by David Nobbs
That afternoon, Henry bashed out his story.
Mr Gunnar Fridriksen, from Iceland, likes Thurmarsh [he wrote]. In particular, he likes our grime!
Grime gives the buildings real atmosphere, he avers: ‘We just do not have this grime in Iceland. Iceland is so clean, so new.’
Another aspect of our life which wins praise from Mr Fridriksen, who runs an old people’s home in the Icelandic capital, is our draught beer. ‘It’s an acquired taste,’ he jokes. ‘I have acquired it!’
Mr Fridriksen, aged 43, also likes our gardens – front and back.
The kindness of the ordinary man – and woman! – in the street is another source of praise from the blond Icelander.
And he enjoys our toast. In fact, when he goes home Mr Fridriksen will take a very practical souvenir for his wife. Yes, a toaster!
The unprepossessing news editor read the story in grim silence.
‘We’ll make a journalist of you yet,’ he said.
That evening, at number 66, Barry Frost bolted his liver and bacon, hummed that his desert was waiting so fiercely that he sprayed rhubarb crumble over his fellow ‘businessmen’, said, ‘Dress rehearsal tonight,’ and handed them all tickets for the first night. Liam’s shining face reddened with excitement. Norman Pettifer talked about Sibyl Thorndike’s St Joan. Cousin Hilda affected disapproval, but Henry sensed that she too was excited.
He looked at two flats that evening, but they were awful. He felt like going to the pub, but hurried home and watched Come Dancing with Cousin Hilda. Half of him affected lofty scorn. The other half danced to exotic Latin-American rhythms with Helen Cornish, who had sewn all the sequins herself.
On Tuesday he finished his calls quickly, bought the first edition of the paper and had a quick beer in the Pigeon and Two Cushions. There it was, on page 5, under the headline ‘He likes our grime’. Three other customers had early editions. One of them said he’d have fancied Ginger’s Delight in the one forty-five at Beverley if racing hadn’t been snowed off. Another said, ‘We should bomb that bugger Makarios.’ None of them said, ‘By ’eck, there’s an Icelander here likes our grime.’
He lunched in the canteen. He announced that he was looking for a flat. Ginny said, ‘There’s a flat to rent in my house.’ Helen said, ‘That’d be cosy.’ Gordon stared glumly at his toad-in-the-hole and said, ‘He was a well-nourished man of average height.’ Henry told Ginny that he couldn’t see the flat that night. He was seeing The Desert Song. Ginny said she was reviewing The Desert Song. Helen said, ‘That’ll be cosy.’
The foyer of the Temperance Hall, in Haddock Road, was drab, draughty and bare save for admonitions against drink. But they had arranged to meet Barry Frost there after the performance.
Cousin Hilda and Mrs Wedderburn looked flushed by their exposure to the wanton world of show business. Liam O’Reilly looked exalted. Norman Pettifer looked vaguely disgusted, as if disappointed not to have seen Edith Evans.
Ginny approached them. Henry noticed for the first time that her legs were slightly bowed.
Why should he feel ashamed of Cousin Hilda and her ‘businessmen’ in the presence of this bow-legged future war correspondent? And why should he feel ashamed of this bow-legged future war correspondent in the presence of Cousin Hilda and her ‘businessmen’?
‘Are you going to the pub?’ said Ginny.
‘Certainly not,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘I’m proud to say I’ve never been in a pub in my life.’
‘Then how do you know you’re right to be proud you’ve never been in one?’ said Henry.
His belief that he’d scored a debating point lasted two seconds. Cousin Hilda said grimly, ‘Because I’ve seen what it’s done to people who have been in them.’
Liam looked back wistfully, towards the hall. He’d found things easier to deal with, in there.
Barry Frost appeared, smiling broadly. Henry introduced him to Ginny. There was silence. Neither Henry nor Ginny could bring themselves to give praise. Nobody else realized that they were expected to.
‘Well, come on, what did you think of it?’ said Barry Frost.
‘Grand,’ said Liam. ‘It was just grand.’
Good old Liam, thought Henry, and then he realized that Liam meant it.
‘Very nice,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘Especially the women. They were hardly stiff at all.’
‘I see,’ said Barry Frost.
