by David Nobbs
‘It’s with the Cucumber Marketing Board,’ said Henry. ‘They’ve relocated to Leeds. There’s a vacancy for an Assistant Regional Co-ordinator, Northern Counties (Excluding Berwick-on-Tweed).’
There was a stunned silence in the little mews house in Chelsea.
Henry ‘We admire your personality but are not convinced that you have the moral commitment that we as a religious body are seeking’ Pratt sat in the foyer of the Cucumber Marketing Board, which was brilliantly user-unfriendly many years before the concept was put into words.
The Cucumber Marketing Board was housed in a four-storey Edwardian building in the business district of Leeds, among banks and solicitors’ offices. The steel-armed chairs and the glass-topped table were far too small for the high-ceilinged room with its dusty chandelier and impressive ceiling rose. The table was strategically placed too far in front of his chair and too near the floor, so that he risked severe backache every time he bent down to pick up the out-of-date copies of The Lady and The Vegetable Growers’ Gazette, which were the only reading matter provided.
‘Mr Tubman-Edwards will see you now,’ said the receptionist. ‘Second floor. He’ll meet you at the lift.’
Henry couldn’t believe it. Could this possibly be the same Tubman-Edwards, the bully of Brasenose and Dalton, whom Tosser Pilkington-Brick, when he was a hero and not a financial consultant, had forced to smile on the other side of his face? If so, it was goodbye, cucumbers.
He wished he looked taller and more athletic. He wished that his dark grey suit didn’t look crumpled.
He walked along a dark, uncarpeted corridor to the lift, which clanked precariously to the second floor, where he was met by a rather anxious man in his fifties, wearing a pin-striped suit and an MCC tie with a blob of egg yolk on it. A tiny piece of cotton wool had stuck to a cut on his neck.
‘Dennis Tubman-Edwards,’ he announced. ‘It’s Henry, isn’t it? We’re friendly people here.’
He smiled, seeming unaware that his smile gave a twisted, slightly sinister look to his face. Henry saw the resemblance to J. C. R. Tubman-Edwards (Plantaganet House) for the first time.
Mr Tubman-Edwards led him along a carpeted corridor, past the offices of the Director (Operations) and the Director (Admin.) and opened the door of Room 208, which carried the legend ‘Head of Establishments’.
Mr Tubman-Edwards seated himself behind his very bare desk, and gestured to Henry to sit in the hard chair provided for interviewees. The office was not large and was almost entirely taken up with filing cabinets. There were just two pictures on the walls – a lurid portrait of the Queen and a school photograph of the Dalton College boys from Mr Tubman-Edwards’s final year. His desk was bare except for a pen, a pad of lined paper, and two photograph holders.
‘You were at school with my son, I believe,’ said Mr Tubman-Edwards, turning one of the photographs round so that Henry could see the unprepossessing face of the ghastly boy.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Henry, wondering desperately whether this was good news or bad.
Mr Tubman-Edwards winced and gasped. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Touch of shrapnel still lodged in the skull. Gives me gyp intermittently. Not to worry. Chums, were you?’
It might be a trap. Better be honest. Not too honest, though. Pity he needed the job. He would have loved to have said, ‘Couldn’t stand the great sack of blackmailing yak turd.’
‘Er … not particularly,’ he said.
‘What’s your ambition in life?’ asked the father of the great sack of blackmailing yak turd in the same casual, conversational tone.
Henry realised that he had been thrown a conversational hand-grenade. To pitch his ambition too high – ‘I’d like to feel that I’d helped to save Western civilisation’ – would be to risk ridicule and, more seriously, rejection. To pitch it too low – ‘I’d like to feel that I could support my family and give them double glazing for life’ – might be even more disastrous.
‘Er …,’ he began, more to show that he was still alive than anything, and as soon as he had stopped, he realised that to be indecisive would be the most fatal fault of all.
Too late. Oh well. Mr Tubman-Edwards smiled his slightly crooked smile and tapped his HB pencil on the desk. Must say something.
‘I suppose,’ he said, investing a deeply thoughtful inflection into his voice, to suggest that his long hesitation had been caused by deep thought, ‘I suppose my ambition is to find an ambition that satisfies me.’
