The Complete Pratt (120 page)

‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘I thought I was going to pass out. I thought, “I wish Henry was telling me this outside, on the moors, in the wind.” I felt …’

‘Claustrophobic.’

‘Yes. You are serious, aren’t you?’

‘Would I joke about something so important?’

‘So … why did he do all this?’

‘It was all…,’ Henry lowered his voice still further, ‘financial shenanigans. Property.’

‘I told him he should get into property.’

‘Well he did.’

‘So whose was the body in the Cap Ferrat?’

‘I can’t tell you. People still living might get hurt. Nobody you know.’

Auntie Doris raised another piece of the
ballottine
to her mouth. Suddenly her fork stopped, and she asked the question Henry had dreaded. ‘Why didn’t he tell me?’

‘He … er … I think I’d better tell you the whole truth.’

‘People usually say that when they’re about to tell you half the truth.’

‘Well I’ll tell the whole truth. There was a woman.’

‘A younger woman?’

‘Er … slightly.’

‘Who was this slightly younger woman?’

‘Oh Lord. I can’t tell you that either.’

‘People still living might get hurt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is she dead too?’

‘Oh no. She left him … with her tail between her legs after he’d thrown her out.’

‘I see.’

‘You’re the only person he’s ever loved, Auntie Doris.’

‘Well, he’s the only person I’ve ever loved, Henry. Have you seen him?’

‘Yes, we stayed with him in Cap Ferrat just after this slightly younger woman had … been thrown out.’

‘So! He took her to Cap Ferrat! That was our place. He shouldn’t have taken her to Cap Ferrat.’

‘A psychiatrist would say he took her there because subconsciously he wished she was you.’

‘I’m sure he would if you paid him enough.’

‘He has a nice villa, a good life, many friends, a thriving … import-export business. He wants to give all that up, and come back to England … and you.’

‘Well!’

‘I wish he could. I love you both, you see.’

‘I still can’t think why.’

‘Neither can I, but we won’t go into that.’

‘What do you think I should do?’

‘Meet him in London. See how it develops. Find out what you feel about him.’

‘What’ll I tell Geoffrey?’

‘Shopping trip with Hilary.’

‘You’re a very resourceful liar.’

‘Must have been my upbringing.’

‘Oh God. Were we totally awful? Henry, I heard your friend Tommy Marsden on the telly, saying, “It hasn’t really sunk in yet.” I thought, “God, you must be thick, if you don’t realise
you
’ve scored the winning goal in the Cup Final.” I see what he meant now. This hasn’t sunk in. So many questions. What about Geoffrey? Where would we live?’

‘Would you feel bad about giving up the White Hart?’

‘Bad? I’d be thrilled. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved it. It’s done wonders for my self-confidence. But you’ve heard the phrase, “A legend in his own lunchtime.” Well I have to drink the lunchtimes of my legend, and it’ll kill me. Oh my God!’

‘What?’

‘Teddy can’t see me like this, with all these chins. Oh my God.’

‘He won’t mind. He’s got a paunch and his legs are going thin.’

‘No, but … has he? Oh, poor Teddy. No, but I’m huge. It’s served its purpose. I have to lose weight. Teddy will mind.’

‘What do you mean, “It’s served its purpose”?’

‘Kept the customers happy – they think I’ve a huge personality because I’m huge – and put Geoffrey off sex. I don’t like sex with Geoffrey any more. I keep thinking of those waitresses. And the blackheads are getting worse.’

‘Well there you are, then.’

‘Yes.’

Quentin Cloves had a curious ability to walk across a room without seeming to move his legs. He floated towards them now.

‘And how was the famous Fig Leaf
ballottine d’homard?
’ he asked.

‘Wonderful,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘Magnificent. Supreme.’

Quentin Cloves looked gratified. But when he’d gone, Auntie Doris said, ‘The sad thing is, what with all this, I just didn’t taste it at all.’

Henry waited three weeks before replying to Uncle Teddy, to give Auntie Doris time to go to a health farm.

