The Complete Pratt (13 page)

He loved every minute of the bus ride, on that morning of Saturday, November 14th 1943. Mist clung to the hillsides. A black-market pig squealed under the back seat.

Miss Candy met him off the bus. She was wearing a brand-new utility skirt and jacket. Her grey hair was piled up on top of her head in a fearsome Victory Roll.

The train was late. On the platform opposite, the adverts stated ‘Dr Carrot, your winter protector’, and ‘The navigator swears. By Kolynos, of course.’ Henry read them out loud. He read everything out loud.

He’d never been on a train before. He’d only watched them disappearing into the distance, while he waved at vanishing parents.

The smoke from the engine poured past the window. Sheep ran away across the sodden fields, as if this was the first train they had ever seen. People got on at every station, many of them in uniform. By the time they reached Leeds, the train was jam-packed. Miss Candy chatted easily about the things they saw, and he completely forgot that he hadn’t wanted to come.

They went to the British Restaurant and had Woolton Pie. Then they caught a bus to Elland Road, to see Leeds play Bradford, in the Wartime League North. There was only a small crowd in the large, windswept stadium.

Henry enjoyed the game, which was the first football match he had ever seen. Miss Candy was rooting for her native Bradford. ‘Other way!’ she shouted angrily at the ref, and flat-capped men turned to look. There weren’t many women present, and certainly none with booming, posh voices, three chins and a moustache. Henry wished Miss Candy wouldn’t draw attention to herself.

Leeds took a well-deserved lead through
HENRY
and
HINDLE.
Miss Candy was a picture of dejection, and Henry, who had begun by wanting Leeds to win, because they had a player called Henry, who, to Henry’s delight, scored, found himself switching his allegiance after Leeds had gone 2–0 up.

‘Where’s your white stick, ref?’ shouted Miss Candy.

In the last twenty minutes, Bradford equalised through
STABB
and
FARRELL,
who netted from the penalty spot. In fact Bradford might have snatched victory, had Butterworth not kicked off the line with the goalkeeper beaten.

They went back into the City in a state of physical well-being. Henry was particularly thrilled, because although it had been a two-all draw, the team he had been supporting at the time had scored all four goals.

The train to Skipton was crowded, and slow, and there was nothing to look at. The blinds were drawn. A dim bulb gave a light too faint for reading.

At Skipton they caught a local train. The only other person in their compartment was an airman, who was fast asleep.

Henry had felt sure that there would be a catch. There was. It came now, on the rattling, blacked-out little local train.

‘Henry?’ said Miss Candy. ‘I want you to tell me what people say about me.”

‘Tha what?’ said Henry.

‘The children say things about me. I must know what they say,’ said Miss Candy.

Miss Candy had given him a nice day. She didn’t tell him that she had delivered her part of an unspoken bargain, and now it was his turn. She didn’t need to.

‘I won’t be upset,’ she said. ‘And I won’t be angry. But I must know.’

‘They say tha used to ride in a circus,’ said Henry. ‘They say tha loved a Yank, and he went home and left thee broken-hearted. They say…’

He hesitated.

‘Go on,’ breathed Miss Candy.

If only the airman would wake up. But he snored deeply, as if to reassure them that it was safe to continue.

‘They say tha drinks a bottle of a gin a day,’ said Henry. ‘They say tha has a pet wolf. They say…’ He hesitated.

‘Go on,’ breathed Miss Candy.

‘They say tha’s got a special tube so tha never has to go to t’ lav.’

‘Go on,’ breathed Miss Candy.

‘They say tha used to be a stripper in a club in Wakefield,’ said Henry.

‘Really?’ said Miss Candy, amazed. ‘It must have been the masochists’ club.’

‘Tha what?’

‘Never mind. Go on.’

‘They say…’

‘Go on. I won’t be cross.’

‘They say tha has great tufts of hair hanging down from thy nipples.’

There was silence. The train rattled on. The airman groaned and his head lolled.

‘What an amazing woman I must be,’ said Miss Candy.

