by David Nobbs
The elderly man approached them slowly. He was wearing a smart green overcoat. The creases in his trousers were razor sharp. His shoes shone.
‘Don’t you recognise me, Henry?’ he said.
‘Norman Pettifer!’ said Henry.
Norman Pettifer smiled shyly.
‘Couldn’t let the old girl go with none of her gentlemen here,’ he said. ‘Most of the others are dead.’
‘It’s wonderful of you to come,’ said Henry. ‘And good to see you. I didn’t even realise you were …’ He stopped, embarrassed.
‘Still alive?’ Norman Pettifer finished his sentence for him. ‘Oh yes. Just. I’m living in the Yorkshire Retired Grocers’ Benevolent Home.’
So there were just ten mourners in the over-polished crematorium chapel, to see Cousin Hilda move sedately to her last resting place.
Afterwards, they stood around, feeling sad and inadequate. Quite soon, the Langridges took their leave. Shy Len Langridge blushed at the warmth of Henry’s praise of his wife.
Henry didn’t know what to do about Norman Pettifer.
‘I’m so glad you could come, Norman,’ he said. ‘We’re having a little family lunch party at the Post House. We’d be very pleased if you joined us.’
‘Oh no,’ said Norman Pettifer. ‘No, no. It’s a family do, fair play. I wouldn’t intrude. No, no. I were glad to pay my last respects. That’s enough.’ He turned to smile at them all. ‘She were a fine landlady, of the old school. I ate three hundred and eighty-two portions of her toad-in-the-hole. Three hundred and eighty-one portions of her spotted dick. That sort of thing makes folk close.’
A combination of shyness, respect for privacy, lack of interest and sheer awe at these monumental statistics prevented any of the English mourners from raising the question. Giuseppe, being Italian, had no such scruples.
‘Why one less spotted dick than toad-in-the-hole?’ he asked.
Norman Pettifer blushed.
‘One Tuesday I went to dinner with my ex-lover,’ he said.
They all hid their astonishment politely, and again it was Giuseppe who asked the question that was in all their minds.
‘Only once?’ he said gently. ‘Was it not a success?’
‘You should never try to relive the past,’ said Norman Pettifer.
Henry and Hilary gave Norman Pettifer a lift home. On the way, he said, ‘We get our last meal at five thirty. It makes for a long evening. There’s always the telly. We play chess and cards, those of us who still have our marbles. We talk. We discuss the changing face of grocery. Supermarkets at all four corners of the town. Shopping for motorists when we’re supposed to be fighting pollution. The huge Fish Hill development sucking the lifeblood out of the town. Boarded up shops in all the old streets. Banks and building societies and charity shops and second-hand shops everywhere. Old folk with no neighbourhood shops, long bus journeys and then no small portions of everything and having to queue at check-outs, where once we delivered groceries to their door. There’s not one of us that isn’t glad to be in a home, the way grocery’s going.’
He was silent after that, until Henry had pulled up outside the old Regency mansion that housed the Retired Grocers’ Benevolent Home. After he’d got out of the car he turned and said, ‘One funeral I’d have given my eye-teeth to be at was old Ralphie Richardson’s. Thank you for the lift.’
After their funeral lunch, the family went their several ways.
As she kissed Henry goodbye, Camilla said, ‘Mummy’s really happy with Gunter, and you’re really happy with Hilary, and you’re both pleased the other’s happy, and I love you both, and Giuseppe and I are really happy. If only …’ She stopped. She could no longer bring herself to mention Benedict by name.
As she kissed Henry goodbye, Kate said, ‘You will come to the play, won’t you?’ and Henry said, ‘Of course. We love your work. You’re good, but then you know that.’ ‘Yes, I do, actually, isn’t that awful?’ said Kate. ‘No,’ said Henry. ‘You’re entitled to enjoy the fact. You’ve given up a lot for it.’ ‘Given up a lot? Given up what?’ said Kate. ‘Marriage, children,’ said Henry. ‘And sex,’ said Kate. ‘Really? Oh dear,’ said Henry. ‘How hopelessly old-fashioned you are, Dad,’ said Kate.
