by David Nobbs
They went on, down memory lane, up Commercial Street, to the Devonshire, where Henry disgusted Hilary by suggesting that the dark patches under the arms of Sid Hallett and the Rundlemen might be the same ones that he had seen on the shirts of the resident jazz band when he’d last visited the pub almost a year ago.
‘So Hilary’s pregnant,’ yelled Helen over ‘Basin Street Blues’. ‘I always knew you had it in you.’
Her hand stroked his private parts gently. He turned hurriedly to Ben, and reeled off all the goalkeepers except Halifax Town’s.
Colin Edgeley hugged him again and said, ‘Can I borrow a quid till next Thursday?’ as if forgetting that Henry wasn’t a colleague any more.
But Henry had a new life, and the evening cured him of nostalgia for the old one. Suddenly, during Sid Hallett’s spirited if inaccurate rendition of ‘South Rampart Street Parade’, he longed to be in bed with Hilary. A wave of love swept through him, and his feet tingled.
But they were all incredibly hungry, and after closing time an irresistible force led him not to bed, but to that very inadequate substitute, the Shanghai Chinese Restaurant and Coffee Bar.
Over his glutinous beef curry, Henry gazed earnestly at his old friends and said, ‘Who should I contact about cucumbers?’
There was a stunned silence.
‘I want to give the cucumber a higher profile,’ he said. ‘I thought somebody could do a feature about it. The forgotten vegetable kind of thing. Bring back the cucumber sandwich type of touch.’
‘Well I should think Ted could fit it into his kiddies’ column,’ said Helen. ‘He might even make a competition out of it. “Knit your own phallic symbol.”’
‘It was just an idea,’ said Henry.
The following Friday, Henry met Martin Hammond in the Pigeon and Two Cushions. Martin, his friend ever since the days of the Paradise Lane Gang, had become the youngest ever Union Convener at the Splutt Vale Iron and Steel Company. He was tired. ‘I’m knackered. It’s a non-stop job, raising the level of political consciousness,’ he explained, yawning and apologising owlishly.
‘Have you heard anything about Tommy?’ Henry asked. ‘It’s a bit strange. He wasn’t even on the plane.’
Tommy Marsden, fellow member of the Paradise Lane Gang, ex-star of Thurmarsh United, had been transferred to Manchester United in December of 1956. Yet when the plane carrying Manchester United home from a European Cup match in Belgrade on February 6th, 1958 had crashed at Munich Airport, killing twenty-three people, including eight members of the first team, Tommy’s name had not been mentioned.
‘They say he doesn’t hit it off with Matt Busby,’ said Martin, ‘but I don’t really find time for chat about football.’
To Henry’s joy, Oscar, the hypochrondriac waiter, came on duty at 7.30. He bore down on them in his white umpire’s coat, beaming from mastoid to mastoid.
‘It’s good to see you again, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I get this sore throat on and off, but it never seems to develop into anything. The doctor says I’m living with it symbiotically. Sounds disgusting. Where have you been? I wondered if you’d emigrated.’
‘Hilary’s pregnant,’ said Henry.
‘Oh, congratulations, sir,’ said Oscar. ‘Such a lovely young lady. Such a nice wedding. I almost forgot me sinuses. What’s it to be, gentlemen?’
‘A pint and a half of bitter,’ said Martin stuffily.
‘Do you like people?’ asked Henry, when Oscar had gone.
‘Of course I do,’ said Martin Hammond.
‘Oh,’ said Henry. ‘Only I thought you might be too busy improving their lot to have much time for them.’
Martin Hammond coloured, and Henry felt sorry.
‘Only a half?’ he said, when the drinks arrived.
‘I don’t drink much any more,’ said Martin.
‘Have you got a girlfriend?’ asked Henry.
‘I’ve no time,’ said Martin Hammond.
‘What’s your attitude to cucumbers?’ asked Henry.
‘They give me indigestion,’ said Martin Hammond.
‘You know what you are?’ said Henry. ‘Old before your time.’
During the Easter holidays, Hilary resumed work on her novel. One evening, when Henry returned home tired after visiting the Selby and Osgodby areas to meet cucumber growers and ‘show my face’, Hilary told him that she had made good progress, and he said, ‘Oh good. Thank goodness one of us is talented,’ and she stared at him in dismay, and he stared at her in dismay, and said, ‘No, I’m really pleased. Tell me about it.’ But she couldn’t. A curtain was drawn across a whole room in their lives.