Christmas came and went. Strikes were frequent. The British and Americans landed at Anzio. In the Far East the war was fierce.
The
Rowth Bridge knitting circle knitted its two thousandth woollen garment. Every Sunday evening, Henry listened to ‘Variety Band Box’. Then Albert Sandler and the Palm Court Orchestra played ‘a programme of the kind of music heard in the Palm Court of your favourite hotel in the days before the war’ and Henry, who had never been in the Palm Court of any hotel before the war, listened, because it was there.

One day, towards the end of May, 1944, he received a letter from his father, who was now in…and hoping that by Christmas he would be in…he was well, and he loved Henry very much. And Henry realised, with a shock, that the letter had come as a shock. He was happy here. Uncle Frank and Auntie Kate were his parents now. There wasn’t any room for his father. And then he felt guilty about that, because he knew that you were supposed to love your father. That afternoon, after school, he saw one of the five-year-old boys crying. His name was Sidney Mold. He came from Five Houses, which was a tiny hamlet of six houses on the Troutwick road. He had to walk three miles on his own, and the previous day Simon Eckington had offered to escort him, but halfway home, Simon Eckington had dug his nails into him viciously. Henry sympathised. In fact he was shocked that his friend Simon could have done that. He offered to escort Sidney Mold home in good faith, but halfway to Five Houses he dug his nails into him viciously and made him cry.

In school the next day, Henry wondered if Miss Candy could see what he had done, and he felt guilty. He looked at Simon and felt shocked by Simon’s cruelty more than by his own, and he wondered if Simon was thinking the same. He wandered home slowly. The weather was humid. He felt tired and nasty.

It is easier to cope with the shame of yesterday than with the shame of years past. Henry suddenly recalled the last time he had ever seen his mother. The last words he had ever said to her were, ‘It’s got ten wheels. Two little ’uns and three big ’uns on each side.’ He could cope with the guilt of knowing that he had dug his nails into Sidney Mold and probably would again, much as he didn’t want to. He couldn’t cope with the guilt of his neglect of his mother.

He trudged towards the head of the valley, nine years and two
months
old, his chubby white legs still in short trousers, his shoes scuffed, his shirt grubby and hanging outside his trousers, a tiny, leaden figure in the great, natural bowl of Upper Mitherdale, and he vowed that from now on his heart would be a shrine for his mother, and he would be a loving son to his father, for his mother’s sake.

Then he remembered that Uncle Frank and Auntie Kate regarded him as their son now. They wanted him to stay with them. He wanted to stay with them. He wanted to take over Low Farm, when Uncle Frank retired. He wanted to keep the shorthorn cattle, the Dales pony, Billy the half-wit, and other endangered species.

Where did that leave his father?

Had Henry not been in such a state, he might have made a better show of resisting Lorna Arrow. She was sitting on the dry-stone wall, swinging her long, thin legs, smiling her toothy smile.

She led him to one of the field barns, on Kit Orris’s farm, at the back of the village. It was full of animal fodder. It smelt steamy and warm.

One of the best-known facts of human life was that girls were useless and soppy, yet Henry liked being with Lorna Arrow. He liked her husky voice, with the slight lisp. It made him tingle strangely. Why? He knew that grown-ups liked women. He knew that he was advanced at all his school subjects. Who could blame him, during the Lorna Arrow summer, if he deduced that the explanation was that he was advanced for his years?

The allies landed in northern France. The weather was wet, and Uncle Frank had great difficulty in gathering his hay. In the school sports Henry came second from last in the Sack Race, thus exceeding his achievements in the Hundred Yards, the Four-Forty, the Egg and Spoon Race, the High Jump, the Three-legged Race and the Potato Race. Yet Lorna Arrow did not desert him. He kept her apart from Simon. Some days were Simon days. Others were Lorna days. On Lorna days, they sometimes went to the field barn and he read her the comics. She didn’t like reading. It made him feel good to read them, because he read well. Her favourites were Desperate Dan, Our Gang and Merry Marvo and his Magic Cigar. She laid her fair, toothy head against his chest, and he tingled as he read the exploits of Zogg, who turned Nick
Turner
into the Headmaster of his Old School!, and of Wun Tun Joe, whose bones were so heavy that he weighed a ton. ‘“Come here, Chink,” snapped the bully,’ he read, ‘“No savvy,” chirped Wun Ton Joe.’

