by David Nobbs
Her father banged on the door.
‘Are you coming in?’ he said.
‘We’re coming,’ she said.
In they went, through the French windows, creeping, whispering, so as not to wake her mother or the object.
‘We were talking,’ she whispered. ‘Talking and kissing.’
Howard Lewthwaite touched Henry gently on the shoulder.
‘Would you like to stay?’ he said. ‘On the sofa?’
‘It’d be lovely to know you’re there,’ said Hilary. ‘It’d be lovely to start 1957 by waking up in the same house as you.’
Howard Lewthwaite touched Henry gently on the shoulder.
Oh, the bitter-sweet evenings of talk and beer and desire and frustration and the continuing steady improvement of Oscar’s haemorrhoids. Oh, the lingering good night kisses in Perkin Warbeck Drive.
Oh, the difficulty of having to investigate Hilary’s so-called Uncle Peter, who was her father’s friend, not to mention Herbert Wilkinson, who was also her father’s friend. Howard Lewthwaite would hardly relish being told, by a twenty-one-year-old, that his choice of friends was unwise, that he was naïve. If only he had more courage. If only Hard Man Henry hadn’t become a ghost.
Stanley Matthews and Donald Campbell were given CBEs. C. P. Snow was knighted. A leftwing government under a military dictator was formed in Syria. Egypt abrogated the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1954, denying the basis on which Britain could use the Suez Canal in time of war. John Foster Dulles, who had done so much to turn a disastrous Anglo-French victory into an even more disastrous defeat, said that the US had a major responsibility to help prevent the spread of Soviet imperialism in the Middle East. The pleas of road haulers for more fuel were rejected.
Henry summoned up his courage. On Thursday, January 3rd, he told Hilary of his investigations. She said they must tell her father. He’d know what to do.
Gertie Gitana, who’d become synonymous with ‘Nellie Dean’, died at the age of 68. The Egyptians refused to let United Nations troops move ships out of the canal. They wouldn’t negotiate with Britain and France until new governments came into power, and then only if they apologized for the deeds of their predecessors.
Howard Lewthwaite walked to the Midland Hotel on the following Tuesday, and gave Henry and Hilary lunch. None of them had the pamplemousse. They talked of Suez. ‘What have we got,’ asked Hilary, ‘in exchange for splitting the nation, weakening the Commonwealth, the Atlantic alliance and the United Nations, diverting the world’s attention from the Russian atrocities in Hungary, and harming for ever our capacity to take a credible position of moral leadership in the world?’ ‘Nothing,’ said Henry. ‘As much as that!’ said Howard Lewthwaite. They laughed. Lowering his voice, even though the nearest customer was twenty feet away, Henry told Hilary’s father about his suspicions. Howard Lewthwaite went quite white, and shook his head several times. He waved a waiter away, brusquely. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘but I’m perfectly capable of pouring wine.’ He promised to look into the matter immediately.
Sir Anthony Eden resigned, due to ill health. Harold Macmillan became Prime Minister. Oil promised by America still hadn’t materialized.
He met Hilary in the Winstanley at noon. It was the last Sunday before her return to Durham. The proximity of the Winstanley to his flat was not accidental. She arrived with her father, on foot. Howard Lewthwaite was keen to be seen not wasting petrol by as many voters as possible.
He bought the youngsters a drink. They sat in a quiet corner.
‘I’ve had one meself,’ said Howard Lewthwaite.
‘One what?’ said Hilary.
‘An offer from the council. For Lewthwaite’s. I haven’t told Naddy yet. I daren’t tell her till the spring. She’s so frail in winter these days.’
‘You’ll refuse the offer, of course,’ said Hilary.
Her father stared at his glass of beer. ‘I don’t know as I can,’ he said. ‘Drapery as we know it is finished. The east side of Market Street as we know it is finished. I’m in trouble. The offer is strictly fair, if mean. Doesn’t cheat me or the ratepayers. I don’t know if I can refuse it, Hilary.’
‘But Lewthwaite’s!’
‘All things come to an end, Hilary.’
‘But this is wicked manipulation,’ said Henry.
‘Is it?’ said Howard Lewthwaite. ‘I’m at liberty to refuse. I choose not to. What’s wicked about that?’