‘I see,’ said Mr Tubman-Edwards neutrally. ‘I see. And what is your attitude to cucumbers?’
If this next abrupt change of subject was intended to jolt Henry, it failed. He felt on safer ground with cucumbers than with ambition.
‘I like them,’ he said, and then, to his horror, he heard himself add, ‘I think they’re the Cinderellas of the salad bowl.’
Fortunately, Mr Tubman-Edwards took him seriously.
‘In what way?’ he asked.
‘Well what is a salad built around for most people?’ said Henry. ‘Lettuce and more lettuce. Tomatoes. Hard-boiled eggs. I think because it’s the same colour as lettuce – green,’ he wished he hadn’t added the explanation, ‘… the cucumber is often added as an afterthought. I’d like to raise the profile of the cucumber, give it in post-war cuisine a prominence akin to its dominance of the teatime sandwich in the pre-war world.’
J. C. R. Tubman-Edwards’s father seemed impressed, if also slightly stunned.
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Excellent. Splendid.’
A wave of self-disgust swept over Henry. How could he sit there and pretend, for the sake of a measly job, that cucumbers were so important? Where was the fighting spirit on which he prided himself?
‘Of course they aren’t the be-all and end-all,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not quite with you,’ said Mr Tubman-Edwards. ‘They aren’t the be-all and end-all of what?’
‘Of life,’ said Henry.
He feared that, in that brave, reckless moment, he had lost all chance of working for the Cucumber Marketing Board. But he was wrong.
He would often wonder, in the years to come, if things would have been better if he’d been right.
2 The First, Faint Shadows
ON FRIDAY, JANUARY 10th, 1958, there was a second successful launch of the Air Force’s Atlas Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile at Cape Canaveral, a burglar found so much wine and spirits in a director’s room at an Edinburgh shop-fitting firm that he was found drunk at the director’s desk when the work-force arrived, and Hilary left for the doctor’s before the post came.
The moment Henry had read the letter, he wanted to stand in the middle of Perkin Warbeck Drive and announce the good tidings with such a yell of triumph that it would be heard in Lambert Simnel Avenue and Wat Tyler Crescent. But there was only Nadežda to tell, and he didn’t want to tell her before he told Hilary.
He wheeled Nadežda to the French windows, from which she liked to watch the birds. A pair of chaffinches were foraging under the bird table, the male strikingly colourful, the female gently subtle. A jaundiced sun was filtering through high clouds. There was still a little frost under the conifers and in front of the summer-house, but in Henry’s heart there was a warm glow. No matter that the call of the cucumber gave him no great sense of vocation. No matter that he would never know whether he had got the job on merit or because he’d been at school with Mr Tubman-Edwards’s son. No matter that an unworthy little voice had already whispered to him that there was no need to tell anybody, not even Hilary, about the Tubman-Edwards connection. Pratt of the Argus was employable again. The world was a beautiful place.
He rehearsed the scene in which he would tell Hilary and she would admire him. He heard footsteps on the gravel path, but it was the heavy crunching feet of the nurse who would wash and dress Nadežda and give her the massage that did so little good.
He stood at the French windows, looking out at the summer-house, where they had discovered the
depth of their love. Four starlings descended on the bird table, and the chaffinches flew away. How could a sore foot take a doctor so long?
At last he heard her light, quick steps. He opened the front door, and there she stood, his pale ethereal love, and her eyes sparkled, as if she already knew. He ushered her in with mock courtliness, closed the door, and said, ‘I’ve got some news.’
‘So have I,’ said Hilary. ‘I’m pregnant.’
He gawped. He couldn’t grasp it. She couldn’t be, his slender love.
‘Good Lord,’ he said, with more amazement than delight. And then the amazing fact of it filtered through, and he said ‘Good Lord’ again, with more delight than amazement, and he rushed to her and she to him and they hugged in the sadly impersonal hall, and he said, ‘When?’ and she said, ‘Beginning of August,’ and they laughed a bit and cried a bit and she said, ‘I must tell Mummy.’
The nurse had finished washing and dressing Nadežda and had wheeled her back to her favourite position by the French windows.
