The Complete Pratt

by David Nobbs

  When he came round, Ted was kneeling beside him anxiously and Ginny was holding a blood-soaked handkerchief to his nose. He was glad to see that Ted’s face also showed signs of damage. One eye was closing up.

  ‘You’ll be all right, kid,’ said Colin.

  Ben looked at his watch anxiously. ‘Time I was giving the wife one,’ he said.

  ‘Wife!’ said Gordon. ‘In the mouse house!’ He kissed Ginny, and hurried off to his returning wife. Ginny looked inconsolable. Henry, lying with his head on the cold stone, looked up at Ginny’s legs and dress and longed to put this to the test.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ted. ‘I’ve messed you up a bit.’

  ‘I asked for it,’ said Henry. ‘It was the wrong way to deal with it. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t still think Ted arranged those misprints, do you?’ said Helen.

  ‘Didn’t you, Ted?’ said Henry.

  ‘Of course I didn’t, you stupid prick.’

  ‘Ted’s wicked,’ said Helen. ‘He’s horrid. He’s a tease. But he wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  ‘If he found a spider in the bath he’d be sarcastic to it till it went away,’ said Ginny, and blushed at memories of Ted and baths.

  ‘Oh God!’ said Henry. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, Ted.’

  A taller, sharper, younger, less benevolent version of Neil Mallet emerged from the front bar of the Lord Nelson. His brother, the compositor. Henry’s eyes met Ted’s. He looked away. The sudden revelation of Neil Mallet’s guilt set his spine tingling and filled him with a curious sense of shame, which he didn’t wish to share with another human being. He hoped Ted would make no comment, but Ted said, ‘He’s envious’, forcing Henry to say, ‘Envious? Of me?’

  ‘I think he saw you as a natural ally,’ said Ted. ‘A natural friend. Another lonely, hopeless case, unable to strike up human relationships.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Henry.

  ‘Ah, but you aren’t, are you?’ said Ted. ‘You have the ability to inspire affection. When he realized that, he couldn’t resist his campaign of mischief-making.’

  ‘But he seemed as friendly as ever,’ said Henry.

  ‘Ah well,’ said Ted. ‘Ah well.’

  He wished Denzil hadn’t come too. As the taxi made its way to Winstanley Road, his face and body stung, his head throbbed, his blood explored painful places, his sensuality leapt and he felt a deep desire for Ginny. He felt that, if they had been alone, his predicament would have awakened her sexuality. The need to avoid pain from his bruises would have added salt to the stew of their love-making. Her soft, warm kisses on his swollen eyes would have been as nectar on a bee’s tongue. But Denzil had come too.

  His legs were still wobbly. They supported him, one on each arm, to the front door, across the hall, into his impersonal little flat.

  ‘I’ll make him some tea and hot food.’ Heart-warming words, but not from Denzil. Speak out, Ginny.

  ‘Oh. Right. Thanks,’ said Ginny. And off she went!

  He felt so tired.

  ‘Scrambled eggs do you?’ said Denzil.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You must eat.’

  ‘OK, then.’

  ‘Best I can do, with your measly stores.’

  So tired. Denzil clattered away, finding crockery. Upstairs, Ginny clumped about. Spring-cleaning? Barricading herself against bruised sex maniacs?

  Henry sat at the little formica-topped kitchen table and ate scrambled eggs on toast, with weak tea. He found it difficult to swallow.

  ‘Come on holiday with me.’

  The words drifted around inside his painful head, bumped meaninglessly against his bruised eyes, and finally impinged upon his consciousness.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on holiday with me. I see we’ve put down for the same fortnight. I want to show you Italy.’

  What? Why? Oh!

  ‘Well … er …’

  ‘Have you anything arranged?’

  ‘Yes, I … yes. Something arranged. Yes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What have you arranged?’

  ‘Oh … er … with my aunt. I’m going to Filey, with my aunt.’

  ‘You can’t turn down Italy with me for Filey with your aunt.’

  ‘I can. I have to.’

  ‘I have the offer of a villa in Amalfi.’

  ‘I have the booking of a boarding house in Filey.’

  So tired. Go, Denzil, please.

  ‘I thought you were going with your friend,’ said Henry.

  ‘Yes … well …’ said Denzil. ‘That’s over. We split up over a lost tie-pin.’

  ‘So tired.’ He realized that he’d said the words out loud by mistake. ‘Sorry, Denzil,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about your friend. Very sorry. And thanks for everything. But … er … I’d quite like to be on my own now.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Yes. Denzil? Thanks.’

