by David Nobbs
‘I think it was pretty rotten of you to remind Blin that she called you an oik,’ said Diana. ‘I think that was a bit oiky.’
‘Diana!’ said Dr Hargreaves.
‘I don’t agree,’ said Paul. ‘I mean you might forgive somebody for calling somebody an oik, if they were an oik, but not when they called you an oik and your father’s a famous test pilot, even if they did knock you off your stupid horse.’
‘Paleface was not stupid,’ said Belinda Boyce-Uppingham, tossing her head, perhaps in sympathetic imitation of her erstwhile mount.
‘I don’t agree,’ said Diana. ‘It doesn’t matter if you call somebody an oik if they obviously aren’t, but if they are it’s unforgiveable. Henry obviously isn’t, so Blin’s forgiven.’
‘I think this is becoming a rather silly conversation,’ said Mrs Hargreaves. ‘I think we’re all a little bit over-excited.’
‘I’d like to meet your father, Henry. I hear he’s fearsomely distinguished,’ said Dr Hargreaves, not without a trace of smugness, as if he knew that Henry’s father would have the utmost difficulty in being as distinguished as he was.
‘What is all this about your father?’ said Belinda Boyce-Uppingham.
‘He’s a famous test pilot,’ said Paul. ‘He tests all the new prototypes.’
‘Well who was that funny little man with the bandage?’ said Belinda Boyce-Uppingham.
‘He was not a funny little man. He was my father. And he’s dead,’ said Henry.
‘Your table’s ready,’ said the head waiter.
Henry found himself walking into the restaurant with the others, although he longed to run from the hotel. But he’d ordered, and social conventions are strong. Paul flashed him a look of fury, Belinda of scorn, Diana of encouragement. Dr and Mrs Hargreaves avoided his eye, which was easy, as he was avoiding everybody’s eye.
He found that he had ordered oxtail soup. Its heat made his nose stream. Paul sat glaring at him as he continually blew his nose. The noise was like an air-raid warning in this temple of starched white linen and watery food.
The soup was watery, the conversation formal and evasive, till Paul said, ‘For God’s sake stop blowing your nose.’
‘Paul!’ said Mrs Hargreaves, reproving Paul for not giving Henry an example of what gracious manners were.
‘Sorry,’ said Henry. ‘My cold’s come out.’
‘I wish you hadn’t,’ said Paul.
‘Paul!’ said Dr Hargreaves.
‘Well, honestly, he’s made me feel such an ass,’ said Paul. ‘He told me his father was a test pilot.’
‘Yes, well,’ said Dr Hargreaves, meaning, ‘You feel an ass? What about him?’
The waiter advanced slowly, like one bad smell approaching another. They remained totally silent while he cleared the plates, as if it was of vital importance that he should know nothing about the matter.
Henry screwed himself up to provide some sort of explanation.
‘Everyone at Brasenose called me Oiky,’ he said. ‘I hated being called Oiky. It wasn’t my fault.’
It was Belinda Boyce-Uppingham’s turn to go scarlet.
‘Isn’t embarrassment embarrassing,’ said Diana. ‘This is the most embarrassing meal I’ve ever been to.’
‘Shut up, Diana,’ said Paul.
‘It really was mean of you actually, Blin, to call Henry an oik, because he really isn’t,’ said Diana.
The waiter ambled over with food that might have been hot when it left the kitchens. Henry found that he had ordered le pâté de la maisonette (cottage pie) avec les choux du Bruxelles (watery) et les carottes (tasteless).
‘Waiter!’ summoned Dr Hargreaves, as the waiter wandered off.
‘Sir?’ said the waiter.
‘Tell the chef he does some amazing things with water,’ said Dr Hargreaves.
‘James!’ said Mrs Hargreaves.
The waiter sauntered off, mystified, across the half-empty room.
There was nothing Henry could have done to make matters worse, except to parody a clumsy young man in a restaurant by losing the top of the salt cellar and pouring all its contents onto his food. And that is exactly what he did.
‘Never mind,’ said Diana. ‘It’s horribly underseasoned actually.’
Henry scooped off what salt he could, and ate his meal bravely, although it did cause him to suffer a severe coughing fit just as his nasal flood had finally come to an end.
After the meal, as they were leaving the hotel, Diana pulled Henry back in.
