The Complete Pratt (151 page)

Less than three months till we meet. I cannot be sad for long.

With deepest love,

Cucumber Henry (Retired)

ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER
16th, 1983, it was revealed that under a scheme to get rid of thousands of senior bureaucrats the National Health Service had ended up with 600 more than before, at a cost of £45 million. Ken Livingstone banned the giving of goldfish as prizes at fairs in Greater London. The main Brighton to Portsmouth railway line was closed for four hours when a six-foot-two signalman fled from his box after seeing a field mouse. And Henry Ezra Pratt met Hilary Nadežda Lewthwaite for only the second time since she’d walked out of their house nineteen years ago.

The venue was the foyer of the Midland Hotel, the appointed time six thirty, but Henry was there ten minutes early.

The claret-coloured carpet had threadbare patches. Some of the leather armchairs had burst arms. The photographs of the halcyon days of steam had not been adequately dusted. The hotel was closing its doors for ever on January 1st.

Henry sat in a quiet corner, with a view of the swing doors. Above him, number 46231
Duchess of Argyll
was still steaming through Crewe Station past knots of train-spotting schoolboys in baggy, knee-length trousers. His heart was thumping.

For all the three days that he’d been in England it had thumped. England seemed so small, so impossibly genteel after Peru, but it was Hilary’s birthplace, so he was glad to be back, in the land of the thumping heart. He was staying at Cousin Hilda’s, in his old room, in that cold house. No amount of airing could remove the aura of emptiness, the accumulated dampness of the gentlemenless years. Last night he’d dined off roast lamb and spotted dick, because it was a Tuesday, and in the stifling basement room he’d told Cousin Hilda about Peru, and she’d said, ‘Ee!’ and, ‘Well I never!’ and, ‘I’ve never been able to see the point of deserts, me. I mean, where’s the sense of them, if nothing grows?’ and, ‘I just wish Mrs Wedderburn was here. She had an ear for foreign parts, did Mrs
Wedderburn
. I haven’t. I can’t imagine them in me mind’s eye,’ and the evening, which Henry had dreaded, had passed swiftly, pleasantly and affectionately, and Henry had felt strangely touched, after all his adventures, to be back with spotted dick on a Tuesday. At the end of the evening he’d said, ‘I’ll be out tomorrow night, Cousin Hilda,’ and her face had fallen, and her lips had worked anxiously, and she’d said, ‘Out??’ as if she couldn’t believe that a man of forty-eight could be so irresponsible, and she’d said, ‘But I’ve bought the sausage for the toad-in-the-hole. I’ve got the sponge for the sponge pudding,’ and he’d said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise. I should have told you. I’m seeing Hilary,’ and she’d gone pink and said, ‘Hilary! You’re seeing Hilary?’ and he’d said, ‘We’ve been corresponding like pen-pals,’ and Cousin Hilda had said, ‘Well, I daresay the toad-in-the-hole can wait till Thursday. There’s no need to be hidebound now it’s just the two of us.’

And now a woman entered through the swing doors and Henry’s heart almost stopped, but this was an elderly lady, and Hilary would not have been flattered.

And then there she was, pale, tall, not looking her forty-eight years, tense, shy, subdued, yet so beautiful.

‘Hello, darling,’ he said, as he kissed her on her cold, cold cheek.

‘Hello, Henry,’ she said. He noted that she hadn’t said, ‘Darling.’ It was going to be a long job.

In the dusty, quiet vastness of the exhausted, ghostly bar, Henry ordered a pint of Tetley’s, and his companion plumped for mineral water. ‘I don’t drink much these days,’ she said.

They sat in the alcove in which, almost twenty-eight years ago, Henry had introduced Lorna Arrow to his journalist friends. The stuffing was bursting out of the seats. Above them, a Patriot-class engine was still pulling a mixed freight out of Carlisle Upperby Yard in light snow.

‘It’s lovely to see you,’ said Henry, wondering if even this was too bold and forward. Suddenly it all seemed desperately difficult.

‘How was your flight?’

‘Very punctual.’

‘Good. Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

‘How’s your father?’

‘Very well.’

‘Good.’

‘How’s Cousin Hilda?’

Ah! At least she had volunteered a question.

‘Very well.’

‘Good.’

‘Slightly smaller.’

‘Smaller?’

‘Shrinking slowly. We all do.’

‘Oh.’