‘I’m going to have a baby, Mummy,’ said Hilary, bending to kiss her mother’s lifeless hair, while the nurse gently kneaded those deceptively perfect shoulders.
‘Oh my darlings, I’m so happy for you,’ said Nadežda with a gasp, and they both heard, in the silence that followed, her unspoken thought, ‘I hope there’s nothing wrong with it.’
Suddenly sobered, Hilary turned to Henry and said, ‘Didn’t you say you had some news?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Henry, as three magpies attacked the bird table, and the starlings flew off. ‘I’d almost forgotten.’ That’ll teach me to rehearse scenes, he thought. ‘Our baby will have no cause to be ashamed of its Daddy. Our son or daughter, when he or she goes to school, will be able to boast that their father is the Assistant Regional Co-ordinator, Northern Counties (Excluding Berwick-on-Tweed) of the Cucumber Marketing Board.’
Cousin Hilda sniffed.
‘Cucumbers!’ she said. ‘I don’t use them.’
‘Is that all you can say?’ said Hilary.
Henry and Cousin Hilda looked at Hilary in astonishment. Two milky cups of Camp coffee stood on the otherwise bare dining table in the basement room of number 66, Park View Road. Cousin Hilda had not indulged.
‘Mrs Wedderburn’ll be right glad you’re fixed up,’ she said.
‘Never mind Mrs Wedderburn,’ said Hilary. ‘What about you? Aren’t you pleased Henry’s got a job?’
‘Hilary!’ said Henry.
‘Leave this to me, darling,’ said Hilary.
‘I wouldn’t say I’m pleased, no,’ said Cousin Hilda carefully. ‘It’s nowt to get excited about. It’s natural. I’d say I were displeased when he hadn’t got one, and now I’m not displeased any more.’
‘It’s not the greatest job in the world,’ said Henry. ‘But I won’t be in cucumbers for ever. It’s just a launching pad. It does … er … it does mean we won’t be coming back here to live.’
‘I see,’ said Cousin Hilda.
‘We enjoyed being here. We missed it when we were with Hilary’s family, even the spotted dick. Didn’t we, darling?’
‘Yes, we really did,’ agreed Hilary.
‘What do you mean – “Even the spotted dick”?’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘Is there summat wrong with me spotted dick?’
‘Oh no,’ said Henry. ‘Not at all. It’s the best spotted dick I’ve ever eaten.’ He didn’t tell her that the only other spotted dick he’d ever eaten had been at Brasenese College, where all the food had been inedible. ‘We’ll move into rented accommodation and start looking for a house.’
‘I see,’ said Cousin Hilda.
‘Cousin Hilda? Do you love Henry?’ asked Hilary.
Henry’s astonishment was total now, but he knew better than to say, ‘Hilary!’ again. His heart was beating fast and he felt rivulets of embarrassment running down his back.
Cousin Hilda turned away abruptly and shovelled more coke into the roaring fire, although it was already stifling in the little room. The smell of hot glass from the panes in the front of the blue-tiled stove mingled with the remnants of battered cod, jam roly-poly, and Mr O’Reilly’s end-of-the-week feet.
As Cousin Hilda bent to her task, Henry saw the white dead skin of her thigh through a hole in her pale pink bloomers.
When she had finished her displacement activity, Cousin Hilda suddenly looked Hilary full in the face. Hilary didn’t flinch. Henry held his breath.
‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘I’ve looked after him like a son, haven’t I? He knows I do.’
‘He doesn’t actually,’ said Hilary. ‘He can never quite believe that anybody loves him. I’m not sure that he even realises how much I love him.’
‘Hilary has a reason for feeling particularly emotional tonight, Cousin Hilda,’ said Henry.
‘Don’t make excuses for me,’ said Hilary.
‘Well tell her.’
‘All in good time. I thought there were things that should be said. Families ought to be able to say things.’
‘We were brought up not to say things,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘The longer it goes on, the harder it becomes to say things.’
‘That’s why I thought tonight might be a good time to start,’ said Hilary.
It was extraordinary, but Henry had the impression that Cousin Hilda was actually quite pleased.
