The Complete Pratt

by David Nobbs

  ‘I’m not a stranger,’ said Henry.

  ‘Mrs Wedderburn said to me the other day: “I haven’t seen that nice young Henry recently. Does he visit you regularly?” She can be right nosy, when she’s a mind to it, can Mrs Wedderburn. Well, I couldn’t lie. I said, “He comes as regularly as you’d expect a busy young man to visit an elderly relative.”’

  ‘I’m sorry. I keep meaning to.’

  ‘Intentions are cheap.’

  ‘I know. But I am busy. I will come more often. I promise. I think of you a lot.’

  ‘Thoughts don’t cost.’

  ‘I know.’

  Cousin Hilda didn’t offer him so much as a cup of tea, for fear it would pollute the purity of his motives in visiting her.

  ‘So what have you come about?’ she said.

  ‘I haven’t come about anything,’ he said. ‘Can’t I just have come to see you, because I want to?’ Oh god. How do I raise the subject of the wedding now? ‘How’s Liam?’

  ‘The same as always.’

  ‘And Mr Pettifer? Having a run on Stilton, is he?’

  ‘You seem to have forgotten that he’s been moved to general groceries. But I suppose it’s natural for young people to be self-centred these days.’

  He ignored this. ‘How’s he bearing up?’ he asked.

  ‘He puts a brave face on it, but he’s a shadow of his former self.’

  ‘And Mr Frost?’

  ‘He has peace of mind. He’s made the right decision. He’s abandoned the lure of the bright lights and is looking forward to buckling down to the responsibilities of marriage.’

  Bless you, Cousin Hilda. A cue!

  ‘Talking of marriage, I suppose you got Auntie Doris’s invitation.’

  Cousin Hilda sniffed. ‘It went where it belonged. In the dustbin.’

  ‘Cousin Hilda!’

  ‘You expect me to accept? Marrying a man who runs a pub, with your Uncle Teddy barely cold.’

  ‘It’s a hotel, actually.’

  ‘That makes it all right, I suppose. I thought you didn’t like him, anyroad. Slimy, I seem to recall, was your description.’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t said that now.’

  ‘Why? Isn’t he slimy?’

  ‘Well … yes … I suppose he is … but it doesn’t seem generous.’

  ‘Generous! If he’s slimy, he’s slimy. You can’t avoid facts.’

  ‘No, but … I think sliminess is in the eye of the beholder. And I beheld it. And I wish I hadn’t.’

  ‘So you regard my conduct in throwing Doris’s invitation to her wedding with this slimy person while the husband she abandoned is still practically warm into the dustbin as unjustified?’ Cousin Hilda just managed to hang onto her syntax, but the effort had exhausted her.

  ‘No, but … she’d like you to be there.’

  ‘I hardly think that’s likely.’

  ‘I know she would. She asked me to ask you.’

  ‘So that’s why you came round!’

  ‘No. I’d forgotten about that. Then you mentioned Barry Frost’s wedding, and it all came back.’ Cousin Hilda sniffed. ‘I had forgotten it.’

  ‘I didn’t say owt.’

  ‘No, but you sniffed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sometimes, when you disapprove of something, you sniff. You probably don’t realize you’re doing it.’

  ‘I see.’ Cousin Hilda sniffed. ‘I’ll try to stop it if it upsets you.’

  ‘It doesn’t. I just … look, I know Auntie Doris would like you there because … well, I don’t think there’ll be many family, and blood is thicker than water, as they … I mean, I don’t approve, but … I forgive. Can’t you forgive?’

  Cousin Hilda sniffed.

  ‘Something puzzles me, Cousin Hilda,’ said Henry. ‘I’m not a Christian any more, but I can forgive. You are, and you can’t. I thought forgiveness was a big bit of the … er … the whole caboosh, but … it worried me a bit when I was a Christian. It seemed to me that some Christians didn’t have any forgiveness in their hearts at all.’

  Cousin Hilda’s new cuckoo clock, a reminder of Mrs Wedderburn’s holiday in Lucerne, a reminder that Cousin Hilda had never been abroad, ticked remorselessly.

  ‘I’ll come,’ she said.

  He didn’t want her to. It would be embarrassing. It would have been so much easier without her.

  Why had he gone to such lengths to persuade her?

  ‘Oh good,’ he said. ‘That’s grand.’

  He kissed her.

  She sniffed.