As he gave Henry an embarrassed bear-hug, because kissing fathers wasn’t possible in Thurmarsh, Jack said, ‘Come up again soon,’ and Henry said, ‘You come to London,’ and Jack said, ‘Oh no. Not again. I hate it.’ Flick said, ‘Let’s take a cottage by the sea for a fortnight. That’s what Jack would really like,’ and Henry and Hilary agreed, and Flick said, ‘I didn’t say anything, because I’m not absolutely sure, but I’m almost certain I’m pregnant again at last,’ and Henry said, ‘That’s the second time you’ve given us good news after a cremation,’ and Flick said, ‘Sorry,’ and Henry said, ‘No, it’s as it should be. Life goes on.’
That night, in Cousin Hilda’s house, Henry said, ‘We’ve all the time in the world to make love here now. Poor old Cousin Hilda won’t be coming back with any more shopping,’ and Hilary said, ‘I’d really rather not. Not here. Not tonight. It’d seem like taking advantage. It’d seem disrespectful. I didn’t think I believed in life after death, but I get the feeling that she’d know.’
In the morning, Hilary set off for London and her unfinished novel, while Henry stayed behind to deal with lawyers and estate agents. As the London train groaned wearily out of Thurmarsh (Midland Road) Station, Hilary leant out and yelled, ‘If I’d married Nigel I’d have been known as Hilary Clinton.’
They exchanged deeply fond grins, they waved, the train rounded a bend, Hilary was gone, and Henry shivered.
All day, as he tied knots on the parcel of Cousin Hilda’s life, Henry felt uneasy.
That evening he neglected Norman Pettifer’s advice. He tried to relive the past. He went back, to Paradise Lane, to the little back-to-back terraces where he’d been born. The house wasn’t there any more. The streets weren’t there any more. Paradise Lane, Back Paradise Lane, Paradise Hill, Back Paradise Hill, Paradise Court, Back Paradise Court. All gone. Boxy little houses with horrible brown window surrounds were rising in their place, and in the far distance there were tower blocks, back-to-back terraces turned on their end, with all the inconveniences and none of the neighbourliness.
At first he felt wry. Bang goes my chance of a blue plaque, saying, ‘Henry Pratt, founder of the Café Henry, was born here.’
The great steelworks of Crapp, Hawser and Kettlewell had gone too. In its place were huge, ugly, prefabricated stores – Texas, Homebase, Do-It-All.
Henry would never be banned from the Navigation Inn again. There was no Navigation Inn to be banned from.
Anger began to replace wryness.
Between the Rundle and the Rundle and Gadd Navigation, on the waste ground where the Paradise Lane Gang had played and fought, there was a gleaming new brick building, an old warehouse in modern dress. A huge sign announced, in ironically antique lettering, ‘Rundle Heritage Centre’.
Henry walked slowly over to it, across the hump-backed canal bridge, now dwarfed. Two brightly painted old working boats were tied up against the Heritage Centre.
The Heritage Centre had closed for the day. Henry looked through the ground floor windows and saw … a reconstruction of the Navigation Inn – gleaming, glistening, dead.
His fury took hold of him. He banged on the window and shouted, ‘What about my heritage, you bastards? You’ve taken it all away.’
The east wind snatched his words and sent them floating towards the Pennines, to the mystification of those passing curlews and plovers that had avoided being shot on their journey across Europe.
Henry walked slowly up the hill, past Brunswick Road School, through the almost deserted town centre. Paper bags soared like gulls, plastic bottles bounced across roads, tins lurked among the beautiful daffodils that the council had planted all around the town. On trees not yet quite in leaf, in the Alderman Chandler Memorial Park, black refuse bags shuddere
d like skewered rooks.
Suddenly Henry felt a dreadful premonition. Town planners and developers had taken his past. Something equally dreadful would take away his future. He knew now why he had shivered at the station. He had a sudden certainty that ‘If I’d married Nigel, I’d have been known as Hilary Clinton’ would be the last words he ever heard from his darling Hilary. It seemed entirely appropriate to his life that his marriage should end in a meaningless remark about the soon-to-be-forgotten wife of a soon-to-be-forgotten American president.
The next day, after a sleepless night and a morning spent tying up loose ends, he hurried to the station as if his life depended on it.
As the train pulled out, he looked at his home town for the last time – the backs of grimy houses, the unlovely tower blocks, the waste ground that had once been marshalling yards, the trim outer suburbs, a used car dump, a sad farm, and the golf courses, where people took refuge from the breakdown of law and order. Soon it would be possible to play golf from Lands End to John o’ Groats, and somebody, probably Ian Botham, would.
As they approached London, the knot in his stomach tightened. He was almost paralysed with fear.
He gathered his belongings together slowly, and left the train reluctantly. Above him, the huge majesty of St Pancras station was shrouded in scaffolding.
