The Complete Pratt

by David Nobbs

‘She’s never had a lot of self-discipline, hasn’t Doris,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘Not easy to, running a pub, mind.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t believe she’s ended up running a pub.’ He sighed again. ‘What a mess. Pub still doing all right, is it?’

  ‘They get by,’ said Henry.

  They didn’t tell Uncle Teddy that it was so popular that it was known throughout the Dales as ‘Doris’s’. They didn’t think it would be what he wanted to hear.

  ‘I don’t blame her for not waiting,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘My fault for getting sent to prison. Doris couldn’t live without a man. No idea how to start.’ He sighed. ‘You’d think she’d have been able to get somebody better than Geoffrey Porringer, though.’

  ‘I thought he was your friend,’ said Henry.

  ‘As a chap to do business with, fine,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘Chap to eat with, grand. Chap to drink with, no problem. Chap to wake up to, all those blackheads on the pillow beside you, horrendous I’d have thought.’

  ‘Well you couldn’t be expected to fancy him,’ said Henry. ‘I mean, I can’t believe that I would if I was a woman, but you never know. Women have strange tastes in men.’

  ‘I know,’ said Hilary. ‘I married you.’

  Henry assumed that it was a joke, and laughed not because it amused him, but in order to make it clear that it was a joke. But Uncle Teddy took it seriously.

  ‘That’s very true,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe some of the fellers women take up with. Sidney Watson over at Mexborough. Hollow chest, halitosis, and an undertaker. They were queueing up. Tommy Simonsgate, the plumber. Wallet full of moths, and always had bits of cabbage sticking between his teeth. Married a model. I gave it two years. Ten years later, they’d three kids, she looks like a brick shithouse, and he’s just the same, except a bit more sophisticated. It’s broccoli instead of cabbage.’ He fell silent for a reflective moment. ‘I don’t blame Anna for going. I’m getting an old man’s legs. I’ll end up looking like a punchball on matchsticks. I’m not bitter. She gave me some wonderful times. Always knew it had to end. I just wish we could have had one more year. Just one more year. I’d have settled for that.’ His voice was choking. He blew his nose. ‘May as well kill the bottle.’

  He filled their glasses almost to the brim. A plane winked across their natural planetarium, and there was a soft whisper of wind.

  ‘Grand kids,’ he said. ‘Grand. I’m going to love having them around. I’m so glad you came, son. And you, Hilary. You’re a belter. I’m proud of him, winning you. Always knew he had it in him, mind.’

  He paused. Neither Henry nor Hilary spoke. They didn’t know what to say. They decided to let Uncle Teddy get it off his chest.

  ‘I’m frightened of growing old. I had looks, you see. It’s sad losing them. You’re all right, Henry, because you’ve never had looks.’

  Henry had to bite his tongue to stop himself saying, drily, ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘So you’ve nothing to lose. Women find you irresistible because of your …’

  Uncle Teddy paused for so long that Henry felt compelled to speak.

  ‘Charisma?’ he said hopefully.

  ‘Vulnerability. They want to mother you and then when they realise you’re a proper sexy man they’re hooked.’ He sighed again. ‘I should have gone back to Doris when you gave me the chance. Tell me, would you say … would you say Doris and Geoffrey are … happy?’

  Henry’s head was swimming with wine and exhaustion. He longed for sleep. He couldn’t think. He knew that it was important to answer carefully, but he simply hadn’t the energy.

  Luckily, Hilary had.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘They aren’t happy, but they aren’t unhappy either. They’ve formed a modus vivendi. A way of living.’

  ‘Thank you for translating,’ said Uncle Teddy, ‘but I’m not completely ignorant.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Anna and I used to read Shakespeare’s plays out loud.’

  Henry and Hilary tried hard to hide their astonishment. Without success.

  ‘You’re stunned. We decided to expand our horizons. Couldn’t get to grips at first. Then, suddenly, open sesame, we got it. Loved it. Romeo and Juliet, know it?’

  ‘I know it,’ said Hilary.