  Jim Laker bowled England to the Ashes at Old Trafford, taking 9 for 37 and 10 for 53. There were several feet of hailstones in Tunbridge Wells on August Bank Holiday Monday. Aly Khan sought a new divorce from Rita Hayworth. Egypt refused an invitation to a conference in London to establish an international system for operating the Suez Canal. An air lift of British troops to the Mediterranean began. The Foreign Secretary, Mr Selwyn Lloyd, said, ‘We are not bellicose. With Britain force is always the last resort.’ Eoka called for a truce in Cyprus. And on Saturday, August 18th, Auntie Doris married Geoffrey Porringer.

  As he walked towards the low, crenellated, blackened stone church of Holy Trinity, Skipton, with its squat, solid tower and huge black clock with gold numbers, showing that it was 11.22, Henry’s mind went back to the War years, when his mother had brought him to the town for a treat. They’d seen The Wizard of Oz, and a display of blitz cookery by a team of girl guide advisors. He wished it was that day now, and the wedding wasn’t taking place, and Cousin Hilda wasn’t walking with pursed lips at his side.

  In the church there were memories of childhood too. There was Auntie Kate, five foot one, white-haired, beaming. In the War Henry had lived with her and Uncle Frank at Low Farm, outside Rowth Bridge. Uncle Frank had been dead for eleven years. Henry was filled with shame and horror as he realized how long it was since he’d seen or even thought about her. She lived in Skipton now, in a house with lurid patterned carpets, with her daughter Fiona and Fiona’s husband, Horace Brassingthwaite, the assistant bank manager with the artificial leg. In the War Fiona had been a princess who’d read Henry stories from comics when he’d had measles. Now she was a wife, a mother of three, a sweeper of lurid carpets. She and Horace were in the church, too.

  The remaining guests were Ollie Renishaw, barman at the White Hart, and Geoffrey’s son Stephen and daughter Geraldine. Eight guests, occupying just two of the numbered pews, each with its own door, beneath the great beamed roof. Henry recalled the splendours of Diana’s marriage to Tosser, and felt sad. ‘We wanted it small,’ Auntie Doris said later. ‘We could have invited lots of customers but, once you’ve started, where do you stop?’

  Henry felt that Geoffrey Porringer made a surprisingly impressive figure. Now that he’d settled in the country, he was slowly, imperceptibly becoming less slimy. Of course nothing could be done about his blackheads. Nobody, in secret laboratories in Cumbria and Suffolk, was giving hamsters blackheads in order to find a cure for the condition in humans. Henry felt that he might even become quite fond of the man, for Auntie Doris’s sake, now that the die was cast, provided he could desist from rubbing against waitresses and calling him ‘young sir’.

  The little group trooped through the cold August rain, down the wide high street and into the Black Horse, where they had booked a private room.

  They took sherry before the meal. Cousin Hilda sniffed.

  ‘Come on, Cousin Hilda,’ implored Henry. ‘Just the one.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Cousin Hilda.

  Geoffrey Porringer told Geraldine that she could have ‘just the one’. Geraldine Porringer was sixteen years old. She looked like her father, except that she had no blackheads.

  ‘Don’t order me around, Dad,’ she said. ‘I’ve come here to enjoy myself because I’m happy to see you happy.’ After that, Geoffrey Porringer made no comments about Geraldine and drink.

  Ollie Renishaw, a tall, dour man with bags under his eyes
, had a drip on the end of his nose. Cousin Hilda sniffed meaningfully but, since he had already realized that she sniffed at regular intervals, he took no heed. Geraldine, onto her second sherry, whispered to him. He blew his nose hurriedly. Within minutes the drip was there again. It was as if a washer in his nostril was on the blink.

  ‘I was right happy at Low Farm,’ Henry told Auntie Kate. ‘The happiest time of my life.’

  ‘Oh, I hope not,’ she said, but he could tell she was pleased.

  ‘I wish I’d come to see you more often,’ he said.

  ‘Why haven’t you?’ said Horace, and Henry tried not to look at his artificial leg.

  ‘Because young men are self-centred,’ said Henry.

  Horace opened his mouth, but could think of no reply so, wisely under the circumstances, he closed it again.

  ‘I hope Graham’ll manage on his own,’ said Ollie Renishaw.

  ‘Relax,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘Forget the bar. You aren’t indispensable. Nobody is.’