  ‘Pleasure.’

  Suddenly the man’s speckled brown parchment skin was looming towards the limited field of vision left by his puffy eyes. The man was kissing him full on the lips.

  ‘Denzil?’ he said, in a quavering voice which seemed to come from a very long way away. ‘I really would prefer it very much if you never did that again.’

  Hundreds of miles away, almost as far away as Amalfi is from Filey, the door of his flat closed gently behind Denzil Ackerman.

  Henry limped into the office. Terry Skipton gawped at his black eyes and swollen nose.

  ‘Mr Pratt!’ he said. ‘What does the other feller look like?’

  ‘You’ll see in a minute.’

  ‘What?’

  Terry Skipton was not overjoyed to learn that two of his reporters had been brawling.

  Denzil had given Henry the films to review. ‘Review’ meant ‘Regurgitate the publicity material.’ He tried to bury himself in them. ‘Pairing sultry Italian siren Anna Magnani with craggy Burt Lancaster was a …’

  Denzil limped in. Henry blushed invisibly beneath his bruises. The surging blood explored new areas of pain around his cheekbones. He avoided Denzil’s eyes. ‘… risky idea, perhaps, but it’s a risk that comes off triumphantly. Set in a semi-tropical Gulf Coast town, The Rose Tattoo is …’

  Ted entered, arm in infuriating arm with Helen. Ted’s face was puffy, and he had one black eye. Henry approached him immediately.

  ‘I’m really sorry about what I did,’ he said. ‘I think you’ve been fairly amazing about it.’

  Ted looked embarrassed and grunted. Henry realized that he disliked having his basic good nature discovered. Helen blew Henry an ambiguous little kiss.

  ‘The tragic death of James Dean would make Rebel Without A Cause worth seeing even if it was a bad film. It isn’t. This study of American juvenile delin …’

  Ginny looked bleary, as if she’d been catching up on lost sleep. She rebuked Henry for not waiting for her. ‘I didn’t want people to see you with me. They might have thought you’d been beating me up,’ he explained. He realized immediately that she might take this as a comment on her size. He was glad she couldn’t see his blushes beneath the bruises.

  ‘… quency is a brilliant exploration of a transatlantic middle-class mal …’

  Henry tried not to look at Neil. He knew that Ted and Helen and Ginny were all trying not to look at Neil. Neil seemed to sense that something was up. He turned and looked at them all not looking at him. Henry’s spine tingled. ‘Your faces!’ said Neil. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘We had a fight,’ said Henry, in a shaky voice. ‘I accused Ted of sabotaging my stories with misprints. I had the wrong man, didn’t I? Ted doesn’t have a brother in the print room, does he?’

  The blood drained from Neil Mallet’s face. His mask of geniality faded. A gleam of hatred lit up his eyes. A snarl played cruelly round the edges of his mouth. Too late, the mask returned. Henry couldn’t look at him any more. ‘… aise. Dean plays a crazy,
mixed up …’

  Colin entered dramatically. He had two black eyes and a puffed-up face criss-crossed with Elastoplast. His right hand was heavily bandaged. Neil Mallet slipped past, out of their lives, a tormented ghost, with a pile of books tucked underneath his arm instead of his head. Colin hardly noticed him. He looked across the newsroom and smiled triumphantly, as if to say, ‘You see. I wasn’t making it up.’ The gap in his mouth had widened by a tooth.

  ‘You should see the other feller,’ he said.

  ‘Nasty one, I’m afraid, Mr Pratt,’ said Terry Skipton. ‘Motor cyclist killed in a collision with a lorry. Twenty years old. Name of Smailes. Lived with his family in Matterhorn Drive.’

  His nose had returned to normal, but there was still a little yellowy greenness round the eyes. He took a deep breath as he walked up the garden path, past two tiny landscaped ponds cluttered with gnomes, storks, windmills and tiny bridges. He rang the doorbell. The cheerful chimes sounded indecent in that house of grief.

  He found himself facing a comfortable woman in her late forties. She showed no outward signs of grief. His throat was dry. His stomach was churning.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you at a time like this, Mrs Smailes,’ he said. ‘I’m … er … I’m from the Argus. I… er… I’ve been asked to ask you one or two questions about your son. It won’t take a minute. Er … I understand he was quite a promising all-round sportsman.’

  Mrs Smailes had gone deathly pale.

