandler Memorial Park. It had a bay window on the ground floor. Cousin Hilda owned the house. She had been a paid companion to a rich, autocratic, invalid lady. The family had disapproved of her dancing to this lady’s sour tune. The family disapproved even more when the lady died at Deauville and left Cousin Hilda several thousand pounds, a vast sum in those days, and not to be sniffed at even by Cousin Hilda.
Into her modest, but pleasantly situated house, Cousin Hilda crammed four paying guests. They paid one pound ten shillings a week for a bed-sitting room, breakfast, tea, supper and laundry. On Sundays they had dinner instead of tea. Cousin Hilda referred to them as ‘my businessmen’. They kept her occupied and solvent.
One of Cousin Hilda’s ‘businessmen’ was present that Christmas Day. He was Len Arrowsmith, a French polisher, and he believed in reincarnation. He had no family living, in recognisable form, although every holiday he went to see a giraffe in Chester Zoo. Also present was Cousin Hilda’s friend.
Cousin Hilda’s living quarters were in the basement, which received only a poor ration of daylight. They ate their Christmas dinner around a large, square table in a corner of the room, with bench seats along two sides. This was where the ‘businessmen’ ate. A little blue-tiled stove, with a front of four panes of blue glass, shone merrily. It was set in a blue-tiled fireplace. There were two armchairs, which sagged badly, and a dresser, on which there were several plates. All the plates were blue. Blue was Cousin Hilda’s favourite colour, being the colour of God, in her opinion.
At the back of this room there was a small, crowded scullery where Cousin Hilda slaved all day, cooking, ironing, washing clothes in a huge tub, with liberal usage of Reckitt’s Blue, and rinsing them through a formidable mangle.
Henry missed Rowth Bridge again that day. Not that Cousin Hilda didn’t do her best. They had roast chicken with all the trimmings, and Christmas pudding to follow. Henry got the threepenny bit. In Henry’s cracker there was a joke, which ran ‘What kind of ant waits on people? An attendant.’ Len Arrowsmith said that that was a good one. His dad was on his best behaviour. They listened to a programme that linked up English-speaking people right round the world. Then came the King’s speech. They stood up for the national anthem. Len Arrowsmith hummed it tunelessly.
Cousin Hilda’s friend’s left stocking developed a ladder which grew slowly longer as the day darkened.
They went for a short walk in the Alderman Chandler Memorial Park. The slit trenches remained. Three or four hardy children were playing on the swings and roundabouts, but the little cluster of animal and bird cages was empty. The glass in the old men’s shelter had been shattered in the Blitz, and had still not been replaced. They went back to Cousin Hilda’s and had tea and Christmas cake and then they played a card game in which you started with the sevens and had to go up to as far as the kings and down as far as the aces. Cousin Hilda’s friend couldn’t quite get the hang of it, but Len Arrowsmith revealed an unsuspected ruthless streak. His father was on his best behaviour. When Cousin Hilda’s friend reached up for her handkerchief, which she kept in her knickers, Henry looked up her thigh to see how far the ladder had got.
‘All over till next year,’ said Cousin Hilda as they left.
Thank goodness, thought Henry.
1946 began quietly. More footwear was promised soon for civilians. In the January clearance sales, boys’ school shirts were offered at 2/1d by the Thurmarsh and Rawlaston Cooperative Society. Gents’ merino vests and trunks were 2/- and half a coupon. There were plans to stamp children’s footwear to prevent parents pawning it, and complaints from housewives about the illogicality of aprons being on coupons when floor mops weren’t.
Henry spent the time quietly with his friends. He had many friends. He particularly liked the boy detectives, Norman and Henry Bones, on ‘Children’s Hour’, and there was an exciting serial called ‘The Gay Dolphin Adventure’ by Malcolm Saville. ‘Nature Parliament’ had begun, with Derek McCullough, Peter Scott and L. Hugh Newman. He loved this, and ‘A Visit to Cowleaze Farm’, although they both opened up a vein of painful nostalgia. But he would listen to anything. When they heard that Ezra’s father had died, Henry was in the middle of a talk on squash rackets, with recorded illustrations, by F. N. S. Creek. In the evenings he liked boxing, comedy and adventure. He listened spell-bound to Arthur Dancha of Bethnal Green v Omar Kouidri of Paris. He laughed at ‘Merry-Go-Round’ from Waterlogged Spa, Sinking-in-the-Ooze, at ‘Music Hall’ with Nat Mills and Bobbie, who said, ‘Well let’s get on with it’ and everybody laughed. They all had their catch phrases. Leon Cortez said, ‘There was this ’ere geyser Caesar,’ and everybody laughed. It seemed a shame to Henry to laugh at Shakespeare, just because he was so much worse a writer than Captain W. E. Johns.
He thrilled to Paul Temple and to ‘Appointment with Fear’.
These were his friends. He had no real-life friends.
Then, one dark, dismal, dank outside as well as in, electric-lit morning in early February, an incident occurred in Mr Gibbins’ class which was to have a profound effect on Henry’s social life.
Although Brunswick Road Elementary School had become Brunswick Road Primary School, it remained a stone, Victorian fortress, with high Dutch-style gables, a steep-pitched roof and green guttering. The walls and windows were high. There were three doors, for boys, girls and mixed infants. Beyond the infant level, boys and girls were still totally segregated.
Mr Gibbins’ classroom had bare
walls with peeling plaster. There wasn’t a lot of fungus. The desks were fixed to the floor by iron legs, and the seats were benches fixed to the desks by iron arms. Sharp corners abounded. On each desk there was an ink-well.
Absentees were Chadwick (cold), Erpingham (I forget), Lewis (flu), Barton (death of grandmother – genuine) and Pilling (death of grandmother – false – got idea from Barton).
Among those present were Mr Gibbins, Henry, Tommy Marsden, Martin Hammond, Ian Lowson (son of the peripheral Sid) and Chalky White, the West Indian.
They took a test each week, and changed places according to their results, moving to the front if bad, and to the back if good. Henry had risen rapidly to the back of the class.
Mr Gibbins caned them on the hand if they didn’t get seven out of ten for mental arithmetic, but the biggest bee in his bonnet was English grammar.
‘Today,’ he announced, ‘we’ll deal with subjects and objects. You might say that the subject of the lesson is subjects and objects, and the object is to cram as much knowledge into your thick skulls as possible.’
To be honest, the class did not look as if they would be very likely to say that.
‘Joking apart,’ said Mr Gibbins, to their surprise, ‘give me a sentence, Marsden.’
‘Six months,’ said Tommy Marsden from the front row.
‘Six months what, Marsden?’
‘Six months for nicking lead off the church roof.’
‘Come here, Marsden.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Tommy Marsden went forward and held out his hand. Mr Gibbins smacked it three times with the cane.
‘Let that be a warning to you all,’ said Mr Gibbins. ‘Give me a sentence, Cuffley.’
Norbert Cuffley, a goody but not a genius, adorned the second row from the back.
‘The teacher asked me to give him a sentence, sir,’ he said.
‘Excellent, Cuffley, if not wildly imaginative.’ Mr Gibbins scraped the sentence agonisingly onto the blackboard. ‘Now, what is the subject of the sentence, Pratt?’