  ‘Oh aye. I know that,’ said Ollie Renishaw. ‘But it’s the price rises. He hasn’t got the hang of them at all.’

  ‘So we’ll lose a bit of money,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘Never mind. It’s our wedding day. Enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Right,’ said Ollie Renishaw grimly. ‘Right.’

  Geoffrey Porringer was very fussy about where everybody sat, at the big table, in the beamed, low-ceilinged room. ‘You look after Geraldine, young sir,’ he told Henry.

  On Henry’s other side was Auntie Kate. Cousin Hilda was put next to Ollie Renishaw.

  There was good red roast beef and claret. Cousin Hilda asked for a well-done slice off the edge and complained that she’d been given too much. She glanced at Henry every time he took a sip of wine, so he said, ‘This is a very nice wine,’ and her lips moved painfully, and he wished he hadn’t said it.

  ‘It’s a thoughtful little number,’ said Stephen Porringer, who was twenty-one and a trainee manager at Timothy Whites. ‘It combines the strength of a Burgundy with the finesse of a claret.’ Henry detected no trace of self-mockery.

  Geraldine whispered in his ear, ‘Don’t you think my brother’s a prick?’ Henry felt overcome with sorrow that she wasn’t attractive. She deserved the best of men, and wouldn’t get him because the world is a cattle market. He whispered back, ‘A total prick.’

  ‘Whispering?’ said Stephen. ‘A state secret, or may we share it?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Henry. ‘I was telling your sister she combines the purity of a good Chablis with the sweetness of a vintage hock.’

  Geraldine chortled. Stephen didn’t.

  ‘I’m awfully happy for Dad,’ said Geraldine. ‘He was so sad when our mother died.’

  Henry realized with a shock that he’d never dreamt that Daphne Porringer had died. He’d assumed that Geoffrey had left her, or that she’d left Geoffrey.

  ‘So where do you live?’ he asked Geraldine.

  ‘With my mother’s childless married sister,’ said Geraldine Porringer. ‘It wasn’t thought right that I should live with Daddy, partly because he wasn’t married to your auntie, and partly because he runs a pub.’

  ‘So they objected on two premises, one moral, the other licensed,’ said Henry, and to his shame he found himself wishing that he could have said it to somebody prettier. Geraldine Porringer would be liked by everybody and loved by nobody.

  With Auntie Kate he reminisced about the village school, Miss Candy, Billy the half-wit, Jackie the land girl and other ghosts.

  ‘There’s a wedding reception at the Crown this afternoon,’ said Ollie Renishaw sadly.

  Geoffrey Porringer made a tiny grimace. Auntie Doris leant over towards Cousin Hilda and said, ‘The Crown’s a pub on the opposite side of the square from us, Hilda.’

  ‘The relative position of public houses in Troutwick is of no conceivable interest to me, Doris,’ said Cousin Hilda. Henry had to admire her. He decided that, for Cousin Hilda’s sake, he wouldn’t have any more wine.

  ‘It’s a Rowth Bridge wedding,’ Auntie Doris told Auntie Kate. ‘They couldn’t have the reception there. The groom’s banned from the Parish Hall and his dad’s banned from the Three Horseshoes.’

  ‘That sounds like the Luggs,’ said Auntie Kate.

  ‘It is. Eric Lugg,’ said Auntie Doris.

  Henry felt himself going cold.

  ‘Who’s he marrying?’ he asked, trying to sound casual.

  ‘One of our ex-waitresses,’ said Ollie Renishaw. ‘Lorna Arrow. She …’

  ‘Careful what you say, Ollie,’ said Auntie Doris, who always made things worse by protesting about them. ‘Lorna used to be a great friend of Henry’s.’

  ‘I was only going to say she left us very suddenly,’ said Ollie Renishaw.

  ‘Thank you, Ollie, but I think we’d best draw a veil over that,’ said Auntie Doris, who sometimes made things even worse by protesting about them twice. She smiled at Geoffrey Porringer, a warm smile, a forgiving smile. Henry saw Geoffrey Porringer relax, and realized how little the man felt able to want from life now. To be able to relax, to be let off the hook, these were his ambitions.

  The waiter offered Henry more wine. After the startling news about Lorna Arrow, he hadn’t the strength to refuse. He compromised. ‘Just half a glass,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to drink too much.’ Cousin Hilda’s lips twitched. ‘You already have,’ said her twitch.