‘I don’t think you’re an oik,’ she said, ‘Knocking Blin off her horse like that, and pretending your father was a test pilot. I think it’s a hoot.’
In the morning, there was a fire practice at Orange House. They descended down a canvas chute from their dormitory windows. South Africa dorm was on the second floor, and it was quite a long way down to the gravel. Runciman and Cranston held the chute rather high off the ground, and Henry took a nasty, scraping fall on the gravel.
‘Terribly sorry,’ said Runciman and Cranston in unison.
Henry caught sight of Paul, standing among a group of boys who had made their descent, grinning broadly.
‘I paid them to do that,’ said Paul. ‘Serve you right for yesterday.’
They wandered along the path that led to the extensive vegetable garden.
‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ said Henry.
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ said Paul. ‘Everyone will think your father’s a test pilot except me.’
‘But…’
‘I’m your friend, aren’t I?’
But for how long, thought Henry. Maybe Paul really was such a smashing bloke that his feelings wouldn’t be undermined by the power he had over Henry, but what about Henry? Would his feelings of friendship survive the guilt and gratitude that he would always feel in Paul’s presence?
The answer was ‘no’. The fourth and final link in the chain was therefore inevitable.
The opportunity arose the following day, when the English master, Mr Foden (Foggy F), set them an essay on the subject of ‘A building that’s important to me’. Seven long days later, the essays were handed back by Foggy F. He approached Henry, his slightly vacant face grave with disapproval.
‘Not an inspired effort, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘You look an imaginative enough boy, Mallender, but this is dead prose. Correct, organised, dead as a doornail.’
‘But, sir…’ Henry began.
‘Don’t argue, Mallender,’ said Foggy F. ‘You must be able to take criticism.’
‘But, sir…’
‘Silence. You haven’t shown any finesse in your approach. Imagine me, the reader, approaching your work. You’ve held nothing back. Your first paragraph reveals all, making the rest of the essay almost redundant. You should tempt me. You should lead me up a figurative garden path.’
‘But, sir…’
‘There are no buts about it, Mallender. Now Pratt here…’
Foggy F turned towards Mallender.
‘But, sir…’ began Mallender.
‘Don’t argue,’ said Foggy F. ‘I’m about to praise you. You, Pratt, you may sit there looking about as imaginative as a pumice stone, but, inside that sponge-like edifice which passes for your brain, you are actually thinking.’
‘Please, sir…’ said Mallender.
‘Silence, Pratt. You’ll get nowhere if you’re embarrassed by praise. You paint a picture of a world, a world of back-to-back terraces in industrial Yorkshire. The building you describe was jerry-built in the industrial revolution. It’s infested with vermin. It’s probably condemned by now. Do you live there? No. In your last paragraph you tell us why it’s important. Not the first paragraph, Mallender. The last. That house is important to you because you do not live there, because it makes you appreciate the running water, the fitted carpets, the electric light of the house where you do live.’
‘But, sir,’ said Henry. ‘I’m Pratt.’
‘Mallender, for the last time…
you’re Pratt? Well, why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I tried, sir.’
‘Well, anyway, Pratt, it’s a fine piece of work. As for you, Mallender, sitting there accepting credit for work you didn’t do, I hope you’re ashamed. Now, I want everyone to read Pratt’s essay. It’s a thoroughly imaginative…’
‘It isn’t imagination, sir,’ said Henry. ‘I lived in that back-to-back terrace.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Foggy F. ‘I understood your father was a brain surgeon.’
‘No, sir. My father’s a brain surgeon,’ said Paul Hargreaves. ‘His father’s a test pilot.’
‘Thank you, Fuller,’ said Foggy F.
‘My father isn’t a test pilot,’ said Henry. ‘I made that up. My father made penknives, and he died sitting on the outside lats.’
The relief was intense. The truth was out at last. The future wouldn’t be easy, but now his real life at Dalton College could begin.
The future wasn’t easy. The news of his true origins swept Orange House. As an hors d’oeuvre, on Friday evening, he met an old chum, the noddle down the porcelain bowl. This bowl was made by Bollingtons of Tunstall, just up the road from Etruria. The incident linked the little village school at Rowth Bridge with the great public school of Dalton, and might have been said to be the only evidence Henry ever received of true equality of opportunity in education, had it not been for the fact that, due to the primitive toilet arrangements at Rowth Bridge school, even that had been an extra-mural activity.