They had been having driving lessons, and it didn’t help Henry’s mood when Hilary passed her test first time, even though it meant that they bought a very old Standard Eight, which Henry was able to drive at weekends, to improve his technique.
An enormous improvement in his driving did result. In fact, his examiner on his second test told him that he might have passed him if he hadn’t hit the car while parking at the very end. ‘What do you do now?’ the examiner asked him. ‘Try to find the owner and report the accident,’ said Henry. ‘Right,’ said the examiner drily. ‘Well, that bit’s easy. I’m the owner.’
Hilary was becoming aware of a strong element of perversity in Henry’s make-up. When he passed his test at the fourth attempt – we’ll draw a veil over the third, since the greengrocer’s has long been rebuilt – there was only one possible target for his first trip behind the wheel. Berwick-on-Tweed, the only town in the North of England for whose cucumbers he was not responsible.
It was an unseasonably warm Saturday in early July. On parts of the north-east coast the temperature was nudging 65. As the car nosed rustily up the A1, past Newcastle, with the sheep-rich Cheviots to their left and the great castles of Northumberland to their right, Henry’s blood fizzed to the romance of the open road.
They reached Berwick in time for a sandwich lunch. As they wandered the sober Georgian streets of that estuarine gem, Henry was disturbed to see how full of cucumbers the greengrocers’ were.
They drifted, hand in hand, along the Quay Walls, at the wide Tweed’s edge. Under the great road and rail bridges, swans paddled gently against the current, so as to remain still for their lunch.
As they sauntered happily along the ramparts, they saw a tall, craggy, handsome young man and a bronzed young woman walking towards them, hand in hand. For an absurd moment Henry wished that it was a mirror image, and that he was tall, craggy and handsome. He almost wished that Hilary was sun-drenched and sensuous and sultry and fleshy like … ‘Anna!’ they both exclaimed.
Anna Matheson, best friend of Hilary at Thurmarsh Grammar, and unlawful wife of Uncle Teddy in Cap Ferrat, who had once bared her all for Henry in her little flat in Cardington Road, went the colour of milky coffee beneath her suntan.
‘Oh hell,’ she said. ‘Oh Christ. Oh well. This is Jed.’
‘Hi,’ said Jed.
Jed! What sort of a name is that? thought Henry, and he found that he didn’t want to be tall, craggy and handsome any more.
‘These people are all right, Jed,’ said Anna. ‘Hillers was my best friend at school and Henry is Teddy’s kind of adopted son.’
‘Oh. Right,’ said Jed.
‘We can tell them, Jed. I have to.’
Jed thought for a moment. ‘OK,’ he said.
Anna led them along the dignified ramparts towards the sea, past the Customs House and the Guard House.
‘You look wonderful, Hillers,’ she said. ‘Pregnancy really suits you. I can’t believe it. You look lovely.’
‘Thank you,’ said Hilary drily. ‘You do too.’
‘Well I always did,’ said Anna, ‘but you were a mess.’
‘Thank you very much.’
‘No, not being rude, because now you aren’t, not remotely, so that’s great,’ said Anna.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Hilary. ‘Good.’
They had reached a grassy open spa
ce, sheltered from the onshore breeze by the town walls. Anna plonked herself on the grass and brought her knees up almost to her chin, as if to flaunt the glory of her sun-kissed thighs. Jed, in his old oil-stained cords, lolled darkly, suspiciously.
Behind them, gentle rollers expired on the Northumberland coast, and an oystercatcher’s shrill alarm cry rang out. In front of them, gulls wheeled bad-temperedly over the slate-and red-tiled roofs. The sun shone on the sandstone and whitewash of the trim Georgian houses. Henry and Hilary waited patiently for an explanation.
‘Jed has a boat,’ said Anna.
Jed frowned.
‘I have to tell them, Jed. They know about Teddy. It’s nothing sinister, anyway. It isn’t drugs or dead bodies or the white slave trade. Just Teddy’s old business. Import-export. We import wine and brandy and export whisky. All right, it’s illegal, but there’s no harm done.’
Henry was amazed at the extent of the relief with which he greeted this story. Why should he still care so much about Uncle Teddy? Why should he care so little about Uncle Teddy’s breaking of the law?
‘I love Teddy,’ said Anna. ‘I’d never want to hurt him. Jed knows that.’