  ‘We’ll get drunks from the wedding tonight,’ said Ollie Renishaw. ‘I hope we’ll be able to handle them. We don’t want trouble with you away on your honeymoon.’

  ‘Stop worrying,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘Oh, he is a worry-guts.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Fiona.

  ‘Interlaken,’ said Geoffrey Porringer.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Horace Brassingthwaite. ‘A lovely spot.’

  ‘You know it?’ said Geoffrey Porringer.

  ‘No,’ said Horace.

  ‘We will,’ said Ollie Renishaw.

  ‘Will what?’ said Auntie Doris.

  ‘Get drunks in.’

  ‘Luggs,’ said Auntie Kate.

  ‘Drunk Luggs,’ said Fiona.

  ‘Is that serious, drunk Luggs?’ said Geoffrey Porringer.

  ‘Geoffrey!’ said Auntie Doris. ‘We’re going on our honeymoon.’

  ‘I’m not saying we aren’t,’ said Geoffrey Porringer. ‘I’m only saying, not being acquainted with drunk Luggs, is it serious? Should we recruit extra staff?’

  ‘It is serious,’ said Henry. ‘You should recruit extra staff. I’ll come.’

  There was silence. It seemed that the prospect of the availability of Henry to deal with hordes of drunk Luggs didn’t remove entirely the worries of Geoffrey Porringer and Ollie Renishaw.

  ‘The more hands, the better,’ said Henry. ‘I’d like to help you, Geoffrey.’

  Geoffrey Porringer looked surprised. But pleased. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘I accept, young sir.’

  Cousin Hilda sniffed loudly.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean, Hilda?’ said Auntie Doris.

  ‘What’s what supposed to mean,’ said Cousin Hilda.

  ‘That sniff. One of your loudest.’

  Cousin Hilda sniffed. ‘“One of my loudest”?’ she said. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Doris.’

  ‘At moments of disapproval you sniff, Hilda. Probably you don’t realize you’re doing it. I wondered to what particular disapproval we owed that snorter?’

  ‘To me working behind a bar,’ said Henry. ‘But I won’t be working, Cousin Hilda, because I won’t be paid. I’ll be helping Auntie Doris, who helped bring me up – as you did, of course, and thank you – by letting her go on her honeymoon with an untroubled mind.’

  ‘I thought you were coming home with me,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘We were going to have supper with Mrs Wedderburn. I’ve left cold for my businessmen.’

  ‘I’ll just have to forgo Mrs Wedderburn for the greater good,’ said Henr
y.

  Cousin Hilda sniffed.

  ‘Promise you won’t refuse to serve me because I’m under age,’ said Geraldine Porringer.

  ‘I’m afraid I’d have to,’ said Henry. ‘Even though in your case it’d be unnecessary, because you’re so mature.’

  ‘Geraldine’s squiffy,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Am not, prick,’ said Geraldine.

  There was non-vintage port, with the cheese.

  ‘What’s the time?’ said Cousin Hilda, as soon as she decently could. ‘I’m thinking about my trains.’

  ‘Twenty-two minutes past two,’ said Henry.

  ‘I hope Graham won’t forget to ring the bell for last orders,’ said Ollie Renishaw.

  Ollie Renishaw drove back, in his rusting blue van, as if convinced that Graham would have missed a smouldering fag end, which would reduce the White Hart to rubble. Brief beams of sunlight were breaking through the dark canopy of the clouds, lighting up the occasional sycamore, a distant stone barn, the corner of a field on the far hills. It was as if lace curtains were briefly parted, to allow a vision of a beautiful woman.

  The van screamed to a frenzied halt, beside the unburnt hotel. It had started to rain again.

  Henry’s motives in offering to help man the bar were not entirely unselfish. He didn’t really expect trouble. He believed that the Luggs became involved in frequent fights because, since they had a reputation for becoming involved in frequent fights, people frequently picked fights with them, accusing them of frequently picking fights with people. Tonight, in the comparative gentility of the White Hart, nobody would pick on them.

  His real motive was to visit the reception of Mr and Mrs Eric Lugg.

  He walked slowly across the square, between the stalls, in his only suit, still wearing the buttonhole from the other wedding. He had bemoaned the frequency of weddings that summer, and now here he was on his way to yet another one, to which he hadn’t even been invited.

  He approached the Crown with increasing reluctance. There was a great roar of talk and laughter. But he must go on, now that he had come this far.