The Complete Pratt (116 page)

‘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 something, 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.

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.

‘Hello, Hillers,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Hello, Henry. Oh it
is
good to see you. One of the worst things about being a novice nun was not seeing my friends.’

Henry’s heart sank. They were in for an evening of play-acting.

‘And your parents, surely?’ said Olivia.

‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Anna. She flashed a defiant look at Henry and Hilary.

‘I could never understand that,’ said Peter Matheson. ‘I should have thought you could have seen your parents.’

‘You had to renounce the familiar,’ said Anna. ‘It was a test of strength. Unfortunately, I failed.’

‘Well we’re pleased you did,’ said her father.

Henry accepted one of Howard Lewthwaite’s splendidly strong gin and tonics. Hilary chose white wine, Peter Matheson whisky, Olivia sherry, Anna tonic water.

‘I’ve got used to not having artificial stimulants,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure if I could cope with them now.’

‘Well of course I think religion can be an artificial stimulant,’ said Peter Matheson. He laughed at his own remark, which was just as well, if it was intended to be funny, because nobody else did.

Howard Lewthwaite departed to the kitchen.

Olivia Matheson approached Henry, and led him over to the window of the heavily floral lounge. There was still a gleam of light in the western sky.

‘You’re a man of the world,’ she said. ‘And Hilary’s Anna’s best friend. Will you help Anna come to terms with real life?’

Henry had a vision of Anna, on the one and only night when he had taken her out, sitting stark naked in a cheap brown armchair in her flat in Cardington Road, beneath a reproduction of ‘Greylag Geese Rising’, by Peter Scott. Nothing had risen that night, except the greylag geese.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, yes. We’ll … er … try and help her come to terms with real life.’

‘Thank you.’ She patted his arm. ‘My husband really likes you.’

The conversation became general again, and Henry didn’t feel like letting Anna off the hook too easily.

‘I’m shamefully ignorant about nuns,’ he said. ‘Tell us what you had to study, what devotions you had to perform, what disciplines were required of you, how you spent a typical day.’

Anna smiled. ‘I’d like to,’ she said, ‘but we were sworn to secrecy, and although I’ve left, I’d like to respect that.’

Henry had to admire her, albeit reluctantly.

‘I hate that kind of secrecy,’ said Hilary. ‘It sounds like a religious version of the Masons.’

‘Yes, that’s one of the things that disillusioned me,’ said Anna.

Hilary had to admire her, albeit reluctantly.

Sam, in jeans and tee-shirt, put his head round the door and said, ‘Hi. I’m out with some mates tonight. Have a great meal. Bye.’

Howard Lewthwaite, in a ‘Ban the Bomb’ apron, put his head round the door and said, ‘Come and get it.’

Hilary wheeled her mother into the lifeless dining room. Howard Lewthwaite asked Henry to deal with the wine. Everybody had some, even Anna. ‘I suppose I ought to try to get to like the stuff,’ she said.

‘You’ve been to France too, haven’t you?’ said Olivia Matheson to Henry and Hilary, over the beef casserole.

‘Yes, but not near Anna,’ said Henry. ‘We stayed with my Uncle Teddy. It was rather sad. He’d been married to a woman thirty years younger than him, and she’d left the day before we got there.’