by David Nobbs
He tipped the driver generously, because of all the kissing.
Helen marched up the drive, as if she couldn’t wait to get into her house. She fumbled with the key, as if she was nervous.
Light flooded a neutral hall. She opened a door on the right, and entered ahead of him. He would be able to remember none of the contents of the room, except for Ted Plunkett.
‘Hello, darling,’ said Helen brightly. ‘I’ve brought Henry home for a coffee.’
On Thursday, January 26th, 1956, three million workers asked for pay rises, the big freeze was followed by floods, and Henry had his first page lead. He felt that his intro was a masterpiece of concentrated information and human interest. Imagine his chagrin when Terry Skipton read it aloud, scornfully. ‘A 76 year-old diabetic retired railway guard was making “a miraculous recovery” in Thurmarsh Royal Infirmary today after lying semiconscious in a rhubarb patch in near-zero temperatures for 10 hours only 300 yards from the council “pre-fab” where his invalid wife Doris and their Jack Russell terrier “Spot” were waiting anxiously for his return from a Darby and Joan hot-pot supper and whist drive.’ When the story appeared, the information was threaded through it with the parsimony of an investment manager hanging onto his bills till he got his second final reminders. Terry Skipton called him over and said gruffly, ‘Not a bad story, Mr Pratt. You’ll learn our style in time.’
Over his roast pork, roast potatoes and cabbage, with tinned pears to follow, Henry failed to tell Cousin Hilda that he had found a flat.
On Friday, January the 27th, the Queen flew over the Libyan desert on her way to Nigeria. Henry had battered cod and chips, with jam roly poly to follow, and failed to tell Cousin Hilda that he had found a flat.
At half past eight he slipped out, and went to the Devonshire in Commercial Road, three hundred yards up the hill towards Splutt, beyond the Chronicle and Argus building. Upstairs, on Fridays, there was a jazz club with a resident Dixieland band. There he met Colin, Gordon, Ginny, Ted and Helen. Ben had gone home to give the wife one.
Sid Hallett and the Rundlemen comprised trumpet, clarinet, trombone, piano, bass and drums. As Henry entered, they were playing ‘Basin Street Blues’. The room was large, dimly lit and crowded. Most people were standing. A buzz of conversation vied with the music. Sid Hallett jigged continually and smiled a lot. He had huge damp patches under his arms. Although not yet thirty, the trombonist and the bass players were developing paunches. All the band had pints of bitter in strategic places. Henry longed for fresh air.
He’d avoided speaking to Ted and Helen since Wednesday night. Now he tried to be casual, saying, ‘Oh! Thanks for the coffee, incidentally.’ He must have succeeded, because they looked rather sheepish. He thought longingly of the Upper Mitherdale fells.
He tried to have a quiet word in Ginny’s ear. It wasn’t easy, during ‘South Rampart Street Parade’.
‘Nothing happened on Wednesday night, you know,’ he said. ‘I just had a coffee. Ted was there.’
‘Ah! Shame!’ said Ginny.
‘I’m cured of Helen, Ginny.’
‘Congratulations. What has this to do with me?’
‘Well, I’m … er … moving into the house where you live.’
‘So?’
He was suddenly overwhelmed with affection for Lorna Arrow. He longed to see her. If only he wasn’t working tomorrow, on the football paper, The Pink ’Un. (When Denzil had seen everybody reading pink papers last Saturday evening, he’d said ‘Good Lord! Why are they all reading the Financial Times?’) He sighed deeply. Colin asked him what was wrong. He told him. Colin offered to work tomorrow instead of him. Glenda wouldn’t mind. She was all right, was Glenda. Henry telephoned Auntie Doris and invited himself to stay. She was thrilled. The band played ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’. Henry thought about sweet Lorna Arrow.
He crept into the house at 11.43. Not late. Not really. Not drunk. Not very. Better if he didn’t meet Cousin Hilda, though. She might not understand that you could have hiccups without being drunk.
She materialized at the top of the basement stairs.
‘Henry!’ she said grimly.
He decided to tell her that he’d found a flat, now, when he wasn’t drunk, not really, but while his courage was fortified by alcohol.
‘I’ve got something …’ He swallowed a hiccup brilliantly. ‘… to tell you,’ he said.