But she couldn’t resist having one more parting shot. ‘Some folk say too much. I could never be like the Dorises of this world. Her mother used to say, “I’m saying nowt.” Doris should have taken heed.’ Then she turned to Hilary and her face softened into something almost resembling a smile. ‘It’s time now, isn’t it, Hilary?’ she said. ‘Time to find out why you have reasons for feeling emotional tonight.’
And Henry realised, to his amazement, that Cousin Hilda knew.
‘I’m pregnant,’ said Hilary.
Cousin Hilda’s face didn’t move, but a single tear ran down her cheek, and Henry recognised it for what it was. It was a tear for the life she might have led.
And maybe Hilary recognised it too, because she went over to Cousin Hilda and hugged her and held her close and planted a gentle kiss on her forehead, and Cousin Hilda’s lips worked anxiously and at last she spoke.
‘Give over,’ she said. ‘Don’t be so daft.’
And then she sniffed.
Henry recognised it as a truly historic sniff.
It was the first time that Cousin Hilda had sniffed not out of disapproval, but because her nose was running.
During January, 1958, the National Union of Mineworkers claimed an extra ten shillings a week for its 382,000 day wage men, Dr Vivian Fuchs reached the South Pole and Sir Edmund Hillary flew in to greet him with the immortal words, ‘Hello, Bunny,’ scientists at Harwell, revealing secrets of their work on producing electricity through hydrogen power, predicted that the sea would provide a fuel supply sufficient to last mankind for a thousand million years at nominal cost, and Henry and Hilary Pratt both started new jobs.
On Hilary’s first day at Thurmarsh Grammar School for Girls, Henry traipsed the cold pavements of Thurmarsh, looking at a succession of dismal flats. Her absence pierced him like a cruel frost. At lunchtime, on an impulse, he went to the Lord Nelson, in Leatherbottlers’ Row, in the hope that he would run into some of his old colleagues from the Evening Argus. Nobody he knew came in. Even the bar staff were unfamiliar to him. He sat at their usual corner table in the brown, clubby back bar, and had a Scotch egg, a ham sandwich, two pints of bitter and a bout of melancholia. He wished that he could put up a notice explaining that ‘Mr Henry Pratt isn’t really lonely and pathetic. He is revisiting old haunts while waiting to take up one of the most prestigious appointments in the cucumber world.’
Just as he was about to leave, Peter Matheson, leader of the Conservative minority on Thurmarsh Borough Council, and father of Anna, Hilary’s schoolfriend who lived with the bigamous Uncle Teddy in Cap Ferrat, entered the bar. He had been a prime mover in the sa
ga of corruption which had seemed likely to make, but had ultimately been allowed to break, Henry’s brief journalistic career. Henry disliked him intensely, yet felt so lonely without Hilary that he accepted a drink with eagerness.
‘I don’t usually drink at lunchtime,’ said Peter Matheson, when they were settled at the corner table, ‘but I’ve had some grave news about Anna. I haven’t even told Olivia yet.’
Henry’s blood ran cold. Had Peter Matheson discovered that she was married to Uncle Teddy? Or had she died?
‘You remember that girlfriend of hers who was becoming a nun?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry cautiously, remembering the tale that Anna had told her parents to explain her presence in France.
‘Well Anna’s joined her. She’s become a nun.’
Henry felt a surge of relief. Anna wasn’t dead. And of course he knew that she hadn’t become a nun.
‘Oh I am sorry,’ he said, hoping that he looked sufficiently grave.
‘It’s an extremely strict order. She isn’t even allowed to see her parents. We’ve lost our only child.’
Henry was appalled, but also reluctantly impressed, by Anna’s ruthlessness. He bought another round, didn’t mention his own good news, and talked to Peter Matheson in a suitably muted manner.
For the remainder of the afternoon, back in Perkin Warbeck Drive, Henry counted the minutes till Hilary’s return. He planned to kiss her, tell her how much he’d missed her, ask her about her day, take her to bed and lay his head against her still smooth stomach, trying to sense the developing foetus within.
In fact, perhaps because he had drunk two more pints than he had intended, he gave her only a perfunctory kiss and found it impossible to tell her how much he had missed her. He felt jealous of all the experiences from which he had been excluded, and managed to invest his, ‘How did you get on?’ with only a grudging expression of interest.