‘Oh aye. Right. Oh, she loves Teddy,’ said Jed.
‘I’m no angel, but I do have feelings, and I’d never want to hurt Teddy,’ said Anna.
‘Never want to hurt him. I can vouch for that,’ said Jed.
‘Obviously it has to be me who comes to England,’ said Anna. ‘Teddy can’t. He’s supposed to be dead. Teddy knows I’m seeing Jed.’
‘It’d be a trifle awkward if your parents happened to see you now, not wearing your nun’s habit.’ It was Henry’s turn to be dry.
This time Anna gave a tanned blush.
‘It is all a bit awful, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘But what can I do? They’d be even more hurt by the truth.’
A huge gull, sitting on the middle of nine chimney-pots, disturbed that rare summer afternoon with a stream of raucous indignation.
‘There’s just … there’s just one thing,’ said Anna. ‘It’d be nice if you could bear it in mind. Teddy thinks Jed’s seventy.’
3 The Miracle of Life
AS HE WALKED along the corridor to the maternity ward, Henry again made the mistake of rehearsing the scene that was about to take place. Hilary would be sitting up in bed, beautiful and serene and sparkling, and little Kate would be gurgling happily in her arms, or perhaps sleeping peacefully after the ordeal of birth.
In fact Hilary was lying with her head resting against three pillows. Her face was strained and even paler than usual. There were dark patches under her deep-set eyes. Her hair, wet from her exertions, clung lankly and dankly to her scalp. She was holding their baby very gingerly. Kate’s disproportionately large face was red, and a few strands of wispy blonde hair were almost invisible on her scalp. Her eyes were shut, her nose was wrinkled and she was yelling furiously at the ignominy of moving from her mother’s womb to twentieth-century Thurmarsh.
Henry had imagined that he would bend down to kiss Hilary and say, ‘Darling, I’m so proud of you. I love you so much. I’m the luckiest man in the world.’ But his throat was tight with emotion and no words would come, and he felt himself dissolving into ten thousand receding pinpricks. The floor of the ward came up to meet him. As his forehead crashed into the foot of Hilary’s bed, he felt the pain as if it were outside himself, at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
The nurse looked at Hilary in alarm, and Hilary looked at the nurse in alarm.
‘I think he’s pleased,’ said Hilary weakly.
Then she burst into tears, and the baby bawled and yelled and Henry stirred and moaned, and the nurse said, ‘I’ve heard of postnatal depression, but this is ridiculous.’
Two burly men wheeled Henry to the Casualty Department, where the blood was washed off his face and the wound dressed. Then they wheeled him to the X-Ray Department, where his forehead was x-rayed. Then he tried to walk, but his legs were wobbly. They gave him a mug of sweet tea, and he tried again, and this time he was strong enough to walk carefully down the serpentine corridors, past wards and operating theatres and the Oncology and Pathology Departments, so that by the time he reached Hilary’s bedside he felt a complete sham.
‘How are you?’ asked Hilary anxiously.
Henry groaned.
‘That’s what I should be asking you,’ he said. ‘This is your ordeal, not mine.’
Hilary clasped his hand.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I should be clasping your hand. It’s you who were brave and suffered. It’s you who has to bear the burden of being a woman. You were in labour six hours. I just … oh, I feel so guilty.’ And then, at last, late but no less sincere, ‘Darling, I’m so proud of you. I love you so much. I’m the luckiest man in the world.’
He squeezed Hilary’s hand and she squeezed his back, and he said, ‘You look lovely.’
‘You don’t.’
‘Oh, thank you very much.’
‘Well, you don’t. You’ve got a huge swelling on your forehead and two black eyes.’
‘Oh no,’ he groaned. ‘Oh, I haven’t, have I? Oh God. I didn’t want to steal your thunder.’
‘How’s your head?’
‘Never mind my head. How are your … well, actually, I’ve got a splitting headache, but never mind that, how are your … well, your everything? Oh darling, you must be so sore.’
‘I don’t even want to think about it,’ said Hilary weakly.
He gazed down at their sleeping daughter, and thought he could see echoes of Hilary in her nose and eyes and mouth.
‘She’s so beautiful,’ he said.
‘What happened?’ asked Hilary, squeezing his hand again. ‘Why did you faint?’
‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘I don’t even remember coming in the ward.’
‘Are you concussed?’