‘Come downstairs,’ commanded Cousin Hilda.
‘It won’t take …’ Another hiccup was skilfully stifled. ‘… a moment.’
‘I’m not having you waking the whole house with your hiccups.’
Damn!
‘You’re drunk again,’ she said, as they entered the basement room. The stove was low. There was a lingering aroma of potted meat.
‘You can have hiccups without being drunk,’ he said. ‘Babies have hiccups.’
‘You aren’t a baby,’ she said, as if that proved that he was drunk. He knew that there was a fault in her logic, but couldn’t pin it down.
‘I’m … er … I’m going away for the weekend,’ he said.
Cousin Hilda sniffed.
‘You went away last weekend,’ she said.
‘I’m going to see Auntie Doris.’ Cousin Hilda sniffed. ‘I mean … after all, she is my … I mean … my auntie … isn’t she? And I … er … I should have told you before, but I thought you’d be cross.’ The tension had cured his hiccups. ‘I met Uncle Teddy in the Shanghai Chinese Restaurant and Coffee Bar.’
Cousin Hilda sniffed twice, once for Uncle Teddy and once for Chinese food. ‘Why should I be cross?’ she said.
‘Well, not cross,’ he said. ‘Upset. I know you don’t approve of them.’
‘It beats me why you do,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been one for running people down, especially my own flesh and blood, but what did they ever do for you? The minimum. I gave you a good home and was ready to earlier if asked.’
‘I know. And I’m grateful.’
‘I didn’t do it for you to be grateful.’
‘I know. But you’ve got to let people be grateful if they want to. So I’m going to see Auntie Doris and tell her I saw Uncle Teddy. I’m going to bring them together again.’
‘Henry!’
‘I’d have thought you’d have thought the marriage tie was sacred.’
‘I do. But it’s none of your business, is it?’
‘They love each other. It’s just about the only good thing about them.’
‘Well, it’s your life,’ said Cousin Hilda.
‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘It is. Cousin Hilda? I’ve … er … I’ve found a flat. I’m moving in next weekend.’
Cousin Hilda sniffed. She said nothing. He felt that any remark would have been better than her silence.
‘Cousin Hilda?’ he said. ‘I love you. I love you very much.’
Cousin Hilda sniffed.
5 Meetings in Mitherdale
AS THE TRAIN clattered through the stolid Airedale towns out towards the high country, Henry’s spirits soared. On the southern edges of the dewy fields, banks of snow lay against the dry stone walls.
Few people got off at Troutwick. The air carried promises of spring. The breeze carried memories of winter. The sun scoffed briefly at the breeze’s warnings. A few drops of rain, mocking the sun, spattered onto the frost-broken streets of the quaint, narrow, stone and whitewash town.
The White Hart stood, white-painted in a dark, stone square, facing the awnings of the Saturday Market. The AA sign, with its two stars, swung squeakily. Behind it, the eponymous beast was frozen in wary pride.
The lobby was dark and leathery, its old oak table strewn with Country Life and The Field, its notice-board plastered with news of Conservative coffee mornings. It was steeped in a feudal respectability to which neither Auntie Doris nor the slimy Geoffrey Porringer had any right.
The receptionist had been hired for her snootiness, and gave full value. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ she said, as if the possibility was remote
and the ‘sir’ apocryphal.
‘I ’ope so, luv,’ said Henry, rediscovering the full Yorkshire tones that his southern schools had weakened. ‘I’m Henry.’
‘Do you have a reservation, Mr Henry?’
‘No, luv. I’m not a Red Indian.’
She didn’t laugh, and it did cross Henry’s mind that this might be because it wasn’t funny.
Auntie Doris emerged from the staff quarters behind the desk. She was in her mid-fifties now. Age wasn’t withering her charms. It was just making it more expensive to maintain them.
‘Henry!’ she cried.
‘Auntie Doris!’
They embraced. It was like kissing an oil painting. Her hair was blonder than ever. Henry threw the receptionist a triumphant glance, which would have been more effective if he hadn’t been covered in Auntie Doris’s lipstick and powder, so that he looked like a clown in a decadent thirties nightclub in Berlin.
