by David Nobbs
Gradually it dawned on Henry that Anna would never phone, because her father would never tell her that her company was sought by a short, podgy, trembling young drunk who dressed like a bad journalist because he was a bad journalist and followed him into pub lavatories while having dates with women with bad colds. It also dawned on him that if he wrote her a letter her father could hardly refuse to forward it, because he couldn’t know who it was from.
On Wednesday, October 10th, Seretse Khama, chief-designate of the Bamangwata tribe, returned to Bechuanaland for the first time since his exile for marrying Ruth Williams, a white London typist. When she’d married him, Cousin Hilda had said, ‘It’s her mother I’m sorry for.’ Henry had said, ‘If I was a typist and married a tribal chief, I’d expect you to be thrilled.’
Anna must have got his letter but still she didn’t ring. He wondered if Cousin Hilda would be thrilled when he married her.
He had a permanent pain in his testicles as he thought about her, and was finding it difficult to walk without doubling up. He went for his lunch at the Rundle Café, because she’d worked there. A hosiery salesman listened with bated breath to the tale of Sammy, the Squirrel who’d lost his nuts. Henry envied Sammy the Squirrel. That afternoon, he busied himself with his film reviews. His phone didn’t ring.
On the next day, when he returned from number two magistrates’ court – he made dog noises, she mewed like cat, court told – Colin Edgeley said, ‘A girl rang for you. Very sexy. She’ll ring at nine-fifteen tomorrow morning.’ Henry tried not to blush, and failed.
Most of the usual crowd drifted to the Lord Nelson, drawn by no greater impulse than habit. Ben bet Henry that he couldn’t name the five league teams whose names ended with the same letter as they began. He tried, but his heart wasn’t in it. He got Liverpool, Charlton Athletic and Aston Villa, but missed Northampton Town and York City. Helen pressed her thigh against him and quizzed him about the phone call from the sexy lady.
It struck him with a shock of shame that he hadn’t been to see Cousin Hilda since he’d got back from Italy. He’d go tonight. If he didn’t, Anna wouldn’t ring. No. That was juvenile. But he’d go anyway.
Gordon and Ginny left early, after an elaborate debate about which film to see, although everybody knew they weren’t going to the pictures. Ben announced that he was going home to give the wife one. Henry asked if anybody had peppermints. Ben and Colin, the married men, both had peppermints.
The fog was returning, after a fine day. Henry’s peppermint breath made clouds of steam as he crunched the gravel outside number 66.
The fire crackled economically in the blue-tiled stove. The smell of pork and cabbage lingered. Cousin Hilda switched Frankie Howerd off.
‘Don’t switch him off for me,’ he said.
‘He’s nearly finished,’ said Cousin Hilda, ‘and then we’ve only got some documentary or something about violence against witnesses in Liverpool and then some woman and Edgar Lustgarten, who isn’t even English, having the cheek to think they can solve people’s personal problems. Though I like the Horse of the Year Show at nine-fifty. I’m not struck on the horses, but Dorian Williams speaks beautifully.’
‘How’s Liam?’ he inquired.
‘He’s Liam.’
‘And Mr Pettifer?’
‘Mr Pettifer is a disappointed man. He has a jaundiced view of life.’
‘And Mr Frost?’
‘Married. Living in Rawlaston.’ Cousin Hilda sniffed. ‘I have a Mr Peters in his room and a Mr Brentwood in your old room. Mr Peters is used to fine things, and Mr Brentwood has a hygiene problem. Things aren’t what they were, Henry. We’ve seen the halcyon days of paying guests. We won’t see them again in our lifetimes.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘So how was Italy? I got your card.’
‘Oh. Good. It was very nice. It’s a very beautiful country.’
Cousin Hilda sniffed. ‘Well, I suppose it would be, if you like that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘Wensleydale’s good enough for me. I see no cause to gad off abroad. But I expect it’s all different now. Mrs Wedderburn’s nephew’s just been to Germany. I shouldn’t fancy that, after the War. But she says it looks very picturesque, to judge from his three postcards, though too many conifers for her liking. She said, “And have you had some nice cards from Henry?” “Just the one,” I said. She said, “The Italian post is very slow. I expect the others’ll arrive after he’s been to see you, which he’ll do as soon as he gets back. He’s such a thoughtful boy.” I said, “He is, and he knows my views about extravagance, and he wouldn’t want to worry me by inundating me with needless postcards.” That told her. There’s a nosy side to Mrs Wedderburn.’
