The Complete Pratt (126 page)

But she was standing, with her coat on, reading an invitation on the mantelpiece.

‘Time I was off,’ she said.

This was worse than her having taken all her clothes off.

‘Oh, Ginny,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you going to stay and come to bed with me?’

She put her arms round him, and kissed him solemnly.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t want me enough. I don’t want you enough. It might work at the time. It wouldn’t work afterwards. I’d want to go home as soon as it was over. Neither of us would want to wake up beside the other. Will you walk me to my door, like a gentleman? I’d like to feel I’d been out with a gentleman, just once in my life.’

The invitation which Ginny had been reading on Henry’s mantelpiece was to the engagement party of Paul Hargreaves, Henry’s best friend at Dalton College, to Dr Christobel Farquhar.

It took place in the elegant Hampstead home of Paul’s parents. Henry told himself, with every mile of the long journey from Thurmarsh, that this was another social event at which it was important for him not to blot his copy-book. He would be witty, gracious, generous, sober – well, fairly sober. It was ridiculous to have a best friend whom you no longer liked very much. He would find in his heart the warmth to rekindle his affection for Paul.

Dr Christobel Farquhar was, as was to be expected, strikingly attractive. ‘Paul’s a lucky man,’ Henry told her, and he told Paul, ‘You’re a lucky man.’ Low marks for originality, but his reward was a warm smile from Paul which almost persuaded him that he really did like him.

There was champagne, but Henry drank carefully. There was a salmon buffet, and Henry ate carefully. With his suit unsullied by mayonnaise, and his senses barely affected by champagne, he sailed through the elegant rooms, crowded with surgeons and radiologists and neurologists and psychiatrists and a couple of Hampstead artists to give just a slight piquancy of bohemianism.

It was less than halfway through the party when he overheard the exchange. ‘Who
is
that?’ ‘That’s Paul’s funny little friend. You know, the cucumber man.’

The cucumber man’s heart raced, his pulse hammered, but he refused to feel humiliated. He was a fighter. He had always been a fighter. He would regain his fighting form.

So, when he had a minute or two with Paul and Christobel, he didn’t say, ‘Going to be a lawyer, get engaged to a lawyer. Going to be a doctor, get engaged to a doctor. Is your whole life programmed?’ He said, ‘I hope you’ll be very happy and I hope you’ll visit me in Thurmarsh. I haven’t seen nearly enough of Paul over the years.’

When Mr Hargreaves, eminent brain surgeon, said, ‘I’m retiring next year. Let some of the younger chaps in. No point in being greedy,’ Henry didn’t say, ‘You don’t need to be, you’ve got enough salted away to live in luxury for fifty years.’ He said, ‘An admirable sentiment. I wish you a long and happy retirement.’ Mr Hargreaves thanked him warmly. It was nice to be thanked warmly.

When Mrs Hargreaves bore down on him, she imposed a critical test on his new-found social solidity. He felt an absurd temptation to say, ‘I bet you look wonderful with nothing on.’ He fought it off valiantly, and said, ‘You look as young and elegant and beautiful as ever,’ and was rewarded by a blush of pleasure and embarrassment that sent an exquisite shiver through his genitals.

Henry was surprised and delighted to see Denzil and Lampo. They weren’t speaking to each other. ‘A contretemps over a tantalus.’ Lampo had put on weight. He looked solidly successful, as well he might, since he was regarded as a golden boy at Sotheby’s – or was it Christie’s? Denzil remained slender and trim, his limp had grown no worse over the years, and his parchment skin, stretched and flecked with age, had barely changed in the ten years that Henry had known him. He had aged young, and in his mid-fifties he was gently ripening into distinction.

‘Still with cucumbers?’ asked Lampo.

‘Still with cucumbers.’

‘Priceless. Oh my God. Tosser!’

Tosser Pilkington-Brick entered
en famille
. He too had put on weight, and lost the fitness of his rugger years. Diana looked pleasantly chunky, but tired. Benedict, who was almost eight, looked like Little Ford Fauntleroy. Camilla, who was six, looked like a very small horse.