Her visit was an enormous success, or rather a ceasing to be enormous success, and she followed her strict regime impeccably even after her release, a day early, for good behaviour. But, as her weight dropped off, her face became gaunt. She aged, through dieting too quickly, and she lost energy. Geoffrey Porringer, at
first
enthusiastic over the venture, didn’t enjoy its fruits, and the more fickle among the customers felt the place wasn’t what it was, the beer wasn’t kept as well, it wasn’t as clean, service was more surly, it was resting on its laurels, when in fact nothing had changed except Auntie Doris’s weight.

Auntie Doris was pleased, if also slightly offended, that Geoffrey Porringer’s sexual appetite didn’t increase as expected.

Then there was a delay before Uncle Teddy’s reply – ‘Sorry I didn’t write sooner but an opportunity to visit Italy came up.’

In the meantime, Hilary was getting on well with her second novel. Although sales of
In the Dog House
had been modest, and the advance on
All Stick Together
hadn’t been sensational, these sums, added to Henry’s utterly secure if not startlingly large salary, had given them the confidence to make an offer for a larger house, with three bedrooms.

Dumbarton House was a 1930s property, more modern Georgian than mock-Georgian, in Waterloo Crescent, off Winstanley Road, slightly too near to the town centre to be truly part of the posh suburb of Winstanley, where they brought their fish and chips home in briefcases. Neither of them liked it as much as Paradise Villa, but it had the extra bedroom they needed, and a secure garden, and Cousin Hilda said, ‘Mrs Wedderburn said, “It’ll be further away for them.” I said, “Yes, Mrs Wedderburn, but old houses just aren’t synonymous with small children.” “They’ll still visit you regularly, though,” she said. “Oh yes,” I said, “though Henry has his cucumbers, which keep him right busy, and bringing up children is a full-time job even if you aren’t writing a novel as well.” She said, “I can’t understand why she writes novels, a nice girl like her. I prefer biographies, me. At least you know they’re true.” She’s very direct, is Mrs Wedderburn, but she has a heart of gold. Where I’d ever have found another friend like her I do not know.’

In the summer of 1963 the Profumo affair swept away old certainties about the probity of British public life. By the end of the summer, a society osteopath called Stephen Ward had
revealed
the truth about John Profumo’s relationship with Christine Keeler. By the end of the year, Profumo would have resigned, Ward would have been found guilty of living on immoral earnings and died of a drugs overdose, the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan would have been succeeded by Sir Alex Douglas-Home, and Christine Keeler would be in prison for perjury over the trial of her West Indian associate, Aloysius ‘Lucky’ Gordon.

In the midst of all this, Henry ‘not so lucky’ Pratt sat at his desk on a sultry August day, and found no enthusiasm for his task – the preparation of the first draft of a consultative document to be presented to Roland Stagg (to be rejected by him if bad, and claimed as his own if good) under the snappy title ‘The Way Forward – Cucumber Distribution in the Seventies. A centralised chilled store for the Northern Counties – a Study of Feasibility and Location.’ On this summer dog day this podgy and exhausted young dog couldn’t even summon up enthusiasm for his other great task – the scouring of the Situations Vacant columns for alternative employment.

This was because, in his mind, he was elsewhere.

Where was he, in his mind?

He was in the restaurant of the Hotel Magnifique, in London, with Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris.

The Hotel Magnifique no longer exists, mercifully, but in 1963 it was the ideal venue for a romantic encounter. The restaurant was so large, and the customers were so few, and the service was so slow, that one achieved almost total privacy. The lights were so dim that the lines on ageing faces were invisible. The food was so bland that it couldn’t possibly interrupt any train of thought or emotion. The bill was so enormous that the lady could never accuse the gentleman of meanness again.

Uncle Teddy gave a nervous, stiff smile, as if for a photograph he didn’t want taken, and said, ‘You look wonderful, Doris.’

‘I don’t,’ said Auntie Doris, ‘but thank you. But you
do
look wonderful.’

‘I don’t either, but thank
you
,’ said Uncle Teddy.

‘So, I’m a bigamist, like you, to add to my other crimes.’

‘My God, I suppose you are. What other crimes?’