Geoffrey Porringer, sensing emotion from which he had been excluded, oozed onto the scene, clasped Henry’s hands and said, ‘Welcome, young sir.’ Henry peeped surreptitiously at his blackheads. Still a forest of them. Excellent!
They entered the lounge bar, warm, full of antiques, bustling with measured market-day bonhomie. Auntie Doris served them, while Geoffrey Porringer sat beside him and drank.
‘We’ll have sandwiches this morning,’ he said, ‘because we’re working.’ We? I don’t see you doing much. ‘Tonight we’ve got the bar fully staffed, so we’ll have dinner.’
Conversation with Geoffrey Porringer wasn’t easy. Henry couldn’t bring himself to mention Lorna, up against whom the man habitually rubbed. He asked if his old teacher, Miss Candy, still drank there. It was a shock to learn that she was dead. People like Miss Candy didn’t die, any more than Matterhorns fell down. Her death made him feel sad. ‘Yes, she was a good old stick,’ said Geoffrey Porringer. He greeted each new arrival loudly. ‘Good to see you, young sir.’ ‘Trust the better half’s flourishing, young George?’ ‘Morning, Arthur. Can’t make up its mind, can it?’ It began to dawn on Henry that Geoffrey Porringer didn’t find it easy to fill the role of mine host, and had constructed a labyrinth of verbal camouflage to protect himself. It began to dawn on him that Geoffrey Porringer hadn’t wanted to be slimy, to have a nose festooned with blackheads, and that it was no more his fault than Auntie Doris’s that she hadn’t waited for Uncle Teddy. Perhaps his rubbing against Lorna had been accidental. These thoughts worried him. He’d feel the loss if he couldn’t continue to hate Geoffrey Porringer. Supposing becoming a mature adult meant sympathizing with everybody? Henry shuddered.
Geoffrey Porringer didn’t make disliking him any easier by leaping into action and doing his bit behind the bar. Conversation grew louder. Sandwiches arrived and were consumed. He must go and see Lorna. It’d be awful if, at their next meeting, she was serving him dinner.
He caught the bus to Rowth Bridge. It growled up the narrowing dale, towards the high fells, crossing and recrossing the laughing little river Mither. There were eight houses now, in the hamlet of Five Houses, where Sidney Mold lived, into whose sticky hand Henry had once dug his fingernails.
He grew nervous. What would he say to her? Did he want to take her to Kit Orris’s field barn? Did he want to marry her and open her eyes to a wider world? Did he want to marry her and live in Rowth Bridge?
The bus swung past the school, past the Parish Hall, and dropped him by the hump bridge. He walked briskly towards Lorna’s parents’ council house.
‘She’s out.’
The anti-climax was shattering. She couldn’t be. She had no right to be.
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Could be round the Luggs.’
‘Well could you give her a message? I’m staying at the White Hart. Could you ask her if she could meet me tomorrow morning? I could pick her up here round about ten.’
He wandered away. Should he call on the Luggs? He set off down the winding back lane towards their cottage. It was surrounded by more old cars, baths and prams than ever. He turned back abruptly, before anyone saw him. There were too many Luggs, and he particularly didn’t want to see Jane, built like a rugby forward, who’d been his childhood sweetheart before Pam Yardley, who’d been his childhood sweetheart before Lorna. If Lorna was ‘round the Luggs’, let her remain there undisturbed.
He heard horse’s hooves. Round the corner there came a magnificent creature, a real thoroughbred, perfectly groomed, highly strung, shining with health, a superb physical specimen produced by generations of careful breeding. The horse was nice too.
‘It’s Henry, isn’t it?’ The face smiled, a social smile from on high. Henry decided that he’d campaign to remove the Elgin marbles from her mouth and return them to Greece. He wished horses didn’t make him uneasy, wished she wasn’t so far above him, wished he could think of something better to say than ‘Yes. Hello, Belinda.’ He wished he wasn’t nine years old again.
‘Whoa, Marigold. Henry’s a friend,’ said Belinda Boyce-Uppingham, who had once called him an oik.
He heard a parody of himself say, ‘You’ve become a really beautiful woman, Belinda.’ Well, it’d be churlish not to admit it. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of thinking that he was still an oik.