‘Well, not you,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘The others. They didn’t seem to know what to do with their hands.’
‘The scenery was attractive,’ said Norman Pettifer.
‘It didn’t wobble nearly as much as it did when the Baptist Players put on Noël Coward’s Blythe Fever,’ said Cousin Hilda.
‘I’m a bit deaf,’ said Mrs Wedderburn, who had become Cousin Hilda’s friend since Cousin Hilda’s other friend, with whom Henry had shared two Christmasses, had died. She was short and stocky and had a thick bandage round her left leg. ‘I heard every word you said. I thought you and the prompter were the clearest of all.’
‘Thank you,’ said Barry Frost.
‘I admired your presence of mind when the door fell down,’ said Norman Pettifer. ‘You just opened the hole in the wall and stepped over the door as if nothing had gone wrong. I don’t think Johnny Gielgud could have carried it off better.’
‘Thank you, Norman,’ said Barry Frost. ‘Well, you’ve all made my evening. Who’s coming to the pub?’
‘Really, Mr Frost,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘In front of the boy.’
‘Boy?’ said Henry. ‘I’m nearly twenty-one. I’ll tell you what you’d find in a pub, Cousin Hilda. Human warmth. Friendship. Laughter. Fun. Come on, Ginny, love.’
On Wednesday, January 25th, an inquiry set up to find ways of cutting the spending of the National Health Service reported that more money should be spent. Compulsory road tests were introduced for pre-war cars. Henry woke up thinking warm, erotic thoughts about Ginny Fenwick. She was big, warm and lovely. He’d have gone back with her last night if Norman and Barry hadn’t been with them. Tonight he’d take a flat in her house. A new life was beginning. He was getting stories in the paper. He’d drink less, and work harder. Every night he would make love to Ginny Fenwick. Her eyes would shine with happiness.
He wanted to make people happy. He wanted to make Cousin Hilda happy. It was a source of great unhappiness to him that he regularly made her unhappy. He dreaded breakfast.
‘I suppose you were drunk again last night,’ she said grimly.
‘I wasn’t. It was Mr Pettifer knocked the milk bottles over.’
‘Grown men don’t tell tales.’
‘He wasn’t drunk either. He slipped on the icy step.’
The breakfast porridge could have been used as cement for the bricks of spotted dick in the house that Cousin Hilda’s cooking built.
Liam entered the basement room next. A trace of the night’s wonderment still hung about him.
‘Grand morning,’ he said.
Barry Frost grunted his greetings. Last night he’d been a showbiz personality. Today he was a tax inspector.
Over his second cup of tea, Norman Pettifer said, ‘It’s been a dull week so far. Cheddar, Cheddar, Cheddar. I hope today’s different. It’s discouraging when you pride yourself on the widest selection in the West Riding, and all you’re asked for is Cheddar.’
‘Don’t you know what sort of day it’ll be?’ said Barry Frost. ‘Has your uncanny talent for cheese prediction deserted you?’
‘Feeling let down after the first night?’ said Norman Pettifer. ‘I read in a biography of …’
‘I’m warning you,’ said Barry Frost. ‘If you mention Sibyl Thorndike or Johnny Gielgud I’ll shove this cup right up your arse.’
‘Mr Frost!’ said Cousin Hilda.
Do, thought Henry. Give me a story. Tax inspector charged with assault after prominent local cheeseman hurt in Spode backside horror during post-theatre fracas.
No, thought Henry. I’m a kind-hearted
humanist. I want people to get on well. I don’t want them to be fodder for my career. Oh my god. Perhaps I shouldn’t have become a journalist.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Barry Frost, leaving abruptly and banging the door behind him.
‘Show business!’ said Cousin Hilda.
‘I thought it was grand last night,’ said Liam. ‘I thought it was the best thing I’ve ever seen in me life.’
The flat consisted of half the ground floor of a detached 1920s mock-Tudor house in Winstanley Road, which ran north through hills dotted with desirable residences on the edge of the town. Ginny had the half of the first floor which was directly above it.