‘Receiving stolen goods. Smuggling. Tax evasion. Fraud. All the things that came with living with you.’

‘Doris!’

‘Anyway, I’ve got a good defence if I’m ever arrested for bigamy. The fact that you were certified dead by a Coroner’s Court should get me off.’

An elderly waiter limped towards them across the cavernous restaurant, which had the look of a ballroom on a liner. He carried menus which had the wingspans of giant condors.

‘At last!’ said Uncle Teddy.

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ said the waiter.

‘You aren’t exactly Speedy Gonzales, are you?’

‘Geoffrey!’ hissed Auntie Doris. ‘Tact.’

‘The name is Teddy, Doris. And why are we Teddying, anyway?’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘Two minutes together and already I’m being Teddyed.’

‘Well, honestly,’ said Auntie Doris, who always made things worse by protesting about them. ‘Fancy complaining about the speed of service to a man with a deformed foot.’

‘Doris!’

It was as if Uncle Teddy had never gone to prison and come out to find Auntie Doris living with his best friend and pretended to be killed in a fire and gone to live in France with a slightly younger woman, aged nineteen, while Auntie Doris married his best friend. There were no great statements of love and regret, of guilt and shame. They just slipped back into the old ways, they Dorised and Teddyed together through a long, bad meal, and knew that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.

As the summer died, so did Henry’s enthusiasm for finding another job. He was simply too busy. In the evenings and at weekends, he kept the children amused while Hilary finished her novel. Jack was almost four now, and soon he’d be as good at football as Henry. Kate rode her bicycle round the Alderman
Chandler
Memorial Park at a pace which terrified him. Jack climbed with ease trees that other children and cats and firemen found difficult. Both children courted serious accidents and defied warnings. Neither ever suffered anything worse than grazed knees and elbows, but Henry’s nerves were shattered. And when the children fell exhausted into bed, he fell exhausted into redecorating Dumbarton House. Small wonder that he was having difficulty concentrating on the second draft of ‘The Way Forward – Cucumber Distribution in the Seventies. A centralised chilled store for the Northern Counties – a Study of Feasibility and Location.’ They had a new car now, well a new used car, a Mini. It nosed its way to York and Tyneside and Wearside, to Lancaster and the Solway Firth, so that its proud owner could examine the nine possible sites that had been shortlisted for the projected chilled store.

When Hilary’s editor said that the ending of
All Stick Together
was slightly too farcical, he suggested that it was his turn to come to her. She, having no idea that Henry thought of her editor as a middle-aged, bespectacled, stooping, bookish wreck, suggested a Saturday, when she wouldn’t have to fetch the children from school, and Henry could take them out for the day.

Henry took the children to York, leaving before the arrival of the editor. They had a good day, particularly enjoying the Railway Museum and the Castle Museum, which had a complete Victorian street. But the children grew tired, and they arrived home before the editor had left.

Henry’s first sight of Nigel Clinton sent his whole world spinning. He had a strong sensation of falling and was astounded to find that he was actually standing absolutely normally on the stridently orange and purple carpet that they hated and couldn’t yet afford to replace. Nigel Clinton was twenty-five, Oxford educated, tall and dark. It was only in Henry’s mind that he was the most good-looking man who ever walked this earth, but he was undeniably handsome and, being determined to be a successful man of letters, he was seriously embarrassed by his looks, so
that
he smiled at new arrivals with a selfconscious shyness that merely increased his sex appeal.

‘Are you all right, darling?’ Hilary asked Henry anxiously.

‘Fine. Just tired.’

She kissed him warmly – perhaps, he thought, a little too warmly. Had she something to hide?

Henry found himself absurdly anxious to impress this young man, and on the whole he was sorry that his next remark, ‘Still at it, then?’ was such a banal statement of the obvious, and when Nigel said, ‘This is a nice house, Henry, and a lovely street,’ with an air of surprise, Henry regretted responding with, ‘Oh yes, Nigel. We have all sorts of things in the North – shops that sell books, theatres that put on plays. I could even show you an off-licence that stocks green chartreuse.’