Henry longed to talk to Diana. The intensity of his longing astounded him. He moved towards her, but got waylaid by Belinda Boyce-Uppingham.

‘My God,’ he said. ‘This party’s registering seven on the reunion scale …’

‘Lovely to see you,’ said Belinda. ‘I heard something about you the other day. Now what was it? Oh yes. You’ve given up scribbling and are in radishes. That’s right.’

‘Well actually I gave up scribbling eight years ago, and it’s cucumbers.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And how about you?’

‘I’ve got two,’ said Belinda Boyce-Uppingham, as if there was no
other
subject but children. ‘Tessa and Vanessa. Robin would love a son, but never mind, they’re good girls. Ah, speak of the devil. Robin, you remember Henry Pratt.’

‘Er … oh yes,’ said Robin. ‘The refugee chap who’s in tomatoes.’

‘Cucumbers, actually,’ said Henry.

‘I said “radishes”,’ said Belinda.

They all had a laugh over that.

‘Oh, well, they’re all veg, I suppose,’ said Robin.

Henry was tempted to say, ‘Shrewd of you to spot that. Who says you’re as thick as two short planks?’ but he fought it off, smiled a self-deprecatory smile, and said, ‘Actually I sometimes forget what I’m in myself,’ and they all laughed again, in the way people do, at parties, at things that aren’t remotely amusing.

At last he was at Diana’s side.

‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said.

She flushed slightly.

‘You know Benedict and Camilla, don’t you?’ she said.

‘We have met but you were much younger then,’ said Henry.

‘So were you,’ said Camilla.

‘Camilla! Don’t be rude,’ said Diana.

‘No, she’s absolutely right. It was a silly remark,’ said Henry.

He smiled at Camilla. If he’d hoped to win her over, it was a dismal failure.

‘I remember you,’ said Benedict. ‘I’m nearly eight. Much older than Camilla. You were at Dalton College with Daddy, weren’t you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m going to Dalton College after I’ve been to Brasenose College.’

‘Really? I was at Brasenose too. You’ll be following in my footsteps.’

‘Will you excuse me?’ said Benedict. ‘I’ve spotted a friend. Nice to meet you.’

Benedict moved off.

‘Bloody twit!’ said Camilla.

‘Please don’t swear, Camilla,’ said Diana.

‘Gosh. Nosh,’ said Camilla. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? “Gosh. Nosh.”’

‘It’s very good,’ said Henry. ‘Why don’t you go and eat some?’

Camilla gave him a cool look, and stalked off.

‘Where’s Nigel?’ said Henry, looking round, and remembering, on this his first day of total social smoothness, not to call him ‘Tosser’.

‘Tosser,’ said Diana. ‘Would you believe he’s gone to phone a client?’

‘Oh my God. He’s monstrous. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘Yes, you should. He is.’

‘But you’re happy?’

‘No.’

‘Oh Diana, I wish you were happy.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘Actually I wish everybody was happy tonight.’

‘Oh.’

‘But you particularly.’

‘That’s nice.’

It was so nice, Henry found, to smile at people and be smiled at by people. He wished the party would go on for ever and he would never have to go back to his lonely life.

The children returned, and Henry ‘Can I have permission to get something out of the Permissive Society?’ Pratt wasn’t nearly as lonely when they were around. They said they’d had a wonderful time but didn’t say much about Hilary, and he refused to stoop to using them in a search for information. They were very brown and looked extremely fit. To his enormous, his stupendous, his tear-wrenching, his heart-stopping relief, they seemed thrilled to see him and not unhappy to be home.

Folk music swept the land. Even in Thurmarsh there were hippies. Henry bought a Bob Dylan record, but he sensed that the whole movement was passing him by.

The Regional Co-ordinator, Northern Counties (Excluding
Berwick
-on-Tweed) reached retirement age. His successor was named, and he was not the Assistant Regional Co-ordinator Northern Counties (Excluding Berwick-on-Tweed) but John Barrington, Head of Gherkins.

Once again, the party was held in the Board Room, but this time there were no balloons. ‘A bad idea.
Mea culpa
,’ had been Timothy Whitehouse’s verdict on the balloons.