‘What are you doing these days?’ she asked.
‘I’m working as a reporter on the Thurmarsh Evening Argus.’
‘Oh. Is that …?’ She couldn’t think of an adjective.
‘Interesting?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘I think so.’
He watched her brain whirring through all the connections, seeking new subject matter.
‘Have you seen Diana recently?’
He longed to say, ‘Yes. We made love last weekend.’ He hadn’t the courage. He said, ‘Yes. I saw her last week.’
‘Careful, Marigold,’ said Belinda Boyce-Uppingham. ‘Don’t frighten Henry. She’s all right, Henry.’
‘I’m sure she is. I’m not frightened.’ Why say that, when he longed to edge away from those towering, steaming, chestnut flanks.
‘Listen,’ said Belinda Boyce-Uppingham, with every semblance of real friendliness. ‘I have a nutty uncle near Thurmarsh. If I visit him and I can get away, will you show me the town? Are we on?’
‘Yes. That’d be smashing.’
‘Wonderful.’
He was getting an erection. She was so beautiful. Life was so unfair. If he made a move, would she leap off Marigold and lose her individuality with him on the muddy verge of the lane? Could he become the third D. H. Lawrence?
‘Well, lovely to see you, Henry,’ she said. ‘I mean that. So glad you’re … er …’ Again, she couldn’t find an adjective. What had she been searching for? Still alive? Not unemployable? Not totally physically repulsive? Getting erections at the sight of me?
When she’d gone, it was as if the light began to fade. He told himself that it wasn’t her fault that she was as she was. This was awful. Supposing, in one day, he found that he didn’t dislike either Geoffrey Porringer or Belinda Boyce-Uppingham? What would there be left to cling to?
He realized, to his relief, that the light really was fading from the steely winter sky. He walked over the hump bridge, past his old school, with its high Gothic windows and triangular gables. A car was approaching. He thumbed it. It sped him to Troutwick. By half past four he was asking the snooty receptionist for tea.
Auntie Doris brought it.
‘Auntie Doris?’ he said in a low voice. ‘I want to speak to you alone.’
‘Good Lord!’ she said. She thought swiftly. ‘Go to the Sun at six. I’ll try to slip out.’
The Sun was a dark, gloomy pub near the station. Auntie Doris, wafting in on a tide of scent, seemed totally out of place. She kissed him and bought him a beer.
‘Auntie Doris?’ he said, when they’d settled in a dim corner near the darts board. ‘I met Uncle Teddy.’ He fancied that she paled, under all the make-up.
&nb
sp; ‘Where?’
‘In Thurmarsh. In the Shanghai Chinese Restaurant and Coffee Bar.’
‘Good Lord. I … knew he’d come out, of course. How was he?’
‘He seemed all right.’
‘You talked, did you?’
‘Oh yes. I … er … I was a bit drunk, though.’
‘Was he … er …?’
‘There was a man with him. Derek Parsonage.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘He has blackheads.’
‘I’d need more to go on.’
He wished he hadn’t mentioned the blackheads. Did the subject have a fatal fascination for him?
‘Did he … er … say anything about me?’
‘No. It didn’t … you know … crop up.’
‘Ah. Did he … er … say anything about … anybody else there might be in his life?’
‘No.’
‘It didn’t crop up?’
‘No. But … er … there is one thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘He’s opening a nightclub.’
‘Oh? And?’
‘Well … he’s calling it the Cap Ferrat. I mean, he wouldn’t name it after your house and the place where you spent your holidays if there was somebody else, would he?’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘Auntie Doris? I suppose none of this is my business, really, but … I do love you, you know.’
‘I’m not sure I did know, no.’
‘Oh. Well I do.’
‘I’m not sure I deserve it.’
‘Well there you are. I do, anyway. And …’ He hoped she couldn’t see his blushes. ‘… obviously I wish you’d waited for Uncle Teddy and were still with him, because … you know … so anyway I thought I’d tell you anyway.’
‘You don’t like Geoffrey very much, do you?’
‘Well … you know.’
‘I like Geoffrey very much.’
‘Yes.’
‘I like Teddy very much.’
‘Yes.’
‘Life’s complicated.’
He judged it wise to leave it there. He’d sown the seed.