by David Nobbs
‘Oh. Well it’s all very well for him to say that, but I’m not sure he can. He hasn’t discussed it with us. I mean, truth to tell, he resents Felicity.’
‘He resents everybody, including himself, but don’t worry your tiny little mind about that, he isn’t actually coming, your lifestyles are safe, if he was he’d have told you. He’s lied to us and he’s obviously going off somewhere.’
‘Oh God. What’s he up to now?’
‘May I?’ said Henry, pointing at the phone.
‘Hang on, Nigel, Henry wants a word,’ said Diana.
She handed the phone to Henry.
‘Hello, Nigel,’ said Henry. It was too serious a moment to call him Tosser.
‘Hello, Henry. This is all a bloody bore, isn’t it?’
‘Listen, Nigel. Benedict left here about half an hour ago. Our only chance is to try the trains. I’m going to the station now. If I don’t catch him and a train’s gone that he might have caught, will you go to St Pancras and meet it?’
‘St Pancras. That’s miles away.’
‘I know it’s miles away but he’s your son for God’s sake.’
‘Yours is his home and you’ve made a mess of dealing with him, that’s the truth, isn’t it?’
‘There isn’t time to argue, for God’s sake. We must rush. Will you?’
‘It’s not as easy as that, Henry. I’m guest of honour at a dinner tonight. I’m Top Pensions Salesman of the Year.’
‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing. He’s your son!’
‘I’m not thinking of myself.’
‘Huh!’
‘Well, not only myself. There’s Felicity. There’s all the guests. The chap presenting the trophy’s coming all the way from our Cardiff office.’
‘You were my hero once. I’m off to the station. Here’s Diana.’
Henry handed the phone to Diana and hurried out of the house.
He drove to Thurmarsh (Midland Road) Station like a maniac.
The London train had gone five minutes ago. He tried the bus station without luck, and then drove along Commercial Road towards Splutt, which was Benedict’s most likely route if he was hitchhiking. There was no sign of him.
When he got home he phoned Tosser again.
‘He might have got the 4.12,’ he said. ‘It gets to St Pancras at 7.57.’
‘Look,’ said Tosser. ‘I see no reason why I should go, he’s seventeen, he knows what he’s doing, I’m not sure if it would do any good if I did go, though I hasten to add that I would go any other night despite that, but this whole event is about me and not to be there would be an enormous insult to a lot of good people, who’ve paid a lot of money.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Felicity is not a very strong or stable woman emotionally. Having Benedict here is not an option. I know it sounds brutal, but I have to think of Felicity’s health. She’s my ultimate responsibility.’
‘Goodbye, Tosser,’ said Henry.
‘I want to change my name to Pratt,’ said Camilla Pilkington-Brick.
There was still some hope for Henry and the world as 1974 drew towards its close. Life in 83, Lordship Road proceeded smoothly and the mattresses had finally been removed from the front of the Gleneagles. In Portugal, a bloodless military coup had overthrown President Tomas and Prime Minister Caetano, had seen the Socialist leader Mario Soares return from exile, and the end of censorship and the disbandment of the secret police. In Greece the long night of the colonels was over. Democracy returned joyously in a fizz of fireworks and a cacophony of car horns. ‘What a fragile and precious gift democracy is, and how carelessly and apathetically we guard ours,’ Henry told John Barrington in the pub one lunchtime, and John Barrington made his point perfectly without knowing it, saying, ‘True. Better get those sandwiches ordered if we want a decent choice.’
There were clouds of course. The IRA bombed two pubs in Birmingham, killing nineteen people. And Benedict didn’t return to collect the rest of his things. He didn’t return to Dalton College either. The school heard nothing. Henry and Diana heard nothing. Tosser heard nothing. Camilla heard nothing and was very hurt. The police heard nothing and had more serious concerns on their hands.
Henry’s contempt for Tosser was modified, during those winter months, by his knowledge of the way in which he himself salved his conscience with the thought that Benedict’s absence was a good thing for every other member of the family.