  ‘“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? We must defy our families, because … we’ve formed a modus vivendi.” Not good enough, is it? Doris deserves better. Doris deserves love.’ Uncle Teddy took a gulp of wine, not tasting it. ‘I should have gone back to her when you gave me the chance.’ He held his glass up against the night sky, as if surprised to have found that it was empty. ‘I don’t regret it, though. None of it.’ He stood up. ‘Starting to repeat myself. Time for bed. You’ve got a holiday to have.’ He shook Henry’s hand with strange formality. ‘Good to see you, son.’ He kissed Hilary. ‘You’re lovely.’ He weaved his way back to the house, turned, said, ‘I’m going to give you a wonderful holiday,’ and disappeared into the house.

  Kate and Jack slept through till seven. Uncle Teddy was already up, natty in white shorts and a blue shirt. Breakfast was laid on the terrace. The morning was as fresh as a washed dairy.

  ‘Morning,’ said Uncle Teddy heartily. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Very well. How about you?’

  ‘Like a top,’ lied Uncle Teddy. ‘Right. Coffee?’

  They nodded.

  ‘Right. Coffee coming up.’

  Uncle Teddy tried to make a great fuss of the children without quite knowing how to, and said, ‘Oh well.’

  They had no difficulty in supplying the missing sub-text: ‘I wish I’d had children. Too late now.’

  ‘We thought we’d go on the beach today,’ said Henry, as he spread honey on a crisp, fresh roll. ‘Jack isn’t really ready, but Kate’ll love it.’

  ‘You will come, won’t you?’ said Hilary. They had decided that it would be better if she asked.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘I hate the sea.’

  They looked at him in surprise. Uncle Teddy had no difficulty in supplying the missing sub-text: ‘Then what on earth are you doing living by the bloody thing?’

  ‘Oh, I love living by it,’ he said. ‘I love sea fronts, hotels, promenades, palms, seaside cafés, fish markets, children’s happy faces, everything about it except the bloody thing itself. Well, I don’t hate all seas. I love the Atlantic. That’s my sea. Breakers rolling in. Sand-castles eaten up by the onrushing tide. Sand left glistening by the receding tide. Limpets drying out on the rocks. Streams to dam. Tongues of sea flecking their way in, sliding into rock-pools. Rock-pools coming to life again. Tides, change, drama, that’s my sea. The Med just sits there, like a lukewarm soup. Disgusting.’

  Henry looked at him in amazement, and Hilary looked at Henry in silent rebuke for not having told her that Uncle Teddy had a lyrical side.

  ‘You’re astounded. You think nothing excites me except sex and import-export,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘I told you. We’ve expanded our horizons. Oh God, how could she go?’ His face crumpled and then the mask returned. ‘Out, damned self-pity. I’ll leave you now. Enjoy your day.’

  And Uncle Teddy got into his Rolls Royce and drove off.

  Jack crawled over the sand, Kate loved being buried in the sand, light aeroplanes passed overhead trailing advertising banners, Jack and Kate loved the water, and the day passed pleasantly; and they shopped, and Hilary cooked, and the children were utterly exhausted and fell asleep, and Uncle Teddy returned home and said, ‘Sun’s over the yard-arm. Time for the first Pernod,’ and they drank their apéritifs and ate salade niçoise and sea bass with fennel that Hilary had made very creditably, although the sea bass was slightly overcooked.

  Over dinner Uncle Teddy asked what they’d done that day and pretended to be interested in their replies. Then they asked him what he’d done and he said, ‘Oh, you know, drove around the hills, put the roof down, felt the wind in my face, smelt the wild thyme, blew the cobwebs away.’

  ‘Don’t you have
friends here?’ asked Hilary with that social directness that Henry admired and feared.

  ‘Oh yes. But you’ve heard of flags of convenience. These are friends of convenience. Friends of geography. I like the French, can’t think why so many British can’t stand them, but they’re foreigners to us, we’re foreigners to them, I don’t think we ever quite make real friends. The British are all exiles, like me, so there’s something wrong with them all, except the bona fide businessmen and diplomats, and the bona fide don’t like me because I’m not bona fide. Nice sea bass this, Hilary.’

  ‘It’s overcooked.’