The main course took place on Saturday evening. Cranston and Runciman grabbed him as he was collecting his clean pants, vest and socks from matron’s cupboard under the stairs, with its overpowering smell of ironing. They led him out, through the back door, into the dark November night. A thin drizzle was falling, and there was a light wind from the east.
Waiting outside were Shelton, Holmes, Philpot A. E., Philpot W. F. N. and Perkins. Philpot A. E. and Shelton carried coils of rope. Henry was led into a small corner of the gardens. The gardener had complained that the gardens were too much for him, and Dopy S had agreed to make his task easier by leaving a section as a nature reserve. It was known as ‘The Dell’. They tied Henry to a tree in ‘The Dell’ with one of the ropes, the one carried by Philpot A. E. Then each boy gave him eight strokes with the other rope, doubled up. It hardly seems necessary to tell you that this was the rope carried by Shelton.
Eight strokes each from Cranston, Runciman, Shelton, Holmes, Philpot A. E., Philpot W. F. N. and Perkins. Fifty-six strokes with a doubled-up rope. They thudded into his backside until pain was an irrelevant word. He made no movement. He made no noise. He would die before he gave them the satisfaction.
They untied him, and led him back into the changing room.
‘Did you have anything on, under there, for protection? said Perkins.
Henry shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.
They made him take down his shonkers, and examined his backside. They seemed awed by what they saw.
‘Pull them up,’ said Holmes flatly.
They seemed curiously subdued, almost crestfallen.
Henry decided that he must trust himself to speak. He must take a leaf out of the Brasenose book.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
And for dessert? There was no dessert. The bullying of Henry ended as abruptly as it had begun.
Not everybody was nasty to Henry.
Nattrass wasn’t.
Nattrass summoned him to his study the next day.
‘I believe something happened last night,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Henry.
‘Sit down,’ said Nattrass.
‘I’d rather stand,’ said Henry.
Nattrass grinned.
‘You had your buttocks beaten to pulp by a group of savages,’ said Nattrass. ‘This house is a cess-pit. It hasn’t been cock house at anything since 1937. I want to clean it up. I want to turn it into a civilised, compassionate place. I want those bastards sacked.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Henry. ‘I want to forget it.’
‘Shove off, then,’ said Nattrass irritably, and added, in a kinder voice, ‘If you’re ever in any more trouble, come to me.’
Lampo Davey wasn’t nasty.
On Sundays the senior boys often had fry-ups, cooked for them by their fags on the little gas stove in the alcove between the changing room and the showers. There were three favourite meals. Sausage and egg with fried bread and beans. Bacon and egg with fried bread and beans. Sausage, bacon and egg with fried bread and beans. Lampo opted for bacon and egg with fried bread but without the beans. The absence of baked beans was his way of asserting his sophistication.
To Henry’s intense relief, he didn’t break the egg. Tosser would eat anything, but it grieved Lampo deeply if the egg was broken.
Lampo signalled to him to sit down.
‘I’d rather stand,’ he said.
‘Get me a coffee, then,’ said Lampo.
The last November light was fading from the Sunday sky. Tosser was out. It was cosy in the study, with its smell of warm pipes and fried bread.
‘Excellent,’ said Lampo Davey, picking his way daintily through his fry-up. ‘You’re quite a good cook.’
‘I’m not surprised you sound surprised,’ said Henry. He was surprised himself.
‘Priceless, this business of you being a slum kid,’ said Lampo.
‘It wasn’t a slum,’ said Henry. ‘It was sub-standard housing, that’s all.’
‘Priceless, anyway,’ said Lampo. ‘Much better than that dreary old test pilot. He really was a bore. I bet he had a handlebar moustache. I’m so relieved to see him go.’
‘I’m not too sorry myself,’ said Henry.
‘You worship Tosser, don’t you?’
‘He’s pretty good at rugger.’
‘You think the sun shines out of his arse. Well just as long as that’s your only interest in that part of his anatomy. Now I’ve shocked you again. I understand why now. The working class has always hated homosexuality. All right, thanks for a nice meal. Dismiss, little Henry.’
Lampo Davey smiled his slightly distant, slightly crooked smile, and to his surprise Henry smiled back.
Paul Hargreaves wasn’t nasty.