Henry told her about Florence and Siena. He told her about meeting Michael and Denzil. He didn’t tell her about Anna or about Denzil going off with Lampo while he trudged round Lucca and Pisa on his own. She said she didn’t see anything clever in building things that leant. Thurmarsh church could have been built leaning, but where would have been the sense of it?
When Cousin Hilda began laying up for the little supper that she gave her ‘businessmen’, Henry made his excuses. He couldn’t face seeing Liam, who was Liam, or Norman Pettifer, with his jaundiced view of life, or Mr Peters, who was used to fine things, or Mr Brentwood, who had a hygiene problem.
It was 9.17 before his phone screamed into life. Those two minutes seemed endless.
Tactful typewriters clacked all round him.
‘Henry Pratt, Evening Argus.’
‘Hello!’
‘Anna!’
‘Hello, Henry. How super of you to write. I was thrilled to get your letter.’ In her voice there was still the warm sun of Siena.
‘Were you? Oh good. Super.’ Super? That’s not one of my words.
‘I hoped you’d get in touch.’
‘Did you? Oh good. Super. Look, Anna … er …’ He hardly dared ask her out, which was ridiculous, when she’d phoned him. ‘… how about coming out one evening?’
‘Lovely. When?’
‘How about …?’ He wanted to say ‘tonight’ but knew better than to insult her by suggesting that she might be free at such short notice. ‘… next Tuesday?’
‘Wednesday would suit me better.’
‘I’ll just have a look in my diary.’ He stared into space and counted to twenty. ‘Yes. I can work round things and manage Wednesday.’
‘Super.’ Her voice sounded posher than he’d remembered. ‘There’s a little pub near where I live called the Cross Keys.’
‘I know it.’
‘Seven-thirty?’
‘Right.’
‘Super. Next Wednesday, then. Save yourself for me.’
What did it matter that he’d been insufficiently masterful? Who cared that he’d let her name the day, the place and the time? She’d said, ‘Save yourself for me.’
He did.
Britain and France agreed with Egypt on the main principles for international control of the canal. President Eisenhower described the talks as ‘most gratifying’. It looked as though ‘a very great crisis’ was ‘behind us’. Nina Ponomareva was given an absolute discharge at Marlborough Street. The Bolshoi Ballet decided to stay in Britain for three extra days. Russians were good people. The world was a nice place. Henry Pratt was in love.
The Prime Minister was enthusiastically received at the Conservative Party Conference in Llandudno when he said that Britain reserved the right to use force. His speech was less well received in Cairo, where they didn’t appear to understand that it had been aimed at the Tory faithful. There was a gun-fight in a Hungarian airliner between security police and ‘bandits’ trying to flee to the West. But these were small clouds.
At 7.17, on the evening of Wednesday, October 17th, Henry entered the Cross Keys, in Brunswick Road. It was a little Victorian pub in a low stone terrace, dwarfed by the primary school. That steep-roofed fortress, with its green institutional guttering and Dutch-style gables, filled Henr
y with memories of humiliation and of phenomenal farting, which were inappropriate to this important evening in his life. Why had he agreed to meet her here?
The bar had a grey-green patterned carpet with one hole and two bad stains. There were 9 low tables, with maroon bench seating round the walls, and 22 ugly wooden chairs. There were 39 bottles of drink behind the bar. There were 17 cracks in the ceiling. Behind the bar, pinned to a board, were 7 postcards. In the lurid sky above a Swiss funicular railway on one of the postcards, there were 7 puffy white clouds. Henry counted all these things, between 7.17 and 8.04, which was when he decided that she wasn’t coming, which was when she came.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she said casually, as if she didn’t know that he’d been enduring torment. ‘You know how it is.’ He wanted to say, ‘No, I don’t. How is it?’ Did she mean she tried to be on time and failed? Or had she kept him waiting deliberately? He didn’t know her. Well, of course he didn’t. He’d only met her once. They’d never been alone together. Yet he felt that he knew her. He felt resentful of her for not being in the image in which he had recreated her. She was a little smaller than he’d expected. A little fleshier, too. Her eyes were greener. Her mouth, with those faintly protruding teeth, was smaller. He felt jealous of her independent existence. He hardly understood these feelings. He only knew that she’d caught him on the hop by coming in just as he was getting up to leave. She’d ruined the most important moment of his life.