  ‘Barely. Damned good first effort. Anna took ages to get the hang of cooking.’ He paused, thinking affectionately of past culinary disasters, and their hearts bled for him. ‘No, the fact is, they aren’t real friends, and I don’t think I could face them now. All the explanations. All the sympathy.’ He smiled wryly, and with more self-knowledge than they would have believed possible. ‘Besides, I’ve always put myself across as a bit of a roué, young lady at my side, saucy remarks, suggestive inferences, all the gubbins. Bit of a gay dog, old Teddy Braithwaite. Seen it all, knows how to live. Be a shame to let them see me with the stuffing knocked out of me, the gay dog become a hang-dog. No, I have to reconstruct myself and move on. Never see any of them again. Chapter closed. More wine?’

  So every day Uncle Teddy took to the hills. Some days Henry and Hilary went sightseeing. They went to Cannes and Nice and Menton and Monaco and Vence. But some days it was too hot for sightseeing, and some days it was even too hot for the beach. Henry and Hilary grew rather bored with the beach, and Jack and Kate grew sleepy with the sun, and, after lunch, when time stood still, they all went to bed. Occasionally, in those shuttered, insect-buzzing afternoons, Henry and Hilary made love, sleepily. More often they just slept, lovingly. Then there was shopping, and feeding of children, and cooking, because it turned out that they ate in almost every night. Uncle Teddy would return, the sun would go down over the yard-arm, there’d be Pernod and Kir and food and wine and Uncle Teddy repeating himself and apologising for ruining their holiday, and bursting the balloon of self-deception with the sharp pinprick of self-knowledge.

  Yet over it all there hung a growing shadow, a shadow that had nothing to do with Uncle Teddy, but everything to do with Henry and Hilary. Henry didn’t even know it existed, but Hilary did.

  On the beach on their last morning, the hottest, the haziest, the stickiest, the soupiest, Hilary was almost shivering as she screwed herself up to speak.

  ‘My book’s been accepted by Wagstaff and Wagstaff,’ she said.

  Henry felt the great cancer of jealousy, the great lump. He also felt a surge of righteous indignation.

  ‘And you never told me,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t dare.’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  Kate began to cry. Jack smiled. They had to take Kate to the water. The water was warm. Henry was very conscious of the slim, bronzed bodies all round. His podgy body had gone a blotchy red.

  ‘Don’t shout and upset them,’ said Hilary.

  ‘I won’t. But I really do think it’s awful that you waited until the last day of our holiday, and then you tell me as if it’s bad news.’

  ‘It is bad news to you.’

  They all splashed each other and laughed.

  ‘When did you find out?’ said Henry.

  ‘Three days before we left home. And then we were so busy and I thought you’d be upset and I thought I’d tell you on the first day here and then of course all this business blew up and somehow I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.’

  Henry longed to be able to say, ‘I understand completely, my darling. It’s my fault, for giving you the wrong impression, but it is a wrong impression. I’m absolutely thrilled. I hope the book’s an enormous success, and my God your legs look good today,’ but he couldn’t. He said, ‘So you should be. If you don’t trust me I don’t see what hope there is for us,’ and he set off and swam almost a mile out to sea, and his chest ached with the anger and the exertion, and he thought he was starting a heart attack, and he was far out beyond everybody. He fought his panic and controlled it, and swam very slowly back, with his inimitably ungainly breast-stroke, towards the splashing, laughing, smoothly athletic swimmers and the great range of the Alpes Maritimes, barely scarred by all the corniche roads. Above the mountains clouds were gathering, clouds with dark angry centres, clouds like boils full of pus.

  Hilary didn’t speak. Henry found it impossible to apologise. He said, ‘I suppose we’d better get ready for lunch,’ in a low, lifeless voice. ‘Yes,’ said Hilary, in a similar voice.

  All afternoon they communicated like that. That evening, Uncle Teddy suggested a posh restaurant for their last night. They ate outside, overlooking the sea, with Jack in his carry-cot. The staff were kind and warm to Kate and Jack. Henry and Hilary, used to being treated like germs when they took the children out in England, couldn’t believe it.

  They pretended that nothing was wrong, for Uncle Teddy’s sake. And Uncle Teddy pretended that he was as happy as a sandboy, for their sake. They ate bourride and langoustine mayonnaise and lamb crusted with herbs, and because of the ghastly charade that they were playing out it might have been cotton wool.

  ‘It’s been a lovely fortnight, despite everything.’

  ‘I hope everything works out.’

  ‘It mustn’t be so long next time.’

  ‘I think you’ve taken it terribly well.’