He walked slowly along the platform, trying to calm himself, and entered a tunnel that led down to the underground station. He didn’t know why he was entering the tunnel, but he knew that he must.
A tattered figure was walking towards him. He saw a flicker of recognition in the tramp’s bloodshot eyes, and a gleam of anger. Henry’s blood ran cold even before he saw the knife.
Benedict advanced on him with the knife held high. Henry grabbed his arm and tried to bend the wrist to release the knife, but Benedict was astonishingly strong considering his unkempt, emaciated condition.
Henry missed his footing, fell against the wall of the tunnel, and crashed to the ground on his back. Benedict loomed over him and raised the knife. Henry wondered where the rescuing crowds were, but there was nobody there at all. Maybe they’d all melted away in fear. He’d read about that being a common occurrence in 1990s Britain.
It is said that at the moment of death one’s whole life flashes before one. Luckily for you, horrified reader, since you’ve been right through his life already, this did not happen to Henry. Instead, images of the future that was being snatched from him flashed through his mind – English spring mornings, Hilary bent over her latest book, gentle mornings at the Café Henry, Hilary kissing him, grandchildren playing happily.
Suddenly he felt no fear of dying. His last wry thought, as Benedict made to lunge at him, gripping the knife fiercely in both hands, was that at least he was being killed by a member of the privileged classes, whose rich father had sent him to public school. He might not have led a good humanist’s life, but he was achieving a politically correct death.
He stared bravely at Benedict, showing no sign of pleading for mercy. Benedict raised the knife above his head, gave a wild cry of despairing aggression, and lunged forward as he began to bring the knife down. Suddenly he slipped sideways, overbalanced and crashed into the side of the tunnel. The knife slid from his grasp.
Henry was up in a flash, and he grabbed and pocketed the knife before Benedict could get up.
But Benedict didn’t get up. He lay concussed, glassy-eyed, his brief mad strength gone. Henry, who had once dreamt of a career as a stand-up comedian called Henry ‘Ee by gum I am daft’ Pratt, had been saved by a joke even older than the ones he had made at school. At the crucial moment, Benedict had slipped on a banana skin.
I should have remembered that my premonitions are always unfounded, thought Henry.
He took a photocopy of a recipe for sea bass on a bed of green lentils out of his wallet, crossed through the recipe, and wrote ‘PTO’ in large letters. On the back he wrote his home address and phone number and the message, ‘There’ll always be a place for you at our table, son.’
He kissed Benedict’s filthy forehead. The glassy eyes blinked.
Henry felt an overwhelming urge to get away, but he couldn’t just abandon Benedict. He went back into the station concourse, and told a member of the transport police about the tramp lying in the subway. He asked for a contact number, so that he could find out what happened to the tramp. The transport policeman gave him an odd look, and the number.
Henry waited until he was sure that Benedict was being seen to, and then he hurried off into the late spring sunshine of a London afternoon. He felt a deep joy that was probably entirely selfish, because Benedict was still in terrible trouble and there was no knowing whether he could be saved.
When he got back to the café, Henry would stick another motto on the crowded walls. ‘Until you are no longer frightened of dying, you cannot enjoy life.’
He would enjoy life. Maybe he would remain content to dispense happiness in his café. Maybe even at fifty-nine he would find some useful role in the battle to save radical and humane ideas from the humourless arrogance of political correctness.
As Henry walked along Marchmont Street, he saw a man carrying an ice-cream cornet mount his bicycle, and set off, holding the handlebars with one hand. The bicycle wobbled, the man grabbed the handlebars with his other hand, and all the pistachio ice-cream fell out of the cone onto the road. He gave Henry a rueful smile and said, quite cheerfully, ‘Worse things happen at sea.’
Thank you, unknown cyclist, thought Henry. I shall always console myself with that. I shall become Henry ‘Worse Things Happen at Sea’ Pratt.
He turned right into Tavistock Place, and set off, in tranquillity at last, in maturity at last, to relish the astonishing richness of everyday life.
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Published by Arrow Books 2007
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Copyright © David Nobbs 1998
David Nobbs has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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Omnibus edition first published in Great Britain in 1998 by Arrow Books
Second From Last in the Sack Race first published in Great Britain in 1983 by Methuen London; Pratt of the Argus first published in Great Britain in 1988 by Methuen London; The Cucumber Man first published in Great Britain in 1994 by Methuen London
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