Kate recovered from her experience slowly but steadily. The news that she had got nine O levels had boosted her ego at a vital time. She met a nice lad called Brian, who worshipped her, and she kept him at arm’s length without being cruel. She would survive.
Jack was doing very well at football, was unlikely to do well in his exams, was known to frequent the Golden Ball in Gasworks Road, although he was more than two years under age, relished being the only boy in the house, and remained good-natured and cheery.
Camilla wanted to leave boarding school and join Kate at Thurmarsh Grammar School for Girls. Tosser resented this. ‘I want her to have the best. I’m happy to pay. I did everything for Benedict.’ In the end it was decided, democratically, in line with events in Western Europe, that she should stay at Benningdean until the end of the school year and then go to Thurmarsh Grammar if a) she was accepted and b) she still wanted to. She was becoming much more interested in boys and correspondingly less interested in horses.
Henry dreaded the end of winter. The conviction that he’d been lied to about his suspect cucumbers seeped out of the storage cavern of his subconscious. He knew that he’d find it difficult to live with himself if he ignored the issue, but he was nervous of the problems he might face if he didn’t. Is this the fighter who learnt to laugh at himself and performed a comic act to the whole school at the age of fifteen? you ask most reasonably. Do not forget, gentle reader, that since that day Henry had experienced a failed career in newspapers, a rocky career in cucumbers, a failed marriage and a failed step-fatherhood. His confidence was low. Fighting wasn’t so easy now.
On March 13th, 1975, actress Viviane Ventura won her court battle to prove that millionaire financier John Bentley was the father of her love child, Schehezerazade. Mr Bentley, seemingly ignorant of British politics, said, ‘I was considering joining the Conservative party before this came up – now perhaps I ought to join the anarchists.’ Seven-foot-tall US actor Rik Van Nutter opened a warehouse to sell off the spoils of his broken marriage with Anita Ekberg. Henry Ezra Pratt celebrated his fortieth birthday in modest fashion with a meal at the Taj Mahal restaurant with Diana, Kate, Jack and the Blair family.
Did life begin at forty for our hero? No. It merely continued.
Early in May he went up to County Durham again, and asked Mr Wilberforce, happily recovered from his kidney problems, if he could take a ridge cucumber and a hot house cucumber for analysis, ‘Just to monitor the situation.’ Mr Wilberforce, anxious to avoid further black stem rot, raised no objections.
That evening, Henry met Martin Hammond in the Pigeon and Two Cushions. There were still bells round the walls of the gleaming little black bar, but Oscar had long gone. During his forty years Henry had seen eras end as quickly as the promises of Prime Ministers. Golden ages had died like hares at harvest time. Halcyon days had disappeared like dissidents in Argentina. Now another golden age had gone. Another era had ended. The halcyon days of waiters in northern pubs had gone for ever. And, to add insult to injury, there was a fruit machine.
‘Awful news about Tommy Marsden,’ said Henry.
‘Dreadful. If I’d said to you, twenty years ago, when he had the world at his feet, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up driving his car into a gravel pit outside Newark while blind drunk,” you’d have thought I was mad.’
‘I went to the funeral. It was a bleak little affair really.’
‘I’d have liked to. It clashed with an absolutely vital Highways and By-ways Committee.’
‘No idea what happened to Ian Lowson and Billy Erpingham, I suppose?’
‘Ian Lowson emigrated to Australia. I’ve not heard a word about Billy Erpingham.’
‘That’s it then. The Paradise Lane Gang. It’s just thee and me now.’
They recalled the good, bad, indifferent old days in silence for a few moments. Then Henry broached the matter in hand.
‘Martin? Do you, with your industrial contacts and your political contacts, know of a laboratory where I could have something very important analysed in secret?’
‘I might,’ said Martin Hammond cautiously. ‘What is it?’
‘Two cucumbers.’
‘What??’
They waited while a fruit machine repairer and his fiancée walked past to the far corner. The fruit machine repairer gave the fruit machine a nervous glance, as if fearing that it might go wrong and spoil his evening out.
Henry lowered his voice to a whisper.