‘Darling! Never mind about me. How … er … was it awfully … they say I am a bit concussed, actually, but never mind that, it’ll pass, how about you, that’s the point … I mean, don’t talk about it if you don’t want to.’
They sat in silence for a moment, holding hands. Their three-hour-old daughter stirred in her sleep and made a tiny noise.
‘She’s dreaming,’ said Hilary. ‘What can she have to dream about? What does she know?’
‘Her lovely mummy’s lovely insides,’ said Henry. ‘It’s coming back. I remember, I came in, and I saw you lying there, looking so exhausted.’ He saw Hilary’s disappointment and added hurriedly, ‘and so incredibly lovely and beautiful. And I saw … it … her … and she … I mean, people say babies are small, but she’s huge, I mean all that, her head alone looks enormous, and I mean there’s hardly room for my prick sometimes, and all that had to come out through that, and I was just overwhelmed with love and empathy with your suffering and I thought, “I’ll never complain about anything again.”’
‘How’s your head?’
‘Awful.’
Hilary laughed.
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘That was wicked. Oh, darling, I … Oh God, I feel so ashamed. No!! Who cares what I think? How do you feel, really?’
‘Tired,’ said Hilary. ‘So terribly tired. You’ll just have to go on feeling ashamed. I don’t have the energy to steal my thunder back.’
He kissed her very gently, and the doctor came in with the nurse.
‘Aching,’ said the nurse. ‘Lost quite a lot of blood. Shocked.’
‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ said the doctor. ‘What you poor women have to go through!’
‘Oh I was speaking about the husband,’ said the nurse.
Henry groaned.
When Cousin Hilda saw little Kate she said, ‘She’s got big ears, hasn’t she?’ and Henry and Hilary, translating this into praise for eyes, nose and mouth, smiled proudly. When Auntie Doris came, she said, ‘Oh, look at her, bless her. Isn’t she lovely, bless her?’ It was difficult to think that Auntie Doris had once been Kate’s size, and
horrendous to think that one day Kate might be Auntie Doris’s size.
The dreadful summer of 1958 drew blessedly to a close. The cod war raged between Britain and Iceland, the Russians fired two dogs into space and brought them back safely, the number of unemployed reached a ten-year high of 476,000, and Thurmarsh throbbed to the songs of Elvis Presley and Pat Boone.
They took Kate to London to spend a weekend with Mr and Mrs Hargreaves in their tall, narrow Georgian town house in Hampstead, where Elvis Presley was seldom heard, and Pat Boone never. Henry and Hilary were put in Diana’s old room, with Kate next to them, in the room where Henry had made love with Diana, for the first and last time, less than three years ago.
‘Diana and Nigel are coming to dinner,’ Mrs Hargreaves announced. She was still amazingly graceful and attractive, and Henry almost blushed at the memory of the erections he’d been forced to hide on the beaches of Brittany when he was seventeen and hungry. ‘They’re bringing Benedict. And Paul’s popping over.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Judy’s left him.’
Thank God! Paul had been his best friend at Dalton College, but Henry had never liked Judy Miller. She had behaved like a barrister when she was still a student. When she actually became a barrister, goodness knew to what heights of arrogance she would aspire.
‘Oh dear, I am sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s kind of you to say so, but you aren’t really,’ said Mrs Hargreaves. ‘She wasn’t right for him. I just wish he’d had the sense to leave her before she left him. Oh, and we’ve invited Nigel’s and your old sparring partner, Lampo Davey, and his … er … friend, whom you also know, I believe.’
It might have been Hampstead, but Mrs Hargreaves wasn’t Bohemian enough to say ‘lover’.
‘Incidentally, you don’t praise the food here,’ said Henry to Hilary as they unpacked. ‘You don’t praise it at Cousin Hilda’s because food isn’t meant to be enjoyed, and you don’t praise it here because it’s assumed to be delicious and to praise it is to admit the possibility that it might not have been.’
Henry felt nervous as they got ready for dinner, and this surprised him. True, it was fourteen months since he’d last seen Mr and Mrs Hargreaves, at his wedding, but he hadn’t expected, now that he was a husband and a father, that he would still feel an uncouth northern hick in these sophisticated surroundings. Now he wondered if those feelings would ever change. Would he always seek the approval of Mrs Hargreaves, because he found her elegance and unattainability so sexually attractive? Would he always feel inferior to Mr Hargreaves, because Mr Hargreaves was a brain surgeon and he was with the Cucumber Marketing Board?