‘We had spotted dick.’

Her first laugh. Oh, the unbelievable beauty of that first laugh.

His throat was dry. He drank the beer quickly and bought himself another one.

‘Thank you for all your letters,’ she said.

‘Oh, Hilary,’ he said. ‘I wish you’d seen Peru.’

‘Missing it already?’ she said wryly. Oh, the incredible loveliness of that returning wryness.

‘Oh yes. Two years spent largely missing you, and now I’m missing Peru.’

A tactical error! Not saying that he’d miss Peru. Saying that he’d spent two years missing her. She couldn’t cope with that.

‘The Range Rovers are still there,’ he said. ‘There is a corner of some foreign field that is for ever England.’

She smiled. Oh, the gentle splendour of that shy smile.

‘Where do you fancy eating?’ he asked. He expected her to say, ‘I don’t mind.’ Imagine his joy when she said, ‘Is the Taj Mahal still there? I rather fancy that. There aren’t any Indian restaurants in Spain.’

Never mind Indian restaurants in Spain. She wanted to go back to their old haunts. Henry began to dare to believe that it was going to be all right.

Hilary stayed with the Mathesons for a week. That first night they
had
a pleasant meal at the Taj Mahal, where Count Your Blessings was delighted to see them and they were delighted to see him, and pleased that the worrying pain in his left testicle hadn’t been the harbinger of a fatal disease, though disappointed that he’d never qualified as a doctor or given public concerts on the sitar or married Petula Clark.

Afterwards, Henry kissed Hilary demurely on the cheek.

The next day, they had a bar lunch at the Pigeon and Two Cushions, which was a mistake, because they missed Oscar dreadfully. That evening Henry had the extraordinary experience of eating toad-in-the-hole and sponge pudding with chocolate sauce on a Thursday instead of a Wednesday, and Cousin Hilda astonished him by suggesting he bring Hilary on the next evening.

So on the Friday evening Henry and Hilary had battered cod and jam roly-poly at Cousin Hilda’s, and Cousin Hilda went slightly pink and said, ‘Ee! That were grand, though I say it as shouldn’t,’ and they invited her out for Sunday lunch, and she said, ‘Sunday lunch! Whatever next?’

On the Saturday night they ate at the Mathesons’, and talked about Anna, and nuns, and Anna, and gin and tonic, and Anna. Olivia Matheson, who had a bruise on her left cheek, drank too much and fell over, and Peter Matheson said, ‘I’ve never ever known her do that before.’

For their Sunday lunch they went to the Midland Hotel. The restaurant seemed to Henry much changed, but he realised that they must be sitting in exactly the spot where he and Lorna had endured a disastrous meal, because behind them Royal Scot number 46164
The Artist’s Rifleman
was still passing through Bushey troughs with the up Mid-Day Scot.

This meal was not disastrous, just very predictable. Henry had tomato soup, Hilary egg mayonnaise, Cousin Hilda pineapple juice, and they all had the beef. Cousin Hilda ate every scrap. To their surprise, she ordered sherry trifle. ‘Sherry’s alcohol, Cousin Hilda,’ Henry pointed out. ‘Aye, well, I don’t expect they put much in,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘It’s all profit with these hotels, isn’t it?’ She took coffee and an after-dinner mint, saying, ‘I don’t know. Will it
never
end?’ and as they stood up to leave she said, ‘Thank you. I wish Mrs Wedderburn could have seen me today. What a time I’ve had.’

The next day, at Cousin Hilda’s insistence, they dined with her off liver and bacon and rhubarb crumble, and on Hilary’s last night they went to the Taj Mahal again and Count Your Blessings said, ‘So! Maybe you marry each other again!’ and roared with laughter.

But at the end of each day, and at the airport, Hilary’s demeanour was such that Henry felt able to give her no more than a gentle kiss on her cold, cold cheek.

Henry and Hilary were married for the second time on the day that Ian Macgregor, Chairman of the Coal Board, announced that he would write to every miner in Britain appealing for a return to work, Jeffrey Archer told Lynda Lee-Potter that he wasn’t afraid to cry, and police warned children that thousands of Superman transfers might be impregnated with LSD. It was Thursday, June 14, 1984.