‘They were grown near a nuclear power station. I want them tested for radiation. You could be helping to uncover a web of corruption and deception in which the great British public are cast in the role of suckers yet again. You could help rock a major industry and embarrass its leaders.’
‘You’re speaking my language,’ said Martin Hammond. ‘Can it be that your political consciousness is waking up at last?’
Henry scoffed, but Martin was right.
On Monday, May 26th, 1975, head teachers demanded protection from angry parents, Evel Knievel retired after crashing while riding his motor bike over thirteen London buses, and Henry discovered that the cucumber grown outdoors in County Durham contained more than five times the amount of radiation permitted by Government regulations.
That night, after Kate and Jack had gone exhausted to bed, Henry and Diana talked long and hard in the old-fashioned kitchen of number 83, with its battered free-standing dresser picked up cheap at auction.
‘I think I’ll have to resign,’ Henry said. ‘I don’t think I’ve any option.’
‘Well, there’s no more to be said then, is there?’
‘You don’t sound pleased.’
‘I’m not, but does it matter? Your mind’s made up.’
‘Diana! I didn’t say that. Obviously I want to talk it over with you, or we wouldn’t be sitting here.’
The kettle was boiling. Henry expected that Diana would go to it, but she showed no sign.
‘What do you think I should do?’ he asked.
‘I think you should make a real, hard, long, thorough effort to find another job, and then resign.’
The kitchen, damp enough at the best of times, was filling with steam. Henry hurried to the kettle.
‘If I get another job first, I’ll be leaving as a career move, not as a matter of principle,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t principle matter to you?’
‘Well I suppose all life’s a compromise, Henry. I think it’s all very well having principles, but one has to eat, and how could we survive if you lost your salary?’
‘Oh, Diana!’
‘Hilary had her novels. I don’t have anything.’
‘Because you never wanted to have anything, and please let’s keep Hilary out of this.’
He plonked her coffee down on the plain, inelegantly knotted pine table, picked up cheap at auction.
‘I didn’t work because Nigel hated the idea of my working,’ said Diana coolly.
‘And what Nigel said went, because you don’t have a mind of your own.’
They stared at each other in silence.
‘I see,’ said Diana. ‘I thought I had an amazing marriage in which we never had rows. I thought we loved and respected each other. That’s what made living in Thurmash and having draughty houses and clapped-out cars and odd battered furniture picked up at auctions and skimping and scraping and not being able to see my schoolfriends and having to shop at Binns of Thurmarsh instead of Harrods and Harvey Nichols worthwhile. That’s why I never once complained. All for nothing. When the crunch comes, you’re no better than Tosser.’
Henry looked at her in horror.
‘I don’t want to argue,’ he said. ‘The last thing I want to do is argue. Oh my God, Diana darling, I didn’t realise you’d felt like that all these years.’
‘Because I didn’t tell you, because I loved you, so it didn’t matter. So I’m a not completely empty-headed person. I do have a mind of my own.’
‘I’m sorry. Of course you do.’
‘I care about people, Henry. You, the children, our friends, Auntie Doris, Uncle Teddy, Cousin Hilda. I care passionately about other people, and I don’t think I’m selfish.’
‘You’re not! Oh, darling, you’re not.’
He tried to kiss her. She wouldn’t have it.
‘No. Listen to me,’ she said. ‘Hear me out. I don’t think I’m capable of being roused by abstract issues. It isn’t in me. So I can’t be excited by matters of principle as you can. I’m just not made that way. Of course people shouldn’t be eating radiated cucumbers. You should try to do something about it. I agree. But not resign.’
‘Well, I’ll try, but I have to accuse the Director (Operations) of deceiving me, and that won’t go down well. It might end up with my being sacked. I’d rather resign than that.’
‘Well yes.’
‘I mean, what is life all about? Just to eat, sleep, make love, bring up children so they can eat, sleep, make love and bring up children to eat, sleep and make love? I’m forty. Shouldn’t I be ready to act like a man? Isn’t it important for you to know that your husband is strong and resolute?’
‘Not terribly, frankly. If it was I wouldn’t have married you.’
‘Diana!’
‘I loved you for your warmth, humour, generosity and sexuality, not necessarily in that order.’