Paul hadn’t abandoned him. He hadn’t wavered when sentiment against Henry was running at its strongest. It seemed that although dreary to most people, Henry did have something, somewhere, that was not utterly and irremediably unattractive and boring.
On the Monday, two days after the beating, Henry took care during the Latin lesson of Mr Braithwaite (Busy B) not to make a mistake. Busy B ruled his class with a gymshoe of iron. The slightest mistake was rewarded with a sharp thwack across the backside. (It seemed to Henry that the most concrete thing which parents got for all the money they spent on private education was the knowledge that their loved ones would be beaten on the backside instead of the hand.) Henry sat, that morning, wary, alert, his backside throbbing, hoping that Busy B wouldn’t touch on his Achilles heel, the gerund and gerundive. All seemed to be going well until Paul was asked to provide the supine of rego. It is, of course, rectum. Never did the old music-hall gag surface with such painful results. It sent Henry into a panic, from which there was no chance of recovery. Busy B asked him the second person singular of the past perfect of audio. You had been heard. Auditus eras. Normally a doddle, thank you very much, sir, tickety boo. Totally beyond Henry in his sudden panic.
Thwack. The impact of the gymshoe, which normally produced only a moderately unpleasant stinging, seemed to implode inside his rear-end. He had an image of Tubman-Edwards, huge, grotesque, filling the window with his smirking. Then the hallucination was gone, and he struggled back to his desk, resolved to end the threat of Tubman-Edwards.
After dinner the following day (egg and bacon pie with carrots and boiled potatoes, followed by sponge pudding with chocolate sauce), Henry took Paul with him into the market place.
There, outside I
ronmonger’s the newsagent’s, they confronted Tubman-Edwards.
‘This is my friend Paul Hargreaves,’ said Henry. ‘This is my blackmailer, Tubman-Edwards. Paul, tell Tubman-Edwards about my father.’
‘The whole school knows that Henry’s father made pocket-knives and died in the outside lats,’ said Paul. ‘So there’s really no reason for Henry to worry about Shant knowing that he used to be called Oiky, and if you don’t give everything back well tell the whole school what an inflated sack of blackmailing yak turd you are,’ said Paul.
‘I can’t give it all back,’ said Tubman-Edwards, who’d gone the colour of putty. ‘I’ve sold the Gentleman’s Relish.’
‘The equivalent in cash value, in agreed weekly instalments, will do,’ said Henry.
‘Weekly?’ said Tubman-Edwards weakly.
‘Weekly,’ said Henry. ‘Otherwise I’ll get my hatchet-men onto you.’
Henry had a rare stroke of luck at that moment. Tosser Pilkington-Brick walked past on his way back from the Coach and Horses. He was in a genial mood, and smiled as he said, ‘Hello, Pratt.’
Tubman-Edwards gazed at Tosser’s large frame, and his face changed from putty to flour.
‘That won’t he necessary,’ he croaked.
Every Tuesday for the rest of that term and the next term, Henry met Tubman-Edwards in the market place and received his instalment.
Christmas was quiet, especially as the Porringers had gone to Canada. Cousin Hilda gave Henry a stamp album. Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris gave him a Meccano set and equipment for his railway – two trucks, a guards van, four straight rails, two curves, a set of points, a turntable, a box of assorted conifers for scenery, a station platform and six mixed passengers. Henry wasn’t interested in hobbies. He thought they must be a middle-class habit which he’d never acquired. Basic politeness demanded that he construct the odd Meccano monstrosity, stick the occasional desultory stamp in his album, arrange a conifer or two beside the track, even run a train once in a while when Uncle Teddy grew bored. He found Uncle Teddy’s enthusiasm for the railway surprising and endearing, and felt dreadfully guilty about not being able to respond more wholeheartedly. What Henry loved were his books, his wireless – there was Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warris now, in ‘Up the Pole’, with Claude Dampier and Jon Pertwee, but Paul Temple and the Curzon Gang was spoilt because he’d missed the beginning and he’d have to go back to school before the last episode – and, above all, his new craze, the films. He went whenever he could, seeing, among others, Scott of the Antarctic, The Winslow Boy, The Road to Rio, Green Grass of Wyoming, My Brother Jonathan and The Small Back Room. Auntie Doris even came with him once or twice, although she liked to miss the second feature, especially when it was Ma and Pa Kettle.