‘But you’re a councillor.’
‘Exactly. And I still only get a very basic price. Doesn’t sound like corruption, does it?’
‘Well, what about the tobacconist?’ said Henry. ‘Did you ask the planning officer about that?’
‘I did. He said the house is no longer safe, now it’s next to a gaping black hole.’
‘It looks safe to me,’ said Henry.
‘Herbert says the foundations are undermined. Would you guarantee its safety?’
‘No, but what about the woman on the end. Her house isn’t next to a gaping black hole.’
‘It will be, when the tobacconist’s is gone.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Is it? The woman doesn’t want to stay there, a little house beside a gaping black hole. She wants to be rehoused. Nobody is suffering, Henry.’
‘Thurmarsh is. Those streets are full of good old buildings. What’ll we get in their place?’
‘A brave new world, perhaps,’ said Howard Lewthwaite. ‘How conservative with a small c you are.’
‘Are you saying there are no secret plans for redevelopment?’ said Henry.
‘Not that I know of.’
‘But what about Fred Hathersage? He’s buying stuff up all over the area.’
‘Have you proof of that?’
‘I’ve been told.’
‘Maybe he thinks the area is ripe for development. He has eyes. We can’t stop him seeing. Properties become available. We can’t stop him buying.’
‘I don’t understand this,’ said Henry. ‘You’ve got deadly political ammunition against the Tories, and you pooh-pooh it.’
Hilary and her father gave Henry long, rather sad looks.
‘It’s a Labour council, darling,’ said Hilary.
Of course it was. He’d been concentrating on Peter Matheson so much that he’d quite overlooked the fact.
‘Peter Matheson’s leader of a minority,’ said Howard Lewthwaite. ‘Unless there’s corruption on our side, too, he won’t get anywhere, even if he is corrupt.’
‘Could there be corruption on your side?’ said Henry.
‘I hope not. It wouldn’t say much for me as deputy leader.’ Howard Lewthwaite looked at his watch. ‘I must be getting off,’ he said. ‘Got to put the veg on for Naddy’s dinner. Look, I’ll keep digging. I promise. Be good.’
The weight of their discussion faded slowly, like a shadow on a recovering lung. By the time they left the Winstanley, all that was forgotten.
It was a mild, spring-like afternoon. There was very little traffic in Winstanley Road. The petrol shortage was giving the town back to pedestrians.
‘My … er … flat’s close by here,’ he said.
‘Is it really?’ said Hilary drily.
He intended to be oblique, ask her if she’d like to see it, offer her a sandwich. She wasn’t a person to whom it was easy to be oblique. ‘Come on, eh?’ he said.
She nodded bravely.
He didn’t dare speak, for fear she would change her mind.
‘It’s usually me goes too fast,’ she said. ‘Slow down. I’m not going to back out. I’ve gritted me teeth.’
They crossed the road, hand in hand, he in an ecstatically ambiguous state between excitement and fear, and she with gritted teeth. A robin scolded them for their immorality. Henry had never felt less immoral.
He hurried her through the sterile entrance hall, and lit the gas fire in the living-room. She laughed at the French windows.
‘The other half of them’s through here, in the �
�� er … bedroom,’ he said.
‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ she said. ‘You must come and see my French windows.’
He led the way into the bedroom. He lit the gas fire in there, too. She began to undress and he remembered, with a thud of fear, what he’d completely forgotten in the excitement of their growing love. She had a horrible body. Never mind, he told himself, as she undressed tensely, determinedly, as if for a medical, with her back to him. Never mind. Men are far too influenced by physical appearance. I love you, Hilary, the person, the woman. The body is unimportant.
She hopped into the narrow, single bed and covered herself with the bedclothes. But he had seen, in that brief moment, when he hadn’t dared to be seen to be looking, that her body was not horrible at all, but more beautiful than he could have dared to hope. He climbed in beside her, feeling hot and cold and awkward and ardent.
And so, in the cramped atmosphere of his tiny, unattractive bedroom, on a mild Sunday afternoon in January, in a flat in a converted mock-Tudor house in respectable Winstanley Road, Henry Ezra Pratt and Hilary Nadežda Lewthwaite embarked upon a journey that might, with luck, take them from gritted teeth to ecstasy.