  ‘Was?’ she said. ‘Was?’ she repeated on a higher note. ‘What’s happened to him?’

  There was a pained silence. Hard Man Henry joined Henry ‘Ee by gum I am daft’ Pratt, Podgy Sex Bomb Henry and all the other dead Pratts whose ghostly forms would stalk two paces behind him for the rest of his life.

  11 A Run on Confetti

  GRACE KELLY MARRIED Prince Rainier III of Monaco. After fierce border battles, Egypt and Israel agreed an unconditional cease-fire. The Archbishop of Canterbury accused Mr Harold Macmillan of debasing the spiritual currency of the nation by introducing premium bonds. Stanley Matthews, recalled at the age of 42, made all four goals as England beat Brazil 4–2. A dry spring gave way to a cold, wet summer.

  Seated at an outdoor table in the magnificent Piazza del Campo in Siena, on a golden September afternoon, Henry would wryly tell his homosexual companion, ‘I spent as much on confetti in the summer of ’56 as I did on French letters in the autumn of ’52.’

  So many modern works were included in the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition that Sir Alfred Munnings refused to go to the annual banquet. A frogman, Commander Lionel Crabb, was found drowned near Soviet ships while engaged on secret work during a visit to Britain by Messrs Bulganin and Krushchev. Mr and Mrs James Hargreaves requested the pleasure of the company of Henry Pratt at the wedding of their daughter Diana Jennifer to Nigel Timothy Anthony Pilkington-Brick, on Saturday, June 9th.

  Britain offered independence to the Gold Coast. It was revealed, a year after the event, that in May, 1955, 251 men had taken turns to go into a forbidden area to avert a crisis at Windscale Plutonium Factory at Sellafield. It was revealed, after eleven days of soul-searching, that Henry Pratt would attend the wedding of Diana Jennifer Hargreaves and Nigel Timothy Anthony Pilkington-Brick.

  A teacher who spoke on ITV about unruly conditions in secondary schools was sacked by the London County Council. In Cyprus there were reprisals against Britain after the hanging of two terrorists. Talks on the independence of Singapore broke down after the chief minister described Britain’s offer as ‘Like a Christmas pudding with arsenic sauce’. Len Hutton was knighted. The day before he left for the Diana-Tosser wedding, Henry received the heart-warming news that Mr and Mrs Basil Cornish requested the pleasure of his company at the wedding of their daughter Helen Marigold (Marigold!) to Edward Sampson (Sampson!) Plunkett, on Saturday, July 14th.

  At the tram stop that morning, Ginny looked dreadful. Her face was blotchy. Her eyes were red and runny. She gave her red nose a blow so gargantuan that he wanted to pretend he wasn’t with her.

  ‘I think I’m getting a cold,’ she said.

  He touched her muscular right arm. ‘Why’ve you been crying?’ he said.

  ‘It’s so stupid,’ she said.

  ‘They’ve invited you,’ he said.

  She nodded. Tears ran down her cheeks. She looked far too vulnerable to be a war correspondent.

  What a couple they’d make at Ted and Helen’s wedding: Henry still obsessed with the bride, Ginny still in love with the groom.

  Only one thing marred the perfection of the wedding of Diana Hargreaves and Tosser Pilkington-Brick, which took place not in Hampstead, but at Holy Trinity Church, Brompton, because that was where Diana’s parents had been married. Diana looked splendid in a picture gown of white satin, embroidered with diamante and drop pearls, with her tulle veil held in place by a high coronet of pearls. Tosser looked like a Michelangelo sculpture dressed by Savile Row. The three pages, scaled down editions of Tosser, looked charming in knee-breeches of Parma-violet satin and coats of cyclamen satin trimmed with silver braid. The hats and dresses of the female guests were wonderful to behold.

  Tease us no more, you cry. What was this one thing that marred the perfection?

  It was Henry. He felt absurd in his hired morning suit. The assistant had said, ‘You’re lucky, sir. You’re right on the edge of our range.’ ‘On the edge of your range?’ he’d said, determined not to be overawed. ‘So what happens to the gigantic, the obese, the minute?’ ‘People who … er … diverge from the norm to an abnormal degree cannot hire, sir. They have to have clothes made to measure,’ the attendant had said. ‘It’s the law of the market place, I’m afraid,’ he’d added, seeming not in the least afraid. ‘It’s one more example of the cruelty of an inequitable world,’ Henry had said: ‘“Oh, you’re rather handicapped. We’ll handicap you some more.”’ ‘Anyway, sir,’ the attendant had hurriedly repeated, ‘you’re lucky, as I say. You’re …’ ‘… on the edge of your range. Hanging on to the rim of normality. Not grotesque by a hair’s breadth. Terrific. Thank you!’ Henry had said.