He was shown round by the man from Bulstrode and Snotley. The flat comprised what had originally been the living-room and kitchen. Half the kitchen had become a cramped bathroom. In the now tiny kitchen there were servants’ bells in a glass case. They didn’t go with the formica table-top and work surfaces. The living-room had been divided by a plasterboard wall into a compact living-room and tiny bedroom. One half of the French windows stood right in the corner of the living-room, and the other half stood right in the corner of the bedroom. The effect was grotesque. The flat was cramped, ill-proportioned and drearily furnished. He took it.
He invited Ginny out, to celebrate. They walked to the Winstanley, a large, mock-Tudor pub where at lunchtimes mock-sophisticated businessmen ate mock-turtle soup. The large lounge bar was awash with varnished tables, brown Windsor chairs, horse brasses, hunting scenes, tartan shields, and maps of the clans. The bleak, tiny public bar had been designed, successfully, to repel trade.
They drank glasses of Mansfield bitter. He ran his right hand briefly up her large left thigh. How lovely she was. It didn’t matter that her lips were too thick, her nose too splayed, her complexion too red. She was Ginny Fenwick, warm-hearted lover, fearless war correspondent, enveloping earth-mother. They had three more drinks, and he decided that he didn’t want to be enveloped just then. Not yet. Not till he’d moved in.
They caught a trolley-bus into town.
‘They’re ending the trolley-buses next year,’ said Ginny. ‘“Progress.”’
The doomed trolley-bus hissed smoothly through areas increasingly less prosperous as it dropped to the junction with York Road.
‘Where shall we eat?’ asked Henry. ‘The Shanghai?’
‘Oh not the Shanghai!’
No. Those awful glutinous curries. And Helen might be there.
The trolley-bus stopped briefly outside Fison and Oldsworthy’s– the place for screws.
‘I don’t know anywhere, apart from the Shanghai, except the Midland Hotel, and I can’t afford that,’ he said.
‘There’s Donny’s Bar,’ said Ginny. ‘It’s upstairs at the Barleycorn. Steak and chops. Nothing inspired.’
‘That’ll be cosy,’ said Henry.
‘Join us,’ said Helen.
‘Please do,’ boomed Denzil. ‘We’ll have some civilized conversation and pretend we’re in a civilized world.’
Donny’s Bar was a long, narrow room with tables along walls of false stone. Henry and Ginny stood in the middle of the room and talked in low voices.
‘We’ll have to, won’t we?’ he said.
‘Oh yes!’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘What I said,’ said Ginny. ‘We’ll have to join them. That’s clear.’
‘Well, we will. I mean, it’d be rude not to. Wouldn’t it?’
‘Oh yes!’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘What do you mean, “what do you mean by that?”?’ said Ginny. ‘I mean what I say. Yes, it’d be rude not to join them. And it’d be even ruder to stand here for half an hour, debating whether to join them. So let’s join them, since it’s what we all want so much.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Henry.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ said Ginny.
They joined them. Henry throbbed with desire for Helen.
‘Henry’s just taken a flat in my house,’ said Ginny.
Oh my god, so I have, thought Henry. ‘Where’s Ted?’ he said, half hoping she’d say, ‘We’ve broken it off,’ half hoping she’d say, ‘Sending out invitations to the wedding.’ ‘On a story,’ she said.
Cardboard cocktail was followed by medium-rare cardboard with sautéed cardboard and fresh garden cardboard, garnished with cardboard rings and half a grilled cardboard.
‘Even in the gastronomic desert that is Thurmarsh, this could hardly be called an oasis,’ said Denzil.
It rankled when a southerner said such things, especially a limping homosexual southerner with a hand-carved Scottish walking-stick, a high-pitched voice, and mottled skin stretched across his cheekbones like old parchment.
‘You enjoy being superior and mocking about everything, don’t you?’ said Henry.
‘I’m impossible,’ said Denzil. ‘Hadn’t you heard?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘Often, from you. You seem to think if you say you’re unpleasant it gives you carte blanche to be unpleasant.’
‘I think you’re a puritan at heart,’ said Denzil.
Henry tried not to look at Helen. He tried to find Ginny attractive. Her face was even redder than usual and her nose was shining as she shovelled grub into her large mouth like an excavator. She was eating like that because she was hurt. His heart went out to her, but his genitals went out to Helen. He didn’t want to be a virile, sexual person if this was how it made you behave. He put his hand on Ginny’s knee, under the table. She kicked him.