‘There’s no hurry whatsoever,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter if nothing happens. Cuddling is enough.’ But it wasn’t. It wasn’t nearly enough.
His patience and gentleness surprised him. Slowly, Hilary ungritted her teeth. Eventually he took her, rather swiftly, unsatisfactorily, messily. She was too tense to have an orgasm. That was what it was, a taking. Bad. Bad. Taking wasn’t loving.
The daylight faded. The gas fire produced a low, red glow. She began to stroke him. Slowly, together, they sailed away from the land of gritted teeth. In the cave of his room, in the cave of his bed, in the cave of his arms, in a cave within a cave within a cave, Hilary found a place that was safe enough for her. This time, they gave instead of taking. Hilary uttered one single gasp. A gasp of incredulous joy. Outside, people were walking to evening service, down Winstanley Road.
‘Hilary Lewthwaite?’ Henry whispered into her left ear. ‘Do you think that, when your exams are over, you could bear to become Mrs Henry Pratt?’ And then he had an awful worry, a terrible fear that he’d dreamt it all. Because he could have sworn that Hilary Lewthwaite replied, ‘I don’t think I could bear not to,’ and people didn’t say things like that, in real life, on Sunday evenings, in one-bedroom flats in Winstanley Road, to people like Henry Pratt.
After ecstasy, tea. He padded carefully across discarded clothes and shoes. He closed the curtains and switched on the light. She blinked, and smiled, and he realized that, when she was happy, she had the most beautiful face that he had ever seen and that his inability to recognize this possibility in Siena made him irredeemably unworthy of her.
He went through into the living-room, and closed those curtains too. She joined him. The gas fire threw a dim red glow over her lovely body. She put her bare feet on his bare feet. She was taller than him now. She kissed him.
He switched the light on, and went into the kitchen.
The front door slammed. Heavy footsteps trudged across the hall. There was a loud knock on his door.
‘Can I come in?’ It was Ginny. Her voice sounded urgent.
He raised a questioning eyebrow. Hilary nodded. He almost wished that he didn’t love her, so that he could fall in love with her at this moment.
‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘I’m not dressed. Come down in a few minutes.’
They tried to dress quickly, but he wanted to kiss her again and again before she disappeared into the commonplace world of the clothed. ‘Thanks for agreeing,’ he whispered. ‘She sounded desperate,’ she whispered. They weren’t quite sure why they were whispering.
Ginny’s eyes and nose were red. She gave a gasp when she saw Hilary. What a day it was, for the gasps of women.
‘This is Hilary,’ said Henry.
‘Gordon has gone off with Jill,’ said Ginny.
‘Oh, Ginny!’ said Henry. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Ginny.’ Often he’d failed to find emotions to go with his expressions of sorrow. Now it was the word that was pitifully inadequate for what he felt.
‘I was good enough to be his bit on the side when he was married. I’m not pretty enough for him to spend the whole of his life with,’ said Ginny. ‘There she is, practically straight out of school, ripe to be astounded at his virility, ripe to be impressed by his knowledge of life. No wonder he couldn’t resist her.’
Henry tried to put a comforting arm round her, but she shook it off.
‘Men are such bastards,’ she said. ‘I should regard myself as lucky to get away. What an escape I’ve had.’
The last thing Henry wanted, now that he’d won Hilary’s delicate confidence, was an eloquent tirade against the shortcomings of men. He could think of no other way of shutting Ginny up, except to say, ‘Hilary and I are engaged.’
Ginny burst into tears. Hilary rushed to her, put her arm round her and held her. Henry felt absurdly redundant.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ginny. She sniffed, searched for a handkerchief, couldn’t find one. Hilary lent her one quite inadequate for her purposes. She blew her nose as prodigiously as she could.
Henry had said it so often. Now, at last, but not in the circumstances that he would have chosen, it was said to him.
Ginny kissed Hilary. Then she kissed Henry.
‘I hope you’ll both be very happy,’ she said.
The next morning Ginny was at her desk as usual, looking indestructible, larger than life. Gordon slunk to his desk, looking smaller than life. Ginny made no mention of Henry’s engagement. Nor did he. He didn’t yet feel sufficiently sure that it had happened.