‘Let’s be “Our Gang”,’ lisped Lorna.

‘Not now,’ sighed Henry.

‘Do the Nigs,’ commanded Lorna.

‘I can’t. I’m fair jiggered up,’ protested Henry.

Lorna loved to enact the adventures of ‘Our Gang’. She particularly liked Henry’s accent when he portrayed Buckwheat and Billy, the darkies.

‘Which does tha prefer – greengages or eggs?’ queried Lorna.

‘Both,’ he responded.

‘Tha can have a fried greengage for breakfast, then,’ she exclaimed.

Once she brought him two Woodbines and insisted that he pretend to be Merry Marvo and his Magic Cigar, but he turned out to be Puking Pratt and his Soggy Ciggy.

When they ran out of comics, she made him read the All-Bran adverts. They were in comic strip form, featuring characters like Obstinate Oliver and Mary, Mary Not Contrary.

‘Which would tha prefer? Seven hundred thousand tons of All-Bran, or a castle with six gold doors?’ she said.

‘Which would tha prefer? A smack in t’ gob or a kick up t’ arse-end?’ said Henry.

She went home crying. It was all for the best. The boys were right. Girls were useless. So why did he apologise and take her out again?

‘Which does tha prefer?’ she said. ‘Pencils or the Walls of Jericho?’

‘Pencils,’ he said at random. ‘I don’t rate t’ Walls of Jericho, me.’

‘Which would tha prefer?’ she said. ‘Come home to tea or a yacht?’

‘A yacht,’ he said.

Lorna’s father came in late, and they started tea without him.

‘Ee, I’m right twined,’ he said grumpily, when he came in. ‘I’m as twined as me arse.’

‘Wash thy mouth out with soap and water,’ said Lorna’s mother.

‘Which would tha prefer?’ said Lorna. ‘Two hundred bars of soap or a chest of sunken treasure?’

‘Don’t be silly, Lorna,’ said Lorna’s mother.

She
was
silly. Henry wished he wasn’t there. But the next day, when he was with Simon, who was sensible, he longed to hear Lorna’s husky, toothy lisp.

The summer slipped past. Paris was liberated. Henry wasn’t. The weather was wet. Uncle Frank had the greatest difficulty in cutting his oats.

Fiona came over with her husband and his artificial leg. There was an element of the artificial about her legs, too. She had responded to the unavailability of silk stockings by using sun-tan lotion to give her legs the appearance of being stockinged, and had added the seams with eyebrow pencil. This was considered outrageously fast in Skipton banking circles, but then Fiona Brassingthwaite, née Turnbull, was known to be a law unto herself.

School resumed. Miss Candy rustled a lot. Her knickers were made of defective parachute silk. There was a war on. Miss Candy sometimes gave Henry glinting, conspiratorial looks. They embarrassed him less than he expected. The nit lady came. Lorna Arrow had nits. Henry vowed never again ever to have anything more to do with girls again ever.

The very next Sunday he ran across Belinda Boyce-Uppingham. She was riding, picking her way daintily through the little ash wood by the river. Henry was running home, to listen to a spelling bee between Post Office Workers and Red Cross Workers. He frightened her pony. The pony reared. Belinda Boyce-Uppingham, the great love of his life, because of whom all other loves were undergone, was deposited on the soggy, soggy ground.

He rushed forward to help her.

‘Art tha all right?’ he said.

She picked herself up and tested her limbs. Her face was scarlet with fury

‘No thanks to you, you…you bloody oik,’ she said.

The wet weather continued. Uncle Frank’s oats lay sodden in the fields, till well into November. The newspaper adverts began to
look
forward to a time of returning plenty. ‘After victory, our familiar packages will reappear in all parts of the country,’ said Parkinsons’ Old-Fashioned Humbugs. ‘When they have finished their vital war service, Dagenite and Perdrix batteries will again be available to all,’ promised Dagenite and Perdrix batteries. ‘It’s in the shops again! Reckitt’s Blue!’ thundered Reckitt’s Blue.