‘You’re quiet tonight, Helen,’ said Denzil.
‘I only speak when I have something interesting to say,’ said Helen.
‘Good God!’ said Ginny. ‘You must live in perpetual silence.’
‘Thank you, Ginny,’ said Helen icily.
Ginny went redder still. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she said. ‘I honestly didn’t mean that to be bitchy. You shouldn’t judge everybody by yourself, Helen.’
‘And is that also not bitchy?’ said Helen, sweetly this time.
‘Yes, that was,’ said Ginny. ‘Sorry, Helen.’ Helen looked sceptical. ‘I mean it. I hate bitchiness. Life’s too short. When I said you must live in perpetual silence, I meant that most of us would speak very rarely if we waited till we had something worth saying.’
They waited quite a while, for something worth saying.
‘How are you getting on, Henry, with the fearsome Mr Skipton?’ said Denzil eventually.
‘I’m terrified of him,’ said Henry.
‘Me too,’ said Ginny.
‘He makes me uneasy,’ said Helen. ‘I can’t look at him.’
‘Poor Terry,’ said Denzil. ‘I don’t expect he’s got a friend in the world. He’s at exactly the wrong level of unattractiveness.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Ginny.
‘He’s almost deformed. If he was deformed, we’d like him. Almost everybody is kind to the deformed and crippled. Nobody is kind to the unprepossessing. Nobody laughs at the mentally subnormal, but everybody scorns the rather stupid. If one is going to be disadvantaged in life, it’s to one’s advantage to be very disadvantaged. Do you know what I think about Terry Skipton? I think there’s a heart of gold in there, which doesn’t know how to reach out.’
Could that possibly be true? Henry felt that he’d caught a glimpse of another Denzil Ackerman. Was that true of Denzil also? Was that why Denzil understood Terry Skipton? He had an uneasy feeling that he was surrounded by people who had hearts of gold and that he’d fallen in love with the only one who hadn’t.
The evening passed swiftly. Soon Denzil was saying, ‘Well, young things, it’s bedtime for clapped-out queers. Are you coming, Helen?’
‘I’ll stay, if that’s all right,’ said Helen.
‘Of course it’s all right. Isn’t it, Ginny?’ said Henry.
‘Of course,’ said Ginny.
‘Be good,’ said Denzil.
Am I going to have to pay for both wome
n? thought Henry.
A hand stroked his thigh. Whose was it? He stroked Ginny’s thigh. She kicked him. It must have been Helen’s hand. He could hardly breathe.
The waitress hobbled towards them on ruined feet. ‘Would you like coffee?’ she said.
‘Please,’ said Helen.
‘No, thank you,’ said Ginny. ‘I must be getting home.’
‘I’d like coffee,’ said Henry.
‘Well you stay and have some.’
‘But I’m taking you out.’
‘Well, thank you. Good night.’
‘But we’re celebrating my moving into your house.’
‘What a delightful prospect. Look, I’m tired. I need my beauty sleep more than some people.’ Ginny blushed. Helen didn’t. ‘Are you coming or not?’
To do Henry credit, he did try to stand up. In vain.
‘I want my coffee,’ he said.
‘Good night,’ said Ginny Fenwick.
Henry and Helen gave each other meaningful looks. Their coffee came.
‘This coffee’s undrinkable,’ said Helen. ‘Come home with me and I’ll make you some proper coffee.’
He wasn’t going to miss his chance this time. He called for the bill.
‘Let me pay my share,’ said Helen.
‘No. I insist.’ Let nobody say he was mean.
‘I earn as much as you.’
‘Oh all right, then.’ Let nobody say he was obstinate.
The waitress hobbled over with the bill.
‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Two coffees? What about our meals?’
‘Mr Ackerman has paid for all of you.’
‘I bet you wish you’d insisted a bit harder now,’ said Helen.
In the taxi she turned to him, rather disconcertingly, with her mouth opened wide in readiness, like a fledgling expecting food. They explored each other’s lips and mouths. Kissing that superb orifice was everything he’d hoped. He felt as virile as a volcano. He put his left hand on the right cup of her bra. She removed his hand. ‘Think of the driver,’ she whispered. How unexpectedly considerate she could be.