  ‘Thank you for everything.’

  ‘I’ll write very soon.’

  ‘What a lot of flies there are tonight!’

  ‘I hope none of them are mosquitoes.’

  It’ll be a long journey tomorrow.’

  ‘There are some nice places to stay just south of Paris.’

  ‘The air’s incredibly heavy tonight.’

  ‘This raspberry mousse looks wonderful.’

  ‘The wine is lovely.’

  ‘Thank you. I will have another glass.’

  ‘We sound like the conversations in those “Teach Yourself French” booklets.’

  Which of them said what? It doesn’t matter. They barely knew themselves.

  One of the waiters held Kate’s hand and took her to the water’s edge. Another carried a delighted Jack on a tour of the kitchens.

  In the sky, the boils grew, the pus throbbed. The first great fork of lightning broke the world in two. There was a huge rumble of thunder. Jack grinned. Kate cried.

  The storm reached them at two o’clock. The thunder and lightning were almost continuous. It rained ferociously for forty minutes.

  Then the rain stopped and the thunder and lightning moved away, although it would be more than two hours before they were free from distant rumbling.

  Neither Henry nor Hilary had slept a wink. Jack slept throughout it all. Kate woke and cried but was brave when she was cuddled and soon went back to sleep again.

  Henry and Hilary lay as stiff as boards, not touching.

  ‘What you said was absolutely true,’ he whispered, because he was very conscious of Uncle Teddy, also presumably unable to sleep. ‘I was jealous.’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘Are you asleep?’ he whispered.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s so awful. I’m so disappointed in you.’

  ‘That sounds very priggish.’

  ‘I am priggish. My dad’s priggish.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘But not my book.’

  ‘Oh fuck your book.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Silence then.

  A last faint rumble of thunder.

  The first pale streak of dawn.

  The first exclamation of delight at the glory of the privilege of existence from a passing thrush.

  More silence then.

  ‘I need your help,’ whispered Henry.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ whispered Hilary. ‘I create someth
ing, with great difficulty. I have no confidence in it. It’s accepted. I’m overjoyed. I can’t tell you. I tell you. I think, “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he isn’t jealous.” I’m not wrong. You hate my creativity. You hate the existence of my book that is a painful thing wrenched out of myself. My second greatest pride, my second greatest joy, for my first greatest pride and joy was you. I’m thrilled. I’m excited. I find I’m not useless after all. And you are angry. I’m so hurt. So hurt. And you ask me for help.’

  ‘Don’t you love me any more?’ whispered Henry.

  ‘Oh yes, I still love you,’ whispered Hilary. ‘But I don’t want to love you any more.’

  Two hands meet in a French bed. They clasp each other. They squeeze each other, once. They drop apart.

  Silence then.

  6 Count Your Blessings

  ONE OF THE many benefits of having children is that one is too busy to have other crises. Henry and Hilary were very loving parents. Henry would hurry to catch the train from Leeds City Station of an evening, in order to be home for bathtime. Big, ugly yet appealing Jack, with his constant good nature, was almost always a delight. Pale, sensitive, excitable Kate, with her changes of mood and her sharp emotional needs, was altogether more difficult, but often deeply loving and affectionate. She listened to bedtime stories with a solemnity that no heart could have resisted. She laughed at Henry’s funny voices with an abandon that touched them deeply.

  Henry and Hilary were invited to dinner at the Lewthwaites’ one Wednesday. They took Kate and Jack, and put them to bed upstairs. While Henry was reading Kate a story about a magical wellington boot, he was disappointed to hear other guests arriving with cheery ‘hello’s’ and, ‘Oh you shouldn’t have. They’re lovely. Find a vase, Howard.’ They felt disappointed. They hadn’t come prepared for other guests. They strained to catch the identity of the unwelcome strangers, but Sam began to play an Adam Faith record, and the chance was gone.

  The other guests turned out to be unwelcome, but not strangers. They were Peter and Olivia Matheson, and their daughter Anna.

  Peter Matheson turned upon them the massed floodlights of his social smile. Olivia’s face was becoming deeply lined. Anna was wearing no make-up and an unsuccessful grey version of the sack dress. It simply looked as though she was wearing a grey sack. She went pale when she saw them, but soon recovered her colour.