She kissed him on the cheek and said, ‘This is nice,’ as if their meeting were a glass of wine, and then she stood back and looked at him and said, ‘You’re just as I remembered!’ which must have been because she hadn’t thought enough about him to distort him in her mind. She smelt of expensive perfume, and he wanted her to smell overwhelmingly of herself. He was dismayed by her casual self-assurance, while he was rigid with tension. It was all going wrong already. He didn’t like her. It was a nightmare.
Somehow he got through the motions of offering her a drink. She asked for a Pernod. A Pernod, in Brunswick Road! They hadn’t got any. He hated her. She settled for a gin and It. She lit a cigarette. She wasn’t a goddess.
‘You’re trembling,’ she said.
‘I feel terribly cold,’ he lied.
‘I hope you aren’t getting flu,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand sickly people.’
Thurmarsh woman condemns the sick. Her remark was so patently absurd that he began to feel better. Anna Matheson had been a dream, and he was coming out of it already.
They sat side by side, under the curtained window, on the maroon seating, facing the bar.
‘This is a bit different from Siena,’ he said, and groaned silently at the most fatuously self-evident remark ever made.
‘Italy was a big mistake,’ she said. ‘Well, not Italy itself.’ Big of you. Your peninsula is not an error, says Englishwoman. ‘Going with Hilary. I just have this thing about illness.’
‘Is Hilary ill?’
‘In her mind. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like old Hillers. But it would have been a big mistake going away with her even if she hadn’t been so depressed. I like lying on beaches and meeting young men. She likes looking at old buildings. The only young men we met were you and your queer friend. He is queer, isn’t he?’
‘Lampo? Yes. But I thought you seemed quite interested in Siena.’
‘We had a bargain. Half the time on the beach, half the time looking at old stones. Hillers ruined the beach for me. Wouldn’t sit in the sun. Wouldn’t inflict her horrible body on the Italians. Absolute pain in the un-sunburnt backside. Poor old Hillers. She finds life so difficult. Do you find life difficult, Henry?’
‘Incredibly.’
‘Oh God! What is wrong with people? I mean if you’re really poor or something frightful like that, fair enough, you should be miserable. But not people like us. Tell me about your holiday? Did you have a good time?’
He told her about Lampo and Denzil. She laughed at the misfortunes of Henry ‘A gooseberry in Tuscany’ Pratt, proving that she was a good listener and had very white teeth, despite her smoking. When he offered her another drink, she insisted on paying. ‘Daddy says local journalists are pretty miserably paid,’ she said. ‘I think he’s trying to put me off you.’ He asked her what she did. ‘Oh, I help run a sort of beauty parlour thing,’ she said. ‘It’s the new thing.’ During their third drink, she held his hand and he was surprised to feel a stirring in his loins. When he said he was a socialist, she said, ‘How could you?’ as if he’d betrayed the natural order of things and democracy had never existed. She disagreed with him so cheerfully that he decided that she simply didn’t realize that he might find it distressing to discover how much they disagreed. During their fourth drink she ran her tongue quickly round the inside of his right ear and gave him a very meaningful look. He put his right hand in the fold of her dress. She felt extremely soft. He was finding that it didn’t matter as much as he’d thought that they disagreed about almost everything. He hardly dared suggest a change of scene, so well were things going, but he must offer her a meal and it was almost a quarter to ten.
‘Where would you like to eat?’ he said. ‘I only know three places. The Midland, which is pretty awful and probably closed. The Shanghai, which is very awful and definitely open. And Donny’s Bar, upstairs at the Barleycorn, which is competent and may be closed. Thurmarsh is a bit of a gastronomic desert.’