  And so, although dressed in a morning suit at a gathering full of men in morning suits, Henry felt distressingly conspicuous as he approached the church, on foot. The rain had held off. There was a great crowd of bobbing hats. He caught a glimpse of a radiant Belinda Boyce-Uppingham. He saw many men whose large frames and moon-faces proclaimed them to be Pilkington-Bricks. And, with a surge of joy that astounded him, he saw Lampo Davey, Tosser’s study-mate at Dalton. Elegant, fastidious Lampo, for whom Henry had fagged. He’d had to rebuff Lampo’s advances. Lampo turned, and saw him and, to Henry’s surprise, Lampo’s face lit up also. There was a moment when they almost, instinctively, kissed. Two young Englishmen kissing each other in morning suits at a society wedding in 1956! Henry went cold all over, at the enormity of the escape. ‘Henry, good to see you!’ ‘You too, Lampo!’ ‘What are you doing now?’ ‘I’m a reporter on the Thurmarsh Evening Argus.’ ‘Delicious! Priceless! You’re too absurd.’ ‘What about you? Not still in Crete?’ ‘Oh, that. No. That was a mistake. The Cretans are absolute sweeties, but dreadfully basic. Opportunities for mime artists are minimal. No, I’m at Cambridge. Terribly banal.’

  The vicar’s voice rolled round the church like well-bred thunder. The congregation sang with suspicious fervour. Henry felt deeply irritated. Diana Hargreaves, whom he adored, was throwing herself away on the oaf who’d lost the match for England.

  He also felt worried. He was getting nowhere with women, yet he was having to resist the advances of Denzil, and Lampo had almost kissed him. Was he attractive only to men?

  Not quite. As the bells pealed out their joy over a grey London, and the guests slowly filed past Diana, kissing and praising her, she whispered to him, ‘Are you jealous?’ ‘Of course not,’ he said, smiling. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to be a little jealous. There’ll always be a corner of my heart that’s just for you,’ an
d he walked off, weak at the knees.

  At the reception, in the flower-bedecked Sisley Suite of the Gore Towers Hotel, he wandered among the flowers, gazed at the Sisleys, nibbled salmon in aspic, marinated carp, jellied lamb cutlets, cold pigeon pie. He sipped the champagne with the restraint its quality deserved. He talked to Paul. The gap between them was widening remorselessly. He talked to Judy, who clearly would marry Paul. Their conversation was a miniature gem of non-communication.

  Mrs Hargreaves approached him, elegant in a cream and gold brocade suit. His loins stirred irrelevantly.

  ‘I love Sisley, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Er … yes …’ he said. Why could he not admit that he’d never seen a Sisley painting in his life until today, and that it was only because the subjects were French and the style impressionist that he had the impression that Sisley was a French impressionist? Why be ashamed, when he knew that nothing is less sophisticated than believing that sophistication matters?

  He glanced at the pictures, seeking an intelligent comment. ‘Snow at Louveciennes 1874’. ‘Snow at Louveciennes 1878’. ‘Near Marly – Snow on the road to Saint-Germain 1874–5’. ‘Floods at Port Marly’. He couldn’t say ‘Rotten luck Sisley had with his weather.’ He said, ‘They’re pretty.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Mrs Hargreaves, as if she thought he’d said something really clever. ‘Not a fashionable word today, and I wouldn’t want you to think I’m with Munnings – he’s so dull he has no right to criticize anybody – but if we can’t enjoy prettiness what hope is there for us?’

  They examined ‘Early Snow at Louveciennes 1870’ in silence. He’d have to say something. ‘I find them elegiac,’ he said.

  ‘An excellent word,’ said Mrs Hargreaves. ‘Everybody knows roughly what it means. Nobody knows quite what it means. Dear Henry!’ She ran one finger down his cheek and moved elegantly away. Henry turned and came face to face with Mr Hargreaves.

  ‘Good, aren’t they?’ said Mr Hargreaves. ‘Jamot said Sisley had no ambition except to be the delightful minor poet of the country and the seasons. I find that rather difficult to reconcile with some of his late haystacks, don’t you?’