The clock on the living room mantelpiece, bought cheap at auction, struck thirteen. Midnight already!
‘More coffee?’
‘May as well. I won’t sleep anyway.’
Over the next cup of coffee, Henry made the point that, if he did resign, he could tell the newspapers and become a bit of a celebrity. ‘That’d help me get other jobs.’
‘It might label you as a troublemaker.’
‘I can’t be as pessimistic and cowardly as that.’
‘You want your moment of glory, don’t you?’
‘Well I must admit I’d quite enjoy it. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Oh dear,’ said Diana. ‘No, I really don’t think I would. I think I believe that glory is an illusion.’
They finished their coffee in silence. There didn’t seem to be any more to be said.
The Director (Operations) read the laboratory report on Henry’s cucumber and then leant forward, his expression grim, his nose more predatory than ever.
‘So you sent this to an outside lab,’ he said, ‘and not to us.’
‘Yes.’
The sun came out from behind a puffy little cloud and set the dust dancing in Timothy Whitehouse’s office. It was an inappropriately delightful early summer’s day.
‘Do you believe our labs to be inefficient, Henry?’
‘No.’
‘Do you believe our labs to be dishonesty, Henry?’
Henry gulped. The moment he’d dreaded had arrived. Be brave, Henry.
‘Yes.’
‘I see. Oh dear,’ said Mr Whitehouse gravely. ‘Well now! In that case …’
‘I resign.’
‘What?’
‘I resign.’
‘That’s a bit hasty, isn’t it?’
‘Well, I thought you were going to sack me, and I thought I’d better get my resignation in first.’
‘Sack you?’ The Director (Operations) smiled. ‘No, no. I wasn’t going to sack you.’
‘You weren’t?’
‘No!’ A laugh played briefly on the Director’s thin lips, then disappeared. ‘We hardly ever sack people, Henry. It can mean such trouble. Tribunals, lawsuits, strikes, compensation. Oh dear no. I suppose if I found that a member of my staff was systematically murdering his
… or her, we mustn’t be biased … colleagues, I might seriously consider dismissal. In your case, no!’
‘Oh. Well … er … what … er … what were you going to say?’
‘I was going to say, “Well, in that case I don’t see how I can recommend you as my deputy.”’
‘What? I didn’t think you had a deputy.’
‘I don’t. But our masters in Whitehall have calculated that since the Board was created the paperwork has increased by 142 per cent, and three new posts need to be created. One of them is my deputy. In seven years’ time I will retire. You would have been the man in situ. I can’t say you’d have succeeded to my post. I can only say it would have been likely.’
Henry swallowed. Be brave, Henry.
‘Why should I believe you?’ he asked.
‘Don’t you trust me?’
The sun went behind another inoffensive little cloud. The room became dark and grim.
‘You told me not to trust you,’ said Henry stoutly.
‘So I did. So I did. Mea culpa! Mea culpa! I should have told you not to trust me over small and personal matters. Over the great issues of our business I am probity personified. Oh dear, Henry. This is all a storm in a tea-cup.’
The sun streamed into the office again. ‘Henry!’ Mr Whitehouse’s tone became deeply persuasive. ‘One cucumber has shown evidence of radiation. One grower has vegetables that are affected. Cucumbers are distributed centrally. If one person ate a hundred of these cucumbers, I agree, wooden box time. Nobody will! Nobody is in danger. So why alarm the inhabitants of a whole region, of the whole nation, threaten a whole industry, on which so many jobs depend, because of one cucumber?’
Mr Whitehouse paused, waiting for Henry to speak. Henry hesitated. Oh yes, he did hesitate. And, because he hesitated, Mr Whitehouse felt compelled to continue.
‘Between you, me and the mythical G.P., Vincent Ambrose retires in six years. It’s not in the realms of fantasy that you might end up as Chief Executive.’
‘Me, Chief Executive!’ scoffed Henry. ‘I haven’t even been to university.’
‘The tides of egalitarianism are licking at the saltmarsh of privilege even here, Henry. How would you like to be Chief Executive?’