Hilary was staying with the Mathesons again. She hadn’t yet been to bed with Henry. It was strange to reflect that they had already spent several years married to each other, and had slept together before that marriage, at a time when the permissive society was but a gleam in a pop-festival promoter’s eye. Now, when it was respectable to have sex before marriage, and living together for a trial period was regarded as sensible (if hardly romantic), Henry and Hilary sensed a need to be formal and dignified and correct.

As he shaved, Henry thought how incredibly lucky he was. Even when he’d visited Spain for the New Year, and when Hilary had come to Thurmarsh again in February, it had seemed by no means certain that they’d ever manage to find the old intimacy. Then, on his next visit, in March, they’d slipped into it. They’d kissed long and hard on the terrace of her father’s little villa, beside the slatted table with the huge, half-finished jigsaw of the
Mauretania
. ‘Darling,’ he’d said the following morning, ‘will you marry me?’ ‘Yes, please,’ she had said.

So here he was, butterflies in his stomach, ploughing through bacon and egg in Cousin Hilda’s basement. ‘Eat up,’ she commanded. ‘Excitement needs a solid foundation.’

Henry couldn’t wait to see how Cousin Hilda handled the Indian food. Wishing the day to be entirely different from their first wedding, Henry and Hilary had hit upon the happy idea of a wedding feast at the Taj Mahal.

Apart from Cousin Hilda, they’d invited Hilary’s father; her brother Sam and his Danish girlfriend Greta; Kate and her theatre director boyfriend Adam; Jack and his girlfriend with the strange name of Flick; Camilla and her beautiful Italian lover Giuseppe; Martin and Mandy Hammond; Lampo and Denzil; Joe and Molly Enwright; Peter and Olivia Matheson (reluctantly, because Hilary and Howard were staying with them); Nigel Clinton (as a symbol of the renunciation of jealousy, did he but know it) with his attractive wife Rebecca; Paul and Christobel Hargreaves; and, from the old
Argus
days, Colin Edgeley with Glenda; Ben Watkinson with Cynthia; and Ginny Fenwick with nobody, because there was nobody.

They had not invited Tosser and Felicity Pilkington-Brick (because Henry didn’t want to discuss his pension plans); Princess Michael of Kent (because they didn’t know her); Ted and Helen Plunkett (because of a surfeit of embarrassing moments); Diana and Gunter Axelburger (because it seemed inappropriate to invite an ex-wife); Mr and Mrs Hargreaves (because it seemed inappropriate to invite an ex-wife’s parents); Petula Clark (because fantasy withers if it touches reality); or Auntie Doris and Uncle Teddy (because Uncle Teddy still didn’t dare be seen in the town where he had supposedly been burnt to death, and Auntie Doris wouldn’t have been up to it, anyway).

As they arrived at the Taj Mahal from the Register Office the staff were lined up and smiling broadly.

‘Congratulations,’ said Count Your Blessings. ‘You have brought honour on our establishment by choosing it as venue for your nuptial celebrations.’

Henry caught a half-smile on the face of Paul Hargreaves, and wished that he hadn’t invited him.

But Paul saw Henry’s reaction, and hurried over, and said, ‘I wasn’t laughing at him, Henry. I was laughing for joy at the delightful sentiments and charming expression of them. So much better than a strangled “I hope everything will be to your satisfaction, sir,” squeezed out of some dry Anglo-Saxon lips.’ Henry looked at him in astonishment, and Paul said, ‘We’re thrilled to be invited. We bear you no ill-will over Diana.’

‘Whose Swiss dentist is gorgeous,’ interrupted Christobel.

‘Whose Swiss dentist is very nice,’ said Paul. ‘As we’re lifelong friends, shall we make a vow to like each other more, Henry? Or is your puritan heart still shocked by our easy money?’

‘Are you making easy money?’

‘We hope to,’ said Christobel. ‘We’re opening a private HRT clinic.’ She saw Henry’s blank expression. ‘Hormone replacement therapy. It’s the coming thing, and not just for women. You don’t want to age, do you?’

‘Actually I think I’m odd,’ said Henry. ‘I rather like the idea of being old.’

The waiters brought champagne and served it very professionally. Henry offered them a glass, and Count Your Blessings said, ‘Oh no, sir. We have a saying in India. “Intoxication is the thief of service.”’

‘Really?’ said Henry.

‘No, but I thought it sounded good.’ Count Your Blessings roared with laughter.

Henry hurried over to Cousin Hilda and said, ‘What would you like, Cousin Hilda?’