It was Hilary’s last day before her return to Durham. They met in the Pigeon and Two Cushions. They were both nervous, wondering whether they could ever live up to yesterday.
Oscar came straight over to them, and handed them a note. Could he be congratulating them? Was he psychic? No. The note read, ‘Acute laryngitis.’ They met his gaze, and he nodded solemnly. They fought to maintain control of themselves. They looked deep into each other’s secretly laughing eyes and were enveloped once again in the certainty of their love. Good old Oscar. When he bought the next drink, Henry offered him one. Oscar mimed that he’d have sixpennorth with them, he’d pour it later, and would gargle with it.
‘Shall we go home and tell my family?’ she said.
They went home and told her family. Henry bent down to kiss her mother’s cold cheek. Nadežda’s eyes were filled with tears, and he didn’t know whether they were tears of joy or sorrow. Was she overjoyed at Hilary’s capture of a young man of such warmth, kindness and character, or had she hoped for something better than a short, fat, provincial journalist? Howard Lewthwaite seemed caught in the grip of contradictory emotions – half pleased, half worried. Henry was disappointed at his reaction. Sam said, ‘Have you had it off yet, and if so where have you put it?’ Henry said, ‘Belt up, horror.’ Sam smiled, well content. Howard Lewthwaite produced the bottle of champagne they’d have drunk if Labour had won the last election. Yet he still didn’t seem as pleased as Henry had expected.
Hilary walked with him to the end of Perkin Warbeck Drive. There, at the junction with Lambert Simnel Avenue, under a street lamp dimmed to save fuel, their faces clung briefly to each other, and then she was gone. She didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t look back.
19 Startling Information
NEXT MORNING, HE told his friends that he had an announcement to make and would like to see them in the Lord Nelson that night, after work. Only by celebrating could he fill the grey emptiness of a January without Hilary.
That afternoon his phone rang, an event rare enough to be worth recording.
‘It’s your contact from the world of entertainment.’
‘Tony! Hello! How are you?’
‘Very well. I’ve got a story for you,’ said Tony Preece.
‘Oh!’ He just managed not to say,
‘At last.’ ‘What is it?’
‘I can’t talk on the phone, but I’m on tonight at that Mecca of Hysteria, Splutt Working-Men’s Club. How would you like to see the new act?’
‘I’d love to. But I can’t tonight. Can’t you tell me what your story’s about?’
‘Arson and murder.’
‘I’ll be there at half eight.’
Everyone came to the Lord Nelson except Ginny. She’d said, ‘I can’t face it. He’ll be there. Perhaps she’ll be there.’ Even Terry Skipton came.
Henry blushed becomingly, and said, ‘I’ve got some news for you. I’m engaged.’
There was a murmur of false astonishment and genuine delight, especially from the married men. It gave them an excuse for not going home which their wives could hardly not accept.
Terry Skipton had one glass of champagne-type sparkling wine, wrinkling his face as if it were medicine. He was a better judge than he knew. Colin thumped Henry’s back so vehemently that he was bruised for a week. Denzil gave him a quick kiss. Chief Superintendent Ron Ratchett had a discreet word in Denzil’s ear, but not too close to Denzil’s ear. ‘Please, sir,’ he said. ‘We all have to live side by side, unfortunately. I can turn a blind eye so far and no further. It’s still illegal, and long may it remain so.’ Colin borrowed a fiver off Gordon and bought two bottles of champagne-type sparkling wine. Ben said the wife would understand if she was given one later than usual, under the circumstances. Gordon borrowed a fiver off Ted and bought two bottles of champagne-type sparkling wine. Henry thanked him in such surly fashion that Gordon said, ‘Come on, Henry. Come on. If you were free as air, would you marry Ginny?’ ‘That’s a bit different. I haven’t been using her to fulfil my animal needs,’ retorted Henry. ‘We’ll sup some lotion tonight, kid,’ said Colin. ‘I have to go. Family celebration,’ said Henry. They were upset, as if they’d discovered that their expensive theatre tickets were valid for the first act only. Gordon was particularly angry, because he’d cancelled an evening with Jill. Henry slipped away as soon as he could.