Maybe Henry ‘Nonpareil at avoiding blotted copy-books’ Pratt had become complacent. Maybe the pain of being passed over for his boss’s job was greater than he could bear with equilibrium. Maybe the depression he had felt at Dennis Tubman-Edwards’s retirement party had given him a morbid fear of retirement parties. Maybe he had a subconscious dread of finding that he had given his whole life to cucumbers and would end up at his own retirement party. Whatever it was, Henry couldn’t face Roland Stagg’s retirement party without having a couple of drinks first.

By the time he arrived, the party was already in full swing. He took a large glass of red wine and found his retiring boss bearing down on him, trousers at half-mast round his enormous paunch.

‘I’d like a brief word, Henry,’ he said. ‘I’ve decided to come clean. I was asked if I thought you should succeed me. Now I’m very pleased with your progress. You’ve been keeping a really low profile.’

‘So low that sometimes I wonder if I’m clinically dead,’ said Henry.

‘Excellent. Truly excellent.’ He gave his painful, Burmese cough. ‘Anyway, I said, “No. I don’t think Henry should succeed me. He’s ready for promotion, but he needs to move to a different department. He needs a challenge.” Be patient, Henry. Hang on in there, avoid blotting your copy-book, and the world can be your oyster. Your hour of glory is at hand. Have you met my wife Laura?’

Laura Stagg was quite unreasonably pretty. Men with vast paunches shouldn’t have such pretty wives. Where was the justice in the world? She was wearing a surprisingly low-cut dress and Henry was transfixed by her splendid cleavage. He felt an absurd temptation to say something outrageously sexy to her. Desperately,
he
said, ‘How are you feeling about having Mr Stagg at home all day?’

‘You’re the one who was at school with Tommy Marsden, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘When I heard him on the radio being asked what it was like to win the first division championship and he said, “It hasn’t sunk in yet,” I thought he must be some kind of prize idiot. But you know, I feel the same. It simply hasn’t sunk in.’

She smiled and looked straight into Henry’s eyes. He scuttled off in search of safer ground, and poured himself another large red wine.

He found himself face to face with Vincent Ambrose, the Director General. He hadn’t spoken to Mr Ambrose since his first week, and doubted if the Director General would remember him, but there he did him an injustice.

‘Get that kettle all right, did you?’ said Vincent Ambrose genially.

‘Absolutely.’ Henry wished he hadn’t said ‘absolutely’ so absolutely meaninglessly, when ‘yes’ would have sufficed.

‘Jolly good.’ The Director General paused, searching for something to say. ‘Well, keep up the good work,’ he said, and moved on.

When Henry spilt coronation chicken all down his suit front, he knew that he was sinking.

He took another large glass of red wine, to soothe his nerves.

He tried hard, that evening, to hang on in there, to keep a clear head, to avoid blotting his copy-book.

In vain!

He tried hard, that evening, having learnt for all time the dangers of jealousy, not to feel bitter about the promotion of John Barrington.

To no avail!

Somewhere, along the line, he had had one glass of red wine too many.

He awoke with a steam-hammer in his head and an unwashed wart-hog in his mouth. He could remember only three of the things that he had said during the rest of that awful evening.

He recalled countering John Barrington’s, ‘I hope we’ll work well together. I certainly relish the prospect,’ with, ‘Well, I don’t. You’re a little prick, and you should have stayed with gherkins.’

He remembered saying, ‘I bet you look gorgeous with no clothes on,’ to the unexpectedly pretty wife of Roland Stagg.

He saw, vividly, horribly, the expression on the face of the Director (Operations), as he limped off after Henry had said, ‘I know why you haven’t promoted me. Because the face doesn’t fit, does it, Mr Timothy Shitehouse?’

Slowly, Henry’s physical state improved. By lunchtime, he only felt as if he had a face flannel stuck in his throat, and managed to phone his ex-boss to apologise.

‘Oh dear oh dear oh dear,’ said Roland Stagg. ‘Who didn’t keep a low profile, then? Who blotted his copy-book?’

‘I know,’ said Henry. ‘I just wanted to say I’m sorry if I spoilt your party.’