‘Why don’t you come back to the flat and I’ll knock you up an omelette? Much more fun,’ she said.
He couldn’t speak. He nodded. She smiled, patted his knee and said, ‘Good. We’ll have fun. Let’s pick up some wine and go.’
The Cross Keys had two bottles of wine. Henry bought the white one. It was yellow.
They walked along Brunswick Road, holding hands. They turned right into Cardington Road, which ran down the hill, parallel to the main road, back towards the town centre.
Her flat was in a basement. On the doorstep, she kissed him full on the mouth.
The living-room was tiny, with a folding table, two armchairs, two upright chairs, a hissing gas fire which had been on all evening and a reproduction of ‘Greylag Geese Rising’ by Peter Scott. On the mantelpiece there were invitations to three parties and a clock that had stopped.
‘I’ll show you the flat,’ she said. She opened the door of a tiny, pink bedroom. ‘This is Sally’s room. She’s away.’ She showed him her bedroom. On the credit side, it was larger. On the debit side, it was even pinker. He felt that he was a helpless piece of cork, bobbing through the evening on the tide of Anna’s wishes.
The omelettes were fluffy and runny. The unchilled white wine was a tease, constantly promising to be undrinkable and then withdrawing from the brink.
Anna raised her glass and said, ‘To our friendship. I’m so glad you got in touch.’
‘To you, Anna,’ he said. ‘God, I want you.’
‘That’s nice,’ she said. She apologized for her father’s disapproval of him.
‘Is he a headmaster?’ he asked.
‘God, no!’ she said. ‘He looks down on teachers. He’s a solicitor. Why did you think he’s a headmaster?’
‘The pedantic way he used words.’
‘That goes with all the speeches he makes.’
‘Speeches?’
‘He’s on the council. He’s leader of the Tories.’ She stood up. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’s that. I think it would be rather nice if we went to bed together now, don’t you?’
He could hardly breathe. ‘Er … yes … that would be very rather nice. Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve just got to go to the lavatory first.’
She snorted a laugh. ‘God, you’re romantic,’ she said. ‘I’m not a great reader but I can’t remember that happening in any of the great love affairs of literature. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” “Can’t you guess? Won’t be a sec, Juliet.”’
‘They’re fiction,’ he said. ‘This is real life.’ But he wasn’t convinced. He co
uldn’t really believe it was happening.
When he returned she was sitting stark-naked, Rubenesque, smiling, absurd in a cheap brown armchair.
He was appalled. How could he explain that he’d wanted them to undress together, slowly, shyly, gently? How could he say that he found her behaviour grotesquely insensitive and unsubtle? How could he say that she’d ruined a moment that should have been of shared tenderness?
‘Don’t you want me?’ she said. ‘Do you find me too fat? I am a bit fat.’
‘Anna! Oh, Anna! Course I want you.’
She began to undress him. He dreaded the moment when she would see how unaroused he was. He looked at the greylag geese and felt that he would never emulate them.
He stood white and podgy and sweating and unaroused before her. She pulled him to the floor and began very solemnly to kiss him all over. He remained tense.
‘What on earth’s wrong?’ she said.
‘I’m very much afraid this isn’t going to work,’ he said.
‘Oh God!’
Years later he would still break out in a sweat of embarrassment when he remembered the next few minutes, as he clumsily got dressed in that tiny basement room, while the naked solicitor’s daughter sat and watched, beside the hissing fire, beneath the rising geese.
15 Dark Days
DARK DAYS. RAIN, drizzle and fog. Suez, Hungary and Henry. Lost illusions. How small was Henry’s humiliation compared to the humiliation of Great Britain. How puny his loneliness compared to the rape of Budapest. But it was his own humiliation and loneliness that flooded him each morning when his alarm clock summoned him to the responsibilities of consciousness. How could it be otherwise? He wasn’t Budapest. He wasn’t the Suez Canal. He was Henry Ezra Pratt, locked in that little body of his.
He couldn’t tell anybody about Anna, couldn’t turn her into one of his funny stories, couldn’t become Henry ‘Ee by gum she ’ad nowt on’ Pratt.